CITY AND BAY OF NAPLESCITY AND BAY OF NAPLES WITH VESUVIUS IN THE DISTANCECourtesy International Mercantile Marine Co.
TEMPLE OF THESEUSTEMPLE OF THESEUS AT ATHENSCourtesy L. C. Page & Co.
PALERMO, SICILYPALERMO, SICILY, FROM THE SEA
GREEK THEATER AT SEGESTAGREEK THEATER AT SEGESTA, SICILY
TEMPLE OF CONCORDTEMPLE OF CONCORD, GIRGENTI, SICILY
TEMPLE OF JUNOTEMPLE OF JUNO AT GIRGENTI, SICILY
AMPHITHEATER AT SYRACUSEAMPHITHEATER AT SYRACUSE, SICILYCourtesy L. C. Page & Co.
GREEK TEMPLE AT SEGESTAGREEK TEMPLE AT SEGESTA, SICILYCourtesy L. C. Page & Co.
HARBOR OF SYRACUSEHARBOR OF SYRACUSE, SICILYCourtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.
SHIP OF ULYSSESTHE SO-CALLED "SHIP OF ULYSSES" OFF CORFUCourtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.
TEMPLE OF THE OLYMPIAN ZEUSTEMPLE OF THE OLYMPIAN ZEUS AT ATHENSCourtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.
THE PLAIN BELOW DELPHITHE PLAIN BELOW DELPHICourtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.
ROAD NEAR DELPHIROAD NEAR DELPHICourtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.
THE STADIUM AT OLYMPIAENTRANCE TO THE STADIUM AT OLYMPIACourtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.
THRONE OF MINOSTHRONE OF MINOS IN CRETE(Minoan civilization in Crete antedates the Homeric age—perhaps by many centuries
The temple of Segeste was never finished; the ground around it was never even leveled; the space only being smoothed on which the peristyle was to stand. For, in several places, the steps are from nine to ten feet in the ground, and there is no hill near, from which the stone or mold could have fallen. Besides, the stones lie in their natural position, and no ruins are found near them.
The columns are all standing; two which had fallen, have very recently been raised again. How far the columns rested on a socle is hard to say; and without an engraving it is difficult to give an idea of their present state. At some points it would seem as if the pillars rested on the fourth step. In that case to enter the temple you would have to go down a step. In other places, however, the uppermost step is cut through, and then it looks as if the columns had rested on bases; and then again these spaces have been filled up, and so we have once more the first case. An architect is necessary to determine this point.
The sides have twelve columns, not reckoning the corner ones; the back and front six, including them. The rollers on which the stones were moved along, still lie around you on the steps. They have been left in order to indicate that the temple was unfinished. But the strongest evidence of this fact is the floor. In somespots (along the sides) the pavement is laid down; in the middle, however, the red limestone rock still projects higher than the level of the floor as partially laid; the flooring, therefore, can not ever have been finished. There is also no trace of an inner temple. Still less can the temple have ever been overlaid with stucco; but that it was intended to do so, we may infer from the fact that the abaci of the capitals have projecting points probably for the purpose of holding the plaster. The whole is built of a limestone, very similar to the travertine; only it is now much fretted. The restoration which was carried on in 1781, has done much good to the building. The cutting of the stone, with which the parts have been reconnected, is simple, but beautiful.
The site of the temple is singular; at the highest end of a broad and long valley, it stands on an isolated hill. Surrounded, however, on all sides by cliffs, it commands a very distant and extensive view of the land, but takes in only just a corner of the sea. The district reposes in a sort of melancholy fertility—every where well cultivated, but scarce a dwelling to be seen. Flowering thistles were swarming with countless butterflies, wild fennel stood here from eight to nine feet high, dry and withered of the last year's growth, but so rich and in such seeming order that one might almost take it to be an old nursery-ground. A shrill wind whistled through the columns as if through a wood, and screaming birds of prey hovered around the pediments.
When you have ascended to the top of the wall of rocks [at Taormina], which rise precipitously at no great distance from the sea, you find two peaks, connected by a semicircle. Whatever shape this may have had originally from Nature has been helped by the hand of man, which has formed out of it an amphitheater for spectators. Walls and other buildings have furnished the necessary passages and rooms. Right across, at the foot of the semicircular range of seats, the scene was built, and by this means the two rocks were joined together, and a most enormous work of nature and art combined.
Now, sitting down at the spot where formerly sat the uppermost spectators, you confess at once that never did any audience, in any theater, have before it such a spectacle as you there behold. On the right, and on high rocks at the side, castles tower in the air—farther on the city lies below you; and altho its buildings are all of modern date, still similar ones, no doubt, stood of old on the same site. After this the eye falls on the whole of the long ridge of Ætna, then on the left it catches a view of the sea-shore, as far as Catania, and even Syracuse, and then the wide and extensive view is closed by the immense smoking volcano, but not horribly, for the atmosphere, with its softening effect,makes it look more distinct, and milder than it really is.
If now you turn from this view toward the passage running at the back of the spectators, you have on the left the whole wall of the rocks between which and the sea runs the road to Messina. And then again you behold vast groups of rocky ridges in the sea itself, with the coast of Calabria in the far distance, which only a fixt and attentive gaze can distinguish from the clouds which rise rapidly from it.
We descended toward the theater, and tarried awhile among its ruins, on which an accomplished architect would do well to employ, at least on paper, his talent of restoration. After this I attempted to make a way for myself through the gardens to the city. But I soon learned by experience what an impenetrable bulwark is formed by a hedge of agaves planted close together. You can see through their interlacing leaves, and you think, therefore, it will be easy to force a way through them; but the prickles on their leaves are very sensible obstacles. If you step on these colossal leaves, in the hope that they will bear you, they break off suddenly; and so, instead of getting out, you fall into the arms of the next plant. When, however, at last we had wound our way out of the labyrinth, we found but little to enjoy in the city; tho from the neighboring country we felt it impossible to part before sunset. Infinitely beautiful was it to observe this region, of which every point had its interest, gradually enveloped in darkness.
By the ancients Ætna was supposed to be the prison of the mighty chained giant Typhon, the flames proceeding from his breath and the noises from his groans; and when he turned over earthquakes shook the island. Many of the myths of the Greek poets were associated with the slopes of Ætna, such as Demeter, torch in hand, seeking Persephone, Acis and Galatea, Polyphemus and the Cyclops.
Ætna was once a volcano in the Mediterranean and in the course of ages it completely filled the surrounding sea with its lava. A remarkable feature of the mountain is the large number of minor cones on its sides—some seven hundred in all. Most of these subsidiary cones are from three to six thousand feet in height and they make themselves most strongly felt during periods of great activity. The summit merely serves as a vent through which the vapors and gases make their escape. The natural boundaries of Ætna are the Alcantara and Simeto rivers on the north, west, and south, and the sea on the east.
The most luxurious fertility characterizes the gradual slopes near the base, the decomposed volcanic soil being almost entirely covered with olives, figs, grapes, and prickly pears. Higher up is the timber zone. Formerly there was adense forest belt between the zone of cultivated land and the tore of cinders and snow; but the work of forest extermination was almost completed during the reign of the Spanish Bourbons. One may still find scattered oak, ilex, chestnut, and pine interspersed with ferns and aromatic herbs. Chestnut trees of surprizing growth are found on the lower slopes. "The Chestnut Tree of the Hundred Horses," for which the slopes of Ætna are famous, is not a single tree but a group of several distinct trunks together forming a circle, under whose spreading branches a hundred horses might find shelter.
Above the wooded zone Ætna is covered with miniature cones thrown up by different eruptions and regions of dreary plateau covered with scoriae and ashes and buried under snow a part of the year. While the upper portions of the volcano are covered with snow the greater portion of the year, Ætna does not reach the limit of perpetual snow, and the heat which is emitted from its sides prevents the formation of glaciers in the hollows. One might expect that the quantities of snow and rain which fall on the summit would give rise to numerous streams. But the small stones and cinders absorb the moisture, and springs are found only on the lower slopes. The cinders, however, retain sufficient moisture to support a rich vegetation wherever the surface of the lava is not too compact to be penetrated by roots. The surface of the more recent lava streams is not, as might be supposed, smooth and level, but full of yawning holes and rents.
The regularity of the gradual slopes is brokenon the eastern side by the Valle del Bove, a vast amphitheater more than three thousand feet in depth, three miles in width, and covering an area of ten square miles. The bottom of the valley is dotted with craters which rise in gigantic steps; and, when Ætna is in a state of eruption, these craters pour forth fiery cascades of lava. The Monte Centenari rise from the Valle del Bove to an elevation of 6,026 feet. At the head of the valley is the Torre del Filosofo at an altitude of 9,570 feet. This is the reputed site of the observatory of Empedocles, the poet and philosopher, who is fabled to have thrown himself into the crater of Ætna to immortalize his name.
The lower slopes of Ætna—after the basin of Palermo—include the most densely populated parts of Sicily. More than half a million people live on the slopes of a mountain that might be expected to inspire terror. "Towns succeed towns along its base like pearls in a necklace, and when a stream of lava effects a breach in the chain of human habitations, it is closed up again as soon as the lava has had time to cool." As soon as the lava has decomposed, the soil produces an excellent yield and this tempts the farmer and the fruit grower to take chances. Speaking of the dual effect of Ætna, Freeman says: "He has been mighty to destroy, but he has also been mighty to create and render fruitful. If his fiery streams have swept away cities and covered fields, they have given the cities a new material for their buildings and the fields a new soil rich above all others."
The ruins of Syracuse are not to the casual observer very imposing. But even these ruins have great interest for the archeologist. There is, for example, an old temple near the northern end of Ortygia, for the most part embedded in the buildings of the modern city, yet with its east end cleared and showing several entire columns with a part of the architrave upon them. And what a surprize here awaits one who thinks of a Doric temple as built on a stereotyped plan! Instead of the thirteen columns on the long sides which one is apt to look for as going with a six-column front, here are eighteen or nineteen, it is not yet quite certain which. The columns stand less than their diameter apart, and the abaci are so broad that they nearly touch.
So small is the inter-columnar space that archeologists incline to the belief that in this one Doric temple there were triglyphs only over the columns, and not also between them as in all other known cases. Everything about this temple stamps it as the oldest in Sicily. An inscription on the top step, in very archaic letters, much worn and difficult to read, contains the name of Apollo in the ancient form.... The inscription may, of course, be later than the temple; but it is in itself old enough towarrant the supposition that the temple was erected soon after the first Corinthian colonists established themselves in the island. While the inscription makes it reasonably certain that the temple belonged to Apollo, the god under whose guiding hand all these Dorians went out into these western seas, tradition, with strange perversity, has given it the name of "Temple of Diana." But it is all in the family.
Another temple ruin on the edge of the plateau, which begins about two miles south of the city, across the Anapos, one might also easily overlook in a casual survey, because it consists only of two columns without capitals, and a broad extent of the foundations from which the accumulated earth has been only partially removed. This was the famous temple of Olympian Zeus, built probably in the days of Hiero I., soon after the Persian war, but on the site of a temple still more venerable. One seeks a reason for the location of this holy place at such a distance from the city. Holm, the German historian of Sicily, argues with some plausibility that this was no mere suburb of Syracuse, but the original Syracuse itself. In the first place, the list of the citizens of Syracuse was kept here down at least to the time of the Athenian invasion. In the second place, tradition, which, when rightly consulted, tells so much, says that Archias, the founder of Syracuse, had two daughters, Ortygia and Syracusa, which may point to two coordinate settlements, Ortygia and Syracuse; the latter, which was on this temple plateau, being subsequently merged in the former, but, as sometimes happens insuch cases, giving its name to the combined result.
Besides these temple ruins there are many more foundations that tell a more or less interesting story. Then there are remains of the ancient city that can never be ruined—for instance, the great stone quarries, pits over a hundred feet deep and acres broad, in some of which the Athenian prisoners were penned up to waste away under the gaze of the pitiless captors; the Greek theater cut out of the solid rock; the great altar of Hiero II., six hundred feet long and about half as broad, also of solid rock. Then there is a mighty Hexapylon, which closed the fortifications of Dionysius at the northwest at the point where they challenged attack from the land side. With its sally-ports and rock-hewn passages, some capacious enough to quarter regiments of cavalry, showing holes cut in the projecting corners of rock, through which the hitch-reins of the horses were wont to be passed, and its great magazines, it stands a lasting memorial to the energy of a tyrant. But while this fortress is practically indestructible, an impregnable fortress is a dream incapable of realization. Marcellus and his stout Romans came in through these fortifications, not entirely, it is true, by their own might, but by the aid of traitors, against whom no walls are proof.
One of the stone quarries, the Latomia del Paradiso, has an added interest from its association with the tyrant who made himself hated as well as feared, while Gelon was only feared without being hated. An inner recess of thequarry is called the "Ear of Dionysius," and tradition says that at the inner end of this recess either he or his creatures sat and listened to the murmurs that the people uttered against him, and that these murmurs were requited with swift and fatal punishment. Certain it is that a whisper in this cave produces a wonderful resonance, and a pistol shot is like the roar of a cannon; but that people who had anything to say about the butcher should come up within ear-shot of him to utter it is not very likely. Historians are not quite sure that the connection of Dionysius with this recess is altogether mythical, but that he shaped it with the fell purpose above mentioned is not to be thought of, as the whole quarry is older than his time, and was probably, with the Latomia dei Cappuccini, a prison for the Athenians.
The city of Valetta, founded in 1566, by the grand master whose name it bears, is the capital of Malta. The city of La Sangle, and the city of Victoria, which occupy two points of land on the other side of the harbor of the Marse, together with the suburbs of Floriana and Burmola, complete the town; encircled by bastions, ramparts, counterscarps, forts, and fortifications, to an extent which renders siege impossible! If you follow one of the streets which surround the town, at each step that you take, you find yourself face to face with a cannon. Gibraltar itself does not bristle more completely with mouths of fire. The inconvenience of these extended works is, that they enclose a vast radius, and demand to defend them, in case of attack, an enormous garrison; always difficult to maintain at a distance from the mother country.
From the height of the ramparts, one sees in the distance the blue and transparent sea, broken into ripples by the breeze, and dotted with snowy sails. The scarlet sentinels are on guard from point to point, and the heat of the sun is so fierce upon the glacis, that a cloth stretched upon a frame and turning upon a pivot at the top of a pole, forms a shade for the soldiers, who, without this precaution, must inevitably be roasted on their posts....
The city of Valetta, altho built with regularity, and, so to speak, all in one "block," is not, therefore, the less picturesque. The decided slope of the ground neutralizes what the accurate lines of the street might otherwise have of monotony, and the town mounts by degrees and by terraces the hillside, which it forms into an amphitheater. The houses, built very high like those of Cadiz, terminate in flat roofs that their inhabitants may the better enjoy the sea view. They are all of white Maltese stone; a sort of sandstone easy to work, and with which, at small expense, one can indulge various caprices of sculpture and ornamentation. These rectilinear houses stand well, and have an air of grandeur, which they owe tothe absence of (visible) roofs, cornices, and attics. They stand out sharply and squarely against the azure of the heavens, which their dazzling whiteness renders only the more intense; but that which chiefly gives them a character of originality is the projecting balcony hung upon each front; like the "moucharabys" of the East, or the "miradores" of Spain.
The palace of the grand masters—to-day the palace of the government—has nothing remarkable in the way of architecture. Its date is recent, and it responds but imperfectly to the idea one would form of the residence of Villiers de I'lle Adam, of Lavalette, and of their warlike ancestors. Nevertheless, it has a certain monumental air, and produces a fine effect upon the great Place, of which it forms one entire side. Two doorways, with rustic columns, break the uniformity of the long façade; while an immense balcony, supported by gigantic sculptured brackets, encircles the building at the level of the first floor, and gives to the edifice the stamp of Malta. This detail, so strictly local in its character, relieves what might be heavy and flat in this architecture; and this palace, otherwise vulgar, becomes thus original. The interior, which I visited, presents a range of vast halls and galleries, decorated with pictures representing battles by sea and land, sieges, and combats between Turkish galleys and the galleys of the "Religion." ...
To finish with the knights, I turned my steps toward the Church of St. John—the Pantheon of the Order. Its façade, with a triangular porch flanked by two towers terminating in stone belfries, having for ornament only four pillars, andpierced by a window and door, without sculpture or decoration, by no means prepares the traveler for the splendor within.
The first thing which arrests the sight is an immense arch, painted in fresco, which runs the whole length of the nave. This fresco, unhappily much deteriorated by time, is the work of Matteo Preti, called the Calabrese; one of those great second-rate masters, who, if they have less genius, have often more talent than the princes of the art. What there is of science, facility, spirit, expression, and abundant resource, in this colossal picture, is beyond description.
Each section of the arch contains a scene from the life of St. John, to whom the church is dedicated, and who was the patron of the Order. These sections are supported, at their descent, by groups of captives—Saracens, Turks, Christians, and others—half naked, or clad in the remains of shattered armor, and placed in positions of humiliation or constraint, who form a species of barbaric caryatides strikingly suited to the subject. All this part of the fresco is full of character, and has a force of coloring very rare in this species of picture. These solid and massive effects give additional strength to the lighter tone of the arch, and throw the skies into a relief and distance singularly profound. I know no similar work of equal grandeur except the ceiling by Fumiana in the Church of St. Pantaleone at Venice, representing the life, martyrdom, and apotheosis of that saint. But the style of the decadence makes itself less felt in the work of the Calabrese than in that of the Venetian. In recompense of this gigantic work, the artist had the honor, likeCarravaggio, to be made a Knight of the Order.
The pavement of the church is composed of four hundred tombs of knights, incrusted with jasper, porphyry, verd-antique, and precious stones of various kinds, which should form the most splendid sepulchral mosaics conceivable. I say should form, because at the moment of my visit, the whole floor was covered with those immense mats, so constantly used for carpeting the southern churches—a usage which is explained by the absence of pews or chairs, and the habit of kneeling upon the floor to perform one's devotions. I regretted this exceedingly; but the crypt and the chapel contain enough sepulchral wealth to offer some atonement.
There is probably no more exciting voyage, to any educated man, than the approach to Athens from the sea. Every promontory, every island, every bay, has its history. If he knows the map of Greece, he needs no guide-book or guide to distract him; if he does not, he needs little Greek to ask of any one near him the name of this or that object; and the mere names are sufficient to stir up all his classical recollections. But he must make up his mind not to be shocked at "Ægina" or "Phalrum," and even to be told that he is utterly wrong in his way of pronouncing them.
It was our fortune to come into Greece by night, with a splendid moon shining upon the summer sea. The varied outlines of Sunium, on the one side, and Ægina on the other, were very clear, but in the deep shadows there was mystery enough to feed the burning impatience of seeing all in the light of common day; and tho we had passed Ægina, and had come over againstthe rocky Salamis, as yet there was no sign of Peiræus. Then came the light on Psyttalea, and they told us that the harbor was right opposite. Yet we came nearer and nearer, and no harbor could be seen.
The barren rocks of the coast seemed to form one unbroken line, and nowhere was there a sign of indentation or of break in the land. But suddenly, as we turned from gazing on Psyttalea, where the flower of the Persian nobles had once stood in despair, looking upon their fate gathering about them, the vessel had turned eastward, and discovered to us the crowded lights and thronging ships of the famous harbor. Small it looked, very small, but evidently deep to the water's edge, for great ships seemed touching the shore; and so narrow is the mouth, that we almost wondered how they had made their entrance in safety. But we saw it some weeks later, with nine men-of-war towering above all its merchant shipping and its steamers, and among them crowds of ferryboats skimming about in the breeze with their wing-like sails. Then we found out that, like the rest of Greece, the Peiræus was far larger than it looked.
It differed little, alas! from more vulgar harbors in the noise and confusion of disembarking; in the delays of its custom-house; in the extortion and insolence of its boatmen. It is still, as in Plato's day, "the haunt of sailors, where good manners are unknown." But when we had escaped the turmoil, and were seated silently on the way to Athens, almost along the very road of classical days, all our classical notions, whichhad been seared away by vulgar bargaining and protesting, regained their sway.
We had sailed in through the narrow passage where almost every great Greek that ever lived had some time passed; now we went along the line, hardly less certain, which had seen all these great ones going to and fro between the city and the port. The present road is shaded with great silver poplars, and plane trees, and the moon had set, so that our approach to Athens was even more mysterious than our approach to the Peiræus. We were, moreover, perplexed at our carriage stopping under some large plane trees, tho we had driven but two miles, and the night was far spent. Our coachman would listen to no advice or persuasion. We learned afterward that every carriage going to and from the Peiræus stops at this half-way house, that the horses may drink, and the coachman take "Turkish delight" and water. There is no exception made to this custom, and the traveler is bound to submit. At last we entered the unpretending ill-built streets at the west of Athens....
We rose at the break of dawn to see whether our window would afford any prospect to serve as a requital for angry sleeplessness. And there, right opposite, stood the rock which of all rocks in the world's history has done most for literature and art—the rock which poets, and orators, and architects, and historians have ever glorified, and can not stay their praise—which is ever new and ever old, ever fresh in its decay, ever perfect in its ruin, ever living in its death—the Acropolis of Athens.
When I saw my dream and longing of many years fulfilled, the first rays of the rising sun had just touched the heights, while the town below was still hid in gloom. Rock, and rampart, and ruined fanes—all were colored in uniform tints; the lights were of a deep rich orange, and the shadows of dark crimson, with the deeper lines of purple. There was no variety in color between what nature and what man had set there. No whiteness shone from the marble, no smoothness showed upon the hewn and polished blocks; but the whole mass of orange and crimson stood out together into the pale, pure Attic air. There it stood, surrounded by lanes and hovels, still perpetuating the great old contrast in Greek history, of magnificence and meanness—of loftiness and lowness—as well in outer life as in inward motive. And, as it were in illustration of that art of which it was the most perfect bloom, and which lasted in perfection but a day of history, I saw it again and again, in sunlight and in shade, in daylight and at night, but never again in this perfect and singular beauty....
I suppose there can be no doubt whatever that the ruins on the Acropolis of Athens are the most remarkable in the world. There are ruins far larger, such as the Pyramids, and the remains of Karnak. There are ruins far more perfectly preserved, such as the great Temple at Paestum. There are ruins more picturesque, such as the ivy-clad walls of medieval abbeys beside the rivers in the rich valleys of England. But there is no ruin all the world over which combines so much striking beauty, so distinct a type,so vast a volume of history, so great a pageant of immortal memories. There is, in fact, no building on earth which can sustain the burden of such greatness, and so the first visit to the Acropolis is and must be disappointing.
When the traveler reflects how all the Old World's culture culminated in Greece—all Greece in Athens—all Athens in its Acropolis—all the Acropolis in the Parthenon—so much crowds upon the mind confusedly that we look for some enduring monument whereupon we can fasten our thoughts, and from which we can pass as from a visible starting-point into all this history and all this greatness. And at first we look in vain. The shattered pillars and the torn pediments will not bear so great a strain; and the traveler feels forced to admit a sense of disappointment, sore against his will. He has come a long journey into the remoter parts of Europe; he has reached at last what his soul had longed for many years in vain; and as is wont to be the case with all great human longings, the truth does not answer to his desire. The pang of disappointment is all the greater when he sees that the tooth of time and the shock of earthquake have done but little harm. It is the hand of man—of reckless foe and ruthless lover—which has robbed him of his hope....
Nothing is more vexatious than the reflection, how lately these splendid remains have been reduced to their present state. The Parthenon, being used as a Greek church, remained untouched and perfect all through the Middle Ages. Then it became a mosque, and the Erechtheum a seraglio, and in this way survived without damage till 1687, when, in the bombardment by the Venetians under Morosini, a shell dropt into the Parthenon, where the Turks had their powder stored, and blew out the whole center of the building. Eight or nine pillars at each side have been thrown down, and have left a large gap, which so severs the front and rear of the temple, that from the city below they look like the remains of two different buildings. The great drums of these pillars are yet lying there, in their order, just as they fell, and some money and care might set them all up again in their places; yet there is not in Greece the patriotism or even the common sense to enrich the country by this restoration, matchless in its certainty as well as in its splendor.
But the Venetians were not content with their exploit. They were, about this time, when they held possession of most of Greece, emulating the Pisan taste for Greek sculptures; and the four fine lions standing at the gate of the arsenal in Venice still testify to their zeal in carrying home Greek trophies to adorn their capital.
In its great day, and even as Pausanias saw it, the Acropolis was covered with statues, as well as with shrines. It was not merely an Holy of Holies in religion; it was also a palace and museum of art. At every step and turn the traveler met new objects of interest. There were archaic specimens, chiefly interesting to the antiquarian and the devotee; there were the great masterpieces which were the joint admiration of the artist and the vulgar. Even all the sides and slopes of the great rock were honeycombed into sacred grottos, with their altars andtheir gods, or studded with votive monuments. All these lesser things are fallen away and gone; the sacred eaves are filled with rubbish, and desecrated with worse than neglect. The grotto of Pan and Apollo is difficult of access, and when reached, an object of disgust rather than of interest. There are left but the remnants of the surrounding wall, and the ruins of the three principal buildings, which were the envy and wonder of all the civilized world.
The beautiful little temple of Athena Nike, tho outside the Propylæa—thrust out as it were on a sort of great buttress high on the right—must still be called a part, and a very striking part, of the Acropolis. It is only of late years that it has been cleared of rubbish and modern stone-work, thus destroying, no doubt, some precious traces of Turkish occupation which the fastidious historian may regret, but realizing to us a beautiful Greek temple of the Ionic Order in some completeness. The peculiarity of this building, which is perched upon a platform of stone, and commands a splendid prospect, is that its tiny peribolus, or sacred enclosure, was surrounded by a parapet of stone slabs covered with exquisite reliefs of winged Victories, in various attitudes. Some of these slabs are now in the Museum of the Acropolis, and are of great interest—apparently less severe than the school of Phidias, and therefore later in date, but still of the best epoch, and of marvelous grace. The position of this temple also is not parallel with the Propylæa, but turned slightly outward, so that the light strikes it at moments when the other building is not illuminated. At the opposite side is a very well-preserved chamber, and a fine colonnade at right angles with the gate, which looks like a guard-room. This is the chamber commonly called the Pinacotheca, where Pausanias saw pictures or frescoes by Polygnotus.
Our sitting-room fronted the south (with a view of the Acropolis and the Areopagus), and could be kept warm without more labor or expense than would be required for an entire dwelling at home. Our principal anxiety was, that the supply of fuel, at any price, might become exhausted. We burned the olive and the vine, the cypress and the pine, twigs of rose trees and dead cabbage-stalks, for aught I know, to feed our one little sheet-iron stove. For full two months we were obliged to keep up our fire, from morning until night. Know ye the land of the cypress and myrtle, where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine? Here it is, with almost snow enough in the streets for a sleighing party, with the Ilissus frozen, and with a tolerable idea of Lapland, when you face the gusts which drive across the Cephissian plain.
As the other guests were Greek, our mode of living was similar to that of most Greek families. We had coffee in the morning, a substantial breakfast about noon, and dinner at six in the evening. The dishes were constructed after French and Italian models, but the meat is mostly goat's flesh. Beef, when it appears, is a phenomenon of toughness. Vegetables are rather scarce. Cow's milk, and butter or cheese therefrom, are substances unknown in Greece. The milk is from goats or sheep, and the butter generally from the latter. It is a white, cheesy material, with a slight flavor of tallow. The wine, when you get it unmixed with resin, is very palatable. We drank that of Santorin, with the addition of a little water, and found it an excellent beverage....
Except during the severely cold weather, Athens is as lively a town as may be. One-fourth of the inhabitants, I should say, are always in the streets, and many of the mechanics work, as is common in the Orient, in open shops. The coffee-houses are always thronged, and every afternoon crowds may be seen on the Patissia Road—a continuation of Eolus Street—where the King and Queen take their daily exercise on horseback. The national costume, both male and female, is gradually falling into disuse in the cities, altho it is still universal in the country. The islanders adhere to their hideous dress with the greatest persistence. With sunrise the country people begin to appear in the streets with laden donkeys and donkey-carts, bringing wood, grain, vegetables, and milk, which they sell from house to house....
Venders of bread and coffee-rolls go about with circular trays on their heads, calling attention to their wares by loud and long-drawn cries. Later in the day, peddlers make their appearance, with packages of cheap cotton stuffs, cloth, handkerchiefs, and the like, or baskets of pins, needles, buttons, and tape. They proclaim loudly the character and price of their articles, the latter, of course, subject to negotiation. The same custom prevails as in Turkey, of demanding much more than the seller expects to get. Foreigners are generally fleeced a little in the beginning, tho much less so, I believe, than in Italy....
The winter of 1857-58 was the severest in the memory of any inhabitant. For nearly eight weeks, we had an alternation of icy north winds and snow-storms. The thermometer went down to 20 degrees of Fahrenheit—a degree of cold which seriously affected the orange-, if not the olive-trees. Winter is never so dreary as in those southern lands, where you see the palm trees rocking despairingly in the biting gale, and the snow lying thick on the sunny fruit of the orange groves. As for the pepper trees, with their hanging tresses and their loose, misty foliage, which line the broad avenues radiating from the palace, they were touched beyond recovery. The people, who could not afford to purchase wood or charcoal, at treble the usual price, even tho they had hearths, which they have not, suffered greatly. They crouched at home, in cellars and basements, wrapt in rough capotes, or hovering around a mangal, or brazier of coals, the usual substitute for a stove. From Constantinople we had still worse accounts. The snow lay deep everywhere; charcoal sold at twelve piastres the oka (twenty cents a pound), and the famished wolves, descending from the hills, devoured people almost at the gates of the city. In Smyrna, Beyrout, and Alexandria, the winter was equally severe, whilein Odessa it was mild and agreeable, and in St. Petersburg there was scarcely snow enough for sleighing. All Northern Europe enjoyed a winter as remarkable for warmth as that of the South for its cold. The line of division seemed to be about the parallel of latitude 45 degrees. Whether this singular climatic phenomenon extended further eastward, into Asia, I was not able to ascertain. I was actually less sensitive to the cold in Lapland, during the previous winter, with the mercury frozen, than in Attica, within the belt of semi-tropical productions.
To the Acropolis there is only one approach; it allows of no other, being everywhere precipitous and walled off. The vestibules have a roof of white marble, and even now are remarkable for both their beauty and size. As to the statues of the horsemen, I can not say with precision whether they are the sons of Xenophon, or merely put there for decoration. On the right of the vestibules is the shrine of the Wingless Victory. From it the sea is visible; and there Ægeus drowned himself, as they say. For the ship which took his sons to Crete had black sails, but Theseus told his father (for he knew there was some perilin attacking the Minotaur) that he would have white sails if he should sail back a conqueror. But he forgot this promise in his loss of Ariadne. And Ægeus, seeing the ship with black sails, thinking his son was dead, threw himself in and was drowned. And the Athenians have a hero-chapel to his memory. And on the left of the vestibules is a building with paintings; and among those that time has not destroyed are Diomedes and Odysseus—the one taking away Philoctetes's bow in Lemnos, the other taking the Palladium from Ilium. Among other paintings here is Ægisthus being slain by Orestes; and Pylades slaying the sons of Nauplius that came to Ægisthus's aid. And Polyxena about to have her throat cut near the tomb of Achilles. Homer did well not to mention this savage act....
And there is a small stone such as a little man can sit on, on which they say Silenus rested, when Dionysus came to the land. Silenus is the name they give to all old Satyrs. About the Satyrs I have conversed with many, wishing to know all about them. And Euphemus, a Carian, told me that sailing once on a time to Italy he was driven out of his course by the winds, and carried to a distant sea, where people no longer sail. And he said that here were many desert islands, some inhabited by wild men; and at these islands the sailors did not like to land, as they had landed there before and had experience of the natives; but they were obliged on that occasion. These islands he said were called by the sailors Satyr-islands; the dwellers in them were red-haired, and had tails at their loins not much smaller than horses....
And as regards the temple which they call the Parthenon, as you enter it everything portrayed on the gables relates to the birth of Athene, and behind is depicted the contest between Poseidon and Athene for the soil of Attica. And this work of art is in ivory and gold. In the middle of her helmet is an image of the Sphinx—about whom I shall give an account when I come to Bœotia—and on each side of the helmet are griffins worked. These griffins, says Aristus the Proconnesian, in his poems, fought with the Arimaspians beyond the Issedones for the gold of the soil which the griffins guarded. And the Arimaspians were all one-eyed men from their birth; and the griffins were beasts like lions, with wings and mouth like an eagle. Let so much suffice for these griffins. But the statue of Athene is full length, with a tunic reaching to her feet; and on her breast is the head of Medusa worked in ivory, and in one hand she has a Victory four cubits high, in the other hand a spear, and at her feet a shield; and near the spear a dragon which perhaps is Erichthonius. And on the base of the statue is a representation of the birth of Pandora—the first woman, according to Hesiod and other poets; for before her there was no race of women. Here too I remember to have seen the only statue here of the Emperor Adrian; and at the entrance one of Iphicrates, the celebrated Athenian general.
And outside the temple is a brazen Apollo said to be by Phidias; and they call it Apollo, Averter of Locusts, because when the locusts destroyed the land the god said he would drive them out of the country. And they know that he did so, but they don't say how. I myself know oflocusts having been thrice destroyed on Mount Sipylus, but not in the same way; for some were driven away by a violent wind that fell on them, and others by a strong light that came on them after showers, and others were frozen to death by a sudden frost. All this came under my own notice.
There is also a building called the Erechtheum, and in the vestibule is an altar of Supreme Zeus, where they offer no living sacrifice, but cakes without the usual libation of wine. And as you enter there are three altars: one to Poseidon (on which they also sacrifice to Erechtheus according to the oracle), one to the hero Butes, and the third to Hephæstus. And on the walls are paintings of the family of Butes. The building is a double one; and inside there is sea-water in a well. And this is no great marvel; for even those who live in inland parts have such wells, as notably Aphrodisienses in Caria. But this well is represented as having a roar as of the sea when the south wind blows. And in the rock is the figure of a trident. And this is said to have been Poseidon's proof in regard to the territory Athene disputed with him.
Sacred to Athene is all the rest of Athens, and similarly all Attica; for altho they worship different gods in different townships, none the less do they honor Athene generally. And the most sacred of all is the statue of Athene in what is now called the Acropolis, but was then called the Polis (city) which was universally worshiped many years before the various townships formed one city; and the rumor about it is that it fell from heaven. As to this I shall not give an opinion, whether it was so or not. And Callimachus madea golden lamp for the goddess. And when they fill this lamp with oil it lasts for a whole year, altho it burns continually night and day. And the wick is of a particular kind of cotton flax, the only kind indestructible by fire. And above the lamp is a palm tree of brass reaching to the roof and carrying off the smoke. And Callimachus, the maker of this lamp, altho he comes behind the first artificers, yet was remarkable for ingenuity, and was the first who perforated stone, and got the name of "Art-Critic," whether his own appellation or given him by others.
In the temple of Athene Polias is a Hermes of wood (said to be a votive offering of Cecrops), almost hidden by myrtle leaves. And of the antique votive offerings worthy of record, is a folding-chair, the work of Dædalus, and spoils taken from the Persians—as a coat of mail of Masistius, who commanded the cavalry at Platæa, and a scimitar said to have belonged to Mardonius. Masistius we know was killed by the Athenian cavalry; but as Mardonius fought against the Lacedæmonians and was killed by a Spartan, they could not have got it at first hand; nor is it likely that the Lacedæmonians would have allowed the Athenians to carry off such a trophy. And about the olive they have nothing else to tell but that the goddess used it as a proof of her right to the country, when it was contested by Poseidon. And they record also that this olive was burnt when the Persians set fire to Athens; but tho burnt, it grew the same day two cubits.
And next to the temple of Athene is the temple of Pandrosus; who was the only one of the three sisters who didn't peep into the forbidden chest.Now the things I most marveled at are not universally known. I will therefore write of them as they occur to me. Two maidens live not far from the temple of Athene Polias, and the Athenians call them the "carriers of the holy things"; for a certain time they live with the goddess, but when her festival comes they act in the following way, by night: Putting upon their heads what the priestess of Athene gives them to carry (neither she nor they know what these things are), these maidens descend, by a natural underground passage, from an inclosure in the city sacred to Aphrodite of the Gardens. In the sanctuary below they deposit what they carry, and bring back something else closely wrapt up. And these maidens they henceforth dismiss, and other two they elect instead of them for the Acropolis.
Morosini[46]wished to take down the sculptures of Phidias from the eastern pediment, but his workmen attempted it so clumsily that the figures fell from their place and were dashed to pieces on the ground.
An observing traveler[47]was present when afar more determined and systematic attack was made upon the remaining ruins of the Parthenon. While he was traveling in the interior, Lord Elgin had obtained his famous firman from the Sultan, to take down and remove any antiquities or sculptured stones he might require, and the infuriated Dodwell saw a set of ignorant workmen, under equally ignorant overseers, let loose upon the splendid ruins of the age of Pericles. He speaks with much good sense and feeling of this proceeding. He is fully aware that the world would derive inestimable benefit from the transplanting of these splendid fragments to a more accessible place, but he can not find language strong enough to express his disgust at the way in which the thing was done.
Incredible as it may appear, Lord Elgin himself seems not to have superintended the work, but to have left it to paid contractors, who undertook the job for a fixt sum. Little as either Turks or Greeks cared for the ruins, he says that a pang of grief was felt through all Athens at the desecration, and that the contractors were obliged to bribe workmen with additional wages to undertake the ungrateful task. Dodwell will not even mention Lord Elgin by name, but speaks of him with disgust as "the person" who defaced the Parthenon. He believes that had this person been at Athens himself, his underlings could hardly have behaved in the reckless way they did, pulling down more than they wanted, and taking no care to prop up and save the work from which they had taken the support.
He especially notices their scandalous proceeding upon taking up one of the great white marble blocks which form the floor or stylobate of the temple. They wanted to see what was underneath, and Dodwell, who was there, saw the foundation—a substructure of Peiræic sandstone. But when they had finished their inspection they actually left the block they had removed, without putting it back into its place. So this beautiful pavement, made merely of closely-fitting blocks, without any artificial or foreign joinings, was ripped up, and the work of its destruction began. I am happy to add that, tho a considerable rent was then made, most of it is still intact, and the traveler of to-day may still walk on the very stones which bore the tread of every great Athenian.
The question has often been discust, whether Lord Elgin was justified in carrying off this pediment, the metopes, and the friezes, from their place; and the Greeks of to-day hope confidently that the day will come when England will restore these treasures to their place. This is, of course, absurd, and it may fairly be argued that people who would bombard their antiquities in a revolution are not fit custodians of them in the intervals of domestic quiet. This was my reply to an old Greek gentleman who assailed the memory of Lord Elgin with reproaches.
I confess I approved of this removal until I came home from Greece, and went again to see the spoil in its place in our great museum. Tho there treated with every care—tho shown to the best advantage, and explained by excellent models of the whole building, and clear descriptions of their place on it—notwithstanding allthis, it was plain that these wonderful fragments lost so terribly by being separated from their place—they looked so unmeaning in an English room, away from their temple, their country and their lovely atmosphere—that one earnestly wished they had never been taken from their place, even at the risk of being made a target by the Greeks or the Turks. I am convinced, too, that the few who would have seen them, as intelligent travelers, on their famous rock, would have gained in quality the advantage now diffused among many, but weakened and almost destroyed by the wrench in associations, when the ornament is severed from its surface, and the decoration of a temple exhibited apart from the temple itself. We may admit, then, that it had been better if Lord Elgin had never taken away these marbles. Nevertheless, it would be absurd to send them back. But I do think that the museum on the Acropolis should be provided with a better set of casts of the figures than those which are now to be seen there. They look very wretched, and carelessly prepared....
Some ten or twelve years ago, a very extensive and splendidly successful excavation was made when a party of German archeologists laid bare the Theater of Dionysus—the great theater inwhich Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides brought out their immortal plays before an immortal audience. There is nothing more delightful than to descend from the Acropolis, and rest awhile in the comfortable marble arm-chairs with which the front row of the circuit is occupied. They are of the pattern usual in the sitting portrait statues of the Greeks—very deep, and with a curved back, which exceeds both in comfort and in grace any chairs made by modern workmen.[49]Each chair has the name of a priest inscribed on it, showing how the theater among the Greeks corresponded to our cathedral, and this front row to the stalls of canons and prebendaries.
But unfortunately all this sacerdotal prominence is probably the work of the later restorers of the theater. For after having been first beautified and adorned with statues by Lycurgus (in Demosthenes' time), it was again restored and embellished by Herodes Atticus, or about his time, so that the theater, as we now have it, can only be called the building of the second or third century after Christ. The front wall of the stage, which is raised some feet above the level of the empty pit, is adorned with a row of very elegant sculptures, among which one—a shaggy old man, in a stooping posture, represented as coming out from within, and holding up the stone above him—is particularly striking. Some Greek is said to have knocked off, by way of amusement, the heads of most of these figures since they were discovered, but this I do not know upon any better authority than ordinary report. The pit or center of the theater is empty, and was never in Greek days occupied by seats, but a wooden structure was set up adjoining the stage, and on this the chorus performed their dances, and sang their odes. But now there is a circuit of upright slabs of stone close to the front seat, which can hardly have been an arrangement of the old Greek theater. They are generally supposed to have been added when the building was used for contests of gladiators or of wild beasts; but the partition, being not more than three feet high, would be no protection whatever from an evil-disposed wild beast.
All these later additions and details are, I fear, calculated to detract from the reader's interest in this theater, which I should indeed regret—for nothing can be more certain than that this is the veritable stone theater which was built when the wooden one broke down, at the great competition of Æschylus and Pratinas; and tho front seats may have been added, and slight modifications introduced, the general structure can never have required alteration.
It is indeed very large, tho I think exaggerated statements have been made about its size. I have heard it said that the enormous number of 30,000 people could fit into it—a statement I think incredible; for it did not to me seem larger than, or as large as, other theaters I have seen, at Syracuse, at Megalopolis,or even at Argos. But, no doubt, all such open-air enclosures and sittings look far smaller than covered rooms of the same size. This is certain, that any one speaking on the stage, as it now is, can be easily and distinctly heard by people sitting on the highest row of seats now visible, which can not, I fancy, have been far from the original top of the house. And we may doubt that any such thing were possible when 30,000 people, or a crowd approaching that number, were seated. We hear, however, that the old actors had recourse to various artificial means of increasing the range of their voices. Yet there is hardly a place in Athens which forces back the mind so strongly to the old days, when all the crowd came jostling in, and settled down in their seats, to hear the great novelties of the year from Sophocles or Euripides. No doubt there were cliques and cabals and claqueurs, noisy admirers and cold critics, the supporters of the old, and the lovers of the new, devotees and sceptics, wondering foreigners and self-complacent citizens. They little thought how we should come, not only to sit in the seats they occupied, but to reverse the judgments which they pronounced, and correct with sober temper the errors of prejudice, of passion, and of pride.
It was on this very Areopagus, where we are now standing, that these philosophers of fashion came into contact with the thorough earnestness, the profound convictions, the red-hot zeal of the Apostle Paul. The memory of that great scene still lingers about the place, and every guide will show you the exact place where the Apostle stood, and in what direction he addrest his audience. There are, I believe, even some respectable commentators who transfer their own estimate of St. Paul's importance to the Athenian public, and hold that it was before the court of the Areopagus that he was asked to expound his views. This is more than doubtful. The "blasés" philosophers, who probably yawned over their own lectures, hearing of a new lay preacher, eager to teach and apparently convinced of the truth of what he said, thought the novelty too delicious to be neglected, and brought him forthwith out of the chatter and bustle of the crowd, probably past the very orchestra where Anaxagoras' books had been proselytizing before him, and where the stiff old heroes of Athenian history stood, a monument of the escape from political slavery.
It is even possible that the curious knot of idlers did not bring him higher than this platform, which might well be called part of Mars'Hill. But if they chose to bring him to the top, there was no hindrance, for the venerable court held its sittings in the open air, on stone seats; and when not thus occupied, the top of the rock may well have been a convenient place of retirement for people who did not want to be disturbed by new acquaintances, and the constant eddies of new gossip in the market-place.
It is, however, of far less import to know on what spot of the Areopagus Paul stood, than to understand clearly what he said, and how he sought to conciliate as well as to refute the philosophers who, no doubt, looked down upon him as an intellectual inferior. He starts naturally enough from the extraordinary crowd of votive statues and offerings, for which Athens was remarkable above all other cities of Greece. He says, with a slight touch of irony, that he finds them very religious indeed, so religious that he even found an altar to a God professedly unknown, or perhaps unknowable....
Thus ended, to all appearance ignominiously, the first heralding of the faith which was to supplant all the temples and altars and statues with which Athens had earned renown as a beautiful city, which was to overthrow the schools of the sneering philosophers, and even to remodel all the society and the policy of the world. And yet, in spite of this great and decisive triumph of Christianity, there was something curiously prophetic in the contemptuous rejection of its apostle at Athens. Was it not the first expression of the feeling which still possesses the visitor who wanders through its ruins, and which still dominates the educatedworld—the feeling that while other cities owe to the triumph of Christianity all their beauty and their interest, Athens has to this day resisted this influence; and that while the Christian monuments of Athens would elsewhere excite no small attention, here they are passed by as of no import compared with its heathen splendor?
There are very old and very beautiful little churches in Athens, "delicious little Byzantine churches," as Renan calls them. They are very peculiar, and unlike what one generally sees in Europe. They strike the observer with their quaintness and smallness, and he fancies he here sees the tiny model of that unique and splendid building, the cathedral of St. Mark at Venice. But yet it is surprizing how little we notice them at Athens. I was even told—I sincerely hope it was false—that public opinion at Athens was gravitating toward the total removal of one, and that the most perfect, of these churches, which stands in the middle of a main street, and so breaks the regularity of the modern boulevard!
We left Athens on the 13th of April, for a journey to Parnassus and the northern frontier of Greece. It was a teeming, dazzling day, withlight scarfs of cloud-crape in the sky, and a delicious breeze from the west blowing through the pass of Daphne. The Gulf of Salamis was pure ultramarine, covered with a velvety bloom, while the island and Mount Kerata swam in transparent pink and violet tints. Crossing the sacred plain of Eleusis, our road entered the mountains—lower offshoots of Cithæron, which divide the plain from that of Bœotia....
We climbed the main ridge of the mountains; and, in less than an hour, reached the highest point—whence the great Bœotian plain suddenly opened upon our view. In the distance gleamed Lake Capaïs, and the hills beyond; in the west, the snowy top of Parnassus, lifted clear and bright above the morning vapors; and, at last, as we turned a shoulder of the mountain in descending, the streaky top of Helicon appeared on the left, completing the classic features of the landscape....
As we entered the plain, taking a rough path toward Platæa, the fields were dotted, far and near, with the white Easter shirts of the people working among the vines. Another hour, and our horses' hoofs were upon the sacred soil of Platæa. The walls of the city are still to be traced for nearly their entire extent. They are precisely similar in construction to those of Œnoë—like which, also, they were strengthened by square towers. There are the substructions of various edifices—some of which may have been temples—and on the side next the modern village lie four large sarcophagi, now used as vats for treading out the grapes in vintage-time. A more harmless blood than once curdled onthe stones of Platæa now stains the empty sepulchers of the heroes. We rode over the plain, fixt the features of the scene in our memories, and then kept on toward the field of Leuktra, where the brutal power of Sparta received its first check. The two fields are so near, that a part of the fighting may have been done upon the same ground....
I then turned my horse's head toward Thebes, which we reached in two hours. It was a pleasant scene, tho so different from that of two thousand years ago. The town is built partly on the hill of the Cadmeion, and partly on the plain below. An aqueduct, on mossy arches, supplies it with water, and keeps its gardens green. The plain to the north is itself one broad garden to the foot of the hill of the Sphinx, beyond which is the blue gleam of a lake, then a chain of barren hills, and over all the snowy cone of Mount Delphi, in Eubœa. The only remains of the ancient city are stones; for the massive square tower, now used as a prison, can not be ascribed to an earlier date than the reign of the Latin princes....
The next morning we rode down from the Cadmeion, and took the highway to Livadia, leading straight across the Bœotian plain. It is one of the finest alluvial bottoms in the world, a deep, dark, vegetable mold—which would produce almost without limit, were it properly cultivated. Before us, blue and dark under a weight of clouds, lay Parnassus; and far across the immense plain the blue peaks of Mount Oeta. In three hours we reached the foot of Helicon, and looked up at the streaks of snowwhich melt into the Fountain of the Muses....
As we left Arachova, proceeding toward Delphi, the deep gorge opened, disclosing a blue glimpse of the Gulf of Corinth and the Achaian mountains. Tremendous cliffs of blue-gray limestone towered upon our right, high over the slope of Delphi, which ere long appeared before us. Our approach to the sacred spot was marked by tombs cut in the rock. A sharp angle of the mountain was passed; and then, all at once, the enormous walls, buttressing the upper region of Parnassus, stood sublimely against the sky, cleft right through the middle by a terrible split, dividing the twin peaks which gave a name to the place. At the bottom of this chasm issue forth the waters of Castaly, and fill a stone trough by the road-side. On a long, sloping mountain-terrace, facing the east, stood once the town and temples of Delphi, and now the modern village of Kastri.
As you may imagine, our first walk was to the shrine of the Delphic oracle, at the bottom of the cleft between the two peaks. The hewn face of the rock, with a niche, supposed to be that where the Pythia sat upon her tripod, and a secret passage under the floor of the sanctuary, are all that remain. The Castalian fountain still gushes out at the bottom, into a large square enclosure, called the Pythia's Bath, and now choked up with mud, weeds, and stones. Among those weeds, I discerned one of familiar aspect, plucked and tasted it. Watercress, of remarkable size and flavor! We thought no more of Apollo and his shrine, but delving wrist-deep into Castalian mud, gathered huge handfuls ofthe profane herb, which we washed in the sacred front, and sent to François for a salad....