As the sun sank, I sat on the marble blocks and sketched the immortal landscape. High above me, on the left, soared the enormous twin peaks of pale-blue rock, lying half in the shadow of the mountain slope upheaved beneath, half bathed in the deep yellow luster of sunset. Before me rolled wave after wave of the Parnassian chain, divided by deep lateral valleys, while Helicon, in the distance, gloomed like a thunder-storm under the weight of gathered clouds. Across this wild, vast view, the breaking clouds threw broad belts of cold blue shadow, alternating with zones of angry orange light, in which the mountains seemed to be heated to a transparent glow. The furious wind hissed and howled over the piles of ruin, and a few returning shepherds were the only persons to be seen. And this spot, for a thousand years, was the shrine where spake the awful oracle of Greece.
The gulf of Corinth is a very beautiful and narrow fiord, with chains of mountains on either side, through the gaps of which you can see far into the Morea on one side, and into Northern Greece on the other. But the bays or harbors on either coast are few, and so there was nocity able to wrest the commerce of these waters from old Corinth, which held the keys by land of the whole Peloponnesus, and commanded the passage from sea to sea. It is, indeed, wonderful how Corinth did not acquire and maintain the first position in Greece.
But as soon as the greater powers of Greece decayed and fell away, we find Corinth immediately taking the highest position in wealth, and even in importance. The capture of Corinth, in 146 B.C., marks the Roman conquest of all Greece, and the art-treasures carried to Rome seem to have been as great and various as those which even Athens could have produced. No sooner had Julius Cæsar restored and rebuilt the ruined city, than it sprang at once again into importance, and among the societies addrest in the Epistles of St. Paul, none seems to have lived in greater wealth or luxury. It was, in fact, well-nigh impossible that Corinth should die. Nature had marked out her site as one of the great thoroughfares of the old world; and it was not till after centuries of blighting misrule by the wretched Turks that she sank into the hopeless decay from which not even another Julius Cæsar could rescue her.
The traveler who expects to find any sufficient traces of the city of Periander and of Timoleon, and, I may say, of St. Paul, will be grievously disappointed. In the middle of the wretched straggling modern village there stand up seven enormous rough stone pillars of the Doric Order, evidently of the oldest and heaviest type; and these are the only visible relic of the ancient city, looking altogether out of place,and almost as if they had come there by mistake. These pillars, tho insufficient to admit of our reconstructing the temple, are in themselves profoundly interesting. Their shaft up to the capital is of one block, about twenty-one feet high and six feet in diameter. It is to be observed, that over these gigantic monoliths the architrave, in which other Greek temples show the largest blocks, is not in one piece, but two, and made of beams laid together longitudinally. The length of the shafts (up to the neck of the capital) measures about four times their diameter, on the photograph which I possess; I do not suppose that any other Doric pillar known to us is so stout and short.
Straight over the site of the town is the great rock known as the Acro-Corinthus. A winding path leads up on the southwest side to the Turkish drawbridge and gate, which are now deserted and open; nor is there a single guard or soldier to watch a spot once the coveted prize of contending empires. In the days of the Achæan League it was called one of the fetters of Greece, and indeed it requires no military experience to see the extraordinary importance of the place.
Next to the view from the heights of Parnassus, I suppose the view from this citadel is held the finest in Greece. I speak here of the large and diverse views to be obtained from mountain heights. To me, personally, such a view as that from the promontory of Sunium, or, above all, from the harbor of Nauplia, exceeds in beauty and interest any bird's-eye prospect. Any one who looks at the map ofGreece will see how the Acro-Corinthus commands coasts, islands, and bays. The day was too hazy when we stood there to let us measure the real limits of the view, and I can not say how near to Mount Olympus the eye may reach in a suitable atmosphere. But a host of islands, the southern coasts of Attica and Bœotia, the Acropolis of Athens, Salamis and Ægina, Helicon and Parnassus, and endless Ætolian peaks were visible in one direction; while, as we turned round, all the waving reaches of Arcadia and Argolis, down to the approaches toward Mantinea and Karytena, lay stretched out before us. The plain of Argos, and the sea at that side, are hidden by the mountains. But without going into detail, this much may be said, that if a man wants to realize the features of these coasts, which he has long studied on maps, half an hour's walk about the top of this rock will give him a geographical insight which no years of study could attain.
Olympia, like Delphi, is a place of memories chiefly. The visible remains are numerous, but so flat that some little technical knowledge is needed to restore them in mind. There is no village at the modern Olympia at all—nothingbut five or six little inns and a railway station—so that Delphi really has the advantage of Olympia in this regard. As a site connected with ancient Greek history and Greek religion, the two places are as similar in nature as they are in general ruin. The field in which the ancient structures stand lies just across the tiny tributary river Cladeus, spanned by a footbridge.
Even from the opposite bank, the ruins present a most interesting picture, with its attractiveness greatly enhanced by the neighboring pines, which scatter themselves through the precinct itself and cover densely the little conical hill of Kronos close by, while the grasses of the plain grow luxuriantly among the fallen stones of the former temples and apartments of the athletes. The ruins are so numerous and so prostrate that the non-technical visitor is seriously embarrassed to describe them, as is the case with every site of the kind.
All the ruins, practically, have been identified and explained, and naturally they all have to do with the housing or with the contests of the visiting athletes of ancient times, or with the worship of tutelary divinities. Almost the first extensive ruin that we found on passing the encircling precinct wall was the Prytaneum—a sort of ancient training table at which victorious contestants were maintained gratis—while beyond lay other equally extensive remnants of exercising places, such as the Palæstra for the wrestlers. But all these were dominated, evidently, by the two great temples, an ancient one of comparatively small size sacred to Hera, anda mammoth edifice dedicated to Zeus, which still gives evidence of its enormous extent, while the fallen column-drums reveal some idea of the other proportions. It was in its day the chief glory of the enclosure, and the statue of the god was even reckoned among the seven wonders of the world. Unfortunately this statue, like that of Athena at Athens, has been irretrievably lost. But there is enough of the great shrine standing in the midst of the ruins to inspire one with an idea of its greatness; and, in the museum above, the heroic figures from its two pediments have been restored and set up in such wise as to reproduce the external adornment of the temple with remarkable success.
Gathered around this central building, the remainder of the ancient structures having to do with the peculiar uses of the spot present a bewildering array of broken stones and marbles. An obtrusive remnant of a Byzantine church is the one discordant feature. Aside from this the precinct recalls only the distant time when the regular games called all Greece to Olympia, while the "peace of God" prevailed throughout the kingdom. Just at the foot of Kronos a long terrace and flight of steps mark the position of a row of old treasuries, as at Delphi, while along the eastern side of the precinct are to be seen the remains of a portico once famous for its echoes, where sat the judges who distributed the prizes. There is also a most graceful arch remaining to mark the entrance to the ancient stadium, of which nothing else now remains.
Of the later structures on the site, the "houseof Nero" is the most interesting and extensive. The Olympic games were still celebrated, even after the Roman domination, and Nero himself entered the lists in his own reign. He caused a palace to be erected for him on that occasion—and of course he won a victory, for any other outcome would have been most impolite, not to say dangerous. Nero was more fortunately lodged than were the other ancient contestants, it appears, for there were no hostelries in old Olympia in which the visiting multitudes could be housed, and the athletes and spectators who came from all over the land were accustomed to bring their own tents and pitch them roundabout, many of them on the farther side of the Alpheios.
Many various wonders may one see, or hear of, in Greece; but the Eleusinian mysteries and Olympian games seem to exhibit more than anything else the Divine purpose. And the sacred grove of Zeus they have from old time called Altis, slightly changing the Greek word for grove; it is, indeed, called Altis also by Pindar, in the ode he composed for a victor at Olympia. And the temple and statue of Zeus were built out of the spoils of Pisa, which the people of Elis razedto the ground, after quelling the revolt of Pisa, and some of the neighboring towns that revolted with Pisa. And that the statue of Zeus was the work of Phidias is shown by the inscription written at the base of it: "Phidias the Athenian, the son of Charmides, made me."
The temple is a Doric building, and outside it is a colonnade. And the temple is built of stone of the district. Its height up to the gable is sixty-eight feet, and its length 2,300 feet. And its architect was Libon, a native of Ellis.
And the tiles on the roof are not of baked earth; but Pentelican marble, to imitate tiles. They say such roofs are the invention of a man of Naxos called Byzes, who made statues at Naxos with the inscription: "Euergus of Naxos made me, the son of Byzes, and descended from Leto, the first who made tiles of stone."
This Byzes was a contemporary of Alyattes the Lydian, and Astyages (the son of Cyaxares), the king of Persia. And there is a golden vase at each end of the roof, and a golden Victory in the middle of the gable. And underneath the Victory is a golden shield hung up as a votive offering, with the Gorgon Medusa worked on it. The inscription on the shield states who hung it up, and the reason why they did so. For this is what it says: "This temple's golden shield is a votive offering from the Lacedæmonians at Tanagra and their allies, a gift from the Argives, the Athenians, and the Ionians, a tithe offering for success in war."
The battle I mentioned in my account of Attica, when I described the tombs at Athens. And in the same temple at Olympia, above the zone thatruns round the pillars on the outside, are twenty-one golden shields, the offering of Mummius the Roman general, after he had beaten the Achæans and taken Corinth, and expelled the Dorians from Corinth. And on the gables in bas-relief is the chariot race between Pelops and Œnomaus; and both chariots in motion. And in the middle of the gable is a statue of Zeus; and on the right hand of Zeus is Œnomaus with a helmet on his head; and beside him his wife Sterope, one of the daughters of Atlas. And Myrtilus, who was the charioteer of Œnomaus, is seated behind the four horses. And next to him are two men whose names are not recorded, but they are doubtless Œnomaus's grooms, whose duty was to take care of the horses....
The carvings on the gables in front are by Pæonius of Mende in Thracia; those behind by Alcamenes, a contemporary of Phidias and second only to him as statuary. And on the gables is a representation of the fight between the Lapithæ and the Centaurs at the marriage of Pirithous. Pirithous is in the center, and on one side of him is Eurytion trying to carry off Pirithous's wife, and Cæneus coming to the rescue, and on the other side Theseus laying about among the Centaurs with his battle-ax; and one Centaur is carrying off a maiden, another a blooming boy. Alcamenes has engraved this story, I imagine, because he learned from the lines of Homer that Pirithous was the son of Zeus, and knew that Theseus was fourth in descent from Pelops. There are also in bas-relief at Olympia most of the Labors of Hercules. Above the doors of the temple is the hunting of the Erymanthian boar, and Herculestaking the mares of Diomede the Thracian, and robbing Geryon of his oxen in the island of Erytheia, and supporting the load of Atlas, and clearing the land of Elis of its dung....
The image of the god is in gold and ivory, seated on a throne. And a crown is on his head imitating the foliage of the olive tree. In his right hand he holds a Victory in ivory and gold, with a tiara and crown on his head; and in his left hand a scepter adorned with all manner of precious stones, and the bird seated on the scepter is an eagle. The robes and sandals of the god are also of gold; and on his robes are imitations of flowers, especially of lilies. And the throne is richly adorned with gold and precious stones, and with ebony and ivory. And there are imitations of animals painted on it, and models worked on it. There are four Victories like dancers, one at each foot of the throne, and two also at the instep of each foot; and at each of the front feet are Theban boys carried off by Sphinxes, and below the Sphinxes, Apollo and Artemis shooting down the children of Niobe. And between the feet of the throne are four divisions formed by straight lines drawn from each of the four feet.
In the division nearest the entrance there are seven models—the eighth has vanished no one knows where or how. And they are imitations of ancient contests, for in the days of Phidias the contests for boys were not yet established. And the figure with its head muffled up in a scarf is, they say, Pantarcas, who was a native of Elis and the darling of Phidias. This Pantarces won the wrestling-prize for boys in the 86th Olympiad. And in the remaining divisions is the band of Hercules fighting against the Amazons. The number on each side is twenty-nine, and Theseus is on the side of Hercules. And the throne is supported not only by the four feet, but also by four pillars between the feet. But one can not get under the throne, as one can at Amyclæ, and pass inside; for at Olympia there are panels like walls that keep one off.
At the top of the throne, Phidias has represented above the head of Zeus the three Graces and three Seasons. For these too, as we learn from the poets, were daughters of Zeus. Homer in the Iliad has represented the Seasons as having the care of Heaven, as a kind of guards of a royal palace. And the base under the feet of Zeus (what is called in Attic "thranion") has golden lions engraved on it, and the battle between Theseus and the Amazons—the first famous exploit of the Athenians beyond their own borders. And on the platform that supports the throne there are various ornaments round Zeus, and gilt carving—the Sun seated in his chariot, and Zeus and Hera; and near is Grace. Hermes is close to her, and Vesta close to Hermes. And next to Vesta is Eros receiving Aphrodite, who is just rising from the sea and being crowned by Persuasion. And Apollo and Artemis, Athene and Hercules, are standing by, and at the end of the platform Amphitrite and Poseidon, and Selene apparently urging on her horse. And some say it is a mule and not a horse that the goddess is riding upon; and there is a silly tale about this mule.
I know that the size of the Olympian Zeus both in height and breadth has been stated; but I cannot bestow praise on the measurers, for their recorded measurement comes far short of what any one would infer from looking at the statue. They make the god also to have testified to the art of Phidias. For they say that when the statue was finished, Phidias prayed him to signify if the work was to his mind; and immediately Zeus, struck with lightning that part of the pavement where in our day is a brazen urn with a lid.
And all the pavement in front of the statue is not of white but of black stone. And a border of Parian marble runs round this black stone, as a preservative against spilled oil. For oil is good for the statue at Olympia, as it prevents the ivory being harmed by the dampness of the grove. But in the Acropolis at Athens, in regard to the statue of Athene called the Maiden, it is not oil but water that is advantageously employed to the ivory; for as the citadel is dry by reason of its great height, the statue being made of ivory needs to be sprinkled with water freely. And when I was at Epidaurus, and inquired why they use neither water nor oil to the statue of Æsculapius, the sacristans of the temple informed me that the statue of the god and its throne are over a well.
We took Thermopylæ at our leisure, passing out from Lamia over the Spercheios on the bridge of Alamana, at which Diakos, famous in ballad, resisted with a small band a Turkish army, until he was at last captured and taken to Lamia to be impaled....
It may be taken as a well-known fact that the Spercheios has since the time of Herodotus made so large an alluvial deposit around its mouth that, if he himself should return to earth, he would hardly recognize the spot which he has described so minutely. The western horn, which in his time came down so near to the gulf as to leave space for a single carriage-road only, is now separated from it by more than a mile of plain. Each visit to Thermopylæ has, however, deepened my conviction that Herodotus exaggerated the impregnability of this pass. The mountain spur which formed it did not rise so abruptly from the sea as to form an impassable barrier to the advance of a determined antagonist. It is of course difficult ground to operate on, but certainly not impossible.
The other narrow place, nearly two miles to the east of this, is still more open, a fact that is to be emphasized, because many topographers, including Colonel Leake, hold that the battleactually took place there, as the great battle between the Romans and Antioches certainly did. This eastern pass is, to be sure, no place where "a thousand may well be stopt by three," and there can not have taken place any great transformation here since classical times, inasmuch as this region is practically out of reach of the Spercheios, and the deposit from the hot sulfur streams, which has so broadened the theater-shaped area enclosed by the two horns, can hardly have contributed to changing the shape of the eastern horn itself.
Artificial fortification was always needed here; but it is very uncertain whether any of the stones that still remain can be claimed as parts of such fortification. It is a fine position for an inferior force to choose for defense against a superior one; but while it can not be declared with absolute certainty that this is not the place where the fighting took place, yet the western pass fits better the description of Herodotus. Besides this, if the western pass had been abandoned to the Persians at the outset the fact would have been worth mentioning.
As to the heroic deed itself, the view that Leonidas threw away his own life and that of the four thousand, that it was magnificent but not strategy, not war, does not take into account the fact that Sparta had for nearly half a century been looked to as the military leader of Greece. It was audacious in the Athenians to fight the battle of Marathon without them, and they did so only because the Spartans did not come at their call. Sparta had not come to Thermopylæ in force, it is true; but her kingwas there with three hundred of her best men. Only by staying and fighting could he show that Sparta held by right the place she had won. It had to be done. "So the glory of Sparta was not blotted out."
One may have read, and read often, the description of the battle in the school-room, but he reads it with different eyes on the spot, when he can look up at the hillock crowned with a ruined cavalry barrack just inside the western pass and say to himself: "Here on this hill they fought their last fight and fell to the last man. Here once stood the monuments to Leonidas, to the three hundred, and to the four thousand."
The very monuments have crumbled to dust, but the great deed lives on. We rode back to Lamia under the spell of it. It was as if we had been in church and been held by a great preacher who knows how to touch the deepest chords of the heart. Eubœa was already dark blue, while the sky above it was shaded from pink to purple. Tymphrestos in the west was bathed in the light of the sun that had gone down behind it. The whole surrounding was most stirring, and there was ever sounding in our hearts that deep bass note: "What they did here."
The city of Salonica lies on a fine bay, and presents an attractive appearance from the harbor, rising up the hill in the form of an amphitheater. On all sides, except the sea, ancient walls surround it, fortified at the angles by large, round towers and crowned in the center, on the hill, by a respectable citadel. I suppose that portions of these walls are of Hellenic, and perhaps, Pelasgic date, but the most are probably of the time of the Latin crusaders' occupation, patched and repaired by Saracens and Turks. We had come to Thessalonica on St. Paul's account, not expecting to see much that would excite us, and we were not disappointed. When we went ashore we found ourselves in a city of perhaps sixty thousand inhabitants, commonplace in aspect, altho its bazaars are well filled with European goods, and a fair display of Oriental stuffs and antiquities, and animated by considerable briskness of trade. I presume there are more Jews here than there were in Paul's time, but Turks and Greeks, in nearly equal numbers, form the bulk of the population.
In modern Salonica there is not much respect for pagan antiquities, and one sees only the usual fragments of columns and sculptures worked intowalls or incorporated in Christian churches. But those curious in early Byzantine architecture will find more to interest them here than in any place in the world except Constantinople. We spent the day wandering about the city, under the guidance of a young Jew, who was without either prejudices or information. On our way to the Mosque of St. Sophia, we passed through the quarter of the Jews, which is much cleaner than is usual with them. These are the descendants of Spanish Jews, who were expelled by Isabella, and they still retain, in a corrupt form, the language of Spain. In the doors and windows were many pretty Jewesses; banishment and vicissitude appear to agree with this elastic race, for in all the countries of Europe Jewish women develop more beauty in form and feature than in Palestine. We saw here and in other parts of the city a novel head-dress, which may commend itself to America in the revolutions of fashion. A great mass of hair, real or assumed, was gathered into a long, slender, green bag, which hung down the back and was terminated by a heavy fringe of silver. Otherwise, the dress of the Jewish women does not differ much from that of the men; the latter wear a fez or turban, and a tunic which reaches to the ankles, and is bound about the waist by a gay sash or shawl.
The Mosque of St. Sophia, once a church, and copied in its proportions and style from its namesake in Constantinople, is retired, in a delightful court, shaded by gigantic trees and cheered by a fountain. So peaceful a spot we had not seen in many a day; birds sang in the trees without disturbing the calm of the meditative pilgrim. Inthe portico and also in the interior are noble columns of marble and verd-antique, and in the dome is a wonderfully quaint mosaic of the Transfiguration. We were shown also a magnificent pulpit of the latter beautiful stone cut from a solid block, in which it is said St. Paul preached. As the Apostle, according to his custom, reasoned with the people out of the Scriptures in a synagogue, and this church was not built for centuries after his visit, the statement needs confirmation; but pious ingenuity suggests that the pulpit stood in a subterranean church underneath this. I should like to believe that Paul sanctified this very spot with his presence; but there is little in its quiet seclusion to remind one of him who had the reputation when he was in Thessalonica of one of those who turn the world upside down.
At early light of a cloudless morning we were going easily down the Gulf of Thermæ or Salonica, having upon our right the Pierian plain; and I tried to distinguish the two mounds which mark the place of the great battle near Pydna, one hundred and sixty-eight years before Christ, between Æmilius Paulus and KingPerseus, which gave Macedonia to the Roman Empire. Beyond, almost ten thousand feet in the air, towered Olympus, upon whose "broad" summit Homer displays the ethereal palaces and inaccessible abode of the Grecian gods. Shaggy forests still clothe its sides, but snow now, and for the greater part of the year, covers the wide surface of the height, which is a sterile, light-colored rock. The gods did not want snow to cool the nectar at their banquets.
This is the very center of the mythologic world; there between Olympus and Ossa is the Vale of Tempe, where the Peneus, breaking through a narrow gorge fringed with the sacred laurel, reaches the gulf, south of ancient Heracleum. Into this charming but secluded retreat the gods and goddesses, weary of the icy air, or the Pumblechookian deportment of the court of Olympian Jove, descended to pass the sunny hours with the youths and maidens of mortal mold; through this defile marks of chariot-wheels still attest the passage of armies which flowed either way, in invasion or retreat; and here Pompey, after a ride of forty miles from the fatal field of Pharsalia, quenched his thirst.
At six o'clock the Cape of Posilio was on our left, we were sinking Olympus in the white haze of morning, Ossa, in its huge silver bulk, was near us, and Pelion stretched its long white back below. The sharp cone of Ossa might well ride upon the extended back of Pelion, and it seems a pity that the Titans did not succeed in their attempt. We were leaving, and looking our last on the Thracian coasts, once rimmed from Mt. Athos to the Bosphorus with a wreath of prosperous cities. What must once have been the splendor of the Ægean Sea and its islands, when every island was the seat of a vigorous state, and every harbor the site of a commercial town which sent forth adventurous galleys upon any errand of trade or conquest!...
We ascended Mt. Pentelicus. Hymettus and Pentelicus are about the same height—thirty-five hundred feet—but the latter, ten miles to the northeast of Athens, commands every foot of the Attic territory; if one should sit on its summit and read a history of the little state, he would need no map.
Up to the highest quarries the road is steep, and strewn with broken marble, and after that there is an hour's scramble through bushes and over a rocky path. From these quarries was hewn the marble for the Temple of Theseus, the Parthenon, the Propylæ, the theaters, and other public buildings, to which age has now given a soft and creamy tone; the Pentelic marble must have been too brilliant for the eye, and its dazzling luster was, no doubt, softened by the judicious use of color. Fragments which we broke off had the sparkle and crystalline grain of loaf-sugar, and if they were placed upon the table one would unhesitatingly take them to sweeten his tea. The whole mountain-side is overgrown with laurel, and we found wild flowers all the way to the summit....
We looked almost directly down upon Marathon. There is the bay and the curving sandy shore where the Persian galleys landed; here upon a spur, jutting out from the hill, the Athenians formed before they encountered thehost in the plain, and there—alas! it was hidden by a hill—is the mound where the one hundred and ninety-two Athenian dead are buried. It is only a small field, perhaps six miles along the shore and a mile and a half deep, and there is a considerable marsh on the north and a small one at the south end. The victory at so little cost, of ten thousand over a hundred thousand, is partially explained by the nature of the ground; the Persians had not room enough to maneuver, and must have been thrown into confusion on the skirts of the northern swamp, and if over six thousand of them were slain, they must have been killed on the shore in the panic of their embarkation. But still the shore is broad, level, and firm, and the Greeks must have been convinced that the gods themselves terrified the hearts of the barbarians, and enabled them to discomfit a host which had chosen this plain as the most feasible in all Attica for the action of cavalry.
As we approached Sparta, the road descended to the banks of the Eurotas. Traces of the ancient walls which restrained the river still remain in places, but, in his shifting course, he has swept the most of them away, and spread his gravelly deposits freely over the bottomsinclosed between the spurs of the hills. Toward evening we saw, at a distance, the white houses of modern Sparta, and presently some indications of the ancient city. At first, the remains of terraces and ramparts, then the unmistakable Hellenic walls, and, as the superb plain of the Eurotas burst upon us, stretching, in garden-like beauty, to the foot of the abrupt hills, over which towered the sun-touched snows of Taygetus, we saw, close on our right, almost the only relic of the lost ages—the theater. Riding across the field of wheat, which extended all over the scene of the Spartan gymnastic exhibitions, we stood on the proscenium and contemplated these silent ruins, and the broad, beautiful landscape. It is one of the finest views in Greece—not so crowded with striking points, not so splendid in associations as that of Athens, but larger, grander, richer in coloring. Besides the theater, the only remains are some masses of Roman brickwork, and the massive substructions of a small temple which the natives call the tomb of Leonidas....
We spent the night in a comfortable house, which actually boasted of a floor, glass windows, and muslin curtains. On returning to the theater in the morning, we turned aside into a plowed field to inspect a sarcophagus which had just been discovered. It still lay in the pit where it was found, and was entire, with the exception of the lid. It was ten feet long by four broad, and was remarkable in having a division at one end, forming a smaller chamber, as if for the purpose of receiving the bones of a child. From the theater I made a sketch ofthe valley, with the dazzling ridge of Taygetus in the rear, and Mistra, the medieval Sparta, hanging on the steep sides of one of his gorges. The sun was intensely hot, and we were glad to descend again, making our way through tall wheat, past walls of Roman brickwork and scattering blocks of the older city, to the tomb of Leonidas. This is said to be a temple, tho there are traces of vaults and passages beneath the pavement which do not quite harmonize with such a conjecture. It is composed of huge blocks of breccia, some of them thirteen feet long.
I determined to make an excursion to Maina. This is a region rarely visited by travelers, who are generally frightened off by the reputation of its inhabitants, who are considered by the Greeks to be bandits and cut-throats to a man. The Mainotes are, for the most part, lineal descendants of the ancient Spartans, and, from the decline of the Roman power up to the present century, have preserved a virtual independence in their mountain fastnesses. The worship of the pagan deities existed among them as late as the eighth century. They were never conquered by the Turks, and it required considerable management to bring them under the rule of Otho....
Starting at noon, we passed through the modern Sparta, which is well laid out with broad streets. The site is superb, and in the course of time the new town will take the place of Mistra. We rode southward, down the valley of the Eurotas, through orchards of olive and mulberry. We stopt for the night at thelittle khan of Levetzova. I saw some cows pasturing here, quite a rare sight in Greece, where genuine butter is unknown. That which is made from the milk of sheep and goats is no better than mild tallow. The people informed me, however, that they make cheese from cow's milk, but not during Lent. They are now occupied with rearing Paschal lambs, a quarter of a million of which are slaughtered in Greece on Easter Day. The next morning, we rode over hills covered with real turf, a little thin, perhaps, but still a rare sight in southern lands. In two hours we entered the territory of Maina, on the crest of a hill, where we saw Marathonisi (the ancient Gythium), lying warm upon the Laconian Gulf. The town is a steep, dirty, labyrinthine place, and so rarely visited by strangers that our appearance created quite a sensation....
A broad, rich valley opened before us, crossed by belts of poplar and willow trees, and inclosed by a semicircle of hills, most of which were crowned with the lofty towers of the Mainotes. In Maina almost every house is a fortress. The law of blood revenge, the right of which is transmitted from father to son, draws the whole population under its bloody sway in the course of a few generations. Life is a running fight, and every foe slain entails on the slayer a new penalty of retribution for himself and his descendants for ever.
Previous to the revolution most of the Mainote families lived in a state of alternate attack and siege. Their houses are square towers, forty or fifty feet high, with massive walls, and windows so narrow that they may be used as loopholes for musketry. The first story is at a considerable distance from the ground, and reached by a long ladder which can be drawn up so as to cut off all communication. Some of the towers are further strengthened by a semicircular bastion, projecting from the side most liable to attack. The families supplied themselves with telescopes, to look out for enemies in the distance, and always had a store of provisions on hand, in case of a siege. Altho this private warfare has been supprest, the law of revenge exists.
From the summit of the first range we overlooked a wild, glorious landscape. The hills, wooded with oak, and swimming in soft blue vapor, interlocked far before us, inclosing the loveliest green dells in their embraces, and melting away to the break in Taygetus, which yawned in the distance. On the right towered the square, embrasured castle of Passava on the summit of an almost inaccessible hill—the site of the ancient Las. Far and near, the lower heights were crowned with tall, white towers.
The plain of Messenia is the richest part of the Morea. Altho its groves of orange and olive, fig and mulberry, were entirely destroyed during the Egyptian occupation, new and morevigorous shoots have sprung up from the old stumps and the desolated country is a garden again, apparently as fair and fruitful as when it excited the covetousness of the Spartan thieves. Sloping to the gulf on the south, and protected from the winds on all other sides by lofty mountains, it enjoys an almost Egyptian warmth of climate. Here it was already summer, while at Sparta, on the other side of Taygetus, spring had but just arrived, and the central plain of Arcadia was still bleak and gray as in winter. As it was market-day, we met hundreds of the country people going to Kalamata with laden asses....
We crossed the rapid Pamisos with some difficulty, and ascended its right bank, to the foot of Mount Evan, which we climbed, by rough paths through thickets of mastic and furze, to the monastery of Vurkano. The building has a magnificent situation, on a terrace between Mount Evan and Mount Ithome, overlooking both the upper and lower plains of the Pamisos—a glorious spread of landscape, green with spring, and touched by the sun with the airiest prismatic tints through breaks of heavy rain-clouds. Inside the courts is an old Byzantine chapel, with fleurs-de-lis on the decorations, showing that it dates from the time of the Latin princes. The monks received us very cordially, gave us a clean, spacious room, and sent us a bottle of excellent wine for dinner.
We ascended Ithome and visited the massive ruins of Messene the same day. The great gate of the city, a portion of the wall, and four of the towers of defense, are in tolerable condition.The name of Epaminondas hallows these remains, which otherwise, grand as they are, do not impress one like the cyclopean walls of Tiryns. The wonder is, that they could have been built in so short a time—eighty-five days, says history, which would appear incredible, had not still more marvelous things of the kind been done in Russia.
The next day, we rode across the head of the Messenian plain, crossed the Mount Lycæus and the gorge of the Neda, and lodged at the little village of Tragoge, on the frontiers of Arcadia. Our experience of Grecian highways was pleasantly increased by finding fields plowed directly across our road, fences of dried furze built over it, and ditches cutting it at all angles. Sometimes all trace of it would be lost for half a mile, and we were obliged to ride over the growing crops until we could find a bit of fresh trail.
The bridle-path over Mount Lycæus was steep and bad, but led us through the heart of a beautiful region. The broad back of the mountain is covered with a grove of superb oaks, centuries old, their long arms muffled in golden moss, and adorned with a plumage of ferns. The turf at their feet was studded with violets, filling the air with delicious odors. This sylvan retreat was the birthplace of Pan, and no more fitting home for the universal god can be imagined. On the northern side we descended for some time through a forest of immense ilex trees, which sprang from a floor of green moss and covered our pathway with summer shade....
We were now in the heart of the wild mountain region of Messenia, in whose fastnesses Aristomenes, the epic hero of the state, maintained himself so long against the Spartans. The tremendous gorge below us was the bed of the Neda, which we crossed in order to enter the lateral valley of Phigalia, where lay Tragoge. The path was not only difficult but dangerous—in some places a mere hand's-breath of gravel, on the edge of a plane so steep that a single slip of a horse's foot would have sent him headlong to the bottom.
In the morning, a terrible sirocco levante was blowing, with an almost freezing cold. The fury of the wind was so great that in crossing the exposed ridges it was difficult to keep one's seat upon the horse. We climbed toward the central peak of the Lycæan Hills, through a wild dell between two ridges, which were covered to the summit with magnificent groves of oak. Starry blue flowers, violets and pink crocuses spangled the banks as we wound onward, between the great trunks. The temple of Apollo Epicurius stands on a little platform between the two highest peaks, about 3,500 feet above the sea.
On the day of our visit, its pillars of pale bluish-gray limestone rose against a wintry sky, its guardian oaks were leafless, and the wind whistled over its heaps of ruin; yet its symmetry was like that of a perfect statue, wherein you do not notice the absence of color, and I felt that no sky and no season could make it more beautiful. For its builder was Ictinus, who created the Parthenon. It was erected by thePhigalians, out of gratitude to Apollo the Helper, who kept from their city a plague which ravaged the rest of the Peloponnesus. Owing to its secluded position, it has escaped the fate of other temples, and might be restored from its own undestroyed materials. The cella had been thrown down, but thirty-five out of thirty-eight columns are still standing. Through the Doric shafts you look upon a wide panorama of gray mountains, melting into purple in the distance, and crowned by arcs of the far-off sea. On one hand is Ithome and the Messenian Gulf, on the other the Ionian Sea and the Strophades....
We now trotted down the valley, over beautiful meadows, which were uncultivated except in a few places where the peasants were plowing for maize, and had destroyed every trace of the road. The hills on both sides began to be fringed with pine, while the higher ridges on our right were clothed with woods of oak. I was surprised at the luxuriant vegetation of this region. The laurel and mastic became trees, the pine shot to a height of one hundred feet, and the beech and sycamore began to appear. Some of the pines had been cut for ship-timber, but in the rudest and most wasteful way, only the limbs which had the proper curve being chosen for ribs. I did not see a single sawmill in the Peloponnesus; but I am told that there are a few in Euboea and Acarnania....
As we approached Olympia, I could almost have believed myself among the pine-hills of Germany or America. In the old times this must have been a lovely, secluded region, wellbefitting the honored repose of Xenophon, who wrote his works here. The sky became heavier as the day wore on, and the rain, which had spared us so long, finally inclosed us in its misty circle. Toward evening we reached a lonely little house, on the banks of the Alpheus. Nobody was at home, but we succeeded in forcing a door and getting shelter for our baggage. François had supper nearly ready before the proprietor arrived. The latter had neither wife nor child, tho a few chicks, and took our burglarious occupation very good-humoredly. We shared the same leaky roof with our horses, and the abundant fleas with the owner's dogs.
The fortress of Tiryns may fitly be commented on before approaching the younger, or at least more artistically finished, Mycenæ. It stands several miles nearer to the sea, in the center of the great plain of Argos, and upon the only hillock which there affords any natural scope for fortification. Instead of the square, or at least hewn, well-fitted blocks of Mycenæ, we have here the older style of rude masses piled together as best they would fit, the interstices being filled up with smaller fragments. This is essentially cyclopean building. There is a smaller fort, of rectangular shape, on the southern and highest part of the oblong hillock, the whole of which is surrounded by a lower wall, which takes in both this and the northern longer part of the ridge. It looks, in fact, like a hill-fort, with a large inclosure for cattle around it.
Just below the northeast angle of the inner fort, and where the lower circuit is about to leave it, there is an entrance, with a massive projection of huge stones, looking like a square tower, on its right side, so as to defend it from attack. The most remarkable feature in the walls are the covered galleries, constructed within them at the southeast angle. The whole thickness of the wall is often over twenty feet, and in the center a rude arched way is made—or rather, I believe, two parallel ways; but the inner gallery has fallen in, and is almost untraceable—and this merely by piling together the great stones so as to leave an opening, which narrows at the top in the form of a Gothic arch. Within the passage, there are five niches in the outer side, made of rude arches in the same way as the main passage. The length of the gallery I measured, and found it twenty-five yards, at the end of which it is regularly walled up, so that it evidently did not run all the way round. The niches are now no longer open, but seem to have been once windows, or at least to have had some lookout points into the hill country.
It is remarkable that, altho the walls are made of perfectly rude stones, the builders have managed to use so many smooth surfaces looking outward, that the face of the wall seems quite clean and well built. At the southeast cornerof the higher and inner fort, we found a large block of red granite, quite different from the rough, gray stone of the building, with its surface square and smooth, and all the four sides neatly beveled, like the portal stones at the treasury of Atreus. I found two other similar blocks close by, which were likewise cut smooth on the surface. The intention of these stones we could not guess, but they show that some ornament, and some more finished work, must have once existed in the inner fort. Tho both the main entrances have massive towers of stone raised on their right, there is a small postern at the opposite or west side, not more than four feet wide, which has no defenses whatever, and is a mere hole in the wall.
The whole ruin is covered in summer with thistles, such as English people can hardly imagine. The needles at the points of the leaves are fully an inch long, extremely fine and strong, and sharper than any two-edged sword. No clothes except a leather dress can resist them. They pierce everywhere with the most stinging pain, and make antiquarian research in this famous spot a veritable martyrdom, which can only be supported by a very burning thirst for knowledge, or the sure hope of future fame. The rough masses of stone are so loose that one's footing is insecure, and when the traveler loses his balance, and falls among the thistles, he will wish that he had gone to Jericho instead, or even fallen among thieves on the way.
It is impossible to approach Mycenæ from any side without being struck with the picturesqueness of the site. If you come down overthe mountains from Corinth, as soon as you reach the head of the valley of the Inachus, which is the plain of Argos, you turn aside to the left, or east, into a secluded corner—"a recess of the horse-feeding Argos," as Homer calls it—and then you find on the edge of the valley, and where the hills begin to rise one behind the other, the village of Charváti. When you ascend from this place, you find that the lofty Mount Elias is separated from the plain by two nearly parallel waves of land, which are indeed joined at the northern end by a curving saddle, but elsewhere are divided by deep gorges. The loftier and shorter wave forms the rocky citadel of Mycenæ—the Argion, as it was once called.
I need not attempt a fresh description of the Great Treasury. It is in no sense a rude building, or one of a helpless and barbarous age, but, on the contrary, the product of enormous appliances, and of a perfect knowledge of all the mechanical requirements for any building, if we except the application of the arch. The stones are hewn square, or curved to form the circular dome within, with admirable exactness. Above the enormous lintel-stone, nearly twenty-seven feet long, and which is doubly grooved, by way of ornament, all along its edge over the doorway, there is now a triangular window or aperture, which was certainly filled with some artistic carving like the analogous space over the lintel in the gate of the Acropolis. Shortly after Lord Elgin had cleared the entrance, Gell and Dodwell found various pieces of green and red marble carved with geometrical patterns, some of which are reproduced in Dodwell's book. Gell alsofound some fragments in a neighboring chapel, and others are said to be built into a wall at Nauplia. There are supposed to have been short columns standing on each side in front of the gate, with some ornament surmounting them; but this seems to me to rest on doubtful evidence, and on theoretical reconstruction. Dr. Schliemann, however, asserts them to have been found at the entrance of the second treasury which Mrs. Schliemann excavated, tho his account is somewhat vague. There is the strongest architectural reason for the triangular aperture over the door, as it diminishes the enormous weight to be borne by the lintel; and here, no doubt, some ornament very like lions on the other gate may have been applied.
There has been much controversy about the use to which this building was applied, and we can not now attempt to change the name, even if we could prove its absurdity. Pausanias, who saw Mycenæ in the second century A.D., found it in much the same state as we do, and was no better informed than we, tho he tells us the popular belief that this and its fellows were treasure-houses like that of the Minyæ at Orchomenus, which was very much greater, and was, in his opinion, one of the most wonderful things in all Greece.
Standing at the entrance, you look out upon the scattered masonry of the walls of Mycenæ, on the hillock over against you. Close behind this is a dark and solemn chain of mountains. The view is narrow and confined, and faces the north, so that, for most of the day, the gate is dark and in shadow. We can conceive no fitterplace for the burial of a king, within sight of his citadel, in the heart of a deep natural hillock, with a great solemn portal symbolizing the resistless strength of the barrier which he had passed into an unknown land. But one more remark seems necessary. This treasure-house is by no means a Greek building in its features. It has the same perfection of construction which can be seen at Eleutheræ, or any other Greek fort, but still the really analogous buildings are to be found in far distant lands—in the raths of Ireland, and the barrows of the Crimea.
"And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,Land of lost gods and godlike men, are thou!Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now:Thy fanes, thy temples to the surface bow,Commingling slowly with heroic earth,Broke by the share of every rustic plough:"Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild:Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,Thine olives ripe as when Minerva smiled,And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields;There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air;Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare;Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair."
—From Byron's "Childe Harold."
Crete lies between the parallels of 35 degrees and 36 degrees, not much farther removed from Africa than from Europe, and its climate, consequently, is intermediate between that of Greece and that of Alexandria. In the morning it was already visible, altho some thirty miles distant, the magnificent snowy mass of the White Mountains gleaming before us, under a bank of clouds. By ten o'clock, the long blue line of the coast broke into irregular points, the Dictynnæan promontory and that of Akroteri thrusting themselves out toward us so as to give an amphitheatric character to that part of the island we were approaching, while the broad, snowy dome of the Cretan Ida, standing alone, far to the east, floated in a sea of soft, golden light. The White Mountains were completely enveloped in snow to a distance of 4,000 feet below their summits, and scarcely a rock pierced the luminous covering. The shores of the Gulf of Khania, retaining their amphitheatric form, rose gradually from the water, a rich panorama of wheat-fields, vineyards and olive groves, crowdedwith sparkling villages, while Khania, in the center, grew into distinctness—a picturesque jumble of mosques, old Venetian arches and walls, pink and yellow buildings, and palm trees. The character of the scene was Syrian rather than Greek, being altogether richer and warmer than anything in Greece.
Khania occupies the site of the ancient Cydonia, by which name the Greek bishopric is still called. The Venetian city was founded in 1252, and any remnants of the older town which may have then remained, were quite obliterated by it. The only ruins now are those of Venetian churches, some of which have been converted into mosques, and a number of immense arched vaults, opening on the harbor, built to shelter the galleys of the Republic. Just beyond the point on which stands the Serai, I counted fifteen of these, side by side, eleven of which are still entire. A little further, there are three more, but all are choked up with sand, and of no present use. The modern town is an exact picture of a Syrian seaport, with its narrow, crooked streets, shaded bazaars, and turbaned merchants. Its population is 9,500, including the garrison, according to a census just completed at the time of our visit. It is walled, and the gates are closed during the night....
Passing through the large Turkish cemetery, which was covered with an early crop of blue anemones, we came upon the rich plain of Khania, lying broad and fair, like a superb garden, at the foot of the White Mountains, whose vast masses of shining snow filled up the entire southern heaven. Eastward, the plainslopes to the deep Bay of Suda, whose surface shone blue above the silvery line of the olive groves; while, sixty miles away, rising high above the intermediate headlands, the solitary peak of Mount Ida, bathed in a warm afternoon glow, gleamed like an Olympian mount, not only the birthplace, but the throne of immortal Jove. Immense olive trees from the dark-red, fertile earth; cypresses and the canopied Italian pine interrupted their gray monotony, and every garden hung the golden lamps of its oranges over the wall. The plain is a paradise of fruitfulness....
In the morning, the horses were brought to us at an early hour, in charge of a jolly old officer of gendarmes, who was to accompany us. As far as the village of Kalepa, there is a carriage road; afterward, only a stony path. From the spinal ridge of the promontory, which we crossed, we overlooked all the plain of Khania, and beyond the Dictynnæan peninsula, to the western extremity of Crete. The White Mountains, tho less than seven thousand, feet in height, deceive the eye by the contrast between their spotless snows and the summer at their base, and seem to rival the Alps. The day was cloudless and balmy; birds sang on every tree, and the grassy hollows were starred with anemones, white, pink, violet and crimson. It was the first breath of the southern spring, after a winter which had been as terrible for Crete as for Greece.
After a ride of three hours, we reached a broad valley, at the foot of that barren mountain mass in which the promontory terminates.To the eastward we saw the large monastery of Agia Triada (the Holy Trinity), overlooking its fat sweep of vine and olive land.... In the deep, dry mountain glen which we entered, I found numbers of carob-trees. Rocks of dark-blue limestone, stained with bright orange oxydations, overhung us as we followed the track of a torrent upward into the heart of this bleak region, where, surrounded by the hot, arid peaks, is the Monastery of Governato.
We descended on foot to the Monastery of Katholiko, which we reached in half an hour. Its situation is like that of San Saba in Palestine, at the bottom of a split in the stony hills, and the sun rarely shines upon it. Steps cut in the rock lead down the face of the precipice to the deserted monastery, near which is a cavern 500 feet long, leading into the rock. The ravine is spanned by an arch, nearly fifty feet high.
At Agia Triada, as we rode up the stately avenue of cypresses, between vineyards and almond trees in blossom, servants advanced to take our horses, and the abbot shouted, "Welcome," from the top of the steps. We were ushered into a clean room, furnished with a tolerable library of orthodox volumes. A boy of fifteen, with a face like the young Raphael, brought us glasses of a rich, dark wine, something like port, some jelly and coffee. The size and substantial character of this monastery attests its wealth, no less than the flourishing appearance of the lands belonging to it. Its large courtyard is shaded with vine-bowers and orange trees, and the chapel in the center has a façade supported by Doric columns.
The ruins [of the Cnossos palace] lie at the east of the high road, in a deep valley. Their excavation has been very complete and satisfactory, and while some restorations have been attempted here and there, chiefly because of absolute necessity to preserve portions of the structure, they are not such restorations as to jar on one, but exhibit a fidelity to tradition that saves them from the common fate of such efforts. Little or no retouching was necessary in the case of the stupendous flights of steps that were found leading up to the door of this prehistoric royal residence, and which are the first of the many sights the visitor of to-day may see.
It is in the so-called "throne room of Minos" that the restoring hand is first met. Here it has been found necessary to provide a roof, that damage by weather be avoided; and to-day the throne room is a dusky spot, rather below the general level of the place. Its chief treasure is the throne itself, a stone chair, carved in rather rudimentary ornamentation, and about the size of an ordinary chair. The roof is supported by the curious, top-heavy-looking stone pillars, that are known to have prevailed not only in the Minoan but in Mycenæan period; monoliths noticeably larger at the top than at the bottom, reversing the usual form of stonepillar with which later ages have made us more familiar. This quite illogical inversion of what we now regard as the proper form has been accounted for in theory, by assuming that it was the natural successor of the sharpened wooden stake. When the ancients adopted stone supports for their roofs, they simply took over the forms they had been familiar with in the former use of wood, and the result was a stone pillar that copied the earlier wooden one in shape. Time, of course, served to show that the natural way of building demanded the reversal of this custom; but in the Mycenæan age it had not been discovered, for there are evidences that similar pillars existed in buildings of that period, and the representation of a pillar that stands between the two lions on Mycenæ's famous gate has this inverted form.
Many hours may be spent in detailed examination of this colossal ruin, testifying to what must have been in its day an enormous and impressive palace. One can not go far in traversing it without noticing the traces still evident enough of the fire that obviously destroyed it many hundred, if not several thousand, years before Christ. Along the western side have been discovered long corridors, from which scores of long and narrow rooms were to be entered. These, in the published plans, serve to give to the ruin a large share of its labyrinthine character. It seems to be agreed now that these were the storerooms of the palace, and in them may still be seen the huge earthen jars which once served to contain the palace supplies. Long rows of them stand in theancient hallways and in the narrow cells that lead off them, each jar large enough to hold a fair-sized man, and in number sufficient to have accommodated Ali Baba and the immortal forty thieves. In the center of the palace little remains; but in the southeastern corner, where the land begins to slope abruptly to the valley below, there are to be seen several stories of the ancient building. Here one comes upon the rooms marked with the so-called "distaff" pattern, supposed to indicate that they were the women's quarters.
The restorer has been busy here, but not offensively so. Much of the ancient wall is intact, and in one place is a bathroom with a very diminutive bathtub still in place. Along the eastern side is also shown the oil press, where olives were once made to yield their coveted juices, and from the press proper a stone gutter conducted the fluid down to the point where jars were placed to receive it. This discovery of oil presses in ancient buildings, by the way, has served in more than one case to arouse speculation as to the antiquity of oil lamps such as were once supposed to belong only to a much later epoch. Whether in the Minoan days they had such lamps or not, it is known that they had at least an oil press and a good one. In the side of the hill below the main palace of Minos has been unearthed a smaller structure, which they now call the "villa," and in which several terraces, have been uncovered rather similar to the larger building above. Here is another throne room, cunningly contrived to be lighted by a long shaft of light from abovefalling on the seat of justice itself, while the rest of the room is in obscurity.
It may be that it requires a stretch of the imagination to compare the palace of Cnossos with Troy, but nevertheless there are one or two features that seem not unlike the discoveries made by Dr. Schliemann on that famous site. Notably so, it seems to me, are the traces of the final fire, which are to be seen at Cnossos as at Troy, and the huge jars, which may be compared with the receptacles the Trojan excavators unearthed, and found still to contain dried peas and other things that the Trojans left behind when they fled from their sacked and burning city. Few are privileged to visit the site of Priam's city, which is hard, indeed, to reach; but it is easy enough to make the excursion to Candia and visit the palace of old King Minos, which is amply worth the trouble, besides giving a glimpse of a civilization that is possibly vastly older than even that of Troy and Mycenæ. For those who reverence the great antiquities, Candia and its pre-classic suburb are distinctly worth visiting, and are unique among the sights of the ancient Hellenic and pre-Hellenic world.
From whichever side our traveler draws near to Corfu, he comes from lands where Greekinfluence and Greek colonization spread in ancient times, but from which the Greek elements have been gradually driven out, partly by the barbarism of the East, partly by the rival civilization of the West. The land which we see is Hellenic in a sense in which not even Sicily, not even the Great Hellas of Southern Italy, much less than the Dalmatian archipelago, ever became Hellenic. Prom the first historic glimpse which we get of Korkyra,[64]it is not merely a land fringed by Hellenic colonies; it is a Hellenic island, the dominion of a single Hellenic city, a territory the whole of whose inhabitants were, at the beginning of recorded history, either actually Hellenic or so thoroughly hellenized that no one thought of calling their Hellenic position in question. Modern policy has restored it to its old position by making it an integral portion of the modern Greek kingdom.
To the south of the present town, connected with it by a favorite walk of the inhabitants of Corfu, a long and broad peninsula stretches boldly into the sea. Both from land and from sea, it chiefly strikes the eye as a wooded mass, thickly covered with the aged olive trees which form so marked a feature in the scenery of the island. A few houses skirt the base, growing on the land side into the suburb of Kastrades, which may pass for a kind of connecting link between the old and the new city. And from the midst of the wood, on the side nearest to the modern town, stands out the villa of the King of the Greeks, the chief modern dwelling on the site of ancient Korkyra. This peninsular hill, still known as Palaiopolis, was the site of the old Corinthian city whose name is so familiar to every reader of Thucydides. On either side of it lies one of its two forsaken harbors. Between the old and the new city lies the so-called harbor of Alkinoos; beyond the peninsula, stretching far inland, lies the old Hyllaic harbor, bearing the name of one of the three tribes which seem to have been essential to the being of a Dorian commonwealth....
This last is the Corfu whose fate seems to have been to become the possession of every power which has ruled in that quarter of the world, with one exception. For fourteen hundred years the history of the island is the history of endless changes of masters. We see it first a nominal ally, then a direct possession, of Rome and of Constantinople; we then see it formed into a separate Byzantine principality, conquered by the Norman lord of Sicily, again a possession of the Empire, then a momentary possession of Venice, again a possession of the Sicilian kingdom under its Angevin kings, till at last it came back to Venetian rule, and abode for four hundred years under the Lion of Saint Mark. Then it became part of that first strange Septinsular Republic of which the Czar was to be the protector and the Sultan the overlord. Then it was a possession of France; then a member of the second Septinsular Republic under the hardly disguised sovereignty of England; now at last it is the most distant, but one of the most valuable, of the provinces of the modern Greek kingdom.
Of the modern city there is but little to say. As becomes a city which was so long a Venetian possession, the older part of it has much of the character of an Italian town. It is rich in street arcades; but they present but few architectural features; and we find none of those various forms of ornamental window so common, not only in Venice and Verona, but in Spalato, Cattaro, and Traü. The churches in the modern city are architecturally worthless. They are interesting so far as they will give to many their first impression of orthodox arrangement and orthodox ritual. The few ecclesiastical antiquities of the place belong to the elder city. The suburb of the lower slope of the hill contains three churches, all of them small, but each of which has an interest of its own.