It has been repeatedly suggested to me, by the regrets of a considerable number of the members of the American School at Athens, that I should give some public expression to the utility of the bicycle in Greece. I put aside certain temptations to praise the bicycle generally, and speak of it only as a help here in the study of archæology.
Every year men come to us saying: “I left my wheel at home, thinking it would be of little use in this rough country.” After some reflection on the difficulty of having it sent over after them, they rent wheels a few times, after which, deterred partly by the awkwardness of having to hunt up a wheel for every little excursion, and partly by suffering from the poorer quality of wheels that are to be had on loan, they drop the habit of bicycling. But the wheel has been so keenly appreciated here by generations of students that this dropping out is to be very much deprecated. Archæology does not consist entirely in the study of books and museums. That it does largely so consist it must be confessed; but a legitimate and important part of Greek archæology is the knowledge of the face of the country; the tracing out of its ancient routes, going over thepasses and climbing now and then a mountain; the skirting its coasts; the visiting its places of great renown; the studying of its battle-fields; and the seeing of the landscapes on which rested the eyes of Pericles and Epaminondas, of Sophocles and Pindar. Especially important is this for one who has but one year to spend in Greece. It is well for him, even at the expense of some time which might well be spent in the museum or in the library, so to fill his mind with the landscapes of Greece that, when he goes back and stands before his classes and speaks, for example, of Leuctra, he may be looking with the mind’s eye upon the slopes down which the Spartans came charging, the opposite slope where the Thebans stood, and the valley between, where they clashed. The class is then sure to catch some of this vivid presentation, and feel that they have almost seen Leuctra themselves. If, then, one should spend the whole of his year in museums and libraries, we might say to him, “This ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone.”
Granted that one wishes to see the country and to become familiar with it, so that he will read Greek history, and Greek poetry, too, with other eyes, the bicycle becomes evidently indispensable. To take an example: One morning, to shake off a headache incurred by sitting too long in a close room at an invaluable meeting of the German School the night before, I bicycled with a memberof our school, who had never been there before, to Liopesi (Pæania), the birthplace of Demosthenes, stayed long enough to chat with the villagers and take a glass of their resined wine, with which one is supposed to drink in the gift of talking modern Greek, and came back to Athens, all in three hours, taking it very leisurely at that, and returning by a roundabout way, reached home full of oxygen andsansheadache. We might have walked, to be sure, but not to Pæania, unless we had given the whole day to it.
Railroads will take you already to many parts of Greece, and one can now proceed by rail from the northern border of Thessaly to Kalamata at the southern end of Messenia. But even railroads cannot do all for us that the bicycle does. Exercise, open air, and, perhaps more than all, the delight in propelling one’s self, will make one prefer the wheel. We can reach Eleusis by bicycle as quickly as the train takes us, and choose our own time for starting, without the alternative of sitting some time at the station or losing the train.
There are many other charming spots in Attica where no railroad comes in to help. Marathon and Salamis are two such places, to which we make excursions every year. One afternoon in May two of us started out from Athens at half-past two, proceeding aimlessly eastward against a rather pronounced wind. Suddenly the thought struck usthat Marathon lay in front of us. A definite goal is always inspiring, and we struck a good gait for Marathon. We reached it before five o’clock, and after passing ten minutes on the top of the historic mound came back to Athens for dinner at quarter before eight. Last year some of us rode out on Thanksgiving Day through Dekeleia to a point where we saw Oropos and the Eubœan Gulf at our feet, and Dirphys, the highest mountain in Eubœa, rising opposite us, and then turned around with the recollection of one of the finest views in the world to add to enjoyment of our Thanksgiving dinner. In twenty minutes, had we so wished, we could have been in Oropos. On any day, one can start out from Athens and reach the end of Attica in any direction, and get home to an early dinner. In fact, we have sometimes taken dinner at home after straying as far as Megara and Thebes. The acquaintance which some members of our school have gained with Attica, in all its nooks and corners, by single day’s bicycle-riding, is something noteworthy; and when, in 1897, on Thanksgiving Day, we turned out ten men for a ride across Salamis to Megara for a luncheon, and came home by the shore road, we felt considerableesprit de corps.
The notion of foreigners that the roads of Greece are bad compared with those of other countries is an error. A bicycle journey through Italy and Sicily disabused me of that notion. The worstroad that I ever tried was that between Caserta and Naples, and the next worse was that leading into Rome from the north. There are, of course, some bad roads in Greece; but even Sicily, to say nothing of worse roads in Italy, cured me of complaining against Greece. For a pure pleasure ride, the road between Tripolitza and Sparta would be hard to match anywhere in the world. It is in capital condition, and, on account of its gentle grade, involves very little walking. Six hours suffice for the journey in either direction, and the view either way is superb. The ride through Ætolia and Acarnania, regions considered half civilized in the classical period of Greek history, but always fine in natural beauty, with big lakes, and rivers that “move in majesty” (a rare thing in Greece), and hedged in by high mountains, is perhaps the best in Greece. One rides from the shore of the Corinthian Gulf opposite Patras to Arta (Ambrakia) in two days, with a comfortable night at Agrinion, passing the historic Messolonghi and visiting the ruins of Calydon, Pleuron, Œniadæ, Stratos, Limnæa, and Amphilochian Argos, while to the right and left are other ruins which invite one to make détours if one is not in a hurry. And one ought not to omit the recently excavated Thermon, the ancient capital of Ætolia, even if it does cost an extra day. The long-known and impressive ruins of Œniadæ, the chief city in Acarnania, also invite one to linger awhole day instead of spending a few hours in passing.
The first five cities of ancient Greece in renown and interest were Athens, Sparta, Argos, Thebes, and Corinth. One can ride from Athens to Thebes or Corinth and back in a single day; he can also reach Argos from Athens in a day, leaving a rather long day’s work for reaching Sparta. Any good bicyclist would find it no great matter to leave Thebes and pay his respects to Athens on the first day, visit Corinth and Argos on the next day, and sleep comfortably at Sparta the next night.
One day in February the clouds dissipated themselves in such a way as to make me believe that we were about to have a few days of that winter weather which is “rarer than a day in June,” and so, taking a train to Eleusis, to spare myself a little at the start, I rode over the famous Treis Kephalai Pass into Bœotia. I thought when I was at the top of the pass that the view presented was the finest in Greece. Not to mention lesser glories, Parnassus was close at hand on the left, Dirphys almost equally close on the right, while very distant, but very clear, directly in front, was “snowy Olympus,” a perfect mass of white. After lunching at Thebes, I wheeled easily along to Lebadea, entering it as the setting sun was turning the white mountains into pink. The next day, more clear and beautiful than the first, if that were possible, brought me toLamia in Thessaly, via Chæronea, Doris, and Thermopylæ. The third day, in order to get a nearer view of Olympus, I rode and climbed up to the top of the ridge which formed the old border between Greece and Turkey, before Thessaly was incorporated into the kingdom of Greece, and on which, in the late war, the Greeks made their last stand after the battle of Domoko. From this point Olympus is, indeed, grander than from the passes of Cithæron, while the whole Pindos range, and the grand isolated peak of Tymphrestos, which some think would prove, if properly measured, to be the highest peak in Greece, stand up in majesty. Parnassus and the Ætolian Mountains make a fine showing on the south. From this point, on this same third day, as clear as the two preceding, I reached Amphissa at evening, after climbing two passes and enjoying new glories at each. It was, in fact, a continuous intoxication, to recover from which it required two days of archæological study at Delphi. This was, to be sure, almost equally intoxicating, but, being an intoxication of another sort, it let me down gently. In three days I had got a glimpse of nearly all Greece in such weather as only a Greek winter can give.
In many respects the most interesting journey which I have made in Greece was my last one through Acarnania and Ætolia. To be sure, my last journey in Greece is always my best one; yet there was a special attraction in this journey from the fact that it was the fulfilment of a long-cherished desire. There was a gap in my knowledge of western Greece which I keenly felt. I had tramped over the Ionian Islands, visited Joannina and Dodona, and passed over the Pindos range into Thessaly. In passing Prevesa and Nikopolis the sight of the Ambrakian Gulf had filled me with a desire to explore its innermost recesses. The grand mountains of Acarnania to the south challenged especially to a nearer view. Three years later, coming up from Patras by the Northwestern Railroad of Greece to Agrinion, the capital of Ætolia, I had visited in bad weather Œniadæ, the most important city of Acarnania, mused over the Ætolian acropolis of Calydon, famous in song and story, and gone as far north as Stratos, Acarnania’s capital; but although in looking out from Stratos it seems as if all the glory was farther north, my travelling companion was obliged to retreat, and I followed his fortunes. All this hadbut whetted my appetite; and, three years later, at the end of February in that most marvellous of winters, which gave us six consecutive weeks of April temperature with unclouded sky, I set out from Piræus one moonlight night to satisfy my desire, with a companion who was not in a hurry.
Our first goal was Arta, the terminus of a line of steamers from Piræus. No mean part of the journey on a clear winter day is the view of the three masses of snow-covered mountains to the north of the Corinthian Gulf, each over eight thousand feet high, and the three to the south, falling just short of the same height, to say nothing of many others which would be impressive if the giants were absent. The effect is not unlike that of Lake Lucerne somewhat broadened out. A stop at Samos, in Kephallenia, on the morning of the second day, and a sail between Kephallenia and Ithaca, during which the latter may be studied at short range, is no slight advantage “thrown in.” At Leukas, in the afternoon, came a stirring scene. About a hundred recruits were taken on board. Greece had had troops in Crete for a week, and so, although war had not actually been declared, she was gathering troops to protect her border or to advance into Epirus, as circumstances might dictate. Two hours later, in sailing through the waters where the battle of Actium took place, we passed under the guns of the Turkish forts at Prevesa. As the Greek color-bearer was inclinedto flaunt his flag a good deal, it seemed something like an adventure. But the Margarita escaped the fate that a few weeks later overtook the Macedonia, which was sunk by the Turkish fire, while the passengers had to swim for their lives. At Vonitza we took on another hundred of the recruits pouring into Arta from all over western Greece. The men were cheerful and orderly, but brimful of the war feeling which pervaded Greece.
Delayed by these embarkations of troops, we did not reach Koprena, the port of Arta, until eight o’clock in the evening. Then there was a lack of boats to bring such a crowd to shore, and with a long drive of ten or twelve miles in the dark, over a bad road crowded with soldiers, it was after midnight when we reached Arta. Our host, a man whom I had never seen, but to whom I was introduced by a friend in Athens, had been waiting for us at Koprena since noon, and did not appear to think that he had done any more for us than any proper man would do.
TEMPLE AT STRATOS.
TEMPLE AT STRATOS.
The next morning, with a captain of artillery who had been our fellow-passenger from Athens, we went out through orange groves to the famous bridge of Arta, over the Arachthos, which here forms the border, the Greeks having secured, in 1881, Arta and its adjacent fields up to the river, along with Thessaly. The present border is the most unrighteous one that could be devised. A river isgenerally no proper boundary-line, but in this case especially it is intolerable. The plain across the river belongs by nature to the city, and, in fact, is owned largely by the people of Arta, who have suffered manifold inconveniences in the management of their property. Who can wonder that the Greeks were anxious for an offensive campaign here which should give them back their own?
The finest feature of Arta is its view. From the hill, at the foot of which lies the city, one sees the mountains near Dodona, and farther south and quite close at hand, is Tsoumerka, in the spring a mass of snow, falling just short of eight thousand feet. Behind this, over beyond the Acheloos, the snowy peaks of the Pindos range crowd one upon another in such thick array that one despairs of identifying them all with the names given on the map. To the south lie the three mountains of Acarnania inechelon, impressive although only a little over five thousand feet high, and the glorious gulf itself.
Arta has also a history. One hurries by the interesting Church of the Consoling Virgin, a brick structure of the tenth century, perhaps, and a mediæval castle, to the days when Arta was Ambrakia. Even the days when it was the capital of the famous Pyrrhus seem recent, compared with the really great days when it was a democratic city of free Hellas long before the Persian war. Cropping out from under the shabby houses of the town are walls madeof massive blocks which speak of days of greatness. This blooming colony of Corinth, foreordained by its situation to be the principal city of the region, gave its name in antiquity, as now, to the great gulf which it overlooks.
Corinth had the misfortune, rare in Greek history, to plant one unfilial colony, Corcyra, which, as early as 665B.C., worsted the mother in a great naval battle, and, from a daughter, became a lasting enemy. To recover her influence in these regions, Corinth, in the days of Kypselos and Periander, which seem pretty old days, planted Ambrakia besides Anaktorion, just inside the entrance of the gulf, and Leukas just outside. As if to prove that Corinth was not an especially hard mother, these colonies always remained filial, and their contingents were always drawn up in the Persian war alongside those of Corinth. Ambrakia, besides dominating the rich plain which by nature belongs to her, but by the will of Europe now belongs to Turkey, had also an especial significance as standing on the road to Dodona for nearly all of Greece.
But it is not my purpose to rewrite any portion of the history of Greece, but only to set forth clearly the physical and moral position of Ambrakia, that one may realize more clearly the satisfaction of the sturdy Demosthenes, the man of deeds, not the man of words, when, at Olpæ and under the walls of Amphilochian Argos, a few milesto the south, he crippled Ambrakia as thoroughly as Cleomenes had crippled Argos at Tiryns a few years before the Persian war, and made Corinth feel in the woes of her favorite daughter that she had not kindled the flames of the Peloponnesian war with impunity. Since certain Messenians took part in this battle, it has been supposed by some that the famous Nike of Pæonios at Olympia was set up to commemorate their share of the victory.
We proceeded southward from Arta by a very good carriage-road skirting the west end of the gulf. About one-third of our day’s journey was taken up in traversing the famous Makrynoros Pass, where the mountains, as high as Hymettus, come down almost perpendicularly to the sea for a space of about ten miles. This is called the Thermopylæ of western Greece; but it is a much more difficult pass to force than Thermopylæ, where two foot-hills come down to the sea with a more gentle slope. Thermopylæ, too, in modern times has lost its original character by the formation of quite a plain at the foot of its mountains by the alluvial deposit of the Spercheios and the incrustation formed by sulphur springs; while Makrynoros remains a mountain running straight down into the sea, necessitating the making of the modern carriage-road with great difficulty and expense. But as this road is a thousand feet above the water, it affords a fine view over the gulf and its setting. The railroad which connects Patras with Agrinion must come some day to Arta, so all the people of the region were saying. The Makrynoros Pass would be the chief difficulty in the way; but the railroad could keep the same height all the way, and no steep grades would be required. The main difficulty would be the crossing of the many gullies which run down from the side of the mountain. In the ordinary march of events, Arta will be included in the slowly extending network, although the claims of Sparta may have to be attended to first. It depends somewhat upon the relative influence and push of the delegates of the sections concerned.
This pass has a strategic importance, and we may soon hear of it again in connection with military operations. The Ambrakian Gulf and Maliac Gulf, by Thermopylæ, reach out toward each other, making what is sometimes called an isthmus, an echo of the Isthmus of Corinth; but if anyone tries to make his way across this he will realize that it is only an isthmus by courtesy, and will have vividly impressed upon his mind that “the longest way around is the shortest way home.” The pass of Thermopylæ may be circumvented; but so piled up are the mountains to the west of Makrynoros that, in order to circumvent it, one might as well go to Thermopylæ itself.
In the Greek war of independence, the first severe defeat of the Greeks took place in the secondyear of the war, near the northern end of Makrynoros. Maurocordatos, the President of the new State, wishing to be a Washington and to be general as well as statesman, took command of the regular army, and pushed northward through the pass, as if to take the offensive against the Turks at Arta, and then, as if not quite certain what he wanted to do, waited for the Turks to attack him, which they did in good time, annihilating his army at Peta. His head-quarters were farther back at the opening of the pass. Had he decided to take the defensive soon enough he might have immortalized Makrynoros and saved his army, instead of simply saving himself and his staff. At Peta, which lay on the hill to the left of our road from Arta to the mouth of the pass, is a tablet on which are inscribed the names of the members of the regiment of Philhellenes who, to give the Greeks an example, stood their ground until they were all shot down, except twenty-five, who succeeded in cutting their way through the enemy.
In the battle fought near the south end of the pass in which Demosthenes crushed the Ambrakians, the pass played no rôle at all. Here our road passed between Olpæ and Amphilochian Argos, and half an hour was well spent in making a part of the circuit of the walls of the latter, which are fairly well preserved. A sure token that Amphilochian Argos lay here, and not at Karvasara, aswas once supposed, is the name of the plain between the old walls and the sea. This still bears the name “Vlichia,” which is all that is left of “Amphilochia”; but it is enough to prove the identity.
At evening we came to Karvasara, at the foot of one of the most imposing acropolises in Greece. Here we were in Acarnania, where, as in Ætolia, it is more difficult to find names for imposing remains than to find remains for important names. But it is quite likely that the name Limnæa will stick to this great acropolis, inasmuch as Limnæa lay on the sea, and its name is justified by the presence of something half lake and half marsh that almost laps its walls on the south, or landward, side, although certain distances given in Polybius do not quite tally with this identification. From this elevation we could look to the south farther than Stratos, which was hidden by a bend of the long mountain at the south end of which it lay. I had in a certain sense joined hands with my former journey, although the best of the present journey, which was cumulative in its enjoyment, was still to come.
Among many walled cities of Acarnania the three most important are Limnæa, Stratos, and Œniadæ. Limnæa, which plays a comparatively insignificant rôle in history, has the most commanding position, on a high hill overlooking the east end of the Ambrakian Gulf. The walls are wellpreserved, and, for their height as well as extent, excite admiration. Stratos, situated on the west bank of the Acheloos, is not quite so high, but its walls are fully as extensive and high. It has also well-preserved foundations of a temple of white limestone. It confronted Agrinion, the capital city of the Ætolians, the eternal enemies of the Acarnanians; and these two grim fortress capitals frowned at each other for ages with nothing but the rolling river between them.
But Œniadæ is, after all, the most impressive of all the Acarnanian ruins. It crowns an irregular hill which was once an island, but has become a part of the mainland by the action of the Acheloos. Down to the fourth century before Christ, and perhaps even later, the sea touched its western side, for here are clear traces of a harbor, as well as some fairly preserved ship-sheds. The walls are not only of great extent, but wonderfully well preserved, with gates of most varied forms, in which the arch is seen in various stages of formation. The whole vast enclosure is covered with a grove of great oaks, which, in some cases, have pushed down the walls. In one case, the growing oak has pulled out one stone from its place and carried it up in its embrace several feet above the rest of the wall. So luxuriant is the vegetation all over the hill that one who will see the whole wall outside and inside—and no less will satisfy one—must give up a whole dayto the task, and force his way through thorns and briers that scratch and tear, paying with his person.
The result of four or five visits to Œniadæ was finally a plan to make excavations there, and, in 1901, several members of the American School undertook the work. With a comparatively small outlay of money, but with great hardship, they laid bare a theatre, mostly rock-cut, with many inscriptions, the ship-sheds, and near by them a bath. The theatre is most picturesque. Anyone who fails to visit Œniadæ makes a mistake.
On my first visit to Ætolia and Acarnania I went in at the front door,i.e., by the Northwestern Railroad from Patras, past Calydon, renowned in legend, and Messolonghi, of deathless fame, to Agrinion, the terminus of the railroad, and thence northward. On the second visit I went in at the back door by steamer to Arta, and journeyed southward. On a third visit I jumped in, as it were, at the window.
Having returned from a flying visit to Olympia, I and my companion met at Patras two other members of the American School, with whom we intended to bicycle as far north as Arta, diverging to the right and left to visit a half-dozen ancient sites of the region. But twenty-four hours of heavy rain made us feel that the Messolonghi route would be nothing but a bed of mud; and we let the morning boat of the Northwestern Railroad cross over in the rain without us. When at eleven o’clock it was clear, I proposed that we should take a sail-boat over to Naupaktos, and push our way up into Ætolia from that point. Since a good part of the way would be uphill, the water would have run off and the road would be passable. I shouldat least get something new out of the journey, and realize how short was the distance which separated the Lake of Agrinion (Trichonis) from the Corinthian Gulf. We could see by the map that this was not more than twelve miles as the crow flies, and I pictured to myself some water-shed from which we should see both the sea and the lake.
We sailed to the point called now Kastro Roumelias, the ancient Antirrhion, and mounted our wheels at half-past one. Three-quarters of an hour brought us to Naupaktos. This city was flourishing in the seventh and sixth centuries before Christ; but its plain was not large enough, and the places in the interior to which it was a key were not important enough to give it permanent prosperity. In the fifth century it was taken by the Athenians, and given to the exiled Messenians, who made it a stanch ally of Athens in the sphere of Corinthian influence. Besides being most picturesquely situated, it has looked down on important events. Under its walls and in its harbor Phormio, the Athenian admiral, twice annihilated a Peloponnesian fleet of more than double the size of his own. The greatest naval battle that ever took place between Christendom and Islam, though fought in the open sea twenty miles to the west, was named after it, because the Turkish armada set out from it to meet Don John of Austria. One hardly recognizes the name in the Venetian form, Lepanto. The Greekname of to-day, Epaktos, is nearer to the ancient form.
We stopped only a few minutes here, as our intention was to reach Kephalovrysi (Thermon) that night, and, if we failed in that, it seemed child’s-play to reach at least Makrinou on the lake. Even when bicycling ceased and we settled down to steady climbing, we felt no misgivings; and when at four o’clock we began to descend we thought our work for the day about finished. But our confidence was rudely shaken when we saw before us the broad, pebbly bed of the Evenos, which flows down through these mountains, taking a sharp turn to the west and passing under the walls of Calydon. We had forgotten to reckon with this. We now paid dearly for our descent by another climb, which seemed unending, and before we reached our greatest altitude far from Kephalovrysi, and, for aught we knew, far from Makrinou also, it became dark.
This road seems an excellent example of the way in which the little kingdom of Greece ought not to make internal improvements. The fine carriage-road, built at great expense, winds with gentlest grade along every projection and indentation of the mountains; and yet we met on our whole journey to the top only a single cart, and in many places the road was so overgrown with grass that no ruts appeared. When it was growing dark we saw another reason why the road might not be popular.In some places it had slipped downhill; and in other places the hills had slipped down into it, which was almost as bad. There is no call for a fine highway from Naupaktos to the lake. The great interior basin of Ætolia is provided with a good course for its trafficviaMessolonghi; and no power on earth can force it to come this way. It is useless for some silly people in Naupaktos to complain that favoritism was shown in not laying out the Northwestern Railroad with their town as a starting-point. For a town doomed to decline, a steamer stopping two or three times a week, supplemented by sail-boats to and from the more lively and more important southern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, may well suffice. The Northwestern Railroad will soon be prolonged to Arta, giving to him that hath, according to the habit of railroads; and even this finely built carriage-road will continue to be avoided by every self-respecting traveller, as it is now, until only pieces of this monumental folly shall remain. The demarch of Kephalovrysi told me that the primary object of this road was to enable the Government to move troops by land in case of the blockade of the coast by stronger Powers. But even with that explanation the road seems useless without good roads farther east to connect with it, to say nothing of the futility of Greece attempting to resist the stronger naval Powers.
When darkness was fairly upon us, and just as wewere beginning to descend, we found a wretched village of four or five houses. At one of these with a wine-shop below and living-rooms above, we were well fed, but in a rather primitive style, I eating my rice from the same bowl with the host, as we all sat cross-legged in front of the fire. Since it was very cold, we were glad to lie down for the night on rugs, with other rugs over us, with our feet to the fire, making one end of a semicircle, at the other end of which was the host with his wife and five small children, while below, in the business part of the establishment, were five larger children.
When we got off at sunrise the next morning, the view to the west was something over which one may well grow enthusiastic. Low down at our feet, but stretching far away to the west, was the lake which we had sought, and beyond its farther end another smaller one. At that farther end, too, was the fertile plain of Agrinion, where grows the best tobacco in Greece. Beyond that and across the Acheloos rose the snowy mountains of Acarnania and Leukas, just touched by the rising sun. On our right, rising up from the north shore of the lake and stretching far to the north, were the gigantic mountains which make the larger and wilder part of Ætolia. On our left were the lower peaks of Mount Arakynthos bordering the lake on the south. This is the heart of Ætolia. It has a wonderfully drawing power to one who has once seen it. Thelake, enclosed by mountains on its eastern end, and on its western end by a plain, is wonderfully beautiful. It is striking that its surface is hardly stirred by either row-boats or sail-boats. The only time I ever saw a sail upon it was on this particular morning.
It was matter for sad reflection that this great plain did not all belong to Ætolia, but that the part beyond the Acheloos was Acarnania. Rivers cannot divide peoples; and these two peoples through all their history dyed this unnatural boundary with their blood. The Ætolians, as the stronger if not the better people, generally succeeded in keeping a foothold on the other bank, holding even Stratos, the capital of Acarnania, and Œniadæ, its strongest city, for periods of centuries. But the Acarnanians were tough antagonists, and never said die till all was merged in the supremacy of Rome.
It was a matter of a few minutes to spin down to Makrinou, which now had for us no importance. Kephalovrysi was our goal. The visit was for me tinged with some melancholy reflections. Less than a year before I had been there with my friend, Charles Peabody, of Cambridge, and we had been much excited at the thought that here lay Thermon, the head of the Ætolian League, and so near the surface that a little excavation would prove it. On my return to Athens I asked the Ephor General of Antiquities to reserve the spot for us, which he said hewould do. But a few months later, when the Greek Archæological Society sent Georgios Soteiriades into Ætolia to explore sites, this one was not excepted; and he attacked it with great success. While I had to rejoice that archæology had gained a triumph, I was sorry that an enthusiastic American had not been the instrument. After a few miles of level road along the east end of the lake, we toiled four or five miles up along the face of the mountain enclosing it on the north side, and then turning sharply away from the lake at Petrochori, a village perched on the top of a ridge commanding as good a view as the one already described, in a few minutes we had reached our goal.
Kephalovrysi has about a thousand inhabitants. It was not more than ten minutes after we had settled ourselves in an eating-house when all the boys of the place and most of the men, with a small representation of the girls, gathered around and thronged in at the door, in spite of the kicks and cuffs of the proprietor. Before we had fairly begun to eat, the demarch appeared with his inseparable companion, the young schoolmaster, the two who had last year escorted us to the ruins, at the head of the whole school, which had been given a half-holiday in honor of our arrival. This time it was a holiday without special dispensation; but the boys were so absorbed in our bicycles, which were the first ever seen in the place, that we had the demarchand the schoolmaster almost to ourselves on the walk out to the ruins.
The excavation of these ruins called Palæo-Bazaar closes a chapter in the topographical study of Ætolia, which began with Colonel Leake. Pouqueville, indeed, prompted by the natural desire to give names to the impressive ruins that met him on every hand, gave names, as he himself confessed, “by a sort of lucky inspiration.” A passage in Polybius forms the basis for the topography of this central region of Ætolia. It is the passage in which he describes how Philip V., the young King of Macedon, in 218B.C., by a forced march from the Acheloos, near Stratos, reached and destroyed Thermon in revenge for the destruction of Dodona in the preceding year by the Ætolians, under Dorymachos. In this narrative he mentions several towns to the right and left of the line of march.
THERMON. TEMPLE OF APOLLO IN THE FOREGROUND
THERMON. TEMPLE OF APOLLO IN THE FOREGROUND
Leake, who never travelled around the east end of the lake, made up his mind that Thermon must be found at Vlocho, the most impressive ruin and strongest fortified place in Ætolia, not far east of Agrinion. Starting with this as a fact, he laid out the rest of the topography accordingly. Two great difficulties, however, confronted Leake. Polybius speaks of the lake as covering the left of the army during a considerable part of the march, while Leake, placing Thermon at Vlocho, cannot keep them from leaving it well to their right all the way.The great topographer, who had successfully located Calydon by transposing two passages in Strabo and inserting a negative, thought it not venturesome to “restore” right for left in this passage of Polybius, on the ground that there are many occurrences of such slips in ancient writers. A second difficulty troubled him less. A march from the Acheloos to Thermon, which is spoken of as a forced march, a record march if you will, from the dawn of a summer day till late in the afternoon, by hardy troops, cannot, if Vlocho is Thermon, be spun out to more than fifteen miles, and that mostly over good ground. Leake talks loosely of arrival at two o’clock in the afternoon, which hardly does justice to the πολλῆς ὥρας of the text.
The prestige of Leake, his almost established record of never going astray, led topographers generally to follow him, at least in the location of Thermon. Bazin, indeed, having a conscience about changing left to right, makes Philip march clear round the lake and reach Vlocho in season to destroy that great citadel on the same day, a distance of forty-five miles over some very bad ground, and that, too, on top of a forced march the day before. A military man like Leake could not have made this error, though he led Bazin into it by falsely locating Thermon.
In spite of a growing belief, starting with Bursian and at last finding exact expression in Lolling’s selection of Palæo-Bazaar, that Thermon was somewhere near the east end of the lake, Vlocho, the mighty hill fortress, made such an impression that many regarded the discussion as one in which it was still worth while to sum up theprosandcons, adding: “If Vlocho is not Thermon, give us some adequate name for it.” But the spade, which has again substantiated its claims to be the best archæologist, has relegated all this discussion to the limbo of old notions. Whatever Vlocho was, it wasnotThermon. A score or more of inscriptions found by Soteiriades at Palæo-Bazaar, speaking of the affairs of the Ætolian League, show that he has found the capital. What makes the identification absolutely certain is the inscription containing the treaty between the Ætolians and Philip of Macedon, in which it is provided that of two copies one shall be set up at Thermon, and the other at Delphi, which was at the time the ecclesiastical capital of the league. The French have found one copy at Delphi; Soteiriades found the other, an exact duplicate, at Kephalovrysi. After that, one surely need not go elsewhere to seek for Thermon. A suggestive trifle was found here before the excavations, viz., a life-size bronze thumb of good work, showing the dint of a hammer on the knuckle. This probably belonged to one of the two thousand statues destroyed by Philip.
Leaving Kephalovrysi at two o’clock, instead oftaking the shortest road to Agrinion along the north shore of the lake, at my suggestion, which again sprung from the desire of seeing something new, we circled the lake, following the line of Philip’s retreat along the south side, and identifying among other places the site of Trichonion, which gave its name to the lake. Passing between this lake and its neighbor to the west, we reached Agrinion just before dark, and found there a new, clean hotel. The railroad is beginning to work its wonders even in Agrinion.
This flourishing town of about ten thousand inhabitants, the centre of the most important tobacco-growing region in Greece, and the capital of Ætolia, has stolen its name from ancient Agrinion, which lay about seven miles away on the Acheloos. Its real name is Vrachori, which is still used by many who do not fancy the revamping of classical names, especially when they are foisted on to towns that are not entitled to them, and have an honorable history of their own which has been gained under the name which it is proposed to set aside. Vrachori is such a case.
Not till after dinner did we present ourselves at the house of the doctor who had bountifully entertained my friend and me last year for two nights. Both he and his wife seemed hurt that we had not all four of us come unannounced straight to them, and extorted from us the promise that on our return from Arta we would spend a night with them.“But these things lay on the knees of the gods.” After starting off hopefully in the morning, when almost in sight of Stratos my bicycle met with a collapse, which we tried in vain to remedy; and the afternoon train bore me in great tribulation through the front door of Ætolia back to Patras and Athens.
The next year, and pretty nearly every succeeding year, brought me again to this most romantic part of Greece, so little known by modern travellers, and so little famed in ancient history, but full of walls and acropolises which cry out for a name. On the last of these visits we climbed Vlocho on a rather hot day. To judge from the exhaustion which even the strongest felt, as well as from the appearance of the mountain, for Vlocho is really a mountain, we have here the highest acropolis in Greece. It looks down upon Trichonis to the south and back into the rugged peaks of Ætolia to the north, overtopping all the foot-hills of those mountains. Its walls also match the commanding position. It is no wonder that Leake took it for the great central citadel of the Ætolians, none other than Thermon. But not only has Thermon been positively identified, as has been already mentioned, but Vlocho has been shown by an inscription found by Soteiriades to be the acropolis of the Thestiæi, a merely tribal gathering place. This solution is a surprise, a sort of anticlimax. It is an equally greatsurprise that Thermon had no acropolis at all, but was a gathering-place in a plain. Its situation, however, high up above the mountainous north shore of Lake Trichonis near its eastern end, made it difficult for an enemy to attack; and when Philip V. broke into the nest of the robber brood, destroyed it, and got safely back to his connections, it was the master stroke of that enterprising and rash boy king. The Ætolians got a sweet revenge more than twenty years later, when, at Kynoskephalæ, they contributed materially to Philip’s crushing defeat by Flamininus.
The usual approach to Thermon is from Agrinion over a level road along the north shore until the middle of that shore-line is reached. Then comes a steady climb until one gains an altitude of perhaps two thousand feet, directly over the surface of the lake, and then another more gentle climb away from the lake, and the goal is reached. There is a fine carriage-road all the way.
The one thing that Ætolia, as well as Acarnania, lacks to make it famous is the bard, or, failing him, the historian. No Homer or Sophocles or Pindar has made the beautiful Lake Trichonis into a more than earthly lake. The great historians have found elsewhere more attractive themes than the wars of the men who inhabited these mighty fortresses. The modern traveller likes to follow the footsteps of the poets and historians; and so Attica, Argos,Bœotia, and Thessaly are visited and enjoyed, while the stream passes by Ætolia and Acarnania “on the other side.” But there are some who will be drawn by that beautiful Lake Trichonis, by the bountiful Acheloos, by the Gulf of Ambrakia, and by the Gorge of Klissoura, which runs through Mount Arakynthos, and only lacks a stream to make it surpass Tempe. This number may increase so that in ten years more, demand creating supply, even Arta may provide an inn where the weary traveller may lie down to pleasant dreams.
We twelve members of the American School had spent three rather cold and rainy November days at Delphi, managing to see between the showers, perhaps better called tempests, that kept sweeping up the valley of the Pleistos, most of the important objects both in the museum and in the excavation area. After so much tantalizing promise, followed by disappointment, it began to seem very doubtful whether the six bicyclists of the party could carry out their intention of prolonging the trip into Thessaly. The morning of the fourth day looked about like the three preceding mornings, except that the storm centre, on and around Mount Korax to the west of Parnassus and Delphi, had at last broken up. Just this little encouragement led five of us to move on, and we slipped quickly down the long winding road to the foot of the high slope on the top of which Delphi stands.
After we had toiled through mud to Amphissa, we began to reap the benefits of a clearing and bracing north wind. We had an exhilarating climb of three hours up the Amblema Pass, which leads over the ridge connecting Parnassus with the still higher mountains to the west. Before we got to the top,which is the backbone between the Corinthian Gulf and the Gulf of Malis, a cold cloud, which we may as well call a winter storm, came rushing out of the gap to meet us like an army debouching from a covert. We began to fear that Doris, into which we were going to pass, was another storm centre, and our feeling of pity for the one man who had been prudent enough to take his bicycle back to Athens began to change to envy. But after dropping a thousand feet or more into Doris we got below the storm, and the roads became somewhat drier. When we were at the level of that upland plain they were quite good. Doris had been a storm centre in the morning, but at noon was almost clear. What luck!
Confronting us on the north side of the plain was another mountain barrier which shut out Thermopylæ from our view. Rain-clouds were playing around this mountain. After luncheon at Gravia, it was a matter of from two to three hours to get across the plain and partly climb and partly circumvent this second barrier. And then came a most exhilarating experience. Here was the sight of a lifetime. The Gulf of Malis far below us, the road visible in all its extent winding like an enormous serpent down the side of the mountain to the plain from two to three thousand feet below us, and then running straight as an arrow to Lamia, Mount Othrys in the background, Thermopylæ to the right, and, soon after, Tymphrestos to the left, with the Spercheios winding down from it. Historic associations apart—as if they ever could be apart!—this is a landscape not easily surpassed. It is one of those views which seem to gain in power with repetition. It was the fifth time that I had seen and felt it; and I firmly believe that I had a keener relish in the view than my companions who saw it for the first time.
Bicycling down the face of a mountain like that, over curves that take you half a mile or a mile in one direction, and then as far in the other direction, is about the nearest approach to flying that has yet been given to man. One seems to be floating in the ether, and dropping at will down to the earth like a bird on the wing.
In this winding down the mountain-side we crossed probably more than once the path by which the Greek traitor led Hydarnes and his Ten Thousand Immortals around in the rear of the Greeks and cut off their retreat. But it was getting too late now to see and study Thermopylæ by the light of that day. Lamia was our goal, a city where one finds comfortable quarters and good eating. We had heard far back on the road that the bridge over the Spercheios had been carried away two years before, and had not yet been replaced. Some said that we should find a boat to ferry us over, while others said that there was neither bridge nor ferry, which seemed incredible, since we were on the great highway from the Corinthian Gulf to northernGreece. But when we reached the Spercheios at twenty minutes before five o’clock the worst that had been told us came true. No ferry-man was there. One sorrowful-looking Greek who was, figuratively speaking, in the same boat with us, suggested that we go back to a village called Moschochori, which we had passed about two miles back, the road leaving it about a quarter of a mile to the east. He thought that we should there find the ferry-man, who had abandoned his post a little too early, and had left his boat in plain sight bound to a tree with chain and padlock. This suggestion had the advantage that, in case we failed to find the boatman and to induce him to return, we might at least find shelter in the village, poor as it was, which would in the cold weather be better than passing the night in the open air.
I had on two former occasions failed to reach Lamia at nightfall and been obliged to pass the night in this region; once in 1890, very near where we were then standing, in a barn filled with corn-husks, and again, ten years later, under the hospitable roof of the chief of police at Molo, to the east of Thermopylæ. But this time it seemed as if, with a sufficient outlay of energy, we ought to pass over Jordan into a land of milk and honey. The first step was to go back. Just where we were turning from the high-road to go into the village there met us a man on horseback, who proved to be the villagedoctor going to visit a sick woman. The husband of the patient was trotting along behind him. No sooner did the doctor hear our story than he turned to the man following him, and said: "Go into the village and tell the ferry-man that if he doesn’t get back to the ferry as fast as his legs can carry him I will split his head for him. Tell him there are strangers waiting to get over to Lamia." The word “stranger” has great power in Greece. If the stranger is not, as in Homer, under the special protection of Zeus, he is under the protection of all good men, which is perhaps quite as efficient.
At this point came a curious turn. The man who was to call the ferry-man said: “But the ferry-man will not believe me when I tell him that strangers are waiting.” The doctor saw the point, and said: “Yes, one of you must go with him.” I decided that I was needed, and after a hard tramp quite a distance through mud about a foot deep—I would not abate one tittle of nine inches—I saw the effect of the message. The ferry-man saddled a horse and shot off in the direction of the missing bridge as if he believed the doctor was ready to do what he had said he would do. When we reached the ferry all was in readiness for our passage, and, shortly after seven o’clock we sat down to dinner in Lamia. As the doctor and his follower went over in the same ferry-boat it is a fair inference that they had also a personal interest in stirring up the ferry-man.
The fact that this bridge had been lacking for two years on the only high-road which leads directly from Thessaly, not only to the Corinthian Gulf, but also, by a fork in Doris, to Bœotia and Attica, is a sign of the times. The people of Lamia complain against the Government, for this is a national road made and neglected by the general Government. Incomplete in 1890 when I first went over it on foot, it was completed at great expense, and it seems reckless extravagance to neglect it now. Greece might better afford to spare on its army and navy, and put the savings into internal improvements. The bridge over the Peneios, on the high-road between Trikkala and Larisa, the two principal cities of Thessaly, has been down for eight or ten years and its place has been supplied by a ferry-boat. The long-projected railroad, designed to connect Athens with Larisa, and ultimately with Europe, was nearly half finished in 1894, and until 1902 nothing was done to carry on the work, or to save from disintegration the part already finished. After a lapse of eight years a new company has taken up the work and is vigorously pushing it; but the old material has been declared to be of no value. A sense of waste in such matters makes one feel that Greece is far from being a Switzerland in thrift. It hardly affords a basis upon which a “greater Greece” can be built up.
The next day we took Thermopylæ at our leisure, passing out from Lamia over the Spercheios on thebridge 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. Luckily this one bridge over the Spercheios remains, and Thessaly has a road open to the east through Thermopylæ and Atalante. The day was perfect, a day to make an old man young. We were like boys at play, in spite of the overpowering associations of the place. We sat down in the sunlight and dabbled with our feet in the hot sulphur stream, which has given its name to the place, Thermopylæ meaning “Hot Gates,” and when a serious shepherd came and looked at us in wonderment we regarded him as the “Old Man of Thermopylæ,” in that character-sketch, “There was an old man of Thermopylæ who never did anything properly.” We had him photographed in that character, and fancied him doomed to return for a space to the scene of his excesses and to behave himself “properly.” We then went through the pass as far east as Molo, and after taking luncheon there returned to the pass for serious study,i.e., for tracing as far as possible the position and movements of the antagonists in the great battle.
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 battle actually took place there, as the great battle between the Romans and Antiochos certainly did. This eastern pass is, to be sure, no place where “a thousand may well be stopped by three,” and there cannot 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 sulphur streams, which has so broadened the theatre-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 defence against a superior one; but while it cannot 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.