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.dt Studies in Greek Scenery, Legend and History, by James George Frazer
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Transcriber’s Note:
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Footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter, and are
linked for ease of reference.
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see the transcriber’s #note:endnote# at the end of this text
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.bn 001.png
.pb
.h1
STUDIES | IN | GREEK SCENERY, LEGEND | AND HISTORY
.bn 002.png
.pb
.ce
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
.in 4
.ti -4
Pausanias’ Description of Greece. Translated by
Sir J. G. Frazer, D.C.L., Litt.D. With commentary,
illustrations, and maps. Second Edition. 6 vols. 8vo.
126s. net.
.ti -4
The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and
Religion. Third Edition, revised and enlarged. 8vo.
.in +2
.ti -2
Part 1. The Magic Art and the Evolution
of Kings. 4th Impression. Two vols. 20s. net.
.ti -2
Part 2. Taboo and the Perils of the Soul.
3rd Impression. One vol. 10s. net.
.ti -2
Part 3. The Dying God. 3rd Impression.
One vol. 10s. net.
.ti -2
Part 4. Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Two vols.
Third Edition. 20s. net.
.ti -2
Part 5. Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild.
2nd Impression. Two vols. 20s. net.
.ti -2
Part 6. The Scapegoat. One vol. 10s. net.
.ti -2
Part 7. Balder the Beautiful: The Fire-Festivals
of Europe, and the Doctrine of the
External Soul. 2nd Impression. Two vols. 20s. net.
.ti -2
Vol. XII. Bibliography and General Index.
20s. net.
.in -4
.ti -2
Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship.
8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
.ti -2
Totemism and Exogamy. A Treatise on Certain
Early Forms of Superstition and Society. With Maps.
4 vols. 8vo. 50s. net.
.ti -2
The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of
the Dead. Vol. I. The Belief among the Aborigines of
Australia, the Torres Straits Islands, New Guinea, and
Melanesia. 8vo. 10s. net.
.ti -2
Psyche’s Task. A Discourse concerning The
Influence of Superstition on the Growth of Institutions.
Second Edition, revised and enlarged, to which is added
“The Scope of Social Anthropology.” 8vo. 5s. net.
.ti -2
Essays of Joseph Addison. Chosen and edited,
with a Preface and a few Notes, by Sir J. G. Frazer.
2 vols. Gl. 8vo. 10s. net.
.ti -2
Letters of William Cowper. Chosen and edited,
with Memoir and Notes, by Sir J. G. Frazer. 2 vols.
Gl. 8vo. 10s. net.
.in 0
.ce
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.
.bn 003.png
.pb
.sp 4
.nf c
STUDIES
IN
GREEK SCENERY, LEGEND
AND HISTORY
SELECTED FROM HIS COMMENTARY ON
PAUSANIAS’ ‘DESCRIPTION OF GREECE’
BY
SIR JAMES GEORGE FRAZER
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
AUTHOR OF ‘THE GOLDEN BOUGH’
.sp 8
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1917
.nf-
.bn 004.png
.pb
.sp 8
.nf c
First published under the title, “Pausanias and other Greek Sketches,” 1900
Reprinted 1917
.nf-
.bn 005.png
.pn v
.pb
.sp 4
.h2
PREFACE
.sp 2
The Englishman in Greece who pays any heed
to the remains of classical antiquity is apt, if he
be no scholar, to wonder who a certain Pausanias
was whose authority he finds often quoted on
questions of ancient buildings and sites. The
first of the following sketches may do something
to satisfy his curiosity on this head. It
has already served as an introduction to a
version of Pausanias’s Description of Greece
which I published with a commentary two
years ago. The account of Pericles was contributed
to the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica. I desire to thank Messrs.
A. and C. Black for their courteous permission to
republish it. The other sketches are reprinted,
with some small changes and adjustments of
detail, from my commentary on Pausanias.
References to authorities have been omitted
as needless in a book which is not specially
.bn 006.png
.pn +1
addressed to the learned. Any one who wishes
to pursue the subject further will find my
authorities amply cited in the original volumes.
Among works from which I have borrowed
both outlines and colours for some of my
sketches of Greek landscape I will here mention
only two—the Erinnerungen und Eindrücke
aus Griechenland of the Swiss scholar W.
Vischer, and the Peloponnes of the German
geologist Mr. A. Philippson. Slight and fragmentary
as these sketches are, I am not without
hope that they may convey to readers who
have never seen Greece something of the eternal
charm of its scenery. To such as already
know and love the country they will yet be
welcome, if here and there they revive some
beautiful or historic scene on those tablets of
the mind from which even the brightest hues
so quickly fade.
.ll 68
.rj
J. G. F.
.ll
Cambridge, March 30, 1900.
.bn 007.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
CONTENTS
.sp 2
.ta r:4 l:40 r:5
| | PAGE
1.| Pausanias and his Description of Greece | #1:ch01#
2.| Oropus | #160:ch02#
3.| Rhamnus | #163:ch03#
4.| Marathon | #165:ch04#
5.| Prasiae | #174:ch05#
6.| Mount Hymettus | #178:ch06#
7.| Mount Pentelicus | #182:ch07#
8.| Phyle | #187:ch08#
9.| The Port of Athens | #191:ch09#
10.| The Sacred Way | #209:ch10#
11.| The Hall of Initiation at Eleusis | #214:ch11#
12.| Eleutherae | #216:ch12#
13.| Megara | #219:ch13#
14.| The Scironian Road | #220:ch14#
15.| The Isthmus of Corinth | #223:ch15#
16.| The Bath of Aphrodite | #226:ch16#
17.| The Prospect from Acro-Corinth | #227:ch17#
18.| The Capture of Corinth by Aratus | #228:ch18#
19.| Sicyon | #232:ch19#
20.| Phliasia | #233:ch20#
21.| Nemea | #237:ch21#
22.| The Pass of the Tretus | #238:ch22#
.bn 008.png
.pn +1
23.| Mycenae | #242:ch23#
24.| The End of the Mycenaean Age | #245:ch24#
25.| Mount Arachnaeus | #248:ch25#
26.| Epidaurus | #249:ch26#
27.| The Temple in Aegina | #251:ch27#
28.| The Sanctuary of Poseidon in Calauria | #252:ch28#
29.| Troezen | #253:ch29#
30.| From Troezen to Epidaurus | #255:ch30#
31.| Methana | #260:ch31#
32.| Nauplia | #261:ch32#
33.| The Springs of the Erasinus | #263:ch33#
34.| The Lernean Marsh | #266:ch34#
35.| The Anigraean Road | #269:ch35#
36.| The Battlefield of Sellasia | #270:ch36#
37.| Sparta | #271:ch37#
38.| Mistra | #274:ch38#
39.| On the Road from Sparta to Arcadia | #278:ch39#
40.| Cape Malea | #279:ch40#
41.| Monemvasia | #281:ch41#
42.| Maina | #282:ch42#
43.| Pharae and the Messenian Plain | #284:ch43#
44.| Messene | #285:ch44#
45.| On the Road to Olympia | #287:ch45#
46.| Olympia | #290:ch46#
47.| Phidias’s Image of Olympian Zeus | #292:ch47#
48.| The Hermes of Praxiteles | #293:ch48#
49.| Lasion | #296:ch49#
50.| The Erymanthus | #299:ch50#
51.| The Monastery of Megaspeleum | #300:ch51#
52.| The Gulf of Corinth | #301:ch52#
53.| On the Coast of Achaia | #303:ch53#
54.| Pellene | #304:ch54#
55.| The Road from Argos to Arcadia | #306:ch55#
.bn 009.png
.pn +1
56.| Mantinea | #308:ch56#
57.| The Road to Stymphalus | #310:ch57#
58.| The Lake and Valley of Stymphalus | #312:ch58#
59.| The Lake of Pheneus | #315:ch59#
60.| From Pheneus to Nonacris | #320:ch60#
61.| The Fall of the Styx | #324:ch61#
62.| The Valley of the Aroanius | #330:ch62#
63.| The Springs of the Ladon | #331:ch63#
64.| The Gorge of the Ladon | #333:ch64#
65.| Aliphera | #336:ch65#
66.| Dimitsana | #337:ch66#
67.| Gortys | #338:ch67#
68.| The Plain of Megalopolis | #342:ch68#
69.| The Cave of the Black Demeter | #343:ch69#
70.| The Temple of Apollo at Bassae | #345:ch70#
71.| The Temple of Artemis at Aulis | #346:ch71#
72.| Glaucus’s Leap | #347:ch72#
73.| Evening on the Euripus | #349:ch73#
74.| The Copaic Lake | #349:ch74#
75.| The Great Katavothra | #355:ch75#
76.| The Vale of the Muses | #357:ch76#
77.| Hippocrene | #358:ch77#
78.| Lebadea | #359:ch78#
79.| The Boeotian Orchomenus | #361:ch79#
80.| The Plain of Chaeronea | #364:ch80#
81.| Panopeus | #364:ch81#
82.| Near Hyampolis | #365:ch82#
83.| Tithorea | #366:ch83#
84.| From Amphissa to Gravia | #369:ch84#
85.| Daulis | #371:ch85#
86.| The Cleft Way | #373:ch86#
87.| Delphi | #374:ch87#
88.| Aeschines at Delphi | #378:ch88#
.bn 010.png
.pn +1
89.| The Pythian Tune | #379:ch89#
90.| The Lacedaemonian Trophy at Delphi | #380:ch90#
91.| The Gods in Battle | #382:ch91#
92.| The Sibyl’s Wish | #384:ch92#
93.| Orpheus in Hell | #386:ch93#
94.| The Acheron | #387:ch94#
95.| A Ride across Parnassus | #389:ch95#
96.| Pericles | #392:ch96#
.ta-
.bn 011.png
.pn 1
.sp 4
.ce
PAUSANIAS | AND OTHER GREEK SKETCHES
.h2 id=ch01 title='I — Pausanias and his Description of Greece.'
.ti 0
.sn Greece in | the second | century | A.D.
I. Pausanias and his Description of Greece.—It
may be reckoned a peculiar piece
of good fortune that among the wreckage of
classical literature the Description of Greece by
Pausanias should have come down to us entire.
In this work we possess a plain, unvarnished
account by an eye-witness of the state of Greece
in the second century of our era. Of no other
part of the ancient world has a description at
once so minute and so trustworthy survived,
and if we had been free to single out one
country in one age of which we should wish
a record to be preserved, our choice might
well have fallen on Greece in the age of the
Antonines. No other people has exerted so
deep and abiding an influence on the course
of modern civilisation as the Greeks, and never
could all the monuments of their chequered but
glorious history have been studied so fully as
.bn 012.png
.pn +1
in the second century of our era. The great
age of the nation, indeed, had long been over,
but in the sunshine of peace and imperial favour
Greek art and literature had blossomed again.
New temples had sprung up; new images had
been carved; new theatres and baths and aqueducts
ministered to the amusement and luxury
of the people. Among the new writers whose
works the world will not willingly let die, it is
enough to mention the great names of Plutarch
and Lucian.
It was in this mellow autumn—perhaps
rather the Indian summer—of the ancient
world, when the last gleanings of the Greek
genius were being gathered in, that Pausanias,
a contemporary of Hadrian, of the Antonines,
and of Lucian, wrote his description of Greece.
He came in time, but just in time. He was
able to describe the stately buildings with
which in his own lifetime Hadrian had embellished
Greece, and the hardly less splendid
edifices which, even while he wrote, another
munificent patron of art, Herodes Atticus, was
rearing at some of the great centres of
Greek life and religion. Yet under all this
brave show the decline had set in. About
a century earlier the emperor Nero, in the
speech in which he announced at Corinth the
liberation of Greece, lamented that it had not
been given him to confer the boon in other
.bn 013.png
.pn +1
and happier days when there would have been
more people to profit by it. Some years after
this imperial utterance Plutarch declared that
the world in general and Greece especially was
depopulated by the civil brawls and wars; the
whole country, he said, could now hardly put
three thousand infantry in the field, the number
that formerly Megara alone had sent to face
the Persians at Plataea; and in the daytime
a solitary shepherd feeding his flock was the
only human being to be met with on what
had been the site of one of the most renowned
oracles in Boeotia. Dio Chrysostom tells us
that in his time the greater part of the city
of Thebes lay deserted, and that only a single
statue stood erect among the ruins of the
ancient market-place. The same picturesque
writer has sketched for us a provincial town
of Euboea, where most of the space within the
walls was in pasture or rig and furrow, where
the gymnasium was a fruitful field in which
the images of Hercules and the rest rose here
and there above the waving corn, and where
sheep grazed peacefully about the public offices
in the grass-grown market-place. In one of
his Dialogues of the Dead, Lucian represents
the soul of a rich man bitterly reproaching
himself for his rashness in having dared to
cross Cithaeron with only a couple of men-servants,
for he had been set upon and murdered
.bn 014.png
.pn +1
by robbers on the highway at the point
where the grey ruins of Eleutherae still look
down on the pass; in the time of Lucian the
district, laid waste, he tells us, by the old wars,
seems to have been even more lonely and
deserted than it is now. Of this state of things
Pausanias himself is our best witness. Again
and again he notices shrunken or ruined cities,
deserted villages, roofless temples, shrines without
images and pedestals without statues, faint
vestiges of places that once had a name and
played a part in history. To the site of one
famous city he came and found it a vineyard.
In one neglected fane he saw a great ivy-tree
clinging to the ruined walls and rending the
stones asunder. In others nothing but the
tall columns standing up against the sky
marked the site of a temple. Nor were more
sudden and violent forces of destruction wanting
to hasten the slow decay wrought by time,
by neglect, by political servitude, by all the
subtle indefinable agencies that sap a nation’s
strength. In Pausanias’s lifetime a horde of
northern barbarians, the ominous precursor of
many more, carried fire and sword into the
heart of Greece, and the Roman world was
wasted by that great pestilence which thinned
its population, enfeebled its energies, and precipitated
the decline of art.
The little we know of the life of Pausanias
.bn 015.png
.pn +1
is gathered entirely from his writings. Antiquity,
which barely mentions the writer, is
silent as to the man.
.sn Date of |Pausanias.
Fortunately his date is certain. At the
beginning of his description of Elis he tells
us that two hundred and seventeen years had
elapsed since the restoration of Corinth. As
Corinth was restored in 44 B.C., we see that
Pausanias was writing his fifth book in 174
A.D. during the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
With this date all the other chronological
indications in his book harmonise. Thus he
speaks of images which were set up in 125 A.D.
as specimens of the art of his day. Again,
he gives us to understand that he was a contemporary
of Hadrian’s, and he tells us that
he never saw Hadrian’s favourite, Antinous,
in life. Now Hadrian died in 138 A.D., and
the mysterious death of Antinous in Egypt
appears to have fallen in 130 A.D. It is
natural to infer from Pausanias’s words that
though he never saw Antinous in life, he was
old enough to have seen him; from which we
conclude that our author was born a good
many years before 130 A.D., the date of
Antinous’s death. The latest historical event
mentioned by him is the incursion of the
Costobocs into Greece, which seems to have
taken place some time between 166 A.D. and
180 A.D., perhaps in 176 A.D.
.bn 016.png
.pn +1
.sn Dates of | the various | books.
From these and a few more hints we may
draw some conclusions as to the dates when
the various books that make up the Description
of Greece were written. In the seventh book
Pausanias tells us that his description of Athens
was finished before Herodes Atticus built the
Music Hall in memory of his wife Regilla.
As Regilla appears to have died in 160 or
161 A.D. and the Music Hall was probably
built soon afterwards, we may suppose that
Pausanias had finished his first book by 160
or 161 A.D. at latest. There is, indeed, some
ground for holding that both the first and the
second book were composed much earlier.
For in the second book Pausanias mentions
a number of buildings which had been erected
in his own lifetime by a Roman senator
Antoninus in the sanctuary of Aesculapius at
Epidaurus. If, as seems not improbable, the
Roman senator was no other than the Antoninus
who afterwards reigned as Antoninus
Pius, we should naturally infer that the second
book was published in the reign of Hadrian,
that is, not later than 138 A.D., the year when
Hadrian died and Antoninus succeeded him
on the throne. With this it would agree that
no emperor later than Hadrian is mentioned
in the first or second book, or indeed in any
book before the eighth. Little weight, however,
can be attached to this circumstance, for
.bn 017.png
.pn +1
in the fifth book Hadrian is the last emperor
mentioned although that book was written, as
we have seen, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius,
thirty-six years after Hadrian’s death. A
much later date has been assigned to the
second book by Mr. W. Gurlitt in his valuable
monograph on Pausanias. He points out that
when Pausanias wrote it the sanctuary of
Aesculapius at Smyrna had already been
founded, and that if Masson’s chronology of
the life of the rhetorician Aristides is right
the sanctuary was still unfinished in 165 A.D.
Hence Mr. Gurlitt concludes that the second
book of Pausanias was written after 165 A.D.
Even the first book, according to him, must
be dated not earlier than 143 A.D. His reason
is that when Pausanias wrote this book the
stadium at Athens had already been rebuilt
of white marble by Herodes Atticus, and that
the reconstruction cannot, if Professor C.
Wachsmuth is right, have been begun before
143 A.D. or a little earlier. With regard to
the other books, the evidence, scanty as it is,
is less conflicting. The fifth book, as we have
seen, was composed in the year 174 A.D. The
eighth book, in which mention is made of the
victory of Marcus Antoninus over the Germans,
must have been written after 166 A.D., the
year when the German war broke out, and
may have been written in or after 176 A.D.,
.bn 018.png
.pn +1
the year in which the emperor celebrated a
triumph for his success. In the tenth book
occurs the reference to the inroad of the
Costobocs; hence the book was written between
166 and 180 A.D. Further, the references
which Pausanias makes both forwards
and backwards to the several parts of his work
show that the books were written in the order
in which they now stand. Hence books six
to ten cannot have been composed earlier, and
may have been composed a good deal later,
than 174 A.D., the year in which our author
was engaged on his fifth book. Thus the composition
of the work extended over a period
of at least fourteen years and probably of
many more. That Pausanias spent a long
time over it might be inferred from a passage
in which he explains a change in his religious
views. When he began his work, so he tells
us, he looked on some Greek myths as little
better than foolishness, but when he had got
as far as his description of Arcadia he had
altered his opinion and had come to believe
that they contained a kernel of deep wisdom
under a husk of extravagance. Such a total
change of attitude towards the religious traditions
of his country was more probably an
affair of years than of weeks and months.
That the first book was not only written
but published before the others seems clear. The first | book | written and | published | before the | rest.
.bn 019.png
.pn +1
Amongst the proofs of this the strongest is the
writer’s statement in the seventh book, that
when he wrote his description of Athens the
Music Hall of Herodes Atticus had not yet
been built. This implies that when he wrote
the seventh book the first was already published;
otherwise he could easily have incorporated
a notice of the Music Hall in its proper
place in the manuscript. Again, in the eighth
book he expressly corrects a view which he had
adopted in the first; this also he might have
done in the manuscript of the first book if he
still had it by him. In other places he tacitly
adds to statements and descriptions contained
in the first book. Further, the narrative of the
Gallic invasion in the first book is superseded
by the much fuller narrative given in the tenth
book, and would hardly have been allowed to
stand if it had been in the author’s power to
cut it out. More interesting are the passages
in which we seem to discover references to
criticisms which had been passed on his first
book. Thus in the third book he repeats
emphatically the plan of work which he had
laid down for himself in the first, adding that
the plan had been adopted after mature deliberation,
and that he would not depart from it.
This sounds like a trumpet-blast of defiance to
the critics who had picked holes in the scheme
of his first book. Elsewhere he seems conscious
.bn 020.png
.pn +1
that some of their strictures were not wholly
undeserved. In speaking of the descendants of
Aristomenes he is sorely tempted to go into the
family history of the Diagorids, but pulls himself
up sharply with the remark that he passes
over this interesting topic “lest it should appear
an impertinent digression.” Clearly the arrows
of the reviewers had gone home. The tedious
historical dissertations with which he had sought
to spice the plain fare of Athenian topography
were now felt by the poor author himself
to savour strongly of impertinent digressions.
Again, old habit getting the better of him, the
sight of a ruined camp of King Philip in a
secluded Arcadian valley sets him off rambling
on the divine retribution that overtook that
wicked monarch and his descendants and the
murderers of his descendants and their descendants
after them, till, his conscience smiting him,
he suddenly returns to business with the half
apology, “But this has been a digression.”
That Pausanias had the fear of the critics before
his eyes is stated by himself in the plainest
language. He had made, he tells us, careful
researches into the vexed subject of the dates
of Homer and Hesiod, but refrained from
stating the result of his labours, because he
knew very well the carping disposition of the
professors of poetry of his own day. Little
did he foresee the disposition of certain other
.bn 021.png
.pn +1
professors who were to sit in judgment on him
some seventeen hundred years later. Had he
done so he might well have been tempted to
suppress the Description of Greece altogether,
and we might have had to lament the loss of
one of the most curious and valuable records
bequeathed to us by antiquity.
.sn Birthplace | of | Pausanias.
The birthplace of Pausanias is less certain
than his date, but there are good grounds for
believing that he was a Lydian. For after
saying that in his country traces were still to
be seen of the abode of Pelops and Tantalus,
he mentions some monuments and natural
features associated with the names of these
ancient princes on and near Mount Sipylus.
This is nearly a direct affirmation that the
region about Mount Sipylus in Lydia was his
native land. The same thing appears, though
less directly, from the minute acquaintance he
displays with the district and from the evident
fondness with which he recurs again and again
to its scenery and legends. He had seen the
white eagles wheeling above the lonely tarn of
Tantalus in the heart of the hills; he had
beheld the stately tomb of the same hero on
Mount Sipylus, the ruined city at the bottom
of the clear lake, the rock-hewn throne of
Pelops crowning the dizzy peak that overhangs
the cañon, and the dripping rock which
popular fancy took for the bereaved Niobe
.bn 022.png
.pn +1
weeping for her children. He speaks of the
clouds of locusts which he had thrice seen
vanish from Mount Sipylus, of the wild dance
of the peasantry, and of the shrine of Mother
Plastene, whose rude image, carved out of the
native rock, may still be seen in its niche at the
foot of the mountain. From all this it is fair
to surmise that Pausanias was born and bred
not far from the mountains which he seems to
have known and loved so well. Their inmost
recesses he may have explored on foot in boyhood
and have drunk in their old romantic
legends from the lips of woodmen and hunters.
Whether, as some conjecture, he was born at
Magnesia, the city at the northern foot of
Mount Sipylus, we cannot say, but the vicinity
of the city to the mountain speaks in favour of
the conjecture. It is less probable, perhaps,
that his birthplace was the more distant Pergamus,
although there is no lack of passages to
prove that he knew and interested himself in
that city. As a native of Lydia it was natural
that Pausanias should be familiar with the
western coast of Asia Minor. There is indeed
no part of the world outside of Greece to which
he refers so often. He seizes an opportunity
to give us the history of the colonisation of
Ionia, and dwells with patriotic pride on the
glorious climate, the matchless temples, and the
natural wonders of that beautiful land.
.bn 023.png
.pn +1
.sn Other |writers of | the same | name.
Some scholars have identified our author
with a sophist of the same name who was
born at Caesarea in Cappadocia, studied under
Herodes Atticus, and died an old man at
Rome, leaving behind him many declamations
composed in a style which displayed a certain
vigour and some acquaintance with classical
models. But, quite apart from the evidence
that our author was a Lydian, there are strong
reasons for not identifying him with his
Cappadocian namesake. Neither Suidas nor
Philostratus, who has left us a short life of the
Cappadocian Pausanias, mentions the Description
of Greece among his works; and on the other
hand our Pausanias, though he often mentions
Herodes Atticus, nowhere speaks of him as his
master or of any personal relations that he had
with him. Further, the author of the Description
of Greece is probably to be distinguished
from a writer of the same name who composed
a work on Syria to which Stephanus of Byzantium
repeatedly refers. It is true that our
Pausanias evidently knew and had travelled
in Syria, but this in itself is no reason for
supposing that he was the author of a work to
which in his extant writings he makes no allusion.
The name Pausanias was far too common
to justify us in identifying all the authors who
bore it, even when we have grounds for believing
them to have been contemporaries.
.bn 024.png
.pn +1
That Pausanias had travelled widely beyond
the limits of Greece and Ionia is clear from the
many allusions he lets fall to places and objects
of interest in foreign lands. Some of them he
expressly says that he saw; as to others we
may infer that he saw them from the particularity
of his description. In Syria he had seen
the Jordan flowing through the Lake of Tiberias
and falling into the Dead Sea, and had gazed
at the red pool near Joppa in which Perseus
was said to have washed his bloody sword after
slaying the sea-monster. He describes a tomb
at Jerusalem, the door of which by an ingenious
mechanical contrivance opened of itself once a
year at a certain hour, and he often alludes to
Antioch which for its vast size and wealth he
ranked with Alexandria. In Egypt he had
seen the Pyramids, had beheld with wonder the
colossal statue of Memnon at Thebes, and had
heard the musical note, like the breaking of a
lute-string, which the statue emitted at sunrise.
The statue still stands, and many inscriptions
in Greek and Latin carved by ancient visitors
on its huge legs and base confirm the testimony
of Pausanias as to the mysterious sound. From
Egypt our author seems to have journeyed
across the desert to the oasis of Ammon, for he
tells us that in his time the hymn which Pindar
sent to Ammon was still to be seen there carved
on a triangular slab beside the altar. Nearer
.bn 025.png
.pn +1
home he admired the splendid fortifications of
Rhodes and Byzantium. Though he does not
describe northern Greece, he had visited Thessaly,
and had seen the blue steaming rivulet
rushing along at the foot of the rugged forest-tufted
mountains that hem in like a wall the
pass of Thermopylae on the south. He appears
to have visited Macedonia, and perhaps, too,
Epirus; at least he speaks repeatedly of Dodona
and its oracular oak, and he mentions the
sluggish melancholy rivers that wind through
the dreary Thesprotian plain and that gave
their names to the rivers in hell. He had
crossed to Italy and seen something of the
cities of Campania and the wonders of Rome.
The great forum of Trajan with its bronze roof,
the Circus Maximus—then probably the most
magnificent building in the world—and the
strange beasts gathered from far foreign lands,
seem to have been the sights which most impressed
him in the capital of the world. In the
Imperial Gardens he observed with curiosity
a tusk which the custodian assured him had
belonged to the Calydonian boar; and he
noticed, doubtless with less pleasure, the great
ivory image of Athena Alea which Augustus
had carried off from the stately temple of the
goddess at Tegea. In the neighbourhood of
Rome the bubbling milk-white water of Albula
or Solfatara, as it is now called, on the road to
.bn 026.png
.pn +1
Tibur, attracted his attention, and beside the
sylvan lake of Aricia he appears to have seen
the grim priest pacing sword in hand, the
warder of the Golden Bough. The absurd
description he gives of the beautiful and much-maligned
Strait of Messina would suffice to
prove that he never sailed through it. Probably
like most travellers coming from the East
he reached Italy by way of Brundisium. Of
Sardinia he has given a somewhat full description,
but without implying that he had visited
it. Sicily, if we may judge by a grave blunder
he makes in speaking of it, he never saw.
.sn Aim of | Pausanias’s | work.
The aim that Pausanias had in writing his
Description of Greece is nowhere very fully or
clearly stated by him. His book has neither
head nor tail, neither preface nor epilogue. At
the beginning he plunges into the description of
Attica without a word of introduction, and at
the end he breaks off his account of Ozolian
Locris with equal abruptness. There is reason
to believe that the work is unfinished, for he
seems to have intended to describe Opuntian
Locris, but this intention was never fulfilled.
However, from occasional utterances as well as
from the general scope and plan of the book,
we can gather a fairly accurate notion of the
writer’s purpose. Thus in the midst of his
description of the Acropolis of Athens he
suddenly interposes the remark, “But I must
.bn 027.png
.pn +1
proceed, for I have to describe the whole of
Greece,” as if the thought of the wide field he
had to traverse jogged him, as well it might,
and bade him hasten. Again, after bringing
his description of Athens and Attica to an end,
he adds: “Such are, in my opinion, the most
famous of the Athenian traditions and sights:
from the mass of materials I have aimed from
the outset at selecting the really notable.”
Later on, before addressing himself to the
description of Sparta he explains his purpose
still more definitely and emphatically: “To
prevent misconceptions, I stated in my Attica
that I had not described everything, but only a
selection of the most memorable objects. This
principle I will now repeat before I proceed to
describe Sparta. From the outset I aimed at
sifting the most valuable traditions from out
of the mass of insignificant stories which are
current among every people. My plan was
adopted after mature deliberation, and I will
not depart from it.” Again, after briefly
narrating the history of Phlius, he says: “I
shall now add a notice of the most remarkable
sights,” and he concludes his description of
Delphi with the words: “Such were the
notable objects left at Delphi in my time.” In
introducing his notice of the honorary statues
at Olympia he is careful to explain that he does
not intend to furnish a complete catalogue of
.bn 028.png
.pn +1
them, but only to mention such as were of
special interest either for their artistic merit or
for the fame of the persons they portrayed.
.sn Method of | the work.
From these and a few more passages of the
same sort it seems clear that Pausanias intended
to describe all the most notable objects and to
narrate all the most memorable traditions which
he found existing or current in the Greece of
his own time. It was a vast undertaking, and
we need not wonder that at the outset he should
have felt himself oppressed by the magnitude
of it, and that consequently in the first book,
dealing with Attica, his selection of notable
objects should be scantier and his description
of them slighter than in the later books. It
was not only that he was bewildered by the
multitude of things he had to say, but that he
had not quite made up his mind how to say
them. He was groping and fumbling after a
method. As the work proceeded, he seems to
have felt himself more at ease; the arrangement
of the matter becomes more systematic,
the range of his interests wider, the descriptions
more detailed, his touch surer. Even the
second book shows in all these respects a great
advance on the first. To mention two conspicuous
improvements, he has now definitely
adopted the topographical order of description,
and he prefaces his account of each considerable
city with a sketch of its history. In the first
.bn 029.png
.pn +1
book, on the other hand, an historical introduction
is wholly wanting, and though Athens
itself is on the whole described in topographical
order, the rest of Attica is not. Only with
the description of the Sacred Way which led
from Athens to Eleusis does Pausanias once for
all grasp firmly the topographical thread as
the best clue to guide him and his readers
through the labyrinth. Throughout the rest of
his work the general principle on which he
arranges his matter is this. After narrating in
outline the history of the district he is about to
describe, he proceeds from the frontier to the
capital by the nearest road, noting anything of
interest that strikes him by the way. Arrived
at the capital he goes straight to the centre of
it, generally to the market-place, describes the
chief buildings and monuments there, and then
follows the streets, one after the other, that
radiate from the centre in all directions, recording
the most remarkable objects in each of
them. Having finished his account of the
capital he describes the surrounding district on
the same principle. He follows the chief roads
that lead from the capital to all parts of the
territory, noting methodically the chief natural
features and the most important towns, villages,
and monuments that he meets with on the way.
Having followed the road up till it brings him
to the frontier, he retraces his steps to the
.bn 030.png
.pn +1
capital, and sets off along another which he
treats in the same way, until in this manner he
has exhausted all the principal thoroughfares
that branch from the city. On reaching the
end of the last of them he does not return on
his footsteps, but crosses the boundary into the
next district, which he then proceeds to describe
after the same fashion. This, roughly speaking,
is the way in which he describes the cities and
territories of Corinth, Argos, Sparta, Mantinea,
Megalopolis, Tegea, and Thebes.
.sn The work | is a guide-book.
A better and clearer method of arranging
matter so complex and varied it might be hard
to devise. It possesses at least one obvious
advantage—the routes do not cross each other,
and thus a fruitful source of confusion is
avoided. The reader, however, will easily
perceive that the order of description can hardly
have been the one in which Pausanias travelled
or expected his readers to travel. The most
patient and systematic of topographers and
sightseers would hardly submit to the irksome
drudgery of pursuing almost every road twice
over, first in one direction and then in the
other. Manifestly the order has been adopted
only for the sake of lucidity, only because in no
other way could the writer convey to his reader
so clear a notion of the relative positions of the
places and things described. Why was Pausanias
at such pains to present everything to his
.bn 031.png
.pn +1
readers in its exact position? The only
probable answer is that he wished to help them
to find their way from one object of interest to
another; in other words that he intended his
Description of Greece to serve as a guide-book
to travellers. If his aim had been merely to
amuse and entertain his readers at home, he
could hardly have lighted on a worse method
of doing so; for the persons who find topographical
directions amusing and can extract
entertainment from reading that “This place is
so many furlongs from that, and this other so
many more from that other,” must be few in
number and of an unusually cheerful disposition.
The ordinary reader is more likely to yawn
over such statements and shut up the book.
We may take it, then, that in Pausanias’s work
we possess the ancient equivalent of our modern
Murrays and Baedekers. The need for such
a guide-book would be felt by the many
travellers who visited Greece, and for whom the
garrulous but ignorant ciceroni did not, as we
know, always provide the desired information.
Yet with the innocent ambition of an author
Pausanias may very well have hoped that his
book might prove not wholly uninteresting to
others than travellers. The digressions on
historical subjects, on natural curiosities, on the
strange creatures of different countries, with
which he so often breaks the thread of his
.bn 032.png
.pn +1
description, may be regarded as so many lures
held out to the reader to beguile him on his
weary way. Indeed in one passage he plainly intimates
his wish not to be tedious to his readers.
.sn Antiquarian and | religious | bias of | Pausanias.
When we come to examine the substance of
his book we quickly perceive that his interests
were mainly antiquarian and religious, and that
though he professes to describe the whole of
Greece or, more literally, all things Greek,
what he does describe is little more than the
antiquities of the country and the religious
traditions and ritual of the people. He interested
himself neither in the natural beauties
of Greece nor in the ordinary life of his contemporaries.
For all the notice he takes of
the one or the other, Greece might almost have
been a wilderness and its cities uninhabited or
peopled only at rare intervals by a motley
throng who suddenly appeared as by magic,
moved singing through the streets in gay procession
with flaring torches and waving censers,
dyed the marble pavements of the temples
with the blood of victims, filled the air with
the smoke and savour of their burning flesh,
and then melted away as mysteriously as they
had come, leaving the deserted streets and
temples to echo only to the footstep of some
solitary traveller who explored with awe and
wonder the monuments of a vanished race.
Yet as his work proceeded Pausanias seems
.bn 033.png
.pn +1
to have wakened up now and then to a dim
consciousness that men and women were still
living and toiling around him, that fields were
still ploughed and harvests reaped, that the
vine and the olive still yielded their fruit,
though Theseus and Agamemnon, Cimon and
Pericles, Philip and Alexander were no more.
To this awakening consciousness or, to speak
more correctly, to this gradual widening of
his interests, we owe the few peeps which in
his later books Pausanias affords us at his
contemporaries in their daily life. Thus he
lets us see the tall and stalwart highlanders
of Daulis; the handsome and industrious
women of Patrae weaving with deft fingers
the fine flax of their native fields into head-dresses
and other feminine finery; the fishermen
of Bulis putting out to fish the purple
shell in the Gulf of Corinth; the potters of
Aulis turning their wheels in the little seaside
town from which Agamemnon sailed for Troy;
and the apothecaries of Chaeronea distilling
a fragrant and healing balm from roses and
lilies, from irises and narcissuses culled in
peaceful gardens on the battlefield where
Athens and Thebes, side by side, had made
the last stand for the freedom of Greece.
.sn His | descriptions | of religious | rites.
Contrast with these sketches, few and far
between, the gallery of pictures he has painted
of the religious life of his contemporaries. To
.bn 034.png
.pn +1
mention only a few of them, we see sick people
asleep and dreaming on the reeking skins of
slaughtered rams or dropping gold and silver
coins as a thank-offering for recovered health
into a sacred spring; lepers praying to the
nymphs in a cave, then swimming the river
and leaving, like Naaman, their uncleanness
behind them in the water; holy men staggering
along narrow paths under the burden
of uprooted trees; processions of priests and
magistrates, of white-robed boys with garlands
of hyacinths in their hair, of children wreathed
with corn and ivy, of men holding aloft blazing
torches and chanting as they march their native
hymns; women wailing for Achilles while the
sun sinks low in the west; Persians in tall
caps droning their strange litany in an unknown
tongue; husbandmen sticking gold leaf
on a bronze goat in a market-place to protect
their vines from blight, or running with
the bleeding pieces of a white cock round the
vineyards while the black squall comes crawling
up across the bay. We see the priest making
rain by dipping an oak-branch in a spring
on the holy mountain, or mumbling his weird
spells by night over four pits to soothe the
fury of the winds that blow from the four
quarters of the world. We see men slaughtering
beasts at a grave and pouring the warm
blood down a hole into the tomb for the dead
.bn 035.png
.pn +1
man to drink; others casting cakes of meal
and honey into the cleft down which the water
of the Great Flood all ran away; others trying
their fortune by throwing dice in a cave, or
flinging barley-cakes into a pool and watching
them sink or swim, or letting down a mirror
into a spring to know whether a sick friend
will recover or die. We see the bronze lamps
lit at evening in front of the oracular image,
the smoke of incense curling up from the
hearth, the enquirer laying a copper coin on
the altar, whispering his question into the ear
of the image, then stealing out with his hands on
his ears, ready to take as the divine answer the
first words he may hear on quitting the sanctuary.
We see the nightly sky reddened by the fitful
glow of the great bonfire on the top of Mount
Cithaeron where the many images of oak-wood,
arrayed as brides, are being consumed in the
flames, after having been dragged in lumbering
creaking waggons to the top of the mountain,
each image with a bridesmaid standing by its
side. These and many more such scenes rise
up before us in turning the pages of Pausanias.
.sn His | account of | superstitious | customs | and beliefs.
Akin to his taste for religious ritual is his
love of chronicling quaint customs, observances,
and superstitions of all sorts. Thus he tells
us how Troezenian maidens used to dedicate
locks of their hair in the temple of the bachelor
Hippolytus before marriage; how on a like
.bn 036.png
.pn +1
occasion Megarian girls laid their shorn tresses
on the grave of the virgin Iphinoe; how lads
at Phigalia cropped their hair in honour of
the river that flows in the deep glen below the
town; how the boy priests of Cranaean Athena
bathed in tubs after the ancient fashion; and
how the priest and priestess of Artemis Hymnia
must remain all their lives unmarried, must
wash and live differently from common folk, and
must never enter the house of a private person.
Amongst the curious observances which he
notices at the various shrines are the rules that
no birth or death might take place within the
sacred grove of Aesculapius at Epidaurus, and
that all sacrifices had to be consumed within
the bounds; that no broken bough might be
removed from the grove of Hyrnetho near
Epidaurus, and no pomegranate brought into
the precinct of the Mistress at Lycosura; that
at Pergamus the name of Eurypylus might
not be pronounced in the sanctuary of Aesculapius,
and no one who had sacrificed to Telephus
might enter that sanctuary till he had bathed;
that at Olympia no man who had eaten of the
victim offered to Pelops might go into the
temple of Zeus, that women might not ascend
above the first stage of the great altar, that
the paste of ashes which was smeared on the
altar must be kneaded with the water of the
Alpheus and no other, and that the sacrifices
.bn 037.png
.pn +1
offered to Zeus must be burnt with no wood
but that of the white poplar. Again, he loves
to note, though he does not always believe, the
local superstitions he met with or had read of,
such as the belief that at the sacrifice to Zeus
on Mount Lycaeus a man was always turned
into a wolf, but could regain his human shape
if as a wolf he abstained for nine years from
preying on human flesh; that within the precinct
of the god on the same mountain neither
men nor animals cast shadows, and that whoever
entered it would die within the year; that
the trout in the river Aroanius sang like
thrushes; that whoever caught a fish in a certain
lake would be turned into a fish himself; that
Tegea could never be taken because it possessed
a lock of Medusa’s hair; that Hera
recovered her virginity every year by bathing
in a spring at Nauplia; that the water of one
spring was a cure for hydrophobia, while the
water of another drove mares mad; that no
snakes or wolves could live in Sardinia; that
when the sun was in a certain sign of the
zodiac earth taken from the tomb of Amphion
and Zethus at Thebes and carried to Tithorea
in Phocis would draw away the fertility from
the Theban land and transfer it to the Tithorean,
whence at that season the Thebans kept
watch and ward over the tomb, lest the Tithoreans
should come and filch the precious earth;
.bn 038.png
.pn +1
that at Marathon every night the dead warriors
rose from their graves and fought the great
battle over again, while belated wayfarers,
hurrying by, heard with a shudder the hoarse
cries of the combatants, the trampling of
charging horses, and the clash of arms.
In carrying out his design of recording
Greek traditions, Pausanias has interwoven
many narratives into his description of Greece.
These are of various sorts, and were doubtless
derived from various sources. Some are historical,
and were taken avowedly or tacitly
from books. Some are legends with perhaps
a foundation in fact; others are myths pure
and simple; others again are popular tales to
which parallels may be found in the folk-lore
of many lands. Narratives of these sorts
Pausanias need not have learned from books.
Some of them were doubtless commonplaces
with which he had been familiar from childhood.
Others he may have picked up on his
travels. The spring of mythical fancy has not
run dry among the mountains and islands of
Greece at the present day; it flowed, we may
be sure, still more copiously in the days of
Pausanias. Amongst the popular tales which
he tells or alludes to may be mentioned the
story of the sleeper in the cave; of the cunning
masons who robbed the royal treasury they
had built; of the youth who slew the lion and
.bn 039.png
.pn +1
Myths.
married the princess; of the kind serpent that
saved a child from a wolf and was killed
by the child’s father by mistake; of the king
whose life was in a purple lock on his head;
of the witch who offered to make an old man
young again by cutting him up and boiling
him in a hellbroth, and who did in this way
change a tough old tup into a tender young
lamb. It is characteristic of Greek popular
tradition that these stories are not left floating
vaguely in the cloudy region of fairyland;
they are brought down to solid earth and
given a local habitation and a name. The
sleeper was Epimenides the Cretan; the masons
were Trophonius and Agamedes, and the king
for whom they built the treasury was Hyrieus
of Orchomenus; the youth who won the hand
of the princess was Alcathous of Megara; the
king with the purple lock was Nisus, also of
Megara; the witch was Medea, and the old
man whom she mangled was Pelias; the place
where the serpent saved the child from the
wolf was Amphiclea in Phocis. Amongst the
myths which crowd the pages of Pausanias we
may note the strangely savage tale of Attis
and Agdistis, the hardly less barbarous story
of the loves of Poseidon and Demeter as horse
and mare, and the picturesque narratives of
the finding of the forsaken babe Aesculapius
by the goatherd, and the coming of Castor
.bn 040.png
.pn +1
Legends.
and Pollux to Sparta in the guise of strangers
from Cyrene. Of the legends which he tells
of the heroic age—that border-land between
fable and history—some are his own in the
sense that we do not find them recorded by
any other ancient writer. Such are the stories
how Theseus even as a child evinced undaunted
courage by attacking the lion’s skin of Hercules
which he mistook for a living lion; how the
same hero in his youth proved his superhuman
strength to the masons who had jeered at his
girlish appearance; how the crazed Orestes,
dogged by the Furies of his murdered mother,
bit off one of his fingers, and how on his doing
so the aspect of the Furies at once changed
from black to white, as if in token that they
accepted the sacrifice as an atonement. Such,
too, is the graceful story of the parting of
Penelope from her father, and the tragic tale
of the death of Hyrnetho; in the latter we
seem almost to catch the ring of a romantic
ballad. Among the traditions told of historical
personages by Pausanias but not peculiar to
him are the legends of Pindar’s dream, of the
escape of Aristomenes from the pit, and of
the wondrous cure of Leonymus, the Crotonian
general, who, attacking the Locrian army at
the point where the soul of the dead hero
Ajax hovered in the van, received a hurt from
a ghostly spear, but was afterwards healed by
.bn 041.png
.pn +1
the same hand in the White Isle, where Ajax
dwelt with other spirits of the famous dead.
To the same class belong a couple of anecdotes
with which Pausanias has sought to enliven
the dull catalogue of athletes in the sixth book.
One tells how the boxer Euthymus thrashed
the ghost of a tipsy sailor and won the hand
of a fair maiden, who was on the point of
being delivered over to the tender mercies of
the deceased mariner. The other relates how
another noted boxer, by name Theagenes,
departed this vale of tears after accumulating
a prodigious number of prizes; how when he
was no more a spiteful foe came and wreaked
his spleen by whipping the bronze statue of
the illustrious dead, till the statue, losing
patience, checked his insolence by falling on
him and crushing him to death; how the sons
of this amiable man prosecuted the statue for
murder; how the court, sitting in judgment,
found the statue guilty and solemnly condemned
it to be sunk in the sea; how, the
sentence being rigorously executed, the land
bore no fruit till the statue had been fished up
again and set in its place; and how the people
sacrificed to the boxer as to a god ever after.
.sn His | description | of the | country.
The same antiquarian and religious tincture
which appears in Pausanias’s account of the
Greek people colours his description of the
country. The mountains which he climbs, the
.bn 042.png
.pn +1
plains which he traverses, the rivers which he
fords, the lakes and seas that he beholds shining
in the distance, the very flowers that spring
beside his path hardly exist for him but as they
are sacred to some god or tenanted by some
spirit of the elements, or because they call up
some memory of the past, some old romantic
story of unhappy love or death. Of one flower,
white and tinged with red, he tells us that it
first grew in Salamis when Ajax died; of
another, that chaplets of it are worn in their
hair by white-robed boys when they walk in
procession in honour of Demeter. He notes
the mournful letters on the hyacinth and tells
the tale of the fair youth slain unwittingly by
Apollo. He points out the old plane-tree
which Menelaus planted before he went away
to the wars; the great cedar with an image of
Artemis hanging among its boughs; the sacred
cypresses called the Maidens, tall and dark and
stately, in the bleak upland valley of Psophis;
the myrtle-tree whose pierced leaves still bore
the print of hapless Phaedra’s bodkin on that
fair islanded coast of Troezen, where now the
orange and the lemon bloom in winter; the
pomegranate with its blood-red fruit growing
on the grave of the patriot Menoeceus who shed
his blood for his country. If he looks up at
the mountains, it is not to mark the snowy
peaks glistering in the sunlight against the
.bn 043.png
.pn +1
blue, or the sombre pine-forests that fringe their
crests and are mirrored in the dark lake below;
it is to tell you that Zeus or Apollo or the
Sun-god is worshipped on their tops, that the
Thyiad women rave on them above the clouds,
or that Pan has been heard piping in their
lonely coombs. The gloomy caverns, where the
sunbeams hardly penetrate, with their fantastic
stalactites and dripping roofs, are to him the
haunts of Pan and the nymphs. The awful
precipices of the Aroanian mountains, in the
sunless crevices of which the snow-drifts never
melt, would have been passed by him in silence
were it not that the water that trickles down
their dark glistening face is the water of Styx.
If he describes the smooth glassy pool which,
bordered by reeds and tall grasses, still sleeps
under the shadow of the shivering poplars in
the Lernean swamp, it is because the way to
hell goes down through its black unfathomed
water. If he stops by murmuring stream or
brimming river, it is to relate how from the
banks of the Ilissus, where she was at play, the
North Wind carried off Orithyia to be his
bride; how the Selemnus had been of old a
shepherd who loved a sea-nymph and died
forlorn; how the amorous Alpheus still flows
across the wide and stormy Adriatic to join his
love at Syracuse. If in summer he crosses a
parched river-bed, where not a driblet of water
.bn 044.png
.pn +1
is oozing, where the stones burn under foot and
dazzle the eye by their white glare, he will tell
you that this is the punishment the river suffers
for having offended the sea-god. Distant prospects,
again, are hardly remarked by him except
for the sake of some historical or legendary
association. The high knoll which juts out
from the rugged side of Mount Maenalus into
the dead flat of the Mantinean plain was called
the Look, he tells us, because here the dying
Epaminondas, with his hand pressed hard on
the wound from which his life was ebbing fast,
took his long last look at the fight. The view
of the sea from the Acropolis at Athens is
noticed by him, not for its gleam of molten
sapphire, but because from this height the aged
Aegeus scanned the blue expanse for the white
sails of his returning son, then cast himself
headlong from the rock when he descried the
bark with sable sails steering for the port of
Athens.
The disinterested glimpses, as we may call
them, of Greek scenery which we catch in the
pages of Pausanias are brief and few. He tells
us that there is no fairer river than the Ladon
either in Greece or in foreign land, and probably
no one who has traversed the magnificent
gorge through which the river bursts its way
from the highlands of northern Arcadia to the
lowlands on the borders of Elis will be inclined
.bn 045.png
.pn +1
to dispute his opinion. Widely different scenes
he puts in for us with a few touches—the
Boeotian Asopus oozing sluggishly through its
deep beds of reeds; the sodden plain of Nestane
with the rain-water pouring down into it from
the misty mountains; the road running through
vineyards with mountains rising on either hand;
the spring gushing from the hollow trunk of a
venerable plane; the summer lounge in the
shady walks of the grove beside the sea; the
sand and pine-trees of the low coast of Elis;
the oak-woods of Phelloe with stony soil where
the deer ranged free and wild boars had their
lair; and the Boeotian forest with its giant
oaks in whose branches the crows built their
nests.
.sn His notices | of the| natural | products | of Greece.
It is one of the marks of a widening intellectual
horizon that as his work goes on
Pausanias takes more and more notice of the
aspect and natural products of the country
which he describes. Such notices are least
frequent in the first book and commonest in
the last three. Thus he remarks the bareness
of the Cirrhaean plain, the fertility of the valley
of the Phocian Cephisus, the vineyards of
Ambrosus, the palms and dates of Aulis, the
olive-oil of Tithorea that was sent to the
emperor, the dykes that dammed off the water
from the fields in the marshy flats of Caphyae
and Thisbe. He mentions the various kinds
.bn 046.png
.pn +1
of oaks that grew in the Arcadian woods, the
wild-strawberry bushes of Mount Helicon on
which the goats browsed, the hellebore, both
black and white, of Anticyra, and the berry of
Ambrosus which yielded the crimson dye. He
observed the flocks of bustards that haunted
the banks of the Phocian Cephisus, the huge
tortoises that crawled in the forests of Arcadia,
the white blackbirds of Mount Cyllene, the two
sorts of poultry at Tanagra, the purple shell
fished in the sea at Bulis, the trout of the
Aroanius river, and the eels of the Copaic
Lake. All these instances are taken from the
last three books. In the earlier part of his
work he condescended to mention the honey of
Hymettus, the old silver mines of Laurium, the
olives of Cynuria, the fine flax of Elis, the
purple shell of the Laconian coast, the marble
of Pentelicus, the mussel-stone of Megara, and
the green porphyry of Croceae. But of the
rich Messenian plain, known in antiquity as the
Happy Land, where nowadays the traveller
passes, almost as in a tropical region, between
orange-groves and vineyards fenced by hedges
of huge fantastic cactuses and sword-like aloes,
Pausanias has nothing more to say than that
“the Pamisus flows through tilled land.”
.sn His | account of | the state of | the roads.
On the state of the roads he is still more
reticent than on that of the country. The
dreadful Scironian road—the Via Mala of
.bn 047.png
.pn +1
Greece—which ran along a perilous ledge of
the Megarian sea-cliffs at a giddy height above
the breakers, had lately been widened by
Hadrian. An excellent carriage road, much
frequented, led from Tegea to Argos. Another
road, traversable by vehicles, went over the pass
of the Tretus, where the railway from Corinth
to Argos now runs; and we have the word of
Pausanias for it that a driving-road crossed
Parnassus from Delphi to Tithorea. On the
other hand the road from Sicyon to Titane was
impassable for carriages; a rough hill-track
led from Chaeronea to Stiris; the path along
the rugged mountainous coast between Lerna
and Thyrea was then, as it is now, narrow and
difficult; and the pass of the Ladder over
Mount Artemisius from Argos to Mantinea
was so steep that in some places steps had to
be cut in the rock to facilitate the descent. Of
the path up to the Corycian cave on Mount
Parnassus our author truly observes that it is
easier for a man on foot than for mules and
horses. Greek mules and horses can, indeed,
do wonders in the way of scrambling up and
down the most execrable mountain paths on
slopes that resemble the roof of a house; but it
would sorely tax even their energies to ascend
to the Corycian cave.
The real interest of Pausanias, however, lay
neither in the country nor in the people of his
.bn 048.png
.pn +1
His | descriptions | of | the monuments.
own age, but in those monuments of the past,
which, though too often injured by time or
defaced by violence, he still found scattered in
profusion over Greece. It is to a description
of them that the greater part of his work is
devoted. He did not profess to catalogue, still
less to describe, them all. To do so might
well have exceeded the powers of any man,
however great his patience and industry. All
that a writer could reasonably hope to accomplish
was to make a choice of the most interesting
monuments, to describe them clearly, and
to furnish such comments as were needful to
understanding them properly. This is what
Pausanias attempted to do and what, after every
deduction has been made for omissions and
mistakes, he may fairly be said to have done
well. The choice of the monuments to be
described necessarily rested with himself, and if
his choice was sometimes different from what
ours might have been, it would be unreasonable
to blame him for it. He did not write
for us. No man in his sober senses ever did
write for readers who were to be born some
seventeen hundred years after he was in his
grave. In his wildest dreams of fame Pausanias
can hardly have hoped, perhaps under all the
circumstances we ought rather to say feared,
that his book would be read, long after the
Roman empire had passed away, by the people
.bn 049.png
.pn +1
whom he calls the most numerous and warlike
barbarians in Europe,[1] by the Britons in their
distant isle, and by the inhabitants of a new
world across the Atlantic.
.fm rend=th
.fn 1
“Antoninus the Second,” he tells us (viii. 43. 6), “inflicted
punishment on the Germans, the most numerous and warlike barbarians
in Europe.”
.fn-
.fm rend=th
.sn His preference | for the | older over | the later | art.
When we examine Pausanias’s choice of
monuments we find that, like his account of
the country and people, it was mainly determined
by two leading principles, his antiquarian
tastes and his religious curiosity. In the first
place, the monuments described are generally
ancient, not modern; in the second place, they
are for the most part religious, not profane.
His preference for old over modern art, for
works of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.
over those of the later period, was well founded
and has been shared by the best judges both
in ancient and modern times. Cicero, Dionysius
of Halicarnassus, Quintilian, and our author’s
own contemporary, Lucian, perhaps the most
refined critic of art in antiquity, mention no
artist of later date than the fourth century B.C.
The truth is, the subjugation of Greece by
Macedonia struck a fatal blow at Greek art.
No sculptor or painter of the first rank was
born after the conquest. It seemed as if art
were a flower that could only bloom in freedom;
in the air of slavery it drooped and faded.
.bn 050.png
.pn +1
Thus if Pausanias chose to chronicle the masterpieces
of the great age of art rather than the
feebler productions of the decadence, we can
only applaud his taste. Yet we may surmise
that his taste was here reinforced by his
patriotism. For he was more than a mere
antiquary and connoisseur. He was a patriot
who warmly sympathised with the ancient
glories of his country and deeply mourned its
decline. He recognised Athens as the representative
of all that was best in Greek life, and
he can hardly find words strong enough to
express his detestation of the men who by
weakening her in the Peloponnesian war directly
prepared for the conquest of Greece by Macedonia.
The battle of Chaeronea he describes
repeatedly as a disaster for the whole of Greece,
and of the conqueror Philip himself he speaks
in terms of the strongest reprobation. The
men who had repelled the Persians, put down
the military despotism of Sparta, fought against
the Macedonians, and delayed, if they could
not avert, the final subjugation of Greece by
Rome were for him the benefactors of their
country. He gives a list of them, beginning
with Miltiades and ending with Philopoemen,
after whom, he says, Greece ceased to be the
mother of the brave. And as he mentions
with pride and gratitude the men who had
served the cause of freedom, so he expresses
.bn 051.png
.pn +1
himself with disgust and abhorrence of the
men who had worked for the enslavement of
Greece to Persia, to Macedonia, and to Rome.
His style, generally cold and colourless, grows
warm and animated when he tells of a struggle
for freedom, whether waged by the Messenians
against the Spartans, or by the Greeks against
the Gauls, or by the Achaeans against the
Romans. And when he has recorded the final
catastrophe, the conquest of Greece by Rome, he
remarks as with a sigh that the nation had now
reached its lowest depth of weakness, and that
when Nero afterwards liberated it the boon
came too late—the Greeks had forgotten what
it was to be free.
.sn His preference | for | religious | over profane | art.
The preference which Pausanias exhibits for
the art of the best period is not more marked
than his preference for sacred over profane or
merely decorative art, for buildings consecrated
to religion over buildings devoted to the purposes
of civic or private life. Rarely does he
offer any general remarks on the aspect and
architectural style of the cities he describes.
At Tanagra he praises the complete separation
of the houses of the people from the sanctuaries
of the gods. Amphissa, he tells us, was handsomely
built, and Lebadea could compare with
the most flourishing cities of Greece in style
and splendour. On the other hand he viewed
with unconcealed disdain the squalor and decay
.bn 052.png
.pn +1
of the Phocian city of Panopeus, “if city it can
be called that has no government offices, no
gymnasium, no theatre, no market-place, no
water conducted to a fountain, and where the
people live in hovels, just like highland shanties,
perched on the edge of a ravine.” In the
cities he visited he does indeed notice market-places,
colonnades, courts of justice, government
offices, fountains, baths, and the houses
and statues of famous men, but the number of
such buildings and monuments in his pages is
small compared to the number of temples and
precincts, images and votive offerings that he
describes, and such notice as he takes of them
seldom amounts to more than a bare mention.
The civic buildings that he deigns to describe
in any detail are very few. Amongst them we
may note the Painted Colonnade at Athens
with its famous pictures, the spacious and
splendid Persian Colonnade at Sparta with its
columns of white marble carved in the shape
of Persian captives, the market-place at Elis,
and the Phocian parliament-house with its
double row of columns running down the
whole length of the hall and its seats rising in
tiers from the columns up to the walls behind.
.sn His | descriptions of | religious | monuments.
It is when he comes to religious art and
architecture that Pausanias seems to have felt
himself most at home. If in his notice of civic
buildings and monuments he is chary of details,
.bn 053.png
.pn +1
he is lavish of them in describing the temples
and sanctuaries with their store of images,
altars, and offerings. The most elaborate of
his descriptions are those which he has given
of the temple of Zeus at Olympia with the
great image of the god by Phidias, the scenes
on the Chest of Cypselus in the Heraeum at
Olympia, the reliefs on the throne of Apollo
at Amyclae, and the paintings by Polygnotus
in the Cnidian Lesche at Delphi. But, apart
from these conspicuous examples; almost every
page of his work bears witness to his interest
in the monuments of religion, especially when
they were more than usually old and quaint.
Among the queer images he describes are the
thirty square stones revered as gods at Pharae;
the rough stones worshipped as images of Love
and Hercules and the Graces at Thespiae,
Hyettus, and Orchomenus; the pyramidal stone
which represented Apollo at Megara; the
ancient wooden image of Zeus with three eyes
on the acropolis of Argos; the old idol of
Demeter as a woman with a horse’s head holding
a dove in one hand and a dolphin in the
other; the figure of a mermaid bound fast with
golden chains in a wild wood at the meeting
of two glens; the image of the War God at
Sparta in fetters to hinder him from running
away; the bronze likeness of an unquiet ghost
clamped with iron to a rock to keep him still;
.bn 054.png
.pn +1
an image of Athena with a purple bandage on
her wounded thigh; a pair of wooden idols of
Dionysus with shining gilt bodies and red
faces; and tiny bronze images of Castor and
Pollux, a foot high, on a rocky islet over which
the sea broke foaming in winter, but could not
wash them away. Some of the images he
describes as tricked out with offerings of devout
worshippers. Such were an image of Pasiphae
covered with garlands; a figure of Hermes
swathed in myrtle boughs; a crimson-painted
idol of Dionysus emerging from a heap of
laurel leaves and ivy; and a statue of Health
almost hidden under tresses of women’s hair
and strips of Babylonish raiment in the shade
of ancient cypresses at Titane. Among the
appointments of the sanctuaries he mentions,
for example, altars made of the ashes or blood
of the victims, perpetual fires, a golden lamp
that burned day and night in the Erechtheum,
a gilt head of the Gorgon on the wall of the
Acropolis, a purple curtain in the temple of
Zeus, a golden and jewelled peacock dedicated
by Hadrian to Hera, the iron stand of
Alyattes’s bowl, chains of liberated prisoners,
hanging from the cypresses in the grove of
Hebe, and bronze railings round the shaft down
which the enquirer, clad in a peculiar costume,
descended by a ladder to consult the oracle of
Trophonius.
.bn 055.png
.pn +1
.sn His | interest in | relics.
Again, Pausanias loves to notice the things,
whether worshipped or not, which were treasured
as relics of a mythical or legendary past. Such
were the remains of the clay out of which Prometheus
had moulded the first man and woman;
the stone that Cronus had swallowed instead of
his infant son; the remains of the wild-strawberry
tree under which Hermes had been
nourished; the egg which the lovely Leda had
laid and out of which Castor and Pollux had
been hatched; the ruins of the bridal chamber
where Zeus had dallied with Semele; the
mouldering hide of the Calydonian boar; and
the old wooden pillar, held together by bands
and protected from the weather by a shed,
which had stood in the house of Oenomaus.
In the temple of Artemis at Aulis, now represented
by a ruined Byzantine chapel in a bare
stony field, the traveller was shown the remains
of the plane-tree under which the Greeks had
sacrificed before setting sail for Troy, and on
a neighbouring hill the guides pointed out the
bronze threshold of Agamemnon’s hut. But
the most revered of all the relics described by
Pausanias seems to have been the sceptre which
Hephaestus was said to have made and Agamemnon
to have wielded. It was kept and
worshipped at Chaeronea. A priest who held
office for a year guarded the precious relic in
his house and offered sacrifices to it daily,
.bn 056.png
.pn +1
while a table covered with flesh and cakes
stood constantly beside it. A ruder conception
of religion than is revealed by this practice of
adoring and feeding a staff it might be hard to
discover amongst the lowest fetish-worshippers
of Western Africa. And this practice was
carried on in the native city and in the lifetime
of the enlightened Plutarch! Truly the
extremes of human nature sometimes jostle
each other in the street.
.sn His notices | of historic | monuments.
But his religious bias by no means so
warped the mind of Pausanias as to render
him indifferent to the historic ground which he
trod, and to those monuments of great men and
memorable events on which his eye must have
fallen at almost every turn. As a scholar he
was versed in, and as a patriot he was proud
of, the memories which these monuments were
destined to perpetuate, and which in the genius
of the Greek people have found a monument
more lasting than any of bronze or marble.
He visited the battlefields of Marathon and
Plataea and beheld the trophies of victory and
the graves of the victors. At Salamis he saw
the trophy of the great sea-fight, but he mentions
no graves. Doubtless the bones of many
victors and vanquished lay together fathoms
deep in the bay. At Chaeronea he saw a
sadder monument, the colossal stone lion on
the grave of the Thebans who had fallen in
.bn 057.png
.pn +1
the cause of freedom. On the battlefield of
Mantinea he found the grave of Epaminondas,
at Sparta the grave of Leonidas, and among
the pine-woods of the sacred isle that looks
across the blue Saronic gulf to Attica the
grave of the banished Demosthenes. At
Thebes he saw the ruins of Pindar’s house,
the shields of the Lacedaemonian officers who
fell at Leuctra, and the figures of white marble
which Thrasybulus and his comrades in exile
and in arms had dedicated out of gratitude for
Theban hospitality. In the Grove of the Muses
on Helicon he beheld the statues of renowned
poets and musicians—Hesiod with his lute,
Arion on his dolphin, blind Thamyris, Orpheus
holding the beasts spellbound as he sang. At
Tanagra he observed the portrait and the tomb
of the poetess Corinna, the rival of Pindar;
and in several cities of Arcadia he remarked
portraits of the Arcadian historian Polybius.
Nowhere, however, did he find historical
monuments crowded so closely together as at
Athens, Olympia, and Delphi. The great
sanctuaries of Olympia and Delphi served in
a manner as the national museums and record-offices
of Greece. In them the various Greek
cities not only of the mother-country but of
Italy, Sicily, Gaul, and the East set up the
trophies of their victories and deposited copies
of treaties and other important documents.
.bn 058.png
.pn +1
Historic | monuments | at | Olympia.
They offered a neutral ground where natives
of jealous or hostile states could meet in peace,
and where they could survey, with hearts that
swelled with various emotions, the records of
their country’s triumphs and defeats. At
Olympia our author mentions a tablet inscribed
with a treaty of alliance for a hundred years
between Elis, Athens, Argos, and Mantinea;
another tablet recording a treaty of peace for
thirty years between Athens and Sparta; and
the quoit of Iphitus inscribed with the terms of
the truce of God which was proclaimed at the
Olympic festival. Amongst the many trophies
of war which he enumerates the most memorable
was the image of Zeus dedicated in
common by the Greeks who had fought at
Plataea, and the most conspicuous, unless we
except the figure of Victory on the pillar
dedicated by the Messenians of Naupactus,
must have been the colossal bronze statue of
Zeus, no less than twenty-seven feet high,
which the Eleans set up for a victory over the
Arcadians. A golden shield, hung high on the
eastern gable of the temple of Zeus, proclaimed
the triumph of the Lacedaemonian arms at
Tanagra. The sight of one-and-twenty gilded
shields that glittered on the eastern and southern
sides of the temple must have cost Pausanias
a pang, for they had been dedicated by the
Roman general Mummius to commemorate the
.bn 059.png
.pn +1
conquest of Greece. Another monument that
doubtless vexed the patriotic heart of Pausanias
was an elegant rotunda with slim Ionic columns
resting on marble steps and supporting a marble
roof; for the statues which it enclosed, resplendent
in gold and ivory, were those of
Philip and Alexander, and the building stood
as a memorial of the battle of Chaeronea.
.sn Historic | monuments | at | Delphi.
At Delphi the road which wound up the
steep slope to the temple of Apollo was lined on
both sides with an unbroken succession of monuments
which illustrated some of the brightest
triumphs and darkest tragedies in Greek
Here the proud trophy of the Lacedaemonian
victory at Aegospotami, with its rows of statues
rising in tiers, confronted the more modest
trophy erected by the Athenians for the victory
of Marathon. Here were statues set up by the
Argives for the share they had taken with the
Thebans in founding Messene. Here was a
treasury dedicated by the Athenians out of
the spoils of Marathon, and another dedicated
by the Thebans out of the spoils of Leuctra.
Here another treasury, built by the Syracusans,
commemorated the disastrous defeat of the
Athenians in Sicily. A bronze palm-tree and
a gilded image of Athena stood here as
memorials of Athenian valour by sea and land
at the Eurymedon. Here, above all, were
monuments of the victories achieved by the
.bn 060.png
.pn +1
united Greeks over the Persians at Artemisium,
Salamis, and Plataea. The golden tripod,
indeed, which formed the trophy of Plataea,
had disappeared long before Pausanias passed
up the Sacred Way, its empty place testifying
silently to the rapacity of the Phocian leaders;
but the bronze serpent which had supported
it still stood erect, with the names of the states
that had taken part in the battle inscribed on
its coils. A prodigious image of Apollo, five-and-thirty
ells high, towering above the other
monuments, proclaimed at once the enormity
of the crime which the Phocians had committed
and the magnitude of the fine by which
they had expiated it. High and conspicuous
too, on the architrave of the temple, hung the
shields which told of one of the latest triumphs
of the Greek arms, the repulse and defeat of
the Gauls. All these and many more historical
monuments Pausanias saw and described at
Delphi.
.sn Historic | monuments | at | Athens.
At Athens among the portraits of famous
men that attracted his attention were statues
of the statesmen Solon, Pericles, and Lycurgus,
the generals Conon, Timotheus, and Iphicrates,
the orators Demosthenes and Isocrates, the
philosopher Chrysippus, and the poets Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Euripides, and Menander. In the
Prytaneum were preserved copies of the laws
of Solon. The colonnades that flanked the
.bn 061.png
.pn +1
market-place were adorned with pictures of
the battles of Marathon, Oenoe, and Mantinea,
and in one of them—the celebrated Painted
Colonnade—our author observed bronze shields,
smeared with pitch to preserve them from rust,
which had been taken from the Spartans at
Sphacteria. On the Acropolis stood, as a
trophy of the Persian wars, the immense bronze
statue of Athena, of which the blade of the
spear and the crest of the helmet could be seen
far off at sea. Close at hand in the Erechtheum
the traveller was shown the sword of Mardonius
and the corselet of Masistius, who had fallen
while leading the Persian cavalry to the charge
at Plataea. In Piraeus he saw the sanctuary
of Aphrodite which Conon had built after
vanquishing the Lacedaemonian fleet off Cnidus,
and at the entrance to the great harbour, in
view of the ships sailing out and in, the grave
of Themistocles who had won for Athens the
empire of the sea. But no place in Greece
was richer in monuments of the historic past,
none seems to have stirred Pausanias more
deeply than that memorable spot outside the
walls of Athens where, within the narrow compass
of a single graveyard, were gathered the
mortal remains of so much valour and genius.
Here lay not a few of the illustrious men who
by their counsels, their swords, or their pens
had made Athens great and famous, and hither
.bn 062.png
.pn +1
the ashes of humbler citizens, who had died for
their country, were brought from distant battlefields
to rest in Attic earth. His description
of this the national burying-ground of Athens
has not, indeed, the pensive grace of Addison’s
essay on the tombs in the Abbey. It is little
more than a bare list of the names he read on
the monuments, but there almost every name
was a history as full of proud or mournful
memories as the names carved on the tombs in
Westminster and St. Paul’s or stitched on the
tattered and blackened banners that droop
from the walls of our churches. The annals
of Athens were written on these stones—the
story of her restless and aspiring activity, her
triumphs in art, in eloquence, in arms, her brief
noon of glory, and her long twilight of decrepitude
and decay. No wonder that our traveller
paused amid monuments which seemed, in the
gathering night of barbarism, to catch and
reflect some beams of the bright day that was
over, like the purple light that lingers on the
slopes of Hymettus when the sun has set on
Athens.
.sn His digressions | on | natural | curiosities.
To relieve the tedium of the topographical
part of his work, Pausanias has introduced
digressions on the wonders of nature and of
foreign lands. Thus, for example, having mentioned
the destruction of Helice by an earthquake,
he describes the ominous signs which
.bn 063.png
.pn +1
herald the approach of a great earthquake—the
heavy rains or long droughts, in winter the
sultry weather, in summer the haze through
which the sun’s disc looms red and lurid, the
sudden gusts, the springs of water drying up,
the rumbling noises underground. Further, he
analyses the different kinds of shocks, determines
the nature of the one which destroyed
Helice, and describes the immense wave which
simultaneously advanced on the doomed city
from the sea. He refers to the ebb and flow
of the ocean, to the ice-bound sea and frozen
deserts of the north, to the southern land where
the sun casts no shadow at midsummer. He
tells how the Chinese rear the silkworm, and
describes both silk and the silkworm more
correctly than any writer who preceded and
than some who followed him. It has been
suggested that he derived his information,
directly or indirectly, from a member of the
Roman embassy which appears from the
evidence of Chinese historians to have been
sent by the emperor Marcus Antoninus to the
far East and to have reached the court of
China in October 166 A.D. Again, he describes
the Sarmatians of northern Europe leading a
nomadic life in the depths of their virgin
forests, subsisting by their mares, ignorant of
iron, clad in corselets made of horse-hoofs,
shooting arrows barbed with bone from bows
.bn 064.png
.pn +1
of the cornel-tree, and entangling their foes in
the coils of their lassoes.
Among the curiosities which seem to have
especially interested him were the huge bones
he met with in various places. Generally he
took them to be bones of giants, but one of
them he described more happily as that of a
sea-monster. Probably they were all bones of
mammoths or other large extinct animals, such
as have been found plentifully in modern times
in various parts of Greece, for example near
Megalopolis, where he saw some of them.
Again, he is particularly fond of describing or
alluding to strange birds and beasts, whether
native to Greece or imported from distant
countries. Thus he mentions a reported
variety of white blackbirds on Mount Cyllene
which had attracted the attention of Aristotle,
and he describes almost with the exactitude
of a naturalist a small venomous viper of
northern Arcadia which is still dreaded by
the inhabitants. He refers to the parrots and
camels and huge serpents of India, and he
describes briefly but correctly the ostrich and
the rhinoceros. He gives a full and sober
account of the method of capturing the bison,
and another of the mode of catching the elk
which contrasts very favourably with the absurd
account of it given by Caesar. At Tanagra
he saw the stuffed or pickled Triton, or what
.bn 065.png
.pn +1
passed for such, of which the Tanagraeans were
so proud that they put a figure of a Triton on
the coins which they minted in the lifetime of
Pausanias. In the island of Poroselene he
enjoyed, he assures us, the spectacle of a tame
dolphin that came at a boy’s call and allowed
him to ride on its back.
His report of this last spectacle, though it
is confirmed by another witness, may raise a
doubt as to his credibility. Professor Alfred
Newton, whom I have consulted on the subject,
kindly informs me that he knows of no modern
evidence to bear Pausanias out, but that considering
the widespread belief of the ancients
in the familiarity of dolphins he does not
think it inconceivable that in those days the
creatures lived in little fear of mankind. We
cannot judge, he says, by the behaviour of
animals at the present day of what they might
or did do before persecution began. “When
the Russians,” he continues, “discovered Bering’s
Island in 1741, they found its shores
thronged by a big sea-beast (the Rhytina gigas
of naturalists), which, never having seen men
before, had no fear of them, and the Russians
(shipwrecked as they were) used to wade in
the water and milk the ‘cows.’ The confidence
was misplaced, and within thirty years or so
every one of the animals had been destroyed,
and the species extirpated.” Thus it seems
.bn 066.png
.pn +1
not impossible that dolphins may have been
tamer in antiquity than they are now, and that
Pausanias may really have seen what he tells
us he saw. But perhaps the exhibition at
Poroselene was a hoax.
.sn Description | of | Greece by | the pseudo-Dicaearchus.
So much for the contents of Pausanias’s
book. Before we enquire into the character
of the writer and the sources from which he
drew his materials it may be instructive to
compare his work with the fragments of
another ancient description of Greece which
have come down to us. The comparison will
help us to understand better both what we
have gained and what we have lost by the
idiosyncrasies of Pausanias. The fragments
commonly pass under the name of the eminent
Messenian writer Dicaearchus, a pupil of
Aristotle; but from internal evidence we may
conclude that the work of which they formed
part was written by a later author at some time
between 164 B.C. and 86 B.C. The nature of
the work may be gathered from the following
free translation or paraphrase, which is also
slightly abridged.
“ The road to Athens is a pleasant one,
running between cultivated fields the whole
way. The city itself is dry and ill supplied
with water. The streets are nothing but
miserable old lanes, the houses mean, with a
few better ones among them. On his first
.bn 067.png
.pn +1
arrival a stranger could hardly believe that
this is the Athens of which he has heard so
much. Yet he will soon come to believe that
it is Athens indeed. A Music Hall, the most
beautiful in the world, a large and stately
theatre, a costly, remarkable, and far-seen
temple of Athena called the Parthenon rising
above the theatre, strike the beholder with
admiration. A temple of Olympian Zeus, unfinished
but planned on an astonishing scale;
three gymnasiums, the Academy, Lyceum, and
Cynosarges, shaded with trees that spring from
greensward; verdant gardens of philosophers;
amusements and recreations; many holidays
and a constant succession of spectacles;—all
these the visitor will find in Athens.
“ The products of the country are priceless
in quality but not too plentiful. However, the
frequency of the spectacles and holidays makes
up for the scarcity to the poorer sort, who
forget the pangs of hunger in gazing at the
shows and pageants. Every artist is sure of
being welcomed with applause and of making
a name; hence the city is crowded with
statues.
“ Of the inhabitants some are Attic and
some are Athenian. The former are gossiping,
slanderous, given to prying into the business of
strangers, fair and false. The Athenians are
high-minded, straightforward, and staunch in
.bn 068.png
.pn +1
friendship. The city is infested by a set of
scribblers who worry visitors and rich strangers.
When the people catches the rascals, it makes
an example of them. The true-born Athenians
are keen and critical auditors, constant in their
attendance at plays and spectacles. In short,
Athens as far surpasses all other cities in the
pleasures and conveniences of life as they
surpass the country. But a man must beware
of the courtesans, lest they lure him to ruin.
The verses of Lysippus run thus:
.pm start_poem
‘If you have not seen Athens, you’re a stock;
If you have seen it and are not taken with it, you’re an ass;
If you are glad to leave it, you’re a pack-ass.’
.pm end_poem
“ Thence to Oropus by Psaphides and the
sanctuary of Zeus Amphiaraus is a day’s
journey for a good walker. It is all up-hill,[2]
but the abundance and good cheer of the inns
prevent the traveller from feeling the fatigue.
Oropus is a nest of hucksters. The greed of
the custom-house officers here is unsurpassed,
their roguery inveterate and bred in the bone.
Most of the people are coarse and truculent
in their manners, for they have knocked the
.bn 069.png
.pn +1
decent members of the community on the
head. They deny they are Boeotians, standing
out for it that they are Athenians living in
Boeotia. To quote the poet Xeno:
.pm start_poem
‘All are custom-house officers, all are robbers.
A plague on the Oropians!’
.pm end_poem
.fm rend=th
.fn 2
This is an odd mistake. In point of fact half of the way
is up hill and the other half is down hill. The road rises first
gently and then steeply to the summit of the pass over Mount
Parnes not far from the ancient Decelea; thence it descends, at first
rapidly in sharp serpentine curves, then gradually through a rolling
woodland country to the sea at Oropus.
.fn-
.fm rend=th
“ Thence to Tanagra is a hundred and
thirty furlongs. The road runs through olive-groves
and woodlands: fear of highwaymen
there is none at all. The city stands on high
and rugged ground. Its aspect is white and
chalky; but the houses with their porches and
encaustic paintings give it a very pretty appearance.
The corn of the district is not very
plentiful, but the wine is the best in Boeotia.
The people are well-to-do, but simple in their
way of life. All are farmers, not artisans.
They practise justice, good faith, and hospitality.
To needy fellow-townsmen and to vagabonds
they give freely of their substance, for meanness
and covetousness are unknown to them.
It is the safest city in all Boeotia for strangers
to stay in; for the independent and industrious
habits of the people have bred a sturdy downright
hatred of knavery. In this city I
observed as little as might be of those unbridled
impulses which are commonly the
source of the greatest crimes. For where
people have enough to live on, they do not
.bn 070.png
.pn +1
hanker after lucre, so roguery can hardly show
face among them.
“ Thence to Plataea is two hundred furlongs.
The road is somewhat desolate and stony, and
it rises up the slopes of Cithaeron, but it is
not very unsafe. In the city, to quote the
poet Posidippus,
.pm start_poem
‘Two temples there are, a colonnade and old renown,
And the baths, and Sarabus’s famous inn.
A desert most of the year, it is peopled at the time of the games.’
.pm end_poem
The inhabitants have nothing to say for themselves
except that they are Athenian colonists,
and that the battle between the Greeks and
the Persians was fought in their country.
“ Thence to Thebes is eighty furlongs. The
road is through a flat the whole way. The
city stands in the middle of Boeotia. Its
circumference is seventy furlongs, its shape
circular. The soil is dark. In spite of its
antiquity the streets are new, because, as the
histories tell us, the city has been thrice razed
to the ground on account of the morose and
overbearing character of the inhabitants. It is
excellent for the breeding of horses; it is all
well-watered and green, and has more gardens
than any other city in Greece. For two rivers
flow through it, irrigating the plain below the
city; and water is brought from the Cadmea in
.bn 071.png
.pn +1
underground conduits which were made of old,
they say, by Cadmus. So much for the city.
The inhabitants are high-spirited and wonderfully
sanguine, but rash, insolent, and overbearing,
ready to come to blows with any man, be
he citizen or stranger. As for justice they set
their face against it. Business disputes are
settled not by reason but by fisticuffs, and the
methods of the prize-ring are transferred to
courts of justice. Hence lawsuits here last
thirty years at the very least. For if a man
opens his lips in public on the law’s delay and
does not thereupon take hasty leave of Boeotia,
he is waylaid by night and murdered by the
persons who have no wish that lawsuits should
come to an end. Murders are perpetrated on
the most trifling pretexts. Such are the men
as a whole, though some worthy, high-minded,
respectable persons are also to be found among
them. The women are the tallest, prettiest, and
most graceful in all Greece. Their faces are so
muffled up that only the eyes are seen. All of
them dress in white and wear low purple shoes
laced so as to show the bare feet. Their yellow
hair is tied up in a knot on the top of the head.
In society their manners are Sicyonian rather
than Boeotian. They have pleasing voices,
while the voices of the men are harsh and deep.
The city is one of the best places to pass the
summer in, for it has gardens and plenty of cool
.bn 072.png
.pn +1
water. Besides it is breezy, its aspect is
verdant, and fruit and flowers abound. But it
lacks timber, and is one of the worst places to
winter in by reason of the rivers and the winds;
for snow falls and there is much mud. The
poet Laon writes in praise of the Boeotians, but
he does not speak the truth, the fact being that
he was caught in adultery and let off lightly by
the injured husband. He says:
.pm start_poem
‘Love the Boeotian, and fly not Boeotia;
For the man is a good fellow, and the land is delightful.’
.pm end_poem
“ Thence to Anthedon is one hundred and
sixty furlongs. The road runs aslant through
fields. Carriages can drive on it. The city,
which is not large, stands on the shore of the
Euboean sea. The market-place is all planted
with trees and flanked by colonnades. Wine
and fish abound, but corn is scarce, for the soil
is poor. The inhabitants are almost all fishermen
living by their hooks, by the purple shell,
and by sponges, growing old on the beach
among the seaweed and in their huts. They
are all of a ruddy countenance and a spare
form; the tips of their nails are worn away by
reason of working constantly in the sea. Most
of them are ferrymen or boat-builders. Far
from tilling the ground they do not even own it,
alleging that they are descendants of the marine
Glaucus, who was confessedly a fisherman.
.bn 073.png
.pn +1
“ So much for Boeotia. As for Thespiae, it
contains ambition and fine statues, nothing else.
The Boeotians have a saying about their
national faults to the effect that greed lives
in Oropus, envy in Tanagra, quarrelsomeness
in Thespiae, insolence in Thebes, covetousness
in Anthedon, curiosity in Coronea, braggery in
Plataea, fever in Onchestus, and stupidity in
Haliartus. These are the faults that have
drained down into Boeotia as into a sink from
the rest of Greece. To quote the verse of
Pherecrates:
.pm start_poem
‘If you have any sense, shun Boeotia.’
.pm end_poem
So much for the land of the Boeotians.
“From Anthedon to Chalcis is seventy furlongs.
As far as Salgoneus the road is level
and easy, running between the sea on the one
hand and a wooded and well-watered mountain
of no great height on the other. The city of
Chalcis measures seventy furlongs in circumference.
It is all hilly and shaded with trees.
Most of the springs are salt, but there is one
called Arethusa of which the water, though
brackish, is wholesome, cool, and so abundant
that it suffices for the whole city. With public
buildings such as gymnasiums, colonnades,
sanctuaries, and theatres, besides paintings and
statues, the city is excellently provided, and the
situation of the market-place for purposes of
.bn 074.png
.pn +1
commerce is unsurpassed. For the currents that
meet in the Euripus flow past the very walls of
the harbour, and here there is a gate which leads
straight into the market-place, a spacious area
enclosed by colonnades. This proximity of the
market-place to the harbour, and the ease with
which cargoes can be unloaded, attract many
ships to the port. Indeed the Euripus itself,
with its double entrance, draws merchants to the
city. The whole district is planted with olives,
and the fisheries are productive. The people
are Greek in speech as well as by birth. Devoted
to learning, with a taste for travel and
books, they bear their country’s misfortunes with
a noble . A long course of political
servitude has not extinguished that inborn freedom
of nature which has taught them to submit
to the inevitable. To quote a verse of Philiscus:
.pm start_poem
'Chalcis is a city of most worthy Greeks.'”
.pm end_poem
These passages, which I have perhaps quoted
at too great length, may suffice. I will spare
the reader a long description of Mount Pelion,
its pine-woods, its wild flowers, and its simples,
which seems to be a fragment of the same work.
Two points only in the description of the
mountain may be mentioned. The writer tells
us that the knowledge of certain simples was
hereditary in a single family, who kept it a profound
secret, though they refused to accept any
.bn 075.png
.pn +1
money from the sick people whom they tended,
deeming it would be impious to do so. These
herbalists claimed to be descended from the
centaur Chiron. Again, we learn from the writer
how in the greatest heat of summer, when the
Dog Star rose, a procession of men of good
birth and in the prime of life, all chosen by
the priest and all clad in sheepskins, ascended
through the pine-woods to the cave of Chiron
and a sanctuary of Zeus on the top of the
mountain. He mentions the sheepskins as a
proof of the great height of Mount Pelion, as if
without them the men would have shivered on
the mountain even while the plains below were
sweltering and baking in the heat. But it is
more probable that the sheepskins had some
religious significance.
.sn The | pseudo-Dicaearchus | and | Pausanias | compared.
This account of the procession of skin-clad
men to the cave and sanctuary on the top of
the high mountain reads not unlike a passage in
Pausanias. But how different is almost all the
rest of this writer’s description of Greece from
that of Pausanias! Instead of a dull patient
enumeration of monuments, arranged in topographical
order and seldom enlivened even by
a descriptive epithet, we have slight highly-coloured
sketches of the general appearance of
the towns—the white city of Tanagra on the
hill with the pretty painted porches of the
houses; Chalcis with its handsome buildings,
.bn 076.png
.pn +1
its shady trees, its flowing springs, its spacious
market beside the narrows where the tide runs
fast and the porters are busy unlading the ships
in the harbour; Thebes in summer with its fine
new streets, its verdure, its fruit and flowers, and
the balmy freshness of the perfumed air blowing
over gardens; Thebes in winter, swept by bitter
cutting winds, the streets deep in mud and
whitened by the falling snow; Athens with its
old narrow lanes and mean houses, and now and
then a glimpse between them of the resplendent
Parthenon, like a sun-burst, high up against the
sky. Then again as to the people, what a contrast
between the grave Pausanias, who hardly
allows us to see them except at their devotions,
and the sparkling writer who so often lifts the
veil of the past and lets us catch a glimpse of
the bustling motley crowd and hear the hum of
their voices—the crowd that ceased to bustle
and the voices that fell silent so long ago. We
see the hungry populace at Athens forgetting
their empty stomachs in the joys of the theatre
and pageant; the frail beauties ogling; the
literary pests scribbling lampoons in their garrets
or wriggling in the grasp of the law. On the
highways we behold the travellers walking in
fear of robbers or taking their ease at their inn.
At Oropus we watch the custom-house officers
diving into the baggage of exasperated travellers,
who mutter curses. At Tanagra we shake hands
.bn 077.png
.pn +1
with the bluff well-to-do farmer, comfortable,
kindly, and contented, who has a hearty welcome
for the stranger and a bit and a sup for the
beggar who knocks at his door. In the streets
of Thebes we jostle with your ruffling swaggering
blades, your bullies and swashbucklers, who
will knock you down for a word and cut your
throat in a dark lane if you dare to whisper a
word that reflects on the course of justice, or
rather of injustice, in their native city. And
moving amongst these ruffians are tall graceful
women, muffled up to their eyes, their yellow
hair gathered in knots on the top of their heads,
their purple shoes peeping from under their
white dresses, their soft voices contrasting with
the gruff deep bass of the men. Again the
scene shifts. We are no longer among the
streets and gardens of Thebes, but on the beach
at Anthedon with the salt smell of the sea in
our nostrils and the cool sea-breeze fanning our
brow. We see the fisher-folk, with their ruddy
weather-beaten faces and their finger-nails eaten
away by the brine, baiting their hooks among
the sea-weed on the shore, or hammering away
at a new fishing-boat, or ferrying travellers
across the beautiful strait to Euboea.
These pictures of a vanished world are worth
something. They have life, warmth, and colour;
but the colours, we can hardly doubt, are
heightened unduly. The lights are too high,
.bn 078.png
.pn +1
the shadows too deep. We cannot believe that
the population of Oropus consisted exclusively
of cut-throats and custom-house officers; that
the farmers of Tanagra were all bluff and
virtuous; that none but good men struggling
nobly with adversity resided at Chalcis; that
no lawsuit at Thebes ever lasted less than thirty
years. The writer, it is plain, has exaggerated
for the sake of literary effect. And he has
a strong leaning to gossip and scandal. He
extenuates the praise of Boeotia in the mouth
of a poet on the ground of a painful episode in
the bard’s private history, and he retails with
evident relish the current tattle as to the characteristic
vices of the various Boeotian towns. On
the whole this lively, superficial, gossipy work,
with its showy slap-dash sketches of life and
scenery, cannot compare in solid worth with the
dry and colourless, but in general minute and
accurate description of Greece which Pausanias
has given us. In the writings of Pausanias we
certainly miss the warmth and animation of the
other, the pictures of contemporary life and
character, the little touches that bring the past
and the distant vividly before us. His book is
too much a mere catalogue of antiquities, the
dry bones of knowledge unquickened by the
breath of imagination. Yet his very defects
have their compensating advantages. If he
lacked imagination he was the less likely to
.bn 079.png
.pn +1
yield to that temptation of distorting and discolouring
the facts to which men of bright fancy
are peculiarly exposed, of whom it has been
well said that they are like the angels who veil
their faces with their wings.
.sn Character | of Pausanias.
In truth Pausanias was a man made of
common stuff and cast in a common mould.
His intelligence and abilities seem to have been
little above the average, his opinions not very
different from those of his contemporaries.
His | political | opinions.
While he looked back with regret to the great
age of Greek freedom, he appears to have
acquiesced in the Roman dominion as inevitable,
acknowledging the incapacity of the degenerate
Greeks to govern themselves, the general
clemency of the Roman rule, and especially the
wisdom and beneficence of the good emperors
under whom it was his happiness to live. Of
democracy he had no admiration. He thought
the Athenians the only people who ever throve
under it, and on observing that the slaves who
fought and died for Athens were buried with
their masters, he remarks with apparent surprise
that even a democracy can occasionally be just.
With his turn for study and for brooding over
the past, it was natural that he should prefer a
life of privacy to the cares and turmoils of a
public career. Accordingly we find that he
admired the prudence of Isocrates who lived
placidly to old age in the shade and tranquillity
.bn 080.png
.pn +1
of retirement, and that he censured implicitly
the imprudence of Demosthenes, whose fiery
genius hurried him through the storm and
sunshine of public life to exile and a violent
death.
Such a preference, implied rather than expressed,
says much for the decay of public spirit
in Greece. Our author himself was conscious
that his lot had fallen on evil days. He speaks
sorrowfully of the olden time when the gods
openly visited the good with honour, and the
bad with their displeasure; when the benefactors
of mankind were raised to the rank of divinities,
and evil-doers were degraded into wild beasts
and stones. “But in the present age,” he adds
mournfully, “when wickedness is growing to
such a height, and spreading over every land
and city, men are changed into gods no more,
save in the hollow rhetoric which flattery addresses
to power; and the wrath of the gods at
the wicked is reserved for a distant future when
they shall have gone hence.” We cannot doubt
that here he glances covertly at the practice of
deifying the Roman emperors, which seems to
have stirred his honest indignation as a mark of
the supple servility and political degeneracy of
the age. Nor was he a stranger to those graver
thoughts on the vaster issues of life and history
which the aspect of Greece in its decline was
fitted to awake. The sight of the great city of
.bn 081.png
.pn +1
Megalopolis lying in ruins brings to his mind the
high hopes with which it had been founded,
and that again ushers in a train of melancholy
reflexions on the instability of human affairs.
He thinks how from so many golden cities of
the ancient world—from Nineveh and Babylon,
from Thebes and Mycenae—the glory had
passed away; how nature itself, which seems
so stable, is subject to great mutations; how
transitory, then, is earthly glory, how brief and
frail the life of man!
.sn His ethical | views.
On the passions which move men and make
history he seems to have thought much like
other people. He knew that avarice is the cause
of many crimes, and that love is the source both
of great happiness and of great misery. Yet
he appears to have held that the mischief
wrought by the passion of love outweighs the
good it brings; for after telling how, by washing
in the river Selemnus, men and women were
supposed to forget their love, he adds that if
there is any truth in this story great riches are
less precious to mankind than the water of the
Selemnus. Again, he has a sincere admiration
for the heroic virtues, and a genuine detestation
of baseness and depravity of all sorts. Treason
he stigmatises as the foulest of crimes. He
considers that the bold and disinterested patriot
Thrasybulus, who freed his country and healed
her dissensions, was the best of all the famous
.bn 082.png
.pn +1
men of Athens, and that the deed of Leonidas
and his Spartans at Thermopylae was the most
splendid feat of arms in Grecian history. He
praises his Spartan namesake for his courteous
treatment of the captive Coan lady and for
rejecting the base proposal of the wretch who
would have had him mutilate the corpse of the
gallant Mardonius. He speaks with sympathy
of the brave men worthy of a happier fate who
fell on the tyrant Lachares, of those who would
have wrested Piraeus from the Macedonians had
they not been done by their confederates to
death, and of those others whom on the great
day Cimon led to victory by sea and land. He
tells how in the last fight with the Romans,
before the day was lost, the Achaean general
fled, leaving his men to shift for themselves, and
he contrasts his selfish cowardice with the
soldierly devotion of an Athenian cavalry officer
who on the disastrous retreat from Syracuse
brought off his regiment safe, then wheeled
about and, riding back alone, found the death
he sought in the midst of the enemy.
.sn His | religious | opinions. | Belief in | the gods.
In religion as in morals Pausanias seems to
have occupied a position not unlike that of his
contemporaries. That it did not occur to him
to doubt the existence of the gods and heroes
of Greek mythology is clear from the tenour of
his work as well as from many observations
which he lets fall. Thus for example, he tells
.bn 083.png
.pn +1
us that to see the gods in bodily shape was
perilous; that Pan possessed, equally with the
greatest of the gods, the power of answering
prayer and requiting the wicked; and that
down to his own time there was preserved at a
city on the Euphrates the very rope, plaited of
vine and ivy branches, with which Dionysus had
spanned the river on his march to India. Even
the criticisms which he sometimes offers on
myths and legends prove that in the act of
rejecting them wholly or in part he does not
dream of questioning the reality of the divine
or heroic personages of whom they were told.
Thus, to give instances, while he examines and
rejects the claims set up on behalf of various
objects to be works of Hephaestus, he admits
the genuineness of one of the objects, thereby
clearly taking for granted the existence of the
smith-god himself. Again, observing an image
of Aphrodite with fetters on her feet he tells
how, according to one tradition, Tyndareus had
put this indignity on the goddess to punish her
for bringing his daughters to shame. “This
explanation,” declares Pausanias with decision,
“I cannot accept for a moment It would have
been too silly to imagine that by making a
cedar-wood doll and dubbing it Aphrodite he
could punish the goddess.” Obviously our
author, if he has small reverence for the image
and none at all for the tradition of its origin,
.bn 084.png
.pn +1
cherishes an unfaltering faith in the reality of
the goddess. Again, he denies that Semele
was ever, as Greek tradition would have it,
rescued from hell by Dionysus, and the reason
he gives for his incredulity is that Semele was
the wife of Zeus and therefore could not die.
Yet again, after telling the legend of Eurypylus
and the wonderful chest in which he kept a
portable god, he mentions only to reject the
tradition that Eurypylus received the chest
from Hercules. “Sure am I,” says he, “that
Hercules knew all about the chest, if it really
was such a wonderful chest, and I do not
believe that knowing about it he would ever
have given it away to a comrade in arms.” Once
more, Pausanias cannot bring himself to believe
that Hercules ever carried his anger at a friend’s
daughter so far as to condemn her to remain a
spinster for the rest of her days and to serve
him in that capacity as his priestess. He opines
that while Hercules was still among men,
“punishing other people for presumption and
especially for impiety, it is not likely that he
would have established a temple with a priestess
all for himself, just as if he were a god.”
.sn His | scepticism | as to hell.
There is one side, however, of Greek religion
as to which Pausanias shows himself consistently
sceptical, if not incredulous. He had serious
doubts as to the existence of a subterranean hell.
“It is not easy,” he says, “to believe that gods
.bn 085.png
.pn +1
have an underground abode in which the souls
of the dead assemble.” He speaks of the
“supposed subterranean realm” of Pluto, and in
the cave at Taenarum, which was thought to be
one of the mouths of hell, he looked in vain for
any passage leading down to the nether world.
Cerberus in particular, the hound of hell, is
roughly handled by Pausanias, who ruthlessly
strips him of his superfluous heads, reduces him
to a commonplace serpent, and seems to take a
malicious pleasure in enumerating all the places
where the animal was said to have been haled
up by Hercules. But though Pausanias had
his doubts as to hell, he seems to have believed
in the existence of the soul after death; for in
a passage which has been already quoted he
speaks of the punishment that awaits the wicked
in another life. At the same time his belief in
the doctrine was apparently not very firm; at
least he refers to it somewhat hesitatingly in
mentioning the Messenian tradition that the
soul of the dead hero Aristomenes had fought
against his old foes the Lacedaemonians at
Leuctra. “The first people,” he there tells us,
“who asserted that the soul of man is immortal
were the Chaldeans and the Indian magicians;
and some of the Greeks believed them, especially
Plato, the son of Aristo. If everybody accepts
this tenet, there can be no gainsaying the view
that hatred of the Lacedaemonians has rankled
.bn 086.png
.pn +1
in the heart of Aristomenes through all the
ages.”
.sn His | attitude to | various | deities.
Amongst the gods Pausanias assigns the
first place to Zeus. He alone is superior to
Destiny, to which all the other gods must submit;
he is the ruler and guide of the Fates, and
knows all that they have in store for man. Of
the Fates themselves Fortune is, in our author’s
opinion, the most powerful; she it is whose
resistless might sweeps all things along at her
will, determining the growth and decay of cities,
the revolutions of nature, and the destiny of
man. Yet Pausanias’s own devotions seem to
have been paid rather to Demeter than to Zeus
or the Fates. He visited Phigalia chiefly for
the sake of the Black Demeter to whom he
sacrificed at the mouth of the cave; he relates
at length the history of her image; and he
describes in unusual detail the sanctuary and
images of Demeter and Proserpine at Lycosura.
Again, he had been initiated into the Eleusinian
mysteries; he loves to trace their diffusion from
Eleusis over the rest of Greece; he speaks of
the Andanian mysteries as second in point of
sanctity to the Eleusinian alone; he tells us
that the Greeks of an earlier age esteemed the
latter as far above all other religious exercises
as the gods were above heroes; and he expresses
his own conviction that there was nothing on
which the blessing of God rested in so full a
.bn 087.png
.pn +1
measure as on the rites of Eleusis and the
Olympic games. His religious awe of the
mysteries, silencing his antiquarian garrulity,
forbade him to describe not only the rites but
the sacred precincts in which they were celebrated.
Once more, on Mount Panhellenius in
Aegina he sacrificed to the images of the kindred
deities Damia and Auxesia according to the
ritual observed in sacrificing at Eleusis. Another
deity in whom Pausanias seems to have been
especially interested was Aesculapius. He
examines the legends of the god’s parentage,
discusses his nature, and traces the spread of his
worship from Epidaurus. Along with his belief
in the gods and in the resistless power of Fate
our author apparently cherished a dim faith in
a divine providence which watches over the
affairs of man. In speaking of the exploits of
Theseus in Crete he remarks that “nothing less
than the hand of Providence could reasonably
be supposed to have brought him and his comrades
safe back, guiding him through all the
mazy intricacies of the labyrinth, and leading
him unseen, when his work was done, through
the midst of his enemies.”
.sn His belief | in the | active interference | of | the gods in | human | affairs.
The gods, in the opinion of Pausanias, were
neither cold abstractions nor blessed beings who,
lapped in the joys of heaven, took no thought
for the affairs of earth. They actively interfered
in the course of events, rewarding the virtuous
.bn 088.png
.pn +1
and punishing the wicked. They were the
givers of good things to men; and if their
rewards had been more open and manifest in
days of old, the prosperity of the pious Athenians
was a standing proof that even in later times
the gods had not forgotten to recompense their
worshippers. Yet, like most people who lay
themselves out to justify the ways of God to
man, Pausanias was readier to detect the hand
of the deity in the miseries and misfortunes of
his fellow-creatures than in their joys and blessings.
The confidence with which he lays his
finger on the precise misdeed which drew down
on a malefactor the wrath of a justly offended
god implies an astonishing familiarity with the
counsels of the Almighty. He knew that the
Persians were defeated at Marathon because
they had angered Nemesis by bringing, in the
pride of their hearts, a block of marble which
they proposed to set up as a trophy of their
expected victory; that the destruction of Sparta
and Helice by earthquakes was due to the wrath
of Poseidon at the violation of his sanctuaries;
that the ruin and death of Mithridates had
been brought to pass by Apollo, whose sacred
island had been sacked by the king’s general;
that Sulla’s miserable end was a direct consequence
of his guilt in tearing Aristion from the
sanctuary of Athena; and that the wrath of the
Eleusinian goddesses abode on the Megarians
.bn 089.png
.pn +1
for ever because they had encroached on the
sacred land and murdered a herald who warned
them to desist. Again, he shrewdly suspects
that the long misfortunes of the Messenians
flowed directly from the anger of the Dioscuri
at the impious presumption of two Messenian
youths; and he surmises that gods and heroes
combined to wreak their displeasure on the
devoted head of Cleomenes, who had tampered
with the Delphic oracle, ravaged the sacred
Eleusinian land, and burned the grove of the
hero Argus. The Delphic Apollo was quick
and powerful, according to Pausanias, to defend
his honour and to visit with vengeance the
sacrilegious persons who dared to assail his
sanctuary or rifle his treasures. King Archidamus,
who had fingered the sacred moneys,
fell in battle in a foreign land and his corpse
weltered unburied; the Phlegyans, who made
a raid on Delphi, perished by thunderbolts and
earthquakes; and it was in all the majesty of
thunder, lightning, and earthquake that at a
later time the god stood forth to repel the Gauls.
Amongst the punishments with which the gods
were thought to visit unwarranted intrusions into
their sanctuaries, blindness and madness had a
special place. King Aepytus, on forcing his
way into the shrine of Poseidon at Mantinea,
which none might enter, was instantly struck
blind and died soon afterwards; some Persian
.bn 090.png
.pn +1
soldiers who ventured into the sanctuary of the
Cabiri near Thebes became crazed and in that
state put an end to themselves; and it was
believed that if any defiled or impious person
entered the sanctuary of the Eumenides at
Cerynea he would go mad on the spot.
.sn His belief | in oracles.
Believing in the gods, Pausanias naturally
believed in their official utterances, the oracles.
The Delphic oracle, he thinks, foretold the battle
of Leuctra and various episodes in the Messenian
wars; and he appeals to one of its answers as
conclusive evidence that the mother of Aesculapius
was Coronis. He relates how the accidental
exposure of the bones of Orpheus was
followed by the destruction of the city of
Libethra in accordance with a prediction of
Dionysus in Thrace, and he narrates the fatal
disasters which Epaminondas, Hannibal, and
the Athenians incurred by misunderstanding
oracular answers sent them from Delphi, Ammon,
and Dodona. The history of Macedonia,
its rise and its fall, had been predicted by the
Sibyl, if we may believe Pausanias, who quotes
her prophecy; and he assures us that the
inroad of the Gauls into Asia had been foretold
by Phaennis a generation before the event took
place. He had himself consulted the oracle of
Trophonius, and has left us a curious account
of the ceremonies observed by enquirers at the
shrine. In his day, he informs us, the most
.bn 091.png
.pn +1
infallible oracle was that of Amphilochus at
Mallus in Cilicia.
.sn His | criticism of | myths.
Yet while Pausanias accepted on the whole
the religion of his country, he was by no means
blind to the discrepancies and improbabilities
of many Greek myths and legends, and he
speaks somewhat disdainfully of the unquestioning
faith of the multitude in the stories they
had heard from childhood. “Falsehood in
general,” he says, “passes current among the
multitude because they are ignorant of history
and believe all that they have heard from
childhood in choirs and tragedies.” And again
he observes that “it is not easy to persuade
the vulgar to change their opinions.” From
the former of these passages it appears that
Pausanias was little disposed to place implicit
faith in the utterances of the poets on matters
of tradition. Elsewhere he intimates his doubts
still more plainly. Speaking of the hydra,
which he maintains had not more than one
head, he says that the poet Pisander multiplied
the creature’s heads “to make the monster
more terrific, and to add to the dignity of his
own verses.” Again, he mentions that the
poets have declared certain objects of art to
be works of Hephaestus, and that obsequious
public opinion has chimed in with them, but
he for his part rejects all such relics as spurious
save one. The only poet to whose authority
.bn 092.png
.pn +1
he inclined to bow was Homer, whose testimony
he often appeals to with respect. He
held that many old stories were true enough
in their origin, but had fallen into discredit
by reason of the distortions and exaggerations
to which they had been subjected by
the narrators. The particular story which
suggests this remark is the legend that Lycaon
had been turned into a wolf on sacrificing a
babe to Lycaean Zeus. Pausanias believes the
legend, but he rejects as incredible the assertion
that at every subsequent sacrifice to Zeus
on Mount Lycaeus a man had been turned
into a wolf, and he does not stick to brand as
humbugs the persons who gave out that the
Arcadian boxer Damarchus had been so transformed.
“Lovers of the marvellous,” he observes,
“are too prone to heighten the marvels
they hear tell of by adding touches of their
own; and thus they debase truth by alloying
it with fiction.”
.sn His disbelief | of | certain | myths.
The attitude of incredulity which Pausanias
maintained towards many of the current legends
is declared by him in the most unequivocal
manner. He speaks of “the many falsehoods
believed by the Greeks,” and reminds us that
though he is bound to record Greek stories he
is not bound to believe them, and that as a
matter of fact he does not believe them all.
The myths of the transformations of gods and
.bn 093.png
.pn +1
men into animals and plants seem especially
to have stuck in his throat. He does not
believe that Zeus changed himself into a cuckoo
to win the love of Hera, and as to the story of
the transformation of Cycnus into a swan, he
says roundly: “That a man should be turned
into a bird is to me incredible.” Nor will he
hear of Narcissus’s love for his own reflexion
in the glassy pool and his wondrous change
into the flower that bore his name. “It is
sheer folly,” he remarks, “to suppose that a
person who has reached the age of falling in
love should be unable to distinguish between a
man and his reflexion,” and as for the flower
in question he has chapter and verse for it to
prove that it grew before Narcissus was born.
The companion story of the transformation of
Hyacinth into the flower he does not treat quite
so cavalierly. “It may not be literally true,”
he tells us, “but let it pass.” Further, he cannot
believe that the beasts followed Orpheus
as he sang, and that the minstrel journeyed
down to hell to win back his lost Eurydice.
Again, while he believes in giants, he rejects
as a silly story the notion that they had serpents
instead of feet, and he supports his
scepticism by referring to the corpse of one
of these monstrous beings which had been
found in the bed of the river Orontes enclosed
in a coffin eleven ells long. Often,
.bn 094.png
.pn +1
without formally refusing his assent to some
tale of wonder, he quietly hints his incredulity
by indicating that he leaves his readers to
believe it or not as they feel inclined. Thus
after telling how pigs thrown into the halls of
Demeter at Potniae were supposed to re-appear
next year at Dodona, he adds, almost sarcastically:
“The tale may possibly find credence
with some people.” Other marvels which he
dismisses with a sneer are the sowing of the
dragon’s teeth by Cadmus and the springing
up of armed men; the sprouting of Hercules’s
club into a tree when he set it on the ground;
the wonderful vision of Lynceus who could see
through the trunk of an oak-tree; and the
story that at a certain rock in Megara the sad
Demeter stood and called back her daughter
from the darkling road down which she had
vanished.
.sn His rationalistic | interpretation | of some | myths.
It is not always, however, that Pausanias
meets seemingly miraculous stories with a blank
negation. He had too much good sense to do
that. He knew that our experience does not
exhaust the possibilities of nature, and he endeavoured
accordingly to trim the balance of
his judgment between hasty credulity on the
one side and rash disbelief on the other. Thus
after pointing out that, if the descriptions of
the strange creatures of distant lands are false
in some particulars, they are true or at least
.bn 095.png
.pn +1
not improbable in others, he concludes: “So
careful should we be to avoid hasty judgments
on the one hand, and incredulity in matters
of rare occurrence on the other.” In his
endeavour to winnow the true from the false,
to disentangle the ravelled skein of tradition,
he has often recourse to that convenient and
flexible instrument—rationalistic or allegorical
interpretation. We have seen with what ease
he thus disencumbered himself of Cerberus’s
superfluous heads and reduced that animal
from a very extraordinary dog to a very
ordinary serpent. The miraculous story of the
death of Actaeon, rent in pieces by his hounds
at the instigation of Artemis, gives him no
trouble: it was a simple case of hydrophobia.
Medusa was a beautiful African queen who met
Perseus at the head of her troops. Titan was
an early astronomer who resided near Sicyon
and passed for a brother of the sun for no other
reason than that he made observations on that
luminary. The fable that Procne and Philomela
were turned into a nightingale and a
swallow arose merely from a comparison of
their mournful cries to the plaintive notes of
these birds. In one passage, indeed, under the
fierce light of criticism the gods themselves
seem on the point of melting away like mist
before the sun, leaving behind them nothing
but the clear hard face of nature, over which
.bn 096.png
.pn +1
for a while the gorgeous pageantry of their
shifting iridescent shapes had floated in a
golden haze. The passage occurs in the
description of Aegium, where our author fell
in with a Phoenician of Sidon with whom he
discussed the philosophic basis of the belief in
Aesculapius, coming to the conclusion that the
god was nothing but the air and his father
Apollo nothing but the sun. Had Pausanias
followed up this line of thought he might, like
Schiller, have seen as in a vision the bright
procession of the gods winding up the long
slope of Olympus, sometimes pausing to look
back sadly at a world where they were needed
no more. But the whole tenour of his work
goes to show that, if here he had a glimpse of
a higher truth, it was only a flash-light that
went out leaving him in darkness.
.sn His change | of view as | to myths.
In a later passage he makes a confession
of his faith in matters of mythology. After
telling the barbarous tale how the cannibal
Cronus, intending to devour his infant son
Poseidon, had been cozened by Rhea into
swallowing a foal, he goes on: “When I
began this work I used to look on these
Greek stories as little better than foolishness;
but now that I have got as far as
Arcadia my opinion about them is this: I
believe that the Greeks who were accounted
wise spoke of old in riddles, and not straight
.bn 097.png
.pn +1
out; and, accordingly, I conjecture that this
story about Cronus is a bit of Greek philosophy.
In matters of religion I will follow
tradition.” This seems to be practically a recantation
of earlier, perhaps youthful scepticism.
The tales which he had once ridiculed as
absurd he now finds to be full of deep, if
hidden, wisdom. Meditation and perhaps still
more the creeping paralysis of age, which brings
so many men to a dull acquiescence in beliefs
and practices which they had spurned in youth,
appear to have wrought a mental revolution
in Pausanias. The scoffer had become devout.
.sn His treatment | of | discrepant | traditions.
Yet to a pious believer the discrepancy
between Greek traditions must have been a
sore stumbling-block. Pausanias tripped over
it again and again. “Greek traditions,” says
he, “are generally discrepant.” “The legends
of the Greeks differ from each other on most
points, especially in the genealogies.” “The
old legends, being unencumbered by genealogies,
left free scope for fiction, especially
in the pedigrees of heroes.” “Most things in
Greece are subjects of dispute.” In face of
such differences Pausanias, when he does not
content himself with simply enumerating the
various traditions, chooses to follow either the
most generally received version or the one
which on any ground appears to him the
most probable. With his sober unimaginative
.bn 098.png
.pn +1
temperament and bias to rationalism, it was
natural that between conflicting versions of the
same tradition he should choose the one which
clashed least with experience. Thus he relates
the two stories told of the way in which the
people of Tanagra acquired the Triton whose
stuffed carcase was the glory of the town.
One story ran that the creature had been slain
by Dionysus himself in single combat; according
to the other, a common mortal had found
the Triton lying drunk on the beach and had
chopped off his head with an axe. The latter
version of the tale is described by Pausanias as
“less dignified but more probable.” Tritons,
it is true, whether drunk or sober, are not
common objects of the sea-shore; but there
was no need to heighten the marvel by lugging
in Dionysus. Again, the death of Aristodemus,
the ancestor of the two royal houses of Sparta,
was variously narrated. “Those who wish to
invest him with a halo of glory,” writes Pausanias,
“say that he was shot by Apollo”; but
the truer story was that he had been knocked
on the head by the children of Pylades. Again,
he regards with suspicion the claims of men
and women to be the husbands and wives,
the sons and daughters of gods and goddesses.
“The Moon, they say, loved Endymion, and he
had fifty daughters by the goddess. Others,
with more probability, say that Endymion
.bn 099.png
.pn +1
married a wife.” “Cadmus made a distinguished
marriage if he really married, as
the Greeks say he did, a daughter of Aphrodite
and Ares.” Then as to reputed sons of
gods. “That Corinthus was a son of Zeus has
never yet, so far as I know, been seriously
asserted by anybody except by a majority of
the Corinthians themselves.” Oenomaus was a
son of Alexion, “though the poets have given
out that he was a son of Ares.” The father
of Augeas was Eleus, “though those who
magnify his history give the name of Eleus a
twist, and affirm that Augeas was a son of the
sun.” The crafty Autolycus “was reputed to
be a son of Hermes, though in truth his father
was Daedalion.” The story that Orpheus had
the Muse Calliope for his mother is stigmatised
by our author as a falsehood. Rivers that
appeared in the character of fathers were also
viewed by Pausanias with distrust. He held
that the father of Eteocles was Andreus, not
the river Cephisus; and he believed that the
father of Plataea was not the river Asopus but
a king of the same name. Other instances
of his hesitation to accept legends of divine
parentage might be cited.
.sn His | application | of historical | methods to | Greek | traditions.
But in his criticism of Greek legends Pausanias
did not confine himself to the simple
test of experience. He did not merely ask
whether a story agreed more or less with the
.bn 100.png
.pn +1
laws of nature, and accept or reject it accordingly.
In historical enquiries the application
of such a criterion obviously cannot carry the
enquirer beyond the first step. Pausanias went
much further. He introduced considerations
drawn from general probability, from chronology,
from the monuments, from a comparison
with other traditions, from the relative weight
to be attached to the authorities by which each
version of a legend was supported. In fact, far
from being hide-bound in the trammels of
tradition, he moved freely among the materials
at his disposal, accepting this and rejecting that
in obedience to the dictates of a reasonable and
fairly enlightened criticism. Thus, he rejects
the Sophoclean version of the death of Oedipus
because it conflicts with the Homeric. He
will not allow that a bronze image of Athena
at Amphissa can have formed part of the
Trojan spoils, and that a bronze image of
Poseidon at Pheneus can have been dedicated
by Ulysses, because at the time of the Trojan
war and in the lifetime of Ulysses the art of
casting in bronze had not yet been invented.
He refuses to believe that the grave of Dejanira
was at Argos, because she was known to have
died at Trachis and her grave to be not far from
Heraclea. Among the several places in Greece
that set up claims to be the Oechalia of Homer,
our author decides in favour of Carnasium in
.bn 101.png
.pn +1
Messenia, because the bones of Eurytus were
there. The tradition that the mysteries at
Celeae had been founded by a man of Eleusis
named Dysaules, who had been driven into exile
after a battle between the Eleusinians and
Athenians, is rejected by Pausanias on the
grounds that no such battle took place and that
no such person is mentioned by Homer. The
legend that Daedalus joined Aristaeus in colonising
Sardinia is set aside by him for the reason
that Daedalus lived several generations after
Aristaeus, and therefore could not possibly have
shared with him in a colony or in anything else.
Similarly he argues on chronological grounds
against the traditions that Achilles had been
a suitor of Helen; that Timalcus went to
Aphidna with the Dioscuri; and that the
Telamon and Chalcodon who marched with
Hercules against Elis were the well-known
Telamon of Aegina and Chalcodon of Euboea.
The Spartan tradition as to the image of
Brauronian Artemis is preferred by Pausanias
to the Athenian, and that for a variety of
reasons which he sets forth in detail.
Thus Pausanias criticised Greek myths and
legends according to his lights, and if his lights
did not shine very brilliantly the fault was not
his.
.sn His taste in art.
Of his taste in painting and sculpture we
are scarcely able to judge, partly because he is
.bn 102.png
.pn +1
chary of his praise, generally confining himself
to a simple mention or description of the work
before him, partly because so few of the works
described by him have survived to our time.
His taste in | painting. The paintings are all gone. A little blue
pigment on a ruined wall at Delphi is all that
remains of those frescoes of Polygnotus which
excited the admiration of antiquity. That
Pausanias himself admired them is clear, both
from the length of his description and from the
words with which he brings it to a close: “So
varied and beautiful is the painting of the
Thasian artist.” Elsewhere he seems to have
lost no opportunity of describing extant pictures
of Polygnotus, though he does not always mention
his name. A painting of Drunkenness by
Pausias apparently struck Pausanias especially,
for he tells us that “in the picture you can see
the crystal goblet and the woman’s face through
it.” But the only pictures, besides those of
Polygnotus at Delphi, on which he deigns to
bestow a dry word of commendation are a
couple of paintings on tombstones, one of them
by Nicias, as to whom Pausanias tells us elsewhere
that he had been the greatest painter of
animals of his time.
.sn His taste in | sculpture.
In sculpture the taste of Pausanias was
apparently austere. He decidedly preferred the
earlier to the later art. Of the archaic works
attributed to Daedalus he says that they “are
.bn 103.png
.pn +1
somewhat uncouth to the eye, but there is a
touch of the divine in them for all that.” He
praises Bupalus, an artist of the sixth century
B.C., as “a clever architect and sculptor.” But
on the whole it was for the sculptors of the
fifth century B.C. that he chiefly reserved his
scanty praise, and amongst them he seemingly
preferred the masters of the older manner who
immediately preceded Phidias. Predecessors | of Phidias. Thus, with regard
to Pythagoras of Rhegium, who flourished
about 480 B.C., he says that he was “a good
sculptor, if ever there was one,” and in speaking
of the boxer Euthymus he remarks that “his
statue is by Pythagoras, and most well worth
seeing it is.” Of Onatas, who was at work
about 467 B.C., he expresses a high opinion:
“I am inclined to regard Onatas, though he
belongs to the Aeginetan school of sculpture,
as second to none of the successors of Daedalus
and the Attic school.” This criticism indicates
that Pausanias preferred in general the Attic
school of sculpture to the Aeginetan, though he
considered one master of the latter school as
the peer of the greatest Attic sculptors. At
Pergamus there was a bronze image of Apollo
by this same Onatas which Pausanias describes
as “one of the greatest marvels both for size
and workmanship.” It is a proof of the independence
of Pausanias’s judgment in art that
this early sculptor, whom he ranked with
.bn 104.png
.pn +1
Phidias Phidias and Praxiteles, is not even mentioned
by any other ancient writer except in a single
epigram of the Anthology. Another old master
of the fifth century whose statues Pausanias
often notices is Calamis; on one of them he
bestows a word of commendation. A statue
by this artist was much admired by Lucian.
The great sculptor Myron, a contemporary of
Phidias, seems also to have found favour in the
eyes of Pausanias, for he mentions that the
image of Dionysus on Mount Helicon was the
finest of all the artist’s works, next to the
statue of Erechtheus at Athens. That Pausanias
appreciated the greatness of Phidias is
clear from the way in which he speaks of him
and from the detail in which he describes the
sculptor’s two most famous works, the image of
the Virgin Athena at Athens and the image of
Zeus at Olympia. Of the latter he observes
that the mere measurements of the image could
convey no idea of the impression which the
image itself made on the beholder. Yet he did
not consider it the sculptor’s masterpiece, for as
to the image of the Lemnian Athena at Athens
he remarks that it is “the best worth seeing of
all the works of Phidias.” The preference thus
given to this comparatively obscure statue over
the image of Zeus which the ancient world
agreed in extolling as little less than divine is
another proof of the independence of Pausanias’s
.bn 105.png
.pn +1
judgment in artistic matters; and that his taste
here was good is attested by the very high
place which his contemporary Lucian, one of
the best critics of antiquity, assigns to the same
statue. Of Alcamenes our author observes that
as a sculptor he was second only to his contemporary
Phidias, and with regard to the statue
of Aphrodite in the Gardens by this artist he
says that “few things at Athens are so well
worth seeing as this.” Here, again, our author’s
judgment is confirmed by that of Lucian, who
describes this image as the most beautiful work
of Alcamenes, and draws from it not a few
traits for his imaginary statue of ideal beauty
which was to combine all the most perfect
features of the most celebrated statues. Another
sculptor whose style seems to have pleased
Pausanias was Naucydes, a brother of the
famous Polyclitus, who worked at the end of
the fifth or at the beginning of the fourth
century B.C. A bronze image of Athena
by Hypatodorus at Aliphera is declared by
Pausanias to be worth seeing both for its size
and its workmanship; but the date of this
sculptor is somewhat uncertain. Strongylion,
whom Pausanias describes as unrivalled in his
representations of oxen and horses, seems to
have flourished toward the end of the fifth
century B.C. Among the sculptors of the following
century Pausanias praises Cephisodotus
.bn 106.png
.pn +1
Sculptors| of the | fourth | century B.C.
for the conception of his statue representing
the infant Wealth in the arms of Peace,
and the sculptors Xenophon and Callistratus for
a similar allegorical work representing Wealth
in the arms of Fortune. Further, he commends
some of the sculptures of Damophon
at Messene,[3] and he has a few words of approbation
for several works of Praxiteles, but not
one for any work of the other two great masters
of the fourth century, Scopas[4] and Lysippus,
though he mentions many statues by them. A
critic of a taste so severe that he could pass
by the works of Scopas and the Hermes of
Praxiteles without uttering a syllable of admiration
was not likely to take much pleasure in
the productions of the decadence. Pausanias
notices few and praises none of the successors
of Praxiteles. Of the colossal image of
Olympian Zeus at Athens, which must have
been executed in his own lifetime, he says
condescendingly that it was good for its size.
.fm rend=th
.fn 3
The date of Damophon is uncertain, but on the whole the
evidence seems to point to his having been at work in the first
half of the fourth century B.C. Pausanias’s appreciation of
Damophon is one more proof of the independence of his judgment
in matters of art; for Damophon is mentioned by no other writer of
antiquity.
.fn-
.fn 4
However, he admired Scopas as an architect if not as a
sculptor (viii. 45. 5). The same may be said of Polyclitus
(ii. 27. 5), though the building which Pausanias admired turns out
to be by the younger and less distinguished artist of that name.
.fn-
.fm rend=th
It may be noted as significant of Pausanias’s
interest in the older sculpture that the only
.bn 107.png
.pn +1
artists with whose styles he shows himself so
familiar as to recognise them at sight are
Calamis, Canachus, Endoeus, and Laphaes, of
whom Calamis and Canachus flourished in the
early part of the fifth century B.C., and Endoeus
in the last part of the sixth century B.C. The
date of Laphaes is unknown, but as the two
images by this artist were both made of wood
and are expressly declared by Pausanias to be
ancient, we can hardly suppose that the sculptor
flourished later than the sixth century B.C.
.sn His taste | in architecture.
Of Pausanias’s taste in architecture we are
much better able to judge, for many of the
buildings described by him exist, and by a
most fortunate coincidence amongst them are
some of which he expressed his admiration in
unusually strong language. Walls of | Tiryns. To begin with the
relics of the prehistoric age, the walls of Tiryns
and the beehive tomb of Orchomenus, which he
calls the Treasury of Minyas, raised his wonder
to such a pitch that he compares them to the
Egyptian pyramids and animadverts on the
perversity of the Greeks, who admired and
described only the marvels they saw abroad,
while they entirely neglected the marvels no
less great which they had at home. The walls
of Tiryns he describes with amazement as
“made of unwrought stones, each stone so large
that a pair of mules could not even stir the
smallest of them.” No modern reader who has
.bn 108.png
.pn +1
Beehive | tomb at | Orchomenus.
seen the walls of Tiryns as they still stand,
built of enormous stones and resembling a work
of giants rather than of men, will be likely to
regard Pausanias’s admiration of them as misplaced,
whatever may be thought of the comparison
of them to the pyramids. Amongst
the prehistoric remains of Greece they are
certainly unmatched. The walls of Mycenae
and of the great prehistoric fortress of Gla or
Goulas in Boeotia surpass them, indeed, in
extent, but fall far short of them in the size of
the blocks of which they are composed. As
to the beehive tomb at Orchomenus, of which
Pausanias says that there was no greater marvel
either in Greece or elsewhere, it is now sadly
ruinous, but we can judge of its original effect
by the great beehive tomb at Mycenae known
as the Treasury of Atreus, which agrees with
the tomb at Orchomenus very closely in
dimensions and exists almost intact. To stand
within the great circular chamber and look up
at the domed roof, with its rings of regularly
hewn stones diminishing one above the other
till they are lost in the darkness overhead, is an
impressive experience. Those who have enjoyed
it will be disposed to think that Pausanias was
right in regarding the similar edifice at Orchomenus
as a very wonderful structure.
.sn The | Propylaea.
To come down to buildings of the historical
age, Pausanias admired the Propylaea or grand
.bn 109.png
.pn +1
Theatre at | Epidaurus.
portal of the Acropolis at Athens, which “for
the beauty and size of the blocks,” he says,
“has never yet been matched.” It is probably
not too much to say that even in its ruins this
magnificent portal is still the highest triumph
of the mason’s craft. The exquisite fitting of
the massive cleanly-cut blocks of white marble
is a pleasure to behold. Again, the sight of
the theatre in the sanctuary of Aesculapius at
Epidaurus moves the sober Pausanias to an
extraordinary, almost unparalleled burst of
admiration. “In the Epidaurian sanctuary,”
he says, “there is a theatre which in my
opinion is most especially worth seeing. It is
true that in size the theatre at Megalopolis in
Arcadia surpasses it, and that in splendour the
Roman theatres far transcend all the theatres
in the world; but for symmetry and beauty
what architect could vie with Polyclitus? For
it was Polyclitus who made this theatre.” Here
again modern taste confirms the judgment of
Pausanias. Neither the Dionysiac theatre at
Athens, nor the great theatre at Megalopolis,
nor the well-preserved theatre at Delphi, nor
any other existing Greek theatre, so far at least
as my experience goes, can vie for a moment
in beauty and symmetry with the exquisite
theatre at Epidaurus.
.sn Temples at | Bassae and | Tegea.
Again, in regard to the temple of Apollo at
Bassae our author says that “of all the temples
.bn 110.png
.pn +1
in Peloponnese, next to the one at Tegea, this
may be placed first for the beauty of the stone
and the symmetry of its proportions,” and as
to the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea, to
which he here refers, he says elsewhere, “The
present temple far surpasses all other temples
in Peloponnese both in size and style.” So far
as the size of the temple at Tegea goes,
Pausanias is wrong. The temple of Zeus at
Olympia was nearly twice as large. But in
regard to style modern taste merely echoes the
opinion of Pausanias. The scanty remains of
the temple at Tegea are now mostly buried
underground, but the admirable design and
workmanship of the architectural fragments, and
the beauty of the shattered sculptures, justify
the praise which Pausanias bestows on it as
the finest temple in Peloponnese in respect of
artistic style. No person of taste but will set
the pathetic force and beauty of the two
battered heads from this temple above all the
coarse vigour of the Phigalian frieze and the
ungraceful, almost repulsive hardness of the
groups from the gables of the Olympian temple.
And that in architectural style the temple at
Bassae came next to the one at Tegea is an
opinion that will hardly be disputed by any one
who has seen the beautiful temple at Bassae
with its long rows of grey columns standing
solitary among the barren mountains. That
.bn 111.png
.pn +1
Pausanias was right in preferring it to the
temple of Zeus at Olympia both for the beauty
of the stone and the symmetry of its proportions
is hardly open to question. The temple of
Zeus must have been imposing from its size, but
its proportions, so far as we can judge from the
ruins, do not strike an observer as especially
harmonious; and as to the materials, the rough
conglomerate of Olympia cannot be compared
for beauty with the fine hard limestone of
Bassae.
.sn Walls of | Messene.
Further, Pausanias describes the walls of
Messene with their towers and battlements, and
declares them to be stronger than the finest fortifications
he had seen elsewhere. The remains
of these superb fortifications bear him out.
For the scale on which they are planned and
for the solidity and perfection of the masonry
they are without a rival in Greece. In other
places, as at Asea in Arcadia, at Aegosthena
in Megaris, and at Lilaea and Drymaea in
Phocis, circuits of walls with their flanking
towers exist in better preservation, but none of
them can vie in style and splendour with the
fortifications of Messene. Here again we must
pronounce unhesitatingly that so far as our
knowledge goes Pausanias was in the right.
.sn Music Halls | at Athens | and Patrae.
To come down to buildings of a later age,
Pausanias tells us that the Music Hall at Patrae
was the grandest in Greece except the one
.bn 112.png
.pn +1
built by Herodes Atticus at Athens, which
excelled it both in size and style. Here we
are in the fortunate position of being able to
compare for ourselves the two buildings which
Pausanias ranks together as the finest of their
kind in Greece, for both of them exist in comparatively
good preservation to the present day.
That the Music Hall of Herodes Atticus excels
in size the one at Patrae, as Pausanias says it
did, is obvious at a glance. The former is in
fact a spacious theatre, the latter is a tiny one.
But both, as appears from the remains, were
originally cased with marble and probably
presented a splendid appearance. The lions’
paws of white marble which adorn the seats
in the Music Hall at Patrae, together with the
mosaic pavement of black and white in the adjoining
chamber, enable us to form some slight
idea of the elegance of those appointments
which excited the admiration of Pausanias.
.sn Stadium | at Athens.
Lastly, our author observes that the stadium
at Athens, built of white marble by Herodes
Atticus, was “wonderful to see, though not so
impressive to hear of,” and that the greater
part of the Pentelic quarries had been exhausted
in its construction. The latter statement is, of
course, an exaggeration. Mount Pentelicus is
made of white marble, and there is a good deal
of it left to this day, though the great white
blotches on its sides, visible even from the coast
.bn 113.png
.pn +1
of Epidaurus, tell plainly where the quarrymen
have been at work. But we may easily believe
Pausanias that the stadium was a wonderful
sight when tiers of white marble benches,
glistening in the strong sunshine, rose steeply
above each other all along both sides of the
valley. For a valley it is still, and a valley
lined with white marble it must have been in
the days of Pausanias. Those who have seen
the stadium since it was partially refitted with
white marble benches for the games of 1896
can better picture to themselves what its aspect
must have been when the benches were complete.
Before the time of Herodes Atticus the spectators
may have sat either on the earthen slopes, as at
Olympia, or on benches of common stone, as at
Epidaurus and Delphi.
On the whole, then, so far as we can judge
from the existing monuments and the testimony
of ancient writers, especially of Lucian, the
artistic taste of Pausanias was sound and good,
if somewhat austere.
.sn Intrinsic | evidence of | Pausanias’s | truthfulness.
The manner in which he has described the
monuments is plain and appropriate, entirely free
from those vague rhetorical flourishes, literary
graces, and affected prettinesses with which, for
example, Philostratus tricks out his descriptions
of pictures, and which have consequently left it
a matter of dispute to this day whether the
pictures he describes existed anywhere but in
.bn 114.png
.pn +1
his own imagination. No one is ever likely
seriously to enquire whether the temples and
theatres, the statues and paintings described by
Pausanias ever existed or not. His descriptions
carry the imprint of reality on them to every
mind that is capable of distinguishing between
the true and the false; and even if they did
not, their truthfulness would still be vouched for
by their conformity with the remains of the
monuments themselves. Proof of this confirmity
might be adduced in great abundance.
Here, however, we are concerned with that
internal evidence of the author’s honesty and
candour which the writings themselves supply.
Evidence of this sort can never, indeed, amount
to demonstration. Candour and honesty are
not qualities that can be brought to the test
of the senses; they cannot be weighed in a
balance or seen under a microscope. A man
who is neither candid nor honest himself will
probably never sincerely believe in the existence
of these qualities in others, and there is no
means of convincing him. It is always open to
him to find a sinister motive for the simplest
act, a covert meaning under the plainest words.
In the case of Pausanias the internal evidence
of good faith seems amply sufficient to convince
a fair-minded enquirer. It consists in the
whole cast and tenour of his writings; in the
naturalness and credibility of all that he affirms
.bn 115.png
.pn +1
of his own knowledge, with the exception of
two or three cases in which he seems to have
been duped by mercenary or priestly trickery;
it consists in the plainness and directness of the
descriptions; in their freedom from any tinge
of rhetoric or sophistry; in the modesty with
which the author generally keeps himself in
the background; and finally in occasional confessions
of ignorance which only malignity could
interpret as artifices resorted to for the purpose
of supporting an assumed air of ingenuous
simplicity. This last feature of the work it
is desirable to illustrate by instances. The
others, pervading as they do the whole book,
hardly admit of exemplification.
.sn His confessions | of | ignorance.
Repeatedly, then, Pausanias owns that he
had not been present at certain festivals, and
consequently had not seen certain images which
were only exhibited on these occasions. Thus
with regard to the very curious image of Eurynome,
which would have especially interested
him as an antiquary, he tells us that the
sanctuary in which it stood was opened only
on one day in the year, and that as he did not
happen to arrive on that day he had not seen
the image, and therefore could only describe it
from hearsay. Similarly he says that he cannot
describe the image of Artemis at Hyampolis
because it was the custom to open the sanctuary
only twice a year. He tells at second hand of
.bn 116.png
.pn +1
a festival of Dionysus at Elis, in which empty
kettles were said to be found miraculously filled
with wine; but he informs us that he was not
himself at Elis at the time of the festival, and
from expressions which he uses in regard to
the marvel we may infer that he had his doubts
about it. No one presumably will dispute
these statements of Pausanias and maintain
that he arrived in time for those festivals and
saw those images although he assures us that
he did not. We are bound, therefore, in fairness
to believe him when he tells us with regard
to the sanctuary of Mother Dindymene at
Thebes that “it is the custom to open the
sanctuary on a single day each year, not
more. I was fortunate enough to arrive on
that very day, and I saw the image.” As
other instances of his candour may be cited his
acknowledgment that he had not witnessed the
ceremonies performed at the tombs of Eteocles
and Polynices at Thebes, nor beheld the secret
object revered in the worship of Demeter at
Hermion; that he could describe the sanctuary
of Poseidon at Mantinea only from hearsay;
that he had neither seen the walls of Babylon
and Susa nor conversed with any one who
had; that he never saw Antinous in life, though
he had seen statues and paintings of him; and
that he had not heard the trout sing like thrushes
in the river Aroanius, though he tarried by the
.bn 117.png
.pn +1
river until sunset, when they were said to sing
loudest. These are the confessions of an
honest man, inclined perhaps to credulity, but
yet who will not deceive others by professing
to have seen sights, whether marvellous or
otherwise, which he has not seen. Again, when
he quotes a book at second hand he is careful
to tell us so. Thus, after citing some lines
from the Atthis of Hegesinus, he goes on:
“This poem of Hegesinus I have not read: it
was lost before my time; but the verses are
quoted as evidence by Callippus of Corinth in
his history of Orchomenus, and I have profited
by his information to do the same.” Again,
after quoting a couple of verses of an Orchomenian
poet Chersias, he adds. “The poetry
of Chersias is now lost, but these verses also
are quoted by Callippus in the same work of
his on Orchomenus.” These statements, like
the foregoing, will hardly be disputed even by
the most sceptical. No one will be likely to
insist that Pausanias read books which he tells
us he did not. Therefore in fairness we are
bound to believe him when he says that he did
read certain other works, such as the memoirs
of some obscure historians, a treatise on rhetoric
purporting to be by Pittheus, the epics Eoeae
and Naupactia, a poem attributed to Linus,
verses of Erato, a poem on soothsaying which
passed under the name of Hesiod, and the
.bn 118.png
.pn +1
oracles of Euclus, Musaeus, and Bacis. If we
take the word of Pausanias for what he tells us
he did not see and did not read, we must take
it also for what he tells us he did see and did
read. At least if we are to accept as true all
those statements of an author which tell against
himself and to reject as false all those which
tell in his favour, there is an end of even the
pretence of fair and rational criticism.
.sn Literary | style of | Pausanias.
The literary style of Pausanias is no exception
to the rule that the style of a writer
reflects the character of the man. Pausanias
was neither a great man nor a great writer.
He was an honest, laborious, plodding man of
plain good sense, without either genius or
imagination, and his style is a faithful mirror
of his character. It is plain and unadorned,
yet heavy and laboured, as if the writer had
had to cast about for the proper words and
then fit them painfully together like the pieces
in a Chinese puzzle. There is a sense of strain
and effort about it. The sentences are devoid
of rhythm and harmony. They do not march,
but hobble and shamble and shuffle along. At
the end of one of them the reader is not let
down easily by a graceful cadence, a dying fall;
he is tripped up suddenly and left sprawling,
till he can pull himself together, take breath,
and grapple with the next. It is a loose,
clumsy, ill-jointed, ill-compacted, rickety, ramshackle
.bn 119.png
.pn +1
style, without ease or grace or elegance
of any sort. Yet Pausanias had studied good
models. He knew Thucydides and his writings
abound with echoes of Herodotus. But a style
that has less of the unruffled flow, the limpid
clearness, the exquisite grace, the sweet simplicity
of the Herodotean prose it might be
hard to discover. The sound of the one is like
the chiming of a silver bell; that of the other
like the creaking of a corn-crake. With all its
defects, however, the style of Pausanias is not
careless and slovenly. The author bestrides
his high horse; he bobs up and down and
clumps about on it with great solemnity; it is
not his fault if his Pegasus is a wooden hobby-horse
instead of a winged charger.
.sn He perhaps | modelled | his style on | that of | Hegesias.
This union of seemingly opposite faults, this
plainness without simplicity, this elaboration
without richness, may perhaps be best explained
by Boeckh’s hypothesis, that he modelled his
style on that of his countryman Hegesias of
Magnesia, a leader of the Asiatic school of
rhetoric, who, aping the unadorned simplicity of
Lysias’s manner, fell into an abrupt and jerky,
yet affected and mincing style, laboriously
chopping and dislocating his sentences so that
they never ran smooth, never by any chance
slid into a rounded period with an easy cadence.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus declares peevishly
that in all the voluminous works of Hegesias
.bn 120.png
.pn +1
there was not a single well-written page, and
that the man must have gone wrong not from
stupidity but of set purpose and malice prepense,
otherwise he could not have helped
writing a good sentence now and then by
accident. Frigid conceits and a puerile play
upon words were mistaken by this perverse
writer for literary beauties, and in the effort to
stud his pages with these false jewels he sacrificed
both pathos and truth. In this respect,
indeed, Pausanias happily did not follow the
bad example of his predecessor. His writings
are entirely free from paltry conceits and verbal
quibbles. The thought is always manly and
direct, however tortuous may be the sentence
in which he seeks to express it. If he imitated
Hegesias, it was apparently in the arrangement
of the words and sentences alone.
Whatever may be thought of this theory,
the attention which Pausanias obviously bestowed
on literary style is in itself wholly laudable.
Such attention is a simple duty which
every author owes to his readers. Pausanias
cannot be blamed for trying to write well; the
pity is that with all his pains he did not write
better. He was anxious not to be needlessly
tedious, not to inflict on the reader mere bald
lists of monuments strung together on a topographical
thread. He aimed at varying the
phraseology, at shunning the eternal repetition
.bn 121.png
.pn +1
of the same words in the same order. Yet he
steered clear of one shoal only to run aground
on another. If to some extent he avoided
monotony and attained variety of expression, it
was too often at the cost of simplicity and
clearness. The natural order of the words was
sacrificed and a crabbed contorted one substituted
for it merely in order to vary the run
of the sentences. For the same reason a direct
statement was often discarded in favour of an
indirect one, with the result that a reader who
happens to be unfamiliar with the author’s
manner is sometimes at a loss as to his meaning.
For example, it has been questioned
whether he means that there was a statue of
Aeschylus in the theatre at Athens and one of
Oenobius on the Acropolis. Yet any person
conversant with his style must feel sure that in
both these cases Pausanias intends to intimate
the existence of the statue, and that if he does
not affirm it in so many words this is due to
no other cause than a wish to turn the sentence
in another way. Similar instances could easily
be multiplied. The ambiguity which so often
arises from this indirect mode of statement is
one of the many blots on the style of Pausanias.
Such as it is, his style is seen at its best in
some of the longer historical passages, notably
in the spirited narratives of the Messenian wars
and the Gallic invasion. Here he occasionally
.bn 122.png
.pn +1
rises to a fair level of literary merit, as for
example in describing the evil omens that preceded
and hastened the death of the patriot
king Aristodemus, and again in relating the
impious attack of the Gauls on Delphi and
their overwhelming repulse. Through the latter
narrative there runs, like a strain of solemn
music, an undertone of religious faith and fervour
which greatly heightens the effect.
.sn Pausanias’s | use of | previous | writers.
In these and similar historical episodes we
must allow something for the influence on
Pausanias’s style of the literary authorities
whom he followed. The warmer tinge of the
descriptions, the easier flow of the sentences
may not be wholly due to the ardour of the
writer’s piety, to the swell of his patriotic feelings.
Something of the movement, the glow,
the solemn strain, the martial fire may have
been caught by him from better models. This
brings us to the enquiry, What books did Pausanias
use in writing his own? and how did
he use them? Unfortunately we are not and
probably never shall be in a position to answer
these questions fully. Like most ancient writers
Pausanias is sparing in the citation of his
authorities, and it is clear that he must have
consulted books of which he makes no mention.
And when to this we add that the works of
most of the writers whom he does cite have
perished or survive only in a few disjointed
.bn 123.png
.pn +1
fragments, it becomes clear that any hope of
acquiring a complete knowledge of his literary
sources and mode of using them must be abandoned.
Many attempts have been made of
late years to identify the lost books consulted
by Pausanias; but from the nature of the case
it is plain that such attempts must be fruitless.
One of them will be noticed presently. Meantime
all that I propose to do is to indicate some
of the chief literary and documentary sources
which Pausanias expressly cites, and to illustrate
by examples his method of dealing with them.
.sn Distinction | between | the historical | and | descriptive\
|parts of | Pausanias’s| work.
Before doing so it is desirable to point out
explicitly a distinction which, though obvious
in itself, has apparently been overlooked or
slurred over by some of Pausanias’s critics. The
matter of his work is of two sorts, historical
and descriptive: the one deals with events in
the past, the other with things existing in the
present. For his knowledge of past events,
except in so far as they fell within his own lifetime
and observation, Pausanias was necessarily
dependent either on written documents or on
oral testimony, in short on the evidence of
others; no other source of information was
open to him. For his knowledge of things
existing in the present, on the other hand, he
need not have been indebted to the evidence of
others, he may have seen them for himself. It
does not, of course, follow that what he may
.bn 124.png
.pn +1
have seen he did actually see. His descriptions
of places and things, like his narratives of
events that happened before his time, may all
have been taken from books or from the mouths
of other people; only it is not, as in the case
of the historical narratives, absolutely necessary
that they should be so derived. This distinction
is so elementary and obvious that to call
attention to it may be deemed superfluous.
Yet some of the critics appear to labour under
an impression that, if they can show the
historical parts of Pausanias’s work to have
been taken from books, they have raised a
presumption that the descriptive or topographical
parts were also so taken. They do
not, indeed, put so crass a misapprehension
into words, but they seem to be influenced by
it. To brush away these mental cobwebs it
is only needful to realise clearly that, though
Pausanias certainly could not have witnessed
events which happened before he was born, he
was not therefore necessarily debarred from seeing
things which existed in his own lifetime. In
investigating the sources of his information it is
desirable to keep the historical and the descriptive
parts of his work quite distinct from each other
and to enquire into each of them separately.
.sn Poets | used by | Pausanias.
To begin with the historical, in the widest
sense of the word, we find that Pausanias drew
his accounts of the mythical and heroic ages
.bn 125.png
.pn +1
in large measure from the poets. Homer is
his chief poetical authority, but he also makes
use of the later epics such as the Cypria, the
Eoeae, the Little Iliad, the Minyad, the Naupactia,
the Oedipodia, the Returns (Nostoi), the Sack
of Ilium by Lesches, the Thebaid, and the
Thesprotis. Of these the Thebaid was esteemed
by him next to the Iliad and Odyssey. On
questions of genealogy he often cites the early
poets Asius and Cinaethon. Among the works
attributed to Hesiod he frequently refers to the
Theogony and the Catalogue of Women, and he
once quotes the Argonautica of Apollonius
Rhodius. That he knew the Alexandrian
poet Euphorion of Chalcis is shown by two
references to his writings. The most ancient
Greek hymns in his opinion were those of
Olen; he cites several of them. Again, the
testimony of Pamphos, author of the oldest
Athenian hymns, is often appealed to by Pausanias.
Among the lyric poets whose works he
knew, such as Alcaeus, Alcman, Archilochus,
Pindar, Sappho, and Stesichorus, he appears to
have ranked Pindar first; at least he refers to
his poems far oftener than to those of the
others. Among the elegiac poets he quotes
Tyrtaeus and Simonides. With the great
tragic and comic poets he shows but little
acquaintance; Aeschylus is the only one whose
authority he appeals to repeatedly. He refers
.bn 126.png
.pn +1
once to the testimony of Sophocles, but only
to reject it; once to that of Aristophanes;
never to that of Euripides. On the other
hand, he seems to have devoted a good deal of
attention to the critical study of the older poets.
He had investigated the dates of Homer and
Hesiod and the question of Homer’s native
country. Nor did he neglect to enquire into
the genuineness of many poems that passed
under famous names. He tells admiringly
how a contemporary of his own, Arrhiphon
of Triconium, detected the spuriousness of
certain verses attributed to an old Argive poet
Philammon, by pointing out that the verses
were in the Doric dialect which had not
yet been introduced into Argolis in Philammon’s
time. Among the works ascribed to
Musaeus he held that nothing was genuine
except the hymn to Demeter composed for the
Lycomids; some of the verses which passed
under the name of Musaeus he set down as
forgeries of Onomacritus. The hymns of
Orpheus were ranked by him next to those of
Homer for poetical beauty, but he saw that
some of the verses attributed to Orpheus were
spurious. He had grave doubts as to the
Theogony being a genuine work of Hesiod;
and he informs us that the reading of a poem
fathered on Linus sufficed to convince him of
its spuriousness. Of the works which circulated
.bn 127.png
.pn +1
under the name of the early Corinthian poet
Eumelus one only, he tells us, was held to be
genuine. He could not believe that Anaximenes
had written a certain epic on Alexander the
Great. As to the epic called the Thebaid, which
he admired, he reports the view of Callinus
that the author was Homer, adding that “many
respectable persons have shared his opinion.”
.sn Historians | used by | Pausanias.
The historian whom Pausanias seems to
have studied most carefully and whom he cites
most frequently is Herodotus. Though he
only once refers to the history of Thucydides
and once to that of Xenophon, it is probable
that he used both authors in several passages
where he does not mention their names. Other
historians whom he refers to are Anaximenes,
Antiochus of Syracuse, Charon of Lampsacus,
Ctesias, Hecataeus, Hellanicus, Hieronymus of
Cardia, Myron of Priene, Philistus, Polybius,
and Theopompus. Besides these he cites
several local histories, such as the histories of
Attica by Androtion and Clitodemus, a history
of Corinth attributed to Eumelus, a history of
Orchomenus by Callippus, and what seems to
have been a versified history of Argos by
Lyceas. Further, he had read the memoirs
of certain obscure historians whose names he
does not mention. In his use of the historical
materials at his disposal Pausanias appears to
have done his best to follow the same critical
.bn 128.png
.pn +1
principles which he applied to the mythical and
legendary lore of Greece. When the accounts
conflicted he weighed them one against the
other and accepted that which on the whole
seemed to him to be the more probable or the
better authenticated. Thus before proceeding
to narrate the history of the Messenian wars he
mentions his two chief authorities, namely a
prose history of the first war by Myron of
Priene and a versified history of the second
war by Rhianus of Bene; then he points out a
glaring discrepancy between the two in regard
to the date of Aristomenes—the William Tell
or Sir William Wallace of Messenia—and gives
his reasons for accepting the testimony of
Rhianus and rejecting that of Myron, whose
writings, according to him, revealed an indifference
to truth and probability of which
he gives a striking instance. Again, Pausanias
was able to allow for the bias of prejudice in
an historian. Thus he points out that the
history of Hieronymus the Cardian was coloured
by a partiality for Antigonus and a dislike of
Lysimachus, of whom the latter had destroyed
the historian’s native city; that the historian
Philistus concealed the worst excesses of
Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, because he hoped
to be allowed by the tyrant to return to that
city; and that Androtion, the historian of
Attica, had apparently introduced a certain
.bn 129.png
.pn +1
narrative for the sole purpose of casting reproach
on the Lacedaemonians.
.sn The Elean | register.
An historical document of which Pausanias
made much use was the Elean register of
Olympic victors. He often refers to it. We
need not suppose that he consulted the original
documents in the archives at Elis. The register
had been published many centuries before by
Hippias of Elis, and copies may have been in
common circulation. Wherever he may have
seen it, Pausanias appears to have studied it
carefully, and sometimes he turns the information
thus acquired to good account. Thus he
points out that a statement of the Elean guides
was at variance with an entry in the register, and
that the runner Oebotas could not possibly have
fought at the battle of Plataea in 479 B.C. since
his Olympic victory was won in Ol. 6 (756 B.C.).
.sn Inscriptions.
Another trustworthy source from which
Pausanias derived many of his historical facts
was inscriptions. What copious use he made
of them may be gathered from a slight inspection
of his work, particularly his description
of Olympia, and that on the whole he read
them correctly is proved by inscriptions still
extant of which he has given us either the
text or the general purport. Yet he did not
accept their testimony blindfold. In some of
his references to them we can perceive the
same discrimination, the same desire to sift and
.bn 130.png
.pn +1
weigh the evidence which we have found to
characterise his procedure in other enquiries.
Thus in an old gymnasium at Anticyra he saw
the bronze statue of a native athlete Xenodamus
with an inscription setting forth that the man
had won the prize in the pancratium at Olympia.
Pausanias accordingly consulted the Olympic
register and finding no such victor mentioned
in it came to the conclusion that, if the inscription
were not lying, the victory of Xenodamus
must have fallen in Ol. 211 (65 A.D.), the only
Olympiad which had been struck out of the
register. Again, at Olympia he saw a tablet
inscribed with the victories of Chionis, a
Lacedaemonian runner, who lived in the first
half of the seventh century B.C. In the inscription
it was mentioned that the race in armour
had not yet been instituted in the time of
Chionis; indeed we know from Pausanias that
more than a century elapsed after the time of
Chionis before the race in armour was introduced.
Hence Pausanias concludes very
sensibly that the inscription could not, as
some people supposed, have been set up by
the runner himself, for how could he have foreseen
that the race in armour ever would be
instituted long after he was dead and buried?
Again, he infers that the Gelo who dedicated
a chariot at Olympia cannot have been, as was
commonly assumed, the tyrant Gelo, because in
.bn 131.png
.pn +1
the inscription on the pedestal Gelo described
himself as a citizen of Gela, whereas, according
to Pausanias, at the time when the chariot was
dedicated Gelo had already made himself master
of Syracuse and would therefore have described
himself as a Syracusan, not as a native of Gela.
The argument falls to the ground because
Pausanias mistook the date of Gelo’s subjugation
of Syracuse by several years; none the
less his criticism of the current view testifies to
the attention he bestowed on inscriptions.
.sn Writers | on art.
The image of Zeus which the united Greeks
dedicated at Olympia as a trophy of the battle
of Plataea was made, Pausanias tells us, by a
sculptor of Aegina named Anaxagoras, as to
whom he remarks that “the name of this
sculptor is omitted by the historians of sculpture.”
This passage proves that Pausanias consulted,
as might have been anticipated, some of
the many ancient works on the history of art,
but what they were he has not told us and
it would be vain to guess. He alludes to
them elsewhere.
.sn The local | guides.
Yet another source which furnished Pausanias
with information, more or less trustworthy, on
matters of history and tradition was the discourse
of the local guides whom he encountered
at many or all of the chief places of interest.
We know from other ancient writers that in
antiquity, as at the present day, towns of any
.bn 132.png
.pn +1
note were infested by persons of this class who
lay in wait for and pounced on the stranger as
their natural prey, wrangled over his body, and
having secured their victim led him about from
place to place, pointing out the chief sights
to him and pouring into his ear a stream of
anecdotes and explanations, indifferent to his
anguish and deaf to his entreaties to stop, until
having exhausted their learning and his patience
they pocketed their fee and took their leave.
An educated traveller could often have dispensed
with their explanations, but if he were good-natured
he would sometimes let them run on,
while he listened with seeming deference to the
rigmarole by which the poor men earned their
daily bread. A question interposed in the torrent
of their glib discourse was too apt to bring
them to a dead stand. Outside the beaten
round of their narrow circle they were helpless.
That Pausanias should have fallen into their
clutches was inevitable. He seems to have
submitted to his fate with a good grace, was
led about by them to see the usual sights,
heard the usual stories, argued with them about
some, and posed them with questions which
they could not answer about others. Often
no doubt their services were useful and the
information they gave both true and interesting.
Among the many traditions which Pausanias
has embodied in his work there may be not a
.bn 133.png
.pn +1
few which he picked up from the guides. We
may conjecture, too, that the measurements of
buildings and images which he occasionally
records were, at least in some cases, derived by
him from the same source.
So much for the sources of historical and
traditionary lore on which Pausanias drew.
That he always used them correctly cannot
be maintained. We can show that he sometimes
mistook the purport of inscriptions and
blundered as to historical events and personages,
but these mistakes are not more numerous
than can be reasonably allowed for in a work
embracing so great and multifarious a collection
of facts.
.sn Did| Pausanias| describe| Greece| from books | or from| personal| observation?
Coming now to the descriptive or topographical
part, which forms the staple of
Pausanias’s work, we have to ask, Whence did
he derive his knowledge of the places and
and monuments he describes? from observation?
or from books? or from both? To these
questions Pausanias himself gives no full and
direct answer. He neither professes to have
seen everything that he describes nor does
he acknowledge to have borrowed any of his
descriptions from previous writers, whom he
barely alludes to and never mentions by name.
On the other hand he sometimes affirms in the
most unambiguous language that he saw the
things which he describes, and as there is no
.bn 134.png
.pn +1
He affirms | that he saw | many | things | which he | describes.
reason to doubt his word we may accept these
affirmations unconditionally, and believe that
he describes some things at least as an eye-witness.
But such assertions of personal knowledge
are only incidental, and the total number
of them is exceedingly small in comparison
with the number of places and things which he
describes without saying whether he saw them
or not. Thus in regard to the vast majority of
Pausanias’s descriptions we have still to ask,
Are they based on personal observation or
taken from books? In endeavouring to answer
this question we must first of all bear in mind
that if Pausanias saw all that he professes to
have seen it is inevitable that he should have
seen a great deal more. For example, he
could not have seen, as he professes to have
done, certain statues on the Acropolis of Athens
without also seeing the Parthenon, the Erechtheum,
and the Propylaea, which he does not
expressly say that he saw. He could not have
seen, as he says he did, the statue of Anaximenes
and the Sicyonian treasury at Olympia
without also seeing the temples of Zeus and
Hera and a multitude of buildings and statues
besides. In short, in all the places which he
appears on his own showing to have visited, we
may and must assume that he saw much more
than he claims in so many words to have seen.
Further, since he was not transported from one
.bn 135.png
.pn +1
place to another by magic, he must have
travelled over the roads which joined the
various places that he visited. Thus by plotting
out on the map the places which he saw
and joining them by the routes he describes,
we can form some general notion of the extent
of Pausanias’s travels in Greece. Yet the
notion thus formed must necessarily be very
rough and imperfect. For, in the first place,
we cannot always be sure of the route which
he took from one town or village to another.
Thus, for example, he describes two roads from
Argos over Mount Artemisius to Mantinea;
but there is nothing to show which he took or
even that he took either. He may, like most
travellers, have reached Mantinea from Argos
by neither of the direct passes over the
mountains, but by the circuitous route that
goes by Lerna and Tegea. In the second
place, it would be very rash to assume that he
visited only those places where he is proved by
some incidental assertion of personal knowledge
to have been. Possibly or rather probably he
visited many more. If he did not think it
worth while to assure us that he saw the
Parthenon and the Erechtheum at Athens, and
the temples of Zeus and Hera at Olympia,
he need not have thought it worth while to
depose to having seen every insignificant shrine
and image that he describes in the petty towns
.bn 136.png
.pn +1
and obscure villages through which he passed.
Thus the indications which he has given us are
far too meagre to permit us to make out his
itinerary in Greece with any approach to
certainty.
.sn Descriptions| which| he may| have taken| from| books.
But if we cannot be sure that many of his
descriptions are based on personal knowledge,
have we any grounds for supposing that they
are borrowed, without acknowledgment, from
books? Such a supposition would be, on the
face of it, neither unreasonable nor improbable.
In the historical parts of his work Pausanias
must have used many books which he does not
mention, and he may have done the same thing
in the topographical or descriptive parts. The
grounds on which it could be proved or made
probable that he borrowed his descriptions from
books are various. The most obvious and
certain would be the existence in an older
writer of a description agreeing in form as well
as in substance so closely with a description in
Pausanias that no alternative would be left us
but to suppose, either that Pausanias copied
from this older writer, or that both of them
copied from some common original. Or again
it might be that the descriptions of Pausanias
contained information which he could hardly
have ascertained for himself, or mistakes into
which he could scarcely have fallen if he had
seen the things for himself. In regard to the
.bn 137.png
.pn +1
first of these grounds it may be said at once
that in the extant literature of antiquity, so far
as the present writer is aware, there is no
description of any place or monument agreeing
in form and substance so closely with a description
in Pausanias as to make it probable
that he copied it. The slight and superficial
resemblances which have been traced between
passages of Strabo and passages of Pausanias
are no more than such as may easily or necessarily
arise when two writers are describing
independently the same places.
.sn Measurements| of| monuments| and of| distances.
When we ask whether the descriptions of
Pausanias contain matter which he could not
easily have ascertained for himself, we are
reminded first of his measurements of temples
and images, and second of his estimates of
the exact distances in furlongs between one
place and another. The measurements of
temples and images were probably derived either
from the local guides or from books. Some of
them he may perhaps have taken for himself;
but that he should, for example, have measured
for himself the height of the temple of Zeus at
Olympia is highly improbable. The distances
by land, estimated in furlongs, may have been
drawn by Pausanias from Roman milestones or
from books or from a map like the Tabula
Peutingeriana. Distances by sea he can hardly
have measured for himself; if he did not borrow
.bn 138.png
.pn +1
them from a book or a map, he may have had
them from the sailors with whom he voyaged.
In all these cases it is possible, perhaps probable,
that Pausanias drew his information from
literary sources; but what particular books or
maps he used, if he used any, we do not know,
and it would be vain to guess.
.sn Description| of the| coast of| Hermionis.
When we next enquire whether the descriptions
of Pausanias contain errors into
which he could scarcely have fallen if he had
seen the places and things which he describes,
a student of Pausanias is at once reminded of
the author’s description of the coast of Hermionis,
which it is difficult or impossible to
reconcile with the actual features of the coast.
That the description contains grave errors is
almost certain. How these errors are to be
explained is much more doubtful. It is easy
to suggest, as has been done, that Pausanias
did not himself sail along the coast, but
borrowed his description from one of those
Periploi or Coasting Voyages, which enumerated
the places on a coast in topographical order
and recorded the distances between them. Yet
this supposition by itself would hardly explain
the confusion into which Pausanias has fallen.
Specimens of these Coasting Voyages have come
down to us, and they are so exceedingly clear,
concise, and business-like, that it is difficult to
understand how any one who simply set himself
.bn 139.png
.pn +1
to copy from them could have blundered so
egregiously as Pausanias appears to have done.
More plausible is the suggestion that, while
Pausanias was obliged by the plan of his
itinerary to describe the coast in one direction,
the Coasting Voyage which lay before him
described it in the reverse direction, and that
in his effort to throw the information supplied
by the Voyage into the form that suited his
itinerary Pausanias made the jumble which has
caused his critics so much trouble. This may
be the true explanation. It would have the
further advantage of helping us to understand
how Pausanias obtained his knowledge of the
exact distances between places on various parts
of the coasts of Greece, notably on the coast of
Achaia and on the wild inhospitable coast of
Laconia. The Coasting Voyage which he used
may, like the extant Coasting Voyage of Scylax,
have comprised a description of the whole
coast of Greece, and from it Pausanias may
have borrowed his estimates of distances and
perhaps other features of his description as
well. This is Mr. Heberdey’s theory, and it is
a perfectly tenable one, though in the absence
of direct evidence it must remain only a more
or less probable hypothesis. Yet when we
remember that Pausanias’s topographical indications
are nowhere more full and exact than
in Arcadia, where by the nature of the case
.bn 140.png
.pn +1
he cannot have used a Coasting Voyage, the
hypothesis that he used one in other parts of
his work seems superfluous, if not improbable.
It is quite possible that he described the coast
of Hermionis from notes he had made for
himself in sailing along it, and that either he
failed at the time to take in the natural
features correctly or that afterwards in redacting
his notes at home he misunderstood what
he had written on the spot. Perhaps I may be
allowed to say that having repeatedly sailed
along the coast in question I can testify from
personal experience how difficult it is to
identify by sight the places from a ship, so
bewildering is the moving panorama of capes,
islands, bays, and mountains. It would be no
great wonder if Pausanias’s head swam a little
in this geographical maze.
.sn Roads from| Lepreus.
Another passage where error and confusion
of some sort seem to have crept in is the
mention of the three roads that led from
Lepreus to Samicum, Olympia, and Elis.
Here, again, Pausanias may have used and
misunderstood some literary source, or he may
have blundered on the spot, or his notes may
have been lost, or his memory may have played
him false. Any of these explanations is
possible. To attempt to decide between them
in the absence of any positive evidence would
be fruitless.
.bn 141.png
.pn +1
.sn The Enneacrunus | episode.
More famous than either of these difficulties
is one which occurs in Pausanias’s account of
Athens. Here in the middle of describing the
market-place, which lay to the north-west of
the Acropolis, he suddenly without a word of
warning transports the reader to the Enneacrunus
fountain, which lay in the bed of
the Ilissus, not far from the Olympieum, at
the opposite extremity of the city; then,
having despatched the fountain and some
buildings in its neighbourhood, he whirls the
reader back to the market-place, and proceeds
with his description of it as if nothing had
happened. Of the many attempts to clear up
this mystery, as by supposing either a dislocation
of the text or a confusion in the author’s
notes or the existence of another fountain near
the market-place which may have been shown
to him as the Enneacrunus, none is free from
serious difficulties. That he fell into error
through copying blindly and unintelligently
from a book is possible but very improbable.
As it is practically certain that he visited
Athens and saw both the market-place and the
Olympieum, the chances that he should not
have seen the Enneacrunus and should therefore
have been driven to borrow his description of it
from a book are so small that they may be
neglected.
.sn Law-courts | at Athens | and altars | at Olympia.
Other passages which Pausanias may perhaps
.bn 142.png
.pn +1
have taken either wholly or in part from
books are his account of the Athenian law-courts
and his list of the altars at Olympia.
Neither of these passages, it is true, is demonstrably
infected by error or confusion, though
there is some ground for suspecting the existence
of confusion in the enumeration of the
altars. But in both of them the author departs
from the topographical order of description,
which is so characteristic of his method, and
arranges the monuments together simply on
the ground of their belonging to the same
class. These departures from his usual principle
of order suggest that in both cases
Pausanias may have borrowed from written
documents in which the monuments were
grouped together according to kind rather
than in topographical order. Another set of
monuments which Pausanias links together
by a chain other than the topographical are
the buildings erected by Hadrian in Athens.
It is possible that he may have taken his list
of them from the inscription in the Athenian
Pantheon which recorded them all.
These are perhaps the most notable passages
in Pausanias, which might be thought to bear
traces of having been derived either wholly or
in part from written documents rather than
from personal observation. In none of them
are the indications so clear as to amount to a
.bn 143.png
.pn +1
proof of borrowing. At most they raise a
probability of it, nothing more.
.sn Predecessors |of | Pausanias.
It would be neither surprising nor unnatural
if in writing his Description of Greece Pausanias
not only consulted, as we know he did, but
borrowed from the works of previous writers
on the same subject. Any one who undertakes
to write a guide-book to a country may
legitimately borrow from his predecessors, provided
he has taken the trouble to ascertain
for himself that their descriptions are still
applicable to the country at the time he is
writing. Pausanias in his character of the
Camden of ancient Greece had many predecessors
whose writings he may and indeed
ought to have consulted. But of their works
only the titles and a few fragments have come
down to us, and these contain nothing to show
that Pausanias copied or had even read them.
The most considerable of the fragments—those
which pass under the name of Dicaearchus the
Messenian—have been already examined, and
we have seen how different in scope and style
was the work to which they belonged from
that which Pausanias has left us. No one
would dream of maintaining that Pausanias
copied his description of Greece from the
pseudo-Dicaearchus. The most famous of the
antiquaries who preceded Pausanias seem to
have been Diodorus, Polemo, and Heliodorus,
.bn 144.png
.pn +1
all of whom earned by their writings the title
of The Periegete or Cicerone. Diodorus. Of these the
earliest was Diodorus, who is not to be confounded
with the Sicilian historian of that
name. He published works on the tombs and
townships of Attica, of which a few fragments
survive. Heliodorus. They seem to have been composed
before 308 B.C. Heliodorus lived in the reign
of Ptolemy Epiphanes and wrote a work on
the Acropolis of Athens in no less than fifteen
books, of which only a few brief fragments
have come down to us. There is some reason
to think that Pausanias cannot have consulted
it. Polemo. Polemo of Ilium flourished in the first part
of the second century B.C., and was the author
of many special treatises on the monuments of
Greece. Amongst them were works on the
Acropolis of Athens, on the eponymous heroes
of the Attic townships and tribes, on the Sacred
Way, on the Painted Colonnade at Sicyon, on
the votive offerings at Lacedaemon, on the
founding of the cities of Phocis, on the treasuries
at Delphi, and many more. More than a
hundred extracts from or references to his
works have come down to us; and if we may
judge from them, from the number and variety
of the treatises he published, and from the
praise of Plutarch we shall be inclined to
pronounce Polemo the most learned of all
Greek antiquaries. His acquaintance both
.bn 145.png
.pn +1
with the monuments and with the literature
seems to have been extensive and profound.
The attention which he bestowed on inscriptions
earned for him the nickname of the ‘monument-tapper.’
His works were certainly extant later
than the time of Pausanias, since they are
freely quoted by Athenaeus. It would, therefore,
be strange if Pausanias did not study
them, dealing as many of them did with the
same subjects on which he touched in his
Description of Greece. Yet the existing fragments
of Polemo hardly justify us in supposing
that Pausanias was acquainted with the writings
of his learned predecessor. Certainly they lend
no countenance to the view that he borrowed
descriptions of places and monuments from
them. This will appear from an examination
of those fragments of Polemo which deal with
subjects falling within the scope of Pausanias’s
work. We shall look, first, at the things
mentioned by both writers, and, second, at
the things mentioned by Polemo alone. The
fragments are numbered as in the editions of
L. Preller and Ch. Müller, to which the reader
is referred for the Greek text.
First, then, let us take the things mentioned
by both Polemo and Pausanias.
.sn Polemo| and| Pausanias| compared.
Fragment ii. In his description of the
Acropolis at Athens, Polemo mentioned a
sculptor Lycius, son of Myron. So does
.bn 146.png
.pn +1
Pausanias in his description of the Acropolis.
Fragment iii. In his description of the
Acropolis, Polemo mentioned a decree forbidding
women of loose character to take the
names of any of the great quadriennial festivals.
Pausanias mentions no such decree, but among
the paintings which he describes in the Propylaea
is one of Alcibiades “containing emblems of
the victory won by his team at Nemea.” Now
we know from other writers that in this picture
Alcibiades was portrayed reclining in the lap
of Nemea. The model who sat for the personification
of Nemea was probably a woman
of the sort who were forbidden by the decree
to take the name of a quadriennial festival,
and the sight of the picture may have led
Polemo to mention the decree. If this was so—and
the reasoning though a little circuitous
is plausible—it becomes probable that Polemo
saw and described the picture of Alcibiades
to which Pausanias refers. The probability is
strengthened, almost to the point of certainty,
by our knowledge that Polemo did describe
the paintings in the Propylaea, though no
details of his description have survived.
Fragment iv. In his description of the
Acropolis, Polemo mentioned that Thucydides
was buried at the Melitian gate. So does
Pausanias in his description of the Acropolis.
.bn 147.png
.pn +1
Fragment vi. In his description of the
pictures in the Propylaea, which probably
formed part of his treatise in four books on the
Acropolis, Polemo mentioned three Athenian festivals
at which torch-races were held, namely the
Panathenian festival, the festival of Hephaestus,
and the festival of Prometheus. Pausanias in
his description of the Academy mentions that
torch-races were run from an altar of Prometheus
in the Academy to the city.
Fragment x. Polemo told the story of the
capture of Aphidna in Attica by the Dioscuri,
and mentioned that in the affair Castor was
wounded by king Aphidnus in the right thigh.
Pausanias repeatedly refers to the capture of
Aphidna by the Dioscuri, but he expresses a
belief that the place was taken without fighting,
and he gives reasons for thinking so.
Fragment xi. In one of his works which
is cited as The Greek History Polemo mentioned
that Poseidon contended with Hera for the
possession of Argos and was worsted, and
that the two deities did not exhibit tokens in
support of their claims as they did at Athens.
Pausanias in his description of Argolis twice
mentions the defeat of Poseidon in his dispute
with Hera for the possession of the land, but
he says nothing about the absence of tokens.
Fragment xii. According to Polemo, the
Argives related how the first corn sown in
.bn 148.png
.pn +1
Argolis had been fetched by Argus from
Libya. According to Pausanias, they asserted
that they had received the first corn from
Demeter.
Fragment xviii. In his work on the votive
offerings at Lacedaemon, Polemo mentioned
“a chapel of Cottina, close to Colone, where is
the sanctuary of Dionysus, a splendid edifice
known to many in the city.” Pausanias in
his description of Sparta mentions “the place
named Colona, and a temple of Dionysus
Colonatas.”
Fragment xxii. Polemo mentioned at
Olympia the old temple of Hera, the temple of
the Metapontines, and the temple of the Byzantines.
Pausanias describes all three buildings,
but he designates the two latter correctly as
treasuries, not temples.
Fragment xxiii. Polemo related that for a
time a race had been run at Olympia between
carts drawn by mules, but that after thirteen
victories had been won the race was abolished
in Ol. 84. He further said that the name for
a mule-cart (apene) was a Tegean word. Pausanias
mentions that the race between mule-carts
at Olympia was instituted in Ol. 70 and
abolished in Ol. 84. He says nothing about
the name for a mule-cart being Tegean.
Fragment xxiv. Polemo said that Athena
was wounded by Ornytus. Pausanias says that
.bn 149.png
.pn +1
she was wounded by Teuthis, but that some
people called her assailant Ornytus.
Fragment xxvii. In his work on the
treasuries at Delphi, Polemo mentioned the
Sicyonian treasury. So does Pausanias in his
description of Delphi.
Fragment xxix. Polemo told how the
Delphians honoured the wolf because a wolf
had discovered a sacred jewel of gold that had
been stolen from Delphi and buried on Mount
Parnassus. Pausanias says that the Delphians
dedicated a bronze figure of a wolf in the
sanctuary of Apollo, because a man who had
stolen some sacred treasures and hidden them
in the forest on Parnassus was killed by a wolf,
which then went daily to the city and howled,
till people followed it and so found the stolen
treasure.
Fragment xxxii. Polemo told how Palamedes
invented dice to amuse the Greek army
before Troy when they were distressed by
famine. Pausanias says simply that dice were
an invention of Palamedes.
Fragment xli. Polemo said that at Athens
there were three images of the Furies, two made
by Scopas out of the stone called luchneus (probably
Parian marble), and the middle one made
by Calamis. Pausanias notices the images of
the Furies without mentioning their number,
their material, or the artists who made them.
.bn 150.png
.pn +1
Fragment xlii. In speaking of wineless
libations Polemo remarked on the scrupulousness
of the Athenians in matters of ritual.
Pausanias observes, in different connexions,
that the Athenians were more pious and
more zealous in religious matters than other
people.
Fragment xliv. Polemo said that Lais was
born at Hyccara in Sicily and was murdered in
Thessaly, whither she had gone for love of a
Thessalian named Pausanias; and he described
her grave beside the Peneus with the epitaph and
the urn on the tombstone. Pausanias says that
Lais was a native of Hycara (sic) in Sicily and
that her grave was at Corinth, where it was surmounted
by the figure of a lion holding a ram in
its paws. He adds that in Thessaly, whither she
had gone for the love of a certain Hippostratus,
there was another tomb which claimed to be hers.
Fragment xlviii. Polemo said that copies
of the laws of Solon were kept in the Prytaneum
engraved on square wooden tablets which revolved
on pivots in such a way that when the
tablets were turned at an angle they seemed to
be triangular. Pausanias says briefly that the
laws of Solon were inscribed in the Prytaneum.
Fragment lv. Polemo said that wrestling
was invented by Phorbas. Pausanias says that
it was invented by Theseus.
Fragment lxxviii. Polemo mentioned the
.bn 151.png
.pn +1
sanctuary of Hercules at Cynosarges. So does
Pausanias.
Fragment lxxxiii. Polemo described two
pools in Sicily, beside which the Sicilians took
their most solemn oaths, perjury being followed
by death. Pausanias describes how people
threw offerings into the craters of Etna and
watched whether the offerings sank or were
ejected by the volcanic fires. Some modern
writers have supposed that Pausanias meant to
describe the place and the oath described by
Polemo, but that he mistook the water for fire
and the offering for an oath. The supposition
is very unlikely.
Fragment lxxxvi. Polemo mentioned the
Tiasa, a river near Sparta. So does Pausanias.
.sn No evidence| that| Pausanias| copied| Polemo.
These are, I believe, all the existing fragments
of Polemo in which he mentions the
same things as Pausanias. Not one of them
supports the theory that Pausanias copied from
Polemo. In some of them the writer mentions
the same places, buildings, and works of art
that are mentioned by Pausanias. But this
was almost inevitable. When two men describe
the same places correctly they can hardly help
mentioning some of the same things. In no
case does the coincidence go beyond a bare
mention. Again, Polemo sometimes referred
to the same myth or legend as Pausanias; but
this is no proof that Pausanias copied from
.bn 152.png
.pn +1
Polemo. A multitude of myths and legends
were the commonplaces of every educated
Greek, whether he had read Polemo or not.
The passage of Polemo as to the race between
mule-carts at Olympia agrees in substance, not
in language, with the corresponding passage of
Pausanias. Both writers, it may be assumed,
derived their information from the best source,
the Olympic register, which, as we have seen,
was published and accessible to all. The
Delphian story of the wolf that disclosed the
stolen treasure may have been narrated by both
writers in the same way, though from the
abridged form in which Polemo’s version is
reported by Aelian we cannot be sure of this.
No doubt the story was told in much the same
way by the Delphian guides to all visitors, who
may have been surprised to find a statue of
a wolf dedicated to Apollo, the old mythical
relationship of the god with wolves having long
fallen into the background. Again, Polemo,
like Pausanias, remarked on the scrupulous
piety of the Athenians. So, too, for that
matter did St. Paul, but nobody suspects him
of having borrowed the remark from Polemo.
The mention of the sculptor Lycius, of the
grave of Thucydides, and of the torch-race by
the two writers proves nothing as to the dependence
of the one on the other. Some of the
fragments of Polemo show that he described in
.bn 153.png
.pn +1
minute detail things which Pausanias has merely
mentioned. Finally, in a number of the fragments
Polemo makes statements which are
explicitly or implicitly contradicted by Pausanias.
This proves that if Pausanias was
acquainted with the works of Polemo, he at
least exercised complete freedom of judgment
in accepting or rejecting the opinions of his
predecessor. Another proof of his independence
is furnished by his speaking of the treasuries
at Olympia as treasuries, whereas Polemo
had designated the same buildings less correctly
as temples.
.sn Things| mentioned| by Polemo| but not by| Pausanias.
Second, let us take the things mentioned by
Polemo, but not by Pausanias. They include
at Munychia the worship of the hero Acratopotes;
at Athens a picture of the marriage of
Pirithous, an inscription relating to the sacrifices
offered to Hercules at Cynosarges, and cups
dedicated by a certain Neoptolemus, apparently
on the Acropolis; in Attica a township called
Crius; at Sicyon the Painted Colonnade (to
which Polemo seems to have devoted a special
treatise), pictures by the painters Aristides,
Pausanias, and Nicophanes, a portrait of the
tyrant Aristratus partly painted by Apelles,
and an obscene worship of Dionysus; at Phlius
a colonnade called the Colonnade of the Polemarch
and containing a painting or paintings
by Sillax of Rhegium; at Argos a sanctuary
.bn 154.png
.pn +1
of Libyan Demeter; at Sparta a chapel and
bronze statue of Cottina, a bronze ox dedicated
by her, a sanctuary of Corythallian Artemis, a
festival called kopis (described by Polemo in
detail), and the worship of two heroes Matton
and Ceraon; at Olympia a hundred and thirty-two
silver cups, two silver wine-jugs, one silver
sacrificial vessel, and three gilt cups, all preserved
in the treasury of the Metapontines, a
cedar-wood figure of a Triton holding a silver
cup, a silver siren, three silver cups of various
shapes, a golden wine-jug, and two drinking-horns,
all preserved in the treasury of the
Byzantines, thirty-three silver cups of various
shapes, a silver pot, a golden sacrificial vessel,
and a golden bowl, all preserved in the temple
of Hera, and a statue of a Lacedaemonian
named Leon who won a victory in the chariot-race;
at Elis the worship of Gourmand Apollo;
at Scolus in Boeotia the worship of Big-loaf
Demeter; at Thebes a temple of Aphrodite
Lamia, a statue of the bard Cleon (about which
Polemo told an anecdote), and games held in
honour of Hercules; and finally at Delphi a
golden book of the poetess Aristomache in the
Sicyonian treasury, a treasury of the Spinatians
containing two marble statues of boys, a sanctuary
of Demeter Hermuchus, and a curious
custom of offering to Latona at the festival of the
Theoxenia the largest leek that was to be found.
.bn 155.png
.pn +1
All these are mentioned by Polemo as things
existing or customs practised within that portion
of Greece which Pausanias has described.
When we remember that the mention of them
occurs in a few brief fragments, which are all
that remain to us of the voluminous works of
Polemo, we can imagine what a multitude of
things must have been described by Polemo,
which are passed over in total silence by
Pausanias.
.sn Result of| comparison| between| Polemo and| Pausanias.
To sum up the result of this comparison of
Polemo with Pausanias, we find that both
writers mention some of the same things and
record some of the same traditions, but that
this agreement never amounts to a verbal coincidence;
that Polemo mentions many things
which are not noticed by Pausanias; and that
Pausanias repeatedly adopts views which differ
from or contradict views expressed by Polemo.
Thus there is nothing in the remains of Polemo
to show that Pausanias, treading as he so often
did in Polemo’s footsteps, copied the works
of his predecessor; on the contrary, the very
frequent omission by Pausanias of things mentioned
by Polemo, and the not infrequent
adoption by him of opinions which contradict
those of Polemo, go to prove either that he was
unacquainted with Polemo’s writings, or that he
deliberately disregarded and tacitly controverted
them.
.bn 156.png
.pn +1
.sn Theory | that | Pausanias | copied | from\
| Polemo | or from | writers of | Polemo’s | date.
Yet in recent years it has been maintained
that Pausanias slavishly copied from Polemo
the best part of his descriptions of Athens,
Olympia, and Delphi, and a good deal besides,
and that he described these places substantially
not as they were in his own age but as they
had been in the time of Polemo, about three
hundred years before; for it is a part of the
same theory that Pausanias had travelled and
seen very little in Greece, had compiled the bulk
of his book from the works of earlier writers,
and had added only a few hasty jottings of his
own to give the book a modern air.
As to the proposition that Pausanias borrowed
largely from Polemo it is not needful to
say any more. We have seen that it has no
foundation in the existing remains of Polemo.
Whether it would be established or refuted by
the lost works of Polemo we cannot say. It
will be time to consider the question when these
lost works are found, if that should ever be.
.sn Theory that| Pausanias| did not| describe| Greece as| it was in| his own| time.
On the other hand, the proposition that
Pausanias described Greece not as it was in
his own time, but as it had been in an earlier
age, while it is of wider scope than the former
is also more susceptible of verification. It
could be established very simply by proving
that he spoke of things as existing which from
other sources are known to have ceased to
exist before his time. It could not, of course,
.bn 157.png
.pn +1
be established merely by showing that he
mentions little or nothing of later date than
say the age of Polemo, about 170 B.C., unless
it could be further shown that the things he
mentions had ceased to exist between that age
and his own. For obviously all the things he
notices might have existed in 170 B.C. and
still be in existence when he wrote, and in
describing them he would be as truly describing
the Greece of his own time as a writer of
the present day who, professing to record the
most notable things in Athens at the end of
the nineteenth century A.D., should choose to
mention no building or statue later than the
time of Pausanias, or even of Polemo himself.
Thus all the attempts that have been made
to invalidate the testimony of Pausanias as to
the state of Greece in the second century A.D.
by demonstrating merely that the things he describes
were in existence in the second century
B.C. must be dismissed as irrelevant. Even
if the premises be admitted, the conclusion
which it is sought to establish would not follow
from them. It remains, therefore, to examine
the evidence which has been thought to prove
that some of the things mentioned by Pausanias
as existing had ceased to exist before his time.
If this were indeed proved, then the proposition
that he did not describe Greece as it was in
his own time would be proved also, and we
.bn 158.png
.pn +1
should be sure that his descriptions were
borrowed either wholly or in part from earlier
writers, even if we could not hazard any guess
as to who these writers were.
.sn His description| of| Piraeus.
In the first place, then, it has been maintained
that the description which Pausanias
gives of the state of Piraeus did not apply to
his own time. His account of the ship-sheds,
the two market-places, the sanctuaries, the
images, and so on, implies, it is said, that the
port was in a fairly thriving state when he
wrote about the middle of the second century
A.D., and this cannot have been the case since
Piraeus was burnt by Sulla in 86 B.C., and still
lay in a forlorn condition when Strabo wrote
in the age of Augustus. This remarkable
criticism entirely overlooks the fact that between
the destruction of Piraeus by Sulla and
the time of Pausanias more than two hundred
years had elapsed, during the greater part of
which Greece had enjoyed profound peace
and had been treated with special favour and
indulgence by the Roman emperors. Is it
beyond the bounds of possibility that during
these two centuries the blackened ruins should
have been cleared away? that new buildings
should have sprung up, and population should
have gathered once more around the harbour?
Does the Palatinate, we may ask by analogy,
remain to this day the wilderness to which it
.bn 159.png
.pn +1
was reduced by the armies of Louis XIV. two
centuries ago? But such questions need no
answer. In the case of Piraeus, fortunately,
we are not left merely to balance probabilities
or improbabilities against each other. We
have positive evidence of a great revival of
the port after its destruction by Sulla. A
single inscription of the first century B.C. or
the second century A.D. testifies to the existence
of the dockyards, the colonnades, the
Exchange, the government buildings, the sanctuaries.
Another, contemporary with Pausanias,
proves that Roman merchants were then settled
in the port. A third deals with the regulation
of traffic in the market. Portraits of Roman
emperors found on the spot speak of gratitude
for imperial favour, and remains of Roman
villas and Roman baths bear witness to the
return not merely of prosperity but of wealth
and luxury. In short, if Pausanias had described
Piraeus as lying in ruins, as his critic
thinks he should have done, he might have
described it as it was in the early part of the
first century B.C., but he certainly would not
have described it as it was in his own time two
hundred years later.
.sn His description| of| Arcadia.
Again, it has been argued that Pausanias
copied his description of Arcadia from much
older writers because, it is said, he pictures
the country as in a flourishing state, whereas
.bn 160.png
.pn +1
Strabo says that most of the famous cities of
Arcadia had either ceased to exist or had left
hardly a trace of themselves behind. How
little the testimony of Strabo is worth when he
speaks of the interior of Greece is shown by
his famous statement that not a vestige of
Mycenae remained. Contrast this statement
with the brief but accurate description which
Pausanias gives of the walls and the lion-gate
of Mycenae as they were in his day and as
they remain down to this; then say whether
the testimony of Strabo is to outweigh that
of Pausanias on questions of Greek topography.
In fact it is generally recognised that Strabo
had visited very few parts of Greece, perhaps
none but Corinth. We may therefore well
hesitate to confide in his vague sweeping
assertion as to the desolation of Arcadia. A
simple fact suffices to upset it. Coins of the
Roman period prove that seven out of the
eleven cities, which he says had ceased to exist
or had left hardly a trace behind, were still
inhabited and doing business long after the
agreeable, but not too scrupulously accurate,
geographer had been gathered to his fathers.
Nor, again, is it true to say that Pausanias
describes Arcadia as if it were in a prosperous
state. On the contrary, the long array of
ruined or shrunken cities, deserted villages,
and roofless shrines, which he has not failed
.bn 161.png
.pn +1
to chronicle, leave on the reader, as they left
on the writer himself, a melancholy impression
of desolation and decay. The only two cities
which from his description we should gather
to have been in a tolerably thriving condition
are Tegea and Mantinea. As to the former
we have the precious testimony of Strabo himself
that “it kept pretty well together.” As
to Mantinea, if we cannot trust the evidence
of Pausanias, we can surely trust the architectural
and inscriptional evidence which proves
that in the Roman period the theatre was
rebuilt, and that not many years before Pausanias
was born Roman merchants resided in
the city, great reconstructions were carried out
in the market-place, a marble colonnade added
to it, banqueting-halls and treasuries built, a
bazaar surrounded with workshops erected, and
a semicircular hall reared which, in the words
of an inscription referring to it, “would by
itself be an ornament of the city.” The
remains of these buildings, together with the
ancient walls and gates of the city almost in
their entire extent though not to their full
height, were visible down to the year 1890
A.D. at least.[5] All this in a city which, if we
were to believe Strabo, had vanished from the
.bn 162.png
.pn +1
earth before his time leaving little or no traces
of it behind. So much for the comparative
value of the testimony of Strabo and Pausanias
with regard to Arcadia.
.fm rend=th
.fn 5
When I last visited Mantinea, in October 1895, most of the
ruins about the market-place, which were excavated by the French
some ten years ago, had again disappeared beneath the soil.
.fn-
.fm rend=th
.sn Grove of | Poseidon at | Onchestus.
Again, in Boeotia our author is accused of
describing things that were not as if they were,
and the witness for the prosecution is again
Strabo. Pausanias says that the grove of
Poseidon at Onchestus existed in his time.
Strabo says that there were no trees in it.
Where is the inconsistency between these
statements? Strabo wrote in the reign of
Augustus; Pausanias wrote in the reign of
Marcus Aurelius. Did trees cease to grow
after the time of Strabo?
.sn Limnae| and| Thuria in| Messenia.
Further, Pausanias has been reproached with
not knowing that Limnae in Messenia belonged
to the Messenians in his time. This is a strange
reproach. He treats of Limnae under Messenia,
and does not say that it belonged to anybody
but the Messenians. What more could he do?
Was it needful for him to say of every place in
Messenia that it belonged to the Messenians?
of every town in Arcadia that it belonged to
the Arcadians? of every temple in Athens that
it belonged to the Athenians? The ground of
the offence is Pausanias’s statement that the
neighbouring town of Thuria in Messenia had
been bestowed by Augustus on the Lacedaemonians.
The truth of this statement is not
.bn 163.png
.pn +1
disputed. It is confirmed by coins which prove
that in the reign of Septimius Severus, long
after the time of Pausanias, Thuria continued
to belong to the Lacedaemonians. But the
critics have assumed quite gratuitously that
along with Thuria the emperor Augustus transferred
Limnae also to the Lacedaemonians, and
that Pausanias believed Limnae to belong to
them still in his time, although we know from
the evidence of Tacitus and of boundary stones
that in his time Limnae belonged to Messenia.
Both these assumptions are baseless. We have
no reason to suppose that Augustus gave Limnae
to the Lacedaemonians, none to suppose that
Pausanias believed it to belong to them. On
the contrary, we have, as I have just pointed
out, the best of grounds for supposing that he
held it to belong to Messenia. The truth is,
the critics have confused two distinct, though
neighbouring districts, and have shifted the
burden of this confusion to the shoulders of the
innocent Pausanias, in whose work not a shadow
of it can be detected.
.sn Temple of| Apollo at| Delphi.
Lastly, it has been assumed that Pausanias’s
account of the temple of Apollo at Delphi is
irreconcileable with the remains of the building
and with inscriptions relating to it which have
recently been discovered by the French at
Delphi. The combined evidence of architecture
and inscriptions proves conclusively that
.bn 164.png
.pn +1
the temple built by the Alcmaeonids in the
sixth century B.C. was afterwards destroyed,
probably by an earthquake, and that it was
rebuilt in the fourth century B.C. Yet Pausanias,
it is said, describes the temple of the sixth
century B.C. as if it still existed in his time.
Let us look at the facts in the light of the
French discoveries. Observe, then, that Pausanias
mentions the Gallic shields hanging on
the architrave of the temple. These shields
were captured in 279 B.C. Hence the temple
which he describes cannot have been the old
one built in the sixth century B.C., since that
temple, as we now know, was afterwards destroyed
and rebuilt in the fourth century B.C.
But did Pausanias believe it to be the old one?
There is nothing to show that he did, but on
the contrary there is a good deal to show that
he did not. In the first place, he does not say
that the temple was built by the Alcmaeonids.
He says it was built for the Amphictyons by
the architect Spintharus. The date of Spintharus
is otherwise unknown, but we have no
reason to suppose that he lived in the sixth
rather than in the fourth century B.C. In the
second place, Pausanias tells us that the first
sculptures for the gables of the temple were
executed by Praxias, a pupil of Calamis, but
that as the building lasted some time, Praxias
died before it was finished, and the rest of the
.bn 165.png
.pn +1
sculptures were executed by another artist.
Now we have the evidence of Pausanias himself
that the sculptor Calamis was at work as late
as 427 B.C. His pupil Praxias may therefore
easily, at least in the opinion of Pausanias, have
been at work at the end of the fifth century
B.C. or in the early part of the fourth century
B.C., and this is precisely the time when, if we
may judge from the historical and inscriptional
evidence, the old temple was destroyed and preparations
at least for rebuilding it were being
made. At all events, Pausanias cannot possibly
have supposed that the pupil of a man
who was at work in 427 B.C. can have executed
sculptures for a temple that was built in the
sixth century B.C. In short, neither was the
temple which Pausanias describes the temple of
the sixth century B.C. nor can he possibly have
supposed it to be so. The temple he describes
was in all probability the temple of the fourth
century B.C. His statement that the temple
was long in building is amply confirmed by the
inscriptions, which prove that the process of
reconstruction dragged on over a period of
many years.
Thus in every case an analysis of the
evidence adduced to prove that Pausanias described
a state of things which had passed away
before his time, reveals only some oversight or
misapprehension on the part of his critics. We
.bn 166.png
.pn +1
might take it, therefore, without further discussion
that he described Greece as it was in his
own age. But if any reader is still sceptical,
still blinded by the phantom Polemo, let him
turn to Pausanias’s description of new Corinth
New | Corinth. and read it with attention. Here was a city
built in 44 B.C., more than a century after the
time of Polemo, upon whom Pausanias is supposed
by some to have been slavishly dependent.
Yet he describes the city minutely and in topographical
order, following up each street as it
led out of the market-place. Amongst the
many temples he mentions in it is one of
Octavia and another of Capitolian Jupiter;
among the many waterworks is the aqueduct
by which Hadrian, the author’s contemporary,
brought the water of the Stymphalian Lake to
Corinth. And his description of the city with
its temples, images, fountains, and portals is
amply borne out by coins of the Imperial age.
In the face of this single instance it is impossible
to maintain that Pausanias must needs
have borrowed most of his descriptions from
writers who lived before 170 B.C. If he could
describe Corinth so well without their aid, why
should he not have described Athens, Olympia,
and Delphi for himself? Nor does his power
of description fail him when he comes down to
works which were produced in his own lifetime.
Not to mention his many notices of the works
.bn 167.png
.pn +1
of Hadrian, such as the Olympieum at Athens
with its colossal image of gold and ivory, and
the library with its columns of Phrygian marble,
its gilded roof, its alabaster ornaments, its
statues and paintings, he has given us a minute
account of the images dedicated by his contemporary
Herodes Atticus in the temple of
Poseidon at the Isthmus. Images | dedicated | by Herodes | Atticus | at the | Isthmus. He describes the
images of Amphitrite and Poseidon, made of
gold and ivory, standing erect in a car drawn
by gilt horses with ivory hoofs; the image of
Palaemon, also made of gold and ivory, standing
on a dolphin; the two Tritons beside the
horses, each of them made of gold from the
waist upward and of ivory from the waist downward;
and the reliefs on the pedestal of the
images, comprising a figure of the Sea holding
up the infant Aphrodite, with Nereids and the
Dioscuri on either side. If he could describe in
such detail the work of an obscure contemporary
artist whom he does not condescend to mention,
what reason have we to think that he could not
describe for himself the famous images by the
great hand of Phidias, the image of the Virgin
at Athens and the image of Zeus at Olympia?
In short, if Pausanias copied his descriptions
from a book, it must have been from a book
written in his own lifetime, perhaps by another
man of the same name. The theory of the
copyist Pausanias reduces itself to an absurdity.
.bn 168.png
.pn +1
.sn Pausanias | and the | existing | monuments.
The best proof that Pausanias has pictured
for us Greece as it was in his own day and not
as it had ceased to be long before, is supplied
by the monuments. In all parts of the country
the truthfulness of his descriptions has been
attested by remains of the buildings which he
describes, and wherever these remains are most
numerous, as for example at Olympia, Delphi,
and Lycosura, we have most reason to admire
his minute and painstaking accuracy. That he
was infallible has never been maintained, and if
it had been, the excavations would have refuted
so foolish a contention, for they have enabled
us to detect some errors into which he fell. For
example, he mistook the figure of a girl for that
of a man in the eastern gable of the temple of
Zeus at Olympia; he misinterpreted the attitude
of Hercules and Atlas in one of the
metopes of the same temple; he affirmed that
the colossal images at Lycosura were made of
a single block of marble, whereas we know that
they were made of several blocks fitted together;
and he described the temple of Athena Alea at
Tegea as the largest in Peloponnese, though in
fact it was much smaller than the temple of
Zeus at Olympia. These and similar mistakes,
like the slips he sometimes made in reading
inscriptions, do not lend any colour to an imputation
of bad faith. All they show is that
he shared the common weaknesses of humanity,
.bn 169.png
.pn +1
that his eye sometimes deceived him, that his
attention sometimes flagged, that occasionally
he may have lent too ready an ear to the talk
of the local guides. If these are sins, they
are surely not unpardonable. Those who have
followed in his footsteps in Greece and have
formed from personal experience some idea,
necessarily slight, of the magnitude of the task he
set himself and of the difficulties he had to overcome
in accomplishing it, will probably be the
readiest to make allowance for inevitable imperfections,
will be most grateful to him for what
he has done, and least disposed to censure him
for what he has left undone. Without him the
ruins of Greece would for the most part be a
labyrinth without a clue, a riddle without an
answer. His book furnishes the clue to the
labyrinth, the answer to many riddles. It will
be read and studied so long as ancient Greece
shall continue to engage the attention and
awaken the interest of mankind; and if it is
allowable to forecast the results of research in
the future from those of research in the past we
may venture to predict that, while they will
correct the descriptions of Pausanias on some
minor points, they will confirm them on many
more, and will bring to light nothing to shake
the confidence of reasonable and fair-minded
men in his honour and good faith.
.bn 170.png
.pn +1
.h2 id=ch02 title='II. — Oropus.''
.ti 0
II. Oropus.—The plain of Oropus extends
along the shore for about five miles; inland it
narrows to a point, two or three miles from the
shore, where the Asopus issues from a beautiful
defile. At this inner angle of the plain stand
the modern villages of Oropo and Sykamino on
opposite sides of the river. But the territory of
Oropus included some at least of the low hills
which environ the plain, for the hills of Oropus
were at one time divided between two Attic
tribes. Moreover, the sanctuary of Amphiaraus,
which belonged to Oropus, stands in hilly
ground to the east of the plain. The whole of
this district, lying between the Euripus and the
northern declivities of Mount Parnes, is of great
natural beauty. It is an undulating and richly
wooded country, where the road runs between
soft green hills and knolls, with charming and
varied prospects across the winding waters of
the Euripus to the blue mountains of Euboea,
among which the lofty Delph may be seen
glistering white with snow even in the hot days
of summer. The traveller who comes direct
from the monotonous and sterile plain of Athens
is struck, on emerging from the wooded pass of
Decelea, by the contrast between the scene
which he has left behind and that which is
suddenly unrolled at his feet. In antiquity
this road, which went by Aphidna and could be
traversed on foot in a day, was noted for the
.bn 171.png
.pn +1
number and excellence of its inns, a distinction
which it certainly does not enjoy now.
The country between Oropus and Rhamnus,
through which Pausanias conducts his readers,
is of similar character. Parallel chains of hills
run from Mount Parnes to the high steep coast;
and between them are fruitful valleys watered
by pleasant brooks and embowered in luxuriant
vegetation, with thickets where the song of the
nightingale may be heard.
The site of the city of Oropus is now occupied
by Skala Oropou, that is, ‘the port of
Oropo,’ a small hamlet prettily situated among
gardens, meadows, and springs, on the shore of
a bay which is formed by two low projecting
points a couple of miles asunder. Across the
water the white houses of Eretria are clearly
visible on the shore of Euboea; the mountains
above them, when seen at evening from Oropus,
are of a deep azure blue. In the sea are the
remains of an ancient breakwater extending
parallel to the shore. Among the remains of
antiquity which have been found here is a
beautiful marble relief of the best period of
Greek sculpture, representing Amphiaraus and
his charioteer Baton driving in a car drawn by
four horses; the moment chosen by the sculptor
is that when the earth gaped to receive the
prophet; the horses are starting back in terror at
the sight of the abyss which yawns at their feet.
.bn 172.png
.pn +1
The sanctuary of Amphiaraus, described by
Pausanias, lies in a pleasant little glen, neither
wide nor deep, among low hills partially wooded
with pine. The place, now called Mavrodhilisi,
is distant about four miles south-east of Skala
Oropou; Pausanias has greatly understated the
distance. The path to it first goes through
corn-fields near the sea, then turns inland and
ascends through woods. A brook flows through
the glen and finds its way between banks
fringed by plane-trees and oleanders to the sea,
which is more than a mile off. The clumps of
trees and shrubs which tuft the sides of the
glen and in which the nightingale warbles, the
stretch of green meadow at the bottom, the
stillness and seclusion of the place, and its
sheltered and sunny aspect, all fitted it to be
the resort of invalids, who thronged thither to
consult the healing god. So sheltered indeed
is the spot that even on a May morning the
heat in the airless glen, with the Greek sun
beating down out of a cloudless sky, is apt
to be felt by a northerner as somewhat overpowering.
But to a Greek it was no doubt
agreeable. The oracle, we know, was open
only in summer; and Livy speaks of “the
ancient temple delightfully situated among
springs and brooks”. The ruins of the sanctuary,
excavated some years ago by the Greek
Archaeological Society, lie on the narrow strip
.bn 173.png
.pn +1
of flat ground on the northern or left bank of
the stream.
.h2 id=ch03 title='III. — Rhamnus.'
.ti 0
III. Rhamnus.—Rhamnus is one of the
loneliest and most secluded, but at the same
time most picturesque and verdant spots in all
Attica. It lies on the north-east coast of
Attica, about six and a half miles north of
Kato-Souli, the village which occupies the site
of the ancient Tricorythus. The distance agrees
well with the sixty Greek furlongs (nearly seven
miles) at which Pausanias estimates it. The
road from Kato-Souli first goes north-east
across the northern portion of the Marathonian
plain, which it quits by a pass leading northward
through the hills. The pass soon opens
into an upland valley, three miles long from
south to north by one mile wide, enclosed on
both sides by wild and barren hills. The upper
slopes of these hills are scantily wooded with
firs; their lower slopes are overgrown with
myrtle, lentisk, and many sorts of thorny
shrubs, especially the one called rhamnus, which
gave the district its ancient name. The soil of
the valley is partly under cultivation, but most
of it is covered with dense underwood and oaks
of the valanidia species. On a low flat ridge
which runs across the valley from east to west
there are some ancient ruins, consisting of walls
.bn 174.png
.pn +1
and foundations of houses. There are now
no permanent inhabitations in the whole valley.
A few dirty hamlets, tenanted from time to
time by peasants for the purpose of looking
after their fields, lie at its eastern edge. The
general aspect of the country is lonesome and
desolate.
Towards the northern end of the valley the
ground gradually rises; and where it terminates
the scenery changes. Here, at the northern
extremity of the valley, a narrow woody glen,
about half a mile long, descends rapidly in a
north-easterly direction to the sea-shore. At
the head of the glen, commanding a magnificent
view down its wooded depths and across the
narrow channel of the Euripus to the lofty
mountains of Euboea, rises a stately terrace
supported by exquisitely constructed walls of
white marble, which are embowered in a luxuriant
growth of dark-green shrubbery and fir-trees.
In this superb situation, crowning the
terrace, stand side by side the ruins of two
temples, the famous temple of Nemesis and a
smaller temple, probably of Themis. Below,
where the glen opens on the shore, an isolated
rocky hill juts out into the sea; and on its
sides, half buried in thickly clustering masses
of evergreens, are the white marble walls and
towers of Rhamnus.
.bn 175.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.h2 id=ch04 title='IV. — Marathon.'
.ti 0
IV. Marathon.—The plain of Marathon,
the scene of the memorable defeat of the
Persians by the Athenians in 490 B.C., is a
crescent-shaped stretch of flat land curving
round the shore of a spacious bay and bounded
on the landward side by a semicircle of steep
mountains, with bare rocky sides, which rise
abruptly from the plain. In its north-eastern
corner the plain is terminated by a narrow
rocky promontory running southward far into
the sea and sheltering the bay on the north-east;
in antiquity this promontory was called
Cynosura (‘dog’s tail’), it is now called Cape
Stomi or Cape Marathon. At its southern end
the plain is terminated by Mount Agrieliki, a
spur of Mount Pentelicus, which here advances so
far eastward as to leave only a narrow strip of
flat land between it and the sea. Through this
strip of flat land at the foot of Mount Agrieliki
runs the only carriage road which connects
Marathon with Athens. The length of the
plain of Marathon from north-east to south-west
is about six miles; its breadth varies from
one and a half to two and a half miles. The
shore is a shelving sandy beach, free from
rocks and shoals, and well suited for the disembarkation
of troops. A great swamp,
covered with sharp reed-grass and divided from
the sea by a narrow strip of sandy beach overgrown
with pine-trees, occupies most of the
.bn 176.png
.pn +1
northern end of the plain. It never dries
wholly up even in the heat of summer; two
canals constructed by General Sutzos have only
partially drained it. Tamarisk bushes grow
in the drier parts of the marsh; their scarlet
blossoms are conspicuous in spring. The
swamp is deepest at its western side, where it
is separated only by a narrow passage, hardly
wide enough for two horses to pass each other,
from the steep rocky slope of Mount Stavrokoraki.
The ancient road which led northward
from the plain of Marathon to Rhamnus ran
along this narrow passage, between the marsh
on the one hand and the slope of the mountain
on the other. Leake noticed traces of ancient
chariot-wheels here; and till a few years ago a
long line of stones, a little farther to the south,
marked the line of the ancient road. At the
northern end of this defile between the marsh
and the mountain stands the modern village of
Kato-Souli. About a quarter of a mile to the
south of it, close to the road and to the foot
of the mountain, are the deepest pools of the
swamp; they are easily distinguished by the
luxuriant vegetation that surrounds them, the
tall reeds being particularly noticeable. These
pools, beside which cattle find green pasture
in summer when the plains are scorched and
brown with heat, are fed by powerful subterranean
sources, the Macaria of the ancients,
.bn 177.png
.pn +1
about which Pausanias tells us the legend of
Macaria, daughter of Hercules, who gave her
name to the spring. Strabo says that the
head of Eurystheus was cut off and buried by
Iolaus beside the spring Macaria, under the
highroad, and that hence the place was called
‘the head of Eurystheus.’ At Kato-Souli,
about half-way up the slope of the hill which
rises above the village, there are some shallow
niche-like excavations in the rock, not unlike
mangers. It may have been these niches to
which popular fancy gave the name of ‘the
mangers of the horses of Artaphernes.’ On its
opposite or eastern side the great swamp ends
in a small salt-water lake, now called Drakonera,
that is ‘the dragon-water’ or ‘the enchanted
water.’ This lake discharges itself into the sea
by a stream which flows exactly at the point
where the sandy beach of the bay ends and the
rocks of Cape Cynosura begin. Sea fish are
caught in the lake, and eels in the fresh-water
pools of the marsh. The salt lake has perhaps
been formed since the time of Pausanias, for
he describes only the marsh and a stream
flowing from it into the sea. At the southern
end of the plain of Marathon there is another,
but much smaller, swamp called Vrexisa
between the sea and the foot of Mount
Agrieliki. Its greatest breadth is about half
a mile. It is covered with reedy grass and
.bn 178.png
.pn +1
shrubs, and is separated from the sea by a
strip of sand. The highroad to Athens runs
betwixt this marsh and the foot of the
mountains.
Between these two marshes, the one on the
north, the other on the south, the plain of
Marathon is now chiefly covered with corn-fields.
But towards its southern end there is
a stretch of vineyards mixed with olives and
fruit-trees and dotted with a few pines and
cypresses. Farther north, an isolated oak-tree
rising here and there, and a green belt of
currant-plantations stretching from the foot of
the hills to the shore of the bay, break the
uniformity of the endless corn-fields. The
plain is uninhabited. The villages lie at the
foot of the mountains or in the neighbouring
glens. On a still autumn day, under a lowering
sky, the wide expanse of the solitary plain
presents a chilling and dreary aspect. Not a
living creature is to be seen, except perhaps
a few peasants in the distance ploughing with
teams of slow-paced oxen.
In this vast sweep of level ground the eye is
caught, at no great distance, by a single solitary
object rising inconspicuously above it. This
is the famous mound, now called Soros, which
covers the remains of the Athenians who fell in
the battle. It rises from the plain a mile from
the foot of the hills, half a mile from the sea,
.bn 179.png
.pn +1
and about three-quarters of a mile north of the
marsh of Vrexisa. It is a conical mound of
light, reddish mould, some thirty feet high and
two hundred paces in circumference. Its top
has been somewhat flattened by excavations;
its sides are overgrown with low brushwood.
A wild pear-tree grows at its foot. In April-June
1890 the mound was excavated under the
superintendence of Mr. Staes for the Greek
Government. Trenches were cut into it, and
at the depth of about nine feet below the
present surface of the plain there was found an
artificial floor, constructed of sand and other
materials, about eighty-five feet long and twenty
feet broad. On this floor there rested a layer
of ashes, charcoal, and human bones, charred by
fire and mouldering away with damp. Mixed
with this layer of ashes and bones were about
thirty earthenware vases, most of them broken in
pieces. These vases are painted in the common
black-figured style; the subjects represented
are generally chariots, but in some cases
horsemen and foot-soldiers. Besides these
vases there was found a long-necked amphora
adorned with friezes of beasts and monsters in
the oriental style, and a winged figure of the
oriental Artemis; and another two-handled
vase of reddish-brown clay, with decorations
somewhat in the Mycenaean style, was found
to contain charred bones, perhaps those of a
.bn 180.png
.pn +1
general. Further excavations made in the
following year laid bare a sacrificial pit or
trench extending diagonally under the mound
from north to south. This trench is cased with
burnt bricks, and contained ashes, charcoal, and
the bones of animals and birds, mixed with
fragments of black-figured vases. It had
originally been roofed with bricks, which had
fallen in. The bones found in this trench are
clearly those of the victims sacrificed to the
heroic dead before the mound was heaped over
their remains; and the broken vases discovered
along with them may have been those which
were used at the funeral banquet. The Greek
archaeologists further detected some vestiges
which led them to believe that, even after the
mound had been raised, sacrifices continued
to be annually offered at it. This confirms
Pausanias’s statement that the men who fell in
the battle were worshipped as heroes by the
people of Marathon. From an inscription we
learn that the Athenian lads went to the tomb,
laid wreaths on it, and sacrificed to the dead.
The excavations have finally disproved
a theory, broached by E. Curtius in 1853
and maintained by Professor Milchhöfer as
late as 1889, that, the mound was prehistoric
and had nothing to do with the battle
of Marathon. For the black-figured vases
found with the bones and ashes of the dead
.bn 181.png
.pn +1
belong to the period of the Persian wars; the
human remains can therefore be no other than
those of the hundred and ninety-two Athenians
who fell at Marathon. Curtius’s erroneous
theory was apparently countenanced by some
imperfect excavations made by Dr. Schliemann
in 1884. Many bronze arrow-heads, about an
inch long and pierced with a round hole at the
top for the reception of the shaft, have been
picked up at the mound; also a great number
of black flints, rudely chipped into shape. It
has been conjectured that these flints are parts
of the stone-headed arrows discharged by the
Ethiopian archers in the Persian army. But
against this opinion it has been urged that
similar flints have been found at other ancient
sites in Attica and elsewhere, especially in the
oldest graves on many Greek islands, and have
not been found at Thermopylae and Plataea,
where, if anywhere, the stone-headed arrows
may be supposed to have flown in showers.
There are two main routes from the plain of
Marathon to Athens; one of them goes by the
south, the other by the north side of Mount
Pentelicus. The first route leaves the plain at
its southern extremity, and passing between
the foot of Mount Agrieliki and the marsh of
Vrexisa runs parallel with the coast for some
distance. It then turns westward, and crossing
the deep valley which divides Pentelicus on
.bn 182.png
.pn +1
the north from Hymettus on the south enters
the plain of Athens. This is by far the
easiest road; it is the only one which vehicles
can traverse. The distance by this road from
the great mound at Marathon to Athens is
about twenty-five or twenty-six miles. The
other route, by the north side of Mount
Pentelicus, goes from Oenoe (the modern
Ninoi) by a very steep and toilsome path to
Stamata, a village in a high situation, surrounded
by a few barren fields, among woods
of pine. In many places the path is so
hemmed in between cliffs and precipices that
there is room only for a single horse. Trees
are rare, but the stony slopes of the mountain
are overgrown with shrubs of many sorts,
among which the Erica arborea is conspicuous.
In spring its masses of white blossoms perfume
the whole air with their fragrance. About half
an hour short of Stamata, at a point where
there is a spring shaded by fine plane-trees,
the path is joined on the left by another path,
also steep and toilsome, which comes up from
Vrana. This latter path commands a magnificent
view backward down the deep ravine
through which the traveller has ascended. On
either side of the ravine rise the mountains,
their precipitous sides covered with straggling
pine-forest or evergreen copse, and terminating
in bold peaks; below is spread out the green
.bn 183.png
.pn +1
expanse of the Marathonian plain, backed by
the sea and Cape Cynosura curving into the
blue water with the sweep of a scimitar.
Farther off, bounding the prospect, stretches
the long line of the mountains of Euboea.
From Stamata the path skirts the north-western
shoulder of Mount Pentelicus and
enters Kephisia, from which there is a good
highroad through the plain to Athens. The
distance by this route from the mound at
Marathon to Athens is roughly about twenty-two
miles.
A third route, intermediate between the two
preceding routes and shorter than either of
them, goes from Vrana up the wild romantic
ravine of Rapentosa and crosses the southern
shoulder of Mount Pentelicus, the highest
summit of which is left about a mile to the
westward. It is a rugged and precipitous
path, hardly practicable even for heavy infantry.
Within a distance of little more than nine
miles the route ascends and descends a ridge
which rises more than two thousand five hundred
feet above the plain below.
Clearly the first of these routes is the only
road by which a large army with cavalry and
baggage-train could march. Therefore when
the Persians landed at Marathon, under the
guidance of the banished Athenian tyrant
Hippias, who was of course familiar with the
.bn 184.png
.pn +1
country, they must have intended to advance
on Athens by the southern road, and consequently
the Athenians must have marched to
meet them by the same road; for had they
taken the northern route the enemy might
have given them the slip, and his cavalry might
have been entering the streets of Athens at
the time when the Athenians were emerging
from the defiles of Pentelicus on the plain of
Marathon. Thus the traveller who drives to
Marathon by the carriage road may feel sure
that he is following very closely the route by
which the Athenian army advanced to the
battle.
.h2 id=ch05 title='V — Prasiae.'
.ti 0
V. Prasiae.—The township of Prasiae
was situated on the spacious and beautiful bay
now called Porto Raphti, on the east coast of
Attica, about sixteen miles north-east of Sunium.
From the fertile valley of Cephale (now Keratea)
a path leads north-eastward through a very deep
and narrow glen to the shore of the bay. In the
depths of this romantic glen there winds the
bed of a stream which is sometimes nearly or
wholly dry. The sides of the glen, seamed
with the beds of torrents and rifted rocks, are
so thickly wooded and overhung with pine-trees
and bushes that in many places it is hard
to force a passage along it. Flocks of sheep
.bn 185.png
.pn +1
and goats browsing, and in spring the warbling
of numerous nightingales in the thickets, alone
relieve the solitude. At the end of the glen,
which is about three miles long, the view of
the wide bay, enclosed by barren mountains,
suddenly bursts on us. On the north Mount
Peratia, with its jagged ridge and bold beautiful
outline, descends in precipices almost sheer into
the water, its sides bare except for here and
there a thin patch of pinewood. On the south
rises, dark and massive, the loftier Mavronori
(‘the black mountain’). From its base the
rocky headland of Koroni runs far out into the
sea, sheltering the bay on the east and narrowing
its entrance to about a mile and a quarter.
Right in the middle of the entrance, breaking
the force of the waves when the wind blows
from the east, a rocky islet in the shape of a
sugar-loaf or pyramid rises abruptly from the
sea to the height of about three hundred feet.
Its sides, clothed with lentisk bushes and dwarf
pines, are so steep that it can be scaled only on
one side, the north. On its summit, looking seaward,
sits a colossal but headless and armless
statue of white marble on a high pedestal, the
blocks of which were falling to ruin at the time
of Dodwell’s visit but are now held together by
iron clamps. This statue, which, to judge from
its style, dates from the time of the Roman
empire, is popularly supposed to resemble a
.bn 186.png
.pn +1
tailor (raphti) seated at his work; hence it has
given its present name of Porto Raphti to the
bay. It has been plausibly conjectured that
this is the monument described by Pausanias
as the tomb of Erysichthon who died at sea
on his way home from Delos. The striking
monument, looking out from its high lonely
isle across the blue sea, may have been erected
on the traditionary site of the hero’s grave by
some wealthy patron of art in Roman days,
perhaps by Herodes Atticus himself.
The inner part of the bay is divided into
two by a rocky spit jutting out from the shore,
to which it is attached by a low isthmus. The
promontory takes its name from a chapel of St.
Nicholas which stands on the isthmus; a small
island off the promontory still bears the name
of Prasonisi or ‘Isle of Prasiae.’ The anchorage
for fishing boats is on the north side of the
isthmus, and here are the few wretched hovels
which make up the hamlet of Porto Raphti.
The hamlet is not permanently inhabited. For
the bay, though one of the finest harbours in
Greece, is desolate and hardly frequented except
in summer. By day peasants may be met
at work in the fields or carting fish to the
neighbouring villages. But all through the
colder seasons of the year and even on summer
evenings a profound stillness, broken only by
the lapping of the waves on the beach, reigns
.bn 187.png
.pn +1
on the shores of this beautiful bay, one of the
fairest scenes in Attica.
On the northern shore of the bay there are
a few scanty remains of antiquity which seem
to have belonged to the township of Stiria.
Prasiae lay on the southern shore, which still
bears the ancient name. Here, between the
sandy and in part marshy beach and the hills,
there stretches a strip of level cornland interspersed
with olives and stately cork-oaks.
Some vestiges of ancient wall may be traced at
a garden not far from the shore, where there is
also an ancient well. But the sand is gaining
so fast here that a few years ago the ruins of
a chapel with some Christian graves were discovered
buried in the downs. The citadel of
Prasiae occupied the rocky headland of Koroni
(probably the ancient Coronea), which, as we
have seen, shelters the bay on the east. This
bold headland, joined to the mainland by a low
sandy isthmus, has obviously been at one time
an island; indeed the whole of the southern
part of the bay is being gradually sanded up.
The fortification walls, six feet thick and built
without mortar, may be followed all round the
summit of the headland, which is besides so
well protected by its steep cliffs that an attack
from the side of the sea must have been nearly
impracticable. Another wall, eight to ten feet
thick, which seems to have been strengthened
.bn 188.png
.pn +1
with towers or bastions, runs down in a south-westerly
direction from the ring-wall of the
citadel. It probably served as an outwork and
may have reached as far as the shore, though
now it disappears some distance above the water.
Within the ring-wall of the citadel are the
remains of a number of cross-walls extending
at right angles to it; but they are now so overgrown
by dense underwood that it is almost
impossible to trace them. From the summit
of the headland there is a fine prospect, on the
one side over the noble bay with its rocky
islets, on the other side across the sea to
Euboea, Andros, and Ceos. The white houses
which are seen gleaming in Ceos are those of
the modern town which occupies the site of the
ancient Julis.
.sp 2
.h2 id=ch06 title='VI. — Mount Hymettus.'
.ti 0
VI. Mount Hymettus.—The outline of
Hymettus, viewed from Athens, is even and
regular; but its sides are furrowed by winter
torrents and its base is broken into many
small isolated hills of a conical form. Except
towards its base the range is almost destitute of
soil. Wild olives, myrtles, laurels, and oleanders
are found only in some of the gullies at the
foot of the mountain. Its steep rocky slopes
are composed of grey marble seamed and
cracked in all directions. Some stunted shrubs,
.bn 189.png
.pn +1
however, including the lentisk, terebinth, and
juniper, and sweet-smelling herbs, such as
thyme, lavender, savory, and sage, grow in the
clefts of the rocks, and, with flowers such as
hyacinths and purple crocuses, furnish the bees
with the food from which they still extract the
famous Hymettian honey. Hymettus seems
to have been as bare and treeless in classical
antiquity as it is now; for Plato remarks that
some of the Attic mountains, which now only
provided food for bees, had at no very remote
epoch furnished the timber with which some
very large buildings were still roofed at the
time when he wrote. The honey of Hymettus
was renowned. It was said that when Plato
was a babe the bees on Hymettus filled his
mouth with honey. The story went that bees
were first produced on the mountain. Poets
spoke of the flowery and fragrant Hymettus.
The thyme and the creeping thyme (serpyllum)
of Hymettus are specially mentioned; the
creeping thyme was transplanted to Athens
and grown there. When ancient writers speak
of Attic honey in general, they may have had
Hymettian honey in view. Vitruvius compares
Attic honey to resin in colour, which aptly
describes the colour of the modern Hymettian
honey. When Synesius visited Athens in the
fifth century A.D. he found that the glory of its
philosophers had departed, but that the glory
.bn 190.png
.pn +1
of its bee-masters still remained. Opinions
differ as to the quality of the modern Hymettian
honey. Leake pronounced it superior to that
of the rest of Attica and of the surrounding
provinces of Greece. Others think it inferior
to the honey of other parts of Greece, such as
the Cyclades, Corinth, and Thebes, as well as
to the heather honey of Scotland and Ireland.
Most of the honey sold as Hymettian comes
from Tourko Vouni, north of Athens, and from
other parts of Attica.
Hymettus was also famous in antiquity for
its marble, which seems to have been especially
prized by the Romans. This marble, which is
still quarried in large quantities on Hymettus,
is a bluish-grey streaky marble, of finer and
closer grain than the white Pentelic marble, but
far inferior to it in beauty. The Greeks seem
not to have used it commonly till the third
century B.C. From that time onward we find
it employed for tombstones, inscriptions, and
the casing of buildings. The principal quarries
are on the western side of the mountain, on the
slopes which enclose the valley of St. George
on the south and south-east and which on
the other side descend nearly sheer into
‘the Devil’s Glen’ or ‘the Evil Glen,’ the
deepest and wildest gorge in Hymettus.
Vestiges of the ancient road or slide by which
the blocks were brought down from the quarries
.bn 191.png
.pn +1
may be seen about a hundred yards above the
chapel of St. George; the road seems to have
been led in serpentine curves down the slope,
not in a straight line like the road from the
quarries on Pentelicus. A great part of the
upper ridge of Hymettus is composed of a
white marble resembling the white marble of
Pentelicus, but inferior to it in crystalline
structure and of a duller white. The ancients
apparently made little use of this white Hymettian
marble.
Clouds on Hymettus were believed to prognosticate
rain; if during a storm a long bank
of clouds was seen lowering on the mountain, it
meant that the storm would increase in fury.
Hymettus is still as of old remarkable for the
wonderful purple glow which comes over it as
seen from Athens by evening light. When the
sun is setting, a rosy flush spreads over the
whole mountain, which, as the daylight fades
and the shadows creep up the slope, passes by
insensible transitions through all intermediate
shades of colour into the deepest violet. This
purple tinge is peculiar to Hymettus; none of
the other mountains which encircle the plain of
Athens assumes it at any hour of the day. It
was when the sunset glow was on Hymettus
that Socrates drained the poisoned cup.
.bn 192.png
.pn +1
.h2 id=ch07 title='VII. — Mount Pentelicus.'
.ti 0
VII. Mount Pentelicus.—Pentelicus is
the pyramid-like mountain, between three and
four thousand feet high, which closes the
Athenian plain on the north-east, at a distance
of about ten miles from Athens. Its upper
slopes, as seen from the Acropolis at Athens,
have been aptly compared to the pediment or
gable of a Greek temple. Through the clear
air of Attica the unaided eye, looking from the
Acropolis, can distinguish the white line of the
ancient quarries descending, somewhat to the
right of the highest peak, straight down into
the valley where the monastery of Mendeli lies
hidden by the intervening heights; to the left
of the summit, half-way up the slope, may be
discerned the large white patches which mark
the site of the modern quarries.
But though the view of the pyramidal or
gable-like summit is the one which chiefly
strikes the observer at Athens, Pentelicus is
really a range of mountains with a number of
lesser summits, extending from north-west to
south-east for a distance of about four and a
half miles. The ancient quarries lie on the
south-western side of the highest peak. Five-and-twenty
of them may be counted, one above
the other; the highest is situated not far
beneath the highest ridge, at a height of over
three thousand three hundred feet above the
sea. They are reached from the monastery of
.bn 193.png
.pn +1
Mendeli, the wealthiest monastic establishment
in Attica, which nestles in a well-watered and
wooded glade at the southern foot of the
mountain, about twelve hundred feet above sea
level. The ground in front of the monastery
is shaded by gigantic white poplars, under
which flows a spring of excellent water. The
name Mendeli is the modern equivalent of
Pentele, the name of the ancient township, the
site of which is perhaps marked by some
ancient blocks and traces of walls and terraces
at the chapel of the Trinity, a little to the
north-east of the monastery.
The quarries are situated in the gullies
above the monastery. An ancient road, very
steep and rugged, leads to them up the eastern
side of the principal gully. The road is
roughly paved; the blocks of marble were
probably brought down it on wooden slides.
Square holes may be seen at intervals cut in
the rock at the side of the road; the beams
which supported the wooden slides may have
been fastened in these holes. The road appears
to end at the principal quarry, a spot
now called Spilia, two thousand three hundred
feet above the sea. Here the rock has been
quarried away so as to leave a smooth perpendicular
wall of marble, the top of which is
fringed with firs. The marks, delicate and
regular, of the ancient chisels may be seen in
.bn 194.png
.pn +1
horizontal rows on the face of the rock. At
the foot of this wall of marble, overgrown with
shrubs and mantled with creepers, is the low
entrance to a stalactite grotto, well known to
visitors, as the names cut and painted on the
walls suffice to prove. The entrance is partly
built up with walls of the Byzantine age; to
the right, roofed by the rock, is a chapel of St.
Nicholas. The grotto is spacious, cool, and
dark; its floor descends somewhat from the
mouth inwards. About sixty paces from the
entrance there is a small side-grotto with a rocky
basin full of cold spring-water.
An examination of the marks on the rock
shows that the ancients regularly quarried the
marble in rectangular blocks, first running a
groove round each block with the chisel and
then forcing it out with wedges. The effect of
this has been to leave the quarries in the shape
of huge rectangular cuttings in the side of the
mountain.
The stone extracted from these quarries is
a white marble of a close fine grain. It is
readily distinguished from Parian marble—the
other white marble commonly used by Greek
sculptors and architects—by its finer grain and
opaque milky whiteness; whereas the Parian
marble is composed of large transparent crystals,
and is of a glistering snowy whiteness. Parian
marble resembles crystallised sugar; Pentelic
.bn 195.png
.pn +1
marble resembles solidified milk, though its
surface is of course more granular. Pentelic
marble, alone among all Greek marbles, contains
a slight tincture of iron; hence its surface,
when long exposed to the weather, acquires
that rich golden-brown patina which is so much
admired on the columns of the Parthenon and
other buildings constructed of Pentelic marble.
The Parian marble, on the other hand, though
it weathers more easily than the Pentelic on
account of its coarser grain, always remains
dazzlingly white. Pentelic marble is always
clearly stratified, and in places it is streaked
with veins of silvery white, green, and reddish-violet
mica. Blocks so streaked were either
thrown aside by the ancients or used by them
for buildings, not sculpture. But even in
architecture these veins of mica entailed this
disadvantage that the surfaces containing them,
when long exposed to the weather, split and
pealed off in flakes, as we may see on the
drums of the columns of the Olympieum or
Parthenon.
Besides the fine white marble already described,
which is commonly known simply as
Pentelic marble, there occurs on Mount Pentelicus
a grey, bluish-grey, and grey-streaked
marble identical in kind with the marble known
as Hymettian, because the ancients quarried it
on Mount Hymettus. This grey or bluish-grey
.bn 196.png
.pn +1
marble is of more recent geological formation
than the white. It does not appear to have
been quarried by the ancients on Pentelicus; at
least no ancient quarries of it have been discovered
on the mountain. But it is now obtained
in great masses in the large modern
quarries to the east of Kephisia, and furnishes
Athens with building material for the better
class of houses and public edifices; even
paving-stones are made of it.
An hour’s climb from the great quarry at
Spilia takes us to the summit of Pentelicus.
The path ascends slopes which not many years
ago were thickly wooded, but are now bare and
stony. The view from the top is the clearest
and most comprehensive that can be obtained
of the Attic peninsula. Conspicuous below us
on the north is the sickle-shaped bay of Marathon.
The snowy peak of Parnassus closes the
prospect on the west; the mountains of Euboea
bound it on the north; and to the south, in
clear weather, the island of Melos is faintly
visible at a distance of ninety to a hundred
miles. On the ridge, a little below and to the
south-east of the summit of Pentelicus, there is
a small platform, which on three sides shows
traces of having been hewn out of the rock. It
is exactly in the line of the ancient paved road,
which, however, comes to an end considerably
lower down, at the great quarry. On this
.bn 197.png
.pn +1
platform probably stood the image of Athena
mentioned by Pausanias.
.sp 2
.h2 id=ch08 title='VIII. — Phyle.'
.ti 0
VIII. Phyle.—An expedition to the ruins
of Phyle is a favourite excursion of visitors
to Athens. The distance by road is about
fourteen miles. Diodorus indeed estimates the
distance at a hundred Greek furlongs or eleven
miles. But he is wrong. Demosthenes, more
correctly, says that it was over a hundred and
twenty Greek furlongs. A carriage road runs
as far as Chasia, a large village on the southern
slopes of Mount Parnes, about ten miles from
Athens. Beyond this point the way is nothing
but a steep and stony bridle-path. After
ascending it for half an hour we come to the
meeting of two deep and savage glens. In the
glen to the right or east the little monastery of
Our Lady of the Defile stands romantically
at the foot of sheer precipices. The path to
Phyle (which is at the same time the direct
road to Thebes) winds rapidly up the narrow
western glen through a thin forest of firs. In
places the path is hewn in the rock, and the
defile is so narrow that a handful of men might
make it good against an army. Phyle is
reached in about an hour and three-quarters
from Chasia. The fortress with its massive
walls and towers crowns a high precipitous crag
.bn 198.png
.pn +1
on the southern side of the pass, which it completely
dominates. A ridge connects the crag
with the higher mountains on the east; and
along this ridge is the only approach to the
fortress. On the west and south the sides of
the crag fall away abruptly into a deep ravine,
which is broken by tremendous precipices,
crested with firs and tufted with shrubs and
underwood. The ruins of the fortress encircle
a little plateau, scarcely three hundred feet long
from east to west, on the summit of the crag.
The walls and towers, built of fine quadrangular
blocks without mortar, are best preserved on
the north-east side, where they are still standing
to a height of seventeen courses. The
tower at the north-east angle is round; the
other two remaining towers are square. The
principal gate was on the east side, approached
from the ridge. There was further a postern,
also approached from the ridge, near the south-east
corner. From the fortress, which stands
more than two thousand feet above the sea, the
view is magnificent, taking in the whole of the
Athenian plain with Athens itself and Hymettus,
and the sea with Salamis, Aegina, and the coast
of Peloponnese.
The high peak, now named Mount Pagania,
which towers immediately to the north-east of
Phyle in the form of a crescent-shaped wall
of naked rock is probably the ancient Harma,
.bn 199.png
.pn +1
which the augurs at Athens watched till they
saw lightning flash about its summit, whereupon
they sent the sacrifice to Delphi. Strabo
expressly says that Harma was near Phyle.
On its eastern side the peak descends in precipices
into the deep glen, already mentioned, at
the entrance of which is the monastery of
Our Lady of the Defile.
Farther up this glen than the monastery, at
a height of some hundreds of feet above the
torrent (the Potami) which traverses it, there
is a cavern which is sometimes visited. The
direct distance of this cavern from the monastery
is only about a mile and a half. But in
the glen the stream, hemmed in by precipices
advancing from the mountains on both sides,
has scooped out for itself between them a bed
so profound and rugged that to scramble along
it is impossible, even when the water is at its
lowest. Hence in order to reach the cavern it
is needful to make a long detour round the
western flanks of Mount Pagania and to come
down into the glen at a point a good deal
higher up. Having done so we follow the glen
downward past the place where another glen
opens into it, bringing its tributary stream to
swell the Potami. The cave is situated high
up on the eastern side of the main glen, a little
below the meeting of the waters. To clamber
up the steep slope to it is far from easy. The
.bn 200.png
.pn +1
mouth of the cave is so narrow that only one
person can enter it at a time; it opens at the foot
of a precipice darkened by overhanging trees
and flanked by two crags which project like
wings on either side. In the face of the rock
to the right of the entrance into the cavern are
some votive niches with worn inscriptions under
them. Within the cave, which may be about
a hundred paces deep, water dripping from
the roof has formed large stalactites and
has hollowed out basins in the floor. Broken
lamps and potsherds have been found in it in
considerable quantities, which, with the votive
niches outside, prove that this secluded spot
was an ancient sanctuary. It was most probably
the Nymphaeum or sanctuary of the
Nymphs, which Menander mentioned as being
near Phyle. Here, too, the people of Phyle
probably offered the sacrifices to Pan to which
Aelian refers. For one of the inscriptions on
the rock outside the cave sets forth that a
certain Tychander caused workmen to put up
the image of Pan beside the Celadon, and that
sacrifices were offered by one Trophimianus.
From this inscription we learn that the Potami,
which flows in the depth of the glen below the
cave, went in antiquity by the name of the
Celadon or ‘Roaring Stream.’
.bn 201.png
.pn +1
.h2 id=ch09 title='IX. — The Port of Athens.'
.ti 0
IX. The Port of Athens.—Piraeus, the
port of Athens, is a rocky peninsula which runs
out into the sea in a south-westerly direction
for a distance of more than two miles. It is
composed of two masses, each over a mile wide,
which are united to each other by a somewhat
low and narrow ridge or isthmus. The south-western
mass, anciently known as the Acte,
rises gradually on all sides to a height of nearly
two hundred feet. The north-eastern mass
attains a height of nearly three hundred feet in
the steep rocky hill of Munychia. The ancients
believed that the peninsula of Piraeus had
formerly been an island, and that it had received
its name because it was the land across (peran)
the water. Modern observation confirms the
belief that Piraeus was once an island. The
peninsula is joined to the mainland by a stretch
of low swampy ground, nowhere more than eight
feet above the level of the sea. This stretch of
low land, which the ancients called Halipedon,
appears to be formed of alluvial soil brought
down in the course of ages by the Cephisus,
which falls into the sea a little to the east, and
which has by its deposits gradually converted
the rocky island into a peninsula.
Piraeus includes three distinct harbours, each
opening to the sea by a separate mouth. These
are the great harbour, technically known as
Cantharus, on the north-west side of the peninsula,
.bn 202.png
.pn +1
and the two smaller and nearly circular
harbours of Zea and Munychia on the south-eastern
side. The whole of the peninsula, with
its three harbours, was strongly fortified in
antiquity. The line of the fortification wall may
still be traced almost all round it, and in most
places the foundations are so well preserved
that it is possible to reconstruct the plan of the
fortress as a whole. The wall runs along the
shore at such a distance as to be out of reach
of the waves, and yet near enough the sea to
prevent an enemy from bringing siege engines
into play on the beach. It is from ten to twelve
feet thick, and is very carefully built of squared
blocks of the native limestone without mortar.
The quarries in which the stones were hewn
may be observed at many points both behind
and in front of the wall. In places where the
stones have been taken away from the wall to
furnish building material for the modern town,
we can see the grooves or channels cut in the
rock in which the stones were originally bedded.
These grooves are each about two and a half
feet wide and run parallel to each other, showing
that only the outer and inner faces of the
wall were of solid masonry, and that the core
must have been, as in many ancient Greek walls,
filled up with rubble and earth. In the best
preserved portions the wall is still standing to
a height of five courses or more. It is flanked
.bn 203.png
.pn +1
by towers which project from the curtain at
intervals of sixty or seventy yards.
In addition to this sea-wall which skirted
the coast, the mouths of the three harbours were
contracted by moles of solid masonry that ran
out to meet each other on either side, leaving
only a narrow entrance between their extremities.
The long moles which thus barred the mouth
of the great harbour still exist, though the
southern of the two has been washed away
by the waves to a depth of some thirteen feet
under the surface of the water. They now support
the red and green lights which at night
mark the entrance to the harbour. The haven
of Zea is naturally stronger than the great harbour,
and therefore needed less elaborate fortifications.
It consists of a circular basin lying
about two hundred yards inland from the sea,
and is approached by a channel a hundred yards
wide. Walls ran along this channel on either
side, so that an enemy’s ships endeavouring to
enter the harbour would have had to run the
gauntlet of a cross fire. At its inner end the
channel was flanked on either side by a tower
of solid masonry built out into the water, but
connected with the fortification walls. The third
harbour, Munychia, the smallest of the three, is
farthest removed from the business and bustle
of the modern port town, and hence has, in some
respects, best preserved the relics of antiquity.
.bn 204.png
.pn +1
Originally it was a mere open bay, and therefore
needed vast constructions of masonry to
convert it into a war harbour. The moles built
for this purpose are described by Lieutenant
von Alten, who examined them with attention,
as the most magnificent specimens of ancient
Greek fortification which have survived. In
some places on the outer edges of the moles the
colossal blocks of which they are composed have
been piled up in wild confusion by the heavy
surf, and project like islets above the surface of
the water. Each mole ended in a tower; and
the narrow entrance to the harbour was between
the towers. The tiny basin is commanded by
the hill of Munychia which rises steeply from the
shore. In time of danger each of the harbour
mouths could be closed with a chain stretched
between the two towers that flanked the entrance.
The chain seems to have been coated with tar
to prevent it from rusting in the water.
On the landward side the peninsula was
defended by a wall, which started from the harbour
of Munychia, ascended the hill, and after
following the edge of the plateau for some
distance gradually descended westward to the
shallow northern bight of the great harbour,
across which it appears to have been carried on
a mole or dam. This landward wall, to judge
from its existing remains, seems to have been
a masterpiece of military engineering, every
.bn 205.png
.pn +1
opportunity offered by the nature of the ground
for strengthening the fortifications having been
unerringly seized upon and turned to account.
The naturally weakest spot in the whole circuit
was where the wall crossed the flat between the
hill of Munychia and the great harbour. Here
accordingly we find the wall especially strong;
it is twenty-six feet thick, and is constructed of
solid masonry in large squared blocks without
any core of rubble. Naturally the gates were
placed in this landward wall and opened northward.
Remains of four of them can be distinguished.
The principal gate, flanked by two
square towers on oval bases, stood in the flat
ground between the north-east end of the great
harbour and the heights of Munychia. Through
it doubtless ran the highway to Athens; and
here at a little side portal for foot-passengers
probably stood the image of Hermes, which
the nine archons dedicated when they set about
fortifying Piraeus. A little to the east of this
principal gate and on slightly higher ground is
another gate, through which the road to Athens
went between the two Long Walls. The gate is
double, that is, it is composed of a court nearly
square with a gate at each end. The reason of
this construction, which is common in Greek
fortifications, was that, if an enemy should force
the outer gate, he would still have a second gate
in front of him, and would in the meantime
.bn 206.png
.pn +1
find himself pent in a narrow court, as in
a trap, from the walls of which he would be
assailed on all sides by the missiles of the
defenders.
The docks at Piraeus were one of the glories
of Athens. Demosthenes mentions them along
with the Parthenon and the Propylaea. When
the Athenian navy numbered about four hundred
warships, we learn from inscriptions that
the number of docks was three hundred and
seventy-two. But this excess of ships over
docks could scarcely have caused inconvenience,
as some vessels must always have been in
commission. Very considerable remains of the
ancient docks are still to be seen in the harbours
of Zea and Munychia. The flat beach all
round the basin of Zea was enclosed by a wall
of ashlar masonry, which ran round the harbour
at a distance of fifty or sixty feet from the
water’s edge. This formed the back wall of all
the docks, which extended at right angles to it
and parallel to each other down into the water.
The average breadth of each dock or berth was
about twenty feet. The docks were separated
from each other by rows of columns, the foundations
of which, bedded on the shelving rocky
beach, descend in steps to the water, and are
continued under it for some distance. These
columns supported the roofs, which were probably
wooden, for no remains of a stone roof
.bn 207.png
.pn +1
have been found. Between these partition rows
of columns the rock has been hollowed out and
smoothed, so that it forms an inclined plane,
descending gradually, like the rows of columns,
to the sea, and continued under water for some
way. Each of these inclined planes formed the
floor of a dock. In the middle of each floor
is built a stone pier about ten feet wide and
a yard high; in some places the native rock,
hewn out at the sides, has been left standing in
the centre so as to form a pier of similar dimensions.
On these piers, whether built or hewn
out of the rock, the ancient ships were hauled
up and down. Remains of them may still be
seen all round the harbour of Zea running out
under the clear water.
The only relics of ancient ships which have
been found at Zea are some plates of Parian
marble representing great eyes. Clearly these
were the ship’s eyes which used to be fastened
to the bows of ancient Greek vessels. Pollux
tells us that the ship’s name was painted beside
its eye. Philostratus describes the picture of
an Etruscan pirate ship painted blue, with fierce
eyes at the prow to frighten the enemy. In a
list of missing or unserviceable ships’ furniture,
preserved in an inscription, mention is twice
made of a broken ship’s eye. Some of the eyes
found at Zea show traces of red paint at the
back; the paint probably adhered to them from
.bn 208.png
.pn +1
the ships’ sides; for ships’ bows were often
painted red. Modern Italian sailors sometimes
still paint an eye on the bow of their vessel.
In the East, too, every craft owned by a Chinaman,
from a sampan up to an English-built
screw-steamer, has a pair of eyes painted on
the bows, that it may see its way and spy out
sunken rocks and other dangers of the deep.
Indeed, in all parts of eastern Asia where many
Chinese travel, the local steamers, whether owned
by Chinese or not, all have eyes; otherwise no
Chinaman would travel in them, or send his
goods by them.
Another famous structure in Piraeus was the
arsenal, which formed a necessary adjunct to
the docks of the navy. We know from ancient
authors that it was built from designs furnished
by the architect Zeno, who explained them to
the people in a speech which won him a high
reputation for eloquence. The building was
admired for its elegance, and the Athenians
were proud of it. However, it was finally burnt
by the Romans under Sulla, and no certain
vestiges of it have been as yet discovered. But
by an extraordinary piece of good fortune the
directions given to the contractor for its construction
have been preserved to us. They
were discovered in 1882 engraved on a slab of
Hymettian marble at the foot of the hill of
Munychia, not far from the harbour of Zea.
.bn 209.png
.pn +1
The directions are so full, clear, and precise
that we now know Philo’s arsenal from roof to
foundation better than any other building of
ancient Greece, though not a stone of it has
been found. A brief description of the edifice,
derived from the inscription, may not be uninteresting.
The arsenal was to be built at Zea, the
principal war-harbour, and was to begin at the
gateway which led from the market-place and
to extend to the back of the docks. It was to
be constructed of the hard reddish-grey Piraeic
limestone, an excellent building material often
mentioned in inscriptions and still much in use.
In shape it was to be a sort of arcade, lit
principally by rows of windows in the long sides,
and divided into three aisles by two rows of
columns running down its whole length. The
central aisle, paved with flags, and entered by
two bronze-plated doors at each end, was to be
kept clear as a passage for the public; while
the two side aisles were to serve for storing the
ships’ tackle. For this purpose each of the
side aisles was divided into two stories by a
wooden flooring. On the ground floor the sails
and other canvas gear were stowed away in
presses; and in the upper galleries the ropes
were coiled on open wooden shelves. Between
the columns which flanked the central aisle
there ran a stone balustrade with latticed gates
.bn 210.png
.pn +1
opening into the side aisles between each pair
of columns. The roof of the building was to be
constructed of strong wooden rafters overlaid
with boards, which were to be fastened on with
iron nails; and the whole was to be covered
with close-fitting Corinthian tiles. To secure
that the building should be well aired, which
was especially necessary in a magazine of this
sort, lest the tackle should suffer from damp,
slit-like openings were to be left in the walls
between the joints of the stones, the number
and situation of these air-holes being left to the
discretion of the architect. Such was, in outline,
the great arsenal of the Piraeus. Thither
on hot summer days, we may suppose, crowds
were glad to escape from the dust and glare of
the streets and to promenade in the cool, lofty,
and dimly-lighted arcade, often stopping to gaze
with idle curiosity or patriotic pride at the long
array of well-ordered tackle which spoke of the
naval supremacy of Athens.
Before we quit the war-harbours we should
note the Choma, as it was called, a quay near
the mouth of the harbour on which, when an
armament was fitting out for sea, the Council
of the Five Hundred held their sittings daily
till the squadron sailed. When all was ready,
every captain was bound by law to lay his
vessel alongside the quay to be inspected by
the Council. The inspection over, the fleet
.bn 211.png
.pn +1
weighed anchor and proceeded on its voyage.
It must have been a heart-stirring sight to
witness the departure of a fleet for the seat of
war, as gallant ship after ship passed in long
procession through the mouth of the harbour and
stood out to sea, followed by the gazing eyes
and by the hopes and fears and prayers of
thousands assembled on the shore. When the
last ship had glided from the smooth water of
the harbour, and begun to breast the waves
and shake out its sails to the freshening breeze,
multitudes would rush from the shore to the
heights, there to watch the galleys slowly lessening
in the distance, till they could discern no
longer the flash and sparkle of the oars as they
rose and fell at the ships’ sides, and till even
the white sails melted away like snow in the
blaze of the sun on the far southern horizon.
A long line of colonnades extending along
the eastern shore of the great harbour appears
to have formed the public mart or emporium.
One of the most important buildings in this
commercial part of the harbour was a bazaar or
exchange, where foreign merchants exhibited
samples of their wares, and where bankers sat
at the receipt of custom. It must have been
close to the quays and the shipping, as we
learn from the account of a successful raid
which Alexander of Pherae once made on the
bankers’ counters. One day a squadron was
.bn 212.png
.pn +1
seen standing into the harbour. The loungers on
the quays watched it with indolent curiosity till
the ships drew up alongside the wharfs, when a
crowd of armed men leaped from the ships’
sides, drew their swords, and with a flourish of
trumpets made a rush for the bazaar, where
they swept the counters clean and then returned
with the booty to their vessels, without stopping
to notice the panic-stricken crowds who were
fleeing in all directions. In another ‘cutting-out’
expedition which the Lacedaemonians made
with twelve ships into the harbour of Piraeus, a
handful of daring men jumped ashore, laid hold
of some merchants and skippers in the bazaar,
and hurried them on board. It was in the
bazaar that the Boastful Man in Theophrastus
used to stand talking with foreigners about the
great sums he had at sea, while he sent his page
to the bank where he kept the sum of ten-pence.
Chief among the holy places of Piraeus was
a sanctuary of Saviour Zeus. Fine paintings
by distinguished artists adorned the cloisters
attached to it, and statues stood in the open air.
The festival of the god included a regatta and a
procession through the streets. The expenses
of the sanctuary were partly defrayed by a
small tax levied on every vessel which put into
the port. Moreover, persons who had escaped
from danger—for example, seafaring men who
.bn 213.png
.pn +1
had come safe to land—commonly brought
thank-offerings to the shrine. From a fragment
of an ancient comedy we learn that, among the
long-shore sharks who lay in wait on the quays
for sailors fresh from a voyage, there were cooks
with an eye to business. For in the passage
in question one of the fraternity tells us how,
whenever he spied a jolly tar just stepping
ashore, ready for a spree, with a bulging purse
in his fist and an expansive smile on his sunburnt
face, he used to rush up to him, shake him
warmly by the hand, drop a delicate allusion to
Saviour Zeus, and proffer his services at the
sacrifice. The bait took, and soon he was to be
seen heading for the sanctuary with the sailor
man in tow.
Better known to English readers than the
sanctuary of Saviour Zeus was the altar of the
Unknown God which St. Paul, and after him
Pausanias, saw at Phalerum, the old port of
Athens. In a dialogue attributed to Lucian,
a certain Critias raps out a number of oaths
by the old heathen gods and goddesses, and
for each of them he is gravely taken to task
by his comrade Triephon, who has just been
initiated into the sublime mysteries of the
Christian theology by a person of a Hebrew
cast of countenance, whom he describes as a
bald-pated long-nosed Galilean. At last
Critias swears by the Unknown God at Athens,
.bn 214.png
.pn +1
and this oath is allowed to pass unchallenged
by Triephon, who winds up the dialogue with
this edifying advice: “Let us, having found out
and worshipped the Unknown God at Athens,
raise our hands to heaven and give him thanks
that we have been found worthy to be subject
unto so great a power; but let us leave other
folk to babble, satisfied ourselves with applying
to them the proverb 'Hippoclides doesn’t
care.'”
A little way from the shore of the great
harbour was the market-place named after the
Milesian architect Hippodamus, who laid out
Piraeus on a regular plan. It must have been
a spacious open square, for we hear of troops
mustering in it. The distinguished general
Timotheus had a house on the market-place,
and it was here that he lodged his two royal
visitors, Jason of Pherae and Alcetas king of
Epirus, when they came to give evidence at his
trial. The general had impaired his private
fortune by his exertions in the public service,
and when his illustrious visitors arrived late one
evening he had to send out his Caleb Balderstone
in haste to borrow some bedding and
silver plate. From the market-place a street
led upwards to the sanctuary of Artemis on the
hill of Munychia. It must have been a wide
street; for in the street-fighting at the revolution
which overturned the tyranny of the Thirty
.bn 215.png
.pn +1
and restored the democracy, the troops of the
tyrants formed in order of battle in the market-place
and then marched up the street, while the
democratic party, led by Thrasybulus, charged
down the street in battle array and met them.
At one time apparently the market-place fell
into disrepair, and enjoyed the dubious privilege
of what is popularly known in Scotland as a
‘free coup,’ the inhabitants of the neighbouring
streets using it unceremoniously as a convenient
dust-hole wherein to throw away their old rags
and bones and other domestic refuse. At last
the authorities felt constrained to interfere and
put a stop to the nuisance. So they ordered
that the market-place be levelled and put in
good repair, and that for the future nobody
should be allowed to shoot rubbish or dump
down dung in it.
The broad straight streets of the new town
of Piraeus must have formed a striking contrast
to the narrow and crooked streets, lined with
mean houses, which Athens itself seems always
to have retained. Aristotle perhaps had this
contrast in his mind when he recommended for
his ideal city a mixture of the two modes of
building, remarking that the new straight streets
in the style of Hippodamus were handsomer
and more convenient, but that the old crooked
streets could be better defended against an
enemy. Another advantage of the older style
.bn 216.png
.pn +1
of architecture, at least in southern cities, is the
shade and coolness of narrow lanes from which,
as from the bottom of a well, we look up at a
narrow strip of blue sky high overhead, instead
of being exposed to the pitiless glare of the sun
as we pace, with blue spectacles on our eyes and
a white umbrella over our head, the broad open
streets which, on the model of the Parisian
boulevards, are rapidly springing up in the towns
of southern Europe. Still, in spite of the ravages
of municipal authorities and the jerry-builder,
we can even yet remark in modern Europe a
contrast between the towns that have grown up
irregularly in the course of ages, and those
which have been created at once on a regular
plan by the will of a despot. The two most
regularly built towns in Europe are probably
Turin and Mannheim. Turin still stands on the
lines laid down by Augustus, when he founded
a Roman colony on the site; Mannheim was
built by the Elector Palatine, Frederick the
Fourth, in 1606. Something of the same
difference may also be observed between
Madrid, the new capital of Spain, with its
thoroughfares radiating like the spokes of
a wheel from the Puerta del Sol, and the
old Spanish capital Toledo, with its narrow
lanes straggling up and down the rocky hill
whence the white, silent, seemingly half-deserted
city looks down on the gorge of the Tagus. But
.bn 217.png
.pn +1
Madrid, a creation of Philip the Second, does
not equal Turin or Mannheim in mathematical
regularity of construction.
There can be no doubt that the fortification
of Piraeus and the transference to it of the port
of Athens from the open roadstead of Phalerum
constituted one of the most momentous steps in
the history of Athens. Coupled with the construction
of a large permanent war-fleet it made
Athens the first naval power in Greece, and so
determined her subsequent history. All three
measures originated in the far-seeing mind of
Themistocles, who thus in a sense created Athens,
and proved himself thereby one of the greatest
of statesmen. He saw that Piraeus was more
important to the Athenians than Athens itself,
and he often advised them, if ever they were
hard put to it by land, to evacuate Athens and
settle at Piraeus, where with their fleet they
could defy the world. If they had taken his
advice, Athens might perhaps have played a
still greater part in history.
The man to whom Athens owed so much
died an exile in a foreign land; but, if tradition
may be trusted, his bones were afterwards
brought and laid, with singular felicity, beside
the sea at the foot of the frowning walls of that
great fortress which formed his noblest monument.
The exact spot has been described by
an ancient writer. “At the great harbour of
.bn 218.png
.pn +1
Piraeus,” says Plutarch, quoting Diodorus the
Periegete, “a sort of elbow juts out from the
headland of Alcimus; and when you have
rounded this elbow, on the inner side, where the
sea is somewhat calm, there is a large basement
of masonry, and the altar-like structure on it
is the grave of Themistocles. And Diodorus
imagines that the comic poet Plato bears him
out in the following passage:
.pm start_poem
'Fair lies thy tomb
For it will speak to merchants everywhere;
It will behold the seamen sailing out and in,
And mark the contests of the ships.'”
.pm end_poem
Tradition places the site of the tomb on the
shore of the Acte peninsula, near the modern
lighthouse, some way to the south of the entrance
to the great harbour. Here a small square space
has been levelled in the rock; and its outer
margin has been cut and smoothed as if to form
the bed of a wall. Within this area are three
graves, and just outside it, on the side away
from the sea, is a large sepulchre hewn in the
rock. It has been suggested that when the
square space was enclosed by its wall, and the
interior was filled up with rubble, it may have
been the “altar-like structure” described by
Diodorus the Periegete, and that the rock-hewn
tomb behind it, and sheltered by it from the
surf and spray of the neighbouring sea, may
.bn 219.png
.pn +1
have been what antiquity was fain to regard
as the grave of Themistocles.
.h2 id=ch10 title='X. — The Sacred Way.'
.ti 0
X. The Sacred Way.—Having completed
his description of the Attic islands,
Pausanias returns to Athens and sets out
thence for Eleusis along the Sacred Way. This
was the road by which the initiated went
from Athens to Eleusis: the antiquary Polemo
devoted a whole book to a description of the
route. The present highroad from Athens to
Eleusis follows very closely the line of the
Sacred Way. This road, running in a north-westerly
direction, soon passes on the left the
Botanic Garden, conspicuous by its tall and
stately poplars, and enters the broad belt of
olive-wood which still extends, as it doubtless
extended in antiquity, along both sides of the
Cephisus for mile after mile. Through this
wood of ancient olives, with their massive
gnarled trunks and pale green foliage, the road
runs for more than a mile, crossing several
arms of the Cephisus, which are generally dry
and dusty, the water being diverted in many
petty rivulets to feed the olive-yards and gardens.
Beyond the olive-wood the road at first gradually
ascends through a bare stony tract where nothing
grows but thistles; then it climbs more steeply
the arid and rocky slopes of Mount Aegaleus,
.bn 220.png
.pn +1
which it crosses by a narrow but easy pass,
enclosed on both sides by low and desolate
heights. Near the summit of the pass a round
isolated hill, crowned by a church of St. Elias,
rises conspicuously on the right. From this
point of the road there is a famous view backward
over the Athenian plain. The scene is
especially striking at sunset, when the acropolis,
rising high above the olive-woods, with its
temples lit up by the dying splendour of the
sun, stands out against a background of purple
mountains. A little farther on the road turns
and begins to descend, and Athens is lost to
sight.
About a mile farther on we pass the deserted
monastery of Daphni, which probably occupies
the site of the sanctuary of Apollo mentioned
by Pausanias. It stands on the left of the road
enclosed by a high battlemented wall above
which rises the dome of its Byzantine church.
Beyond the monastery the road descends rapidly
towards the shore. Here the ancient road may
be traced for a long way on the north side of
the pass, running parallel to the modern highway
on the left bank of a dry water-course
which descends from the monastery. The road
was partly cut in the rock, partly supported by
a wall of rough stones on the side of the water-course.
As the road descends the sea appears
at the farther end of it, framed between the
.bn 221.png
.pn +1
stony slopes of the hills which enclose the pass.
Farther on, the pass opening out, we see
stretched below us, like a lake, the deep blue
waters of the landlocked Gulf of Salamis, shut
in on the south by the bare but beautifully outlined
hills of Salamis, on the north by a graceful
sweep of the Attic coast, and backed by the
distant heights of Cithaeron and the mountains
of Megara on the west. Through a dip between
the hills of Salamis and the mainland
may be seen in clear weather the far conspicuous
peak of Cyllene in Arcadia with its crown of
snow.
A mile or so after passing the monastery
we see on the right of the road some ancient
masonry and large blocks of stone at the foot
of a rugged wall of rock, in the face of which
many niches are cut. This is the sanctuary
of Aphrodite mentioned by Pausanias. Soon
after this point the hills retire on both sides
and the pass ends in a little plain, barren and
waterless but partially planted with olives,
beside the shore. Here the road turns sharply
to the right and, following the shore, runs
northward, hemmed in between the sea on the
one side and the grey arid slopes of Mount
Aegaleus on the other. Soon, however, the
hills trend inland a little, leaving between the
foot of their declivities and the road a small
lake or large pond of clear salt-water, fed by a
.bn 222.png
.pn +1
number of copious salt-springs, the ancient
Rhiti. The pond is formed by damming up
the water of these springs by means of a stone
dyke or embankment, beside which the modern
road runs on a narrow strip of sand between
the pond on the right and the sea on the left.
Fiedler observed flying-fish of the size of herrings
rising from the surface of the pool: he says
their flesh is white and succulent, better than
that of the sea fish in the neighbouring bay.
In antiquity, as Pausanias tells us, the right of
fishing here was strictly preserved by the priests
of Eleusis. A strong stream, turning a mill,
flows out of the pool into the sea. At the
farther end of the pond Mount Aegaleus sends
down its last spur close to the road; after
passing it the road skirts on the right another
salt-pool and enters the Thriasian plain. The
stream which issues from the second of the two
salt-ponds turns, or rather used to turn, another
mill. Opinions have differed as to whether
the ancient road ran, like the modern highway,
between the salt-pools and the sea, or skirted
the foot of the hills, making a circuit round the
pools. In any case it seems probable that in
antiquity the water of the salt-springs was not
dammed up as at present so as to form pools,
but was allowed to flow directly into the sea in
brooks which hence received the name of Rhiti
(‘streams’).
.bn 223.png
.pn +1
After entering the Thriasian plain the road
continues to skirt the shore. As the ground is
here low and marshy, the road is raised on a
causeway, which consists of ancient materials
mixed with those of later ages. This causeway
therefore marks the line of the Sacred Way.
On the right of it, about half a mile beyond
the salt-pools, where the road to Kalyvia
branches off across the plain to the right, there
are remains of an ancient monument, which
appears to have consisted originally of a cubical
mass of earth, cased with white marble and
supporting a tombstone. An inscription proves
that the monument marked the tomb of one
Strato, his wife Polla (Paula) Munatia, and his
son Isidotus. This sepulchre, one of the many
sepulchres which lined the Sacred Way in
antiquity, is not mentioned by Pausanias.
The Thriasian plain, through which the
Sacred Way led to Eleusis, is surrounded by
mountains and hills except on the south, where
it is bounded by the Gulf of Salamis. It is
about nine miles long from east to west, and
five miles wide at the broadest part, from north
to south. The northern and western parts of
the plain are stony and barren. Nearer the
sea there is a tract of fertile cornland, but it
does not extend much to the north of Eleusis
itself. The monotony of the otherwise treeless
expanse is broken here and there by some
.bn 224.png
.pn +1
scattered olive-trees and oaks. In spring and
early summer the plain is gaily carpeted
in places with anemones, red, purple, and
blue.
.h2 id=ch11 title='XI. — The Hall of Initiation at Eleusis.'
.ti 0
XI. The Hall of Initiation at Eleusis.—The
great Hall of Initiation, to which the
paved road leads from the smaller portal, is
a vast single chamber about a hundred and
seventy feet square, the sides of which face
north, south, east, and west. The whole of the
west side, together with the western parts of
the northern and southern sides, are bounded
by the rock of the acropolis, which has been
cut away perpendicularly to make room for the
hall. The roof was supported by six rows of
columns, seven columns in each row: the bases
of all these columns except one are still to be
seen in their places. Eight tiers of steps,
partly cut in the rock, partly built, ran all
round the chamber except at the entrances, of
which there were six, namely, two on the north,
two on the east, and two on the south. On
these tiers of steps the initiated probably sat
watching the performance of the mysteries
which took place in the body of the hall. It
is calculated that about three thousand people
could find room on them. The steps, originally
narrow, were widened at a later date by a
.bn 225.png
.pn +1
casing of marble. That this marble casing of
the steps is a late work appears from the use
of mortar to fasten it on.
There are passages of ancient writers which
seem to imply that besides the place to which
the initiated had access there was an inner
Holy of Holies called the anaktoron or megaron,
which none but the high-priest of the mysteries
might enter, and which, being suddenly thrown
open, disclosed to the view of the awestruck
beholders the most sacred objects of their religious
veneration lit up by a blaze of dazzling
light. But no trace of any inner chamber or
enclosure has been discovered in the great Hall
of Initiation. It may therefore be suggested
that the anaktoron or megaron was perhaps
nothing but the body of the hall, which may
have been screened by curtains from the spectators
sitting in darkness on the tiers of seats
that ran all round it, till suddenly the curtain
rose and revealed the vast hall brilliantly
illuminated, with the gorgeously attired actors
in the sacred drama moving mazily in solemn
procession or giddy dance out and in amongst
the forest of columns that rose from the floor
of the hall, while the strains of grave or voluptuous
music filled the air. Then, when all was
over, the curtain would as suddenly descend,
leaving the spectators in darkness and silence,
with nothing but the memory of the splendid
.bn 226.png
.pn +1
pageant that had burst upon them and vanished
like a dream.
.h2 id=ch12 title='XII. — Eleutherae.'
.ti 0
XII. Eleutherae.—From Eleusis the road
to Eleutherae, which is at the same time the
highway from Athens to Thebes, goes north-west
across the plain. The olive-trees begin to
appear soon after we have left Eleusis, and the
road runs for three miles through thick groves
of them to the large village of Mandra situated
on a small height at the entrance to a valley;
for here the mountains which bound the plain
of Eleusis begin. The native rock crops up
among the houses and streets of the village.
The hills that rise on both sides of the valley
are wooded with pine. Beyond the village the
valley contracts, and the road ascends for a long
time through the stillness and solitude of the
pine-forest. A little wayside inn (the khan of
Palaio-Koundoura) is passed in a lonely dale;
and then, after a further ascent, the prospect
opens up somewhat, and the tops of Hymettus
and Pentelicus are seen away to the east, appearing
above a nearer range of hills. Soon
afterwards the road descends into a cultivated
and fertile little plain or valley watered by the
chief arm of the Eleusinian Cephisus, and
bounded on the north by the principal range
of Cithaeron, on the south by the lower outlying
.bn 227.png
.pn +1
chain which we have just crossed. This no
doubt is the plain in which stood the temple
of Dionysus mentioned by Pausanias. At the
northern end of the valley or plain there is now
a police-barrack on the right of the road, and
near it a public-house, the khan of Kasa. Here
the pass over Cithaeron, in the strict sense, begins.
It is a narrow rocky defile, up which the road
winds tortuously between high pine-clad slopes
on either hand. In the very mouth of the
pass, immediately beyond the barrack, a steep,
conical, nearly isolated hill rises up as if to bar
the road. Its summit is crowned with the grey
walls and towers of Eleutherae.
The ruins of Eleutherae, now called Gyphtokastro
or ‘Gypsy-castle,’ form one of the finest
extant specimens of Greek fortification. The
circuit of the walls, which is but small, encloses
the summit and part of the southern slope of
the hill. The north wall, strengthened with
eight square projecting towers, is nearly complete.
It is about eight feet thick, and is built
of blocks laid in regular courses, with a core
of rubble. As the ground falls away to the
north, the wall is higher on the outside than on
the inside. The towers are about thirty paces
apart. Most of them entered from the ramparts
by two doors, one on each side of the tower.
These doors are still to be seen, though the
floors of the upper stories, having been of wood,
.bn 228.png
.pn +1
have of course perished. Each tower has three
small windows or loopholes, one in each of the
sides which project outward beyond the curtain.
Traces of the wall and towers on the other and
lower sides of the hill can still be seen, but they
are far less perfect than on the north side. The
chief gate was on the south. The whole place
is now an utter solitude. When I first visited
it, on a day in May, the ground was carpeted
with yellow flowers; goats were balancing themselves
on the grey ruins; and the goatherd was
sleeping in the shadow of one of the towers.
On either hand the mountains, clothed in their
sombre mantle of dark pine-forests, towered into
the bright sky.
If from the ruins of Eleutherae we return to
the highroad which winds along the western foot
of the hill, and follow it for a few miles to the
top of the pass, we obtain a commanding view
over the wide plain of Boeotia stretching away
to the line of far blue mountains which bounds
it on all sides. Below us, but a little to the
west, at the foot of the long uniform slope of
Cithaeron, the red village of Kokla marks the
site of Plataea. Thebes is hidden from view
behind the dip of a low intervening ridge. The
sharp double-peaked mountain on the west,
beyond the nearer fir-clad declivities of
Cithaeron, is Helicon. The grand mountain
mass which, capped with snow, looms on the
.bn 229.png
.pn +1
north-west, is Parnassus. The mountains on
the north-east are in Euboea, but the strait
which divides them from Boeotia is not visible.
.h2 id=ch13 title='XIII. — Megara.'
.ti 0
XIII. Megara.—From Eleusis to Megara
by road or railway is about fourteen miles.
The road first passes along the northern side
of the low ridge which formed the acropolis of
Eleusis; then it turns down to the sea and
follows the shore. The plain of Eleusis is
divided from the plain of Megara by a chain of
wooded hills which advances southward from
Mount Cithaeron to the shore of the bay. The
road skirts the foot of these hills, ascending and
descending, traversing olive-groves, and winding
round little bays and headlands, commanding
views, ever shifting but ever beautiful, of the
coast of Salamis across the blue and blue-green
waters of the lake-like bay, which is here so
narrow that the white monastery of Phaneromene,
with its clustered domes and turrets, can
be plainly seen standing among green fields on
the opposite shore. Then, when the last spur
of the hills is rounded, the plain of Megara,
covered with olives and vines, and backed by
high mountains, opens out before us. In the
distance can be distinguished the picturesque
oriental-looking town of Megara, with its white
houses rising in terraces, one above the other,
.bn 230.png
.pn +1
on the sides of two isolated hills in the far
corner of the plain: the higher of the two hills
used to be crowned by a square mediaeval
tower.
The modern town is chiefly confined to the
western hill, the southern slope of which it
occupies to the summit. Its narrow steep
streets, and white-washed, flat-roofed, windowless
houses, with low doorways opening into
courts shaded here and there by a fig-tree, have
much the appearance of an Arab village. The
dazzlingly white walls make, in the brilliant
sunshine, an excellent background for the gay
costumes of the women, the bright colours of
which (red, green, blue, violet) add to the
Eastern effect of the scene.
.h2 id=ch14 title='XIV. — The Scironian Road.'
.ti 0
XIV. The Scironian Road.—The famous
pass along the sea-cliffs, known in antiquity as
the Scironian Road, is thus described by Strabo:
“The Scironian cliffs leave no passage between
them and the sea. The road from the Isthmus
to Megara and Attica runs along the top of
them; indeed in many places it is compelled
by the beetling mountain, which is high and
inaccessible, to skirt the brink of the precipices.”
The dread of robbers, who here lay in wait for
travellers, enhanced the natural horrors of the
pass in ancient as well as in modern times.
.bn 231.png
.pn +1
In recent years these horrors have been dissipated
by the construction of a highroad and
a railway along the coast; but down to the
middle of the present century, if we may trust
the descriptions of travellers, the cliff-path well
deserved its modern name of Kake Skala or
‘the Evil Staircase.’ For six miles it ran
along a narrow crumbling ledge half-way up
the face of an almost sheer cliff, at a height of
six to seven hundred feet above the sea. On
the right rose the rock like a wall; on the left
yawned the dizzy abyss, where, far below, the
waves broke at the foot of the precipices in a
broad sheet of white curdling foam. So narrow
was the path that only a single sure-footed
beast could make its way with tolerable security
along it. In stormy or gusty weather it was
dangerous; a single slip or stumble would
have been fatal. When two trains of mules
met, the difficulty of passing each other was
extreme. Indeed at the beginning of the
present century Colonel Leake pronounced the
path impassable for horses; and at a later
time, when it had been somewhat mended,
another distinguished traveller, himself a Swiss,
declared that he knew of no such giddy track,
used by horses, in all Switzerland. In many
places the narrow path had been narrowed still
further by its outer edge having given way
and slid into the depths, so that it was only by
.bn 232.png
.pn +1
using the utmost caution that the traveller was
able to scramble along at all. At one point,
where it crossed the mouth of a gully, the road
had completely disappeared, having either fallen
into the sea or, according to another account,
been blown up in the War of Independence.
Here therefore the wayfarer was obliged to
pick his steps down a breakneck track which
zigzagged down to the narrow strip of beach,
from which he had laboriously to clamber up
by a similar track on the opposite side of the
gully. One traveller has graphically described
how his baggage-horses slid and slipped on their
hind feet down one of these tracks, while their
drivers hung on to the tails of the animals
to check their too precipitate descent. Last
century the path had ceased to be used even
by foot-passengers. Chandler took boat at
Nisaea and coasted along the foot of the cliffs,
looking up with amazement at the narrow
path carried along the edge of perpendicular
precipices above the breakers and supported
so slenderly beneath “that a spectator may
reasonably shudder with horror at the idea of
crossing.”
Nothing was easier than to make such a
path impassable. Accordingly when word
reached Peloponnese that Leonidas and his
men had been annihilated by the Persians at
Thermopylae, the Peloponnesians hurried to
.bn 233.png
.pn +1
the Isthmus, blocked up the Scironian road,
and built a fortification wall across the Isthmus.
In modern times, though the path had fallen
into decay, it still showed traces of having
been used and cared for in antiquity. In
many places the marks of the chariot-wheels
were visible in the rock; in other places there
were remains of massive substructions of
masonry which had once supported and
widened the road; and here and there pieces
of ancient pavement were to be seen. These
were probably vestiges of the carriage road
which, as Pausanias tells us, the emperor
Hadrian constructed along this wild and
beautiful coast. At the present day, as the
traveller is whirled along it in the train, he
is struck chiefly by the blueness of the sea
and the greenness of the thick pine-woods
which mantle the steep shelving sides of the
mountains.
.h2 id=ch15 title='XV. — The Isthmus of Corinth.'
.ti 0
XV. The Isthmus of Corinth.—The
Isthmus of Corinth, which unites Peloponnese
on the south to the mountainous district of
Megara and Central Greece on the north, is
a low flat neck of land about three and a half
miles wide at the narrowest part and about
two hundred and sixty feet high at the lowest
point, stretching roughly in a direction from
.bn 234.png
.pn +1
south-west to north-east. The central part is
a flat tableland, which shelves away in steep
terraces to the sea on the southern side. Its
surface is rugged, barren, and waterless; where
it is not quite bare and stony, it is mostly
overgrown with stunted shrubs and dwarf
pines, or with thistles and other prickly plants
of a grey arid aspect. There is no underwood
and no turf. In spring some grass and
herbage sprout in patches among the thistles
and afford pasture to flocks. The niggard
soil, where soil exists, is cultivated in a rude
imperfect way, and yields some scanty crops,
mostly of wheat and barley. But in the
drought of summer every green blade disappears,
and the fields are little more than a
bare stony wilderness swept by whirling clouds
of dust. This rugged barren quality of the
soil was equally characteristic of the Isthmus
in antiquity. It seems to have been customary
to gather the stones from the fields before
sowing the seed.
In ancient times ships of small burden were
regularly dragged on rollers or waggons across
the narrowest part of the Isthmus in order
to avoid the long voyage round Peloponnese;
hence this part of the Isthmus was known as
the Diolkos or Portage. The Portage began on
the east at Schoenus, near the modern Kalamaki;
its western termination is not mentioned
.bn 235.png
.pn +1
by ancient writers, but was probably near the
west end of the modern canal. We read of fleets
of warships being transported across the Isthmus;
for example after the battle of Actium
the victorious Augustus thus conveyed his
ships across the Isthmus in pursuit of Antony
and Cleopatra, and in 883 A.D. the Greek
admiral Nicetas Oriphas transported a fleet
across it to repel an attack of the Saracens.
Some remains of the ancient Portage, which
seems to have been a sort of tramway, may
still be seen near a guard-house, at the point
where the road from Kalamaki to Corinth
crosses the northern of the two ancient fortification
walls.
The lowest and narrowest part of the
Isthmus, through which the Portage went in
antiquity and the modern canal now runs, is
bounded on the south by a line of low cliffs.
Along the crest of these cliffs may be traced
the remains of an ancient fortification wall
stretching right across the Isthmus from sea to
sea. It is built of large blocks laid in fairly
regular courses, and is flanked by square towers
which project from the curtain at regular intervals
of about a hundred yards on the north
side, showing that the wall was meant to protect
the Corinthian end of the Isthmus against
invasion from the north. The wall does not
extend in a straight line, but follows the crest
.bn 236.png
.pn +1
of the cliffs, wherever this natural advantage
presented itself.
.h2 id=ch16 title='XVI. — The Bath of Aphrodite.'
.ti 0
XVI. The Bath of Aphrodite.—The
lower spring, which Pausanias took to be
Pirene, has sometimes been identified with the
copious springs now known as ‘the bath of
Aphrodite.’ They issue just below the steep
northern edge of the broad terrace on which
the old city of Corinth stood. Here the rocks
curve round in a semicircle and overhang so
as to form grottoes under their beetling brows.
From these rocks, overgrown with moss and
rank creepers, the clear water bubbles and
trickles in copious rills, which nourish a rich
vegetation in the open ground through which
they flow. The grotto, which is always fresh
and cool, commands an uninterrupted view
over the Gulf to the mountains beyond. Here
in the days of the Turkish dominion the bey
of Corinth had his gardens, where he led
a life of Asiatic luxury. A staircase still
leads from the grotto to the terrace above, on
the edge of which stood his seraglio. All is
now ruin and desolation. A few pieces of
ancient columns of green and white streaked
marble mark the site of the seraglio. The
spring is frequented only by washerwomen,
and its streams water only vegetable gardens
.bn 237.png
.pn +1
and orchards. But the water is as sweet as in
Pausanias’s time, and the grottoes under the
overhanging ledge of rock might pass for “the
chambers made like grottoes” of which he
makes mention.[6]
.fm rend=th
.fn 6
However, the true Pirene described by Pausanias has lately
been discovered elsewhere by the American archaeologists who
are now excavating the site of ancient Corinth.
.fn-
.fm rend=th
.h2 id=ch17 title='XVII. — The Prospect from Acro-Corinth.'
.ti 0
XVII. The Prospect from Acro-Corinth.—The
view from the summit of Acro-Corinth
has been famous since the days of Strabo, who
has accurately described it. The brilliant foreground,
indeed, on which he looked down has
vanished. The stately city with its temples, its
terraced gardens, its colonnades, its fountains,
is no more. In its place there is spread out
at our feet the flat yellowish expanse of the
Isthmus, stretching like a bridge across the sea
to the point where the Geranian mountains,
their slopes clothed with the sombre green of
the pine-forests, rise abruptly like a massive
barrier at its farther end, sending out on their
western side a long promontory, which cuts far
into the blue waters of the Corinthian Gulf.
Across the Gulf tower on the north the bold
sharp peaks of Cithaeron and Helicon in
Boeotia. On the north-west Parnassus lifts
its mighty head, glistering with snow into late
.bn 238.png
.pn +1
spring, but grey and bare in summer. In the
far west loom the Locrian and Aetolian mountains,
seeming to unite with the mountains of
Peloponnese on the south, and thus apparently
converting the Gulf of Corinth into an inland
mountain-girdled lake. To the south-west,
above ranges of grey limestone hills dotted
with dark pines, soar the snowy peaks of
Cyllene and Aroania in Arcadia. On the
south the prospect is shut in by the high tablelands
and hills of Argolis, range beyond range,
the lower slopes of the valleys covered in
spring with corn-fields, their upper slopes with
tracts of brushwood. Eastward Salamis and
the sharp-peaked Aegina are conspicuous. In
this direction the view is bounded by the hills
of Attica—the long ridge of Hymettus and the
more pointed summits of Pentelicus and Parnes,
while below them in clear weather the Parthenon
is distinctly visible on the Acropolis
nearly fifty miles away, the pinnacle of Lycabettus
rising over it crowned with its white far-gleaming
chapel.
.h2 id=ch18 title='XVIII. — The Capture of Corinth by Aratus.'
.ti 0
XVIII. The Capture of Corinth by
Aratus.—The story of the capture of Corinth
by Aratus has been told by Plutarch with a
wealth of picturesque details which he doubtless
took from the Memoirs written by Aratus
.bn 239.png
.pn +1
himself. The city, and especially the lofty
and precipitous acropolis of Corinth, was held
for King Antigonus by a Macedonian garrison.
Aratus resolved to take the place by a night
surprise. For this perilous service he picked
out four hundred men, and led them to one
of the city-gates. It was midsummer: a full
moon rode in a cloudless sky, and the assailants
feared that its bright beams, reflected from
so many helmets and spears, might betray
their approach to the sentinels on the walls.
But just as the head of the column neared the
gate, a heavy bank of clouds came scudding
up from the sea and veiled the moon, blotting
out the line of walls and shrouding the storming-party
in darkness. Favoured by the gloom
eight men, in the guise of travellers, crept up
to the gate and put the sentinels to the sword.
Ordering the rest of his men to follow him at
the best speed they could make, Aratus now
advanced at the head of a forlorn hope of one
hundred men, planted the ladders, scaled the
wall, and descended into the city. Not a soul
was stirring in the streets, and Aratus hurried
along in the direction of the acropolis, congratulating
himself on escaping observation,
when a patrol of four men was seen coming
down the street with flaring torches. The
moon shone full on them, but Aratus and his
men were in shadow. Aratus whispered his
.bn 240.png
.pn +1
men to stand close in the shadow of the houses.
The unsuspecting patrol came on: in a minute
three of them were cut down, and the fourth
escaped with a gash on his head, crying out
that the enemy were within the walls. A few
minutes more and the trumpets rang out and
the whole city was up. The streets, lately
silent and deserted, were thronged with crowds
hurrying to and fro; lights glanced at the
windows; and high above the city a line of
twinkling points of fire marked the summit of
the acropolis. At the same time a confused
hum of voices broke on the ear from all sides.
Undeterred by these symptoms of the gathering
storm, Aratus pressed up the winding path
towards the acropolis as fast as the steep and
rugged nature of the ground allowed.
Meantime the three hundred men whom he
had left behind, bewildered by the sudden uproar,
the flashing of multitudinous lights, and all
the tumult of the rudely awakened city, missed
the path up the acropolis and, knowing not
whither to turn, halted under an overhanging
crag at the foot of the mountain. Here they
remained in a state of the utmost anxiety and
alarm. For by this time Aratus was hotly
engaged with the garrison on the summit, and
the noise of battle and of distant cheering came
floating down to them, but so faint with distance,
so broken and distorted by the reverberation
.bn 241.png
.pn +1
of the cliffs, that the men below, listening
intently, could not tell from which direction
the sounds proceeded. While they were still
crouching under the shadow of the precipice,
they were startled by a loud peal of trumpets
close at hand, and peering through the gloom
they perceived a large body of men marching
past them up the slope. It was the king’s
troops hastening to the relief of the garrison
on the acropolis. Instantly the three hundred
charged out from their lurking-place, and taking
the enemy completely by surprise, broke them
and drove them in confusion towards the city.
They were still flushed with victory when a
messenger came hurrying down at breakneck
speed from the citadel, telling them that Aratus
was at it, cut and thrust, with the garrison, who
stood bravely to their arms, and imploring
them to hasten to his assistance. They bade
him lead the way; and as they toiled upwards
they shouted to let their comrades know that
help was at hand. By this time the clouds
had passed over and the sky was again clear;
and so all up the weary ascent they could see
the weapons of friend and foe glittering in the
moonlight, as the fight swayed this way and
that, and could hear their hoarse cries, multiplied
apparently a thousandfold as they rolled
down on the night air from crag to crag. At
last they reached the top, and charging side by
.bn 242.png
.pn +1
side with their friends, forced the enemy from
the walls. Day was beginning to break when
Aratus and his men stood victorious on the
summit.
.h2 id=ch19 title='XIX. — Sicyon.'
.ti 0
XIX. Sicyon.—Few ancient cities were
more advantageously or beautifully situated
than Sicyon. Built on a spacious and level
tableland, defended on every side by cliffs,
abundantly supplied with water, at a distance
both safe and convenient from the sea, which,
lying beyond a strip of fertile plain, sends its
cool refreshing breezes to temper the summer
heat, the city possessed a site secure, wholesome,
and adapted both for agriculture and
commerce. Nor are the natural beauties of
the site less remarkable than its more material
advantages. Behind it rise wooded mountains
and in front of it, across the narrow plain,
is stretched the wonderful panorama of the
Corinthian Gulf, with Helicon, Cithaeron, and
Parnassus towering beyond it to the north,
and the mighty rock of Acro-Corinth barring
the prospect on the east. At sunrise and sunset
especially the scene is one of indescribable
loveliness. The ancients themselves were not
insensible to the charms of Sicyon. “A lovely
and fruitful city, adapted to every recreation,”
says a scholiast on Homer, and Diodorus
.bn 243.png
.pn +1
speaks of Sicyon as a place “for peaceful enjoyment.”
.h2 id=ch20 title='XX. — Phliasia.'
.ti 0
XX. Phliasia.—The valley of the Asopus
above Sicyon is a deep and narrow glen shut
in on either hand by mountains, the steep sides
of which are thickly overgrown with bushes.
In some places, where the road is hemmed in
between the roots of the mountain and the
white, turbid, rushing river, the bank is occasionally
undermined and swept away by the stream,
and the path disappears altogether. In its
upper reaches the glen widens so as to admit
of here and there a small riverside meadow,
prettily situated among oaks and shrubbery,
with now and then a patch of ploughed land.
After we have followed the glen upwards from
Sicyon for about four hours, it opens out into
a broad and fertile plain, encircled by steep
mountains, down which brooks flow on all
sides to join the Asopus. This upland plain,
some four miles long and standing about a
thousand feet above the sea, is Phliasia, the
district of which Phlius was the ancient capital.
On the west its level expanse is bounded by
the picturesque, rugged, woody mass of Mount
Gavria (about five thousand feet high), above
which appears the snowy top of the lofty
Cyllene in Arcadia. The eastern side of the
.bn 244.png
.pn +1
valley is bounded by the Tricaranian range,
which with its three flat summits divides the
Phliasian valley from the vale of Nemea. The
Asopus rises among the southern hills and
flows northward through the valley in a deep
grassy bed. It is here a clear and tranquil
stream, very different from the rapid and turbid
river which it becomes in the glen below, where
it takes its colour from the soil which is washed
down into it by the numerous torrents from the
white argillaceous mountains through which it
threads its way. About the middle of the
plain it is joined by a tributary, longer than
the Asopus itself, flowing from the mountains
which enclose the south-western corner of the
plain. The soil of the Phliasian valley is
excellent; the central part of it is given up
almost exclusively to vineyards which furnish
now, as they did in antiquity, a fine fiery wine
like Burgundy. In autumn the red and golden
foliage of the fading vines lends a richer glow
of colour to the beautiful landscape.
Some light is thrown on the topography of
Phlius by the events which followed the battle
of Leuctra. The Phliasians had been friends
of Sparta when Sparta was at the height of
her power; and after the disastrous day of
Leuctra, when Sparta was deserted by allies
and subjects alike, the Phliasians stood loyally
by their old friends. This drew down on them
.bn 245.png
.pn +1
the hostility of the victorious Thebans and
their allies. In 368 B.C. a body of Arcadians
and Eleans, marching through the pass of
Nemea to join the Thebans, were induced by
some Phliasian exiles to make an attempt to
surprise and capture Phlius. Six hundred
men, supplied with ladders, being sent in
advance, concealed themselves by night at the
foot of the citadel walls. Next morning the
sentinels on Mount Tricaranum, to the east of
the town, signalled the approach of the enemy
from the valley of Nemea. The eyes of the
citizens were thus turned to the hills, over
which they momentarily expected to see the
enemy appearing. Taking advantage of their
distraction the six hundred men under the
acropolis planted their ladders and were soon
masters of the almost deserted citadel. But
the citizens rallied, and after a fierce struggle
drove the enemy with fire and sword over the
ramparts.
Next year the allies made a more determined
attempt to get possession of Phlius.
The Theban commander at Sicyon marched
from that city against Phlius at the head of
his garrison and of a body of Sicyonian and
Pellenian troops. He was supported by
Euphron, tyrant of Sicyon, with two thousand
mercenaries. The attack was again made
from the hills on the east of the town. On
.bn 246.png
.pn +1
the neck of land which joins the citadel of
Phlius with the hills a detachment of Sicyonians
and Pellenians was posted, to prevent the
Phliasians from ascending the hills and taking
their enemies in the rear. The rest of the
army then descended from the hills in the
direction of a sanctuary of Hera, meaning to
ravage the corn-fields and vineyards in the
valley. But the Phliasian cavalry and infantry
met them and prevented them from carrying
out their intention. Skirmishing went on most
of the day with varying fortune. At one time
Euphron with his mercenaries drove the
Phliasians over the broken ground. But as
soon as they reached open ground, where the
Phliasian cavalry could come into play, they
were in turn driven back up the hills as far as
the sanctuary of Hera. At last the assailants
abandoned the attack and retreated up the hill,
purposing to join the detachment of Sicyonians
and Pellenians, which they had left on the
neck of ground leading to the citadel. To
reach them they had to make a long detour
up the hill, for a ravine lay between them and
their friends, the ravine namely along which
the city walls were built. The Phliasians
pursued them up hill a little way, then perceiving
the enemy’s intention of forming a
junction with the detachment on the neck
they turned back, and taking a short cut close
.bn 247.png
.pn +1
under the town walls hastened to attack the
detachment of the enemy before the main
body could come up to their assistance. In
this race the cavalry outstripped the infantry
and charged the Pellenians alone. The latter
stood to their arms and repelled the cavalry,
till the Phliasian infantry came running up.
Then, attacked by horse and foot simultaneously,
the Pellenians and Sicyonians gave
way. The victorious Phliasians erected a
trophy and sang a loud paean. The enemy
watched the scene from the hills; then, drawing
together his beaten and scattered forces,
fell sullenly back on Sicyon.
.h2 id=ch21 title='XXI. — Nemea.'
.ti 0
XXI. Nemea.—Between the valley of
Cleonae on the east and the valley of Phlius
or St. George on the west is interposed the
valley of Nemea, running like its sister valleys
from south to north. It is a narrow dale,
some two or three miles long, and from half
to three-quarters of a mile broad. At its
northern end it contracts to a mere gully.
Through the bottom of the valley, which is
almost a dead flat, meanders like a thread the
brook Nemea, fed by the numerous rills which
descend from the neighbouring hills. When
swollen by heavy rain, these tributaries, having
an insufficient outlet through the gully at the
.bn 248.png
.pn +1
north end, keep the bottom of the valley green,
moist, and marshy. The dale is thus better
adapted for pasturage than tillage; indeed
from the rich pastures which clothe its bottom
and the lower slopes of the hills it received its
name of Nemea, ‘the pastoral vale.’ But if
the valley itself, especially after rain, is green
and smiling, the surrounding hills, scarred and
seamed with the beds of torrents, are of a dark
and melancholy hue, and, combined with the
absolute solitude—not a human habitation
being visible through the length and breadth
of the dale—affect the mind with a sense of
gloom and desolation.[7] The solitude is only
broken by the wandering herds of cattle, and
from time to time by a group of peasants,
who come over from St. George to till their
fields in this secluded valley. A white track
winds up the western slope to the mouth of a
glen which opens in the hill-side. Through
this glen is the way to St. George and Phlius.
.fm rend=th
.fn 7
The valley has been less solitary since the village of Herakleia
was founded near the ruined temple of Nemean Zeus.
.fn-
.fm rend=th
.sp 2
.h2 id=ch22 title='XXII. — The Pass of the Tretus.'
.ti 0
XXII. The Pass of the Tretus.—At
the southern end of the valley of Cleonae
there rises like a wall of rock the mountain of
Tretus, which forms the watershed between the
Corinthian and the Argolic gulfs. A straight
.bn 249.png
.pn +1
toilsome path led from Cleonae in antiquity,
and still leads past the village of Hagios
Vasilios, over the mountain, descending into
the Argolic plain at the ruins of Mycenae.
But the more convenient way from the valley
of Cleonae to the plain of Argos bends round
to the west, where the mountain is not so
high, and runs up a gradually ascending gully.
This was the pass of the Tretus, the chief line
of communication between Corinth and the
south. In antiquity it was, as Pausanias tells
us, a driving road, and the ruts worn by the
chariot-wheels can still be seen in many places.
The defile, though long and narrow, shut in
by high mountains on either hand, is nowhere
steep, and the rise is not considerable. The
road runs by a deeply worn watercourse, at
the bottom of which a clear and shallow
stream finds its way amid luxuriant thickets
of oleander, myrtle, and arbutus. The lower
slopes of the mountains are also green with
shrubs, but their upper slopes are grey and
rocky.
The pass is easily defended. On both sides,
towards Cleonae and towards the plain of
Argos, may be seen traces of ancient works
built to defend the defile. Near the highest
point of the pass, where the road begins to
descend towards Argos, there are low Turkish
watch-towers called Derweni on both sides, and
.bn 250.png
.pn +1
rough stone walls such as the Greeks threw
up in many passes during the War of Independence.
In 1822 the Turkish army under
Dramali Pasha, retreating from the plain of
Argos, was caught by the Greeks in the pass
of the Tretus and nearly annihilated; for years
afterwards the defile was strewed with skeletons
and skulls of men and horses.
“Every part of the Argolic plain,” says
Leake, “is considered unhealthy in summer,
and the heat is excessive; that of the ravine
of the Tretus, in the mid-day hours, is said
to be something beyond bearing, which I
can easily conceive, having passed through it
in August, at an hour in the morning when
the heat was comparatively moderate. Not
long since a Tartar, after having drunk plentifully
of wine and raki at Corinth, was found to
be dead when the suriji held his stirrup to
dismount at the khan of Kharvati (Mycenae),
just beyond the exit of the Tretus.”
The name Tretus (‘perforated’) was supposed
by the ancients to be derived from a great cave
in the mountain where the Nemean lion had
his lair. As to the ancient name of the pass,
and the supposed wheel-marks in it, W. G.
Clark says: “This is the road known by the
name of Tretos, or ‘the perforated’; not, I
conceive, in consequence of the caverns in
the neighbouring rocks, which are not more
.bn 251.png
.pn +1
numerous hereabouts than elsewhere, but because
the glen is, as it were, drilled through
the rock. And drilled it has been by the
stream which flows at the bottom. We saw,
or fancied we saw, frequent wheel-marks in the
rocks, and we know that this was the direction
of a carriage road. But from my subsequent
observations I learned to distrust these marks.
The ordinary mode of carrying wood in Greece
is to tie the heavier ends of the poles on each
side to the back of the horse or donkey, and
suffer the other ends to trail along the ground,
thus making two parallel ruts which in course of
time may attain the depth of and be mistaken
for wheel-tracks. When a depression is once
made, it becomes a channel for the winter rains,
and so is smoothed and deepened.”
The modern name of the defile is Dervenaki.
The railway from Corinth to Argos runs through
it. Towards the northern end of the pass the
khan of Dervenaki stands in a little glade
overshadowed by tall poplars, cypresses, and
mulberry-trees, beside a murmuring spring. At
the southern outlet of the pass the whole plain
of Argos, with the mountains on either hand
and the sea in the distance, bursts suddenly on
the view. On the left, nestling at the foot of
the hills, are Mycenae and Tiryns, with Nauplia
and its towering acropolis rising from the sea
and bounding the plain on this side. On the
.bn 252.png
.pn +1
right is Argos with its mountain citadel, and
beyond it the Lernaean lake glimmers faintly
in the distance. In the centre of the picture,
beyond the long foreground of level plain,
stretches the blue line of the Argolic Gulf.
.h2 id=ch23 title='XXIII. — Mycenae.'
.ti 0
XXIII. Mycenae.—Passing southwards
through the pass of the Tretus, we see the
spacious plain of Argolis stretched out before
us. Mycenae lies to our left at the roots of
the mountains which bound the eastern side of
the plain, not far from the point where the pass
of the Tretus opens out on it. The Argolic
plain may be roughly described as a great
triangle, the base of which, on the south, is
formed by the Argolic Gulf, while the eastern
and western sides are enclosed by the ranges of
mountains which converge northwards till they
meet in Mount Tretus. The length of the plain
from north to south is about twelve miles,
the greatest breadth from east to west perhaps
not much less. The mountains which shut
it in are barren and rocky, the highest being
those on the west which form the boundary
between Argolis and Arcadia. The whole
expanse appears to have been once a bay of
the sea, which has been gradually filled up
by the deposits brought down from the surrounding
mountains. The Gulf of Argolis, a
.bn 253.png
.pn +1
broad and beautiful sheet of water winding
between mountains, must originally, before its
upper waters were expelled by the alluvial
deposit, have resembled still more closely, what
it still recalls, a fine Scotch sea-loch or a Norwegian
fiord.
This alluvial plain, situated at the head of
a deep and sheltered frith or arm of the sea,
which opening on the Aegean gave ready
access to the islands of the Archipelago and
the coasts of Asia, was naturally fitted to
become one of the earliest seats of civilisation
in Greece. And in point of fact legend and
archaeology combine to show that in prehistoric
times Greek civilisation reached a very high
pitch in the plain of Argolis. It contained at
least three fortified towns of great importance,
of which remains exist to this day, Tiryns,
Argos, and Mycenae (to mention them in the
order in which they lie from south to north).
Tiryns and Mycenae stand on the eastern,
Argos on the western side of the plain. Of
the three Tiryns is nearest to the sea, from
which it is distant not much more than a mile.
It, or rather its citadel, occupies a low rocky
mound, not a hundred feet above the level of
the sea, and rising in perfect isolation from the
flat. Farther inland Argos lies at the foot of
the last spur which projects into the western
side of the plain from the range of Artemisius.
.bn 254.png
.pn +1
Its citadel, the Larisa, is a fine bold peak
nearly a thousand feet high.
Farther inland, nine miles from the nearest
point of the sea, stands Mycenae, near the
northern extremity of the plain, but on its
eastern side. Its citadel, in respect of elevation
and natural strength, occupies an intermediate
position between the low citadel of
Tiryns and the high mountainous one of Argos.
It lies at the mouth of a wild and narrow
glen, which here opens on the eastern side of
the Argolic plain, between two lofty, steep, and
rocky mountains. From the mouth of this glen
two deep ravines diverge, one running due west,
the other running south-west, and the triangular
tableland which they enclose between them is the
citadel of Mycenae. The whole scene, viewed
from the citadel, is one of desolate grandeur.
The ravines yawning to a great depth at our
feet, the rugged utterly barren mountains
towering immediately across them, the bleak
highland glen winding away into the depth of
these gloomy and forbidding hills, make up a
stern impressive picture, the effect of which is
heightened if one sees it, as the present writer
chanced to do, on a rainy day. Then with a
lowering sky overhead and the mist clinging to
the slopes of the mountains, no sound heard
but the patter of the rain and the tinkling of
sheep-bells from the glen, the whole landscape
.bn 255.png
.pn +1
seems to frown and assumes an aspect more
in keeping with the mist-wrapt stronghold of
some old robber chief in Skye or Lochaber, than
with the conception which the traveller had
formed of Agamemnon’s “golden city.”
.h2 id=ch24 title='XXIV. — The End of the Mycenaean Age.'
.ti 0
XXIV. The End of the Mycenaean
Age.—The catastrophe which put an end to
the Mycenaean civilisation in Greece would
seem to have been the Dorian invasion, which,
according to the traditional Greek chronology,
befell about the middle of the twelfth century
B.C. That the end of Mycenae and Tiryns was
sudden and violent is proved by the conclusive
evidence which shows that the palaces were
destroyed by fire and that, once destroyed, they
were never rebuilt. The date, too, of the
Dorian invasion, so far as we can determine it,
harmonises well with this view; for the Egyptian
evidence of the existence of Mycenae comes
down to about the time of the Dorian invasion,
and there significantly stops. The cessation
also of the characteristic Mycenaean pottery
about the same date points to the same conclusion.
It is not indeed to be supposed that the
Dorians swept over Greece in one unbroken
wave of conquest. The tide of invasion probably
ebbed and flowed; raids were met and
repelled, but were followed by incursions of
.bn 256.png
.pn +1
fresh swarms of invaders, the new-comers
steadily gaining ground, encroaching on and
enveloping the ancient Mycenaean kingdoms
till, the last barrier giving way before them, the
capitals themselves were stormed, their treasures
plundered, and the palaces given to the flames.
The conflict between civilisation and barbarism,
the slow decline of the former and the gradual
triumph of the latter, may have lasted many
years. It is thus that many, if not most, permanent
conquests have been effected. It was
thus that the Saxons step by step ousted the
Britons, and the Danes obtained a footing in
England; it was thus that the Turks slowly
strangled the Byzantine empire. Events like
the fall of Constantinople and the expulsion of
the Moors from Granada are only the last
scenes in tragedies which have been acting for
centuries.
To attribute, with some writers, the creation
instead of the destruction of the Mycenaean
civilisation to the Dorians is preposterous, since
the Dorian immigration did not take place till
the twelfth century B.C., while the Mycenaean
civilisation is known from Egyptian evidence to
have existed from the middle of the fifteenth
century B.C. at least. But this attribution involves
other than chronological difficulties. The
typical Dorians were the Spartans, and no
greater contrast can well be conceived than
.bn 257.png
.pn +1
that between the luxurious semi-Oriental civilisation
of Mycenae and the stern simplicity of
Sparta. On the one side we see imposing
fortifications, stately tombs, luxurious baths,
magnificent palaces, their walls gay with bright
frescoes or glittering with burnished bronze,
their halls crowded with a profusion of precious
objects of art and luxury, wrought by native
craftsmen or brought by merchants from the
bazaars of Egypt and Assyria; and in the
midst of all a sultan, laden with golden jewellery,
listening to minstrels singing the tale of
Troy or the wanderings of Ulysses. On the
other side we see an open unfortified city with
insignificant buildings, where art and poetry
never flourished, where gold and silver were
banned, and where even the kings prided themselves
on the meanness of their attire. The
Dorians, if we may judge of them by the
purest specimens of the breed, were just as
incapable of creating the art of Mycenae as the
Turks were of building the Parthenon and St.
Sophia.
Of the Greeks who were rendered homeless
by the Dorian invasion most fled to Asia.
There, on the beautiful island-studded coast,
under the soft Ionian sky, a new Greece arose
which, in its splendid cities, its busy marts, its
solemn fanes, combined Greek subtlety and
refinement with much of Asiatic pomp and
.bn 258.png
.pn +1
luxury. By this long and brilliant after-glow
of the Mycenaean civilisation in Asia we may
judge, as it has been well said, what its meridian
splendour had been in Europe.
.h2 id=ch25 title='XXV. — Mount Arachnaeus.'
.ti 0
XXV. Mount Arachnaeus.—Mount
Arachnaeus is the high naked range on the
left or northern side of the road as you go to
the Epidaurian sanctuary from Argos. The
most remarkable peak is Mount Arna, the
pointed rocky summit which rises immediately
above the village of Ligourio to a height of
over three thousand five hundred feet. The
western summit, Mount St. Elias, is somewhat
higher. From the summit of Mount Arna the
mountains of Megara and Attica are visible. It
might well have been on its top that the beacon
was lighted which flashed to Argos the news of
the fall of Troy. The name Arachnaea is said
to have been still used by the peasantry in the
early part of this century. The altars of Zeus
and Hera upon which, according to Pausanias,
the people sacrificed for rain, appear to have
stood in the hollow between the two peaks, for
there is here a square enclosure of Cyclopean
masonry which would appear to have been an
ancient place of worship.
Mount Arachnaeus and the mountains of the
Argolic peninsula in general are little better than
.bn 259.png
.pn +1
a stony waterless wilderness. The climate is
very dry, and the beds of all the streams are
waterless except after heavy rain. The hardy
little holly-oak and a few dun-coloured shrubs
are almost the only representatives of plant life.
The eye of the traveller is wearied by the grey
monotony of these arid mountains and desert
tablelands, and his feet are cut and bruised by
the sharp stones over which he has painfully to
pick his steps. Nowhere else in Greece, probably,
is the scenery so desolate and forbidding.
.h2 id=ch26 title='XXVI. — Epidaurus.'
.ti 0
XXVI. Epidaurus.—The city of Epidaurus
was five Roman miles distant from the sanctuary
of Aesculapius. But it takes about two hours
and a half to ride the distance, for the road
is very rough. The scenery on the way is
extremely beautiful—a great contrast to the
dull road from Nauplia to the sanctuary. The
path leaves the open valley by a narrow glen
at its northern end, and leads down deeper and
deeper through luxuriantly wooded dells into
the bottom of a wild romantic ravine. Here
we follow the rocky bed of the stream for
some distance between lofty precipitous banks.
Farther on the path ascends the right bank of
the stream, and we ride along it, with the deep
ravine below us on the left and a high wall of
rock on the right. The whole glen, as far as
.bn 260.png
.pn +1
the eye can reach, is densely wooded. Wild
olives, pines, plane-trees, Agnus castus, laurel,
and ivy mantle its steep sides with a robe of
green. In half an hour from the sanctuary
another valley opens on the left, down which
comes the road from Ligourio. After joining
it we continue to follow the glen along a path
darkened by trees and the luxuriant foliage of
the arbutus, while beside us the stream flows
through thickets of myrtle and oleander. In
about half an hour more the valley opens out,
and we see the sea, with the bold rocky headland
of Methana stretching out into it on the
right, the islands of Salamis and Aegina in the
distance, and farther off the Attic coast lying
blue but clear on the northern horizon.
Emerging at last from the valley we cross a
little maritime plain, covered with lemon-groves,
and reach the site of the ancient Epidaurus. Its
position is very lovely. From the little maritime
plain, backed by high mountains with wooded
sides, a rocky peninsula juts out into the sea,
united to the mainland only by a narrow neck
of low marshy ground. It divides two bays
from each other: the northern bay is well
sheltered and probably formed the ancient
harbour; the southern bay is an open roadstead.
The ancient city seems to have lain
chiefly on the peninsula, but to have extended
also to the shores of the two bays. The rocky
.bn 261.png
.pn +1
sides of the peninsula fall steeply into the sea,
and it rises in two peaks to a height of about
two hundred and fifty feet; the eastern peak is
somewhat the higher. On the edge of the cliffs
may be seen in some places, especially on the
southern side of the peninsula, remains of the
strong walls which enclosed the city. They are
built chiefly in the polygonal style, of large
blocks well cut and jointed.
The peninsula, now mostly overgrown with
brushwood and shrubs, commands fine views both
seaward and landward. The coast southward
in the direction of Troezen is very bold and
grand, the mountains rising here abruptly to a
great height from the sea. At the head of the
bay, on the other hand, the hills, wooded with
pines, are lower, and between them appears the
mouth of the valley up which the path leads
through thickly wooded glens to the sacred
grove of Aesculapius.
.h2 id=ch27 title='XXVII. — The Temple in Aegina.'
.ti 0
XXVII. The Temple in Aegina.—The
temple stands on the top of a hill towards the
north-east corner of the island, commanding
superb views over the sea and the coasts of
Attica and Peloponnese. It is distant about
two and a half hours from the town of Aegina.
Travellers from Athens who wish to visit the
temple commonly land in the fine rocky bay of
.bn 262.png
.pn +1
Hagia Marina on the eastern side of the island.
A steep declivity, sparsely wooded with pine-trees,
leads up from the shore of the bay to the
temple. I shall always remember how on a
lovely day in spring we landed here and lay
under the pine-trees, looking down on the
intensely blue but crystalline waters of the bay.
The air was full of the fragrance of the pines,
the yellow broom was in flower at our feet, and
visible across the sea was the coast of Attica.
It was a scene such as Theocritus might have
immortalised.
.h2 id=ch28 title='XXVIII. — The Sanctuary of Poseidon in Calauria.'
.ti 0
XXVIII. The Sanctuary of Poseidon
in Calauria.—The sanctuary is situated very
picturesquely on a saddle between the two
highest peaks of the island, both of which are
covered with pine-woods. A walk of about an
hour brings us to it from Poros, the modern
capital of the island. The path at first skirts
the southern shore of the island for a short way,
then turns and ascends in a north-westerly
direction through the pine-forest. From the
sanctuary, which stands at a height of about six
hundred feet above the sea, beautiful and wide
prospects open between the wooded hills both
to the north and the south. We look down on
the sea with its multitudinous bays, creeks,
promontories, and islands stretched out before
.bn 263.png
.pn +1
us and framed as in a picture between the pine-clad
hills on either hand. A fitter home could
hardly have been found for the sea-god whose
favourite tree—the pine—still mantles the
greater part of the island.
.h2 id=ch29 title='XXIX. — Troezen.'
.ti 0
XXIX. Troezen.—The plain of Troezen
lies between the sea and a range of rough and
rocky hills, wooded with dark evergreens and
stunted trees, which shut it in on the west
and south. The northern part of the plain is
marshy in places, and the marshes breed fever
among the sallow inhabitants of Damala, the
wretched hamlet which nestles among trees at
the foot of the hills in the inmost corner of the
plain, close to the ruins of Troezen. Stretches
of pasture-land, however, and of vineyards
alternate with the swamps; and eastward,
toward the island of Calauria, the plain is well
watered, cultivated like a garden, and verdant
with vines, olives, lemon-groves, and fig-trees.
Seen from the water of the beautiful almost
landlocked bay the green of this rich vegetation,
with the tall dark cypresses towering conspicuously
over all, is refreshing to eyes accustomed
to the arid plains and hills of Greece. At
Damala groves of oranges and lemons yield
the villagers a considerable return. On higher
ground, to the north-west of the village, are the
.bn 264.png
.pn +1
ruins of Troezen. The glorious prospect over
plain and mountain and sea is unchanged;
but of the city itself, which, if we may trust
Pausanias, its people regarded with such fond
patriotic pride, nothing is left but some insignificant
ruins overgrown with weeds and dispersed
amid a wilderness of bushes. An isolated
craggy mountain, rising steeply on the farther
side of a deep ravine, was the ancient acropolis.
The ascent is toilsome, especially if it be made
at noon on an airless summer day with the sun
blazing pitilessly from a cloudless sky, the rocks
so hot that you cannot touch them without pain,
the loose stones slipping at every step, the dry
withered shrubs and herbage crackling under
foot and blinding you with clouds of dust and
down. The wonderful view from the summit,
however, makes amends for the labour of the
ascent, ranging as it does across the green
fertile plain at our feet and away beyond a
bewildering maze of islands, capes, and bays to
Sunium on the north-east and the snowy peak
of Parnassus on the north-west.
Another picturesque bit of scenery, of a
different kind, may be seen by following up the
ravine to the point where at a great height it is
spanned by a single small arch of grey stone,
which the peasants call the Devil’s Bridge. It
carries the path and a tiny aqueduct, hewn out
of one block of stone, across the narrow but
.bn 265.png
.pn +1
profound abyss. High beetling crags rise above
the little bridge; ferns and ivy mantle thickly
one of the rocky sides of the lyn beneath it;
and trees droop over the stream that murmurs
in the depths below. This is the stream which
Pausanias calls the Golden River. Luxuriant
lemon-groves now line its banks where it issues
from the ravine on the plain of Troezen.
.h2 id=ch30 title='XXX. — From Troezen to Epidaurus.'
.ti 0
XXX. From Troezen to Epidaurus.—We
left the ruins of Troezen at half-past twelve
in the afternoon, and rode northward across
the broad flat neck of land which connects the
mountainous peninsula of Methana with the
mainland. In fifty minutes we reached the
shore of the lagoon which is formed at the
head of the Bay of Methana by the Potami
river, the Golden River of Pausanias. After
making a detour round the lagoon we came, at
half-past one, to the beach at the point where
the stream flows out of the lagoon into the
sea. Thence we rode for some way along the
beach, then over a rocky point, after which the
path kept inland a little from the sea. But all
through our journey from Troezen to Kato-Phanari
the mountains rose at no great distance
from us on the left. By half-past two we were
opposite Lesia, a hamlet at the foot of a high
rocky mountain, with a glen on its eastern side,
.bn 266.png
.pn +1
down which comes a stream. But the bed of
the stream, when we crossed it, was dry. Below
the hamlet in the plain are olives. A little before
four o’clock we came to a ruined mediaeval or
modern tower perched on an eminence to our
right, between us and the sea. Near it stands
a small chapel beside a fine carob-tree. The
mountains now advanced to the water’s edge,
and our path led along their bushy and rocky
slopes, winding round bays and headlands at a
considerable height above the sea. Here we
enjoyed fine views across the spacious bay to
the high, mountainous, and rugged peninsula
of Methana, which wears a sombre aspect due
perhaps to the dark colour of its volcanic
rocks. Farther on the path, though never far
from the sea, trended inland and we passed
over a great deal of stony ground mostly
planted with olives. At many places along
our route in the course of the day the peasants
were at work gathering the olives from the
trees. Another feature in the day’s ride was
the great number of carob-trees we passed,
some of them very fine trees, with dark, smooth,
glossy leaves. Finally the path ascended a
steep rocky slope and brought us at half-past
four to the village of Kato-Phanari, very picturesquely
situated high on the side of a mountain,
which a short way above the village rises
up in rugged precipices of grey rock. Twilight
.bn 267.png
.pn +1
was coming on, but enough of daylight remained
to allow me to appreciate the beauty of the
prospect from the loftily situated village across
the sea to the islands, the high conspicuous
peninsula of Methana, and the long line of
headlands stretching away towards Epidaurus,
all bathed in the warm though fast fading light
of a winter evening.
Next morning we left Kato-Phanari soon
after eight o’clock. The path rose steeply up
the mountain-side in view of the sea. In a
little less than an hour we reached Ano-Phanari,
a village overlooking the sea, situated far up
the side of a lofty rocky mountain which faces
southward to the still higher precipitous mountain
on whose seaward face, below the precipices,
stands the lower village of Kato-Phanari.
On this latter mountain, or rather on the
summit of the range to which it belongs, called
Mount Ortholithion, certain ceremonies are said
to have been performed, time out of mind,
by the peasants in seasons of drought and
pestilence.
At Ano-Phanari I heard of remains of an
ancient fortress in the neighbourhood, and
set off with a guide to visit them. A walk
of a few minutes in a north-easterly direction
brought us to the top of the mountain,
where the remains are to be seen. The
situation is a remarkably fine one. Precipices
.bn 268.png
.pn +1
descending towards the sea encircle the summit
on the north and north-east, and the views
across the Saronic Gulf to Aegina, Salamis,
and Megara are magnificent. Some mediaeval
remains, comprising walls and two or more
ruined chapels, are to be seen on the summit,
and on its southern side, towards the village,
there is a ruined fortification wall built of large
irregular blocks. Thus the ancient fortress which
occupied this commanding situation appears to
have been repaired and inhabited in the Middle
Ages. What the name of the place was in
antiquity we do not know.
The villagers called my attention to several
holes in the rocks between the fortress and the
village from which streams of warm air issue.
The air from one of the holes was hot enough
to warm me, though the morning was cold.
In this particular hole, too, I could hear a
rumbling sound as of water boiling or wind
blowing underground.
We left Ano-Phanari about ten o’clock and
descended westward, out of sight of the sea,
into a small trough-like plain or valley surrounded
on all sides by rocky and barren
mountains. Passing some insignificant ruins in
the little plain, we ascended the mountains
northward by a steep rocky path that led into a
narrow upland valley running north and south
and enclosed by hills, the sides of which were
.bn 269.png
.pn +1
shaggy with bushes of various sorts. This
dale we traversed from end to end. Through
a narrow opening or gorge in the mountains
on its eastern side we obtained a striking
glimpse of part of the promontory of Methana,
mostly in shadow, but with gleams of sunshine
resting on it here and there. At the northern
end of the valley, ascending a ridge, we saw
stretched out below us at some depth a wide
open valley of roughly circular shape. Our path,
which was again very rugged, did not descend into
the valley, but skirted its eastern side, keeping
up on the mountain, till it turned eastward
through a gap in the hills. On passing through
the gap a view of the sea with all its coasts
and islands shining in the sun (for after a dull
morning the day had brightened) suddenly
burst upon us. Salamis was conspicuous to
the north, and to the east of it appeared Mount
Pentelicus with the marble quarries visible even
at that distance as white patches on its side.
Far below us lay Epidaurus, its little peninsula
stretching out into the blue bay. We were at
a great height above the sea, but now gradually
descended to it in the direction of Epidaurus
by a steep rugged path running obliquely down
the bushy side of the mountain. Thus we
came at last into a little maritime plain,
traversed it from south to north, and passing
some lemon-groves reached the modern village
.bn 270.png
.pn +1
of Palaea Epidauros or Old Epidaurus about
half-past two.
The village stands on the shore at the
head of a deep narrow sheltered inlet formed
by the peninsula of ancient Epidaurus on
the south and a higher promontory, wooded
with low green pines, on the north. Beside
the village a little headland runs out into the
water; it is crowned with a white-washed
chapel of St. Nicholas, which stands in a large
walled enclosure with two cypress-trees growing
in front of it. The church seems to occupy
the site of the sanctuary of Hera mentioned
by Pausanias.
.h2 id=ch31 title='XXXI. — Methana.'
.ti 0
XXXI. Methana.—Methana is still the
name of the mountainous peninsula which runs
far out into the sea from the coast of Troezen,
forming a very conspicuous landmark in the
Saronic Gulf. The isthmus which joins it to
the mainland, about a thousand feet wide, was
fortified in the Peloponnesian war by the
Athenians, who established a fortified post on
the peninsula, whence they ravaged the coasts
of Troezen and Epidaurus. Remains of the
wall across the isthmus may still be seen with
the two castles on the opposite shores. These
fortifications were renewed in the Middle Ages;
and the Greeks attempted to make use of them
.bn 271.png
.pn +1
in the War of Independence. The peninsula
itself is a mountainous mass of grand and
picturesque outline. In the heart of it the
chief peak, the conical Mount Chelona, rises to
a height of between two and three thousand
feet. Most of the peninsula is of volcanic
origin, the prevailing rock being a dark red
or brown trachyte. The general character of
the scenery is one of barren desolation, the
whole region, with the exception of a few
narrow strips on the coast, being occupied by
the sharp mountain-ridges which radiate from
Mount Chelona. Narrow gullies divide these
ridges from each other. Water is scarce, and
the air dry and hot. The inhabitants, however,
contrive to cultivate patches of ground,
supported by terraces, high up on the mountain
sides. The contrast is great between this
desolate and arid mountain-mass, and the rich
and well-watered plain of Troezen which adjoins
it on the south.
.h2 id=ch32 title='XXXII. — Nauplia.'
.ti 0
XXXII. Nauplia.—Nauplia, now a busy
flourishing seaport, and one of the chief towns
of Greece, occupies the northern side of a
rocky peninsula which juts out westward into
the Argolic Gulf, near the head of the gulf and
on its eastern side. The northern side of the
peninsula is flat, and here the narrow and not
.bn 272.png
.pn +1
too savoury streets of Nauplia are crowded
together. Thus the town looks across the
harbour to the Argolic plain and has no sea-view.
The southern side of the peninsula, at
the back of the town, is a long and lofty rock
called Itsh-Kaleh, which seems to have been the
original citadel of Nauplia; for ancient walls,
built in the polygonal style, may be seen in
places serving as foundations for the mediaeval
and modern fortifications. Other remains of
antiquity exist in the shape of rock-cuttings,
staircases, cisterns, and so forth. The steep
southern slope of the rock is thickly overgrown
with cactus. On the northern side of the peninsula,
between it and the shore of the Argolic
plain, stretches the harbour which gives Nauplia
its commercial importance. Though spacious, it
is very shallow; large steamers have to anchor
far out.
An isthmus connects the peninsula with the
mainland. Immediately on the landward, that
is, eastern side of the isthmus, the massive and
imposing rock of Palamidi, one of the strongest
fortresses in Greece, towers up abruptly to
a height of over seven hundred feet. The
fortifications which crown its summit were
built by the Venetians and Turks; they now
serve as a prison. In their walls, as well
as in the walls of Itsh-Kaleh, are built many
Venetian inscriptions, some of them bearing the
.bn 273.png
.pn +1
lion of St. Mark. Three sides of the mighty rock
are precipitous, but on the south-eastern side it
is accessible, being joined by a ridge to the
hills. The ascent from Nauplia is by a long
staircase at the north-western corner of the
fortress; it begins close to the gate of the
town. The name Palamidi is derived from
Palamedes, the son of Nauplius. Palamedium
was probably the ancient name of the fortress,
though no classical writer mentions it. The
prospect from the summit over the gulf and
plain of Argos, with the background of mountains
encircling the plain, is very fine. Nor is
the view from the quay of Nauplia across the
bay to the mountains of Argolis one to be
easily forgotten, especially if seen by moonlight,
when the sea is calm, the stars are
shining, and the tall yard-arms of the lateen-rigged
craft stand out like black wings against
the sky, now blotting out and now disclosing
a star as the boats heave on the gentle
swell.
.h2 id=ch33 title='XXXIII. — The Springs of the Erasinus.'
.ti 0
XXXIII. The Springs of the Erasinus.—From
Argos the road to Tegea goes south-west.
At first it skirts the foot of the steep
Larisa, and then runs through the southern
part of the Argolic plain. On the right rise the
mountains, of no great height, which bound the
.bn 274.png
.pn +1
plain on the west. About three miles from
Argos we quit the highway and strike westward
towards the hills through a beautiful
avenue of fine silver poplars, plane-trees, and
oleanders. It soon brings us to the springs.
The spot is very picturesque. A rugged
mountain here descends in precipices of yellowish
limestone to the plain, and at its foot a body
of clear sparkling water comes rushing impetuously
in several streams from the rocks, partly
issuing from a low cavern, partly welling up
from the ground. Under the rocks the water
forms a pellucid but shallow pool, where water-plants
of a vivid green grow thickly; then
flowing through the arches of a wall, which
partially dams up the pool, it is diverted into
several channels shaded by tall poplars, willows,
and mulberries, and so turns in a short space
a dozen mills—the Mills of Argos, as they
are called. After watering the rice-fields, the
channels unite once more into a river, which
finds its way into the sea through swampy
ground, among thick tangled beds of reeds and
sedge, some three miles only from its source at
the foot of the hills. This river, the modern
Kephalari, is the Erasinus (‘the lovely river’)
of antiquity. It is the only river of the Argolic
plain which flows summer and winter alike;
and the opinion both of the ancient and the
modern Greeks that it is an outlet of the
.bn 275.png
.pn +1
Stymphalian lake in Arcadia appears to be
well founded.
In the face of the limestone cliff, a few
feet above the springs of the river, are the
mouths of two caves. A staircase leads up
to them. Passing through the mouth of the
larger we find ourselves in a lofty dimly-lighted
cavern with an arched roof, like a Gothic
cathedral, which extends into the mountain for
a distance of two hundred feet or more. Water
drips from the roof, forming long stalactites.
Some light penetrates into the cave from its
narrow mouth, but even at high noon it is but
a dim twilight. Bats, the natural inhabitants
of the gloomy cavern, whir past our heads, as
if resenting the intrusion. Several branches
open off the main cave. The longest of them,
opening to the left, communicates at its inmost
end with the upper air by means of a windowlike
aperture. In another branch, also to the
left, there is a low, narrow, pitch-dark opening,
which, if explored with a light, reveals at its far
end a crevice descending apparently into the
bowels of the mountain. The smaller of the
two caves, to the north, is walled off and forms
a chapel of the Panagia Kephalariotissa. The
worship of Pan, which Pausanias mentions, may
have been held in this or the neighbouring
cavern; for Pan, the shepherd’s god, loved to
haunt caves, and in these two caves shepherds
.bn 276.png
.pn +1
with their flocks still seek shelter from rain
and storm. The chapel of the Panagia, in
which there are some ancient blocks, may very
well have succeeded to a shrine of Pan, or
perhaps of Dionysus, who was also worshipped
here. A festival is still held annually on the
spot on the eighteenth of April; it may be
nothing but a continuation, in a changed form,
of the festival of Dionysus called Tyrbe, which
Pausanias mentions.
In summer the place is now a favourite resort
of holiday-makers from Argos, who take their
pleasure in a white-washed summer-house or
covered shed at the mouth of the cave. The
whole scene—the rocky precipices, the shady
caverns, the crystal stream, the tranquil pool,
the verdure and shade of the trees—is at once
so beautiful and agreeable, that if it had been
near Athens it would probably have been renowned
in song and legend. But Argos had
no Sophocles to sing its praises in immortal
verse.
.h2 id=ch34 title='XXXIV. — The Lernean Marsh.'
.ti 0
XXXIV. The Lernean Marsh.—Mount
Pontinus, which rises above the village of Lerna,
is a hill of no great height, but of broad massive
outline. On its crest are seen from below
against the sky the walls and towers of a
mediaeval castle crowning the summit. The
.bn 277.png
.pn +1
slope of the hill towards Lerna is on the whole
even and uniform and tufted with low plants,
but toward the south-east it is broken by some
high lines of rocks. The carriage road from
Argos skirts the foot of the hill and traverses
the village. Beside the road rise the springs
both of the Pontinus brook and the Amymone;
and between the road and the sea is the
Lernean marsh. In approaching Lerna from
Argos and entering the pass between Mount
Pontinus and the sea we first come to the rush-fringed
spring of the Pontinus on the left side
of the road. The stream is a mere brook of
clear water bordered by rushes and tall grasses
and almost choked with green water-plants. A
great part of the water is diverted at the spring
to turn a mill which stands on the shore. The
whole course of the brook from its source to
the sea is only a few hundred yards.
After passing the source of the Pontinus
and traversing in a few minutes the village of
Lerna we come to the springs of the Amymone,
which rise beside the road at the southern end
of the village, a few yards to the north of a
white-washed chapel of St. John. The springs
are copious and issue from under rocks, forming
at once a shallow pool of beautifully clear
water, from which the stream flows towards the
sea in a bed fringed with reeds. Great beds of
reeds, marking the site of the Lernean marsh,
.bn 278.png
.pn +1
grow also beside the pool and in the narrow
stretch of flat swampy ground between it and
the sea. A fig-tree has rooted itself among the
rocks from which the springs flow, and a few
yards farther off are a mulberry-tree and a
silver poplar.
Some eighty yards or so to the north-east of
the springs but completely hidden by a screen
of trees is the Alcyonian Lake described by
Pausanias. It is a pool of still, dark, glassy
water surrounded by great reeds and grasses and
tall white poplars with silvery stems. Though
distant only about thirty yards from the highroad
and the village, the spot is as wild and lonely as
if it lay in the depths of some pathless forest of
the New World. I sought it for some time in
vain, and when at last I came upon it, in the
waning light of a winter afternoon, everything
seemed to enhance the natural horror of the
scene. The sky was dark save for one gleam
of sunlit cloud which was reflected in the black
water of the pool. The wind sighed among
the reeds and rustled the thin leaves of the
poplars. Altogether I could well imagine that
superstitions might gather about this lonely
pool in the marsh. Of such a spot in England
tales of unhappy love, of murder and suicide,
would be told. To the Greeks of old it
seemed one of the ways to hell. The man
who drove me from Argos said, like Pausanias,
.bn 279.png
.pn +1
that the pool had never been fathomed and
was bottomless.
.h2 id=ch35 title='XXXV. — The Anigraean Road.'
.ti 0
XXXV. The Anigraean Road.—South
of Lerna the road skirts the shore for some
distance. Leaving the village of Kiveri the path
runs along the slope of Mount Zavitza, which
falls steeply to the sea on the left. This is the
district called Anigraea by Pausanias. The road
is still, as it was in his days, very rugged and
bad. Now and then we come to a little cove
with a beach at the mouth of a narrow glen
which cleaves the mountain-side; elsewhere
the sea is bordered throughout by sheer cliffs,
above which the path scrambles up hill and
down dale. The sides of the mountains are
chiefly clothed with lentisks and wild olives,
with a patch of corn-field here and there. In
about two hours and a half from Kiveri the
path arrives opposite the Anavolo, the ancient
Dine. It is an abundant source of fresh water
rising in the sea, about a quarter of a mile
from the narrow beach under the cliffs. The
body of fresh water appears to be fully fifty
feet in diameter. In calm weather it may be
seen rising with such force as to form a convex
surface, disturbing the sea for several hundred
feet around. It is clearly the exit of a subterraneous
river of some magnitude, and thus
.bn 280.png
.pn +1
corresponds with the Dine of Pausanias. After
clambering along the Anigraea for nearly three
hours, we find that the mountain abruptly ceases,
and the maritime plain of Thyrea stretches out
before us to the south. This is what Pausanias
describes as “a tract of country on the left,
reaching down to the sea, where trees, especially
olives, thrive well.” The plain is about
five miles long, but nowhere more than half
that in breadth; its soil is a rich loam; corn-fields
and olive-groves cover its surface.
.h2 id=ch36 title='XXXVI. — The Battlefield of Sellasia.'
.ti 0
XXXVI. The Battlefield of Sellasia.—At
the present day the track from Arachova
to Sparta follows the bed of the Kelephina
river (the ancient Oenus) for some seven or
eight miles. Path there is none. You ride in
the stony bed of the river, crossing its scanty
water backwards and forwards again and again.
The scenery is picturesque, the river winding
between high banks, which are generally green
with shrubs and trees. Indeed many trees
grow in the very bed of the stream, and the
traveller in riding has sometimes to be careful
not to be knocked off by their boughs. In
front of us, as the valley widens, we get glimpses
of the high, blue, snowy range of Taygetus.
The point at which, quitting the bed of the
stream, we ascend its western bank, and the
.bn 281.png
.pn +1
whole magnificent range of Taygetus appears
in full view across the valley of the Eurotas,
was the scene of the battle of Sellasia.
.h2 id=ch37 title='XXXVII. — Sparta.'
.ti 0
XXXVII. Sparta.—Ancient Sparta stood
upon a broad stretch of fairly level ground,
broken by a few low eminences, on the right
bank of the Eurotas, where the river makes a
bend to the south-east. Thus the city was
bounded on the north and east by the wide
gravelly bed of the river. Approaching from the
north by the highroad from Tegea you cross
the river by a new iron bridge, then traversing
a flat strip of ground ascend through a hollow
between two of the low eminences or hills which
were included within the circuit of ancient
Sparta. Leaving these eminences on the right
and left you emerge to the south upon a level
stretch of cornland, with olive-trees thickly
dotted over it. When I saw it the wheat was
breast high, and its waving surface, dappled
with the shadows of multitudinous olive-trees,
presented a rich and park-like aspect. This
plain is about half a mile across; on the south
it is terminated by the low broad-backed ridge,
running east and west, on which stands the
town of New Sparta.
This new town, which has sprung up since
the War of Independence, is charming. The
.bn 282.png
.pn +1
streets, crossing each other at right angles,
are broad and pleasant. Many of the houses
are surrounded by gardens, and the soft
verdure of the trees peeping over the low
walls is grateful and refreshing to the eyes.
The gardens abound with orange-trees, which,
when laden with fruit, remind one of the gardens
of the Hesperides. In spring the air, even in
the streets, is heavy with rich perfumes. On
the south the town is bounded by the river
of Magoula, which here flows from west to east,
to fall into the Eurotas a little below the town,
opposite the steep heights of Therapnae. Westward
the plain extends three or four miles to
the foot of the magnificent range of Taygetus,
which rises abruptly with steep rocky sides to
the height of nearly eight thousand feet. A
conspicuous landmark to the west, viewed from
Sparta, is the sharp conical hill of Mistra, leaning
upon, but still sharply defined against, the
Taygetus range. Though really a mountain
over two thousand feet high, it is completely
dwarfed by the immense wall of Taygetus
rising at its back.
The country between Sparta and Taygetus
offers points of the most picturesque beauty,
especially if, instead of following the highroad,
which is rather tame, you strike straight
across for Mistra from the ruined theatre of
Old Sparta. It was a bright evening in spring
.bn 283.png
.pn +1
or early summer (towards the end of April, but
summer is earlier in Greece than in England)
when I took this walk, and the impression it
made on me was ineffaceable. The orange-groves,
the gardens fresh and green on all sides,
men taking their ease in the warm evening air
at a picturesque tavern under a great spreading
tree, children playing in the green lanes, a
group of Spartan maidens filling their pitchers
at a spring that gurgled from a grey time-worn
wall, a river (the Magoula) spanned by a quaint
old bridge and winding through groves of
orange-trees spangled with golden fruit, and
towering above all the stupendous snow-clad
range of Taygetus in the west, with the sunset
sky above it—all this made up a picture or
rather a succession of pictures, of which it is
impossible to convey in words the effect. It
was a dream of Arcadia, the Arcadia of poets,
and of painters like the Poussins.
In this union of luxuriant verdure with grand
mountain scenery the valley of Sparta recalls
the more famed but not more beautiful Granada
with its green spreading Vega, its lilac-tinted
mountains basking under the bright sky of
Spain, and the snowy range of the Sierra
Nevada lying like a great white cloud on the
southern horizon. But Taygetus towers above
the spectator at Sparta as the Sierra Nevada
certainly does not over the spectator at Granada.
.bn 284.png
.pn +1
To see it on a bright day with all its superb
outline—its sharp peaks and grand sweeping
curves—clearly defined in the pellucid air, its
long line of snowy summits glistering in the
sun, and the deep purple shadows brooding on
its lower slopes, is a sight not to be forgotten.
A recent explorer of Greece has observed that
of all Greek cities Sparta enjoys the most
beautiful situation. So far as my experience
goes, the observation is just.
.h2 id=ch38 title='XXXVIII. — Mistra.'
.ti 0
XXXVIII. Mistra.—The scenery of the
district at the eastern foot of Mount Taygetus,
to which Pausanias here conducts us, is well
described by Vischer as follows: “ While in
Therapne, Amyclae, and the round buildings
of Vaphio and Marmalia we met with vestiges
of a very ancient civilisation which flourished
in the plain of the Eurotas before the Dorian
invasion; on the other hand when we reach
the first line of the rocky heights of Taygetus,
we find ourselves in the Middle Ages—in the
days of the Franks and the Byzantines. The
first stage of Taygetus rises abruptly from the
plain in bold cliffs broken by many gullies,
from which the mountain torrents issue. Crowning
with its picturesque ruins the summit of
one of these heights, an hour’s ride to the west
of Sparta, is the fortress of Mistra, built by
.bn 285.png
.pn +1
William de Villehardouin in the middle of the
thirteenth century. Below the castle, on the
mountain-side, is spread the extensive town,
once a place of much more importance, now
half in ruins, with its numerous churches and
monasteries falling into decay. Yet for the
traveller, in spite of its decay, Mistra must remain
in virtue of its situation one of the most
enchanting spots which he can find in Greece
or anywhere; and the prospect from the castle
height, on the one side over the whole plain, on
the other side up to the snowy peaks of Taygetus,
across the fruitful levels and wooded slopes
of the first step in the mountain staircase, needs
only a view of the sea to be second to none.
“ The whole neighbourhood, too, is one of indescribable
beauty. The way from New Sparta
by the village of Magoula, which lies scattered
among fruit-trees of every sort, is delightful
enough. It passes through a plain watered by
fresh brooks, where the drooping branches of
the olive-trees and fig-trees often literally bar
the way, and in riding one has to take heed
not to be hung by the head among the boughs.
But all this is almost forgotten when we ride
from Mistra by Parori and Hagiannis along the
foot of the mountains to Sklavochori. On this
ride all the beauties of the Eurotas valley are
crowded together; for here we have wild
magnificence combined with the luxuriant
.bn 286.png
.pn +1
loveliness of a rich southern vegetation. Parori,
which lies close to Mistra and was formerly a
suburb of it, is at the mouth of a dark and deep
gorge, from which a stream comes brawling.
This gorge is pointed out to travellers as the
Caeadas, the gully into which the Spartans
used to throw prisoners of war and afterwards
malefactors; and certainly the Caeadas, as well
as the Apothetae, where weakly children were
exposed, is to be sought in one of the ravines
of Mount Taygetus, of which hardly any appears
so stern and awful as the one at Parori. At
the mouth of the gorge, just above the village,
there is a very lovely spot. From a Turkish
fountain there pours a copious stream of water,
which trickles through creeping plants of all
sorts into a large basin, and before it stand
some fine plane-trees.
“Farther on, the way winds through wood
and thicket, where fruit-trees alternate with tall
oaks, elms, and plane-trees, to the village of
Hagiannis, hidden among groves of oranges,
lemons, fig-trees, and olives. Amongst the
woods dark cypresses rise singly like columns;
many Judas-trees stood in full blossom, forming
with their rosy red a pleasant contrast to the
various shades of green, while the oleanders,
growing as high as trees beside every rill, had
not yet unfolded their buds. Wild vines climb
to the very topmost boughs, and many other
.bn 287.png
.pn +1
creepers, such as ivy, bindweed, and clematis,
often weave trees and shrubs into an impenetrable
thicket. In wealth of vegetation this
district is unsurpassed in Greece, and no one
who has set foot on Greek soil should fail to
visit it. Yet it often happens that travellers,
satisfied with having visited Sparta, turn back
from it immediately, and then, full of the impressions
left on them by the plains of Tripolitza,
of Argolis, and of the neighbourhood of Athens,
complain that there are no trees in Greece.”
The present writer, though he was not
farther south than Parori, can confirm the
general accuracy of this description. The view
of the beautiful valley of Sparta from the steep
hill of Mistra, crowded with monuments of the
Middle Ages, and dominated by the towering
mass of Mount Taygetus, which rises like a
wall behind it, combines almost every element
of natural beauty and historical association.
Immediately below the Frankish castle, which
crowns the summit of the hill, are the ruins of
a spacious Byzantine palace, once the residence
of the governor of the Morea, who ranked next
after the emperor. Its great hall opened on
the palace garden, from the terrace of which
the wonderful view is to be had over the valley.
Again, the fountain, described by Vischer, at
the mouth of the tremendous gorge, is a scene
not to be forgotten. The water gushes from
.bn 288.png
.pn +1
many mouths in the face of a wall built against
the rock. A stone seat encircles the trunk of
the great spreading plane-tree which fronts
the fountain. All this, with the gloomy gorge
behind, makes up a picture such as is oftener
seen in dreams than in reality. Once more,
the village of Trypi, situated a little to the
north of Mistra, at the entrance of the famed
Langada pass over Mount Taygetus, is one of
idyllic beauty. It is embowered among woods
and orchards on the mountain-side; and entering
it from the south you pass the mouth of a
narrow glen carpeted with ferns and overarched
with trees.
.h2 id=ch39 title='XXXIX. — On the Road from Sparta to Arcadia.'
XXXIX. On the Road from Sparta
to Arcadia.—Pausanias now returns from
Mount Taygetus to Sparta and sets off northward
by the road which led to Megalopolis in
Arcadia. As far as the Arcadian frontier the
track follows the valley of the Eurotas, keeping
on the right or west bank of the river and
generally running close to the stream, the
banks of which are fringed with oleanders,
fig-trees, and planes. For the first three miles
the valley is open and possesses that combination
of charms which renders the vale of Sparta
the most beautiful region of Greece. The
river flows on the whole at the foot of the
.bn 289.png
.pn +1
somewhat bare hills which rise on the eastern
side of the valley, dipping their rocky declivities
in many places in its water. But on the other
side low rolling hills, covered with excellent
soil and intersected by streams, stretch away
to where the long range of Taygetus stands up
against the western sky, its majestic snowy
peaks contrasting finely with the dark woods
of its lower slopes and the luxuriant vegetation
of the valley. In this open part of the valley
must have lain all the places and objects
mentioned by Pausanias between Sparta and
the image of Modesty; but no one has yet
ventured to identify them. About three miles
from Sparta the valley contracts and the
scenery changes. We are no longer in a great
open valley covered with luxuriant vegetation
and enclosed by grand mountains. It is a
narrow dale through which we are passing,
hemmed in by low hills, at the foot of which
the river flows between banks thickly wooded
with willows, poplars, oleanders, and plane-trees.
Well-tilled fields lie on the gentle lower
slopes of the hills and occupy the stretches of
flat land where the hills retire from the river.
The bare upper declivities are dotted here and
there with a few olives.
.h2 id=ch40 title='XL. — Cape Malea.'
.ti 0
XL. Cape Malea.—The sides of Cape
.bn 290.png
.pn +1
Malea, the south-eastern extremity of the Greek
mainland and of Europe, are formed by
dizzy crags, about a thousand feet high, of
dark bare rock, seamed and scarred in places
by cracks and fissures. At the extreme end
of the cape there is a great natural recess in
the cliff; and here in the face of the bluff,
about two hundred and fifty feet above the sea,
there is a tiny terrace sloping to the perpendicular
edge of the precipice. Two chapels are
built on the terrace, and close by, partly hewn
in the rock, is the cell of a half-naked and
nearly savage hermit. From the terrace you
may clamber down, at the risk of your neck,
to a cave opening on the foam of the great
rollers which break here eternally. In the
inmost corner of the cave is a heap of human
bones. The sense of utter solitude and isolation
from the world which the spot is fitted to
evoke in the mind is broken by the sight of
passing vessels. In fair weather steamers of
all nations pass continually; and small Greek
sailing-boats, with their reddish-brown or white
lateen sails, skim along close under the cliffs.
But the cape has a bad name for storms and
heavy surf; at times even large steamers are
unable to weather it for a week together.
There was an ancient proverb, “When you
have rounded Malea, forget your home.”
.bn 291.png
.pn +1
.h2 id=ch41 title='XLI. — Monemvasia.'
.ti 0
XLI. Monemvasia.—The ancient Minoa[8]
is now Monemvasia, an island about half a
mile long, close to the shore, with which it is
connected by a long old stone bridge. The
island is a lofty precipitous rock, resembling
Gibraltar, or the Bass Rock and Dumbarton
Rock in Scotland. The summit, crowned by
the ruins of a mediaeval fortress and a mass of
tumble-down roofless churches and houses
overgrown with weeds, is now only a sheepwalk.
From the summit the rock falls away
in sheer and lofty precipices, especially on the
north. The modern town lies huddled up at
the foot of the cliffs on the southern side.
Strong walls encircle it, which are connected
with the ruined fortress on the top of the rock.
Within the walls everything is fast falling to
decay. Fine churches, high archways, great
private houses, all deserted and in ruins, testify
to the former prosperity and the present decline
of the town. Trade has quite deserted it; the
coasting steamers call only at rare intervals.
From the town a zigzag path leads up the face
of the rock to the old citadel on the summit.
.fm rend=th
.fn 8
The reference is to Minoa on the eastern coast of Laconia,
not to the better known but less picturesque Minoa near Megara.
.fn-
.fm rend=th
In the Middle Ages Monemvasia was one
of the chief places of the Levantine trade and
one of the strongest fortresses in the Morea.
It gave its name to Malmsey wine, which was
.bn 292.png
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grown in the Cyclades, especially Tenos, but
was called after the port whence it was shipped
to the west.
.h2 id=ch42 title='XLII. — Maina.'
.ti 0
XLII. Maina.—The great central peninsula
of southern Greece, which Pausanias
describes in detail, has been known since the
Middle Ages by the name of Maina or
Mani. The backbone of the peninsula is the
great range of Taygetus, which runs south till
it terminates in Taenarum, the modern Cape
Matapan, the southern extremity of Greece.
The scenery of the peninsula is wild and
savage; the villages, hedged in by impenetrable
thickets of cactus, cling like eagles’ eyries
to the faces of apparently inaccessible cliffs,
and are reached by stony and exceedingly
toilsome footpaths—the only semblance of
roads in these secluded highlands. Almost
everywhere the surface is nothing but the
naked rock. Wood there is none, but a few
bushes and here and there some tufts of grass
have rooted themselves in the crevices of the
rocks, and furnish a scanty pasture to the sheep
and goats. The miserable stony soil, wherever
it exists, is carefully husbanded by means of
terraces, and under the soft southern sky of
Laconia yields a tolerable return. There are
no springs or brooks; water is obtained only
.bn 293.png
.pn +1
from cisterns, which are kept closed by their
owners, and leave to draw from them has to
be paid for.
The inhabitants, the Mainotes, Mainiotes,
or Maniates, are a hardy and warlike race
of mountaineers, who claim to be descended
from the ancient Spartans. In the fastnesses
of their rugged mountains they are said to
have retained their primitive heathenism till
the latter half of the ninth century; and
the Turks never succeeded in subjugating
them. As pirates they were greatly dreaded.
They are still notorious for the relentless
ferocity of their blood-feuds, which are so
common that every family of importance has
a tower in which to take refuge from the
avengers of blood. In these towers persons
implicated in a blood-feud have been known
to live for many years without ever coming
out. To this day many heads of families dare
not quit their shelter except under a strong
guard of armed retainers. A village will
contain twenty to thirty of such strongholds.
Each tower is surrounded by a few low huts,
which serve as workshops and as the lodgings
of the subordinate members of the household.
Frequently tower and huts together are enclosed
within a fortification wall strengthened
with turrets and loopholed. Bitter feuds often
rage between the towers of the same village.
.bn 294.png
.pn +1
.h2 id=ch43 title='XLIII. — Pharae and the Messenian Plain.'
XLIII. Pharae and the Messenian
Plain.—The ancient Pharae, or Pherae, probably
occupied the site of the modern Kalamata,
an industrial town situated on the left bank of
the broad stony bed of the Nedon, a mile from
the sea. Telemachus, in search of his father,
lodged for the night at Pharae on his way from
Pylus to Sparta, and again on his return. It
is a long day’s ride from Sparta to Kalamata,
by the magnificent Langada pass over Mount
Taygetus. Pausanias does not mention the
name of the river on which Pharae stood,
but from Strabo we learn that it was the
Nedon. It is a torrent which issues from a
rocky gorge in Mount Taygetus, about a mile
to the north-east of a steep hill that rises at
the back of the town. This hill is crowned
with a mediaeval castle, built or occupied
successively by Franks, Venetians, and Turks.
The presence of ancient hewn stones in the
walls, as well as the whole arrangement of
the fortress, seem to show that a castle stood
here in antiquity also. There are no other
relics of antiquity in Kalamata.
The town, with its narrow winding streets and
lively bazaar, lies in the great Messenian plain,
near its south-eastern extremity. This plain,
open to the south and sheltered from the north
by mountains, is the warmest part of Greece,
and on account of its wonderful fertility was
.bn 295.png
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known to the ancients as Makaria or the
Happy Land. Its natural wealth and delightful
climate were celebrated by Euripides
in a lost play, of which some lines have been
preserved by Strabo. Here at the present
day groves of oranges, lemons, fig-trees, olives,
and vineyards succeed each other, all fenced
by gigantic hedges of prickly and fantastically-shaped
cactuses and sword-like aloes, which, with
the hot air, remind a traveller from northern
Europe that he is in a sub-tropical climate.
.h2 id=ch44 title='XLIV. — Messene.'
.ti 0
XLIV. Messene.—From Kalamata, the
probable site of the ancient Pharae, the road
to Messene runs north-west across the fertile
Messenian plain between hedges of huge fantastically-shaped
cactuses and groves of fig-trees,
olives, and vines. In front of us loom
nearer and nearer the twin peaks of Ithome
and Eva rising boldly and abruptly from a
single base on the western side of the plain,
and forming the natural citadel, as it were, of
the whole country. As we near their base we
quit the dusty highway and strike westward
up the mountain-side by devious and rocky
paths. This brings us in time to the monastery
of Vourkano, where visitors to Messene
generally spend the night.
The monastery is beautifully situated on
.bn 296.png
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the eastern slope of the mountain, about a
quarter of an hour’s walk below the saddle
which unites the twin peaks. The buildings,
arranged in the form of a quadrangle
round a little church, stand on a fine open
terrace among cypresses, oaks, and wild olives,
commanding an unimpeded view over the
Messenian plain southward to the shining
waters of the gulf and northward to where
the plain ends at the foot of the hills.
Ithome and its sister peak rise from the
plain about midway between these northern
hills and the gulf. Mount Eva, the lower of
the two peaks, lies to the south or south-east
of Ithome, with which it is connected
by a ridge or saddle about half-way up the
two mountains. The eastern wall of Messene
stood and still stands in ruins on this saddle.
The city itself lay on the western side, in the
cup formed by the converging slopes of the
two mountains. The site may be compared
to an immense theatre, of which the back is
formed by the saddle in question and the
wings by Mount Ithome and Mount Eva.
The wretched hamlet of Mavromati lies nearly
in the middle of this theatre-like hollow; there
are many remains of antiquity in its neighbourhood.
But the site of the ancient city is now
chiefly occupied by corn-fields, vineyards, and
.bn 297.png
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The view from the top of Ithome is magnificent.
The whole of the rich Messenian plain
lies stretched out beneath us. To the south
the full sweep of the Messenian gulf is seen,
with the glorious snow-capped range of Taygetus
bounding both plain and gulf on the
east. High up on Taygetus is visible the
gap through which the Langada pass runs.
Over this pass, which forms the direct route
between Sparta and Messenia, the Spartans
must have often marched to attack their
ancient foes; and it seems just possible that
the gleam of their burnished arms in the sunshine,
as the army defiled over the pass, may
have been visible to the sentinels on Ithome.
Farther to the north we see the mountains of
Arcadia, with the Lycaean group conspicuous
on the north-east. Westward the view is in
general bounded by nearer and lower hills,
but where they dip on the north-west and
again on the south-west we catch glimpses of
the Ionian or, as the ancients also called it, the
Sicilian sea.
.h2 id=ch45 title='XLV. — On the Road to Olympia.'
.ti 0
XLV. On the Road to Olympia.—The
Erymanthus, descending from the lofty mountains
of north-western Arcadia, flows between
hills into the broad open valley of the Alpheus
and joins that river on its northern bank. At
.bn 298.png
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its junction with the Alpheus it flows over
gravel between abrupt cliffs of pudding-stone.
Its water, seen at least from the southern side
of the wide valley on a sunny day, is of a
bright blue colour. After fording the river
and climbing the farther bank, the path leads
through open pastures, and then, to avoid a
great bend of the river, ascends a pass or
woody gorge, where fine oaks and pines, now
singly now in clumps, are scattered in wild
variety. When we have reached the summit
and begin to descend again towards the Alpheus,
a series of magnificent views of the river winding
between wooded hills opens up before us. For
beyond the meeting of its waters with the
Erymanthus, the valley of the Alpheus assumes
a softer and gayer aspect. Moderate heights
rise on the right bank, their gentle slopes
thickly wooded with trees and shrubs of the
most varied sorts. Pine-trees, maples, planes,
and tall lentisk bushes succeed each other,
varied here and there by fields and green
pastures. Across the Alpheus lie the beautiful
wooded hills of Triphylia, where many a
picturesque village is seen nestling among pine-woods,
and many a height, crowned by church
or ruins, stands out abruptly and precipitously
above the river. The whole country, with its
woods and streams, and the broad river flowing
majestically through the middle of the landscape,
.bn 299.png
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is like a great park. The illusion, however,
is broken by the path, which scrambles
up hill and down dale, struggles through
thickets, and splashes through streams and
torrents, in a fashion which resembles anything
rather than the trim well-kept walks and
avenues of an English park. Such is the
scenery and such the path by which Pausanias
is now moving westward towards Olympia.
Dio Chrysostom has described how he lost
his way in this charming country and fell in
with an old dame of the Meg Merrilies type
who professed to have the gift of second sight.
He says: “Going on foot from Heraea to Pisa
by the side of the Alpheus, I was able, up to a
certain point, to make out the path. But by
and by I found myself in a forest and on
broken ground, with many tracks leading to
sheepfolds and cattle-pens. And meeting with
no one of whom I could ask the way I strayed
from the path and wandered up and down. It
was high noon; and seeing on a height a clump
of oaks, as it might be a grove, I betook myself
thither, in the hope that from thence I might
spy some path or house. Here then I found
stones piled carelessly together, and skins of
sacrificed animals hanging up, with clubs and
staves, the offerings, as I supposed, of shepherds;
and a little way off, seated on the ground, was
a tall and stalwart dame, somewhat advanced
.bn 300.png
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in years, in rustic attire, with long grey hair.
Of her I asked what these things might be.
She answered, very civilly, in a broad Doric
accent, that the spot was sacred to Hercules,
and as for herself, she had a son a shepherd
and often minded the sheep herself; that by
the grace of the Mother of the Gods she had
the gift of second sight, and all the herdsmen
and farmers of the neighbourhood came to ask
her about their crops and cattle.”
.h2 id=ch46 title='XLVI. — Olympia.'
.ti 0
XLVI. Olympia.—Olympia lies on the
right or north bank of the Alpheus, where the
river meanders westward through a spacious
valley enclosed by low wooded hills of soft and
rounded forms, beyond which appear on the
eastern horizon the loftier mountains of Arcadia.
The soil of the valley, being alluvial, is fertile;
corn-fields and vineyards stretch away in all
directions. The whole aspect of the scene,
without being grand or impressive, is rich,
peaceful, and pleasing. The bed of the
Alpheus is wide; but in summer the water is
scanty and is divided into several streams
running over a broad gravelly bed. The
sacred precinct or Altis of Olympia lies
between the river on the south and a low
but steep hill, thickly wooded with pine-trees
and shrubs, which rises on the north. This
.bn 301.png
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wooded hill is the ancient Mount Cronius.
Immediately to the west of the precinct the
Cladeus flows between steep sandy banks into
the Alpheus from the north.
In the close hot climate of Olympia the
need of a good supply of drinking water is
especially felt. For months together rain
hardly falls; between May and October a
shower is a rarity. The great festival was
always held in summer (July or August), when
the weather at Olympia is cloudless and the
heat intense. Hence the multitudes who
flocked to witness the games must have been
much distressed by the dust and the burning
sun, against which the spreading shade of the
plane-trees in the sacred precinct could have
afforded only an imperfect protection. Indeed
Lucian, doubtless with a strong touch of exaggeration,
speaks of the spectators packed
together and dying in swarms of thirst and
of distemper contracted from the excessive
drought. The water of the Alpheus is not
good to drink, for even in the height of
summer it holds in solution a quantity of
chalky matter. The water of the Cladeus, on
the other hand, is drinkable in its normal
state; but even a little rain swells it and
makes it run turbid for a long time. Hence
it was necessary to sink wells and to bring
water from a distance. This was done even in
.bn 302.png
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Greek times. Nine wells, some square, some
round, some lined with the usual shell-limestone,
others with plaques of terra-cotta, have been
found at Olympia; and water was brought in
aqueducts from the upper valley of the Cladeus.
But in Roman times the supply was immensely
improved and extended by the munificence of
the wealthy sophist Herodes Atticus. Lucian
tells us how the mountebank Peregrinus denounced
Herodes and his aqueduct for pandering
to the luxury and effeminacy of the day. It
was the duty of the spectators, he said, to
endure their thirst, and if need be to die of it.
This doctrine proved unacceptable to his
hearers, and the preacher had to run for his
life pursued by a volley of stones.
.h2 id=ch47 title='XLVII. — Phidias’s Image of Olympian Zeus.'
.ti 0
XLVII. Phidias’s Image of Olympian
Zeus.—The testimony of antiquity to the
extraordinary beauty and majesty of the image
is very strong. The Roman general Paulus
Aemilius was deeply moved by the sight of it;
he felt as if in the presence of the god himself,
and declared that Phidias alone had succeeded
in embodying the Homeric conception of Zeus.
Cicero says that Phidias fashioned the image,
not after any living model, but after that ideal
beauty which he saw with the inward eye alone.
Quintilian asserts that the beauty of the image
.bn 303.png
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served to strengthen religion, the majesty of the
image equalling the majesty of the god. A
poet declared that either the god must have
come from heaven to earth to show Phidias his
image, or that Phidias must have gone to
heaven to behold it. The statue was reckoned
one of the seven wonders of the world, and to
die without having seen it was deemed a misfortune.
The rhetorician Dio Chrysostom, a
man of fine taste, extolled it in one of his
speeches. He calls it “the most beautiful
image on earth, and the dearest to the gods.”
He represents Phidias speaking of his “peaceful
and gentle Zeus, the overseer, as it were, of
united and harmonious Greece, whom by the
help of my art and of the wise and good city
of Elis I set up, mild and august in an unconstrained
attitude, the giver of life and breath
and all good things, the common father and
saviour of mankind.” And again in a fine
passage he says: “Methinks that if one who is
heavy laden in mind, who has drained the cup
of misfortune and sorrow in life, and whom
sweet sleep visits no more, were to stand before
this image, he would forget all the griefs and
troubles that are incident to the life of man.”
.h2 id=ch48 title='XLVIII. — The Hermes of Praxiteles.'
.ti 0
XLVIII. The Hermes of Praxiteles.—Hermes
is represented standing with the infant
.bn 304.png
.pn +1
Dionysus on his left arm, and the weight of his
body resting on his right foot. His form is
the perfection of manly grace and vigour; the
features of his oval face, under the curly hair
that encircles his brow, are refined, strong, and
beautiful; their expression is tender and slightly
pensive. The profile is of the straight Greek
type, with “the bar of Michael Angelo” over
the eyebrows. The left arm of the god rests
upon the stump of a tree, over which his mantle
hangs loosely in rich folds, that contrast well with
his nude body. His right arm is raised. The
child Dionysus lays his right hand confidingly on
the shoulder of Hermes; his gaze is fixed on the
object, whatever it was, which Hermes held in
his right hand, and his missing left arm must
have been stretched out (as it appears in the
restoration) towards the same object. As most
of Hermes’s right arm is wanting, we cannot
know for certain what he had in his right hand.
Probably it was a bunch of grapes. In a wall-painting
at Pompeii a satyr is represented
holding the infant Dionysus on his left arm,
while in his raised right hand he dangles a
bunch of grapes, after which the child reaches.
It is highly probable that this painting is an
imitation, not necessarily at first hand, of the
work of Praxiteles; and if so, it affords a
strong ground for supposing that the missing
right hand of the Hermes held a bunch of
.bn 305.png
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grapes. The only objection of any weight to
this view is that in the statue Hermes is not
looking at the child, as we should expect him
to be, but is gazing past him into the distance
with what has been described as a listening or
dreamy look. Hence it has been suggested
that Hermes held a pair of cymbals or castanets
in his hand, to the sound of which both he
and the child are listening; and a passage of
Calpurnius has been quoted in which Silenus
is represented holding the infant Dionysus on
his arm and amusing him by shaking a rattle.
This certainly would well explain the attitude
and look of Hermes; but on the other hand
cymbals or a rattle would not serve so well as
a bunch of grapes to characterise the infant
Dionysus. The same may be said of the
suggestion that Hermes, as god of gain, held
aloft a purse and was listening to the chinking
of the money in it. In his left hand Hermes
probably held his characteristic attribute, a
herald’s staff; the round hole for it in the hand
is still visible.
On his head he seems to have worn a metal
wreath; the deep groove for fastening it on
may be seen in the back part of the hair.
Traces of dark red paint were perceived on the
hair and on the sandal of the foot when the
statue was found; the colour is supposed to
have been laid on as ground for gilding. The
.bn 306.png
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back of the statue, which would not be seen
well, is not carefully finished; it still shows the
strokes of the chisel. Otherwise the technical
finish is exquisite. The differences of texture
between the delicate white skin of the god, the
leather straps of the sandals, the woollen stuff
of the cloak, and the curly hair of the head, are
expressed in the most masterly way.
A late distinguished critic was of opinion
that the Hermes is an early work of Praxiteles,
executed before he had attained a full mastery
of his art. Such a view, it would seem, can
only be held by one who knows the statue
solely from photographs and casts. But no
reproductions afford an adequate idea of the
beauty of the original. Engravings of it are
often no better than caricatures. Again, the
dead white colour and the mealy texture of
casts give no conception of the soft, glossy,
flesh-like, seemingly elastic surface of the
original, which appears to glow with divine life.
Looking at the original, it seems impossible
to conceive that Praxiteles or any man ever
attained to a greater mastery over stone than
is exhibited in this astonishing work.
.h2 id=ch49 title='XLIX. — Lasion.'
.ti 0
XLIX. Lasion.—Pausanias has omitted to
mention an ancient town that lay in the wild
upper valley of the Peneus, in the heart of
.bn 307.png
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the Elean highlands, not far from the Arcadian
frontier. This was Lasion, a place which,
from its proximity to the Arcadian boundary,
was the subject of border feuds, the Arcadians
claiming possession of it, though in fact it
appears to have belonged properly to Elis. It
changed hands several times in the fifth, fourth,
and third centuries B.C. The ruins of this
secluded little town were discovered by G. F.
Welcker in 1842 near Koumani, a village at
the head waters of the Peneus. They may be
visited on the way from Olympia to Psophis,
though the visit necessitates a short detour to
the west.
The route first follows the valley of the
Cladeus through soft woodland scenery of the
richest and most charming kind, between low
hills crowned with clumps of pines. Then,
still following the glen of the Cladeus, we
ascend through romantically beautiful forests of
pines and ancient oaks, and emerge on a wide
breezy tableland, backed on the north by the
high mountains of northern Arcadia. In the
middle of the plateau, which is open and well
cultivated, lies the scattered village of Lala.
Crossing the northern end of the tableland,
which is here carpeted with ferns, we again
ascend a steep slope, and find ourselves on a
still higher tableland, covered with fine oak
forests. After traversing the forest for some
.bn 308.png
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time we quit the path to Psophis, which
continues to run northward, and take a path
which strikes westward. The time from Lala
to the parting of the ways is about two hours.
Another half-hour’s ride through the forest,
which grows denser as we advance, brings us
to Koumani, a trim well-to-do village, beautifully
situated among oak-woods. The time from
Olympia is about six hours.
The ruins of Lasion, now called Kouti, are
to the north of the village, apparently on the
same level with it, but a profound ravine divides
them from the village, and half an hour’s
laborious descent and ascent of its steep sides
are needed to bring us to the ruins. The site
is an exceedingly strong one. Two tributaries
of the Peneus, coming from the higher mountains
to the north-east, flow in deep ravines,
which meet at an acute angle. Between them
stretches a long, comparatively narrow ridge or
tongue of land, which on three sides falls
steeply down to the glens; only on the east
the ascent is gentle. The top of the ridge is
quite flat, and well adapted to be the site of
a city. At one point it narrows to a mere
isthmus or neck which divides the level summit
into two parts, an eastern and a western. The
western and smaller part was doubtless the
ancient citadel; a finely-built wall of ashlar
masonry, extending across the narrowest point
.bn 309.png
.pn +1
of the neck, divides it from the rest of the city.
The eastern and larger part of the ridge is
more or less covered with ruins, and at its
eastern end, where the ascent is easiest, a very
fine piece of the city wall is still standing.
Square towers, about seven feet broad, project
from it at intervals. Walls and towers are
built of well and regularly cut blocks; the
masonry resembles that of Messene. There
seem to be no traces of fortification walls on
any other side of the plateau; perhaps none
existed, the inhabitants thinking the deep
ravines a sufficient defence.
The situation of Lasion is not only strong
but beautiful. Tall plane-trees overhang the
streams in the deep glens far below the ruins.
To the north and north-east rises at no great
distance the grand and massive range of Mount
Erymanthus; while westward the view extends,
between the heights that hem in the narrow
valley of the Peneus, away over the lowlands
of Elis to the distant sea.
.h2 id=ch50 title='L. — The Erymanthus.'
.ti 0
L. The Erymanthus.—The first sight I
had of the Erymanthus, among the mountains
of northern Arcadia, is one of the scenes
that dwell in the memory. We had been
travelling for hours through the thick oak-woods
which cover the outlying slopes and
.bn 310.png
.pn +1
spurs of Mount Erymanthus on the south, when
suddenly, emerging from the forest, we looked
down into a long valley, through which flowed,
between hills wooded to their summits, a shining
river, the Erymanthus. At the far end of
the valley high blue mountains closed the view.
The scene, arched by the bright Greek sky, was
indeed Arcadian.
.h2 id=ch51 title='LI. — The Monastery of Megaspeleum.'
.ti 0
LI. The Monastery of Megaspeleum.—The
ancient Buraicus is the stream now called
the Kalavryta river because it descends from
the town of that name. The valley, which is
broad and open at Kalavryta, contracts to the
north of the town into a narrow defile flanked
by huge rocks. In this narrow valley is the
great monastery of Megaspeleum, the largest
and wealthiest monastery in Greece, and indeed
one of the largest and richest monasteries of
the Eastern Church. Formerly it had dependencies
even in Russia. The building and its
situation are in the highest degree picturesque.
It is a huge whitewashed pile, with wooden
balconies on the outside, eight stories high,
perched at a great height above the right bank
of the river, on the steep slope of a mountain
and immediately overhung by an enormous
beetling crag which runs sheer up for some
hundreds of feet above the roof of the
.bn 311.png
.pn +1
monastery. It is this overhanging cliff which
gives to the monastery its name of Megaspeleum
(‘great cave’). So completely does it overarch
the lofty building that when in the War of
Independence the Egyptian soldiers of Ibrahim
Pacha attempted to destroy the monastery by
letting fall masses of rock upon it from the cliff
above, the rocks fell clear of the monastery,
leaving it unharmed. The steep slope of the
mountain below is occupied by the terraced
gardens of the monks, which with their rich
vegetation, and the cypresses rising here and
there above them, add greatly to the charm
of the scene. A single zigzag path leads
up this steep terraced slope to the monastery.
The bare precipices above, crowned with forests,
the deep wooded valley below, and the mountains
rising steeply on the farther side, make up
a landscape of varied delight and grandeur, on
which a painter would love to dwell.
.h2 id=ch52 title='LII. — The Gulf of Corinth.'
.ti 0
LII. The Gulf of Corinth.—After describing
the view from the monastery of Troupia
on the hill of Bura, Leake makes the following
remarks on the scenery of the Gulf of Corinth,
which are worth transcribing because they
convey the impression made by this wonderfully
beautiful gulf on one who in general was not
given to dwell on the charms of nature. He
.bn 312.png
.pn +1
says: “I doubt whether there is anything in
Greece, abounding as it is in enchanting scenery
and interesting recollections, that can rival the
Corinthiac Gulf. There is no lake scenery in
Europe that can compete with it. Its coasts,
broken into an infinite variety of outline by the
ever-changing mixture of bold promontory,
gentle slope, and cultivated level, are crowned
on every side by lofty mountains of the most
pleasing and majestic forms; the fine expanse
of water inclosed in this noble frame, though
not so much frequented by ships as it ought to
be by its natural adaptation to commerce, is
sufficiently enlivened by vessels of every size
and shape to present at all times an animated
scene. Each step in the Corinthiac Gulf presents
to the traveller a new prospect, not less
delightful to the eye than interesting to the
mind, by the historical fame and illustrious
names of the objects which surround him.
And if, in the latter peculiarity, the celebrated
panorama of the Saronic Gulf, described by
Sulpicius, be preferable, that arm of the Aegaean
is in almost every part inferior to the Corinthian
sea in picturesque beauty; the surrounding
mountains are less lofty and less varied in
their heights and outlines, and, unless where
the beautiful plain of Athens is sufficiently
near to decorate the prospect, it is a picture of
almost unmitigated sterility and rocky wildness
.bn 313.png
.pn +1
exhibited in every possible form of mountain,
promontory, and island. It must, however, be
admitted that it is only by comparison that
such a scene can be depreciated.” I can only
confirm this estimate of the superior charms of
the Gulf of Corinth. Its waters seemed to me
of an even deeper blue; and the delicacy of
the morning and evening tints—azure, lilac,
and rose—on the mountains is such that it is
hard in looking at them to believe they are of
the solid earth; so unsubstantial, so fairy-like
do they seem, like the gorgeous phantasmagoria
of cloudland or mountains seen in dreams.
.h2 id=ch53 title='LIII. — On the Coast of Achaia.'
.ti 0
LIII. On the Coast of Achaia.—Pausanias
continues to move eastward along the
coast of Achaia. Beyond the Buraicus river,
where it issues from its romantic gorge, the
strip of fertile plain which has skirted the coast
all the way from Aegium comes to an end.
The mountains now advance to the shore, and
the road runs for a short distance along the
summit of cliffs that border the coast. Then
the mountains again retreat from the shore,
leaving at their base a small maritime plain
clothed with olive-groves. A stream, the river
of Diakopton, crosses the plain and flows into
the sea. It comes down from a wild and magnificent
gorge, thickly wooded with tall firs and
.bn 314.png
.pn +1
shut in by stupendous precipices of naked rock.
Seen at nightfall under a lowering sky, with
wreaths of white mist drooping low on the
black mountains, the entrance to this gloomy
gorge might pass for the mouth of hell; one
could fancy Dante and his guide wending their
way into it in the darkness.
Eastward of this little plain the mountains,
covered with pine forests, again rise in precipices
from the sea, hemming in the railway at their
foot. A line of fine crags runs along the face
of the mountains for a long way, their crests
tufted with pine-woods, and the lower slopes at
their feet also clothed in the same mantle of
sombre green.
.h2 id=ch54 title='LIV. — Pellene.'
.ti 0
LIV. Pellene.—The scanty and insignificant
ruins of Pellene are situated on the
summit of a mountain which rises on the
western side of the river of Trikala (the ancient
Sythas), near the small hamlet of Zougra. It
is a ride of two hours and a half from Xylokastro,
the little town at the mouth of the
river, to Zougra. We cross the river by a large
stone bridge not far from its mouth, and then
ascend the valley on the western bank of the
stream. The bottom of the valley is fruitful;
vineyards and fine groves of olives occupy the
greater part of it, and tall cypresses rise here
.bn 315.png
.pn +1
and there, like dark spires, above the greener
foliage. The hills which enclose the valley on
the east and west are not very high, but they
are gashed and tortured by great scaurs and
precipices of white and whity-brown earth. On
the western side of the valley in particular a
long line of high white precipices runs almost
unbroken along the brow of the hills. The
white, probably argillaceous, earth, which is
thus cleft and gouged into precipices, is the
same which forms the great precipices on the
eastern side of Sicyon. Indeed it prevails
nearly all the way along the southern coast of
the Gulf of Corinth from Sicyon to Derveni,
near Aegira. This chalky earth forms a plateau
of varying height, separated from the shore
by a stretch of level plain which averages
perhaps a mile in width. The seaward face of
the plateau is steep, high, and white; its edges
are sharp as if cut with a knife, and ragged like
the edge of a saw. Every here and there it is
rent by a stream or torrent which has scooped
a deep bed for itself out of the friable soil.
The valley of the Sythas, up which we go to
Pellene, is nothing but one of these water-worn
rifts on a gigantic scale. As we ascend it
through vineyards and olive-groves, between
the rugged broken hills with their long lines of
white precipices, the massive Cyllene, with its
high, bare, pointed summit, looms in front of us
.bn 316.png
.pn +1
at no great distance, blocking the southern
end of the valley. After riding up the valley
for an hour or more along a road which,
for Greece, is excellent, we begin to climb a
mountain on the western side of the river.
A long, toilsome, winding, dusty, or, in rainy
weather, muddy ascent, impeded rather than
facilitated by a Turkish paved road of the usual
execrable description, brings us in time to the
little hamlet of Zougra. As we rise up the
steep slope, our fatigue is to some extent
compensated by the fine prospect that opens
up behind us to the Corinthian Gulf and the
mountains beyond it.
.h2 id=ch55 title='LV. — The Road from Argos to Arcadia.'
.ti 0
LV. The Road from Argos to Arcadia.—From
Argos two main passes lead westward
over the chain of Mount Artemisius to Mantinea.
The southern and more direct of the two is for
the greater part of the way nothing but a rough
bridle-path; in places it crosses the deep beds
of torrents, which at the time of my journey
were dry. The path turns round the northern
foot of the lofty acropolis of Argos, and
skirting the wide Argolic plain enters the
valley of the Charadrus or Xerias, as it is
now called. This is a long narrow valley of
somewhat monotonous aspect, enclosed by
barren and rocky hills, and barred at the
.bn 317.png
.pn +1
farther end by a steep mountain, on which,
when I saw it far away on a bright April morning,
purple shadows rested. The bed of the
river is broad and stony, sometimes several
hundred yards in width; it is generally dry, but
after heavy rains the spates that come roaring
down it from the mountains are much dreaded.
Flocks of sheep and goats feed in the valley;
the herdsmen carry the usual long staves tipped
with crooks, and sometimes a gun. Trains of
laden mules or asses, conducted by peasants,
also met us. The head of the valley, immediately
under the mountain barrier, is very
picturesque. The bottom is partly covered with
shrubs and trees, among which (for the place
was then in its spring beauty) I noticed the
broom and the hawthorn, both in flower, also wild
roses, and a tree with a lovely purple bloom,
which I believe to have been the Judas-tree.
Beyond the small hamlet of Mazi, consisting of
a few wretched stone cottages, the path begins
the long ascent and winds up the face of the
mountain-wall in a series of zigzags. The view
backward from the summit of the pass is magnificent,
embracing a wilderness of mountains
with the sea and the islands of Hydra and
Spetsa in the distance. From the top of the
pass the path drops down very steeply, almost
precipitously, into the flat sodden expanse of
the Fallow Plain, across which we look to a
.bn 318.png
.pn +1
bleak chain of grey limestone hills. The village
of Tsipiana stands at the foot of the pass, its
red-roofed houses, with a large church in their
midst, rising in tiers on the steep mountain-side.
On a ledge high above the village is a
monastery among cypresses, and higher still
there shoots up a huge fantastic pinnacle of
rock. The traveller who has reached Tsipiana
is in Arcadia, and if this is his first glimpse of
that poetical land, he may find the reality to
answer to his expectations, if not to his dreams.
From a low rocky hillock, which runs out
like a promontory into the flat, he looks northward
over the Fallow Plain, fallow no longer,
but covered with a patchwork of maize-fields,
and intersected by a stream meandering through
it in serpentine curves. Southward the eye
ranges away over the level expanse to where it
terminates in low blue hills, at the foot of which,
dimly perceptible in the distance, lies the town
of Tripolitza. In the middle distance, on a
projecting hill, appears a ruined mediaeval castle.
The rural solitude of the landscape with its green
spreading plain, its winding river, its lonely hills,
and the silence and peace brooding over all, is
not unworthy of Arcadia.
.h2 id=ch56 title='LVI. — Mantinea.'
.ti 0
LVI. Mantinea.—The ruins of Mantinea
are situated in a flat, marshy, and treeless plain
.bn 319.png
.pn +1
about nine miles north of the present town of
Tripolitza. The plain is about seven miles long
from north to south, but in the latter direction
it melts into the plain of Tegea; the division
between the two is marked only by the protrusion
of rocky hills on either side, which here
narrows the plain to about a mile in width.
On the east the plain is bounded by the chain
of Mount Alesius, bare and high on the north,
low and bushy on the south; between the two
sections of the chain thus marked off from each
other is the dip through which the path goes to
Nestane and so by the Prinus route to Argos.
On the west of the plain rises the high rugged
range of Mount Maenalus, its lower slopes bare
or overgrown with bushes, its higher slopes
belted with dark pine-woods. Seen from the
plain to the north of Mantinea on a bright
autumn day, this fine range, with its dark blue
lights and purple shadows, presents the appearance
of a tossing sea of billows petrified by
magic. Finally, on the north the plain of
Mantinea is divided from that of Orchomenus
by a low chain of reddish hills.
A great part of the plain, including almost all
the southern part, is covered with vineyards, the
rich green foliage of which, when the vines are in
leaf, contrasts with the grey arid slopes of the surrounding
mountains. But the site of Mantinea
itself is now mostly cornland. Not a single
.bn 320.png
.pn +1
house stands within the wide area, and hardly
one is within sight. In spring the swampy
plain is traversed by sluggish streams, little
better than ditches, the haunts of countless frogs,
which sun themselves on the banks and squatter
into the water with loud flops at the approach
of the wayfarer. The whole scene is one of
melancholy and desolation. As the plain stands
about two thousand feet above the sea, the
climate is piercingly cold in winter as well as
burning hot in summer. The marshes now
render the site unhealthy at all times, but in
antiquity it was doubtless better drained. Of
the oak-forest, through which the road ran from
Mantinea to Tegea in the days of Pausanias,
nothing is left. Indeed the oak has long ago
retreated from the plains to the mountains of
Arcadia.
.h2 id=ch57 title='LVII. — The Road to Stymphalus.'
.ti 0
LVII. The Road to Stymphalus.—The
road to Stymphalus, after diverging from the
road to Pheneus, continues to skirt the foot of
the mountains in a north-easterly direction.
Behind us we leave Mount Trachy, which seen
from the north is an imposing mountain, its
steep sides rent by parallel gullies. Gradually
the hill and plain of Orchomenus disappear
behind us, and the path leads into a savage glen,
hemmed in by wild rocky mountains, bare and
.bn 321.png
.pn +1
desolate, towering high on either side. Away
up in the face of a precipice on the right of the
path is seen the little monastery of Kandyla,
hanging in what appears an almost inaccessible
position. In winter a torrent flows down the
middle of the glen to swell the marsh in the
plain of Orchomenus. A mile or so beyond
the monastery we reach the village of Kandyla,
straggling in the wide gravelly bed of the
torrent, shaded by plane-trees and mulberry-trees,
and shut in on all sides by high rocky
mountains, their sides covered with fir-woods
and their summits tipped with snow for a good
part of the year. From the upper end of the
village a pass leads eastward over the mountains
to Bougiati and the ancient Alea; the path,
which is very rough and steep, ascends a wild
gully overhung on the south by a huge beetling
crag; the descent on the eastern side of the
mountains, towards Bougiati, is so steep as to
be almost impassable for horses.
But at present we are following the path to
Stymphalus, which, leaving the village of Kandyla
in a northerly direction, ascends the mountain
by zigzags along the edge of precipices. The
snow sometimes lies deep here as late as March,
making the ascent difficult and dangerous. The
pass runs north-east between the lofty Mount
Skipieza, nearly six thousand feet high, on the
left, and the sharp-peaked Mount St. Constantine,
.bn 322.png
.pn +1
crowned with a Frankish castle, on the right.
From the first summit of the pass a path
branches off to the right, descending into
the narrow valley of Skotini which we see
stretching eastward beneath us. Half an hour
more takes us to a second summit, whence
we look down on the plain and lake of
Stymphalus and across to the majestic mass of
Mount Cyllene towering on the farther side of
the valley. The way now goes down a ravine
shut in on both sides by lofty fir-clad mountains
and known as the Wolf’s Ravine from the
wolves that are said to abound in it. Thus
descending we reach the valley of Stymphalus
and the western end of the lake.
.h2 id=ch58 title='LVIII. — The Lake and Valley of Stymphalus.'
.ti 0
LVIII. The Lake and Valley of Stymphalus.—The
valley of Stymphalus lies immediately
to the east of the valley and lake
of Pheneus, from which it is divided only by
the ridge of Mount Geronteum. The general
features of both valleys are alike. Both are
shut in so closely on all sides by mountains and
hills that the water which accumulates in them
has no outlet except by underground chasms,
and forms in the bottom of each valley a lake
which shrinks in summer. But the valley of
Stymphalus is smaller and narrower than the
valley of Pheneus, and its lake is quite different.
.bn 323.png
.pn +1
Instead of a deep sea-like expanse of blue
water, we have here a small lake of the most
limpid clearness, the shallowness of which is
proved to the eye by the patches of reeds and
other water-plants that emerge from the surface
of the water even in the middle of the lake.
The palm of beauty is generally, I believe,
awarded to the lake of Pheneus; but the
charms of Stymphalus are of a rarer and
subtler sort. Blue lakes encircled by steep
pine-clad mountains may be found in many
lands; but where shall we look for the harmonious
blending of grand mountains and
sombre pine-forests with a still, pellucid,
shallow, but not marshy lake, tufted with
graceful water-plants, such as meets us in
Stymphalus?
The lake of Stymphalus may be a mile and
a half long by half a mile wide. On the north
it bathes the foot of a ridge or chain of low
heights, covered with rugged grey rocks and
overgrown with prickly shrubs, which reaches
its highest point on the west and descends
gradually in terraces to the east, where its last
rocks are elevated above the plain and lake by
only a few feet. On the crest of this rocky
ridge, towards its eastern end, are some remains
of the citadel of Stymphalus. At the back of
the ridge a stretch of level ground divides it
from the steep slopes of the majestic Cyllene,
.bn 324.png
.pn +1
which rises like a wall on the northern side of
the valley. The sides of this great mountain
are mostly bare and of a reddish-grey hue; but
the grey shoulder of its sister peak on the east,
joined to it by a high ridge, is mottled with
black pines. The mountains on the southern
side of the lake are also steep and high; low
bushes mantle their lower and dark pine-forests
their upper slopes. Conspicuous among them,
between immense pine-covered slopes, is the
deep glen known as the Wolfs Ravine, through
which the road goes to Orchomenus.
Solitude and silence, broken by the strident
cries of the water-fowl that haunt the mere,
reign in the valley. A few hamlets nestle in the
nooks and glens at the foot of the mountains;
but in the wide strath and on the banks of the
lake not a human habitation is to be seen.
The impression left by the scenery on some
minds is that of gloom and desolation. Yet
on a hot day, when all the landscape is flooded
with the intense sunlight of the south, it is
pleasant to sit on the rocky ridge of Stymphalus,
looking down on the cool clear water of
the lake and listening to the cries of the water-fowl,
the drowsy hum of bees, and the tinkle of
distant goat-bells. In such weather even the
dark pine-forests on the mountains, gloomy
as they must be under a bleak cloudy sky,
suggest only ideas of coolness and shade; and
.bn 325.png
.pn +1
we can well imagine that the ancient Stymphalus,
with its colonnades and terraces rising
from the lake, must have been a perfect place
in which to lounge away the languid hours of a
Greek summer. For the high upland character
of the valley contributes with the expanse of
water to temper the heat of the summer sun.
The traveller who passes, as he may do, in a
single day from the cool moist air of the valley
to the sultry heat of the plain of Argos is
struck by the contrast between the climates.
In the morning he may have left the cherry-trees
in blossom at Stymphalus; in the evening
he may see the reapers getting in the harvest
in the plain of Argos.
.h2 id=ch59 title='LIX. — The Lake of Pheneus.'
.ti 0
LIX. The Lake of Pheneus.—The lake
of Pheneus (for what was a plain in the time
of Pausanias is now a lake) is a broad and
beautiful sheet of greenish-blue water encircled
by lofty mountains which descend in rocky
declivities or sheer precipices to the water’s
edge, their upper slopes clothed with black
pine-woods and their summits capped with
snow for many months of the year. Right
above the lake on the north-east towers the
mighty cone of Cyllene, the loftiest mountain
but one in Peloponnese; while on the north-west
Dourdouvana rears its long serrated crest,
.bn 326.png
.pn +1
culminating in a sharp bare peak of grey rock,
at the foot of which, embowered in trees and
gardens, nestles the village of Phonia, the
representative of the ancient Pheneus. Here
on the north, between the village and the
lake, is the only stretch of level ground that
breaks the mountain ring, and the luxuriant
green of its vineyards and maize-fields contrasts
pleasingly with the sombre hue of the
pine-forests all around. The first sight of this
blue lake embosomed among forest-clad mountains
takes the traveller by surprise, so unlike
is it to anything else in Greece; and he feels
as if suddenly transported from the arid hills
and the parched plains of Greece to a northern
land—from the land of the olive, the vine, and
the orange, to the land of the pine, the mountain,
and the lake.
So completely is the lake fenced in by
mountains on all sides that no stream can
issue from it above ground, and the water
escapes only by two subterranean emissaries or
Katavothras, as they are called by the Greeks,
at the south-eastern and south-western ends
of the lake. Through the latter emissary the
water passes under the mountain, and issuing
on the other side, about six miles from the
lake and eight hundred feet below its level,
forms the source of the Ladon. On the state
of these emissaries it depends whether the great
.bn 327.png
.pn +1
mountain-basin of Pheneus is a fertile plain or
a broad lake. From antiquity down to the
present century the periods in which the basin
has been completely drained have alternated
with periods in which it has been occupied by
a lake. In the time of Theophrastus (the
fourth century B.C.) the bottom of the valley
seems to have been generally dry land, for he
mentions that once, when the emissaries had
got choked up, the water rose and flooded the
plain, drowning the willows, firs, and pines,
which, however, reappeared the following year
when the flood subsided. In the following
century part of the valley at least would seem
to have been a lake, for the geographer
Eratosthenes, quoted by Strabo, informs us
that the river Anias formed in front of the
city of Pheneus a lake which was drained by
subterranean passages, and that when these
passages were closed the water rose over the
plain, but that when they were opened again it
was discharged into the Ladon and hence into
the Alpheus in such volume that the sacred
precinct at Olympia was flooded, while the lake
on the other hand shrank. Strabo himself
mentions that the flow of the Ladon was once
checked by the obstruction of the emissaries
consequent upon an earthquake. According to
Pliny there had been down to his time five
changes in the condition of the valley from
.bn 328.png
.pn +1
wet to dry and from dry to wet, all of them
caused by earthquakes. In Plutarch’s age the
flood rose so high that the whole valley was
under water, which pious people attributed to
Apollo’s anger at Hercules, who was said to
have stolen the prophetic tripod at Delphi and
carried it off to Pheneus about a thousand years
before. However, later on in the same century
the waters had again subsided, for Pausanias
found the bottom of the valley to be dry land,
and knew of the former existence of the lake
only from tradition.
From the days of Pausanias down to the
beginning of the nineteenth century we have
no record of the condition of the valley. In
1806, when Leake and Dodwell visited it,
the great valley was still a swampy plain,
covered with fields of wheat or barley except
at the south-western end, where round the
entrance to the emissary the water formed a
small lake which never dried up even in
summer. But in 1821, doubtless through the
obstruction of the emissaries, the water began
to rise over the plain, and by 1829-1830, when
the French surveyors mapped the district, the
whole basin was occupied by a deep lake five
miles long by five miles wide. On January 1,
1834, the emissaries suddenly opened again,
the Ladon became a deep and raging torrent,
the valley was drained, and fresh vegetation
.bn 329.png
.pn +1
sprang up on the rich slimy soil. But when
Welcker visited Pheneus in 1842 the valley
was once more occupied by a lake, and had
been so, if he was correctly informed, since
1838 at least. And a lake it would seem to
have been ever since. In 1853 the Swiss
scholar Vischer found a great lake, exactly as
the French surveyors had represented it on
their map; the hill on the north-west side of
the valley, on which are the scanty remains of
the ancient acropolis, projected like a peninsula
into the lake, and the site of the ancient city
was deep under water. W. G. Clark in 1856
describes with enthusiasm the “wide expanse of
still water deep among the hills, reflecting black
pine-woods and grey crags and sky now crimson
with sunset”; according to him the lake was
seven miles long and as many wide. In June
1888 Mr. Philippson found a broad clear lake
of deep green colour; and in the autumn of
1895 I viewed with pleasure the same beautiful
scene, though I would describe the colour of
the water as greenish-blue rather than green.
The lake has shrunk, however, a good deal
since the middle of the century. A long
stretch of level plain, covered with vineyards
and maize-fields, now divides the ancient
acropolis of Pheneus from the margin of the
lake.
.bn 330.png
.pn +1
.h2 id=ch60 title='LX. — From Pheneus To Nonacris.'
.ti 0
LX. From Pheneus To Nonacris.—The
route from Pheneus to the Styx, at least so far
as the modern village of Zarouchla, is one of
the most beautiful in all Greece. The grandeur
of the mountains, the richness of the vegetation,
the fragrance and charm of the pine-forests,
the distant views of the blue lake of Pheneus,
all contribute to render the impression which
the day’s journey leaves on the memory one of
the most agreeable that the traveller brings
back with him from Greece.
From the lower village of Phonia we ascend
through the luxuriant gardens and lanes of the
village to the ridge which bounds the plain of
Pheneus on the north-west. On reaching it,
a grand view westward of the mighty Mount
Chelmos (the ancient Aroanius), with its bare
summit and pine-clad lower slopes, bursts upon
us. The mountain is seen rising above a
deep basin-like valley, the bottom and sides of
which are clothed with the richest vegetation.
High up on the slope of the mountain to the
north-west (Mount Crathis), among trees, is the
delightfully-situated monastery of St. George.
Our path leads down into the valley; on the
slope grow white poplars and cypresses, and
the ground is partly carpeted with ferns. From
the bottom of the valley, which is chiefly occupied
by a charming grove of plane-trees, we
ascend through fine woods, mostly of oak, to
.bn 331.png
.pn +1
the monastery of St. George. Still ascending
after we have passed the monastery, we plunge
again into a maze of beautiful woods and dense
tangled thickets, threaded by rills of sparkling
water. Vegetation of such rank luxuriance is
rarely met with in Greece. On emerging from
these delightful woodlands we traverse, always
ascending, a stretch of bare bushy slopes which
intervenes between the verdant glades below
and the sombre pine-forests higher up. When
these slopes are passed, we enter the pine-forest,
through which our way now goes for several
hours.
Few things can be more delightful than this
ride through the pine-woods. It was a bright
October day when I passed through them on
my way to Solos; in many places the forest
was carpeted with ferns, now turned yellow,
and between the tree-trunks we could see across
the valley the great slopes of Mount Cyllene,
of a glowing purple in the intense sunlight.
From time to time, too, we had views backward
over the blue waters of the lake of Pheneus
embosomed in its dark pine-clad mountains.
Added to all this were the delicious odour of
the pines and the freshness and exhilaration of
the air at a height of about six thousand feet.
But the culmination of beauty, so far as distant
views go, is reached on the summit of the ridge,
before we begin to descend the northern slope
.bn 332.png
.pn +1
towards Zarouchla. On the one side, toward
the south-east, we look back to the lake of
Pheneus and the great mountains which encircle
it, Mount Cyllene above all. On the
other side, toward the north-west, we gaze down
into the long narrow valley of the river Crathis,
hemmed in on either hand by high mountains,
above which soars the bare sharp peak of
Mount Chelmos on the south, while at the
farther end of the valley the view is closed by
the blue Acarnanian mountains across the Gulf
of Corinth.
From the ridge we now descend through
the forest by a steep, winding, stony path, till
we reach the bed of a stream flowing among
romantic rocks and woods to join or rather to
form, with other streams, the Crathis. In the
bottom of the valley the richness of the vegetation
even increases. We rode through thickets
of planes, growing as great bushes or small
trees, so dense that we had constantly to stoop
to the horses’ necks to prevent our faces from
being brushed by the branches. Other trees
and plants, of which I did not know the names,
grew in profusion around us. And above all
this Eden-like verdure of woods and lanes and
thickets shot up the huge sharp peaks of
Chelmos and its sister mountains, blue and
purple in the sunlight. In this paradise lies
the village of Zarouchla. Beyond it the path
.bn 333.png
.pn +1
follows the valley of the Crathis, keeping for
the most part on the right bank of the stream.
The valley is very narrow, and is enclosed by
immense steep mountains, the sides of which,
wherever it is practicable, are terraced for vines
or other cultivation. The Crathis, when I saw
it, was a clear rushing stream, easily fordable
at any point. At first the path runs in the
bottom of the valley through tangled thickets.
Here and there, where the dale is wide
enough to admit of it, a patch of maize is
grown. But soon, as we proceed, the valley
contracts too much to allow even of this, and
so the path, often rough and difficult for horses,
ascends and leads along the barer mountain-side
at some height above the stream.
Thus advancing we at last arrive opposite
to the mouth of the deep glen down which the
Styx comes to join the Crathis on its western
bank. Here we cross the Crathis and strike
up the glen of the Styx. The scenery of the
profound and narrow glen is almost oppressively
grand. The mountains are immense
and exceedingly massive; above they are bare
and rocky; but their lower slopes are terraced
so as to resemble gigantic staircases, and on the
terraces are perched several very picturesque
villages, the houses scattered at different levels
and embowered among trees. At the upper
end of the glen soars the mighty cone of Mount
.bn 334.png
.pn +1
Chelmos. The grandeur of the scenery, which
would otherwise be almost awful, is softened
by the wonderful luxuriance of the vegetation
in the glen. The horse-chestnut trees especially,
with their enormous gnarled and knotted
trunks, are a sight to see. The nightingales
are said to be very common here and to sing
from February to June. A long laborious
ascent by a winding path brings us to the
prosperous village of Solos on the eastern side
of the glen. The villages on the opposite side
of the glen, dispersed over the terraced slopes,
form, with Solos, almost a single settlement.
One of them probably occupies the site of the
ancient Nonacris.
.h2 id=ch61 title='LXI. — The Fall of the Styx.'
.ti 0
LXI. The Fall of the Styx.—The
village of Solos stands, as we have seen, on
the right bank of the Styx, near where that
stream falls into the Crathis. But the source
of the stream is at the head of the glen, some
miles to the south, where the water tumbles
or trickles, according to the season, over the
smooth face of an immense perpendicular cliff,
the top of which is not far below the conical
summit of Mount Chelmos, a mountain nearly
eight thousand feet high. The walk from
Solos to the foot of the fall and back is exceedingly
fatiguing, and very few travellers
.bn 335.png
.pn +1
accomplish it; most of them are content to
view the fall from a convenient distance through
a telescope. For the first two miles or so the
path is practicable for horses, and travellers
who are resolved to make their way to the
waterfall will do well to ride thus far and to
have the horses waiting for them here on their
return. It is also necessary to take a guide or
guides. The path winds up the glen, keeping
at first high on the right bank. The bed of
the stream is here prettily wooded with poplars
and other trees and is spanned by a bridge
with a single high arch. For a considerable
distance above the village the water of the
Styx, as seen from above, appears to be of
a clear light-blue colour, with a tinge of green.
This colour, however, is only apparent, and is
due to the slaty rocks, of a pale greenish-blue
colour, among which the river flows. In reality
the water is quite clear and colourless.
In about twenty minutes from leaving the
village we come in sight of the cliff over which
the water of the Styx descends. It is an immense
cliff, absolutely perpendicular, a little to
the left or east of the high conical summit of
Mount Chelmos. The whole of this northern
face of the mountain is in fact nothing but a
sheer and in places even overhanging precipice
of grey rock—by far the most awful line
of precipices I have ever seen. The cliffs of
.bn 336.png
.pn +1
Delphi, grand and imposing as they are, sink
into insignificance compared with the prodigious
wall of rock in which Mount Chelmos
descends on the north into the glen of the
Styx. The cliff down which the water comes
is merely the eastern and lower end of this
huge wall of rock. Seen from a distance it
appears to be streaked perpendicularly with
black and red. The black streak marks the
line of the waterfall, to which it has given
the modern name of Mavro-nero, ‘the Black
Water.’ The colour is produced by a dark
incrustation which spreads over the smooth
face of the rock wherever it is washed by the
falling water or by the spray into which the
water dissolves before it reaches the ground.
In the crevices of the cliffs to the right and
left of the fall great patches of snow remain
all the year through. I saw them and passed
close to the largest of them on a warm autumn
day, after the heat of summer and before the
first snow of winter.
About twenty-five minutes after leaving
Solos we cross the Styx by a ford, and henceforward
the route lies on the left or western
bank of the stream. Five minutes from the
ford bring us to a mill picturesquely situated
among trees, where a brook comes purling
down a little glen wooded with willows and
plane-trees. Just above the mill the Styx
.bn 337.png
.pn +1
tumbles over a fine rocky lyn in a roaring
cascade. Beyond this point the steep slopes
of the hills on the opposite bank of the stream
are covered with ferns, which when I rode up
the glen were tinged with the gold of autumn.
In front of us looms nearer and larger the
cone of Mount Chelmos with its long line of
precipices.
Ten or twelve minutes beyond the mill the
horses are left and the traveller sets forward on
foot. As we advance the glen grows wilder
and more desolate, but for the first half-mile or
so it is fairly open, the track keeps close to the
bed of the stream, and there is no particular
difficulty. A deep glen now joins the glen of
the Styx from the south-east. Here we begin
to ascend the slope and cross an artificial
channel which brings down water to the mill.
All pretence of a path now ceases, and henceforward
till we reach the foot of the waterfall
there is nothing for it but to scramble over
rocks and to creep along slopes often so steep
and precipitous that to find a foothold or handhold
on them is not easy, and stretching away
into such depths below that it is best not to
look down them but to keep the eyes fixed on
the ground at one’s feet. A stone set rolling
down one of these slopes will be heard rumbling
for a long time, and the sound is echoed
and prolonged by the cliffs with such startling
.bn 338.png
.pn +1
distinctness that at first it sounds as if a rock
were coming thundering down upon the wayfarer
from above. In the worst places the
guides point out to the traveller where to plant
his feet and hold him up if he begins to slip.
Shrubs, tough grass, and here and there a
stunted pine-tree give a welcome hold, but on
the steepest slopes they are wanting. The last
slope up to the foot of the cliff—a very long
and steep declivity of loose gravel which gives
way at every step—is most fatiguing. As I
was struggling slowly up it with the guides, we
heard the furious barking of dogs away up the
mountains on the opposite side of the glen.
The barking came nearer and nearer, and being
echoed by the cliffs had a weird impressive
sound that suited well with the scene, as if
hell-hounds were baying at the strangers who
dared to approach the infernal water. However,
the dogs came no nearer than the foot of
the slope up which we were clambering, and
some shouts and volleys of stones served to
keep them at bay.
At the head of this long slope of loose
gravel we reach the foot of the waterfall. The
water, as I have indicated, descends the smooth
face of a huge cliff, said to be over six hundred
feet high. It comes largely from the snow-fields
on the summit of Mount Chelmos, and
hence its volume varies with the season. When
.bn 339.png
.pn +1
I visited the fall early in October, after the
long drought of summer, the water merely
trickled down the black streak on the face of
the cliff, its presence being shown only by the
glistening appearance which it communicated
to the dark surface of the rock. At the foot
of the cliff it formed a small stream, flowing
down a very steep rocky bed into the bottom
of the glen far below. The water was clear
and not excessively cold. Even when, through
the melting of the snows, the body of the water
is considerable, it is said to be all dissolved
into spray by falling through such a height
and to reach the ground in the form of fine
rain. Only the lower part of the cliff is visible
from the foot of the waterfall, probably because
the cliff overhangs somewhat. Certainly the
cliffs a little to the right of the waterfall
overhang considerably. With these enormous
beetling crags of grey rock rising on three
sides, the scene is one of sublime but wild
and desolate grandeur. I have seen nothing to
equal it anywhere. On the third side, looking
down the glen and away over the nearer hills,
we see the blue mountains of Acarnania across
the Gulf of Corinth; my guide said these
mountains were in Roumelia. In the face of
the rock, a few yards to the right of the
waterfall, are carved the names or initials of
persons who have visited the spot, with the
.bn 340.png
.pn +1
dates of their visits. Among the names is
that of King Otho, with the date 1847.
.h2 id=ch62 title='LXII. — The Valley of the Aroanius.'
.ti 0
LXII. The Valley of the Aroanius.—After
traversing the upland plain of Soudena
in a broad stony bed, which in autumn is dry,
the river enters a defile at the south-eastern
corner of the plain. Through this defile,
formed on the east by the slopes of Mount
Chelmos and on the west by the hills that
close the plain of Soudena on the south, the
Aroanius and the road to Clitor run side by
side. At first the space between the hills is
broad and level, dotted here and there with
trees. Soon, however, the valley contracts
and begins to descend, affording a beautiful
prospect of range behind range of mountains
in the south, shading away according to the
distance from dark purple to pale blue. The
path runs at first on the east bank of the
river-bed, which was dry when I saw it
early in October. But after being joined by
a tributary, which comes down from Mount
Chelmos in a deeply-excavated bed between
slopes of red earth, the river attained the
dimensions of a good-sized Scotch burn.
Gradually as the mountains close in on either
side the valley becomes a glen, through which
the stream flows among plane-trees in a prettily-wooded
.bn 341.png
.pn +1
bed. Here the path crosses to the
right or west bank, which it follows henceforward.
Farther on the glen contracts into
a deep rocky gorge between steep mountains,
but only to expand again and allow the river
to flow, with a pleasing murmur, in its wooded
bed through a stretch of cultivated ground.
Thus gradually the valley opens out into the
plain of Clitor. Vineyards and maize-fields
occupy its lower reaches. It was the time of
the vintage when I traversed this beautiful
valley. Bunches of ripe grapes lay as offerings
before the holy pictures in the little wayside
shrines; we met strings of donkeys laden with
swelling wine-skins or with panniers of grapes;
and in the vineyards as we passed the peasants
were at work pressing the purple clusters, with
which they insisted on loading, for nothing, the
aprons of our muleteers.
.h2 id=ch63 title='LXIII. — The Springs of the Ladon.'
.ti 0
LXIII. The Springs of the Ladon.—The
Ladon of Arcadia, the greatest of the
tributaries of the Alpheus, rises in the middle
of a valley on the western side of Mount Saita,
the ancient Oryxis. The valley is of some
breadth, and its bottom is furrowed on both
sides by the dry beds of two watercourses.
Between the two watercourses there rises in
the midst of the valley a low hill of reddish
.bn 342.png
.pn +1
rock, which ends on the south in a precipitous
face some hundred and fifty feet high. At the
foot of this red precipitous rock lies a large
still pool of opaque dark-blue water, fringed
by sharp-pointed grasses and other water
plants, while a few stunted willows, holly-oaks,
and plane-trees grow among the rocks
beside it. This pool is the source of the
Ladon, which rushes from it in a brawling
impetuous stream of dark-blue water, its
margin fringed with willows. The water enters
the pool, not from the rocks above, but from
a deep chasm in the earth which is only visible
when, as sometimes happens, the source dries
up. A peasant, who was beside the pool when
I visited it in 1895, told my dragoman that
three years before, after a violent earthquake,
the water ceased to flow for three hours, and
the chasm in the bottom of the pool was
exposed, and fish were seen lying on the dry
ground. After three hours the spring began
to flow a little, and three days later there was
a loud explosion and the water burst forth
in immense volume. Mr. Philippson was informed
on the spot of a like event which had
taken place in 1880. Similar sudden eruptions
of water at the source of the Ladon have been
reported earlier in the present century and in
antiquity. The stoppage of the water and its
abrupt reappearance are doubtless due to the
.bn 343.png
.pn +1
alternate obstruction and clearance of the
subterranean passages by which the Lake of
Pheneus is drained. For the ancients were
right in supposing that the water which rises
at the source of the Ladon comes directly
underground from the Lake of Pheneus. It
has the same deep greenish-blue tinge as the
water of the lake, and is flat and tepid to
the taste like standing water, not cold and
fresh like the water of a mountain spring.
The source is distant only about five miles
from the lake, from which it is divided by
the high range of Mount Saita. The hills on
the opposite or western side of the valley are
much lower; their slopes of reddish rock are
partly covered with low green bushes. Numbers
of peasant women may be seen washing
clothes beside the pool in the usual Greek
fashion; after soaking the clothes in water
they beat them with a sort of broad paddle
in a wooden trough.
.h2 id=ch64 title='LXIV. — The Gorge of the Ladon.'
.ti 0
LXIV. The Gorge of the Ladon.—The
path from the village of Stretzova leads across
bushy and rocky slopes, and then through
bare stony fields to the northern bank of the
river. Indian corn is here grown in the valley
of the Ladon; wooded mountains rise from
its southern bank, and higher mountains of
.bn 344.png
.pn +1
imposing contour close the view on the south-east.
At the point where we strike the river
two springs gush from under rocks and form
a pool shaded by fine spreading plane-trees,
whence a stream flows into the Ladon after a
course of a few yards. From this point to the
bridge of Spathari, a ride of about five hours,
the scenery is unsurpassed in Greece. The
river here forces its way along the bottom of
a profound gorge hemmed in by high wooded
mountains, which in places descend in immense
precipices, feathered with trees and bushes in
their crevices, to the brink of the rapid stream.
The narrow path runs high up on the right or
northern side of the gorge, sometimes overhung
by beetling crags, and affording views,
now grand now almost appalling, down into
the depths of the tremendous gorge, and across
it to the high wooded slopes or precipices on
the farther side.
The gorge may be said to be divided in
two at the village of Divritsa, where the
mountains recede a little from the river, and
the scenery of the two parts is somewhat
different. In the first half, ending a little
above the village of Divritsa, the river sweeps
round the base of high steep mountains, which
on the south side of the gorge are wooded to
their summits and broken every now and then
by a profound glen, the sides of which are also
.bn 345.png
.pn +1
wooded from top to bottom. The mountains
on the north side are in general not wooded,
but bare or overgrown with bushes. This
would detract from the beauty of the scenery
if the path ran on the south side of the gorge,
from which the barer slopes of the mountains
on the north would be visible. As it is, the
path runs along the steep sides of the mountains
on the north side, and the eye rests
continually on the mighty wall of verdure that
rises on the other side of the river. I had the
good fortune to traverse this wonderful gorge
on a bright October day, when the beautiful
woods were just touched here and there with
the first tints of autumn. Far below the river
was seen and heard rushing along, now as a
smooth swirling stream of opaque green water
with a murmurous sound, now tumbling, with
a mighty roar, down great rocks and boulders
in sheets of greenish-white foam.
Below Divritsa the grandeur of the gorge
increases to the point of being almost overpowering.
Wooded mountains rising steeply
from the river have now given place to enormous
perpendicular or beetling crags tufted with
trees and bushes in their crevices wherever
a tree or a bush can find a footing, and overhanging
the ravine till there is hardly room to
pass under them, and they seem as if they
would shut out the sky and meet above the
.bn 346.png
.pn +1
river. Add to this that the path is narrow
and runs high above the stream along the
brink of precipices where a slip or a stumble
of the horse might precipitate his rider into
the dreadful depths below. We seem therefore
to breathe more freely when, a little above the
bridge of Spathari, we at last issue from the
gorge and see a great free expanse of sky
above us, lower hills, and the river winding
between them through woodland scenery of a
pretty but commonplace type.
.h2 id=ch65 title='LXV. — Aliphera.'
.ti 0
LXV. Aliphera.—From the citadel, and
indeed from the whole summit of the ridge,
there is a glorious prospect over the valley
of the Alpheus for miles and miles. All the
mountains of northern Arcadia are spread out
like a panorama; and through the broad
valley that intervenes between them and the
height on which we stand, the Alpheus is seen
winding far away and far below. The air
blows fresh and sweet on the height, and the
peacefulness, the stillness, the remoteness from
the world of this little mountain-citadel remind
one irresistibly of Keats’s lines in the “Ode on
a Grecian Urn”:
.pm start_poem
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
.pm end_poem
.bn 347.png
.pn +1
.h2 id=ch66 title='LXVI. — Dimitsana.'
.ti 0
LXVI. Dimitsana.—The ancient Teuthis
perhaps occupied the site of the modern
Dimitsana, a village which stands very picturesquely
on a high ridge on the left or eastern
bank of the Gortynius river, surrounded on all
sides by steep and lofty mountains. The river
sweeps in a semicircle at the bottom of a deep
gully round the western part of the town,
which thus stands on a high rocky promontory
jutting into the ravine. The steep and narrow
streets, which are little better than rocky staircases,
are lined with shops and present a busy
and animated scene. The air is cool and
healthy. To the south the eye ranges over the
vine-clad hills on both sides of the river, to the
green plain of Megalopolis threaded by the
silver stream of the Alpheus, and bounded
far away to the south by the snowy range of
Taygetus. A steep, rugged, and zigzag path
leads down through terraced vineyards to the
bed of the river at the southern foot of the hill.
Here a bridge spans the stream, just below a
point where the river descends fifty feet in a
space of as many yards, tumbling over huge
masses of rock between lofty precipices overhung
with shrubs. The hill on the opposite
or western side of the ravine is even steeper
and higher than that of Dimitsana.
All round the crest of the ridge occupied by
the town are the remains of an ancient wall,
.bn 348.png
.pn +1
parts of it being intermixed with the yards,
walls, and foundations of private houses. In
some places there are several courses of masonry
standing. The style of masonry is rectangular
at the east, but polygonal at the west end of
the ridge. The blocks at the latter end are
enormous. Here too are the foundations of
an imposing edifice, turned east and west, and
built of fine squared blocks. It was doubtless
a temple. Some ancient foundations may also
be seen among the terraced vineyards on the
southern slope of the hill.
.h2 id=ch67 title='LXVII. — Gortys.'
.ti 0
LXVII. Gortys.—On the right bank of
the Gortynius, or river of Dimitsana, about two
and a half miles from its junction with the
Alpheus, are the ruins of Gortys. They occupy
the fairly spacious summit of a hill which falls
away on the east in lofty precipices to the
river. A visit to them may be most conveniently
paid from Karytaena. From this
picturesque town, perched high on the right or
eastern bank of the Alpheus, we descend northward
by a very rugged and stony path into the
deep glen of the Alpheus. Steep arid mountains
enclose the glen, and behind us towers
the imposing rock of Karytaena with its ruined
mediaeval castle. In about half an hour we
reach the junction of the Gortynius river with
.bn 349.png
.pn +1
the Alpheus. We now quit the glen of the
Alpheus and follow that of the Gortynius river in
a north-easterly direction, keeping at first along
the left bank of the stream. The glen, though
shut in by barren stony mountains, is rather
less gloomy and forbidding than the glen of
the Alpheus which we have left. In less than
half an hour we descend into the bed of the
Gortynius, a rushing stream of clear bluish-green
water, and cross it by a stone bridge
which is carried on a high pointed arch and
paved, in the usual fashion of such bridges in
Greece, with cobbles of the most agonising
shapes and sizes. Just above the bridge the
glen deepens and narrows into a ravine with
steep rocky sides, and the view looking up it,
with the old high-arched bridge in the foreground
and the rushing stream of green water
below, is highly picturesque. I drank of the
water here and found it by no means cold, in
spite of what Pausanias says as to the exceeding
coldness of the water of the Gortynius.
But it was hot autumn weather when I passed
this way. Pausanias may have seen the river
in winter or spring, when its current was chilled
by ice or melting snow. From the bridge a
steep and rugged path ascends the right or
western side of the glen. We follow it and
continue to ride up hill and down dale along
the side of the barren mountains, with the river
.bn 350.png
.pn +1
rolling along in the bottom of the deep ravine
on our right. Half-way up the precipices
which rise on this side of the ravine hangs a
little red-roofed monastery. In about three-quarters
of an hour from crossing the bridge we
reach the ruins of Gortys.
The ruins, as we have seen, occupy the
summit of a hill which overhangs the right or
western bank of the Gortynius river. At its
eastern extremity the hill falls down in sheer
precipices of great height into the glen of the
river. It is in looking down these immense
precipices that we appreciate the height of
the hill. On the other hand, seen from the
south, as you approach it from Karytaena, the
hill presents the appearance merely of a gently-swelling
down. The reason of this is that
from the bridge over the river we have been
gradually rising, and that the ground immediately
to the south of Gortys is itself a hill as
high as the hill of Gortys, from which it is
divided only by a slight hollow now chiefly
occupied with vineyards. But when we have
ascended what appears to be the gentle eminence
occupied by the ruins of Gortys we see
that the hill descends in a long slope north-eastward
to the glen of the Gortynius river,
which curves round the hill in a great bend on
the north-east and east. The summit of the
hill extends in the form of a rather narrow
.bn 351.png
.pn +1
ridge from south-east to north-west, gradually
rising to its highest point on the north-west.
Towards this end the hill is naturally defended
on the side of the south by masses of rugged
rocks, of which the ancient engineers took
advantage, interposing pieces of walls in the
intervals between the rocks. In the crannies of
the rocks bushes have now rooted themselves.
The long slope of the hill down to the glen
of the Gortynius on the north-east is bare and
stony. Stony and barren, too, are the mountains
that surround Gortys on all sides. In a grey
cold light or under a cloudy sky they would be
exceedingly bleak and dreary; but under the
warm sunshine of Greece they are only bare
and desolate. The most pleasing view is down
into the glen of the Gortynius on the north-east,
where the river emerges from a narrow
defile between high precipices, above which
the mountains rise on both sides. At the
mouth of the defile there is a house or two
among trees. In spite of its height above the
river, Gortys lies essentially in a basin shut in
on all sides by mountains. The summer heat
here must consequently be very great. Even
in October, when I visited the place, though a
fresh breeze was blowing, it was drowsily hot
among the ruins. The sweet smell of the
thyme, the tinkle of sheep-bells, the barking of
dogs, and the cries of shepherds in the distance
.bn 352.png
.pn +1
seemed to enhance the feeling of summer and
to invite to slumber in the shade. But it was
pleasant and almost cooling to hear the roar of
the river, and to see its blue-green water and
greenish-white foam away down in the glen.
.h2 id=ch68 title='LXVIII. — The Plain of Megalopolis.'
.ti 0
LXVIII. The Plain of Megalopolis.—Megalopolis
stood in the great western plain of
Arcadia, which, like the great eastern plain of
Mantinea and Tegea, extends in a direction
from north to south. In natural beauty the
plain of Megalopolis is far superior to its
eastern neighbour. The latter is a bare monotonous
flat, unrelieved by trees or rivers, and
enclosed by barren mountains, so that its
general aspect is somewhat dreary and depressing;
only towards its northern end do
the mountains rise in grander masses and
with more picturesque outlines. The plain of
Megalopolis, on the other hand, is surrounded
by mountains of fine and varied outlines, some
of the slopes of which are clothed with wood,
and the surface of the plain itself is diversified
with copses and undulating downs and hillocks,
refreshed by numerous streams shaded with
plane-trees, and watered by the broad though
shallow stream of the Alpheus winding through
its midst. The scenery, in contrast to that of
the eastern plain, is eminently bright, smiling,
.bn 353.png
.pn +1
and cheerful. It is, perhaps, seen at its best
after rain on a fine morning in early summer.
The vegetation is then green, the air pellucid,
the outlines of the environing mountains are
sharp and clear, and their tints vary from deep
purple to lilac.
.h2 id=ch69 title='LXIX. — The Cave of the Black Demeter.'
.ti 0
LXIX. The Cave of the Black
Demeter.—The cave of the Black Demeter
has been identified with a small cavern in the
glen of the Neda, about an hour’s walk to the
west of Phigalia. The place is known in the
neighbourhood as the stomion tes Panagias or
Gully of the Virgin. To reach the cavern it is
necessary to descend into the ravine by a steep
and narrow path which affords very little foothold
and overhangs depths which might turn a
weak head. At the awkward places, however,
it is generally possible to hold on to bushes or
rocks with the hands. Thus we descend to the
bed of the river, which here rushes roaring along
at the bottom of the narrow wooded ravine, the
precipitous sides of which tower up on either
hand to an immense height. The cave is
situated in the face of a prodigious cliff on the
north side of the ravine, about a hundred feet
or so above the bed of the river, from which it
is accessible only by a narrow and difficult footpath.
The ravine at this point sweeps round
.bn 354.png
.pn +1
in a sharp curve, and the cavern is placed just
at the elbow of the bend. On the opposite
side of the lyn, some fifty feet or so away, a
great crag, its sides green with grass and trees
wherever they can find a footing, soars up to
a height about as far above the cavern as the
cavern is above the stream. Hills close the
view both up and down the glen; those at the
upper end are high, steep, and wooded.
The cavern itself, originally a mere shallow
depression or hollow in the side of the cliff,
has been artificially closed by a rough wall of
masonry, apparently of recent date; the plaster
seemed to me fresh. In the cavern thus formed
a rough floor of boards has been run across at
a height of about four feet above the ground.
Thus the grotto is divided into two compartments,
the upper of which has been converted
into a tiny chapel with an altar at the end
and two holy pictures of Christ and John
the Baptist. On one of the walls are some
faded frescoes. Light enters the little cave by
a small window in the wall beside the altar.
At least half of the roof is artificial, being built
of the same rough masonry as the wall. Close
beside this tiny cavern, to the east of it, may
be seen a still tinier grotto, separated from the
former by a slight protuberance in the rock.
The same ledge of rock gives access to both
grottoes.
.bn 355.png
.pn +1
What is called the Gully of the Virgin is
a tunnel, some hundred yards long, formed of
fallen rocks and earth, through which the Neda
rushes in the ravine below the cavern. In
winter the swollen stream flows over the roof of
the tunnel, but in summer, when the river is low,
you may walk through the tunnel and admire
the stalactites which hang from its roof.
.h2 id=ch70 title='LXX. — The Temple of Apollo At Bassae.'
.ti 0
LXX. The Temple of Apollo At
Bassae.—This temple, by far the best preserved
of all ancient temples in Peloponnese,
stands in a strikingly wild and secluded situation
at a height of nearly four thousand feet
above the sea, with a wide prospect southward
to the distant mountains of Messenia and
Laconia. The ground on which the temple is
built is a narrow platform on the southern side
of a hill, the Mount Cotilius of the ancients.
The rocky slopes of this hill, rising rapidly
behind the temple, shut out all distant views
on the north and north-east. But to the south
the slope descends gradually towards the valley
of the Neda. Due south, through a dip in the
hills, is seen the apparently flat-topped summit
of Ithome. To the south-east, through another
gap, appears the range of Taygetus, with its
beautiful outlines and sharp snowy peaks. In
the nearer foreground, between Ithome and
.bn 356.png
.pn +1
Taygetus, rises Mount Ira, the last stronghold
of the Messenian race in its struggle for freedom
with Sparta. To the east are bare rough hills,
dotted with oak-trees, the western spurs of
Mount Lycaeus, while farther to the south
appears the high round-topped Tetrasi, perhaps
the Nomian mountains of the ancients. The
sea is not visible, but it may be seen by ascending
the slope at the back of the temple. The
bleak desolate mountains form a striking background
to the solitary temple which, built of
the same cold grey limestone which composes
the surrounding rocks, tends to deepen rather
than relieve the melancholy of the scene, the
ruined fane witnessing silently to the transitoriness
of human greatness and the vanity of
human faith.
.h2 id=ch71 title='LXXI. — The Temple of Artemis at Aulis.'
.ti 0
LXXI. The Temple of Artemis at
Aulis.—From the head of the Bay of Aulis
a small valley, sloping gently upwards, runs
inland between hills for something over a mile.
It is watered by a brook which falls into the
bay. About a mile up the valley from the
shore is a ruined Byzantine chapel of St.
Nicholas, which is supposed to occupy the site
of the temple of Artemis, mentioned by
Pausanias, where Iphigenia was led to the altar
to be sacrificed before the Greek fleet set sail
.bn 357.png
.pn +1
for Troy. The scene, if it indeed be so, of
this famous event in Greek legend was somewhat
bleak and cheerless as I saw it under a
leaden sky on a dull November afternoon. The
ruined chapel, with its fallen dome and roofless
walls, had a forlorn air, standing solitary in a
bare, stony, ploughed field on the slope of the
low hills that enclose the little valley on the
south. Similar hills—low, stony, and treeless—with
higher hills rising above them on the
north and west, shut in the valley on all sides
except the east, where appeared, of a pale
blue-green colour under the wintry sky,
a bit of the Bay of Aulis, beyond it the
open channel of the Euripus, and still farther
off, bathed in a gloomy purple, the coast and
mountains of Euboea. Bare ploughed fields,
with a small tree dotted here and there among
them, occupied all the bottom of the valley, and
formed the foreground of the melancholy scene.
Yet bare fields, stony hills, leaden sky, cold
steely sea, and purple mountains glooming in
the distance, seemed a fitting framework for the
ruined shrine, with its memories of departed
glory.
.h2 id=ch72 title='LXXII. — Glaucus’s Leap.'
.ti 0
LXXII. Glaucus’s Leap.—Immediately
beyond the flat-topped hillock which probably
marks the site of Salganeus, the plain
.bn 358.png
.pn +1
comes abruptly to an end and the path runs
along the steep, bushy, but not precipitous
slope of Mount Messapius at some height
above the sea, which on a bright sunshiny
day is of a beautiful green colour, clear as
crystal and dappled with patches of purple.
Thus proceeding along the steep mountain-side
for about a mile we find ourselves opposite a
pretty rocky island, wooded with pines, which
lies a little way off the shore. On the island
is a ruin which, so far as I could judge by the
eye from the shore, seemed to be mediaeval or
modern. Hereabouts, too, a row of large stones
may be observed lying at the bottom of the clear
water, but they appear to be boulders rather
than hewn stones. Farther on a high cliff,
which seen from the east reminds one of the
Lorelei Rock on the Rhine, rises close to the
shore. The path here descends and runs along
the narrow beach at the foot of the cliff, from
which a very copious spring of water rushes
into the sea. This high cliff is probably what
the ancients called Glaucus’s Leap. On the
morning when I passed it, the clear, sunlit,
greenish-blue water at its foot looked very
inviting; one could fancy the sea-god taking
his plunge into its cool delicious depths. Beyond
the cliff the path again runs along the
foot of the long slope, covered with lentisk and
holly-oak bushes, which descends from the high,
.bn 359.png
.pn +1
bold, pointed summit of Mount Messapius in
an unbroken sweep to the sea.
.h2 id=ch73 title='LXXIII. — Evening on the Euripus.'
.ti 0
LXXIII. Evening on the Euripus.—The
views from Anthedon across the beautiful
Euripus are charming, especially at sunset when
the opposite mountains of Euboea glow with
delicate pink and lilac hues, and flakes of golden
and rosy clouds are reflected in the mirror-like
surface of the strait, which, apparently landlocked
on all sides, resembles a calm lake.
The effect is heightened if a fishing-boat, its
russet sails aglow in the warm evening light,
chances to glide along at the time, and a snatch
of song comes wafted from it across the water.
.h2 id=ch74 title='LXXIV. — The Copaic Lake.'
.ti 0
LXXIV. The Copaic Lake.—Like other
lakes which are drained not by rivers but by
natural subterranean passages in the limestone
mountains which surround them, the level of the
Copaic Lake varied greatly from time to time.
Such variations depend upon two different
sets of causes, first the varying capacity of
the emissaries, and second the varying amount
of water poured into the lake.
In the first place, not only are the emissaries
subject to a gradual and regular process of
change, their passages being slowly clogged and
.bn 360.png
.pn +1
their mouths choked up by the alluvial deposits
which in the course of ages raise the bed of the
lake; but they are also exposed to sudden and
incalculable changes, wrought by earthquakes,
landslips, floating logs, and so on, which may
in a few minutes either widen the passages or
block them up altogether. In the second place,
while these changes, whether gradual or sudden,
affect the outflow of the water, others not less
marked influence its inflow. For the rainfall,
on which the inflow ultimately depends, varies
not only with the year but with the season.
In the sub-tropical climate of the Mediterranean
rain hardly falls in summer, and as a consequence
the streams in that season either flow
with diminished volume or dry up entirely.
All these various causes combine to produce
secular and periodic as well as irregular and
unforeseen variations in the level of lakes like
the Copaic mere. In no lake, perhaps, have
the annual changes been more regular and
marked than in the Copaic; for while in winter
it was a reedy mere, the haunt of thousands
of wild fowl, in summer it was a more or less
marshy plain where cattle browsed and crops
were sown and reaped. So well recognised
were these vicissitudes of the seasons that places
on the bank of the lake such as Orchomenus,
Lebadea, and Copae had summer roads and
winter roads by which they communicated with
.bn 361.png
.pn +1
each other, the winter roads following the sides
of the hills, while the summer roads struck
across the plain. With the setting in of the
heavy autumn rains in November the lake began
to rise and reached its greatest depth in February
or March, by which time the mouths of the
emissaries were completely submerged and betrayed
their existence only by swirls on the
surface of the mere. Yet even then the lake
presented to the eye anything but an unbroken
sheet of water. Viewed from a height such as
the acropolis of Orchomenus it appeared as an
immense fen, of a vivid green colour, stretching
away for miles and miles, overgrown with sedge,
reeds, and canes, through which the river
Cephisus or Melas might be seen sluggishly
oozing, while here and there a gleam of sunlit
water, especially towards the north-east corner
of the mere, directed the eye to what looked
like ponds in the vast green swamp. Bare grey
mountains rising on the north and east, and
the beautiful wooded slopes of Helicon on the
south, bounded the fen. In spring the water
began to sink. Isolated brown patches, where
no reeds grew, were the first to show as islands
in the mere; and as the season advanced they
expanded more and more till they met. By
the middle of summer great stretches, especially
in the middle and at the edges, were bare. In
the higher parts the fat alluvial soil left by the
.bn 362.png
.pn +1
retiring waters was sown by the peasants and
produced crops of corn, rice, and cotton; while
the lower parts, overgrown by rank grass and
reeds, were grazed by herds of cattle and swine.
In the deepest places of all the water often
stagnated the whole summer, though there were
years when it retreated even from these, leaving
behind it only a bog or perhaps a stretch of
white clayey soil, perfectly dry, which the
summer heat seamed with a network of minute
cracks and fissures. By the end of August the
greater part of the basin was generally dry,
though the water did not reach its lowest point
till October. At that time what had lately
been a fen was only a great brown expanse,
broken here and there by a patch of green
marsh, where reeds and other water plants
grew. In November the lake began to fill
again fast.
Such was the ordinary annual cycle of
changes in the Copaic Lake in modern times,
and we have no reason to suppose that it was
essentially different in antiquity. But at all
times the water of the lake has been liable to
be raised above or depressed below its customary
level by unusually heavy or scanty rainfall in
winter or by the accidental clogging or opening
of the chasms. As we read in ancient
authors of drowned cities on the margin of the
lake, so a modern traveller tells of villagers
.bn 363.png
.pn +1
forced to flee before the rising flood, and of
vineyards and corn-fields seen under water.
The plan of draining the Copaic Lake, which
has been successfully accomplished within the
last few years, was conceived and apparently
executed at a very remote time in antiquity.
Strabo reports a tradition that the whole basin
of the lake had at one time been drained and
cultivated by the people of Orchomenus, and
this tradition has been strikingly confirmed by
the recent discovery of a complete and very
ancient system of drainage works in the bed
of the lake. The discovery was made by the
engineers charged with the execution of the
modern drainage works. As described by them,
the ancient works were composed of an ingenious
combination of dykes and canals, which
completely encircled the lake and, receiving the
waters of the streams which flowed into it on
the west and south, conducted them to the
chasms on the east and north-east banks.
Where the canal skirted closely the precipitous
rocky shore of the lake, a single dyke or embankment
sufficed, the water being led between
the dyke and the shore. But where the canal
had to cross a bay, or where the bank of the
lake was not high and steep enough to serve as
one side of the canal, two parallel dykes were
constructed and the water flowed between them.
The remains of these ancient drainage works in
.bn 364.png
.pn +1
the bed of the lake are of two sorts. In the
first place we see them as low broad mounds,
about five feet high and fifty to sixty yards
wide, stretching for long distances across the
plain, either in an unbroken line or with occasional
gaps. Sometimes it is a single mound
that we see, sometimes two parallel mounds at
a short distance from each other. And between
the two parallel mounds or beside the single one
a long shallow depression marks the line of the
ancient canal. These long, low, broad mounds
are clearly the remains of the dykes which
formerly enclosed the canals, and which have
been gradually reduced to their present level
by the ceaseless wash of the waters in the course
of ages. In the second place, the line of the
ancient canals may be traced by the walls built
of great polygonal blocks which in many places
support and case the inner side of the dykes.
In some places these walls are well preserved,
but in others nothing of them remains but a
conspicuous line of white stones running for
miles through the otherwise stoneless plain.
When the system of drainage by canals
which has just been described was in full operation
the basin of the Copaic Lake must have
been nearly dry. But as we have no ground
to suppose that in the historical period of
antiquity the lake was ever drained, it would
seem that we must refer these ancient drainage
.bn 365.png
.pn +1
works to the prehistoric ages. Now Strabo, as we
have seen, has preserved a tradition that the bed
of the lake was at one time drained and cultivated
by the people of Orchomenus. We shall
therefore hardly err in ascribing to the Minyans
of Orchomenus—the Dutchmen of antiquity—the
extensive system of dykes and canals by
which the vast plain was reclaimed from the
waters and converted into waving corn-fields
and smiling vineyards, which poured wealth into
the coffers of the burghers. This was the golden
age of Orchomenus, when its riches vied with the
treasures of Delphi and the wealth of Egyptian
Thebes.
.h2 id=ch75 title='LXXV. — The Great Katavothra.'
.ti 0
LXXV. The Great Katavothra.—To
reach Larymna from the sanctuary of Apollo
on Mount Ptous, we quit the trough or little
mountain-girdled valley in which the remains
of the sanctuary are to be seen and ascend the
ridge that bounds it on the north-west, forming
a saddle between Mount Tsoukourieli and Mount
Megalo Vouno. From the summit of the ridge
or saddle we take a last look backwards at the
vale of Apollo with its ruined sanctuary and the
beautiful Lake Likeri, with its winding shores,
beyond and below it to the south; then turning
northwards we descend somewhat steeply a
narrow glen with high bushy sides, which leads
.bn 366.png
.pn +1
us straight down to the north-eastern corner of
the great Copaic plain. Across this corner of
the plain, which until a few years ago was a
marsh or even a lake for many months of the
year, but is now under cultivation, we ride to
the Great Katavothra, the largest of the natural
chasms in the line of cliffs through which the
water of the Copaic Lake found its way to the
sea. It is a great cave with a high-arched roof
opening in the face of a cliff of creamy white
limestone. Unlike most of the other chasms
or emissaries, it is still in use; the river Melas
(the modern Mavropotamos or Black River),
after traversing all the northern edge of the
Copaic plain in a canal-like bed, pours its water
in a steady stream into the cave and vanishes in
the depths. A little way inward from the mouth
of the cave there is an opening in the roof.
When the sunshine streams down through this
aperture, lighting up the back of the gloomy
cavern with its hanging rocky roof and hurrying
river, the effect is very picturesque; it is
like a fairy grotto, and we could almost fancy
that we stood
.pm start_poem
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
.pm end_poem
But alas! the women who may be seen any day
washing their dirty linen at the mouth of the
cave break the spell.
.bn 367.png
.pn +1
.h2 id=ch76 title='LXXVI. — The Vale of the Muses.'
.ti 0
LXXVI. The Vale of the Muses.—The
grove of the Muses lay at the northern foot of
Mount Helicon in a valley which is traversed by
a stream flowing from west to east. Towards its
western end the valley contracts, being hemmed
in between the steep, lofty, and wooded slopes of
Helicon on the south and another rugged but
less lofty mountain on the north. The saddle
which joins the two mountains bounds the Vale
of the Muses on the west. A fine view of the
valley is to be had from a ruined mediaeval
tower which surmounts a rocky hill of no great
height on the northern side of the vale, about
midway between Ascra and the village of Palaeo-Panagia.
Across the valley to the south rise
the steep slopes of Helicon, rocky below and
wooded with pines above. In a glen at the
foot of these great declivities are seen the trees
that hide the secluded monastery of St. Nicholas,
below which dark myrtle-bushes extend far down
the slope. At the head of the valley in the west the
serrated top of Helicon appears foreshortened,
and a little on this side of the highest point
the monastery of Zagara peeps out, delightfully
situated on a woody slope that falls away into
the sequestered dale where stand the two villages
also called Zagara. To the left of the summit
the snowy top of Parnassus just shows itself in
the distance. In the nearer foreground, on the
hither side of the valley, the conical hill of Ascra,
.bn 368.png
.pn +1
crowned with its ruined tower, stands out boldly.
Vineyards cover the gently-swelling hills on the
northern side of the vale, and down the middle
of it the brook Archontitza (probably the ancient
Termesus or Permessus), fed by many springs,
flows through fields of maize and corn.
.h2 id=ch77 title='LXXVII. — Hippocrene.'
.ti 0
LXXVII. Hippocrene.—To reach the far-famed
Hippocrene (‘the Horse’s Fount’) from
the sanctuary of the Muses we ascend the steep
eastern side of Helicon over moss-grown rocks,
through a thick forest of tall firs. After a toilsome
ascent of about two hours we emerge from
the wood upon a tiny open glade of circular
shape, covered with loose stones and overgrown
with grass and ferns. All around rises the dark
fir-wood. Here, in the glade, is Hippocrene,
now called Kryopegadi, or ‘cold spring.’ It
is a well with a triangular opening, enclosed
by ancient masonry. The clear ice-cold water
stands at a depth of about ten feet below the
coping of the well. But it is possible to climb
down to the water by means of foot-holes cut
in the side, or by holding on to the sturdy ivy,
which, growing from a rock in the water, mantles
the sides of the well. The coldness and clearness
of the water of this perennial spring are famous in
the neighbourhood, especially among the herdsmen,
who love to fill their skin bottles at it.
.bn 369.png
.pn +1
.h2 id=ch78 title='LXXVIII. — Lebadea.'
.ti 0
LXXVIII. Lebadea.—The modern town of
Livadia retains the ancient name of Lebadea
but slightly altered. It stands very picturesquely
at the mouth of a wild gorge in the
mountains, facing northward across the plain.
The white houses with their red roofs and
wooden balconies climb the hill-sides on both
banks of the Hercyna, a clear and copious
stream, which issues from the gorge and rushes
noisily through the streets in a rocky bed, turning
some mills and spanned by several bridges.
At the back of the town a steep rocky hill,
crowned with the ruins of a great mediaeval
castle, descends in sheer and lofty precipices
into the gorge on the left bank of the stream.
The houses extend down into the plain, scattered
among gardens and clumps of trees which
give the town, as seen from below, an agreeable
aspect. The mountains at the foot of which
Lebadea lies are the northern spurs of Mount
Helicon; the high conical summit to the east is
the ancient Mount Laphystius, now the mountain
of Granitsa. The plain that lies spread
out below the town on the north melts eastward
into the great Copaic plain; on the north
it is divided by a chain of low hills from the
parallel plain of Chaeronea.
The greater part of the water of the Hercyna
rises in the profound gorge immediately behind
the town. Here, at the foot of the great
.bn 370.png
.pn +1
precipice which is surmounted by the ruins of
the castle, a cold spring called Kryo (‘cold’)
issues from the rocks and is conducted into a
small well-house. Some niches for holding
votive offerings are cut in the face of the cliff
above it. The largest of these cuttings is a
square chamber hewn out of the rock, about six
feet above the ground. Right and left, in the
sides of the chamber, are benches cut in the
rock. In this cool retreat the Turkish governor
of Lebadea used to smoke his pipe in the heat
of the day. On the opposite side of the ravine,
a few paces off, near some plane-trees, several
springs of clear but lukewarm water rush turbulently
from the ground, and, united with the
water of the Kryo, form the Hercyna. They
turn a cotton-mill close to the spot where they
rise. That some of these springs are the
waters of Memory and Forgetfulness of which
all who would consult Trophonius had to drink
before descending into the oracular pit, is highly
probable; but we have no means of identifying
these mystic waters. An alteration in the
flow of one of the springs is known to have
occurred within the nineteenth century; and
many such changes may have taken place since
antiquity. The general features of the spot,
however, have probably changed but little, and
they are well fitted to impress the imagination.
The many springs gurgling strongly from the
.bn 371.png
.pn +1
ground, the verdant plane-trees, the caverned
rocks, the great precipices soaring on three sides
of us and overhung on the west by the ruins of
the mediaeval castle, make up a scene which
once seen is not easily forgotten. But the
ravine of which this is after all only the mouth
does not end here. Its deep, narrow, stony bed,
sometimes dry, sometimes traversed by a raging
torrent, winds far into the heart of the mountains,
shut in on either hand like a cañon by
tremendous crags. If you follow it upwards for
some miles, the country begins to open up and
you find yourself in bleak and desolate highlands.
A profound silence reigns, broken only
by the cry of a water-ouzel beside the torrent or
the screaming of hawks far up the cliffs.
.h2 id=ch79 title='LXXIX. — The Boeotian Orchomenus.'
.ti 0
LXXIX. The Boeotian Orchomenus.—Orchomenus,
one of the oldest and most
famous cities in Greece, occupied the eastern
extremity of a sharply-marked chain of hills—the
Mount Acontium (‘javelin’) of the ancients—which
extends east and west for about six
miles, bounding the broad level plain of the
Cephisus on the north. Beginning nearly
opposite to Chaeronea, which lies at the foot of
the hills on the southern side of the plain, the
ridge rises gradually to a considerable height,
runs eastward at this level for some miles, and
.bn 372.png
.pn +1
then slopes down into the Copaic plain. From
beginning to end it is the stoniest, barest,
barrenest, and most forbidding chain of hills
that can well be conceived; looking up at it
you wonder if the foot of man has ever trodden
these rugged and pathless solitudes. Close to
the southern base of these desolate hills the
Cephisus—a fairly broad and deep stream of
turbid whitish water—flows between low banks
fringed with tall willows; ducks disport themselves
on its surface, and pigs wallow in the mire
on its banks. According as the weather has
been dry or rainy, the current is sluggish or
rapid. Riding beside it under the willows on a
grey November day you might fancy yourself
on the banks of an English Ouse or Avon, if
the cotton-fields by the river-side and the towering
ridge of naked rock beyond did not remind
you that you are in a foreign land.
At its eastern end the ridge descends in a
long and gentle slope, expanding fan-like as it
descends to the Copaic plain. This long slope
was the site of Orchomenus. The position is
one of great natural strength. On the south
and north it is protected by the steep and
rugged sides of the ridge which form, as it were,
a first line of defence. At the foot of these
declivities the waters of the Cephisus on the
south and of the Melas on the north constitute
a second line of defence; while on the east,
.bn 373.png
.pn +1
where the descent to the plain is gradual, the
site was till lately rendered secure by the great
Copaic swamp which advanced to within a few
hundred yards of the end of the slope. The
ancient walls, of which considerable remains
exist, started from the broad eastern foot of
the hill, and followed its northern and southern
brows upwards, converging more and more as
they rose till at the upper end of the slope they
were within about thirty yards of each other.
Here at the head of the slope the walls end at
the foot of a cliff which rises like a wall to a
considerable height. Its small summit, reached
by a long, steep, and narrow staircase hewn out
of the rock, was the ancient acropolis. Yet
this cliff, which presents such an imposing
appearance on the east, is separated on the west
only by a shallow depression of a few feet from
the long rugged ridge of the hills. This, therefore,
was the weak point in the circuit; and art
had to be called in to supply the want of a
natural defence. Accordingly the little citadel,
protected by precipices on the east and north,
was fortified on the west and south by immense
walls of massive masonry, the remains of which
are amongst the finest specimens of ancient
Greek fortification in existence. The fortress
thus formed is so small that it resembles a
castle rather than an acropolis of the ordinary
Greek type. But the splendid style of the
.bn 374.png
.pn +1
masonry leaves no room to doubt that it is a
Greek fortress of the very best period, probably
of the fourth century B.C.—the golden age of
Greek military engineering.
.h2 id=ch80 title='LXXX. — The Plain of Chaeronea.'
.ti 0
LXXX. The Plain of Chaeronea.—The
plain of Chaeronea—one of the largest
plains in Greece—stretches in an unbroken
sweep from the foot of Mount Parnassus eastward
to what used to be the Copaic Lake. Its
length from east to west is about twelve miles,
and its breadth from north to south about two.
The plain is a dead flat, covered with fields of
cotton and maize, and enclosed by bare, stony,
barren hills both on the north and on the south.
Seen on a bright summer day, with the mountains
beyond the Copaic plain appearing blue in
the distance and Parnassus towering grandly on
the west, the scene is beautiful enough; but on
a grey November morning, with the mists down
on the distant mountains, it wears a cheerless
aspect that well becomes a battlefield where a
nation’s freedom was lost.
.h2 id=ch81 title='LXXXI. — Panopeus.'
.ti 0
LXXXI. Panopeus.—The space enclosed
by the fortification walls and by the rocky crests
shows but few signs of habitation. On the
highest point of the hill, among some holly-oaks,
.bn 375.png
.pn +1
are the scanty tumble-down ruins of a mediaeval
tower, built in the usual way of small stones with
bricks and mortar in the chinks. A little lower
down, and farther to the east, is a small chapel
with remains of faded paintings on the walls.
Scattered about the hill, especially round the
chapel, is a good deal of broken pottery. A fine
grove of beautiful holly-oaks now shades part of
the summit, growing on a grassy slope amid low
plants and shrubs. It is pleasant in the heat
of the day to rest in the shade of these trees, to
smell the wild thyme which grows abundantly
on the hill, and to enjoy the distant prospects.
To the north, across the broad Chaeronean
plain, we look straight into the defile through
which the Cephisus flows from Phocis into
Boeotia; at the northern end of the defile the
low hill is visible on which are the scanty ruins
of Parapotamii. To the west Parnassus lifts
his mighty head at no great distance from us,
his middle slopes darkened by pine-forests that
look like the shadows of clouds resting on the
mountain-side.
.h2 id=ch82 title='LXXXII. — Near Hyampolis.'
.ti 0
LXXXII. Near Hyampolis.—From the
ledge of rocks which bounds the plateau on the
south, near a ruined chapel, a spring of beautifully
clear water gushes forth. Some ancient
blocks lie tumbled about the spring, and a tall
.bn 376.png
.pn +1
poplar-tree grows opposite it. The day was
very hot when I passed it on my way to and
from the ruins of Hyampolis; but the leaves of
the poplar rustled in the breeze, and the water
flowed from under the rocks with a soothing
murmur. Parnassus loomed dim in the distance
through a haze of heat. On my return from
the ruins I found a shepherd boy at the spring
who offered to share his bread with me. This
picturesque spot, on which a poet of the
Anthology might have written an epigram, is
perhaps the site of the temple of Artemis
mentioned by Pausanias.
.h2 id=ch83 title='LXXXIII. — Tithorea.'
.ti 0
LXXXIII. Tithorea.—The site of
Tithorea, first identified by Clarke in 1801, is
occupied by the modern village of Velitsa,
which stands very picturesquely among trees
on the north-eastern slopes of Parnassus, overlooking
the broad valley of the Cephisus.
About two-thirds of the village are enclosed
within the ancient ivy-mantled walls, which
rank with those of Messene and Eleutherae as
among the finest existing specimens of Greek
fortifications. At the back of the village to
the south rises a huge mountainous cliff of grey
rock, its ledges tufted with pines. Between the
foot of this great cliff and the village there
intervenes a very steep slope, mostly overgrown
.bn 377.png
.pn +1
with holly-oak bushes. On the east the village
as well as the site of the ancient city is bounded
by a very deep rocky ravine, which winds
southward into the heart of the mountains. At
the bottom of the ravine a torrent flows from
Parnassus over a broad gravelly bed to join the
Cephisus in the plain below. This torrent,
now called Kakorevma or Evil Stream, is the
ancient Cachales. In the time of Pausanias,
the townspeople, he tells us, had to fetch their
water in buckets from the depths of the lyn.
Nowadays a portion of the water of the stream
is diverted higher up the glen and brought in a
conduit to the village, where it turns two mills
and waters the gardens and orchards. As
Tithorea was thus naturally defended on two
sides, namely by the great cliff on the south
and by the deep ravine on the east, it needed
walls on two sides only, the west and the
north. These walls, starting from the foot of
the cliff, first descend the steep slope in a
straight line above the village, then follow the
gentler slope within the village, still in a direction
due north, till they turn round at an obtuse
angle and run eastward to the brink of the
ravine. Here they stop. Along the edge of
the ravine a number of ancient blocks may be
observed, but whether they are the remains of
an ancient fortification wall is not clear. Perhaps
the deep precipitous side of the ravine
.bn 378.png
.pn +1
may have been considered a sufficient defence
by itself. The walls so far as they exist are
finely and solidly built of regular ashlar
masonry, and are flanked by massive square
towers constructed in the same style. Walls
and towers are best preserved in the lower
ground among the houses and gardens of the
village, but on the steep slope above the village
the remains are also considerable.
The investigation of the ruined fortifications
on this slope, it may be observed, is a matter
of some difficulty, for the slope is not only
very steep but overgrown with prickly shrubs
and cumbered with huge fallen blocks. The
antiquary who picks his way painfully among
these obstacles is mortified by the contrast
between his own slow progress and that of the
village urchins who accompany him; for they
climb and skip like goats on the top of the
walls, now appearing suddenly on the highest
pinnacles and then again leaping from stone to
stone with wonderful confidence and agility.
The remains of the walls in the village, on
the other hand, can be examined without discomfort,
and they better repay study. Here
on the north and north-west the wall, flanked
by square towers, is standing in an unbroken
line for a considerable distance. As a whole,
the masonry of the walls and towers is splendid,
massive, and almost quite regular, without being
.bn 379.png
.pn +1
absolutely so. The beauty of these venerable
walls is much enhanced by the thick green veil
of ivy and other creepers which clothes their
sides and droops in graceful festoons from their
summits. Such a mantle of clinging verdure is
very rare in Greece, where the ancient temples
and fortresses, unlike the ivy-clad abbeys and
castles of England, remain for the most part to
this day as bare as when they were built,
without even a patch of moss to soften their
hard outlines and to tell of the lapse of ages.
Distant views complete the charm of
Tithorea. From its ivied walls, rising among
the gardens and houses of the village, we look
up at the huge grey crag that hides the higher
slopes of Parnassus, or down the long gradual
declivity to the wide valley of the Cephisus and
across it to the hills, somewhat low and tame,
at whose foot lie the scanty ruins of Elatea.
.h2 id=ch84 title='LXXXIV. — From Amphissa to Gravia.'
.ti 0
LXXXIV. From Amphissa to Gravia.—The
smiling verdure of Amphissa and its
neighbourhood forms a striking contrast to the
stern, arid, and rocky scenery of Delphi, which
is only ten miles off. At Amphissa, indeed,
we are on the borders of almost Swiss scenery.
For the fir-clad and torrent-rent mountains of
Locris and Doris, which rise to the north-west,
are the loftiest in the present kingdom of
.bn 380.png
.pn +1
Greece. Two of the peaks exceed eight
thousand feet in height. A fine specimen of
this Alpine scenery may be obtained by following
the mule-path which leads north from
Amphissa over the mountains to the village of
Gravia in the ancient canton of Doris. With
the exception of the village of Topolia, which
we leave on the right, and here and there a
small farm far up on the mountain-side, not a
human dwelling is to be seen. At first the
path ascends the western declivities of Parnassus.
Looking down to the left we see
below us a narrow dale, where in early summer
the course of the stream, now nearly dried up,
is marked by the red oleander blossoms.
Beyond the dale Mount Kiano rears its snowy
head, the loftiest mountain in Greece; and
behind it the long and almost equally lofty
ridge of Vardousia is seen stretching north and
south. The finest point on the route is at a
clear spring which bubbles up at the top of the
pass, just where the road surmounts the ridge
that joins Parnassus to the mountains of Locris.
Hitherto we have been ascending from the
south; from this point the road begins to
descend to the north. The valley now contracts.
The snowy peaks in the west disappear,
but their lower spurs form, with the
western declivities of Parnassus, a narrow pass,
down which a brook babbles over rocks and
.bn 381.png
.pn +1
stones, its banks overhung with plane-trees.
Pines and oaks of various kinds contrast
pleasantly with the steep cliffs and bushy
slopes; and now and then we come to a little
grassy glade or a patch of corn. “It is,” says
the Swiss traveller Vischer, whose description
of the road I have borrowed, “almost a Swiss
region, and I might have fancied myself transported
to my native land, if the holly-oaks and
oriental plane-trees had not reminded me that
I was in the south.” Thus descending by a
steep and rugged path we reach the village of
Gravia at the northern end of the pass, in five
or six hours from Amphissa.
.h2 id=ch85 title='LXXXV. — Daulis.'
.ti 0
LXXXV. Daulis.—The situation of
ancient Daulis is exceedingly beautiful. It
occupied the broad but somewhat uneven
summit of a fine massive hill, which rises
abruptly from the glens at the eastern foot of
Parnassus. Everywhere the sides of the hill—which
in the grandeur of its outlines deserves
almost to rank as a mountain—are high and
steep, except at a single point on the west
where a narrow ridge connects it with the main
mass of Parnassus. On the south the hill falls
away in sheer and lofty precipices of grey rock
into a deep romantic glen, the sides of which,
where they are not precipitous, are mantled
.bn 382.png
.pn +1
with dark green shrubbery. Beyond the ridge
to the west soar the immense grey precipitous
slopes of Parnassus, mottled here and there
with dark pines. High up on its side is seen a
white monastery at the mouth of a dark gorge,
through which a path ascends to the summit.
In the hollow between the hill of Daulis and
these great slopes, a mill nestles picturesquely
among trees; the water is led to it in a mill-race.
Northward the ruined walls of Daulis,
here thickly overgrown with ivy and holly-oak,
look across a deep dell to the pretty village of
Davlia, embowered among trees and gardens
on the opposite hill-side. The descent to the
valley on this side is steep and bushy, but
not precipitous, except where a line of rocks
runs obliquely up it on the north-west. Here
and there in the valley the last slopes of the
hill are terraced and planted with vines. At
the eastern foot of the hill begins the great
plain—the scene of so many famous battles—which
stretches away for miles past the ruins of
Panopeus and Chaeronea until at Orchomenus
it melts into the still vaster expanse of the
Copaic plain. To the south-east, beyond an
intervening range of low hills, appears the
sharp outline of Helicon. In this direction, at
the southern end of the narrow valley which
divides these low hills from the mighty steeps
of Parnassus, is the famous Cleft Way, where
.bn 383.png
.pn +1
Oedipus is said to have done the dark deed
that was the beginning of all his woes.
Altogether few places in Greece surpass
Daulis in romantic beauty of situation and the
wealth of historical and legendary memories
which the landscape, both near and far, is fitted
to evoke. Standing on the brow of its precipices
we feel that this mountain fastness,
frowning on the rich champaign country below,
was well fitted to be the hold of a wild wicked
lord like Tereus, of whose bad deeds the
peasants might tell tales of horror to their
children’s children. But now all is very peaceful
and solitary in Daulis, for the tide of life
has long rolled away from it. Parnassus still
looks down on it as of old; but ivy mantles
the ruins, the wild thyme smells sweet on the
hill, and the tinkle of goat-bells comes up
musically from the glen. Only the shadow of
ancient crime and sorrow rests on the fair
landscape.
.h2 id=ch86 title='LXXXVI. — The Cleft Way.'
.ti 0
LXXXVI. The Cleft Way.—About five
miles to the south-west of Daulis the road, after
skirting the eastern foot of the mighty mass of
Mount Parnassus, turns sharply to the west
and begins to ascend through the long, narrow,
and profound valley which leads to Delphi.
Just at the point where the road turns westward
.bn 384.png
.pn +1
and before it begins the long ascent it is joined
from the south-east by the direct road from
Lebadea and Thebes. The meeting of the
three roads—the road from Daulis, the road
from Delphi, and the road from Thebes—is the
Cleft Way or Triple Road, the scene of the
legendary murder of Laius by Oedipus. It is
now known as the Cross Road of Megas, after
the gallant Johannes Megas, who met his death
here in July 1856, while exterminating a band
of brigands with a small troop of soldiers. His
monument, on a rock at the meeting of the
roads, bears a few verses in modern Greek.
Apart from any legendary associations the
scene is one of the wildest and grandest in
Greece, recalling in its general features, though
on a vastly greater scale, the mouth of Glencoe.
On both sides of the valley the mountains
tower abruptly in huge precipices; the cliffs of
Parnassus on the northern side of the valley
are truly sublime. Not a trace of human
habitation is to be seen. All is desolation and
silence. A more fitting spot could hardly be
found for the scene of a memorable tragedy.
.h2 id=ch87 title='LXXXVII. — Delphi.'
.ti 0
LXXXVII. Delphi.—The site of Delphi,
till lately occupied by the modern village of
Kastri, is in the highest degree striking and
impressive. The city lay at the southern foot
.bn 385.png
.pn +1
of the tremendous cliffs of Parnassus, which form
a sheer wall of rock, about eight hundred feet
high. Over these frightful precipices Philomelus
drove some of the defeated Locrians. Just at the
angle where this vast wall of rock bends round
towards the south it is rent from top to bottom
by a deep and gloomy gorge, some twenty feet
wide, where there is a fine echo. Facing each
other across this narrow chasm rise two stupendous
cliffs, whose peaked summits tower considerably
above the rest of the line of cliffs. They
are nearly perpendicular in front, and perfectly
so where they fall sheer down into the gorge.
The eastern of the two cliffs was called Hyampia
in antiquity; from its top Aesop is said to have
been hurled by the Delphians. It has been
suggested, though perhaps without sufficient
reason, that when the later writers of antiquity,
especially the Roman poets, speak of the two
summits of Parnassus, they are really referring
to these two cliffs. In point of fact the cliffs
are far indeed from being near the summit of
Parnassus; but seen from Delphi they completely
hide the higher slopes of the mountain.
In winter or wet weather a torrent comes
foaming down the gorge in a cascade about
two hundred feet high, bringing down the water
from the higher slopes of the mountain. At
the mouth of the gorge, under the eastern cliff,
is the rock-cut basin of the perennial Castalian
.bn 386.png
.pn +1
spring, a few paces above the highway. The
water from the spring joins the stream from
the gorge, which, after passing over the road,
plunges into a deep rocky lyn or glen, which
it has scooped out for itself in the steep
side of the mountain. Down this glen the
stream descends to join the Plistus, which flows
along the bottom of the Delphic valley from
east to west, at a great depth below the town.
From the cliffs at the back of Delphi the
ground slopes away so steeply to the bed of
the Plistus that it is only by means of a
succession of artificial terraces, rising in tiers
above each other, that the soil can be cultivated
and made fit for habitation. There are about
thirty of these terraces, supported by stone walls,
mostly of polygonal masonry. The sanctuary
of Apollo occupies only the five or six highest
terraces at the foot of the cliffs, on the western
side of the Castalian gorge. So high does it
stand above the bottom of the valley that
twenty minutes are needed to descend the steep
terraced slope to the bed of the Plistus. Corn
is grown on the terraces below the sanctuary;
and the slopes on the eastern side of the
Castalian gorge are wooded with fine olive
and mulberry trees. Across the valley, on
the southern side of the Plistus, rise the bare
precipitous cliffs of Mount Cirphis, capped with
fir-woods. From the western end of the
.bn 387.png
.pn +1
precipices which rise at the back of Delphi a
high rocky ridge projects southward toward
the bed of the Plistus. This ridge closes the
valley of Delphi on the west, shutting out all
view of the Crisaean plain and the gulf of
Corinth, though a glimpse of the waters of the
gulf is obtained from the stadium, the highest
part of Delphi.
Thus, enclosed by a rocky ridge on the
west, by tremendous precipices on the north
and east, and faced on the south, across the
valley of the Plistus, by the lower but still
precipitous sides of Mount Cirphis, Delphi lay
in a secluded mountain valley; and rising on
terraces in a semicircular shape, it resembled
an immense theatre, to which it has justly been
compared by ancient and modern writers. The
whole scene is one of stern and awful majesty,
well fitted to be the seat of a great religious
capital. In respect of natural scenery no contrast
could well be more striking than that
between the two great religious capitals of
ancient Greece, Delphi and Olympia—Delphi
clinging to the rugged side of barren mountains,
with frowning precipices above and a profound
glen below; Olympia stretched out on the level
margin of a river that winds in stately curves
among the corn-fields and vineyards of a smiling
valley set between soft wooded hills.
.bn 388.png
.pn +1
.h2 id=ch88 title='LXXXVIII. — Aeschines at Delphi.'
.ti 0
LXXXVIII. Aeschines at Delphi.—That
the place of assembly of the Amphictyonic
Council at Delphi must have been situated near
the chapel of St. Elias is shown by a passage of
Aeschines, in which he says that the Cirrhaean
plain lay spread beneath and in full view of
the meeting-place of the Amphictyonic Council.
The orator himself, he tells us, was one of the
Athenian representatives at a meeting of the
Council. Addressing it he pointed to the
smiling and peaceful plain stretched at their
feet, with its olive-groves and corn-fields, its
cottages and potteries, and in the distance the
shining waters of the gulf, with the port-town
visible beside it. “You see,” he cried, “yonder
plain tilled by the men of Amphissa and the
potteries and cottages they have built. You
see with your eyes the fortifications of the
cursed and execrated port. You know for
yourselves that these men levy tolls and take
money from the sacred harbour.” He then
reminded his hearers of the oath sworn by their
ancestors that this fair plain should lie a wilderness
for ever. His words were received with a
tumult of applause, and next day at dawn the
men of Delphi, armed with shovels and mattocks,
marched down into the plain, razed the fortifications
of the port to the ground, and gave the
houses to the flames. It is refreshing to know
that on their way back they were hotly pursued
.bn 389.png
.pn +1
by the Amphissaeans in arms and had to run
for their lives. This was the beginning of the
chain of events which in a few months more
brought Philip at the head of a Macedonian
army into Greece and ended in the overthrow
of Greek freedom at Chaeronea.
The view described by the orator, whose ill-omened
eloquence brought all these miseries
and disasters in its train, is to be obtained, not
from the platform on which the chapel of St.
Elias stands, but from a point a little way to
the south-west of it, where the traveller coming
from Delphi reaches the end of the high ridge
that shuts in the valley of Delphi on the west.
Here as he turns the corner the whole Crisaean
plain, now covered with luxuriant olive-woods,
comes suddenly into sight. The scene is again
as rich and peaceful as it was before Aeschines
raised his voice, like the scream of some foul
bird snuffing the carrion afar off, and turned it
into a desert. We may suppose either that in
his time the Amphictyonic Council met at this
point, or, what is far likelier, that the orator’s
description of that day’s doings is more graphic
than correct.
.h2 id=ch89 title='LXXXIX. — The Pythian Tune.'
.ti 0
LXXXIX. The Pythian Tune.—Sacadas
was said to be the first who played the Pythian
air on the flute at Delphi. The tune has been
.bn 390.png
.pn +1
described for us by Pollux and Strabo. The
melody, intended to represent musically Apollo’s
combat with the dragon, was played by a single
flute, but now and then the trumpets and fifes
struck in. First Apollo was heard preparing for
the fight and choosing his ground. Then followed
the challenge to the dragon, then the battle,
indicated by an iambic measure. Here probably
the music imitated the twanging of the
silver bow and the swish of the arrows as they
sped to their mark. It is expressly said that
the gnashing of the monster’s teeth was heard,
as he ground them together in his agony. Here
the trumpets came in, not in long-drawn winding
bouts, but in short single blasts, one perhaps for
each arrow-shot, every flourish marking a hit.
The shrill wailing notes of the fifes mimicked
the dragon’s dying screams. Then the flute
broke into a light lilting air, beating time to the
triumphal measure trodden by the victorious god.
.h2 id=ch90 title='XC. — The Lacedaemonian Trophy at Delphi.'
.ti 0
XC. The Lacedaemonian Trophy at
Delphi.—The many statues of gods, admirals,
and generals which formed the proud trophy
of the Lacedaemonians at Delphi appear to
have stood like soldiers in stiff formal rows at
different heights on the steps of the pedestal,
scowling at the Athenian trophy which probably
faced them on the opposite side of the road.
.bn 391.png
.pn +1
This Lacedaemonian trophy, commemorative
of the great naval victory of Aegospotami, is
repeatedly referred to by Plutarch. He says
that from the spoils of the battle Lysander set
up bronze statues of himself and of all the
admirals, together with golden stars of the
Dioscuri; and elsewhere he tells us that in his
time these old bronze statues of the admirals
were covered with a beautiful blue patina, the
growth of ages, so that people spoke of them
as being true blue salts. Cicero specially
mentions the statue of Lysander at Delphi.
The reason for dedicating golden stars of the
Dioscuri would seem to have been that Castor
and Pollux were said to have appeared on the
side of the Lacedaemonians at the battle of
Aegospotami, just as they appeared on the
Roman side at the battle of Lake Regillus. It
is related that after the battle of Leuctra, which
gave the death-blow to Spartan prestige and
power, the golden stars disappeared from Delphi
and were never seen again, as if in token that
the star of Sparta’s fortunes had set. The
dedication of the stars in memory of the
appearance of the Dioscuri is an interesting
confirmation of the view that the twins Castor
and Pollux were the Morning and Evening
Star, the equivalents of the Sanscrit Aśvins.
It is notable that in Roman history the appearances
of the Dioscuri as messengers of victory
.bn 392.png
.pn +1
seem always to have taken place in the same
season of the year, namely at the summer
solstice or the first full moon after it. By a
curious coincidence the old chronicler Holinshed
reports that on the eve of the battle of Bannockburn,
which was also Midsummer Eve, two men
appeared at Glastonbury saying they were going
to help the Scots in a battle next day; and a
single knight in bright armour rode into Aberdeen
on the afternoon of the battle and was seen to
pass over into the Orkneys in the evening.[9]
.fm rend=th
.fn 9
For this modern instance I have to thank my friend Mr. R. A.
Neil, of Pembroke College.
.fn-
.fm rend=th
.h2 id=ch91 title='XCI. — The Gods in Battle.'
XCI. The Gods in Battle.—Apollo,
Artemis, and Athena are said to have appeared
in person fighting for the Greeks against the
Gauls. The heroes Theseus and Echetlus were
seen combating on the Greek side at Marathon.
In the great sea-fight of Salamis phantoms of
armed men were perceived stretching out their
hands from Aegina to protect the Greek ships;
they were believed to be the Aeacids, who had
been prayed to for help before the battle. The
spirit of Aristomenes was said to have fought
for the Thebans against his old foes the
Spartans at Leuctra. The Mantineans fancied
they saw Poseidon warring on their side against
the Lacedaemonians. In a battle between the
.bn 393.png
.pn +1
people of Crotona and the people of Locri, two
unknown youths, of wondrous stature, in strange
armour, clad in scarlet and riding white horses,
were seen fighting on the wings of the Locrian
army; after the battle they disappeared. These
two youths were probably regarded as Castor
and Pollux, whose reported appearance at the
battle of the Lake Regillus, charging with lances
in rest at the head of the Roman cavalry,
is well known. It is said that when Alaric
approached Athens he beheld Athena in full
armour patrolling the walls, and Achilles guarding
them with the same fiery valour with which
he had avenged the death of Patroclus; terrified
by the vision, the fierce barbarian gave up all
thought of attacking the city. Similarly in the
battles between the Spaniards and the Indians
of Mexico it is affirmed by grave historians that
St. James, the patron Saint of Spain, was seen
tilting on his milk-white steed at the head of
the Christian chivalry. In one of these battles
a lady robed in white, supposed to be the Virgin,
was visible by the side of St. James, throwing
dust in the eyes of the infidels. The stout old
chronicler Bernal Diaz, who fought in these
wars, confesses that for his sins he was not found
worthy to behold the glorious Apostle.[10]
.fm rend=th
.fn 10
For these Spanish parallels I am indebted to my lamented
friend the late W. Robertson Smith. Niebuhr had previously
made exactly the same comparison.
.fn-
.fm rend=th
.bn 394.png
.pn +1
.h2 id=ch92 title='XCII. — The Sibyl’s Wish.'
.ti 0
XCII. The Sibyl’s Wish.—The author of
the Exhortation to the Greeks was shown at
Cumae a bronze bottle in which the remains of
the Sibyl were said to be preserved. Trimalchio
in Petronius says: “At Cumae I saw with my
own eyes the Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when
the children said to her, ‘Sibyl, what do you
wish?’ she used to answer, 'I wish to die.'”
Ampelius tells us that the Sibyl was said to
be shut up in an iron cage which hung from
a pillar in an ancient temple of Hercules at
Argyrus. It has been pointed out by Dr.
M. R. James that parallels to the story of the
Sibyl’s wish are to be found in German folk-tales.
One of these tales runs as follows:
“Once upon a time there was a girl in London
who wished to live for ever, so they say:
.pm start_poem
‘London, London is a fine town.
A maiden prayed to live for ever.’
.pm end_poem
And still she lives and hangs in a basket in a
church, and every St. John’s Day about noon
she eats a roll of bread.” Another story tells
of a lady who resided at Danzig and was so
rich and so blest with all that life can give
that she wished to live always. So when she
came to her latter end, she did not really die
but only looked like dead, and very soon they
found her in a hollow of a pillar in the church,
half standing and half sitting, motionless. She
.bn 395.png
.pn +1
stirred never a limb, but they saw quite plainly
that she was alive, and she sits there down to
this blessed day. Every New Year’s Day the
sacristan comes and puts a morsel of the holy
bread in her mouth, and that is all she has to
live on. Long, long has she rued her fatal
wish who set this transient life above the eternal
joys of heaven. A third story relates how a
noble damsel cherished the same foolish wish
for immortality. So they put her in a basket
and hung her up in a church, and there she
hangs and never dies, though many, many a
year has come and gone since they put her
there. But every year on a certain day they
give her a roll and she eats it and cries out
“For ever! for ever! for ever!” And when
she has so cried she falls silent again till the
same time next year, and so it will go on for
ever and for ever. A fourth story, taken down,
near Oldenburg in Holstein, tells of a jolly
dame that ate and drank and lived right
merrily and had all that heart could desire,
and she wished to live always. For the first
hundred years all went well, but after that she
began to shrink and shrivel up till at last she
could neither walk nor stand nor eat nor drink.
But die she could not. At first they fed her
as if she were a little child, but when she grew
smaller and smaller they put her in a glass
bottle and hung her up in the church. And
.bn 396.png
.pn +1
there she still hangs, in the church of St. Mary
at Lübeck. She is as small as a mouse, but
once a year she stirs.
.h2 id=ch93 title='XCIII. — Orpheus in Hell.'
.ti 0
XCIII. Orpheus in Hell.—Why in his
picture of hell the painter Polygnotus should
have depicted Orpheus touching the branches
of a willow-tree is not clear. Pausanias has
himself rightly pointed out that willows grew
in the grove of Proserpine, but that does not
suffice to explain the gesture of Orpheus in the
picture. Mr. J. Six ingeniously suggests that
when Orpheus went to hell to fetch the soul of
his lost Eurydice he may have carried in his
hand a willow-branch, just as Aeneas carried
the Golden Bough, to serve as a passport or
‘open Sesame’ to unlock the gates of Death to
a living man, and that in memory of this former
deed the painter may have depicted the bard
touching the willow. Virgil tells how at sight
of the Golden Bough, “not seen for long,” the
surly Charon turned his crazy bark to shore
and received Aeneas on board. Mr. Six surmises
that here the words “not seen for long”
refer to the time when Orpheus, like Aeneas,
had passed the ferry with the Golden Bough in
his hand. If he is right, Polygnotus took a
different view of that mystic branch from Virgil,
who certainly regarded it as a glorified mistletoe.
.bn 397.png
.pn +1
Professor C. Robert accepts Mr. Six’s explanation.
Formerly he held that Pausanias had misinterpreted
the gesture of Orpheus. The bard,
on Professor Robert’s earlier view, was depicted
merely holding the lyre with one hand and playing
on it with the other, and a branch of the
willow under which he sat drooped down and
touched the hand that swept the strings. This
view, which Professor Robert has wisely abandoned,
is open to several objections. It substitutes
a commonplace gesture, which Pausanias could
hardly have so grossly mistaken, for a remarkable
one which, however it is to be explained,
had clearly struck Pausanias as unusual and
significant. Again, if Orpheus had been depicted
playing, would not some one have been
represented listening? But, so far as appears
from Pausanias’s description, not a soul was
paying any heed to the magic strains of the
great minstrel. It seems better, therefore, to
suppose that, like blind Thamyris, he sat sad
and silent, dreaming of life in the bright world,
of love and music.
.h2 id=ch94 title='XCIV. — The Acheron.'
.ti 0
XCIV. The Acheron.—The Acheron is the
river now known as the Suliotiko or Phanariotiko
which comes down from the mountains
of the once famous Suli and winds, a sluggish,
turbid, and weedy stream, through the wide
.bn 398.png
.pn +1
plain of Phanari, traversing some swamps or
meres before it reaches the sea. These swamps,
which extend nearly to the sea, and never dry
up though they shrink in summer, are the
Acherusian lake. The plain, where it is not
too marshy, is covered with fields of maize and
rice and meadows where herds of buffaloes
browse. A few plane-trees and low tamarisks
fringe the margin of the winding river. Otherwise
the plain is mostly treeless. On its eastern
side rise, like a huge grey wall, the wild and
barren mountains of Suli.
Before entering the plain, on its passage
from these rugged highlands, the Acheron flows
through a profound and gloomy gorge, one of
the darkest and deepest of the glens of Greece.
On either side precipices rise sheer from the
water’s edge to a height of hundreds of feet,
their ledges and crannies tufted with dwarf oaks
and shrubs. Higher up, where the sides of the
glen recede from the perpendicular, the mountains
rise to a height of over three thousand
feet, the black pine-woods which cling to their
precipitous sides adding to the sombre magnificence
of the scene. A precarious footpath
leads along a perilous ledge high up on the
mountain-side, from which the traveller gazes
down into the depths of the tremendous ravine,
where the deep and rapid river may be seen
rushing and foaming along, often plunging in a
.bn 399.png
.pn +1
cascade into a dark abyss, but so far below him
that even the roar of the waterfall is lost in
mid-air before it can reach his ear.
At the point where the river emerges from
the defile into the plain, there are a few cottages
with some ruins of a church and fortress on the
right bank. The place is called Glyky. The
church seems to have occupied the site of an
ancient temple; some fragments of granite
columns and pieces of a white marble cornice,
adorned with a pattern of acanthus leaves, may
be seen lying about. Here, perhaps, was the seat
of that Oracle of the Dead where the envoys
of Periander, tyrant of Corinth, summoned up
the ghost of his murdered wife Melissa, and
where Orpheus vainly sought to bring back his
lost Eurydice from the world of shades.
.h2 id=ch95 title='XCV. — A Ride across Parnassus.'
.ti 0
XCV. A Ride across Parnassus.—We
left the new village of Delphi, which stands a
little to the south-west of the ancient sanctuary,
shortly after eight o’clock, and at once struck
up the mountain-side at the back of the village.
The path for a good way is the same as that
to the Corycian cave. It climbs the bare rocky
face of the mountain in a series of zigzags, from
which as we rose higher and higher a wide
prospect opened up behind us to the Gulf
of Corinth and the distant mountains of
.bn 400.png
.pn +1
Peloponnese. On reaching the top of this long
and steep declivity we found ourselves on the
edge of an expanse of comparatively level though
broken ground, sparsely wooded with pines, beyond
which soared the upper slopes of Parnassus,
its summit lightly capped with snow. The high
plateau on which we now stood is bounded on
the north by an outlying spur of Parnassus,
clothed with pine-forest, in the southern face of
which is the Corycian cave. Instead of crossing
the tableland in the direction of the cave,
we skirted its south-western corner, keeping the
wooded mountain on our right. The path continued
to wind for hours along grey rocky slopes
where pines grew more or less thickly. On
either hand rose sombre mountains of the same
general character—grey and rocky with patches
of pine-forest on their sides. Now and then a
little moss relieved with its verdure the barrenness
of the rocks, and a stony glade through
which we passed was speckled with pale purple
crocuses. On these heights the air felt chilly,
for the season was late October, and a little
snow—the first of autumn—had fallen in the
night, just touching with white the peaks of
Parnassus and the high Locrian mountains in
the west. The morning had been bright when
we left Delphi, but as the day wore on the sky
became overcast, its cold and lowering aspect
harmonising well with the wild and desolate
.bn 401.png
.pn +1
scenery through which we rode. The jingling
of the mule-bells and the cries of the muleteers
were almost the only sounds that broke the
silence, though once in the forest to the right
we heard the clapper-like note of a pelican,
and once in an open glade we passed some
woodmen hewing pine-logs. In time, the path
beginning to descend, the rocks gave place to
earthy slopes; a little pale thin grass and some
withered ferns grew in the glades; the sun shone
out between the clouds, and as we descended
into the warmer lowlands it seemed as if we
were pursuing the departing summer.
In about four hours from Delphi high purple
mountains, sunlit and flecked with cloud-shadows,
appeared in the north through and
above the pine-forest. Farther down the forest
grew thin and then disappeared from the stony
bottom of the valley, though the upper slopes of
the mountains on either side were still wrapped
in their dark mantle of pines. It was near
one o’clock when we reached Ano-Agoriani, a
village nestling among trees in a hollow of the
mountains and traversed by a murmuring brook.
After a halt of about an hour we quitted
the village and descended into the deep
bed of the stream; then ascending steeply its
western bank we pursued our way along the
rocky mountain-side high above the glen.
In three-quarters of an hour we came in
.bn 402.png
.pn +1
sight of the broad valley of the Cephisus lying
stretched below us and backed by mountains on
the north. By steep, rocky, winding paths we
now descended into the valley, and at a quarter
to four reached Kato-Agoriani. The village
stands just at the foot of Parnassus. About a
mile to the east the grey ruined walls and towers
of Lilaea climb a steep and rugged hill-side—the
last fall of Parnassus to the plain. The
situation of the place at the northern foot of the
mountain is such that it can receive very little
sun at any time of the year, which, though an
advantage in the torrid heat of a Greek summer,
must render the winter climate severe. As we
rode downwards to Kato-Agoriani the sun set
behind the mountains at our back soon after
three o’clock, but it was not till nearly two hours
afterwards that his light faded from the hills on
the opposite or northern side of the valley. This
may illustrate the remarks of Pausanias as to
the climate of Lilaea.
.h2 id=ch96 title='XCVI. — Pericles.'
.ti 0
XCVI. Pericles.—Pericles, a great Athenian
statesman, and one of the most remarkable
men of antiquity, was the son of Xanthippus,
who commanded the Greeks at the battle of
Mycale. By his mother Agariste, niece of
Clisthenes, who reformed the democracy at
Athens after the expulsion of the Pisistratidae,
.bn 403.png
.pn +1
he was connected both with the old
princely line of Sicyon and with the great but
unfortunate house of the Alcmaeonidae. The
date of his birth is unknown, but his youth
must have fallen in the stirring times of the
great Persian war. From his friendship with
the poet Anacreon, his father would seem to
have been a man of taste, and as he stood in
relations of hospitality to the Spartan kings
his house was no doubt a political as well as
literary centre. Pericles received the best
education which the age could supply. For
masters he had Pythoclides and the distinguished
musician Damon, who infused into his
music lessons a tincture of philosophy, whereby
he incurred the suspicions of the vulgar, and
received the honour of ostracism. Pericles
listened also to the subtle dialectics of the
Eleatic Zeno. But the man who swayed him
most deeply and permanently was the philosopher
Anaxagoras. The influence of the
speculative genius and dignified and gentle
character of the philosopher who resigned his
property that he might turn his thoughts more
steadily to heaven, which he called his home,
and who begged as his last honour that the
school-children might have a holiday on the
day he died, can be traced alike in the intellectual
breadth and the elevated moral tone of the
pupil, in his superiority to vulgar superstitions,
.bn 404.png
.pn +1
and in the unruffled serenity which he preserved
throughout the storms of political life.
It was probably the grand manner of Pericles
even more than his eloquence that won him
the surname of Olympian Zeus.[11]
.fm rend=th
.fn 11
It is said that once, when Pericles was transacting business
in public, a low fellow railed at him all day long, and at nightfall
dogged him to his house, reviling him in the foulest language.
Pericles took no notice of him till he reached his own door, when
he bade one of the servants take a torch and light the man home.
.fn-
.fm rend=th
In his youth he distinguished himself in the
field, but eschewed politics, fearing, it is said,
the suspicions which might be excited in the
populace not only by his wealth, high birth,
and powerful friends, but by the striking resemblance
to the tyrant Pisistratus which old
men traced in his personal appearance, musical
voice, and flowing speech. But when the
banishment of Themistocles and the death of
Aristides had somewhat cleared the political
stage, Pericles came forward as the champion
of the democratic or progressive party, in
opposition to Cimon, the leader of the aristocratic
or conservative party. The two leaders
differed hardly less than their policies. Both
indeed were men of aristocratic birth and
temper, honourable, brave, and generous, faithful
and laborious in the service of Athens.
But Cimon was a true sailor, blunt, jovial,
free-handed, who sang a capital song, and was
always equally ready to drink or fight, to
.bn 405.png
.pn +1
whose artless mind (he was innocent of even
a smattering of letters[12]) the barrack-room life
of the barbarous Spartans seemed the type of
human perfectibility, and whose simple programme
was summed up in the maxim “fight
the Persians.” Naturally the new ideas of
political progress and intellectual development
had no place in his honest head; naturally he
was a sturdy supporter of the good old times
of which, to the popular mind, he was the
best embodiment. Pericles, grave, studious,
reserved, was himself penetrated by those ideas
of progress and culture which he undertook to
convert into political and social realities; philosophy
was his recreation; during the whole
course of his political career he never accepted
but once an invitation to dinner, and he was
never to be seen walking except between his
house and the popular assembly and senate-house.
He husbanded his patrimony and regulated
his domestic affairs with rigid economy
that he might escape both the temptation and
the suspicion of enriching himself at the public
expense.
.fm rend=th
.fn 12
It is amusing to read in Plutarch of this stout old salt sitting
in judgment on the respective merits of Aeschylus and Sophocles.
.fn-
.fm rend=th
The steps by which he rose to the commanding
position which he occupied in later
life cannot be traced with certainty. According
to Plutarch, Pericles, whose fortune did not
.bn 406.png
.pn +1
allow him to imitate the profuse hospitality by
which Cimon endeared himself to the people,
sought to outbid him by a lavish distribution
of the public moneys among the poorer classes;
this device was suggested to him by Damonides,
says Plutarch on the authority of Aristotle.
We may doubt the motive alleged by Plutarch,
but we cannot doubt the fact that Pericles did
extend, if not originate, the practice of distributing
large sums among the citizens either
as gratuities or as payment for services rendered—a
practice which afterwards attained most
mischievous proportions. According to Plato,
it was a common saying that Pericles, by the
system of payments which he introduced, had
corrupted the Athenians, rendering them idle,
cowardly, talkative, and avaricious. It was
Pericles who introduced the payment of jurymen,
and, as there were six thousand of them
told off annually for duty, of whom a great
part sat daily, the disbursement from the
treasury was great, while the poor and idle
were encouraged to live at the public expense.
But the payment for attendance on the public
assembly or parliament (of which all citizens
of mature age were members), though probably
suggested by the payment of the jurymen, was
not introduced by Pericles, and indeed does
not seem to have existed during his lifetime.
It was he who instituted the payment of the
.bn 407.png
.pn +1
citizens for military service—a measure but
for which the Athenians would probably not
have prolonged the Peloponnesian War as
they did, and in particular would not have
been so ready to embark on the fatal Sicilian
expedition.
There was more justification, perhaps, for
the practice, originated by Pericles, of supplying
the poorer citizens from the public treasury
with the price of admission to the theatre. For
in an age when the study of the poets formed
a chief element of education, and when the
great dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides were being put on the stage in all
their freshness, such a measure might almost be
regarded as a state provision for the education
of the citizens. It was part of the policy of
Pericles at once to educate and delight the
people by numerous and splendid festivals,
processions, and shows. But the good was
mixed with seeds of evil, which took root
and spread, till, in the days of Demosthenes,
the money which should have been spent in
fighting the enemies of Athens was squandered
in spectacles and pageants. The Spectacular
Fund or Theorikon has been called the cancer
of Athens. Vast sums were further spent
by Pericles in adorning the city with those
buildings, which even in their ruins are the
wonder of the world. Amongst these were the
.bn 408.png
.pn +1
Parthenon, or Temple of the Virgin, and the
Erechtheum, both on the acropolis, the former
completed in 438 B.C., the latter left unfinished
at Pericles’s death; the magnificent Propylaea
or vestibule to the acropolis, built between 437
and 432; and the Odeum or music-hall, on the
south-eastern slope of the acropolis, completed
before 444. The musical contests instituted by
Pericles, and for which he himself laid down
the rules and acted as judge, took place in
the Odeum. Many artists and architects were
entrusted with the execution of these great
works, but under the direction of the mastermind
of Phidias, sculptor, architect, painter—the
Michelangelo of antiquity.
But Pericles fortified as well as beautified
Athens. It had been the policy of
Themistocles to make her primarily a naval
and commercial power, and to do so he
strengthened the marine, and gave to the city
as far as possible the advantages of an insular
situation by means of fortifications, which
rendered both it and its port impregnable on
the land side. By thus basing the Athenian
state on commerce instead of, like Solon, on
agriculture, he at the same time transferred
the political predominance to the democratic
or progressive party, which is as naturally
recruited from a commercial as a conservative
or aristocratic party is from an agricultural
.bn 409.png
.pn +1
population. This policy was fully accepted
and carried out by Pericles. It was in his
time and probably by his advice that the
Long Walls were built, which, connecting
Athens with Piraeus, converted the capital and
its seaport into one vast fortress. Further, in
order to train the Athenians in seamanship,
he kept a fleet of sixty ships at sea eight
months out of every year.
The expenses entailed by these great
schemes were chiefly defrayed by the annual
tribute, which the confederates of Athens
originally furnished for the purpose of waging
war against Persia, but which Athens, as
head of the league, subsequently applied to
her own purposes. If, as seems likely, the
transference of the treasury of the league
from Delos to Athens, which sealed the conversion
of the Athenian headship into an
empire, took place between 460 and 454, the
step was probably suggested or supported by
Pericles, and at all events he managed the
fund after its transference. But, though the
diversion of the fund from its original purpose
probably did not begin with Pericles, yet, once
established, he maintained it unwaveringly.
The Athenians, he held, fulfilled the trust
committed to them by defending their allies
against all comers, and the tribute was their
wages, which it was their right and privilege
.bn 410.png
.pn +1
to expend in works which by employing labour
and stimulating commerce were a present benefit,
and by their beauty would be “a joy for ever.”
That Athens ruled by force, that her empire
was in fact a tyranny, he fully admitted, but
he justified that tyranny by the high and
glorious ends which it subserved.
The rise of Pericles to power, though it
cannot be followed step by step, has an obvious
and sufficient explanation in his combined
wisdom and eloquence. Plato traces his eloquence
largely to the influence of Anaxagoras;
intercourse with that philosopher, he says, filled
the mind of Pericles with lofty speculations
and a true conception of the nature of intelligence,
and hence his oratory possessed the
intellectual grandeur and artistic finish characteristic
of the highest eloquence. The range
and compass of his rhetoric were wonderful,
extending from the most winning persuasion
to the most overwhelming denunciation. The
comic poets of the day, in general very unfriendly
to him, speak with admiration of his
oratory: “greatest of Grecian tongues,” says
Cratinus; “persuasion sat on his lips, such
was his charm,” and “he alone of the orators
left his sting in his hearers,” says Eupolis;
“he lightened, he thundered,” says Aristophanes.
His speeches were prepared with
conscientious care; before rising to speak he
.bn 411.png
.pn +1
used to pray that no inappropriate word might
fall from his lips. He left no written speeches,
but the few sayings of his which have come
down to us reveal a passionate imagination
such as breathes in the fragments of Sappho.
Thus, in speaking of those who had died in
war, he said that the youth had perished from
the city like the spring from the year. He
called the hostile island of Aegina “the eyesore
of the Piraeus,” and declared that he saw
war “lowering from Peloponnese.” Three of
his speeches have been reported by Thucydides,
who may have heard them, but, though their
substance may be correctly recorded, in passing
through the medium of the historian’s dispassionate
mind they have been shorn of the
orator’s imaginative glow, and in their cold
iron logic are hardly to be distinguished from
the other speeches in Thucydides. An exception
to this is the speech which Thucydides
reports as having been delivered by Pericles
over the slain in the first year of the Peloponnesian
War. This speech stands quite
apart from the others; and as well in particular
touches (for example, in the saying that
“the grave of great men is the world”) as in
its whole tenor we catch the ring of a great
orator, such as Thucydides with all his genius
was not. It is probably a fairly close report
of the speech actually delivered by Pericles.
.bn 412.png
.pn +1
The first public appearance of Pericles of
which we have record probably fell about
463. When Cimon, on his return from the
expedition to Thasos, was tried on the utterly
improbable charge of having been bribed by
the Macedonian king to betray the interests of
Athens, Pericles was appointed by the people
to assist in conducting the prosecution; but,
more perhaps from a conviction of the innocence
of the accused than, as was said, in
compliance with the entreaties of Cimon’s
sister Elpinice, he did not press the charge,
and Cimon was acquitted. Not long afterwards
Pericles struck a blow at the conservative
party by attacking the Areopagus, a
council composed of life-members who had
worthily discharged the duties of archon. The
nature of the functions of the Areopagus at
this period is but little known; it seems to
have had a general supervision over the
magistrates, the popular assembly, and the
citizens, and to have exercised this supervision
in an eminently conservative spirit. It sat
also as a court for the trial of certain crimes,
especially murder. Pericles appears to have
deprived it of nearly all its functions, except
its jurisdiction in cases of murder. The poet
Aeschylus composed his Eumenides in vindication
of the ancient privileges of the Areopagus.
Though Pericles was the real author
.bn 413.png
.pn +1
of the attack on the Areopagus, the measure
was nominally carried by Ephialtes. It was,
indeed, part of Pericles’s policy to keep in the
background, and to act as far as possible
through agents, reserving himself for great
occasions. Ephialtes, a friend of Pericles,
and a patriot of inflexible integrity, paid dearly
for the distinction; he fell by the hand of
an assassin employed by the oligarchical party—an
event the more striking from the rarity
of political assassinations in Greek history.
The popular party seems to have immediately
followed up its victory over the Areopagus
by procuring the ostracism of Cimon, which
strengthened the hands of Pericles by removing
his most influential opponent. Pericles took
part in the battle of Tanagra and bore himself
with desperate bravery. After the battle
Cimon was recalled from banishment, and it
was Pericles who proposed and carried the
decree for his recall.
In 454 Pericles led an Athenian squadron
from the port of Pegae on the Corinthian Gulf,
landed at Sicyon, and defeated the inhabitants
who ventured to oppose him; then, taking with
him a body of Achaeans, he crossed to Acarnania,
and besieged the town of Oeniadae,
but had to return home without capturing it.
Not long afterwards he conducted a successful
expedition to the Thracian Chersonese, where
.bn 414.png
.pn +1
he not only strengthened the Greek cities by
the addition of a thousand Athenian colonists,
but also protected them against the incursions
of the barbarians by fortifying the isthmus from
sea to sea. This was only one of Pericles’s
many measures for extending and strengthening
the naval empire of Athens. Colonies were
established by him at various times in Naxos,
Andros, Oreus in Euboea, Brea in Macedonia,
and Aegina. They served the double purpose
of establishing the Athenian power in distant
parts and of relieving the pressure of population
at home by providing the poorer citizens with
lands. Somewhat different were the famous
colonies established under Pericles’s influence
at Thurii in Italy, on the site of the ancient
Sybaris, and at Amphipolis on the Strymon,
for, though planted under the conduct of Athens,
they were not exclusively Athenian colonies,
other Greeks being allowed, and even invited,
to take part in them. This was especially true
of Thurii, which was in a manner a national
Greek colony, and never stood in a relation of
subjection to Athens. On one occasion Pericles
sailed at the head of a splendid armament to
the Black Sea, where he helped and encouraged
the Greek cities and overawed the barbarians.
At Sinope he left a force of ships and men,
under the gallant Lamachus, to co-operate with
the inhabitants against the tyrant Timesileus,
.bn 415.png
.pn +1
and on the expulsion of the tyrant and his party
he carried a decree for the despatch of six
hundred Athenian colonists to Sinope, to occupy
the lands vacated by the exiles. But, with the
sober wisdom which characterised him, Pericles
never allowed his plans to exceed the bounds
of the possible; he was no political dreamer
like Alcibiades, to be dazzled with the vision of
a universal Athenian empire in Greece, Italy,
and Africa, such as floated before the minds of
many in that and the following generations.
The disastrous expedition which the Athenians
sent to Egypt, to support the rebel Inarus
against Persia, received no countenance from
Pericles.
When Cimon died in 449 the aristocratical
party sought to counterbalance the power of
Pericles by putting forward Thucydides, son of
Melesias, as the new head of the party. He
seems to have been an honest patriot, but, as
the event proved, he was no match for Pericles.
The Sacred War in 448 showed once more
that Pericles knew how to defend the interests
of Athens. The Phocians, under the protection
of Athens, had wrested the control of the Delphic
oracle from their enemies the Delphians. The
latter were friendly to Sparta, and accordingly
the Spartans marched into Phocis and restored
the oracle to the Delphians. When they had
departed, Pericles, at the head of an Athenian
.bn 416.png
.pn +1
force, placed the oracle once more in the hands
of the Phocians. As the seat of the great
oracle, Delphi was to ancient Greece much
what Rome was to mediaeval Europe, and the
friendship of the god, or of his priests, was no
small political advantage.
When the Athenians despatched a small
force under Tolmides to crush a rising in
Boeotia, they did so in spite of the warnings
of Pericles. These warnings were soon justified
by the unfortunate battle of Coronea, which
deprived Athens at a blow of the continental
dominion she had acquired a few years before
by the battle of Oenophyta. The island of
Euboea now revolted from Athens, and hardly
had Pericles crossed over with an army to
reduce it when word came that the Megarians
had massacred the Athenian garrison, and, in
league with Corinth, Sicyon, and Epidaurus,
were up in arms, while a Peloponnesian army
under King Plistoanax was on the point of
invading Attica. Pericles recrossed in haste to
Attica. The Peloponnesians returned home,
having advanced no farther than Eleusis and
Thria. It was said that Pericles had bribed
Cleandridas; certain it is that both Cleandridas
and Plistoanax were charged at Sparta with
having misconducted the expedition and were
found guilty. Having saved Attica, Pericles
returned to Euboea, reduced it to subjection,
.bn 417.png
.pn +1
expelled the Histiaeans, and settled the Athenian
colony of Oreus on their lands.
The thirty years’ peace, concluded soon
afterwards with Sparta, was probably in large
measure the work of Pericles. The Athenians
had evacuated Boeotia immediately after the
battle of Coronea, and by the terms of the
peace they now renounced their other continental
possessions—Achaia, Troezen, Nisaea,
and Pegae. The peace left Pericles at liberty
to develop his schemes for promoting the internal
welfare of Athens, and for making it the
centre of the intellectual and artistic life of
Greece. But first he had to settle accounts
with his political rival Thucydides; the struggle
was soon decided by the ostracism of the latter
in 444. Thenceforward to the end of his life
Pericles guided the destinies of Athens alone;
in the words of the historian Thucydides, the
government was in name a democracy, but in
fact it was the rule of the first citizen. The
unparalleled ascendency which he wielded so
long over the fickle people is one of the best
proofs of his extraordinary genius. He owed
it entirely to his personal character, and he used
it for the wisest and purest purposes. He was
neither a vulgar demagogue to truckle to the
passions and caprices of the mob, nor a vulgar
despot to cow it by a hireling soldiery; he
was a citizen among citizens, who obeyed him
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because they trusted him, because they knew
that in his hands the honour and interests of
Athens were safe. The period during which
he ruled Athens was the happiest and greatest
in her history, as it was one of the greatest
ages of the world. Other ages have had their
bright particular stars; the age of Pericles is
the Milky Way of great men. In his lifetime
there lived and worked at Athens the poets
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Cratinus, Crates,
the philosophers Anaxagoras, Zeno, Protagoras,
Socrates, the astronomer Meton, the painter
Polygnotus, and the sculptors Myron and
Phidias. Contemporary with these, though not
resident at Athens, were Herodotus, the father
of history; Hippocrates, the father of medicine;
Pindar, “the Theban eagle”; the sculptor
Polyclitus; and the philosophers Empedocles
and Democritus, the latter joint author with
Leucippus of the atomic theory. When Pericles
died, other stars were rising or soon to rise
above the horizon—the historians Thucydides
and Xenophon, the poets Eupolis and Aristophanes,
the orators Lysias and Isocrates, and
the gifted but unscrupulous Alcibiades. Plato
was born shortly before or after the death of
Pericles. Of this brilliant circle Pericles was
the centre. His generous and richly-endowed
nature responded to all that was beautiful and
noble not only in literature and art but in life,
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and it is with justice that the age of Pericles
has received its name from the man in whom,
more than in any other, all the various lines of
Greek culture met and were harmonised. In
this perfect harmony and completeness of nature,
and in the classic calm which was the fruit of it,
Pericles is the type of the ideal spirit, not of his
own age only, but of antiquity.
It seems to have been shortly after the
ostracism of Thucydides that Pericles conceived
the plan of summoning a general congress of
all the Greek states to be held at Athens. Its
objects were the restoration of the temples
which the Persians had destroyed, the fulfilment
of the vows made during the war, and the
establishment of a general peace and the
security of the sea. Invitations were sent to
the Greeks of Asia, the islands from Lesbos
to Rhodes, the Hellespont, Thrace, Byzantium,
Boeotia, Phocis, Peloponnese, Locris, Acarnania,
Ambrada, and Thessaly. The aim of
Pericles seems to have been to draw the bonds
of union closer between the Greeks and to form
a national federation. The beneficent project
was defeated by the short-sighted opposition of
the Spartans. But if in this scheme Pericles
rose above the petty jealousies of Greek politics,
another of his measures proves that he shared
the Greek prejudices as to birth. At an early
period of his career he enacted, or perhaps only
.bn 420.png
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revived, a law confining the rights of Athenian
citizenship to persons both of whose parents
were Athenian citizens. In the year 444, on
the occasion of a scrutiny of the list of citizens,
nearly five thousand persons claiming to be
citizens were proved to be aliens under this
law, and were ruthlessly sold into slavery.
The period of the thirty years’ peace was
not one of uninterrupted tranquillity for Athens.
In 440 a war broke out between the island of
Samos (a leading member of the Athenian
confederacy) and Miletus. Athens sided with
Miletus; Pericles sailed to Samos with an
Athenian squadron, and established a democracy
in place of the previous oligarchy. After
his departure, however, some of the exiled
oligarchs, in league with Pissuthnes, satrap of
Sardes, collected troops and, crossing over to
Samos, overpowered the popular party and
revolted from Athens. In this revolt they
were joined by Byzantium. The situation was
critical; the example set by Samos and
Byzantium might be followed by the other
confederates. Pericles discerned the danger
and met it promptly. He led a squadron of
sixty ships against Samos; and, after detaching
some vessels to summon reinforcements
from Chios and Lesbos, and others to look out
for the Phoenician fleet which the Persians were
expected to send to the help of Samos, he gave
.bn 421.png
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battle with forty-four ships to the Samian fleet
of seventy sail and defeated it. Having received
reinforcements of sixty-five ships, he landed in
Samos and laid siege to the capital. But when
he sailed with sixty ships to meet the Phoenician
vessels which were reported to be near, the
Samians sallied out with their vessels, defeated
the besiegers, and remained masters of the sea
for fourteen days. On his return, however,
they were again blockaded and were compelled
to surrender, nine months after the outbreak of
the war.
Though Pericles enjoyed the confidence of
the people as a whole, his policy and opinions
could not fail to rouse the dislike and suspicions
of many, and in the last years of his life his
enemies combined to assail him. Two points
in particular were singled out for attack, his
administration of the public moneys and his
religious opinions. With regard to the former,
there must always be a certain number of
persons who will not believe that others can
resist and despise a temptation which to themselves
would be irresistible; with regard to the
latter, the suspicion that Pericles held heretical
views on the national religion was doubtless
well grounded. At first, however, his enemies
did not venture to impeach himself, but struck
at him in the persons of his friends. In 432
Phidias was accused of having appropriated
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some of the gold destined for the adornment
of the statue of Athena in the Parthenon. But
by the prudent advice of Pericles the golden
ornaments had been so attached that they could
be taken off and weighed, and when Pericles
challenged the accusers to have recourse to this
test the accusation fell to the ground. More
dangerous, for more true, was the charge against
Phidias of having introduced portraits of himself
and Pericles into the battle of the Amazons,
depicted on the shield of the goddess: the
sculptor appeared as a bald old man lifting a
stone, while Pericles was represented as fighting
an Amazon, his face partly concealed by his
raised spear. To the pious Athenians this
seemed a desecration of the temple, and accordingly
Phidias was clapped into gaol. Whether
he died there or at Elis is uncertain.
Even more deeply was Pericles wounded by
the accusation levelled at the woman he loved.
This was the famous Aspasia, a native of
Miletus, whose talents won for her general
admiration at Athens. Pericles divorced his
wife, a lady of good birth who had borne him
two sons, Xanthippus and Paralus, but with
whom he was unhappy, and attached himself
to Aspasia. With her he lived on terms of
devoted affection to the end of his life, though,
as she was a foreigner, their union was not a
legal marriage. She enjoyed a high reputation
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as a teacher of rhetoric, and seems to have been
the centre of a brilliant intellectual society,
which included Socrates and his friends. The
comic poet, Hermippus, brought her to trial on
the double charge of impiety and of corrupting
Athenian women for the gratification of Pericles.
A decree was further carried by a religious
fanatic named Diopithes, whereby all who
denied the existence of the gods or discussed
the nature of the heavenly bodies were to be
tried as criminals. This blow was aimed
directly at the aged philosopher Anaxagoras,
but indirectly at his pupil Pericles as well as
at Aspasia. When this decree was passed,
and apparently while the trial of Aspasia was
still pending, Pericles himself was called upon
by a decree of the people to render an account
of the money which had passed through his
hands. The result is not mentioned, but we
cannot doubt that the matter either was
dropped or ended in an acquittal. The perfect
integrity of Pericles is proved by the unimpeachable
evidence of his contemporary, the
historian Thucydides. Aspasia was acquitted,
but not before Pericles had exerted all his
eloquence in her behalf. Anaxagoras, tried
on the charge of impiety, was obliged to quit
the city.
It was in the same year (432) that the
great contest between Athens and Sparta,
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known as the Peloponnesian War, broke out.
We may dismiss as a vulgar calumny the
statement, often repeated in antiquity, but
quite unsupported by Thucydides, that the war
was brought about by Pericles for the purpose
of avoiding a prosecution. The war was in
truth inevitable; its real cause was Sparta’s
jealousy of the growing power of Athens; its
immediate occasion was the help lent by
Athens to Corcyra in its war with Corinth.
At first, with a hypocritical regard for religion,
the Spartans demanded as a condition of peace
that the Athenians should expel the race of
the Alcmaeonidae (including, of course, Pericles),
whose ancestors had been guilty of sacrilege
about two centuries before. The Athenians
retorted in kind, and, after a little more diplomatic
fencing, the Spartans were constrained
to show their hand by demanding bluntly that
Athens should give back to the Greeks their
independence—in other words, renounce her
empire and abandon herself to the tender
mercies of Sparta. Pericles encouraged the
Athenians to reject the demand. He pointed
out that Athens possessed advantages over the
Peloponnesians in superior wealth and greater
unity of counsels. He advised the Athenians,
in case of war, not to take the field against
the numerically superior forces of the Peloponnesians,
but to allow the enemy to ravage
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Attica at will, while they confined themselves
to the defence of the city. Through their fleet
they would maintain communication with their
island empire, procure supplies, and harass the
enemy by sudden descents on his coasts. By
pursuing this defensive policy without attempting
to extend their empire, he predicted that they
would be victorious. The people hearkened
to him and replied to the Spartan ultimatum
by counter-demands, which they knew would
not be accepted. Pericles had not neglected in
time of peace to prepare for war, and Athens
was now well equipped with men, money, and
ships.
In June of the following summer a Peloponnesian
army invaded Attica. By the advice
of Pericles the rural population, with their
movables, had taken refuge in the city, while
the cattle had been sent for safety to the
neighbouring islands. The sight of their
country ravaged under their eyes excited in
the Athenians a longing to march out and
meet the enemy, but in the teeth of popular
clamour and obloquy Pericles steadily adhered
to his defensive policy, content to protect the
suburbs of Athens with cavalry. Meanwhile
Athenian fleets retaliated upon the enemy’s
coasts. About the same time, as a punishment
for the share that they were supposed to have
had in bringing on the war, the whole population
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of Aegina was expelled from their island
to make room for Athenian colonists. This
measure, directed by Pericles, relieved to some
extent the pressure in the overcrowded capital,
and secured a strong outpost on the side of
Peloponnese. In the autumn, after the Peloponnesian
army had been obliged by want of
provisions to quit Attica and disband, Pericles
conducted the whole available army of Athens
into the territory of Megara, and laid it waste.
It was a custom with the Athenians that at
the end of a campaign the bones of those who
had fallen in battle should be buried with public
honours in the beautiful suburb of Ceramicus,
the Westminster of Athens, and the vast crowd
of mourners and spectators gathered about the
grave was addressed by a citizen chosen for
his character and abilities to pay the last
tribute of a grateful country to its departed
brave. On the present occasion the choice
fell on Pericles. Once before, at the close of
the Samian War, it had been his lot to discharge
a similar duty. The speech which he
now delivered, as reported to us by Thucydides,
is one of the noblest monuments of antiquity.
It is indeed the creed of Athens and of Greece.
In its aristocratic republicanism—recognising
at once the equal legal rights and the unequal
intrinsic merits of individuals—it differs alike
from the monarchical spirit of mediaeval and
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modern Europe, with its artificial class distinctions,
and from that reactionary communism
which preaches the natural as well as the
legal equality of men. In its frank admiration
of art and letters and all the social festivals
which humanise and cheer life, it is as far from
the sullen asceticism and the wild debauchery
of the East as the grave and manly simplicity
of its style is removed from the fanciful luxuriance
of Oriental rhetoric. Finally, in the
words of comfort and exhortation addressed to
the bereaved, the speech—to adopt Thirlwall’s
description of another great effort of Athenian
oratory—“ breathes the spirit of that high philosophy
which, whether learnt in the schools or
from life, has consoled the noblest of our kind
in prisons, and on scaffolds, and under every
persecution of adverse fortune.”
The fortitude of the Athenians was put to
a still severer test in the following summer,
when to the horrors of war (the Peloponnesians
had again invaded Attica) were added the
horrors of the plague, which spread havoc in
the crowded city. Pericles himself escaped
the scourge, but many of his relations and
best friends, amongst them his sister and his
two sons Xanthippus and Paralus, were struck
down. With the elder of his sons, Xanthippus,
a worthless young man, the father had been on
bad terms, but the death of his surviving son,
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at an interval of a few days, affected him
deeply, and when he came to lay the wreath
upon the corpse, though he struggled hard to
maintain his habitual calm, he broke down,
and for the first time in his public life burst
into a passion of weeping. But neither private
grief nor public calamity shook for a moment
the lofty courage and resolution with which he
continued to the last to oppose a firm front
alike to enemies without and to cravens within.
While refusing as before to risk a battle in
Attica, which he allowed the Peloponnesians to
devastate at pleasure, he led in person a powerful
fleet against Peloponnese, ravaged the coast,
and destroyed the town of Prasiae in Laconia.
But the Athenians were greatly disheartened;
they sued for peace, and when their suit was
rejected by Sparta they vented their ill-humour
on Pericles, as the author of the war, by subjecting
him to a fine. However, they soon
repented of this burst of petulance, and atoned
for it by re-electing him general and placing
the government once more in his hands.
Further, they allowed him to legitimate his
son by Aspasia, that his house might not be
without an heir. He survived this reconciliation
about a year, but his name is not again
mentioned in connexion with public affairs.
In the autumn of 429 he died. We may well
believe that the philosophy which had been
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the recreation of his happier days supported
and consoled him in the clouded evening of
his life. To his clement nature it was a
peculiar consolation to reflect that he had
never carried political differences to the shedding
of blood. Indeed, his extraordinary,
almost fatherly, tenderness for the life of every
Athenian citizen is attested by various of his
sayings. On his deathbed, when the friends
about him were telling his long roll of glory,
rousing himself from a lethargy into which he
had fallen, he reminded them of his fairest
title to honour: “No Athenian,” he said, “ever
put on black through me.”
He was buried amongst the illustrious dead
in the Ceramicus, and in after years Phormio,
Thrasybulus, and Chabrias slept beside him.
In person he was graceful and well made, save
for an unusual height of head, which the comic
poets were never weary of ridiculing. In the
busts of him which we possess, his regular
features, with the straight Greek nose and full
lips, still preserve an expression of Olympian
repose.
THE END
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Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.
.pb
.dv class='tnotes'
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Transcriber’s Note
The hyphens used in compound words that span line or page breaks in the
original text are retained or removed based on the preponderance of
examples elsewhere. Several words (‘white-wash’, ‘river-side’, ‘sea-weed’,
and ‘water-course’) appear midline both with and without hyphenation, and
are given here as printed.
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and
are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.
The following issues should be noted, along with the resolutions.
.ta l:8 l:46 l:12 w=90%
| darkest tragedies in Greek history[.] | Added.
| bear their country’s misfortunes with a noble [f]ortitude. | Added.
| occupied by corn-fields, vineyards, and olive-groves[.] | Added.
.ta-
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