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GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017 with funding from
Boston Public Library

https://archive.org/details/greeklandsletterOOalli_O
GREEK LANDS AND
LETTERS
[wc UuuJr a
BY

FRANCIS GREENLEAF ALLINSON

(
Professor of Claaical Philology in Brown University
)

AND
ANNE C. E. ALLINSON

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
(Cfre fttoerjftbe Cambribne
MDCCCCIX
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY FRANCIS G. ALLINSON
AND ANNE C. E. ALLINSON

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published December iqoq

 TO
A. C. E.

AND
S. C. A.
 ’

PREFACE

T
ment. Those
he purpose of this

local associations
book

who possess an intimate acquaintance

is to interpret

lands by literature, and Greek literature by

and the physical environ-

with Greek or who have the good fortune to stay long in

Greek

Greece will be able to draw upon their own resources.

Many travellers, however, must curtail their visit to a
few weeks or months, and it is hoped that to them this

book may prove useful as a companion in travel, while

to a wider range of readers it may prove suggestive in
appraising what is most vital in our “Hellenic heri-
tage.’

To keep within reasonable bounds it has seemed

necessary to limit our survey to those portions of the
mainland of Greece and those islands, immediately
adjacent in the Gulf of ^Egina, which may be easily

visited during a short stay in Athens as headquarters.

But the visitor cannot be too strongly urged to avail
himself of opportunities to visit the remoter islands
and the shores of Asia Minor, which are so beautiful a
part of the Greek world and have played so brilliant

a r61e in Greek history and literature.

In quoting or summarizing the literature the limita-

tions of space are obvious. Selections have been made
Vlll PREFACE
which to us seemed most fairly to interpret the coun-
tries and sites. It is hoped that these will not only
prove representative when taken together but will
recall much that has perforce been omitted.
Purely learned treatises in Greek have not been cited
except by way of illustration. The historical geographer
Strabo, of the time of Augustus, has offered suggestive
material; and Pausanias, of the second century of our

era, the pious and often charming writer of the “ Guide-

book to Greece,” has, as was inevitable, been the
cicerone in many places.

History it has seemed proper to use chiefly to explain

the literature, or, especially in the case of Herodotus
and Thucydides, as itself part of the noblest prose liter-

ature. But in different chapters emphasis has been laid,

to some extent, upon different elements, such as myth

and legend, prehistoric tradition, the history of certain

epochs in classic times, the demands of religion, the

growth of the artistic impulse or the bloom of the Attic

period. By this means we have hoped, without too
much repetition, to suggest a fairly adequate outline of
the different factors in Greek civilization. The intro-

ductory chapter is intended to provide the essential

background for the others.

Forms of art other than literature are only inciden-

tally tquched upon. Archaeological information or dis-

cussion, except as illustration, is precluded by the pur-

pose of the book, which deals with the literature and
the land as being permanent possessions that are not
 ;

PREFACE IX

essentially modified by the successive data of archae-

ology, necessarily shifting from month to month.

In translating Greek authors it has seemed best, as a
rule, to offer new versions, rendering the thought as

literally as is consistent with our idiom or, in the case

of poetry, with the exigencies of English verse. The
anapaestic dimeters and, in the dialogue parts of the
drama, the six-stress iambic verse have been retained
less uniformly the elegiac couplet; and, occasionally
only, the heroic hexameter. Elsewhere poetry has been
usually turned by rhymed verse or by rhythmic prose.

Some existing translations or paraphrases have been

used, for which credit has been given in the text or the
footnotes. Moreover, in most of the citations from Pau-
sanias Mr. Frazer’s admirable translation has been used
without explicit mention, and for this we make acknow-
ledgment here. In translating Pindar many turns of
expression have been taken from the beautiful trans-
lation of Ernest Myers, although, when they are not
expressly credited, the versions have been rewritten.
While it is hoped that full credit has thus been given
wherever it is due, there are doubtless expressions here
and there remaining in the memory from numerous
commentators on Greek authors that form a common
stock in trade for the translator.
In transliterating Greek names we have followed, as
a rule, familiar English usage.
Among many books of reference there are a few to
which we are especially indebted. We have used con-

4
X PREFACE
stantly Mr. J. G. Frazer’s “Commentary on Pausa-
nias,” which includes a wealth of outside references, as,

for example, citations from other travellers beginning

with Dicaearchus, the entertaining geographer of the
fourth century b. c. We are also indebted to Curtius’s
“History of Greece” and Tozer’s “Geography of
Greece”; Dr. W. Judeich’s “Topographie von Athen”
(especially for Piraeus); Professor Ernest Gardner’s
“Ancient Athens,” which should be in the hands of
every visitor to Athens; and Miss J. E. Harrison’s
“ Primitive Athens.” Professor “ History of
J. B. Bury’s
Greece” has been constantly suggestive. On modem
Greece Schmidt’s “Das Volksleben der Neugriechen”
and Sir Rennell Rodd’s “ Customs and Lore of Modem
Greece” have furnished definite material.

Among the numerous editions of Greek authors

necessarily consulted we are under special obligations
to Professor Gildersleeve’s “ Pindar, the Olympian and
Pythian Odes,” and to Professor Smyth’s “Melic
Poets.” Certain quotations in the text, not provided
for in the footnotes, are acknowledged in the Appendix,
in which are also given, for the sake of comparison,
exact references to the Greek.
Our personal thanks are due to Professor J. Irving
Manatt, of Brown University, for valuable suggestions
and criticism of several chapters, and to Professor

Walter G. Everett for his discussion of the section on

Greek philosophy. We are also especially indebted
to Professor Herbert Richard Cross of Washington
 PREFACE xi

University, St. Louis, for placing at our disposal his

water-color sketch of the Propylaea, from which the
frontispiece is taken, and to Professors C. B. Gulick
and G. H. Chase of Harvard University for assistance

in obtaining the impression of the coin upon the cover

of this book.

F. G. A.
A. C. E. A.
Providence, October, 1909.
 CONTENTS
I. The Widespread Land of Hellas i

II. Piraeus, the Harbour Town 32

III. Athens: From Solon to Salamis 57
IV. The Acropolis of Athens 74
V. Athens: From Salamis to Menander 91

VI. Old Greece in New Athens 126

VII. Attica 144

VIII. Eleusis 171

IX. ^Egina 186

X. Megara and Corinth The Gulf of Corinth

: 192

XI. Delphi 218

XII. From Delphi to Thebes 250

XIII. Thebes and Bceotia 266
XIV. Bceotia, continued 296
XV. Thermopyle 316
XVI. Argolis 323
XVII. Arcadia 358
XVIII. Olympia 388
XIX. Messenia 425
XX. Sparta 431

Appendix 453
Index 463
 ILLUSTRATIONS

The Propyltda Frontispiece

From within looking toward Salamis
From a painting by H. R. Cross

Map of Greece and the ^Egean I

Map of Piraeus 32

Renan on the Acropolis 74

From a French painting

S. Colonnade of the Parthenon 88

From a photograph by R. A. Rice

Areopagus 104

Street of the Tombs 114

Monument of Hegeso

After Polygnotus 134

The Panathena£A Continued 134

Map of Attica 144

Menander 152
From bust in Boston Museum of Fine Arts

SUNIUM 162
Temple of Poseidon. From a photograph by S. C. A.
xvi ILLUSTRATIONS
Olive Trees on the way to Eleusis 178
From a photograph by E. G. Radeke

jEgina 188
Temple of Aphaea

Corinth 202
Temple of Apollo and Acrocorinth

Delphi and the Road to Arachova 250

Map of Bceotia 266

A Gallery of the Acropolis of Tiryns 324

Calauria 356
Temple of Poseidon. Scene of the death of Demosthenes

Olympia 388
Kronos Hill. The ruins of the Altis

Taygetus 432

Nike of Samothrace, reproduced on the front cover, is

from a coin in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University.

GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
GREECE
AEGEAN SEA
GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
CHAPTER I

introductory: the widespread land of

HELLAS
“ Greek literature is read by almost all nations.”
Cicero, Pro Archia.

C icero, at one time studying Greek oratory in

Rhodes, at another speaking Greek as the
language best adapted to a Sicilian audience,
suggests with sufficient definiteness the eastern and
western boundaries of ancient Hellas. Leaving out of
consideration more remote colonies, we may content
ourselves with including in the Greater Greece of an-
tiquity all the Mediterranean lands and waters from
Sicily and Lower Italy, in the west, to Cyprus and the
coast of Asia Minor, in the east. The Riviera, or sea-
board of the eastern side of the iEgean, is sharply dif-
ferentiated from the continuous highlands of the inte-

rior, which suggest, a short distance inland, a boundary

line between Europe and Asia. For a maritime people
like the Greeks this was a barrier more effectual than

the highway of the Bosphorus. In the early historic

times, when the sun rose over these mountains of Asia
Minor he left behind him the Oriental and looked down
 2 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
at once upon the Cis-montane Greeks, and it was upon
Greeks that he was still shining when his setting splen-

dour lit up the Bay of Naples — the “New-town” of

that day — or the ancient Cumae and the heights of
Anacapri or the islands of the Sirens and the golden
brown columns of Poseidon’s temple at Paestum.

The seaboard, too, of Macedonia and Thrace be-

longed to Greece by reason of their water-front on the
iEgean. And to the south, the encroachments of the
Greeks upon the preserves of the Nile-god were so ex-
tensive for centuries before the time of Alexander that
we need not wonder either at Egyptian reminiscences
in Greek art or at the increasing evidences of Hellenic

life in Egypt.
The Greeks, compared with the hoary antiquity of
the Egyptians, are late comers. The essential differ-

ence, however, is not a matter of centuries or millennia.

The Egyptians, perhaps because the details are fore-
shortened by the vast distance, seem to possess a chro-
nology, but no real history. There were revolutions,

rather than evolution. The Greeks were young, too,

individually as well as chronologically. From Homer
.down through the classic period we hear “ the everlast-
ing wonder-song of youth.” Plato makes an Egyptian
’priest say to the Athenian law-giver :
“ O
Solon, Solon,
you Hellenes are ever children ;
no Hellene is ever old ” !

We find the Greeks of the historic period on the intel-

lectual watershed between antiquity and the modern
world. From data now well established we may push
 INTRODUCTORY 3

back their life far beyond recorded chronology, and, if

we anticipate even by a little the nucleus of the Homeric

poems, we possess a practically unbroken continuity
of their history and language for three thousand years
down to the present day. Greek history is often con-
fined within perfectly arbitrary dates. In reality, the
death of Alexander in 323 b. c., the closing of the schools
of philosophy in 529 A. d., and the fall of Constantino-

ple in 1453 A D on ly break

- - its course into convenient
chapters.
The Greek language is itself one of the greatest crea-
tions of Greek art. Discarding some superfluities, re-
tained or over-emphasized by others of our common
Indo-European family, the Greeks developed an instru-

ment for the expression of thought unsurpassed, if not

unequalled, among any other people. “ The whole lan-

guage resembles the body of an artistically trained ath-

lete, in which every muscle is called into full play, where

there is no trace of flaccid tumidity, and all is power
and life.” The “common dialect” already dominated
the eastern Mediterranean before the Romans took
physical possession. Its direct legatee is the modern
Greek, that had sprung up in lusty independence some
three centuries before the Turks put an end to senile

Byzantium and its crabbed ecclesiastical speech.

Of creative literature the same unbroken continuity

cannot be predicated. The early literature, beginning
with Homer, extends through the first quarter of the
fifth century b. <5. It includes the great epic poetry, the
4 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
elegiac and iambic, the beginnings of philosophy, and
seven of the ten greatest lyric poets. No fact in Greek
literature is more conspicuous than the shortness and
the richness of the next period, which may be conven-

iently called the “Attic,” although some of the greatest

writers came from outside of Attica — from Boeotia,

from the islands, from beyond the ^Egean, or from

Sicily. Within this brief period of only 183 years, if

we close it with the death of Menander in 292 b. c., all

the additional types of the literature either culminated

or originated.
The next period of 150 years, commonly known as the
Alexandrian period, has within its early limits the name
of Theocritus, whose quality entitles him to rank with
the writers of the Classic period, as does that of his
two legatees, Bion and Moschus, and also Herodas,
whose writings, recovered in the fortunate year 1891,

have now made him a part of the Greek Classics. But

in the Alexandrian period, and in the Graeco-Roman
period from 146 b. c. to 529 a. d., the great names are,

as a rule, not so great, and they are spread over a long

time. Few of them, except Lucian in the second cen-
tury of our era, and Plutarch immediately preceding
him, successfully compete for a prominent place as
writers of pure literature.

With a few exceptions, the great original work in

Greek literature had been done before the death of Me-
nander. The Greek anthology, however, must not be
ignored. It ranges over more than one thousand years
 INTRODUCTORY 5

and leaves no century in all that time without at least

some minor representative of great beauty. Like a
cord twisted of dull strands and golden, it binds to-

gether the Attic age with the whole of the subsequent

time down to the year 550 of our era, the golden strand
reappearing sufficiently often to assure us of its con-
tinuity. The next nine centuries of Byzantine Greek,
ecclesiastical and profane, are little known to most
classical scholars. The contributions of the modern
Greek, before and since the days of Byron, are signifi-

cant, and the friends of the new kingdom await with

cordial expectation the rise of new writers to give to the
lore of the peasant and the struggles of the patriot a
worthy literary form. Of the lacunas in the literature, in
spite of the continuity of the language, Professor Hat-
zidakis of Athens has well said: “The Greek language
is as little to be blamed for this as could be the marble
quarries of Mount Pentelicus, because in those times
no one fashioned from them a Hermes of Praxiteles or
,,
a Venus of Melos.

A glance at the map will show how accessible was

the mainland of Greece, upon the east and south, to

seafaring visitors from across the ^Egean, who would

naturally find here their first landing-places. Except
for the great gash of the Corinthian Gulf, the western
coast is indented only with smaller, though good, har-
bours, while the whole southern and eastern seaboard
from Messenia in the southwest to Thrace is a ragged
fringe of promontories, large and small, welcoming into
6 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
the interior the waters that suggested sea-business of
war and commerce.
But this interlacing of land and water, that brought
the insinuating “call of the sea,” was not the only
factor that predetermined the character of the Greek
cantons. The Greeks were mountaineers as well as
mariners. One is, indeed, almost tempted to speak of
Greece as consisting of only mountains and marina.
There are of course some relatively large plains, nota-

bly the fertile granary of Thessaly, but the general

impression of the land from any bird’s-eye view is a
succession of lofty ridges, peaks, and spurs. Only by
many shiftings of the place of outlook do these par-
tially resolve themselves into ranges continuous in cer-
tain general directions, though with many sharp angles
and curves and buttressed by uncompromising cross
ridges. These mountain barriers make clear the history

of the Greek peoples, both how they combined tempo-

rarily to resist foreign invasion and, above all, why they
developed and cherished in tiny cantons their charac-
teristic individualism, which has been by turns a bane
and a blessing.

Thessaly and Mount Olympus to the north belong

geographically to the Kingdom of Greece. On either
side of Thessaly irregular mountain chains run south-
ward and preserve a general connection through
Central Greece and Attica, and, despite the submerg-
ing water, may be identified as reappearing in the
islands far out in the iEgean. Olympus on the north-
 INTRODUCTORY 7

east — hardly interrupted by the river Peneius, which

has rent its way through the precipitous canon known
as the “Vale” of Tempe — is continued along the east
coast by Mount Ossa and Mount Pelion. Then across
the narrow entrance to the Pagasaean and Malian gulfs
the system is continued by the sharp dorsal fins of the

island of Euboea, that stretches like a sea-monster along

the shores of Locris, Boeotia, and Attica, to reappear at in-
tervals far to the southeast in the islands Andros, Tenos,
Myconos, Delos, Naxos, Amorgos, and Astypalaea. On
the west of Thessaly the great Pindus ridge, descend-
ing through the centre of northern Greece, details on
the rugged system of peaks and ranges which fill cen-
tral Greece southward to the Gulf of Corinth and
which in general run from west to east. One of these
ranges, called the Othrys Mountains, bounds the Thes-
salian countries on the south and ends at the Gulf of
Pagasae. Another, Mount (Eta, is continued by the
high mountains that shut off Thermopylae to the north
and runs on as the boundary between Locris and
Boeotia. Still another range, running out of the central
complex, has its culmination in Parnassus, 8070 feet
high, and is continued, though more interrupted and
with a more irregular course, by Mount Helicon in

Boeotia and the frontier hills of Attica, from Helicon to

Parnes, and bends around into the massive ridge of

Mount Pentelicus, from whose summit the spectator
can see the prolongation in the islands of Ceos, Cyth-
nos, Seriphos, and others beyond.
8 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
The narrow neck that divides the Corinthian from

the Saronic Gulf and connects Attica and Boeotia with

the Peloponnesus, lifts up among its rugged hills in

Megara the picturesque twin peaks of the Kerata.

South of the isthmus itself, with its narrow plain and
the deep cutting necessary for the canal, rises the splen-
did acropolis of Acrocorinth, keeping guard at the en-
trance to the “Island of Pelops.”
The Peloponnesus, or Morea, is a rugged complex of
mountains that by turns shut out and admit the sea. Of
its four irregular peninsulas, jutting out southward in
the Argolis and in Laconia and Messenia, each has its

mountain system; the more broken hills in the Ar-

golid plain ;
the ridge of Parnon to the east of the plain

of Lacedaemon; the imposing barrier of Taygetus

between Sparta and Messenia. In Messenia itself are
fertile plains. One is in the midland, as the name
Messenia originally implied, among offshoots of the
Arcadian Lycaeus; while the great mountain fortress of
Ithome, 2600 feet high, where crops could be reared
and an army supported, towering above the hills and
plains of central Messenia, looks down on another
larger plain, almost tropical in its products, that
stretches southward to the gulf.

The centre and west of the Peloponnesus is a mass of

peaks and mountain ridges tangled up at abrupt angles
but bounded on the north by a formidable chain, gene-
rally parallel with the Gulf of Corinth and dominated
by Erymanthus and Cyllene to the west and east re-
 INTRODUCTORY 9

spectively. Around and against this chain great moun-

tains are piled up like petrified billows. In this part

of Greece plains few but important are interspersed, as

at Megalopolis or Olympia. Along the northwest coast
there is the wider sea-margin of “Hollow” Elis, while
along the Corinthian Gulf HLgialus, the “coastdand,”
seems often little more than a grudging marina sub-
jacent to the foothills of Erymanthus and Cyllene.
From north to south, from east to west the Greek
landscape lends itself to panoramic views. Lucian in

his “ Charon ” makes Hermes seat himself on one of the

twin peaks of Parnassus and Charon upon the other.
With eyes anointed with Homeric eye-salve, the Ferry-

man, on his furlough from the under-world, is able

to see not only the Greater Greece outspread around
him, — from Asia Minor to Sicily, from the Danube to

Crete, — but look beyond

to off to the Orient and to
Egypt. These wide outlooks are enhanced by the
distinctness of the sky-line, everywhere an impor-
tant factor. “The hard limestone of which the moun-
tains are composed is apt to break away, and thus
produces those sharply-cut outlines which stand out
so clearly against the transparent sky of Greece.”
So large a troupe of actors played their parts in

Greek history that the imagination demands a roomy

stage. But the country is small. Were it not for the
mountain barriers, the scale of distances would seem
trivial. It is, for example, only some thirty miles in an
air line from Thermopylae to the Gulf of Corinth. Even
io GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
on the leisurely and winding Piraeus, Athens, and Pelo-
ponnesus Railway, it is only one day’s ride from Athens
via the Isthmus down to Kalamata on the Bay of Mes-
senia. The degrees of latitude that include the main-
land of Central and Southern Greece span in the west
only the Lipari Islands and Sicily; the thirty-eighth
parallel that passes south of Palermo and the straits of

Messina runs a little north of Athens; while the thir-

ty-seventh parallel, running just south of Syracuse,

passes still farther south of Kalamata and Sparta.
Not only is the mainland of Greece contained in
narrow geographical limits, but the ^Egean itself is

almost an inland lake enclosed within neighbouring

coasts. In clear weather the sailor, without adventur-
ing upon open sea, might pass from mainland to main-
land as he watched from his advancing prow another
island lift above the horizon before losing sight of the
harbour left astern. In Greek literature there is no more
striking reminder of the contiguity of the Asian coast

to Greece proper than the well-known passage in the

“Agamemnon” of ^Eschylus describing the swift tele-

graphy of the beacon signals that brought to Argos the

news of the capture of Troy. The ten years’ absence
of Agamemnon’s host tends to an instinctive extension
of the distance, if the imagination is not checked by the
actual scale of miles. Troy seems farther from Argos
than the Holy Land from the homes of the Crusaders.

Beacon telegraphy is a time-honored device. Many

bright beacons doubtless blazed before Agamemnon,
 INTRODUCTORY n
as well as since his time. Commentators have been at

pains to justify by modern experiments with beacon

fires on lofty heights the severest strain upon our
optic nerves which iEschylus makes in the case of the

light that leaped from Mount Athos to the high ridges

of Euboea. The distance is more than ioo miles, but,

bearing in mind that the Euboean mountain is some

4000 feet high and Athos more than 6000, we need not
apply for any special license for our poet’s imagination.
The devious course of the fire signals from Euboea to

Argos is one of the best illustrations of the jagged sur-

face that Greece lifts skywards. As one stands on
Mount Pentelicus and looks across to Euboea, the inter-
vening arm of the sea is hemmed in for the eye into

narrow inland lakes. And Aeschylus, sufficiently, though

not officiously, realistic, makes the firelight zigzag ir-

regularly to dodge the interfering ridges till it falls upon

the palace roof at Argos, — not at Mycenae, as is the
not infrequent misrepresentation of the ^Eschylean
story.

Clytemnestra, to the chorus asking who could have

brought the news so quickly, replies :
—
‘Hephaestus, on from Ida sending brilliant gleam,
And hither beacon beacon sped with courier flame.
FirstIda to the Hermaean crag of Lemnos sent,
Then from the island was received the mighty flame
By Athos, Zeus’s mount, as third this over-passed
:
—
So that it skimmed the sea’s broad back, the torch’s — might,
A joyous traveller, the pine’s gold gleam, sun-like,
To watching Mount Macistus brought its flashing news.
 ;

12 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

Macistus then, delaying not, nor foolishly
Foredone with sleep, as messenger pass’d on his share.
The beacon’s gleam unto Euripus flowing far
Then came and signal to Messapium’s pickets made.
They too gave back a flame and ever onward sent
The news by lighting up a heap of heather gray.
The Torch then, strong to run, nor dimm’d as yet, leap’d on
Like radiant moon across Asopus and his plain
And came unto Cithaeron’s crags, awaking there
A new relay of courier flame nor did the guard
:

Disown the far-escorted light, but escort flame

In turn made soar aloft into the ether high.
Then over Lake Gorgopis smote the gleam and came
Unto Mount ^Egiplanctus urging that the flame
Ordain’d should fail not. Lighting with ungrudging strength
They send a mighty beard of fire. O’er the height
That overlooks the Saronic Gulf it onward flared,
Until, when it had reach’d the Arachnaean steep,
It lighted on the outposts neighbour to our town
Then on this roof of the Atreidae falls this light,
The long-descended grandchild of the Idaean flame!”

From the very smallness of Greece results the over-

crowding of associations that almost oppress the spec-
tator standing at one or another place of vantage.
But if his historic horizon is as clearly defined as the
physical he will come back to the sea-level with a
clearer understanding of the interdependence between
the scene and the action of the greatdramas here en-
acted. The country is not only a background but a
cause for the literature. Neither can be fully under-
stood without the other.
It must not be assumed from the smallness of the
land that the spurs to the imagination of the Greeks
were few. On the contrary, within their narrow bor-
 INTRODUCTORY 13

ders, nature was prodigal of her inspiration. In the few

miles from Thessaly to the Messenian Gulf are offered
a variety of climate and an alternation of products
well-nigh unparalleled for such a limited area. The
warm air of the sea penetrating into sheltered valleys

favours an almost tropical vegetation, while the lofty

mountain ridges offer almost an Alpine climate. In
Attica, in early spring, snow may occasionally be seen
sprinkled on Hymettus and glistening white on Mount
Pentelicus, while oranges hang on the trees in Athens.

Taygetus in the south maybe a snow-covered mountain

even as late as May while in the Messenian plain be-
low grows the palm and, more rarely, the edible date.

In the Argolis are groves of lemons and oranges, and

in Naxos, in the same latitude as Sparta, the tender

lime ripens in the gardens. The gray-green olive is

familiar throughout Central and Southern Greece.

If we extend the survey farther north, the beeches of
the Pindus range, west of Thessaly, are surrounded
by the vegetation rather of northern Europe; in the
interior of Thessaly the olive tree does not flourish;
the northern shores of the ^Egean have the climate of
Central Germany, while Mount Athos, whose marble
walls jut far out into the ^Egean and rise 6400 feet above
the sea, offers on its slopes nearly all species of European
trees in succession.

The different parts of Greece offer a varying devel-

opment in literature. In this particular some districts,

like Acarnania, ^Etolia, and Achaea, though possessed

14 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
of great natural beauty, are negligible. Arcadia, though
itself unproductive, inspired poetry; others, also, like
Phocis, Locris, and Messenia, are inevitably drawn
into the associations of literature and history. In
Epirus we find at Dodona the first known sanctuary of
Zeus, the supreme god of the Greeks. In Thessaly the
earliest Greeks, or Achaeans, may have first forged in
the fire of their young imagination the tempered steel

of the hexameter. Here was the home of Achilles, and

here, perhaps, we must look for the kernel of the Iliad.
Here most fitly, close to Olympus where dwelt the im-
mortals, could the sons of men be “near-gods.”
From the north and northwest successive waves of
population descended into lower Greece to conquer,
merge with, or become subject to the previous comers.

But prehistoric peoples, whether alien or Greek, like

the Eteo- Cretans, the Pelasgi, the Minyae, the Leleges,

the Hellenes, the Achaeans, and even great movements
like the Dorian and Ionian migrations, are all fore-

shortened on a scenic background, as equidistant to the

Greeks of the classic periods as is the vault of heaven
to the eyes of children. One star, indeed, differed from
another. The Dorian, for example, was of the first

magnitude. But the relations of apparent magnitude

and real distance were ignored or naively confused in

the fanciful constellations of myth and saga, distant

yet ever present, bending around them to their explored
horizon. Heroic figures impalpable but real as the
gods themselves intervened continually, controlling
 INTRODUCTORY i5

decisions, shaping policies, or determining disputed

boundaries among even the most intellectual of the

Greeks. Royalty, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny

alike must reckon with personified tradition.
When we emerge into the light of more authentic
records it is well, in the confusing maze of inter-cantonal
contentions, to focus the mind, for the purpose of ap-
preciating the literature, upon certain broader relations
and more clearly defined epochs in Greek history, like

the so-called “Age of the Despots” within the seventh

and sixth centuries, the Persian wars, and the conflicts

between Attica as a pivot and the Peloponnese, Thebes,

and Macedon.
It might be expected from the variety of natural
charm offered by Hellenic lands, from Ilium to Sicily,

from Mount Olympus to Crete, that the Greeks would

show in their literature a pervasive love of nature. This
was, in fact, the case. The modern eye has not been the
first to discover the beauty of form and colour in the
Greek flowers and birds, mountains, sky and sea.
Modern critics, ignoring all historical perspective and
assuming as a procrustean standard the one-sided and
sophisticated attitude that has played a leading role in
modern literature, announced as axiomatic that ancient
Greek poets had no feeling for nature and found no
pleasure in looking at the beauties of a landscape.
This superficial idea still keeps cropping up, although
thoughtful readers of Greek literature have long since
pointed out the necessity both of a chronological analy-
16 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
sis of the literature and of a more inclusive statement of

the various forms in which a sentiment for the natural

world is evinced.* It is a far cry from Homer to Theo-
critus, and, as might well be expected in a range of six
centuries and more, new elements appear from time to
time, due both to changing conditions of life and civil-

ization and also to the personal equation.

A naive feeling for nature is uppermost in the de-

scriptive comparisons and similes of Homer and, gen-

erally speaking, in the myth-making of the Greeks.

The concrete embodiment of natural phenomena and

objects in some Nature-divinity often obviated the
necessity for elaborate description and summarized
their conceptions as if by an algebraic formula. The
mystical element was not lacking, but by this myth-
making process it became objective and real. The
sympathetic feeling for nature becomes more and more
apparent in lyric poetry and the drama until in Euripi-

des there emerges, almost suddenly, the “modern”

romanticism. In the Hellenistic and imperial times,
finally, the sentimental element is natural to men who
turn to the country for relief from the stress of life in a

city. One generalization for the classic periods may

be safely made. Although the Greeks from Homer to

Euripides thought of the world as the environment of

man, yet they stopped short of a sentimental self-analy-

sis. Charles Eliot Norton, more than thirty years ago,

* Cf. Fairclough, The Attitude of the Greek Tragedians toward

Nature.
 INTRODUCTORY 17

pointed out that the expression of a sentiment like

Wordsworth’s —
“To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears” —
is foreign to the clear-eyed Hellene, reared amongst
the distinct outlines of his mountains and from the
cradle to the grave at home upon the blue and wind-
swept iEgean. Certainly this is true until the spec-

ulative questionings of the Ionic philosophers had

time to react upon literature. As the Greeks ac-

cepted their pedigrees from the gods and heroes, so

they accepted their environment of beauty. They
were not unlike the child, content to betray by a
stray word or caress his unanalyzed admiration for his
mother’s face.
Emphasis has often been laid, and rightly, upon the
keen sensitiveness of the Greeks to beauty of form in

sculpture, architecture, and literature. It is urged that

theymade this sense of form and proportion so para-
mount that they were blind to the beauty of colouring
and indifferent to the prodigal variety of Nature’s
compositions. It may be readily admitted that this is a
vital distinction between the ancient and modern atti-

tudes. Both the craving for perfection of form and the

preference given to man before nature come out in the

preeminent development of sculpture by the Greeks.

Their admiration of the beauty of the human form, un-
like the sensitive shrinking of moderns, was extended
even to the lifeless body. ^Eschylus speaks of the war-
18 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
riors who have found graves before Troy as still “ fair

of form.”
But a prevailing tendency does not necessarily ex-

clude other elements. However meagre the vocabulary

of the Greeks in sharp distinction of shades of colour,
their love for a bright colour-scheme is shown not only
by the brilliancy of their clothing and their use of col-

ouring in statuary and architecture, — for even in

these mere form was not enough, — but in unnum-
bered expressions like Aleman’s “sea-purple bird of
the springtime.”
A few of the more obvious passages, illustrating the

Greek attitude toward nature, are here given in gen-

eral historic sequence. Others will be found in the

subsequent chapters in connection with particular land-
scapes. Very often such references are casual and subor-
dinate to some controlling idea, but they none the less

reflect habitual observation. Even when we speak of

Homeric “ tags,” like the “ saffron-robed ” or “rosy-fin-

gered,” or of Sappho’s “ golden-sandalled ” Dawn, as

we are implying that these epi-
“standing epithets,”
made a general appeal. The naive insertions in
thets

Homer of comparisons drawn from birds and beasts,

from night and storm and other familiar elements of
nature, would seem like an intrusive delay of the story
did they not carry with them the conviction that both
poet and hearers alike were well content to linger by
the way and observe the objects of daily life indoors
and out. Thus in the Odyssey :
—
 INTRODUCTORY 19

“The lion mountain-bred, with eyes agleam, fares on-

ward in the rain and wind to fall upon the oxen or the
sheep or wilding deer.”

Or, again :
—
“Hermes sped along the waves like sea-mew hunting
fish inawesome hollows of the sea unharvested and wet-
ting his thick plumage in the brine.”

One of the longer and best known comparisons is the

description in the Iliad of the Trojan encampment by
night :
—
“ Now they with hearts exultant through the livelong
night sat by the space that bridged the moat of war, their

watch-fires multitudinous alight. And just as in the sky

the stars around the radiant moon shine clear; when wind-
less is the air; when all the peaks stand out, the lofty fore-
lands and the glades; when breaketh open from the sky
the ether infinite and all the stars are seen and make the
shepherds glad at heart — so manifold appeared the watch-
fires kindled by the Trojan men in front of Ilios betwixt
the streams of Xanthus and the ships. So then a thousand
fires burned upon the plain and fifty warriors by the side
of each were seated in the blazing fire’s gleam the while

the horses by the chariots stood and champed white bar-

ley and the spelt and waited for the throned Dawn.”

Sappho’s fragments are redolent of flowers; her

woven verse, a “rich-red chlamys” in the sunshine,

has a silver sheen in the moonlight. We hear the full-

throated passion of “the herald of the spring, the

nightingale ” ;
the breeze moves the apple boughs, the
wind shakes the oak trees. Her allusions to “the
 :

20 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

hyacinths, darkening the ground, when trampled under
foot of shepherds”; the “ fine, soft bloom of grass,
trodden by the tender feet of Cretan women as they
dance”; or the “golden pulse growing on the shore,”
— all these seem inevitable to one who has seen the
acres of bright flowers that carpet the islands or the
nearby littoral of the Asian coast. Her comparison of
a bridegroom to “a supple sapling” recalls how Nausi-
caa, vigorous, tall, and straight as the modern ath-
letic maiden, is likened by Odysseus to the “young
shaft of a palm tree” that he had once seen “spring-
ing up in Delos by Apollo’s altar.” In her Lesbian
orchards the sweet quince-apple is still left hanging
“solitary on the topmost bough, upon its very end”;
and there is heard “cool murmuring through apple
boughs while slumber floateth down from quivering
leaves.” Nor need we attribute Sappho’s love of natu-

ral beauty wholly to her passionate woman’s nature.

All the gentler emotions springing from an habitual
observation of nature recur in poets of the sterner sex.
“The Graces,” she says, “turn their faces from those
who wear no garlands.” And at banquets wreaths
were an essential also for masculine full-dress. Pindar,
in describing Elysian happiness, leads up to the climax

of the companionship with the great and noble dead

by telling how “round the islands of the Blest the
ocean breezes blow and flowers of gold are blooming
some from the land on trees of splendour and some
the water feedeth; with wreaths whereof they twine
 INTRODUCTORY 21

their heads and hands.” * Against the green back-

ground passes Evadne with her silver pitcher and her
girdle of rich crimson woof, and her child is seen “hid-
den in the rushes of the thicket unexplored, his tender

flesh all steeped in golden and deep purple light from

pansy flowers.”
To follow through the poetry of the Greeks the un-
failing delight in the radiance of the moon would be
to follow her diurnal course as she passes over Greek
lands from east to west. The full moon looked down
on all the Olympian festivals and Pindar’s pages are
illuminated with her glittering argentry. The Lesbian
nights inspire Sappho as did all things beautiful.

“The clustering stars about the radiant moon avert

their faces bright and hide, what time her orb is rounded
to the full and touches earth with silver.”

Wordsworth could take this thought from Sappho:

“The moon doth with delight look round her when the
heavens are bare,” but the Lesbian certainly did not
finish the fragment by lamenting that “ there has passed
away a glory from the earth.”
The night and the day alike claimed the attention of
the poets and the interchange of dusk and dawn ap-
pealed to the sculptor also. In the east gable of the
Parthenon the horses of the Sun and of the Moon were
at either end. Nature’s sleep is a favourite topic. Ale-
man’s description is unusual only for its detail :
—
* Translation (modified) by E. Myers.
 —

22 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

“Sleep the peaks and mountain clefts;

Forelands and the torrents’ rifts;

All the creeping things are sleeping,

Cherished in the black earth’s keeping;
Mountain -ranging beast and bee;
Fish in depths of the purple sea;
Wide-winged birds their pinions droop —
Sleep now all the feathered troop.”

Goethe, in his well-known paraphrase, —

“ Ueber alien Gipfeln
1st Ruh,” —
cannot refrain from adding the subjective conclusion
of the whole matter :
—
“Die Vogelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.”

The great dramatists display an observation of the

beauty of the external world not always sufficiently

emphasized. In ^Eschylus an intense feeling is evi-

dent ;
none the less because it is subordinated to his
theme or used to point, by way of contrast, some
awe-inspiring or pathetic situation or some scene of
blood. Clytemnestra describes how she murdered her
husband. His spattering blood, she says,
“Keeps striking me with dusky drops of murd’rous dew,
Aye, me rejoicing none the less than God’s sweet rain
Makes glad the corn-land at the birth-pangs of the buds.”

Comparisons, similes, and epithets drawn from the sea

reappear continually in the warp and woof of Greek,
and especially of Athenian, literature. H^schylus, like
the rest, knew the sea in all its moods, terrible in storm,
 INTRODUCTORY 23

deceitful in calm, beautiful at all times and the path-

way for commerce and for war. The returning herald
in the “Agamemnon” rehearses the soldiers’ hard
bivouac in summer and in winter :
—
“ And should one tell of winter, dealing death to birds,
What storms unbearable swept down from Ida’s snow,
Or summer’s heat when, ruffled by no rippling breeze,
Ocean slept waveless, on his midday couch laid prone.”

With the first lines of “Prometheus Bound” we are

carried far from the haunts of men :
—
“Unto this far horizon of earth’s plain we’ve come,
This Scythian tract, this desert by man’s foot untrod.”

Hephaestus reluctant, compelled by Zeus’s order, rivets

his kin-god, the Fire-bringer, to the desolate North
Sea crag and withdraws leaving Prometheus in fetters

to “wrestle down the myriad years of time.” The

night shuts off the warmth and fight, drawing over
him her “star-embroidered robe,” and the fierce sun-
god returns with blazing rays to “deflower his fair

skin” bared of the white counterpane of “frost of early

dawn.” Not until the emissaries of Zeus have departed
does Prometheus deign to speak. Then he “communes
with Nature.” He has no hope of help from God, none
from the “helpless creatures of a day” whom he has
helped. Alone with the forces of nature he utters that
outcry unsurpassed in sublimity and in pathos :
—
“O upper air divine and winds on swift wings borne;
Ye river-springs; innumerous laughter of the waves
Of Ocean; thou, Earth, the mother of us all;
24 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
And thou, all-seeing orb of the Sun — to you cry: I
Behold me what I ’m suffering, a god from gods ”!

Sophocles, too, lets Philoctetes, in his misery and

loneliness on the rocky island of Lemnos, call out to the
wild beasts and the landscape :
—
“Harbours and headlands; and ye mountain-ranging beasts,
Companions mine; ye gnawed and hanging cliffs! Of this
To you I cry aloud, for I have none save you —
You ever present here — to whom to make my cry.
”

In his famous ode on the Attic Colonus he describes

the natural beauty of his home with particularizing
exactness. He has also a wealth of glittering epithet
used for local colouring, for symbolism and personifi-
cation. The contrast of day and night offers to him
a welcome mise-en-scene. The sun’s rays are Apollo’s
golden shafts and the moon’s light seems to filter

through the trees as Artemis roams the uplands :

—
“O God from the woven gold
of the light,
Of the bow, I am fain to behold
strings of thy
Thy arrows invincible, showered around,
As champions smiting our foes to the ground.
And Artemis, too, with her torches flaring,
Gleams onward through Lycian uplands faring.”

Bacchus, also, the “god of the golden snood,” “lifts

his pine-knot’s sparkle” and, roaming with his Mae-

nads, seems to visualize for men the soul of Nature.
Aristophanes with his common-sense objectivity was
averse to the sentimental and romantic in Euripides,

which seemed to him effeminate. His love for nature

was clear-eyed and Hellenic. His lyrics shine like a
 INTRODUCTORY 25

bird’s white wing in the sunlight. The self-invocation

of the Clouds is alive with the radiance of the Attic

atmosphere. A translation can only serve to illustrate

the elements used in the description :
—
CHORUS OF CLOUDS
“Come ever floating, O Clouds, anew,
Let us rise dew
with the radiant
Of our nature undefiled
From father Ocean’s billows wild.
The tree-fringed peak
Of hill upon lofty hill let us seek
That we may look on the cliffs far-seen,
And the sacred land’s water that lends its green
To the fruits, and the whispering rush of the rivers divine
And the clamorous roar of the dashing brine.
For Ether’s eye is flashing his light
Untired by glare as of marble bright.”

The “meteor eyes” of the sun gaze “sanguine” and

unblinking upon the cloud-palisades, glaring bright as
the marble of Mount Pentelicus. Readers of the Greek
will recognize here and there how an Aristophanic
epithet or thought has been precipitated and recom-
bined by Shelley into new and radiant shapes that
drift through his own cloud-land, — “I change but I
cannot die!”
Aristophanes’s observation of nature is varied and
exact. He had nothing but ridicule for the pale student
within doors, and only a man who kept up an intimacy
with “the open road” could have made the natural-
istic painting in the “Peace” of the serenity of country
life :
—
26 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
“ We miss the life of days gone by, the pressed fruit-
cakes, the figs, the myrtles and the sweet new wine, the
olive trees, the violet bed beside the well.”

Euripides in his attitude toward nature has all the

qualities of the other tragedians except sublimity, to

which he more rarely attains. Many qualities are much

more conspicuous. His range of colour is wider. His
allusions to rivers and to the plant and animal world are
more detailed. Picturesque scenes and setting delight
him. Beyond all this the reflection in nature of human
emotion, occasional in his predecessors, plays in his
verse almost a leading part. Modern romanticism, in

short, is no longer exceptional.

Hippolytus, the acolyte of Artemis, and his attendants
address the virgin goddess who ranges the woods and
mountains and who, as iEschylus says, is “kindly unto
all the young things suckled at the breast of wild-wood
roaming beasts.” The “modern” element in the origi-

nal loses nothing in this paraphrase by Mallock :

—
“Hail, O most pure, most perfect, loveliest one!
Lo, in my hand I bear,
Woven for the circling of thy long gold hair,
Culled leaves and flowers, from places which the sun
The Spring long shines upon,
Where never shepherd hath driven flock to graze,
Nor any grass is mown;
But there sound throughout the sunny, sweet warm days,
’Mid the green holy place
The wild bee’s wings alone.”

In one of the despairing chorals of the “Trojan

Women” the personification of nature blends with the
 INTRODUCTORY 27

spirit of mythology. The name of Tithonus, easily

supplied by a Greek hearer, is inserted for English

readers in Gilbert Murray’s beautiful paraphrase :

—
“For Zeus — O leave it unspoken:
But alas for the love of the Morn;
Morn of the milk-white wing
The gentle, the earth-loving,
That shineth on battlements broken
In Troy, and a people forlorn!
And, lo, in her bowers Tithonus,
Our brother, yet sleeps as of old:
O, she too hath loved us and known us,
And the Steeds of her star, flashing gold,
Stooped hither and bore him above us;
Then blessed we the Gods in our joy.
But all that made them to love us
Hath perished from Troy.”

When Dionysus addresses his Bacchantes, Euripides,

in lines reminiscent of Aleman, imposes upon outward
nature the solemn expectancy of the inward mind :
—
“Hushed was the ether; in hushed silence whispered not
Leaves in the coppice nor the blades of meadow grass;
No cry at all of any wild things had you heard.”

The formal banns of the open wedlock of man and

nature were declared in Euripides. Thereafter the
treatment became more and more a matter of personal
equation. In Plato’s dialogues, for example, the ethical
element inevitably appears. In the famous scene beside
the Ilissus, Socrates and young Phaedrus talk through

the heated hours beneath the shade of the wide-spread-

ing plane tree, where the agnus castus is in full bloom,
where water cool to the unsandalled feet flows by, and
28 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
in the branches the cicadae, “prophets of the Muses,”
contribute of their wisdom.
The Anthology, stretched through the centuries of
Greek literature, links the old and the newer, the an-
tique reserve and the fainness of modern romanticism.
One of the epigrams attributed to Plato will serve to
indicate the emergence of the latter :
—
“On the stars thou art gazing, my Star;
Would that the sky I might be,
For then from afar
With my manifold eyes I would gaze upon thee.”

Another seems like an artist’s preliminary sketch for

the picture by the Ilissus, the deeper motive not yet
painted in :
—
“Sit theedown by this pine tree whose twigs without number
Whisper aloft in the west wind aquiver.
Lo! here by my stream as it chattereth ever
The Panpipe enchanteth thy eyelids to slumber.”
From this we pass without break to the piping shep-
herds and the country charms with which Theocritus
filled his Idyls for city- jaded men :
—
. . . “There we lay
Half buried in a couch of fragrant reed
And fresh-cut vine leaves, who so glad as we?
A wealth of elm and poplar shook o’erhead;
Hard by, a sacred spring flowed gurgling on
From the Nymphs’ grot, and in the sombre boughs
The sweet cicada chirped laboriously.
Hid in the thick thorn-bushes far away
The treefrog’s note was heard; the crested lark
Sang. with the goldfinch; turtles made their moan,
And o’er the fountain hung the gilded bee.” *
* Translated by C. S. Calverly.
 INTRODUCTORY 29

Notwithstanding the variety in landscape and the

lack of unified nationality in the long centuries of Greek
history, there is a unity in the impression of ancient
life left upon the mind by a visit to Greece. This is

in part due to the comparative meagreness of remains

from periods subsequent to classic times. The long
obliteration of mediaeval and modem constructive civ-
ilization leaves more clear the outlines of antiquity.

This is true even though the sum total of the re-

mains of Byzantine and mediaeval life, on islands and

on mainland, is large and claims the attention from time
to time. In Athens the traveller will come upon the
small Metropolis church with its ancient Greek calen-
dar of festivals, let in as a frieze above the entrance
and metamorphosed into Byzantine sanctity by the in-

scribing of Christian crosses. As he journeys to and fro

”
in Greece he may see the venerable “ hundred-gated
church on the island of Paros, recalling in certain de-
tails the proscenium of an ancient theatre ;
Monem vasia
with its vast ruins, the home of Byzantine ecclesiasticism
and a splendour of court life that vied with the pomp
and magnificence of western Europe; or the ivy-clad
ruins of Mistra, an epitome of Graeco- Byzantine art
from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century; the frown-

ing hill and castle of Karytaena that guards the ap-

proach to the mountain fastnesses of Arcadia; or the
ancient acropolis of Lindus on the island of Rhodes
with the impregnable fortress of the Knights of St.

John.
 ;;

30 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

Nor will the visitor ignore the reminders of the War
of Independence and the renascence of life in modern
Greece. Mesolonghi, Nauplia, and Arachova have
contributed fresh chapters to human history. Aligned
with ancient names are those of modern heroes in the
nomenclature of the streets and of public squares, like

the Karaiskakis Place that welcomes the traveller as he

disembarks at Piraeus.

But all of these, whether mediaeval or modern, fail

to blur the understanding of antiquity. They do not
obtrude themselves. Often they even illustrate ancient

life. The same wisdom that transferred allegiance

from the Saturnalia to the Christmas festival has here
also been careful to use for Byzantine churches the site
of ancient shrines or temples : St. Elias is a familiar
name on high mountains where once stood altars of the
Olympians; the cult of Dionysus has been skilfully

transformed, in vine-rearing Naxos, into that of St.

Dionysius; SS. Cosmo and Damiano, patrons of medi-

cine, and known as the “feeless” saints, have estab-
lished their free dispensary in place of an Asklepieion
the twelve Apostles have replaced the “Twelve Gods”
and churches dedicated to St. Demetrius have been
substituted for shrines of Demeter.
The thoughtful student of the literature of the
Greeks, no matter how enthusiastic he may be, will not

fail to draw warnings as well as inspiration from their

history. But no defects of the Greeks nor achievements

of posterity can dispossess Hellas of her peculiar lustre.
 INTRODUCTORY 3i

“No other nation, ” as Mr. Ernest Myers has said with

particular reference to the age of Pindar, “has ever
before or since known what it was to stand alone im-
measurably advanced at the head of the civilization

of the world.”
 CHAPTER II

PIRAEUS, THE HARBOUR TOWN

“Returning from Asia Minor and voyaging from ^Egina toward
Megara I began to look on the places round about me. Behind me
was iEgina; before me Megara; on the right Piraeus; on the left
Corinth — cities once flourishing, now prostrate and in ruins.”
Servius Sulpicius to Cicero.

T he sail in bright sunshine up the Gulf of

iEgina, the ancient Saronic Gulf, will
fulfilled the traveller’s anticipations of
beauty of Greece and will have quickened the historic
imagination. History and antiquity, however, will give
have
the

place to the insistent claims of modern Greek life, as

the steamer enters the busy port and passes through the
narrow opening between the welcoming arms of the
ancient moles which still protect the harbour and serve
at night to hold up the green and red signal lights for
mariners.
In this harbour meet the Orient and the Occident.
One may see here craft of all kinds from all parts of the
Mediterranean and from beyond the Straits; modern
steamers, big and little; gunboats, native or foreign;
sailing vessels from the Greek islands or Turkish pos-
sessions, laden with bright cargoes of yellow lemons
and Cretan oranges, great grapes purple and white, or
 PIRyEUS, THE HARBOUR TOWN 33

“ tunnies steeped in brine”; here a steamer packed

with pilgrims for a religious festival on Tenos; here,
perhaps, another vessel crowded with American tourists
to Jerusalem.
Upon landing, most visitors go immediately to Athens,
but no one should fail to return once and again to
Piraeus in order to see the extant remains of the ship-
houses; of the gateways and walls to the northwest of
the Great Harbour; of the walls that skirt the whole
peninsula of the theatres and other scanty traces of the
;

old life within the city. Even to a traveller innocent of

the facts of Greek history, the drive at sunset along the

rim of the peninsula and the indenting harbours will

be one of the best remembered experiences in the neigh-
bourhood of Athens, by reason of the sheer physical
beauty of land and sea, islands and distant mountains.
The terminus of the electric railroad from Athens
to Piraeus is in the northwest corner of the modern
town between the lines now assumed for the “The-
mistocles Wall” and the “Wall of Conon,” dating,
respectively, from the two most significant epochs in

the history of Piraeus. Although the tyrant Hippias

had begun to fortify the Munychia hill in the sixth

century b. c., his undertaking was interrupted, and it

was left for Themistocles, in the early part of the fifth

century, to begin, and finally to carry well on the way

to completion, the transformation into a sea-fortress of
this natural vantage-ground. Later, he was for remov-
ing Athens itself to Piraeus. Failing in this, he shifted
34 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
the habitat for the new fleet from the open roadstead
of Phalerum, which was nearer Athens, to the land-
locked harbours of Piraeus. But the return of the
Persians, ten years after Marathon, surprised the
Athenians with their preparations incomplete, and
Athens was transferred, not indeed to Piraeus, but to
the “wooden walls” of the triremes themselves.

When, under Pericles, Athens reached the acme of

her intellectual, artistic, and material power, around
the harbours at Piraeus had been built a well-planned
city, with stately avenues and dwellings for wealthy
men and wealthier gods. The port had been completely
fortified either by the restoration and carrying out of
the interrupted building or by the extension of the plans
of Themistocles. A massive wall inclosed the three
harbours within its circuit, and strong moles, lasting
on into modern times, guarded their entrances. Ship-
houses had also been built, and doubtless an arsenal,
though a less pretentious one than the great structure
afterwards erected. In short, all the paraphernalia
existed for offensive and defensive naval operations.
The “Long Walls,” actually built soon after the ban-
ishment of Themistocles in 472 b. c., had united Athens
and its port into a dual city. No greater proof of the
vital union of the two cities could be cited than the rage
and grief felt by the citizens when, at the end of the

Peloponnesian War, in404 b. c., the Spartans razed

the Long Walls. It was amputating the very feet of the
imperial Queen of the ^Egean.
 PIRAEUS, THE HARBOUR TOWN 35

Some ten years later, the Long Walls were rebuilt and
the restoration of the Piraeus fortifications was taken in

hand. Of the remains now visible, the major part

belongs to this rebuilding at the beginning of the fourth
century. A little less than a century had elapsed since
Marathon, and we now find Athens allied with her old
enemy, Persia, against another Greek state. Conon the
Athenian, victorious over the Spartans in the naval
battle of Cnidus, sent back Persian gold to fortify the

Piraeus anew, and the circuit wall, of which such ex-

tensive remains are extant, was called by his name.

On issuing from the electric railroad station, the
visitor sees before him, a few yards distant, the Great
Harbour’s smaller, inner fold, known in antiquity as
“The Marsh” (Port d’Halae) or, perhaps, as the
“Blind” Harbour. This inner harbour, roughly a
third of a mile by a sixth in size, now furnishes ample
accommodation for smaller craft and a convenient
landing-place, although in Conon’s day it was probably
more of a marshy barrier than a navigable sheet of
water. If the whole contour of the two harbours to-

gether suggested the designation of “Cantharus,” it

may have been from either the meaning “Beetle,” or

that of “Two-handled Cup.” Until recently, the name
was identified with the southernmost portion only of
the Great Harbour. The locus classicus is the “ Peace”
of Aristophanes. Daedalus and Icarus with their flying-
machines had long since anticipated the modern aero-
plane, and in this comedy Trygaeus in search of Peace
36 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
starts out to navigate Zeus’s ether on his “beetle.
Then, as now, a safe landing-place for the airship was
a desideratum, and Trygaeus states that he will have
as a safe mooring “ the Cantharus harbour in Piraeus.” *
Skirting now the northern margin of the inner har-
bour, the route will follow in part the probable line of
the demolished wall of Themistocles, which extended
on and reached the water outside both the peninsula of
Eetioneia and the outer bay of Krommydaru, where
traces of the more ancient fortifications are still extant.
Close by the modem station of the Larisa railway,

however, will be found the very considerable mins of a

gateway identified with the Conon walls. This alone is

an ample reward for the long detour around the har-

bour.
If time and energy permit, it is well worth while,
instead of crossing by boat to Akte, to return to the

starting-point and to saunter along the whole margin of

the Great Harbour. Particularly picturesque are the
great sloops, laden with lemons and oranges, moored
in behind the Karaiskakis square, which only the pe-
destrian would be likely to discover. As one lingers

along the quays, however, modern warships and all the

craft for commerce and travel will give place to the

memories evoked from the greater past. This harbour

* The Cantharus, or beetle, of Trygaeus is likened in the comedy

to aNaxian boat, a resemblance easily recognized in the drinking-cup
called “Cantharus,” with its two projecting handles for bow and
stern.
 PIR^US, THE HARBOUR TOWN 37

of commerce will, in imagination, be once more crowded

with triremes, brought around from the two war-
harbours on the other side, to be inspected one after
the other by the Council of the Five Hundred. As offi-

cial inspectors of the triremes, when made ready to set

out for conquest or defeat, this Council held its sittings

on the Choma, probably a little promontory that juts

southward from the Karaiskakis Place. One may recall,

with the help of Thucydides, the setting out of the ill-

starred Sicilian expedition. No such vast array had

ever left the harbour for so distant and protracted a
warfare. All the citizens of Athens as well as of Piraeus
are here to witness the departure of sons and friends.

High hopes of imperial expansion feed the imagination

of the multitude. Some rest their confidence on divine
favour sure to accompany the pious, though reluctant,
Nicias others put faith in the warrior
;
Lamachus more
;

in the brilliant Alcibiades, still idolized though accused

of sharing in the mutilation of the Hermae. The great

fleet of swift triremes is ready, together with the trans-
ports for heavy-armed soldiers, equipments, and sup-
plies. Now the men are all on board and a hush falls

upon the throng at a sudden blast of the trumpet. The

prayers, according to established ritual, are offered by
the united squadron. At a concerted sign, the mixing-

bowls are crowned throughout the whole host and the

men and generals pour libations from gold and silver
cups. The throngs upon the land, both citizens and for-
eign well-wishers, join in the service. The hymn of tri-
38 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
umph sung, the libations poured, the ships weigh anchor
and put to sea. But before the last trireme has passed
through the moles, and while the ear still catches the
notes of the flute and the voice of the Keleustce, giving
the time to the crews, a revulsion of grim presentiment
overmasters many of the watchers on the shore. The
expedition now no longer seems what they so lightly
voted in the assembly. The ever- recurrent Greek feel-
ing that “high things annoy the god” calls up the
warning words of ^Eschylus, uttered a generation be-
fore, in the year of the unlucky Egyptian expedition
sent out on a similar venture :
—
“Grown Insolence is wont to breed
Young Insolence midst mortals’ sorrow,
Then, then, when to th’ implanted seed
There comes the birth-light’s destined morrow.”

Or else his immortal lament “over the unreturning

brave” comes unbidden to their lips: —
“Whom one sent forth to war one knows, but, in the
stead of men, come back unto the homes of each but urns
and ashes.”

The mysterious mutilation of the Hermae is fresh in

mind and the fear of angered gods reasserts its sway.

But no presentiment of ill could anticipate the reality of
the disaster in the harbour of Syracuse or the slow tor-
tures of living death in its stone quarries. A chance for
retaliation in kind was indeed to come. In a Piraeus
stone quarry Syracusan captives were in turn impris-
oned a few years later, but they, more lucky than the
 PIRAEUS, THE HARBOUR TOWN 39

Athenians, cut their way to freedom from their rock-

bound prison.

Despite the imperious insolence of Athens and her

unrighteous schemes for aggrandizement, our sym-
pathy in the tragedy is ever fresh. By the harbour side
we mourn to-day the predestined doom of the gallant
squadron and the stricken city. Through the ebb and
flow of hope and disaster, the thought sweeps on to the
close of the war and the humiliation of Athens at the
hands of Sparta; the destruction of the Long Walls,
their rebuilding and the refortification of Piraeus under
Conon ;
the aftermath of Athenian power the;
brilliant

age of Plato and the orators; the struggle with Philip;

the fall of Greek liberty; the sway of Macedon; the
Roman conquest, with the long, stubborn siege of
Piraeus so graphically described by Appian. Sulla,

exasperated by the long defence of the Mithridatic

army, with whom the Athenians had cast in their lot,

burnt the arsenal and docks and razed the fortifications

so utterly that the Roman governor, Sulpicius, in writ-
ing to his friend Cicero in 45 b. c., could describe
Piraeus as the “corpse” of a great city. In the second
century of our era it had resumed a semblance of com-
mercial prosperity. Lucian, in his dialogue, “When
My Ship Comes In,” goes down to Piraeus with a friend
to admire a great grain transport that has just put into
harbour on its way from Egypt to Rome. For a mer-
chantman it is large; some 180 feet long, 45 in beam,
and over 40 feet in depth to the hold. The prow
40 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
stretches out long, and at the stern is the gilded figure-

head of a goose with its graceful curving neck. The

two friends wonder at a sailor mounting nimbly by the
swaying ropes and running out nonchalantly along
the great yardarm, as he holds on by the yardsheets.
But the generous cargo of grain, enough, as we are
told, to feed Athens for a year, is destined for Rome.
Athens was no longer the emporium of the eastern
Mediterranean. She had become a way-station. No
longer could she enforce the old law, mentioned by
Aristotle, which required that two thirds of the cargo
of every grain-ship that put into Piraeus must be car-

ried up to the metropolis.

After Roman times, in the long atrophy of the By-

zantine age, Piraeus dwindled to a group of fishermen’s
huts. It revived somewhat under De la Roche in
the fourteenth century, and thereafter, at least was
known as Porto Leone from the seated figure of a

marble lion that kept guard among the ruins like the

majestic lion that still sentinels the battlefield of Chae-

ronea. In the seventeenth century, the Venetians car-

ried off this Piraeus lion, and now, seated by another
arsenal in another seaport, careless of the passing
lourist, it looks grimly over the Adriatic where steam-
ers come and go between the neighbouring Trieste
and its native land.
Leaving now the Great Harbour and our meditations
on the vicissitudes of history, we resume our inspection
of the fan-shaped peninsula. Without a special permit
 PIR^US, THE HARBOUR TOWN 41
/

the visitor is excluded from the western end and from

the Royal Garden which encloses the most probable
site of the Tomb of Themistocles, if indeed his bones
were ever brought back from burial in exile. His offi-

cial tomb was in Magnesia in Caria. A public interment

in his native land could not be granted to one exiled as
a traitor. Thucydides knows only of a secret burial

of his bones in Attica. The remains of the monument in

question stand on the point of Akte near the entrance to

the outermost harbour. From this tomb the great admi-
ral’s spirit could still watch over the Athenian sea-power.
Skepticism about the site is forgotten when we read the
fragment, meagre as it is, of the comic poet Plato: —

“Fair is the outlook where thy mounded tomb is placed.

For it will signalmerchantmen from here and yon,
It will behold the sailors faring out and in,
Will be spectator of the triremes’ racing oars.”

This “contest of the triremes” may allude to the boat-

race in which the course lay from Cantharus harbour
around the whole peninsula to Munychia. These races
in sacred ships were part of the systematic training of
the Attic youths.
The public road leads over the shoulder of the hill

and, in descending again to the coast, offers a beautiful

view to the west and south over the Saronic Gulf. The
driveway then runs along the water’s edge around the
promontory, keeping close inside the ruined “Wall of
Conon.” Although the remains of this encircling
wall rise nowhere more than about eight feet above
42 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
ground, and usually much less, yet the very continuity
of the ruins is imposing. Practically in an unbroken
line the solid masonry hems the irregular rim of the
peninsula from the mouth of the Great Harbour to a
point not far distant from the war-harbour of Zea on
the opposite side and may be traced again intermittently
around to the Bay of Phalerum. Solid tower buttresses
are interposed at frequent intervals. On this southern
shore of Akte, where the modern town does not intrude,
the spectator is free to divide his attention between the
beauty of the sea view and thoughts of the past.
The picturesque land-locked harbours of Zea and
Munychia next claim our interest. The pear-shaped
Zea basin, now known by the Turco-Greek name of
Pashalimani, makes into the neck of the peninsula
between the promontory hill of Akte and the Acropolis
of Munychia. Behind it and close to it was erected
in the fourth century the great Arsenal, and at vari-

ous points beneath its transparent water may still

be seen distinct remains of 38 of the ship-ways that

ran down from the ancient ship-houses where the
triremes were drawn up. Inscriptions tell us that there
were originally 372 in all, of which 82 were in Muny-
chia, 94 in the Great Harbour", and the remainder in
Zea. No other relic of antiquity brings us into closer
touch with the naval power of Athens and her empire
on the ^Egean. The covered sheds themselves can only
be reconstructed in imagination. Some broken columns
of the ship-houses and portions of the launching piers
 PIR^US, THE HARBOUR TOWN 43

remain in situ. To accommodate the 196 triremes,

130-165 feet long, assigned to the Zea Harbour, some

of the houses must have been constructed so as to dock
the boats in at least two tiers. At Syracuse, the for-

midable Piraeus of the west, remains of ship-sheds

have been found, and at Carthage, the bitter foe of
Syracuse, they remained for Appian to describe. Dry-
docks may have existed near the harbour entrance. This
narrow neck of the pear-shaped harbour was still

further guarded at the inner opening by projecting

moles, which here also are still extant. The entrance
was actually closed, in case of need, by chains extended
across at the surface of the water. Of the proud war-
ships themselves, those chargers of the sea stabled in
Zea, there remains one realistic reminder. Their tim-
bers have long since rotted away, the gulfs have washed
down all such small objects of durable material as
bronze nails and clamps, but some heavy plates of
Parian marble have been found in the harbour. These
were set into the bows of the warships, and upon them
were painted the vessel’s eyes that used to keep fierce

outlook for the enemy or peer through the gloom of

night and storm for the first sight of the shoreward

”
lights of Piraeus. Danaus at Argos, in the “ Suppliants

of iEschylus, as he sees the approaching ship, ex-

claims :
—
“The bellying sails I see; the ox-hide bulwarks stretched
Along the vessel’s sides; the prow that with its eyes
Peers forward o’er the course.”
44 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
On the marble plates actually recovered the iris is

painted bright red or blue, and a vacant hole in the

middle suggests the head of a burnished bronze nail
that served at once as the pupil of the eye and to rivet

on the plate. These eyes are common in representations

of ancient vessels, and only in recent years are they

disappearing from use among Sicilian and Italian boat-

men.
The most casual survey of this protected haven will
justify the sagacity of Themistocles in concentrating
his energy upon Piraeus. His proposition to transfer
Athens altogether to the seaport was strategically wise.

The extent of the Long Walls, uniting the two into a

double city, was a source of weakness, as it drained the
defenders away from both towns. But it was a true
instinct of the Athenians, w hich posterity endorses, to
T

cling to the sentiments evoked by their ancient city and

in it to develop to the full their intellectual empire.

It is probable that the extant traces of the ship-

sheds in the two war-harbours date back only as far
as the fourth century b. c., but the number and size

fairly represent the older Periclean constructions. The

Thirty Tyrants destroyed the former ship-sheds, as
Isocrates tells us, and sold for three talents (about

$3100) the material of these buildings upon which the

city had spent more than one thousand talents.

The ruins of the “Wall of Conon” can still be traced

for some distance to the east after leaving the harbour
of Zea, and at the southeastern promontory the ruins
 PIRAEUS, THE HARBOUR TOWN 45

of ancient fortifications are again to be seen. The har-

bour of Munychia (modem Phanari) is smaller than
that of Zea. Its contour is so perfect an oval as to seem
artificial. It had space to accommodate only eighty-

two triremes in ship-houses, scanty remains of which

are here visible under the water.
At the east side the ruined wall may again be traced
to the Bay of Phalerum or (Greek) Phaleron, and
beyond, curving around the Munychia acropolis to com-
plete the circuit to the north of the town.

Further east, on the open bay of Phaleron, is New

Phaleron, a bathing resort as frankly modem as the
Lido at Venice. The exact site of Old Phaleron is open
to dispute, but the walk between it and Athens was a
favourite constitutional in Plato’s time. Many a classic
conversation was held here on the way. In the “Sym-
posium” of Plato, Glaucon asks Apollodorus: “Isn’t
the road to Athens just made for conversation?” Now
the banality and the bareness of the city’s outskirts
intrude sadly upon the pedestrian’s philosophic equi-
poise, both here and on the other road between Athens
and Piraeus w here Lucian and
r
his friend, in the second'

century of our era, could still find shelter from the hot
sun under some olive trees by the wayside and “sit
down to rest upon an overturned stele.”
The focus of the inner city life was the splendid
Agora laid out by the famous architect Hippodamus.
Here ended the road from Athens. This square was
probably west of Munychia north of the Zea harbour,
46 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
perhaps about where the present Athena street inter-

sects Munychia avenue. Near it were probably grouped

various sanctuaries. Xenophon tells how in the civil
war the patriotic party, “the men from Phyle,” unable
to exclude “the City party” from the whole of Piraeus,

fell back on the Munychia hill, and the men from

Athens blocked up the avenue that leads to the temple
of Bendis and to the sanctuary of Munychian Artemis.
By this Market-place, too, houses of rich residents were
probably built.

The Piraeus was essentially a democratic strong-

hold. It was the rendezvous for the patriotic anti- Spar-

tan party; and Plato, with all his aristocratic leanings,

chose to lay at Piraeus the opening scene and setting for
his greatest dialogue, the “ Republic.” It was the fitting

propylaea for his ideal city as well as for the real Athens.
“I went down yesterday,” Socrates begins, “to Piraeus
with Glaucqji, both to make a prayer to the goddess
and to take a look at the festival to see how they would
carry it off, inasmuch as they are now celebrating it
for the first time.” The Thracian residents, it seems,
had just introduced a celebration in honour of their
goddess Bendis, and the natives had united with them.
The whole port was en fete with processions conducted
both by the hospitable native citizens and the Thra-
cians themselves. In the evening there was to be a
torch-race followed by an all-night festival. Socrates,

who was on the point of returning to Athens after wit-

nessing the daylight processions, was easily persuaded
 ;

PIR^US, THE HARBOUR TOWN 47

by Polemarchus to stay over for the torch-race, dining

first at the house of his father, the rich and hospitable

old metic, Cephalus. At the house Socrates finds an-
other son, Lysias, who was soon to become famous as
an orator. For the Thirty were to plunder the pro-
perty bequeathed by Cephalus to his sons, all the
ready money, the shield factory, and the slaves; were
to put summarily to death young Polemarchus; and
were to force Lysias, reduced to sudden poverty, to

betake himself to speech-writing for a living. His

crowning effort was an arraignment of his brother’s

murderers. Most skilful of narrators, he tells of the fate

of Polemarchus; how his house was plundered; how

his wife was robbed of the very ear-rings from her ears
and how after his execution, notwithstanding the just

title of the family to large holdings of real estate, he

was buried from a hired shed, one friend providing

a robe, another a pillow, for the corpse. He tells, too,

of hisown arrest at his home by the emissaries of the

Thirty: how he bargained for his life with a sum of
ready money how one of his captors followed him into
;

the inner room, looked over his shoulder into the money-
chest, and took not only the price agreed upon but all

the contents of the strong box; how he was taken to

another house of a Piraeus acquaintance; and how,
while his captors were keeping guard at the peristyle
door in front, he had escaped by a back door to the
house of a friend, the shipmaster, with the appropriate
name of Archenaus. So, while his less fortunate bro-
48 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
ther, Polemarchus, is led off to Athens, thrown into
prison, and “bidden by the Thirty their usual bidding
— to drink hemlock,” Lysias, by the aid of his nauti-

cal friend, is embarked for Megara under cover of

night. We should like to have fuller details of that es-

cape of the young Lysias, yesterday a wealthy manu-

facturer, to-day a plundered fugitive but destined to
become one of the greatest of the “ten” orators and a
master architect of Attic style. Perhaps a small boat
put off from some lonely spot on Akte, perhaps from
the Great Harbour itself, shooting through the moles
in the darkness and, wind and weather permitting,
kept to starboard of the Psyttaleia reef, passed up
through the strait of Salamis, on through the beautiful
Bay of Eleusis, and landed the fugitive at Megara.
Plato’s account of the visit of Socrates to the Piraeus
homestead carries us back to the days of security be-
fore the reign of the Thirty. We see old Cephalus
welcoming Socrates cordially, delivering a monologue
on his own gracious old age, telling a story about Sopho-
cles in his later years, and finally withdrawing to super-
vise a sacrifice to the gods.

The introduction of a foreign divinity like Bendis

of the Thracians was not unusual. The celebration,
described at the opening of the Republic, was at least
no more exotic than a St. Patrick’s day in America.
Foreigners and natives united in it as they did in the
celebration of the Mother of the Gods. The customs
inspection of foreign deities was lenient. The Greeks
 PIRAEUS, THE HARBOUR TOWN 49

were free traders both in art and religion, though the

finished product imported was likely enough to be used
as new material. Into the smelting furnace of the
classic period was cast the old, the new, the foreign,

and the domestic, to reappear in fairer form, stamped

with the Hellenic hall-mark. Among the various im-
ported deities, Cybele is well vouched for at Piraeus

where a number of marble votive shrines of the Great

Mother have been found. One of these archaic Cybele
reliefs, brought from Piraeus to the National Museum

in Athens, shows the goddess with her lion in her lap,

her cymbals in her hand. The “new theology,” fos-

tered by Euripides and domiciled in daily life by the
“New Comedy,” could treat these cymbals as typical
of “a creed out-worn.” One of Menander’s characters
exclaims :
—
“ No god, my wife, saves one man through another’s help,
For if a human being can by cymbals’ clash
Deflect the god to whatsoever is desired,
Then greater than the god is he that doeth this.”

Among various resident colonists who may have

occupied distinct sections of the city, like a mediaeval
Ghetto or a modern Italian quarter, the worship of
home divinities was kept alive. It is known, for ex-

ample, that the Egyptian resident merchants, perhaps

as early as the end of the fifth century, had received a
special license to erect an Isis sanctuary and the Cyp-
rians instituted a similar cult of Adonis and Aphrodite.
Remains of the old gateway in the northern circuit-
5o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
wall, just where the north Long Wall joined on, are still

extant. Within a century, the traces of the Long Walls

themselves have been disappearing. Enough is left,
however, to mark their course at various points, and the
remains are particularly plain of the “South” Long
Wall, where it nears the Munychia acropolis. Ascend-
ing Munychia, we may imagine the Long Walls still
reaching up to Athens. We may picture them either
in time of war, with defenders within and foes without,
or in time of peace, with the stream of pedestrians bent
upon pleasure or business. Outside the North Wall
was one of the places of execution. Plato illustrates
the contest between the brute in man and his higher

reason by the story of a certain Leontius who one day

was walking up from Piraeus and saw some dead bodies
fallen prostrate by the side of the executioner. He
loathes the sight but is fain to look. Vulgar curiosity
gains the mastery; he runs up to the dead bodies and,
iholding his eyelids wide open, exclaims: “There
wretches! Take your fill of the fine spectacle!”

Turning from the course of the Long Walls, the eye

surveys the whole panorama of the harbours and the
city. Just within the old wall, on the west slope of the
Munychia hill, is the old Theatre in a ruined con-
dition. But we can think of the harbour folk in days
of peace enjoying on these same rising seats the plays

of a Menander or Euripides or see convened there in

the times of grim civil strife a hurried assembly of the
patriotic party.
 PIR^US, THE HARBOUR TOWN 51

Somewhere close by the north side of Zea was the

famous arsenal which, though not built till near the
end of the fourth century, has entirely disappeared.

Luckily, however, in 1882 there was discovered near

the Zea harbour a slab of Hymettus marble containing
the directions given to the contractors for its construc-
tion. It was built to contain the rigging, tackle, sails,

cables for undergirding the ships, etc., while the masts,

spars, oars, rudders, and other wooden gear seem to

have been kept in the ship-sheds themselves alongside

of the ships. This arsenal of Philo replaced an older and

less elaborate one. It was a large building, four hun-
dred by five hundred feet within, and provided for a

roomy arcade where the populace, screened from the

burning heat without, could promenade and gaze at the
suggestive evidences of their sea power.
Of the many private and public buildings, temples
and colonnades mentioned by classic authors, but few
can be positively located. In the Colonnade of the
Exchange — the Deigma — Theophrastus, Menander’s
friend and the successor of Aristotle, represents his
“Boastful Man,” a shipping-merchant, as bragging
about his great ventures and cargoes at sea. Mean-
while his balance at the banker ’s actually amounts
to about twenty cents. That this Deigma, where
gossip was coined and bargains struck around the
money-changers’ tables, must have been close to the
edge of the Great Harbour is evident from Xenophon,
who says that one day twelve Lacedaemonian ships
52 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
swept into the harbour suddenly, landed a party and
carried off from the Exchange a group of sea-captains

and merchants.
The site of the Asklepieion, partly church, partly
sanatorium, has been identified in the remains west of
Zea. Aphrodite, born of the foam, is a popular god-
dess with sailor-folk. To her were dedicated, it would
seem, no less than three sanctuaries at Piraeus.
Lastly, there was the famous Hieron or Sanctuary
of Zeus and Athena. Even its site cannot now be iden-
tified, but it must have been one of the most frequented
centres of Piraeus life in the fifth century. An inscrip-

tion records that into the treasury of this sanctuary went

the tax of a drachma on every vessel that put into the

port. Incidentally many a further contribution was

levied on the newly landed sailor, who was as much a
fish out of water among the land-sharks as is the mod-
em Jack Tar on ship’s leave. The comic poet Diphilus
tells how one of these harbour caterers used to select
his victims: “For example there’s the skipper who
grudgingly pays off a vow made under stress of wea-
ther when the mast went by the board or when he had
snapped the rudder-sweeps of the ship or else was
forced by water rising in the hold to hurl his cargo
overboard. A wide berth I give to a fellow like him.
Such a man will not be free-handed my best chance ;

is with the captain who has made a quick, safe voyage

from Byzantium, who, all excitement over his gain of
ten or twelve per cent for three days’ risk, is loud in
 PIRAEUS, THE HARBOUR TOWN 53

his chatter about freights and usuries.” He’s the man

for the purposes of this shark, and no sooner is he
landed than our keeper of the Sailors’ Snug Retreat
goes up to him, takes his hand, and reminds him that
a sacrifice at the temple of Zeus Preserver would be in
order. He thoughtfully relieves the skipper of any care,
making the purchases, superintending the offering, and
sharing the commission with the priests of the Hieron.
And human nature was much the same five hun-
dred years later, when we again meet a skipper whose
performance, once he is safe at Piraeus, falls far short
of the vows made in storm and peril. Lucian, in his
“Zeus the Tragedian,” gives details. The Olympian
Father, alarmed at the signs of increasing irreligious-
ness and the consequent stringency in the sacrificial
market, calls an assembly of the gods. After some
difficult points of precedence as to order of seating
have been temporarily waived and half-naturalized
divinities like Mithras and our Thracian Bendis have
been admitted, Zeus makes a speech. He begins
fluently enough with a mosaic of oratorical phrases
which he has memorized from Demosthenes. Pre-
sently, however, he exclaims: “But my Demosthenes
is giving out. I must tell you in plain Greek what has
troubled me.” He reminds them of the dinner in which
some of them — “as many as had been invited” —
had participated the day before, when “Mnesitheus,
the ship-owner, had given them a Thanksgiving
banquet at Piraeus on account of the preservation of
54 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
his vessel that had come within an ace of being wrecked
off Euboea.” “That evening,” he continues, “while
taking a constitutional, I kept thinking over the stingi-
ness of Mnesitheus who undertook to entertain sixteen

gods by sacrificing a single cock — and that, too, a

wheezy old rooster ! — with four little lumps of frank-
incense so mouldy that they went out forthwith on the
coals, without giving even the tip of my nose a whiff of
the smoke. That’s what he did, though he was for
promising whole hecatombs when his boat was driving
on the cliff and was already encircled by reefs.”

Sometimes the fisher- folk preferred to go up to

Athens and dedicate votive offerings in the Parthe-
non. Lucian, in “The Fisher,” when angling over the
edge of the Acropolis for the scaly philosophers of
the second century, borrows of the Priestess of the
Parthenon a rod, hook, and line that “the fisherman
from Piraeus had dedicated” as a thank-offering.
Of the many epigrams in the Greek Anthology on
T
shipw recked mariners, the most appropriate to our
harbour town is perhaps the one written by Antipater
of Sidon for the tomb of a certain Aristagoras who was
drowned after reaching harbour at Scarphe. We are
reminded of the Piraeus temple to Aphrodite of the
Fair Voyage by the bitterness with which the poet
uses the epithet :
—
“Ever the sea is the sea. It is idle to blame
Cyclades’ waves or the Needles or Narrows of Helle;
Them I escaped to be drowned in the harbour of Scarphe.
Vain is their fame.
 PIRAEUS, THE HARBOUR TOWN 55

Pray, if you will, for a fair voyaging homeward, but say:

Here in his tomb Aristagoras knows of the sea and its way —
Ever the same.”

It requires no great stretch of the imagination to re-

produce the thrill of pride and delight with which the

Attic demesman, whether sailor or soldier, fisherman

or merchant, returning from abroad sighted the heights

of Akte and the Munychia acropolis and sailed up to

the beautiful, dignified city built around its strong,

fortified harbours. Even after independent Athens had

been incorporated in the Macedonian empire, Menan-
der could record this patriotic delight. In a fragment
from his “Fishers” a sailor, returning perhaps to Pi-
raeus, falls down and kisses the earth, exclaiming :
—
“Greeting, O dear my country, long the time gone by
Tillnow I see and kiss thee. Not to every land
Would I do this, but only when I see my own,
The land that bred me is a goddess in my eyes.”

We think of Menander himself as a frequent visitor to

the harbour town. Tradition says that he was drowned
while bathing at the harbour and his countrymen gave
him a tomb and an epitaph on the road from Piraeus to
Athens by the Long Walls. There, too, was the ceno-
taph of Euripides, who had sailed away to the court
of the Macedonian king, never again to enter through

the harbour’s arms that welcomed so many returning

voyagers.
And the Athenian of the third century, returning
as we do now, from a visit to Piraeus, would see these
tombs as he left the harbour walls and perhaps find
56 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
compensation for the loss of external liberty in realizing

that the great sea- fortress and the maritime empire of

Themistocles, of Pericles, and of Conon had buttressed
well a Greater Athens; that neither Spartan jealousy
and civil discord, nor even the foreign rule of Macedon
itself could destroy the real power of this Mother city
and obliterate her sway over the human mind. But
it required the perspective of longer time and the ideal-
ism of a Shelley boldly to interpret disaster in terms of

victory and to proclaim Athens as mistress of a sea

wider than the iEgean :
—
“Greece and her foundations are
Laid below the tides of war,
Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity.”

The launching-ways of the ancient triremes, still seen

beneath the clear water, symbolize that continued
hegemony.
 CHAPTER III

ATHENS: FROM SOLON TO THE BATTLE OF

SALAMIS

“Here, stranger, seek no tyrant. This our state is ruled

Not of one man. ’T is free. The people year by year
As kings succeed each other, never yield they most
To Wealth, but even he that’s poor has equal share.”
Euripides, Supplices.

M
growing
any a
its

prised

city, is,
visitor, led to

associations

by its
and
Athens by
its art,

great physical beauty.

drive from Piraeus, through the banal outskirts of the
indeed, a disenchanting approach, but
interest in

has been sur-

The

one has only to walk to the Corinthian columns of the

Olympieum to obtain a satisfying view of the Acropo-
lis, embedded like a crystal in its proper matrix of

encompassing air and plain and sea and mountains.

Future journeys in Greece will but reenforce the con-
viction of the noble loveliness of the Attic plain. The
atmosphere is singularly clear and vibrant, and within
it colour and form are sharply defined. The yEgean
at its shores adds movement and space. And here more
than anywhere else Sir Richard Jebb’s description of
the Greek hills seems inevitable. Their forms “are
at once so bold and so chastened, the onward sweep of
their ranges is at once so elastic and so calm, each
58 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
member of every group is at once so individual and so
finely helpful to the ethereal expressiveness of the rest,

that the harmony of their undulations and the cadences

in which they fall combine the charm of sculpture with
the life and variety of a sunlit sea.”
In making such a study of this city as is demanded
for turning the quick appreciation of its external charm
into the more permanent possession of its underlying
qualities, we must submit to some analysis of the
great moments in its history and its literature.
When Athenian literature begins with Solon, in the

sixth century, b. c., the Greeks have emerged from

a dim antiquity. In the two preceding centuries, the
mother cities of Achaean and Dorian Greece had been
sending out colonists east and west, not merely in a
spirit of Phoenician commercialism, but also with
adventuresome, intellectual curiosity. The heroes of
their earliest traditional literature sailed with them.

Associations half slumbering in the popular conscious-

ness thrilled them as they steered again over the course

of the Argo or as they followed once more the later

track of Odysseus to the west, and in lower Italy and

Sicily reestablished Great Hellas as an integral part of
Hellenic civilization.
In this earlier colonization Athens participated only
vicariously, but it was into this larger Hellas that Solon

the lawgiver and poet was bom. Fire, brought from

the mother cities, was blazing on the hearths of Greek
colonies from the Crimea to Sicily. The Ionians of Asia
 ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 59

Minor had long since joined in the movement of expan-

sion ;
they were presently to colonize the site of modern
Marseilles ;
they were already converting to their own
use the distant outposts of the “ Tyrian trader.” Athens
meanwhile was slowly developing. Later she would
herself be mistress of the sea.

The Athenians, more than most Greeks, could boast

that they were autochthonous, earth-born children of
their own soil. Isocrates in his “ Panegyricus ” makes
proudly the claim: “We dwell in the land not after
expelling others, nor even finding it a desert, nor even
coming as a mixed breed collected from many nations,
but . . . sprung from the soil and able to address

our city by the same names as we give to the closest

relations.” The prehistoric Greek invaders of Attica

had fused with rather than driven out the former occu-
pants, the Pelasgians or whoever they may have been.
Erichthonius, Erechtheus, or Poseidon, “one form
for many names,” was born of Earth but mothered on
Athena, and it would have been as futile as it was
impious to challenge the pedigree of the Erechtheidae.
Erechtheus-Poseidon might coil forever undisturbed
beneath the sheltering shield of the Virgin-goddess.
Cecrops, too, the mythical king and Attic hero, owned
a perpetual ground-rent on the Acropolis and the
Athenians were Cecropidae. They were also the “ Sons
of Hephaestus,” who was often associated with Athena,
a partnership of the heavenly wisdom with the arts
and crafts. An ancient festival of the whole city, held
6o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
in honour of Athena, became afterwards specialized
among the artisans, under the name of Chalkeia, in
honour of Hephaestus ;
and the god may yet win back
as his own “ Hephaesteum ” the so-called “Theseum”
on the hill above the classic market-place.

The age of the heroes merges with that of the Kings.

Theseus moves, a grandiose figure, through art and
literature. Thus when the “Hill party’’ of Pisistratus
became preeminent, Theseus, the aristocrat, came into
prominence in vase painting. He
appears in all the
forms of didactic sculpture, and the “ City of Theseus,”
the older Athens, is recalled again in the Roman re-

naissance by the Arch of Hadrian. This still offers

to the modern pilgrim, on the west side facing the

Acropolis, the inscription: “This is the Athens of The-
seus, the old city,” and on the other, facing the Olym-
pieum of Hadrian: “This is the City of Hadrian and
not the City of Theseus.” Thus meet the old and the
new, with classic Athens ignored.
To understand the literature of the sixth century,
we must remember that the ancient citadel town of the
prehistoric kings had long since overflowed into the
district at its immediate base, absorbing, as time went
on, various original townships adjacent to the Acrop-
olis. Although the name of king and some relics of

royal authority survived in the person of the King

Archon, yet, unlike the relation of Sparta to Laconia
or Thebes to Boeotia, Athens was not a mere royal
centre for the Attic demesmen. All Attica was Athens.
 ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 61

All its free inhabitants, class by class, became included

in the citizenship, albeit the republic was an aristocracy,

first of birth, then of wealth. Solon’s readjustment

of the laws for rich and poor determined the trend
towards government by the people, and even the in-

evitable tyranny, postponed by Solon, only served,

when it came, to retard the current and to dam up a
reservoir of irresistible democratic consciousness which
was to sweep away the tyrants and to render the Attica

of Marathon inaccessible to the returning despot.

The picture of the old city of Theseus is vague to

our imagination, but the Athens of Solon’s administra-
tion emerges somewhat more clearly as we take away,
one after another, some of the prominent features of
the later Athens that we know best. The Acropolis
lacked the Propylaea, the Parthenon, and the Erech-
theum, its barrenness being relieved by little save the
“ old ” temple of Athena Polias. Not only the Dionysiac
theatre, but even its earliest forerunner were things
of the future. The drama was yet unborn. The Mar-
ket-place of later centuries, adorned with statues and
stoas, was represented by a simpler centre of civic life

at the west end of the Acropolis, where were the public

buildings of administration, the communal winepress
of the Lenaeum and the old Callirrhoe spring.
Yet Solon calls Athens a great city, and he was to
make it still greater. Into that early Market-place he
came and, if we accept the picturesque details handed
down by tradition, feigning madness in order to vio-
62 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
late with impunity the law forbidding citizens to re-

open the question of conquering Salamis, he cried :

—
“ Forward to Salamis, forward, to fight for the isle that we yearn for.
Thrusting dishonour aside, casting off grievous disgrace.”

The Athenians were aroused. They went with him

across the narrow strait, and Salamis, the “lovely
island,” thenceforward was their own, destined to serve

them as refuge in their hour of greatest need. Solon

used his popularity, thus acquired, in no self-seeking
way. Chosen archon and virtual dictator he moulded
proletariat and noble to his own noble will. Again and
again his verse reenforces his pedestrian arguments.
“The black earth is enslaved,” he says, and presently
the mortgage stones, dotted over the farms, are mere
cancelled records. Many such, of a later date, have
been found. The “ Penurious Man” in Theophrastus
“ inspects his boundary stones daily to make sure that
they are in place.” Solon proudly appeals to the con-
stituency of the future to justify his laws: —
“Be witness unto this before the bar of time,
Thou greatest Mother of the gods Olympian —
Aye witness best — black Earth, whose mortgage border-stones
Fixed here and there on every side, I took away,
And she who erst was slave is set at liberty.”

Again, even more proudly, he says: —

“I set myself as border stone inscribed betwixt
Contending factions.”

The citizens, he says, by their folly and their greed

would themselves destroy the city, but Athena, the

Watcher, is there upon the hill: —
 ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 63

“Never by Zeus’s decree nor by will of the blessed immortals

Ruin shall come to our town, causing our city to fall.
Never, while yonder that great-hearted Guardian, sired majestic,
Pallas Athena above stretches her sheltering hands.”

In the Athenian memory as well as in these vigorous

elegiacs he embedded the epithet of “ Guardian” (eVt-

o-kottos) that would in after days lend significance to the

great bronze statue, overlooking the city and sea, and
would remain after Macedon had come and gone
as a semi-official title of the goddess.
Legend tells us that Solon in his old age, when the
tyranny had now come, piled his armour in front of
his house door — probably near the Market-place of
Pisistratus — and turned from politics to a serene en-
joyment of the pleasures of ear and eye and intellect to

which he had, indeed, never been a stranger. His life

had always been consistent with his own epigram :

—
“And still as I age, learning many a lesson.”

Like many of his countrymen subsequently, he com-

bined active participation in public affairs with the
character of poet and writer. In literature, as in politi-
cal life, he had his preferences. Perhaps nothing more
distinctly places him in the old Athens than his disap-

probation of the Tragedy that was born in his later

years. He is said to have taken Thespis to task for
the falsehood of the drama. On the other hand the
direct sincerity of lyric poetry accorded with his manner
of thought. From ^Elian’s variegated patch- work the
story drifts down to us that to Solon, seated one day
64 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
over his wine, his nephew sang one of Sappho’s songs.
Solon at once commanded the boy to teach him the
song, and when a bystander asked why he was so eager,
he replied :
“ When I have learned it, then that I may
die!”
To subsequent generations he seemed the embodi-
ment of wisdom over against excess, and readers of
Herodotus who were not troubled by the chronological
difficulties must have especially enjoyed the story of
his interview with Croesus and his reproof of the rich
king for his exultation in his wealth. The famous apo-
thegm, “ One must wait for the end before praising,”
was repeated in one form or another by Simonides,
iEschylus, and Sophocles. Of Solon’s own end a dra-
matic story is mentioned by Plutarch, although he re-

fuses to lend it his credence : “That his ashes, after his

body was burned, were scattered about the island of

Salamis is a story absolutely mythical and incredible by
reason of its outlandishness. It stands recorded, how-
ever, both by other noteworthy men and by Aristotle

the philosopher.”
After years of varying fortune Pisistratus finally

(540 or 539 B. c.) established himself as Tyrant of

Athens. But tyranny at Athens was never more than
an episode. The inbred spirit of freedom must be
reckoned with. Pisistratus respected popular rights,
and after the accession of his sons the suspicion of a
tendency to introduce such measures as were acqui-
esced in, for example, at Corinth, brought death to
 ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 65

the one and subsequent banishment to the other. But

the result of the tyranny of Pisistratus was beneficent.
Under him and his sons the city began to take on both
externally and intellectually more of the characteris-
tics which are in mind when we think of Athens.
Architect, sculptor, and painter began to contribute

enriching details to the Acropolis, including the first

Propylaea. Engineers skilfully brought water from

near and far into the old Market-place, and in front
of the town spring of Callirrhoe Pisistratus built

the spacious “Nine Spouts” — the Enneakrounos —

where women filled their water-jars and stayed to
gossip. The newer market-place, to the north of the
Areopagus, was developed. A great Olympieum was
begun on the site of the present columns, which date
from Hadrian’s time. Gymnasium life became impor-
tant and the Academy was made ready as if in anticipa-

tion of its great future. Doubtless within this lovely

grove many a youth of the period might have served
as a model for Aristophanes’s fifth-century picture of
palaestra life in the good old times :
—
“But you will go enter as Academe sprinter and under the olives con-
tend
With your chaplet of reed, in a contest of speed with some excel-
lent rival and friend:
All fragrant with yew and leisure time too, and the leaf which the
white poplars fling
When the plane whispers love to the elm in the grove in the beauti-
ful season of spring.” *

* Clouds 992, translation (modified) by Rogers.

,
66 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
A distinctive part of Pisistratus’s policy was the
encouragement of country life and of agriculture.
All over the Attic plain the olive orchards were culti-

vated, to become an important source of revenue to

the Athenian state and immeasurably to enhance the

charm of its environment. Herodotus recounts that
a tall, handsome woman named Phye, from the hill

country, had impersonated Athena come down in

mortal guise and, riding in a chariot with Pisistratus,
had lent divine sanction to his original coup d'etat.

The Attic demesmen might still more easily accept

this new measure as a command transmitted from

Athena who had herself first created the olive tree

and taught its culture on the Acropolis :

—
“A heaven-sent grey-gleaming crown for her Athens,
Her city of light.”

Aristotle, in his “ Constitution of Athens,” lays great

stress on the effort of Pisistratus to develop the pros-
perity of the farmers. He tells how Pisistratus, walking
in fhe country and seeing one digging among the rocks,
asked what sort of a crop grew there, and the man,
unaware that it was the Tyrant, replied :
“ Such a crop

of evils and pain that it were right that Pisistratus

should have his tithe of them.” Pisistratus, pleased

both with his industry and his free speech, relieved

the farmer of his burdens. And so, Aristotle continues,

he was not troubled during his reign but could secure

peace and quiet and “the word was often on the lips

of many that the tyranny of Pisistratus was a regular

life under Kronos,” or Golden Age.
 ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 67

Pisistratus did much toward securing for Athens

the intellectual hegemony of Greece. Whatever the
Panathenaea, inherited from Theseus (or even from
Erichthonius), may have been previously, the Greater
Panathenaic was now solemnized every four
festival

years with more magnificence and became at Athens

the necessary and dignified offset to the quadrennial

games at Olympia and Delphi. Games, sacrifices, and

amusements of varied character were added from time
to time. Horse, chariot, torch, and foot races were in-

cluded. Visitors came from abroad. But neither local

nor intercantonal athletics gave the keynote. Rhap-
sodists recited Homer, and flute, cithara, and song
were heard. Everything tended to focus itself upon the
worship of Athena, who was the Athenian conscious-
ness glorified and made objective.
Under Pisistratus or his sons (or, less probably,
under Solon) Homer was recalled from Ionia and domi-
ciled on the mainland. Whatever may be the details

about a formal recension and publication at this time,

recitations from Homer were made an integral part of

the public festivals, and Athens became the clearing-
house for an intellectual currency good throughout
all Hellas. The name “Pan- Athenian,” passing even
beyond Pan-Ionian, was to be equated with a culture
that was Pan-Hellenic. This befitted the epic breadth
transcending mere local traditions. “The Iliad was
not composed for any king or tyrant. If it is aristocratic,

its appeal is not to any given set of noble families, but

68 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
to all brave men of Greek legend.” And the spirit
in which this epic trust was administered tallies well

with the restraint of Pisistratus in respecting, as far

as possible, the laws of Solon. If there were Attic inter-
polations in the poems, they do not glorify his house.
In the “Catalogue of the Ships” the Athenians re-

ceived honourable but not excessive mention. The

brief reference to the ships from Salamis, as ranged
under the command of the Athenians, would seem to

suggest the recent conquest of the island under Solon

or even the suspicion that Solon had himself interpo-
lated it beforehand as proof of the ancient suzerainty
of Athens :
—
“Twelve ships from Salamis Aias commanded. He
brought them and placed them there where Athenian
squadrons were marshalled.”

But perhaps the easiest solution of all questions in re-

gard to interpolations in the Homeric poems is to pin

our uncritical faith to the authenticity of Lucian’s in-

terview with Homer in Elysium: “I went up to Homer
the poet, when we were both at leisure, and after mak-
ing other inquiries ... I asked him further about the
rejected verses, whether they were written by him.
And he declared that he wrote them all ” !

The greatest and most characteristically Attic con-

tribution of the sixth century was the fostering of the

drama, in connection with the worship of Dionysus.

This Thracian divinity, on his journey southwards,
 ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 69

had been welcomed in the villages of Attica, where

vineyard and winepress awaited his blessing. The
Pisistratidae, who have been called “the providential
defenders of the faith of Dionysus” against the aristo-
cratic disdain felt for a peasant’s god, invited him to a

new temple in the Lenaea — the Marshes — below the

Acropolis, where, at the time of the winter solstice,
the Feast of the Winepress once more identified the

capital with the country it had outgrown. But Pisis-

tratus went further in establishing the City Dionysia,

a spring festival destined to a long life and splendid

renown. Instead of private performances at rural
feasts, the drama now became part of the official admin-
istration of the city. The first dated performance of a
play by Thespis was in 534 b. c. This may have been
on the occasion of the opening of the “orchestra,”
north of the Areopagus, near the new Market-place,
where the spectators henceforth found seats on wooden

scaffolding until the more permanent theatre was

erected south of the Acropolis. Athens was now ready
for the great dramatists. The wine-god looms up as a

rival to Athena, as may be seen by his ubiquity on the

vase paintings and his dominant presence in the Attic
calendar.“In the actual religious ritual Dionysus
became of more importance at Athens than Zeus,
Apollo, or even Athena.”
Thus in diverse ways does Pisistratus present a fair

claim for having made Athens greater, in steady pro-

gression from the wise policies of Solon. Solon him-

70 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
self must often have feared an excess of luxury and
splendour. No one of his generation could have
dreamed of a regretful modern desire to have seen,

because of its charming simplicity, “the little earlier

Athens of Pisistratus.” But many a Periclean Greek

may have forestalled it. Aristophanes was forever seek-
ing for a revival of —
“the precepts which taught
The heroes of old to be hardy and bold, and the men who at Mara-
thon fought ” *
!

These were the precepts which taught ^Eschylus. We

are apt to think of him only in his maturity, a fighter

at Marathon, a seasoned warrior at Salamis, a poet of

the post-Persian epoch. But his childhood fell in the

time of the Pisistratidae, and it is by no means idle to

speculate on the influences which then encompassed

him. The memory of Solon’s ethics and vocabulary
he carried with him through life. Foreign poets also,

attracted to Athens by the sons of Pisistratus, must have

seemed to him important personages. Two of the “ ten”
lyric poets were at this time identified with the city.
Anacreon, when Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, had
no longer a home to offer him, was brought in triumph
to Athens in a fifty-oared galley sent by Hipparchus.
And Simonides of Ceos, who was to be the chief mouth-
piece of liberated Greece, was well content to enjoy the
patronage of the despot.
vEschylus was fifteen when Hippias was expelled.
Hipparchus had been assassinated earlier, at one of
* Clouds, 973, translated by Rogers.
 ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 71

the celebrations of the Panathenaea, by Harmodius

and Aristogeiton, but their failure to dispose of both
tyrants at one blow had caused them to be igno-
miniously put to death and. their memory ignored.
Now, in the new enthusiasm for freedom, they were
hailed as liberators of their city. Their memory be-
came a cult. Their statues were set up by the Agoja,
and the boy ^Eschylus, as each anniversary of their deed
came around and the Panathenaic procession wound up
to the Acropolis, must have been fired by the thought
of them. At twenty-five he may have lustily joined

in the new drinking song which, commemorating their

deed, took the town by storm. It continued to be sung

for centuries. To Aristophanes it was a hackneyed
classic and part of his comic stock in trade.
“In a wreath of myrtle I’ll wear my glaive,
Like Harmodius and Aristogeiton brave,
When the twain on Athena’s day
Did the tyrant Hipparchus slay.
“ For aye shall your fame in the land be told,
Harmodius and Aristogeiton bold,
Who, striking the tyrant down,
Made Athens a freeman’s town.” *

With the Marathon Athens came of age.

victory at
The struggle between Orientalism and Hellenism was
just begun. Salamis and Platasa and Eurymedon were

yet to be. But the Greeks with a divine improvidence

discounted their ultimate success. Their twenty years

* Callistratus, translated by Conington. For the complete song

see Symonds, “ Greek Poets,” chap. x.
72 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
of democratic education made impossible any com-
promise with despotism. Whatever necessary vague-
ness may still have existed at Athens in the attempted
fusion of polytheistic tradition with the awakening con-
ception of monotheism, there now stands forth in a
law-abiding conscience the barrier of Law, clear and
bold as the outline of Pentelicus above Marathon.
The contemporary Athenian feeling is reflected by
jEschylus in the answer of the old Persian men to

Darius’s widowed queen, who has asked about the

Greeks :
—
ATOSSA
“ ‘
And who ’s their herdsman ? Who the people’s overlord ? *

CHORUS
‘There’s no man’s name they bear as slaves and underlings.’”

At this time another country god was naturalized

at Athens, a friend and comrade of Dionysus in secret
mountain places, but not intruding upon him in the

formalities of city worship. Pan had helped the Athe-

nians at Marathon and had stopped the swift courier
Pheidippides, sent to hurry reenforcements from Sparta,
and bidden him ask his people “why they made no
account of him, although he had been useful to them
many times already and would be again.” The Athe-
nians at once “dedicated a sanctuary to Pan under the
brow of the Acropolis and in consequence of this mes-

sage they propitiated him by yearly sacrifices and a

torch race.” His cave at the northwest end of the
Acropolis still exists to convince the sceptic. He lived

on here, overlooking the Areopagus and Agora, to

 ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 73

come forth, “horned, panpipe in hand, with his shaggy

legs,” and greet the lady Justice sent by Zeus to in-

vestigate the charlatan philosophers of Athens in Lu-

cian’s day. Pan gives Justice a fluent account of their
frailties and is about to add certain details, when her
sense of propriety cuts him short. “If I must,” says
he, “tell the truth in full, without holding anything
back — for I live, as you see, where I can take a
bird’s-eye view — many ’s the time I ’ve seen scores of
them, well along towards evening —” {Justice) “Stop
there, Pan!”
While Pan was accumulating details of the “Private
Life of the Athenians,” as they passed and repassed
before his grotto, the public energy of the city was trans-
muted into enduring memorials above him on the calm
heights of the Acropolis.
 CHAPTER IV

THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS

“All this pursuit of the arts has this function, even a recall of the
noblest in the soul to a vision of the most excellent in the ideal.”
Plato, Republic.

T
the
o speak of the Acropolis of Athens with due
Hellenic restraint
has lived long under
first visit

most obdurate impassiveness.

is difficult

its

three sets of impressions break

The
for any one who
habitual sway.
down
associations ac-
At
the

quired by a study of history engender a vicarious but

active sympathy with the Greeks themselves. There
is an immediate impact of beauty from marble gate-
way and temples and sculpture which the proces-
sion of years has only incorporated more intimately
with the beauty of sea and land and circumambient air.

And, finally, there is the involuntary sense of coming

back to one’s own — to an intellectual birthright.

Even the Turkish conquerors did not fail to recognize

that all western civilizations consider the Acropolis an
integral part of their joint heritage. Dr. Howe quotes
from an intercepted letter of Kiutahi Pashaw, the op-
ponent of the Greek patriot, Karaiskakis, in 1826:
“The citadel of Athens, as is known to you, was built

of old on a high and inaccessible rock; not to be injured

 THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 75

by a mine nor accessible to assault. . . . From it went

out of yore many famous philosophers; it has many
works of art very old, which make the learned men of
Europe wonder and ;
for this reason all the Europeans
and the other nations of unbelievers regard the citadel
as their own house.”
The attitude of the ancient Greeks toward the Acro-
polis is only casually expressed in their extant litera-

ture. No Greek Victor Hugo has given to men distant

in place and time as vivid a picture of the Parthenon as
we possess of Notre Dame. In trying to imagine what
the Greeks saw, as they came up to their citadel, we
must first ^differentiate between 'the main historical

epochs. Of the Acropolis in the earliest age we can form

a partial conception. The impressive remains of poly-
gonal masonry still extant, in the massive citadel walls ;

the traces of the old “Kings’ City” around the Erech-

theum, and even within the groundplan of the old
Athena temple; the remains of the ancient stairway,
northeast of the Erechtheum, leading to the postern
gate — all fit in with and fill out a reconstruction based
on our conception of other ancient strongholds, like

Mycenae or Tiryns.
When we think of the citadel in the age of Pisistratus
and the time previous to the Persian Wars we are fairly
sure of the main characteristics. We can picture the
old Athena temple, simple yet dignified, in the middle
of the plateau, adorned with coloured sculptures (some
of which may be seen in the Museum to-day), sacred
76 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
shrines, precincts and altars with a wealth of dedi-
catory offerings, and also the older Propylaea let in be-
tween the massive “Pelasgic” walls and approached
by a way that wound down through a complex of out-
works to meet the old Agora.
This Acropolis, far simpler than the Periclean citadel
but beautiful and adorned, was devastated by the Per-
sians. Then for more than a quarter of a century after
Salamis we must imagine it as scarred and patched,
with perhaps only one temple, half restored, to house
the sacred image within its blackened walls.
In general, when we speak of the Acropolis, it is of
the citadel as it appeared towards the close of the fifth

century to Sophocles and Euripides and Aristophanes,

to Thucydides and Xenophon, to Isocrates and Lysias,
to Socrates and Plato. This citadel we can restore to

our imagination from the descriptions of Pausanias

(controlled by information from other sources) who, in

spite of erratic omissions, fortunately describes many

things with a fulness of detail quite foreign to the writ-
ers of the classical period.

When Socrates, too robust at seventy to know the

fatigue of the ascent, climbed the approach to the hill

he must often have been inspired by the beauty of art,

as he had been by the beauty of nature on the banks

of the Ilissus, to renew the prayer: “ Dear Pan, and ye
other gods, make me beautiful in the inward man.”
Born into a generation and among a people where ex-

ternal and physical beauty was assumed as corollary

 THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 77

to the beauty of the ideal, there escapes him, thus in-

cidentally, the echo of his self-conquest over his own
Silenus-like exterior, so out of keeping with the charm
of his environment. Perhaps he went up the hill the
evening before his trial to take a last look at what he

had loved long and well. He knew in advance that his

“apology” to the court was to be a reassertion of indi-

vidual liberty of conscience that would most probably

result for him in the hemlock draught. The majestic
columns of the great gateways rose before him on either
side, the wings extended like welcoming arms. He
would turn to the left and stand in the picture gallery.
Perhaps he would pause longest before Alcibiades, his
pernicious disciple, pictured in arrogant beauty as
victor at the Nemean games. Turning to the other side
of the gateway, he would stand on the bastion before
the Nike temple and would look out over the familiar
city, the Attic plain and harbour-town. As he passed
on now to enter the gateway, and his eye fell upon the
sculptured Hermes and the Graces, little would he
dream of the perplexed debate of modern critics as to

a possible connection of this group with the handiwork

of a young sculptor or stone-cutter, “ Socrates the son
of Sophroniscus.”
Under or just within the Propylaea he would note
various familiar objects, and when, he had passed
through he would see before him to the right and left

the Parthenon and the Erechtheum. The intervening

space would not be as it is now a floe of marble blocks.
78 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Two orderly avenues of votive offerings traversed the
plateau before him. Against a column of the Propylaea
still stands an inscribed basis of a statue dedicated to
Athena, the Giver of Health, set up by Pericles in grati-

tude for the recovery of one of his injured workmen,

one perhaps whose skill he could ill spare in the com-
pletion of his large designs. Close by, a marble boy,
made by a son or disciple of the great Myron, held out
a bowl of holy water as at the entrance of a cathedral.
Socrates, whose reverence exceeded that of all his ac-

cusers, would not scorn this symbol of purification,

least of all when about to journey away, as he ex-

pressed it, from Athens to another life. Before him tow-
ered up the bronze Athena, the warrior goddess, whose
gleaming helmet could be seen by homeward voyagers
as soon as they had passed the intercepting shoulder
and foot-hills of Hymettus. Near by was the Lemnian
Athena, goddess of the arts of peace, held by the Greeks
themselves as more beautiful even than the great gold-
ivory statue within the Parthenon. The three em-
bodied the conceptions of Phidias, as in a trilogy.

Near by was a portrait-herm of Pericles himself. There,

too, was the “wooden horse,” a colossal bronze, with

the Greeks (not forgetting the sons of Theseus) peeping

out from its side. And when, passing along this Pan-
athenaic road, lined with statues and votive offerings,
he had threaded his way around to the east front of

the Parthenon, he would enter between the columns,

and in the cool twilight, lit by the gleam of gold and
 THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 79

ivory, he would look up to the Victory on the extended

hand of Athena. Perhaps for a moment the goddess
may have lifted the veil of the future to reveal that the
defeat of the morrow would be a victory of far greater
import than even that of Marathon or Salamis.
To-day the visitor, as he goes up to the Acropolis,
carries with him the accumulated associations of cen-

turies. On the bastion of the Temple of Victory, un-

surpassed in its miniature charm, he watches with

iEgeus for Theseus returning in triumph from slaying
the Minotaur. At the sight of the black sail, left un-
furled by inadvertence, the old king plunged from
the rock to his death. ^Egeus and the other kings
passed away and other men from this rock watched
fleets hostile and friendly come and go in yonder bay
and enemies scour the surrounding plain of Attica.
Byron, finally, brooded here over a renascent Hellas.
If any work of man’s hands can purge the mind of
the commonplace, it is the Propylaea, imposing in its

grand proportions, yet enticing by its beauty. Through

this the pilgrim now passes and is alone with Greek
life. Although the plateau is deserted, the temple in
ruins, there is no sense of death. There is rather a sud-
den sense of Beauty set free from the trammels of daily
life. The fortunate isolation of the hilltop contributes
to this effect. Byzantine makeshifts, Turkish hovels
and minarets, have all been swept away — even the
intruding Roman is left outside with the disfiguring
pedestal of Agrippa’s statue. The foreground of the
8o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
modern city is sunk out of sight behind the rim of the
plateau. There isto be seen on all sides only the same

Attic plain, the same ^Egean sea, and the same hori-
zon of mountains, which the eyes of kings and demo-
crats, artists, orators and philosophers have looked
upon in days gone by.
In this harmony of surroundings, the eye and thought
rest undisturbed upon the Parthenon. The tributes of

the centuries have probably left the visitor unprepared

for his own emotion. Like a wind on the mountain,
felling the strong oak trees, the heavenly Eros, Plato’s
Love of Beauty, descends upon him. Bayard Tay-
lor’s first impressions, in spite of an enthusiasm per-
missible fifty years ago but now well-nigh out of print,
are worth recalling for the sake of a figure evoked by
the appalling ruin of beauty. Beyond a sea “of hewn
and sculptured marble, drums of pillars, pedestals,

capitals, cornices, friezes, triglyphs and sunken panel-

work,” he saw the Parthenon against the sky, and it

seemed to him as if it lay “broken down to the earth

in the middle like a ship which has struck and parted,

with the roof, cornices and friezes mostly gone and
not a single column unmutilated, and yet with the tawny
gold of two thousand years staining its once spotless
marble, sparkling with snow-white marks of shot and
shell, and with its soaring pillars embedded in the dark
blue ether.”
But since Morosini’s sacrilegious bomb did its work
the generations have refused to accept as the ultimate
 THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 81

fact the shipwreck of this temple in which culminated

the plastic arts of ancient Greece and in which were
typified her loftiest ideas. Poet and philosopher have
sat before it in fruitful meditation, and commoners
have paced its great colonnades, unregardful of the
ways and marts of men amid the austere majesty and
royal repose of the Doric pillars.
From the imperious beauty of the Parthenon the
eye turns gratefully to the lovely Erechtheum. Al-
though this is but a torso of the architect’s design
and its complex structure defies preconceived conven-

tions, its Ionic charm satisfies in each detail. The

eastern columns, the Porch of the Maidens, the ex-
quisite tracery of the doorway set within the perfectly

proportioned northern porch present a series rather

than a unity of graceful designs.

The other remnants — fragmentary and broken —
of the vanished life upon this hill must be identified

with pious care. Then the thought turns to such refer-

ences in literature as have been transmitted to us.
These also are fragmentary, seeming sometimes like

the patches of blue and red and gold not yet wholly
effaced from the marbles.
The Iliad, as we know it, preserves an Athenian
tradition of the prehistoric kingly Acropolis. Among
the warriors bound for Troy are listed: —
“ They that had Athens, the citadel goodly, the holding
of great-heart Erechtheus to whom on a time, as foster-

ing nurse, was Zeus’s daughter, Athena (though the seed-

 —

82 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

land, giver of grain, was the mother who bore him), and at
Athens she made him to dwell, in her own habitation of
plenty. There the Athenian youths with bulls atid with
rams do him honour, year after year in the seasons re-
turning.”

And here under the Greek heaven, on this hill left

lonely by men but easily accessible to gods, it would

hardly seem incredible if Athena herself were suddenly
to appear once more. In the Odyssey, when she had
ventured to leave Odysseus to his own cunning among
the Phaeacians, she returned by a course, strangely
devious for an air line, by way of Marathon to Athens :

“Then with these words the bright-eyed Athena departed

over the harvestless seas and behind her left Scheria lovely.
She came unto Marathon then and the wide-wayed Athe-
nian city, and entered the massive-built house of Erech-
theus.”

As we look upon the meagre traces of the prehis-

toric city, we should like to see the princess maidens
appear in the simplicity of the kingly times. Like the
women described by Pherecrates, the comic poet, they
had no slaves: —
“ No one then possessed a Sambo, no one had a maid-slave then,
Every bit of household labour must the girls themselves perform.”

Herodotus tells us how they used to go down and out

from the protecting gateways, to draw water at Callir-

rhoe beyond the Agora, and how the rough Pelasgians,

banished from this their ancient home, would now and
again rush down from Hymettus to carry them off.
 THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 83

The old Erechtheus worship, the snake, the ancient

image of Athena, and the allied precincts, lost none of
their sanctity as time went on. From Herodotus we
learn that Themistocles was materially aided before
Salamis, in persuading the Athenians to abandon the
city, by the sudden disappearance of the sacred snake.
“ The Athenians,” he gravely reports, “say that a large
snake dwells in the sacred precinct as guardian of the
Acropolis. And they not only say this but they make
offerings to him month by month, setting them out for

him as actually there. These consist of a honey-cake.

Now this honey-cake, although heretofore it had al-

ways been consumed, remained at this time untasted,

so the Athenians, when the priestess reported the fact,

made the more eager haste to leave the city, on the
ground that the goddess had abandoned her citadel.”

The sacred olive tree, however, which Xerxes had

burned with the rest of the precinct, put forth the very
next day a new shoot one cubit long. By the time of
Pausanias the guide said “two” cubits. But the es-

sential point is the continued care of the goddess, and

as for the snake, he soon resumed his dwelling on the
Acropolis. In the “Lysistrata” of Aristophanes, the
women who have seized and barricaded the Acropolis
make excuses for leaving, complaining that they can-
not sleep, one on account of the hooting of Athena’s
owls, another by reason of her terror :
—
“ Since I clapped eyes upon the snake that dwelleth there.”

When in the “Eumenides” of ^Eschylus the scene

 —

84 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

shifts from Delphi to the Acropolis, we find Orestes
seated as suppliant before Athena’s most ancient image.
This we may think of, in default of any other temple
then existing, as placed in the old Hecatompedon, whose
foundations are seen adjoining the Erechtheum on the
south. This temple, burned by the Persians, but par-
tially restored, may have been in use even after the

Parthenon was dedicated in 438 b. c., twenty years after

this play was brought out, and perhaps until the com-
pletion many years later of the Athena Polias chamber
in the Erechtheum. An Athenian could not well con-
ceive of his city as safe without this ancient statue even ;

the birds in their new Cloud-cuckoo-town must needs

debate whether they shall not keep Athena Polias as
their protector.

No Roman Catholic ever accepted more loyally the es-

tablished glory of St. Peter’s and the Vatican than the
Athenians accepted their citadel. The new gateways
were spoken of with undisguised pride. A comic
poet, Phcenicides of neighbouring Megara, when ridi-

culing Athens, incidentally admits that the Athenians

cared as much for their Propylaea as their palates. He
says:
“ Of myrtle berries and their honey, too, they talk,
And praise their Propylaea. Last, not least, dried figs.

I sailedand forthwith had a taste of all of these,

Including Propylaea! Not one single thing
Upon this bill of fare could ever match our grouse ” !

In one of the anonymous fragments, those riderless

Pegasi of Greek literature, another comic poet com-
 THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 85

bines the Piraeus and the Parthenon in an outburst of

civic pride. Nor does he forget the olive groves and
radiant air :
—
“Mistress of all, Queen City of Athenians,
How fair thy docks, how fair to view thy Parthenon!
And thy Piraeus, too, is fair. And then again
What other city ever yet had groves like thine?
And, as they say, the very sky, thy sky, is fair.”

And Demosthenes, not deterred by any shrinking

from hackneyed allusion, refers expressly to the Pro-

pylaea and the Parthenon, when he speaks of “those

things upon which we all naturally pride ourselves.”

Aristophanes, seeking to recall his fellow-citizens to
”
the ideals of Marathon days, shows us in his “ Knights
the Propylaea and the freshly boiled-over and rejuve-
nated Demos, — the avatar of true Democracy, —
seated within the unclosing doors of the gateway,
dressed in the brilliant garb of a gentleman of the good
old Marathon type: “Just such as he used to be when
he messed with Aristides and Miltiades,” his hair
caught up with the golden cicada pin, emblem of Attic
autochthony.
In the “ Lysistrata” the Athenian men, ignorant that
at a future day their Parliament was to be controlled
by suffragettes, feel that the limit of the legitimate
boycott is over-passed when the women seize and bar-
ricade their Acropolis. The old chorus leader says :
—
“In life’s long stretch of time, are many things unlooked
for — Woe is me ! For who had ever thought to hear that
 ;

86 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

women whom we keep (a mischief manifest) should get
Athena’s sacred image in their hands; should seize my
citadel; the Propylaea barricade with bolts and bars?”
In this play, too, we catch a glimpse of the more inti-

mate interweaving of an Athenian maiden’s life with

the Acropolis ritual. One of this same sans-culotte gar-

rison looks about her and reviews her girlhood; how

she had been selected among the best-born girls to
carry the mysterious burden in the Arrephoria, had
ground the meal for the sacred cakes for Athena Arche-
getis ;
had impersonated a bear in the worship of Arte-
mis; and, finally, had gained the coveted privilege of

being basket-bearer in the Panathenaic procession.

Explaining her personal gratitude to the city, the
woman says :
—
“ When seven years old an Arrephoros I
And when I was ten

I ground the meal for our Lady-on-High;

In my next role then
I figured as Bear in Brauronian show,
And the saffron wore;
Then as full-grown maid — quite pretty you know —
The Basket I bore.”

The barren precinct of Artemis Brauronia adjoins

the south corner of the Propylaea, and a small dedica-
tory bear, found somewhere near, now sits in the Acro-
polis Museum, brooding in stony silence over by-gone

glories at the Brauronia. But the maiden with the

saffron robe and all her girl companions have long since
disappeared “down the back entry of time.”
 THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 87

If it could be granted us to have restored one portion

of the Parthenon or its appurtenances, our choice would
probably fall, not upon the famous gold-ivory statue
of Athena, but first upon the pediment sculptures ;
next,

it may be, upon the great continuous frieze. If its shat-

tered fragments could be restored, and the slabs now
in Paris and London could be recalled from exile and
united to those still in place, it would be an easier task

for the imagination to reconstruct from these than from

the piecemeal references in the literature an abridged
idealization of the glory of the actual Panathenaic pro-
cession. As it is, from what is left still in place there

emerges something far more significant than the details

of any cult or festival. The dismounted youth adjust-
ing his sandal ;
the horse with leisurely nose bent to his
fore-leg; the mounted horsemen; the rams and oxen
led to the sacrifice, remain, like Keats’s “heifer lowing
at the skies,” to tell the hurrying generations that once,
at least, there has existed, and may exist again, wherever
men are strong to feel and know, the harmony between
the temporal and the eternal.

The Parthenon remained practically intact for cen-

turies, lending its inspiration both to the creative Greeks
and to the imagination of the Romans, the executors
of the Hellenic realty. Even the chryselephantine
Athena seems to have held undisturbed possession of
her temple for more than eight centuries, from the
dedication in 438 b. c. to about 430 A. d., when it dis-

appears from Athenian records.

88 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Plutarch, a Greek gentleman of the first Christian
century, speaks with enthusiasm of the creations of
Pericles. “There blooms upon them a certain fresh-
ness untouched by time, as if there dwelt within them
an ever- animating spirit, a life that never grows old.”
In the next century, under the successors of Hadrian,
who had inaugurated a new era for Athens, Pausanias,
a foreigner, came and saw and was conquered by the
wealth of detail on the Acropolis. At the same time,
that generous citizen from Marathon, Herodes Atticus,
was building against the side of the Acropolis his
gorgeous Italian opera-house, while Lucian, the Syrian
Atticist, with a higher, if impossible, ideal, was striving

to revive the old Platonic grace by quarrying from the

Pentelicus of classic literature. When, in the role of a

“Truthful James,” he is acquitted of blasphemy against

true philosophy, he enters the east door of the Parthenon
to. make thanksgiving to the goddess, or, more specifi-

cally, to the winged Victory, six feet high, upon her

hand. His devotion takes the form of the prayer ap-
pended to three of Euripides’s dramas :
—
“ O majestical Victory, shelter my life

Neath thy covert of wings.

Aye, cease not to grant me thy crowning.”

Thus, like many another later foreigner, he pays the

time-honoured tribute to the outward embodiment of
the ideal.
The charm of the Acropolis changes with the chang-

ing light. See it, if you will, at dawn from the opposite
S. COLONNADE OF THE PARTHENON
 THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 89

hillside, near the “Prison of Socrates,” as the sun

rises over Hymettus and the Pentelic columns of the
Parthenon change from the gray of unsympathetic sil-

houettes to the luminous chromes of the irradiated

marbles. See it at a later hour and wonder that it does
not fade into the light of common day. Or visit it when
the sunset light turns to burnished copper the un-
adorned hills in the west, beyond Salamis, and on the
choir of the encircling mountains the supramundane
charm of the violet atmosphere falls like a robe with
empurpling shadows in its folds. Go when the night
has fallen, and sit in the mysterious darkness, lit only
by the marble columns white against the dark outlines
of Hymettus, until the full moon looks over the moun-
tain’s rim, tipping architrave and capital with silver,
and then, as it swings free from Hymettus, merging
the wreck of the Parthenon in the beauty of the land-
scape to which the scarred and yawning sides of the
temple seem to open with intent. Presently the whole
hill- top with its moraine of prostrate columns and
marble fragments is lit up and the pillars of the Propy-
laea flower into whiteness. Or finally, bizarre as it may
sound, see it when — illuminated
artificially the after

Olympic Games — the ruined temple and the serrated

contour of the plateau are etched in mid-air by the
white light against a gulf of darkness, a veritable city
of the skies.
The Acropolis, crowned with perfect art, crowded
with the loftier phantoms of our elder kin, is a light-
90 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
house for all time. Liberty and Law are its keepers.
“Knowledge comes but Wisdom lingers,” and this

citadel is to every thoughtful man in some sense a sym-

bol of his goal. Its stately Propylaea welcomes all. No
sincere pilgrim of Truth is an alien in the long Pan-
cosmic procession of statesman and scientist, inventor
and poet, artisan and artist that winds up the steep
ascent to lay an ever freshly woven peplus at the feet

of Wisdom.
 CHAPTER V
ATHENS! FROM THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS TO
MENANDER
“ Know that our city has the greatest name amongst all men
because she never yields to her misfortunes. And even should we
ever be compelled to yield a —
little for it is nature’s way that all

things bloom to suffer loss — there will abide a memory that we

made our dwelling-place to be a city dowered with all things, and
the mightiest of all.”
Thucydides, Oration of Pericles in the Assembly.

A
fter the battles of Salamis and Plataea the
Athenians brought back their families to

Attica. Athens was a scene of desolation the :

walls destroyed, the dwelling-houses ruined heaps, the

sanctuaries burnt, the statues and other dedicatory
offerings broken or carried off by the Persians. But
the invaders had not carried off Athena Nike. ^Eschy-
lus puts his own triumphant feeling into the mouth of
the Persian messenger who brings the news of the de-
feat of Xerxes to Queen Atossa :
—
(messenger)
“ The city of the goddess Pallas gods preserve.
(queen)
What say’st ? The Athens ?
city ? Is it still unsacked ?

(messenger)
Yes, in its living men its bulwark stands secure.”
Euripides, also, reechoes this word of HSschylus and
denies the sack of Athens. As a matter of fact little
92 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
remained save a few houses used as Persian head-
quarters. But the blackened walls of the old temple on
the Acropolis still stood in grim protest against the vio-
lation of the Virgin’s home and as an appeal to the citi-

zens to provide her with a fairer abode. The appeal

was not disregarded. In the fifth century the city was
extended and the Acropolis was adorned with monu-
ments of sculpture and architecture. The gods and the
public needs came first. Private dwellings in the fifth

century were not imposing. The old Marathon fight-

ers and their immediate descendants were content with

private simplicity. In the fourth century, however,
private luxury came uppermost. Demosthenes con-
trasts the unequalled splendour of the temples, statues
and public buildings of the old time with the modera-
tion in private life, which, he says, was so marked
“that if any of you perchance knows what sort of a
house was the dwelling of Aristides or Miltiades or any
of those then eminent, he sees that it was no whit more
stately than those next door — while to-day upstarts
have built themselves private houses more stately than
the public buildings.”
Systematically to discuss the fifth and fourth century
references to specific sites — buildings public and pri-

vate, stoas, temples, theatres, gymnasia, music-halls,

courtrooms, sanctuaries and statues, walls and gates,

the place of the Assembly, the market-place and the
markets, fountains, streets, and wards, would require
several volumes. And although it is possible to present
 ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 93

by inference a reasonably clear picture of the environ-

ment and daily life of the citizens, yet the exact identi-
fication of the majority of the sites in the remains exist-

ing to-day is either impossible or a matter of conjecture.

Apart from the Acropolis buildings but few conspicu-
ous ruins or memorials of these two great centuries
are left for actual inspection. The continuous occupa-
tion of Athens by successive generations of changing
masters has obliterated or buried (perhaps for future
identification) the greater part of the city that lay
around the base of the Acropolis. It is only surprising
that so much remains. It is not meagre except in com-
parison with what has disappeared.
Around or over all that is left of Classic, Hellenistic,
or Roman Athens is the modern city, effacing itself in

patches at the behest of the archaeologist, or developing

slowly in accordance with its own needs.
In this chapter, however, we have to do directly only

with the Athens of the fifth or fourth centuries. If the

physical remains from this period are fragmentary, the

literature, although itself but fragments of the whole,
is the great bulk of existing classic Greek literature

outside of the epic, the earlier philosophers, and the

lyric. And this corpus of literature was in large part
native Attic. At the same time the talent from with-
out gravitated also to Athens. Herodotus from the Do-
rian Halicarnassus not only wrote in Ionic, but adopted
the Athenian attitude so largely as to vitiate in part
his value as an independent historian. Hippocrates,
94 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
the great Ionian physician, visited Athens. The Soph-
ists, though coming from the North, the West, or the
islands, found in Athens the appropriate environment
for a “ circuit ” faculty of an unarticulated federal uni-

versity. Prose, seasoned and adorned, became hence-

forth an asset of the Athenian intellect and was made
ready for the use of historian, orator, and philosopher.
Athens, mistress of the seas, and herself producer of
art and literature, needed no protective tariff against
intellectual imports.
This very wealth of fifth and fourth century litera-

ture imposes limitations, more rigid than our uncer-

tainty about this, that, or the other site, upon the effort

to interpret the external Athens from the more endur-

ing monuments of her thinkers. Nor is it true that the
nexus between Athens and her literature may be made
clear only by definite localization. We do not wish the
conditions reversed. Although, for example, the court-
rooms and the Lyceum have disappeared, we may, as
we wander about Athens to-day, come much nearer the
Greeks of the classic age than if, while the buildings
had remained intact, the words of the orators and of
the great Peripatetic could no longer reach our ears.
The so-called “Theseum,” largely perfect as it is and
invaluable for architectural and artistic suggestion,
leaves us cold in the lack of literary association as com-
pared with the Propylaea where many an old-time
Athenian rubs elbows with us as we pass in and out
between its stately columns. But in a wider sense we
 ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 95

may “localize,” here on this Attic plain around the

Acropolis and here under this Attic sky, the poetry and
prose of the fifth and fourth centuries.

A brief summary of this poetry and prose will per-

haps suggest more clearly the larger pattern from

which, almost arbitrarily, selections may be made.
In the fifth century, lyric was brought to its perfec-

tion by singers not of Athens. But Ceos, the birthplace

of two of them, was moored close to Attica. Simonides,
the poet-laureate of the Persian wars, was much in
Athens, and his nephew Bacchylides took the Attic
Theseus for the theme of two of his extant poems,
wrote one of his epinician odes in honour of an Athen-
ian victor, and composed another poem expressly in
laudation of Athens. Pindar himself studied in Athens,
and afterwards, to his own townspeople’s disgust,
praised her in no grudging terms. The Athenian drama
itself, in the chorals of tragedy and of Aristophanes,
contributed much of the greatest lyric extant in Greek
literature.

Tragedy in the fifth century grew from infancy to

maturity at Athens. When ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides had completed their work it had received its

final form for the Greeks, and was so transmitted to the

great actors and the lesser playwrights of the fourth

century.
Comedy likewise culminated with Aristophanes in
the fifth century. More flexible than tragedy, however,
it could humour successfully the changing moods of
96 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
the body politic and retain its vigour through the whole
of the fourth century. Even under Macedon, Menan-
der in the New Comedy could recast much that Euripi-
des had tried, with varying success, to embody within
the canonized limits of orthodox tragedy.
History was the gift of the fifth century. Herodotus
after the Persian wars bridged with his epic prose the

^Egean, and we reach terra firma in Thucydides’s his-

tory in the latter part of the century. In the first part

of the fourth century we have Xenophon, the historian,
biographer, essay- writer, and historical novelist. These
were precursors of a line of historians appearing spo-
radically even down through Byzantine times.

Oratory, an inalienable inheritance of the Hellene

even before Athena coached the crafty Odysseus, re-

ceived at Athens a certain finality of form, or forms,

that has imposed its influence upon the occidental,
whether Roman or Englishman, lawyer or epideictic
speaker. The unwritten word of statesmen like Peri-
cles, fusing the persuasion of the politician with the
keener rationalism of Anaxagoras and the raucous,
but not wholly unpatriotic, opportunism of dema-
gogues like Cleon or Hyperbolus, was paired with the
more decently draped pragmatism of the Sophists, and
resulted in the selected group of the “ten” orators, of
the fifth and fourth centuries. There was the some-
what archaic Antiphon, the dignified criminal lawyer;

Andocides, who brought his rough and ready style to

bear upon burning questions of contemporary politics;

 ;
;

ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 97

Lysias, the son of an alien, but truly Attic, the younger

friend of Socrates, the lucid narrator, the relentless
prosecutor ;
Isaeus, the capable testamentary barrister
Isocrates, who both saw the building of the Erechtheum
and outlived the battle of Chaeronea, and whose over-
finished oratory transmitted the florid adornment of

Gorgias to the schools in which Cicero was trained;

Demosthenes, greatest of all, whether in private suits

or in his arraignment of public foes, whose terrorizing

cleverness was quick to strike or counter like the flash-

ing arms of the athlete impeded with no ounce of florid

superfluity ;
iEschines, his great antagonist ;
Lycurgus
Hyperides; and Dinarchus.
Philosophy as a native Attic product matured last

of all. Ionia had produced the great “physical” philo-

sophers, and Pythagoras had gone in the sixth century

to Italy ;
but in the first half of the fifth century the so-
called “colonial” philosophers, like the foreign Soph-
ists, influenced Athenian thought — some of them by
personal They came from the East and from the
visits.

West. Parmenides came from Italy, and his influence

was felt by Socrates and transmitted to Plato and
Aristotle. The aristocratic Empedocles came on a visit

from Sicily. Anaxagoras from Ionia settled at Athens

in his youth. — the
His “chaos-controlling mind”
primal force of reason — impregnated the statesman-
ship of Pericles and engendered the rationalism of
Euripides. The Athenians might banish the philoso-
pher, but his “ primal force of reason ” was already busy
98 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
in rearranging the chaos of traditional beliefs. It

emerges clearly in Plato as intelligent Mind. Socrates,

though not himself a writer, is the central figure of

philosophic literature. Pre-Socratic thought focussed

in him as in a burning-glass. From him shoot out the
divergent rays of the Academics and Peripatetics, the
Cynics and the precursors of the Epicureans, Stoics,
and Skeptics. No one of his disciples reproduced his

views with any exactness, but he stimulated self-exami-

nation and independent thought. Each took from him
what he could or would, and developed differing or

mutually exclusive schools. Like the rivers of Greece,

coursing for a time through the underground “kata-
vothras,” pre-Socratic speculative thought on physics
and metaphysics flowed on beneath the open devotion
of Socrates to ethical questions, and reappears in his

successors.
Plato in the fourth century constituted himself the
ethical and philosophic executor of Socrates. Loyalty
and a wide vision alike combined to perpetuate his
master’s name in the intellectual output of the great
iPlatonic dialogues. It has been the work of centuries to

disentangle the real views of this sleeping partner from

those of Plato’s own constructive intellect, which built,
pulled down, and reared anew the dwelling-places for
the minds of many men in many generations.
Aristotle, like Anaxagoras, came as an alien and
settled in Athens in his youth. After the death of his
master, Plato, he left Athens, travelled, and became the
 ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 99

tutor of Alexander. After the accession of his royal

pupil to the throne, he established at Athens in the
Lyceum a rival school to the Academy.
Antisthenes, half Athenian, half Thracian, the faith-
ful follower of Socrates, had before this established the

Cynic school in another gymnasium, the Cynosarges,

where the victors fresh from Marathon had encamped.
Socrates, the barefoot friar, the new avatar of Heracles,

was his patron saint. Later in the century Zeno the

Stoic set up his eclectic school in the Painted Porch
of the Agora, and Epicurus, of an Attic father though
born at Samos, established his school in his own Gar-
dens near the Dipylon.
Theophrastus, the friend of Epicurus and of Menan-
der, gives us in his “Characters,” at the close of this

period, vivid portraits of Athenian life which supple-

ment the fragments of Menander and the other writ-
New Comedy, and also, as pupil and succes-
ers of the

sor of Aristotle, carried on his master’s teachings in the

Lyceum. Thus one pupil busied himself in transmit-

ting through his intellectual heirs the esoteric thought of

his master, while Alexander, another pupil, had con-
structed on lines that paralleled the intellectual imperi-
alism of his teacher a material organon of Empire (ut-
terly at variance with his master’s conception of the
ideal state) that no successor could wield alone until

Rome reached forth and grasped it in her iron hand.

But to understand at all the meaning of the litera-

ture, it is also necessary to remind ourselves of some of

100 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
the more striking features of the history of these two
centuries. They are crowded with conspicuous figures
and with events significant to the philosophic student

of political institutions.
In general the fifth century exhibits the rise and
downfall of the imperialistic policy, the fourth century
the rehabilitation of a chastened democracy, with spo-
radic echoes of a federalizing ideal. But no one policy
can be predicated of the fifth century. It varied with
the great leaders, Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles, and
others — the old in conflict with the new conservative,
;

aristocratic democracy against imperialism democracy ;

against oligarchy; ochlocracy against democracy.

When the Persian peril was thrust back, the irrepressi-
ble conflict between Sparta and Athens emerged. The
struggle for the hegemony between them, or between
varying combinations of the Greek states, was to con-
tinue at intervals until the time when all the old powers
of Greece were to succumb to Macedon.
Themistocles, the hero of Salamis, was ostracized
from Athens within eight years of the great sea-fight,

but his spirit still animated his countrymen, and his

policies were afterwards revived or expanded. His
rival Aristides guided affairs at home, and Cimon, the
son of Miltiades, sailed with the conquering Athenian
navy. His victory at Eurymedon in 468 b. c. made it

possible to fortify Athens and Piraeus and to merge the

Confederacy of Delos in the Athenian Empire. In
seven years more Cimon in turn was ostracized, but at
 ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS ioi

the end of another seven years the rich treasure of

Delos could be transferred to Athens and the empire
formally established. It was to last until the disaster

at ^Egospotami, in 405 b. C. Pericles, after successfully

competing with the reactionary patriotism of statesmen

like Thucydides, obtained, at the ostracism of the latter

in 442 b. c., the controlling power at Athens, which he

guided by his regal persuasion for the next fifteen years.

The imperialism of Pericles realized the policy of

Themistocles on the seas, reaped the harvest of the
great Cimon’s victories, and transmuted the treasure
of Delos into the sinews of war and the monuments
of the glorified Acropolis. He reshaped the civic life,

even curtailing the sacred powers of the Areopagus,

and by popular changes in the complexion of Council,
Assembly, and Law Courts, prepared the way for the

uneven rule of demagogues after his own strong hand

should be withdrawn. He had great odds to contend
with. After the renewal of the Peloponnesian wars in

431 b. c., with the succession of victories and reverses,

the Great Plague came to assert an unlooked-for he-
gemony. On the suffering and disasters of the city fol-
lowed the trial and condemnation of Pericles himself.
He was indeed reinstated as indispensable, but his death
in the following year left Athens at the mercy of the
demagogues — with Alcibiades to follow. The Sicilian

expedition, the crowning venture of imperialism, issued

— as was to be expected with no real successor of Peri-
cles to direct it — in the disaster of 413 b. g., when the
io2 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
brave Syracusans, with the willing help of Sparta, dis-
sipated the Athenian dream of vast colonial expansion.
The next ten years was for Athens a losing struggle
athome and abroad. The short-lived oligarchy of the
Four Hundred in 411 b. c., the strenuous but vain ef-
forts of Theramenes to reconcile oligarchy and democ-
racy, the civic strife and war with the powerful Lysan-
der, the crushing defeat at iTgospotami, the interven-

tion of Sparta, the brief but terrible regime of the Thirty

Tyrants, completed, in 404 b. c., the final overthrow

of imperial Athens. But Sparta, with politic generosity,

while doing away with the empire, left Athens free to

establish a more stable democracy that was to last

through the greater part of the fourth century. Oli-

garchy could no more find a hearing, and, although

Hellenic federations were eloquently advocated by the
orators and actually formed, despotic empire was no
longer feasible for the Athenians. Their new leader,
Conon, however, the foe of Sparta, could succeed after

Lysander’s death in making Athens independent and

strong. Wecome upon his work now and again in
Athens and in Piraeus, and in the renascent civic life
the intellectual life went on with new vigour. The im-
perial dream finally came true, but from the outside.
The Macedonian, though sneered at as barbarian by De-
mosthenes, confirmed at the Olympic games the validity
of his Hellenic claim that he had asserted at Chaeronea.

The fitful struggle against the sway of Macedon only

resulted, under a successor less philhellenic than Philip,
 ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 103

in the forced suicide of the great Demosthenes and the

execution of Hypereides, whose funeral oration, pro-
nounced over the dead heroes of the “lost cause,” car-

ries us beyond the great speech of Pericles — pro-

nounced on a similar but less hopeless occasion —
back to the heroes of Marathon and Salamis. Speaking
of the dead leader Leosthenes, he says: “In the dark
under-world — suffer us to ask — who are they that will

stretch forth a right hand to the captain of our dead ?

. . . There, I deem, will be Miltiades and Themisto-

cles, and those others who made Hellas free, to the
credit of their city, to the glory of their names.”*

We sit to-day beneath a Greek sky on the rising tiers

of the modern centuries, and the drama of Athenian

life is reproduced before our eyes. The greater pro-
tagonists of literature and life play out their roles.
Many another actor plays his less prominent but es-

sential part. The “mutes” contribute. The chorus

of democracy is seldom absent from the scene. The
binoculars of modern historians penetrate behind paint
and mask and robe, and the squalor of the real actor
is at times laid bare. We may choose, however, to
ignore minutiae and to give ourselves up to the more
satisfying perspective of the literature, and to let sweep
before us the bright procession of form and colour, the
song and saga, the Dionysiac revel and tragic mimicry
that fill out the real drama of life.

* Translated by Jebb, Attic Orators.

io 4 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
iEschylus connects the old and the new Athens. Be-
fore Marathon he produced his first play; in the inter-

val before Salamis he gained a first prize; and he

brought out his greatest dramas in the time of the
Renascence, of which he was a great part.
The bare hill of the Areopagus claims attention as
we descend from the Propylaea. It rises as a physical
barrier between the deserted site of the old city of The-
seus and that of Classic or of Modern Athens. With the
sanctity attaching to the time-honoured prerogatives of
its venerable court it was also a moral barrier between
the old and the new in the days when Pericles was
reshaping the civic life. And ^Eschylus in his “ Eumeni-
des,” the third play of his great trilogy, strove as best
he could to reconcile old traditions with the inevitable
readjustment to the life of imperial Athens. He spoke
with the authority of a Hebrew prophet. Whatever else
was changed, blood- guiltiness must be judged. Only
within the mysterious gloom of the cleft beneath the
Areopagus could the dread and ancient Furies, spawn
of Night, be transformed into willing coadjutors of the

goddess of Wisdom.
The Furies in hot haste have pursued from Delphi
Orestes, the mother-murderer. Confidently anticipat-
ing the verdict, they cry :
—
“ Over the victim thus we chaunt,
A frenzy and madness his mind to daunt,
A hymn of the Furies to fetter the mind,
A withering blight to human kind.”
AREOPAGUS
 !

ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 105

The god Apollo himself appears for the defendant, and

when the decision goes against the Furies by Athena’s
casting vote in the Areopagus Court, their bitterness
against the “new” gods shoots forth like the serpents
uncoiling in their hair :
—
“ Ah upstart gods and parvenu
My ancient laws your hoof-beats spurn.
Ye wrested them from out my hand,
Alas for you!
I, though dishonoured and distressed,
Upon this land
The grievous weight of my wrath shall turn
And from my breast
Shoot venom on venom, woe for woe,
Drop upon drop of a poison flow
For Earth unbearable, unblest.”

Athena pacifies the Furies by promising them a local

sanctuary and the reverence of the citizens for all time.

The old order is reconciled with the new, and the
Furies, now the Eumenides — the Propitious Ones —
are escorted to their dwelling in the cleft of the Are-
opagus by Athena’s own attendants, boys, maidens,
and matrons, with ceremonious honour equal to the
Panathenaic procession :
—
“ Fare ye on to your home in your emulous might
. With our loyal attendance, ye children of Night.
(O my countrymen, bless them and praise them!)
“ In the caverns of eld, in the womb of the Earth
With the offerings of honour befitting your worth.
(O my demesmen, now bless them and praise them!)
“ Nay, then, righteous and gracious in mind to our land,
Come, come, O ye Dread Ones, take joy in our band.
(Cry aloud now! Exult in your singing!)
io6 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
“ As the torches attend, let libations be poured,
Thus the all-seeing Zeus and the Moirae as ward
To the people of Pallas their presence afford.
(Cry aloud now! Exult in your singing!) ”

The great mass broken off from the east end of the
Areopagus rock has partially blocked the cleft into

which the chorus conducts home the Dread Goddesses.

As the procession, chanting its hymn, sweeps around
the shoulder of the hill, the faded picture of ancient
Athens regains its outlines as if under some powerful
reagent. Wine-press and fountain, precincts and tem-
ples, rise again from their ruins ;
the throbbing life of
the eager citizens reappears. But the gaily-dressed
people have hushed jest and carping under the sense
of awe evoked by ^Eschylus. The Athenians were then,
as St. Paul on this same Areopagus called them long
afterwards, “very scrupulous,” and it was no unworthy
superstition that made it imperative to harmonize the
cruder conceptions of the immutable laws of Retribu-
tion with the new and expansive wisdom of Athena.
Swinburne, with keen insight into the universal appli-
cation of the great drama, brings the “shadows of
our deeds” under wisdom’s searching but not unkindly
light: —
“ Light whose law bids home those childless children of eternal night,
Soothed and reconciled and mastered and transmuted in men’s sight
Who behold their own souls, clothed with darkness once, now
clothed with light.”

The visitor who takes his stand to-day immediately

in front of the south side of the Areopagus is com-
 ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 107

pletely sequestered from the modern city. Here the

Acropolis and the Areopagus rock make practically

a continuous barrier to the close-built streets that on

the northern side come crowding up their slopes. He
is encircled with hills, and this ancient quarter of the

city of Theseus lies waste and silent around him. The

ground is harrowed and scarred by the spade of the
archaeologist. Only the foundations of sanctuaries and
fountains, houses and cisterns, may be distinguished.
The rock-chambers opposite, called by courtesy
the “Prison of Socrates,” will, however, recall us to
classic Athens. While waiting for the return of the
mission-ship from Delos to bring the day of execution,
Crito and the rest listened to Socrates’s demonstrations
of immortality. Plato sent his reason out as far into
the invisible as reason can go. In the “Phaedo,” after
his half-playful periegesis of the underworld, Socrates

is made to say: “Whosoever seem to have excelled in

holy living, these are they who are set free and released
from these earthly places as from prisons and fare
upward to that pure habitation and make their dwell-

ing-place in yonder land. . . . Therefore we must do

our utmost to gain in life a share in virtue and wisdom.
For the prize is noble and the hope is great!” or, as he
adds presently, “The risk is fair.” And Socrates, like
Pindar before him, finds the crowning joy of a blessed
immortality neither in the unlaborious sunlit life by
night and day, nor in the ocean breezes, nor in the
flowers of gold blooming on trees of splendour, but in
io8 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
the company of the great and noble dead with whom
to live “’twere more of happiness than tongue can
tell.”

On the Pnyx hill we may recall the Athenian As-

sembly, and may turn in fancy the voluminous pages
of Congressional Records filled with patriotism and
jealousy; we listen to. Pericles and his persuasive
schemes for imperial expansion; or to Socrates, presi-

dent for the day, refusing, amidst the clamours of

demos and demagogues, to put to vote the illegal pro-

position to condemn in a body the ten generals; or to

Demosthenes pleading, denouncing, planning for the

welfare of the city. Or in the half-light before dawn

We may see the suffragettes of Aristophanes’s “ Eccle-
siazusae” filing up the hill. More wily than their mod-
ern sisters, they have disguised themselves with beards
and have dressed in the shoes and cloaks distrained
from their husbands, imprisoned at home by naked
necessity. With no man to oppose, the women quickly
transfer the whole control of the State to themselves,
and institute reforms that would put to shame the
most radical of modern socialists. A slave, in the

“Wasps” of Aristophanes, once had a dream by no

means respectful to the Athenian legislature. Some
sheep, with cloaks and staves, sat huddled together like

just so many Athenians on the seats of the Pnyx, hold-

ing an Assembly. To-day the hill is left lonely, and
the wandering goats, with their solemn faces and long
beards, might renew the sittings unmolested.
 ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 109

In the face of the hill fronting towards the Acro-

polis, the rock-chamber of the Callirrhoe spring, with
its sloping entrance and the parapet within, has been
suggested as the original of the famous cave in Plato’s
“Republic.” The Vari Cave, on the south side of
Hymettus, might have made less of a strain, as has been
urged, upon Plato’s imagination. However faint the

resemblance of the Callirrhoe cave to Plato’s complex

setting, it is enough to emphasize the vitality of this

realistic figure, which has become typical, in mod-

ern poetry and prose, of the denizens of earth watching
and naming the shadows thrown by the fire-light upon
the cave’s wall, unable by reason of fetters to look
around at the objects moving behind them, much less

to rise and climb the long ascent to the brighter light

above.
The innocent-looking ravine west of the Hill of the
Nymphs is identified with the Barathrum. In antiquity
its fame had penetrated to the underworld, where the
innkeeper’s maid threatened to pitch the Pseudo-
Heracles “into the Barathrum.” And Herodotus’s
apocryphal story is at least ben trovato. He relates

that, when the ambassadors of Darius came asking

tokens of submission from the Greeks: “Some [the

Athenians] took the messengers and threw them into

the Barathrum, others [the Spartans] into a well,
and bade them take earth and water from there to
their King.” Miltiades, the hero of Marathon, if we
are to believe the allusion in the “ Gorgias,” barely
no GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
escaped with a fine and banishment instead of the
criminal’s end in this same pit.

If even the skeleton of the Athenian Market-place

could be resurrected, like that of the Roman Forum,
many scores of allusions would take on a local habi-

tation. The Agora was the centre of life. In classic

times it probably lay in the depression west of the
“Theseum” hill, and extended, from the slopes of the
Areopagus, northward about to the modern Hadrian
street. Pindar, with no idle flattery, spoke of the “ fair-
famed Agora, in sacred Athens, inlaid with cunning
workmanship.” Sculptor, painter, and architect gave
of their best. The Prytaneum, close to, or in the Agora,
was the city’s fireside. Distinguished foreigners and
citizens here and in the Tholus enjoyed, temporarily
or for life, the public hospitality. Socrates ironically
suggests to his judges that the sentence really fitting
his case would be: “Maintenance in the Prytaneum,
much more so indeed than if any one of you has come
off victor at Olympia with a race horse, a pair, or a
four-horse team.” Plutarch relates that Aristides, far
from enriching himself from the public purse, left not
even enough for his funeral expenses, and that the
Athenians “married off his daughters from the Pry-
taneum at the public cost — voting a dowry of three
thousand drachmas to each.” In the stoas that faced
upon the Agora the citizens heard and discussed many
a new thing, from the days when the great painting of
the battle of Marathon was fresh in the Painted Porch,
 ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS hi
to the time when the Stoics appropriated this colon-
nade. In time of war a man would look fearfully at
the bulletin board near by, to see if his name was posted

for military duty ;

or in time of truce would feel that
yonder beautiful group of Peace with the child Wealth
best reproduced to the eyes the blessings so often ab-
sent during the wearisome Peloponnesian wars, —
blessings which Bacchylides, the admiring neighbour
of Athens, had celebrated :
—
“ And now for mortals Peace, the mighty mother, giveth birth
To Wealth and bears culled flowers of honey’d minstrelsy.
She makes on sculptured altars of the gods to blaze
Thigh pieces, in the yellow flame, of bullocks and of thick-fleeced
lambs,
And lets the youths give thought to athletes’ toil and flutes and
revelry.
Now in the steel-bound hand-loops of the shield
Are stretched the dusk-red spiders’ woven tapestries;
The barbed spears, the two-edged swords are cankered o’er;
The trumpet’s brazen blare is still.”

To be near the Agora was a desideratum. The crip-

ple, in Lysias’s oration, asking the Senate to continue

his pension, refers to the fact that every one in Athens
has his favourite lounging place: “One frequents the
perfume-seller’s, another the barber’s, another the
cobbler’s ;
and as a rule the most of them lounge into

the shops set up nearest the Agora, and the very fewest
resort to those most remote from it.” Socrates, too,
seeking his audience where the crowds gravitated, was
often heard talking “in the Market-place near the
bankers’ tables.” Aristophanes, together with the other
1 12 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
comic writers, and Lysias and Theophrastus tell not
— the
only of other resorts shop, the
like fuller’s shield-
and-spear-maker’s — but of many special sub-markets.
Thus there were by the Agora the “Pottery” and
the “Vegetable” Market, and, somewhere near, the
“ Green-cheese,” the “ Garlic,” the “Wine,” the “ Oil,”

the “Fish” markets. Of the Bird-market we hear in

some detail in Aristophanes, — the live pigeons in cages,
strings of ortolans, thrushes abnormally inflated, and
blackbirds with “feathers shamefully inserted in their
nostrils”! In time of war the country folk thronged
into town to escape the armies that were devastat-
ing Attica. In times of peace, too, they came trooping
in on the first of the month, and to the oft-recurring

festivals. Menander, with his blended Stoicism and

Epicureanism, looks around in the crowded Agora and
compares human life to a festival or market-fair :
—
“ That man, O Parmeno, I count most fortunate
Who quickly whence he came returns, when he, unvexed,
Has looked on these majestic sights — the common sun,
Water and clouds, the stars and fire. If thou shalt live

An hundred years, or if a very few, thou ’It always see

These same sights present, grander ones thou’lt ne’er behold.
So reckon thou this time I’m speaking of as though
Some market-fair or trip to town, where one may see
The crowd, the market, dice and loungers’ haunts;
Then, if thou’rt first unto thy lodgings, with more gold
Thou’lt go upon thy travels and shalt pick no brawl;
While he that tarries longer, worn, his money gone,
Grows old and wretched, and forever knows some lack,
A wandering vagrant finding enemies and plots,
And gains no death that’s easy, staying out his time.”
 ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 113

A broad avenue, flanked with porticoes, ran from

the Market-place northwest to the Dipylon gate. This
double gateway, impressive even from the remains of
its foundations, quickens the memory to recall the

generations of citizens and foreigners that have passed

this way. Along the roads from Colonus and the Acad-
emy and the Sacred Way from Eleusis, converging out-

side the gates, will come a motley throng of Athenian

ghosts, gay or scurrilous, militant or philosophic, to

blot out the consciousness of the modern city. Outside

the Dipylon, in the “ Outer Cerameicus,” is “the Street
of the Tombs.” Some of the beautiful monuments are
still in situ to stimulate a detailed study of the rich
material in the National Museum. It was here that
the Athenians usually buried their dead. The roll-call

of great names stirs the imagination here as in West-

minster Abbey. This is no exclusive privilege of one
place or people. But there is often an appropriate ge-

nius loci. As one lingers along the Appian Way, for ex-
ample, deciphering inscriptions and pausing before the
weather-beaten faces on the monuments, there is a lurk-
ing pessimism and -an insidious melancholy that flow
in from the beauty of the Roman Campagna. Here,
however, in this proastion of Athens, this Suburb of
the Dead, the memorials still in place, with their un-
pretentious sincerity, give rather a sensation of beauty
and hope in perpetuating scenes from actual life.

Even a scene of parting has less of hopeless finality.

The warrior on his horse, the woman with her jewel-

ii4 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
box, suggests life and love, not death and lamentation.
Along yonder road from Eleusis came many an initiate

fresh from the Mysteries, and some may well have been
ready to listen with hope to Pindar’s “ trumpet-blast for
immortality” :
—
“For them the night all through,
In that broad realm below,
The splendour of the sun spreads endless light;
’Mid rosy meadows bright,
Their city of the tombs with incense-trees,
And golden chalices
Of flowers, and fruitage fair,
Scenting the breezy air,

Is laden.There with horses and with play,

With games and lyres, they while the hours away.” *

Whether or no we choose to identify with Charon the

old man in the boat, represented on one of the stelae
still standing, Death and Life here confront each other.
iEschylus, in his early allusion to Charon’s boat, draws
the contrast by an antithesis of the black sails of the
ship of Theseus to the god of Light, and speaks of
the “rowing” of the mourners’ arms causing —
“ that dark-sailed mission-ship, upon whose deck Apollo
treads not and the Acheron to
sunlight falls not, through
pass unto that shore unseen where all must lodging find.”

And Euripides prepares his audience for the pathetic

departure of Alcestis to the underworld by a sharp dia-
logue between Apollo and Death, who is at once as old
and as lusty as Death in the Morality plays.

* Translated by A. Symonds.
J.
STREET OF THE TOMBS
Monument of Hegeso
 ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS IX 5

After the battle of Chaeronea Philip sent back the

ashes of the dead Athenians, and Demosthenes counted
it the highest honour to deliver their funeral oration.
But the noblest association with this spot is the great

oration of Pericles, who was chosen in the course of the

Peloponnesian War to pronounce the public eulogy
over the dead warriors. These were borne along in
cypress chests, with one empty litter to represent those
whose bodies had not been recovered. The long speech
is the incarnation of the Athenian spirit and of Peri-
cles’s own undaunted policy. Thucydides represents
him as saying :
—
“They received praise that grows not old and a most
illustrious tomb not;
that in which they here are laid

but wherever, as occasion arises, there remaineth the

ever-living glory of their word and work. For the whole
earth is the sepulchre of famous men, and not only in

their own land does an inscription upon columns tell

of it, but in other lands an unwritten memory dwells

within the mind of all.”
The “Cerameicus” was soon to receive Pericles.

The great plague carried off the orator’s sons, and,

overcome by grief and the shipwreck of his plans, he
died himself in the next year.
Thucydides describes the plague with appalling vig-

our. The misery and danger were aggravated by the

congestion of the country folk crowding in to escape
the Peloponnesian invaders. Bivouacked in stifling

“shacks” during the hot summer, they died uncared-

n6 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
for and lay where they fell, dying upon one another,
at home, in the streets, or by the fountains where they
had tried in vain to quench their fever.

In the “(Edipus Tyrannus” of Sophocles the plague

at Thebes is pictured in terms certainly reminiscent,
at least here and there, of what must have been the
most awful memory of the poet’s life. The blight that
has fallen alike on the land and on its inhabitants is

described by the Chorus :

—
“Nay, for no longer the glorious Earth
Yieldeth her young; nor by ever a birth
Of a child do our women change sorrow to mirth.
You may see how they’re flocking like birds of unrest
Or swifter than fire’s unquenchable quest,
Afar to the shore of the God in the West.

“ They are unnumbered, dead and dying,

The city’s children, unpitied they’re lying,
With no one to mourn them, outstretched on the ground,
Death and pestilence spreading around.”

Thucydides relates, too, that the Athenians discussed

an ancient oracle which told how a “ Dorian war will

befall and a pestilence come as companion”; and that

in the midst of their despair they could debate whether
the oracle said “pestilence” (Aoi/aos) or “famine”
(Atfxos), either word being appropriate enough. History
repeats itself. At Athens in 1906, during a virulent
outbreak of smallpox, with the pest-houses overflowing,
the newspapers calmly turned to the really vital ques-
tion of the proper Greek word for the disease — whether
it should be evloyia (euAoyta), or effloyia (cu<£Aoyia).
 ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 117

Amidst the splendour of the public buildings the

dwelling-houses long remained insignificant. The
streets were dark at night. The houses had few win-
dows to let out such light as might come from the
“dim and stingy wick” of some miser watching his

hoards, or from that of a perplexed father reckoning

up his son’s horse-racing debts, as we find old Strep-

siades doing in the “Clouds” of Aristophanes: —

“The month’s end’s coming and the interest rolling up.
I say, slave, light a lamp and bring my ledger here.

Slave ( entering ).

There’s scarce a drop of oil in this here lamp of ours.

Strepsiades.

O my! Why did you, tell me, light that thirsty lamp?
Come here that you may get a weeping!

Slave.
And why so?

Strepsiades.

Because you put in one of those fat, greedy wicks.”

In the “ Wasps” the jurors, out before dawn to secure

a job at the court-room, pick their way along the dark

streets with only the link-boys to guard them against
stumbling-stones and refuse.

Member of Chorus.
“Let’s march by the lamp and everywhere look well about, around
us,
Lest here or there should be some stone to trip us and confound us.
 !

n8 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

Boy.
Watch out there, father, father, for this dirt, watch out!

Member of Chorus.
Pick up a chip here from the ground and snuff the lamp.

Boy.
No, with my finger thus I choose to snuff the lamp

Member of Chorus.
What’s got into your head, with hand to shove the wick,
And that when oil’s so scanty? There, you fool, take that!”

The flat-roofed houses were low. Highwaymen

could sit on the roofs and jump down on their victims.

Burglars, who preferred a change from the conven-

tional method of digging through the soft bricks,
could climb over the house-wall. The street-mire and
“ Apaches” were familiar in violet-crowned Athens.
Demosthenes on occasion loads his terrible Gatling
gun with details picked up from the street. In his
oration “Against Conon” he describes a brawl. The
plaintiff recites how the said Conon and his crew had
met him near the Leocorion at the Agora, tripped up
his legs, trampled him in the mire, cut his lip, and
bunged up his eyes ;
how, finally, as he lay there, Conon
was egged on by the others to flap his arms like wings
and to crow over him like a victorious rooster.

The Gymnasia of Athens emphasize one of the most

characteristic features of Athenian life — the close in-

terrelation of the physical and the intellectual. Here

the youths were trained in their naked beauty here the
;
 ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 119

philosophers collected their data ;

here they afterwards
taught their doctrines. To-day, unhappily, we must
content ourselves with recalling the natural beauty
surrounding the Academy at Colonus, or reconstruct-

ing scenes like those in the “ Euthydemus,” the “ Char-

mides,” the “Laches,” or “Lysis” of Plato. At the
opening of the “Lysis” Socrates is making his way
close under the outside of the north wall of the city,

bound from the Academy for the Lyceum, which was

probably somewhere east of the present King’s Gar-
dens. Thus the path between Plato’s Academy and
the future school of Aristotle was worn by the footsteps
of their great predecessor. Socrates on this occasion,
however, was deflected by an eager youth to enter a
new palaestra just opened near the fountain of Panops,
possibly near the gate of Diochares now placed by
conjecture near the intersection of the Street of the
Muses and Boule Street. He is persuaded without
difficulty and holds a discussion on Friendship with

the handsome youths gathered there. In the “Char-

mides” likewise he goes to another palaestra, Taureas,
which was near the Itonian gate, probably not far from
the Olympieum. He had just come back the evening
before from the engagement at Potidaea, and is eagerly
questioned about the battle. As usual, he guides the
talk into other channels and there follows a discussion
upon Temperance.
Although the sites of the courts are uncertain, we
know what went on in them. The Athenian passion
i2o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
for litigation is a commonplace. Lucian’s Icaromenip-
pus, looking down from the moon on the kingdoms of
the classic world, characterizes the inhabitants thus:
“I could see the nomad Scyths in their wagons; the
Egyptian farming the Cilician buccaneering the Spar-
; ;

tan flogging; and the Athenian pettifogging.” So, in

the newly organized Bird-town of Aristophanes, one
of the first visitors, following hard after the parricide,
is a Law-suit-hatcher. He “cannot dig,” but is not
ashamed of his blackmailing trade. He comes to the

birds for wings to bear him around among the Isles

as “Summoner.”
The “Wasps” is a comedy directed against this
frailty of the Athenians. The old Philocleon (dema-
gogue-lover) on account of his inordinate passion for
,

sitting on juries, is forcibly detained at home by his son

who, to console his father, arranges a trial of the dog
Labes (Snap) who has rushed into the kitchen and de-
voured a Sicilian cheese. The trial is conducted with
detailed and rigorous conventionality. The defendant
is finally acquitted, thanks to the puppies, who are
brought into court and “whining beg him off, entreat
and weep!” — a parody on the common but illegal

method of influencing a jury, which Socrates scorned

to adopt when on trial for his life.

With the exception of the Acropolis itself, the great

Dionysiac Theatre perhaps offers most to allure the

visitor. Although in its present state, with the later
disfigurements of Roman times, we can only with diffi-
 :

ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 121

culty form a detailed picture of its structure even in

the fourth century, yet the slight traces of the circular
orchestra, now identified beneath it, entitle the visitor

to associate with this site the classic drama and to give

free play to not unnatural sentiment. It is an epitome

of the Athenian drama. It interprets, and is inter-

preted by, a wide range of literature. Here, too, in

later times were gathered popular assemblies. Here,
looking over plain and sea, sat generations of citizens
and guests to be moved to laughter or to tears. Here
the “ Shameless Man ” of Theophrastus managed to get
himself and his children in for nothing by manipu-
lating the places which he had purchased for his for-

eign visitors.
And not only could the philosopher Theophrastus
find subjects for his character sketches among the
theatre-goers, and turn the critics into material for his
critique, but his friend, the playwright Menander,
could in his comedy use the dramatic troupe as matter
for his sententious characterization. Already in the
time of Aristophanes the chorus was unequally con-
stituted: some members trained as star performers
to take a more active part, others to move as mutes
in the background. Menander utilizes this custom to

illustrate, in a fragment preserved to us, the workers

and the drones of life :
—
“Just as in choruses not every one doth sing,
But certain two or three mere speechless dummies stand
Filling the rows, so here ’t is somehow similar
These fill a space, while these, to whom God grants it, live l”
122 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
The precinct of the Asclepieum, adjoining the Thea-
tre, was a Sanatorium where religion and faith-cures
were combined with actual medical skill. In the “Plu-
tus” of Aristophanes the blind god, Wealth, is restored
to discriminating vision. His head was covered by
“Panacea” with a purple cloth, and two expert snakes
operated upon his eyes.* This comic scene is not, it may
easily be credited, too much of a burlesque upon some
of the practices at such places. Magic miracles, in-
cluding the “absent treatment” of recalcitrant lovers,
are not unknown in other ages. But a visit to the fa-
mous health-resort of the great school of Hippocrates,
on the island of Cos, will tend to inspire a respect for

Greek therapeutics. The “open-air” treatment on

the mountain terrace overlooking the sea may have
been modern enough, and, along with the use of the
sulphur spring, suggests both technical knowledge and
common sense.

Close by the Theatre to the east, hemmed in by

modern houses, the beautiful little circular shrine, the

Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, reminds us of the

cost and rivalry attendant upon bringing out the dramas.

The weathered sculpture around the top speaks once
again of the inseparable connection of Athenian life

and literature. It carries us back to the Homeric Hymn

to Dionysus. The pirates who kidnapped the god
are here undergoing punishment; some, already half

* See Gardner, Ancient Athens, pp. 429 ff.,for a vivid account of

this scene and subject.
 ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 123

changed into dolphins, are diving into the sea. In the

hymn the pirates, who have carried off the youth in his
purple robe, deem him a rich prize for ransom. But
the vine with clustering grapes that presently entwines
sail and yards proclaims the god. He transformed him-
self into a bear, then a lion, and they at the sight, —
“All of them shunning the doom that was on them, together out-
springing,
Leaped to the water divine and, leaping, were turned into dolphins.”

The combination at Athens of natural beauty and

material splendour with moral and intellectual worth
called forth praise from both guests and citizens. To
Bacchylides of Ceos the city is “spacious Athens,”
“splendour-loving.” The Graces “wreath-winning
and violet-eyed” are to dower his songs with honour
when he addresses himself to its specific praise :
—
“Brooding thought of the Cean isle

men praised erst-while,

Poet’s care
Weave me now a web of song
Resplendent, fit for Athens strong
Where love and loveliness belong.”

And Pindar, fresh from the gardens of Thebes, was

impressed by the beauty of Athens at the vernal
Dionysia :
—
“The portals of the chamber of the Hours open wide,
and growing plants, now nectar sweet, perceive the advent
of the fragrant Spring; then, then on earth immortal shower
the lovely tufts of violets, then in the hair the roses are
entwined.”
124 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
A guest-present most highly prized by the Athenians
is preserved in another fragment from Pindar :
—
“Radiant, violet-crowned, by minstrels sung,
Bulwark of Hellas, Athens illustrious.”

But Aristides the Just might have as easily escaped

ostracism as could this overworked epithet, u violet-
crowned,’ ’ escape the irreverence of Aristophanes.
Whenever foreign envoys, he says, wish to cheat us
Athenians, they call us “violet-crowned,” and forth-
with we are all attention.

Among all the native poets no one has given freer

expression to his feeling for the beauty of Athens than
Euripides, unhappy in his personal life and iconoclastic
in his attitude towards old traditions. He breathes the
air, stainless and of a more ethereal violet than the sea,

and sings of the concord of Wisdom and the Heavenly

Aphrodite :
—
“ Blest are the children of Erechtheus of the olden time,
the children of the happy gods, who from a land inviolate

and sacred feed on wisdom famed afar, and go upon their

way forever, daintily enfolded by that bright, bright air.

“ And Cypris, drawing water from Cephlsus flowing fair,

breathes down upon the land the gentle breath of winds

with sweetness laden and ever with her hair encompassed
with blown roses’ fragrant coronals keeps sending down the
Loves who have their seat by side of Wisdom, coadjutors
they of Virtue manifold.”

Through the transparent candour of the philoso-

pher’s robe the soul of the poet Plato is ever shining.
 ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS I2 5

But like iEschylus he is a poet militant. If he walks

by the Ilissus he interprets in terms of the spiritual
the physical charm of tree and water and the chirping
insect; if he goes down to Phaleron, the ^Egean does
not bring in for him “the eternal note of sadness/’ but
his soul has “sight of that immortal sea which brought
us hither”; and in the heaven’s vault, overarching

Attica, he sees “many ways to and fro” where drive

the chariots of the gods whom “he who will and can”
may follow, “for from the choir divine all grudging
stands aloof ” If to Plato the Athens of the fourth cen-
!

tury seemed imperfect, if he was even embittered by

the judicial murder of his master, it was with the truest

patriotism that he turned to construct an ideal state.

His sense of law and order was deep-rooted. It was
with lofty optimism that he urged his hearers not to
rest content with politics as they are, but to look to “ the
pattern that is laid up in heaven for him who wills to

see and, seeing, so to plant his dwelling.”

 CHAPTER VI

OLD GREECE IN NEW ATHENS

“Born into life! — ’t is we,
And not the world, are new.”
Matthew Arnold.

T ravellers fresh

ental picturesqueness in
the immediate impression of
character gained by those
Constantinople is the
from Italy perceive

modern Athens, but

who come from Egypt or

correct one. The old narrow
its
an Ori-

Occidental

streets, reminiscent of the Turkish period, are few in

number and lie on the northern side of the Acropolis.

Back of them, further to the north and west, lies a very

clean and well-planned town which boasts of being a
little Paris. The substantial houses and hotels, the
dignified palaces of the royal princes and the build-
ings of the University and Museum, the conventional
shops and public squares, the boulevards and gardens,
give to Athens the general appearance of any Euro-
pean city that is moving fast toward and beyond a
population of two hundred thousand, and is not yet
disfigured by the smoke-stacks of factories. A welcome
individuality of taste is shown chiefly in the classical

architecture of the group of University buildings and of

the Museum.
 OLD GREECE IN NEW ATHENS 127

Even to pilgrims and strangers the modern city

reveals an eager and, in many -aspects, a charming life.

But a special relationship follows in the wake of famil-

iarity with the new, added to knowledge of the old,
Athens. The student of Greek literature finds that he
need not always seek the ruins of antiquity or the per-
manent stage-setting of Nature when he desires a sense
of fellowship with the past. At any street corner this

sense may be quickened by some person or object

which is an integral part of the city’s modern life.

Ancient literature not only gleams, like “a stately pal-

ace hall, with golden pillars of song,” but also mirrors

common things, trivial or serious, which subtly unite
the times of Homer with those of Pericles, and both
with our own.
Greek gentlemen conspicuously engaged in having
their boots blacked share the habits if not the politics
of Aristophanes’s dicast who was always seeking the
sponge and the basin of oil-mixed pitch for his dusty
shoes. Street-venders from Rhodes, who beguile for-
eign ladies with embroideries, are plying the craft of the
Phoenician peddler at the home of Eumaeus, then a
happy princelet and later the swineherd of Odysseus.
The peddler displayed to Eumaeus’s lady mother and
her maidens a golden chain set here and there with
amber beads, and “they offered him their price.”
Bargaining, the basis of all transactions, is not always
as amiable as it is in Rome. An Athenian cab-driver
in search of drachmas can be as obstinate as the corpse
 — !

128 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

in Aristophanes’s “Frogs,” whom Dionysus asked to
take his luggage to Hades:

Dionysus.
“You there! You dead man! You, I mean! I’m calling you.
Good fellow, wilt to Hades carry down my traps?

Corpse.
How many?
Dionysus.
These.
Corpse.
Wilt make it a two drachma job?

Dionysus.
Not I, by Zeus, but less.

Corpse {to the bearers ).

Start up the funeral, you!

Dionysus.
Good sir, one moment! See if we can’t come to terms.

Corpse.
You’ll put down drachmas two, or else don’t talk to me.

Dionysus.
One drachma and a half ? A bargain ? Come, take that.

Corpse.
May I be — resurrected, if I do

Xanthias.
What airs!

The cursed scamp! Plague take him! I will go myself.”

Dionysus and his servant had made their entrance

with a donkey, ridden by Xanthias who was carrying

 OLD GREECE IN NEW ATHENS 129

the traps on a pole over his shoulder. No age has

allowed the donkey to escape his manifest destiny of
bearing burdens, nor has age or custom exhausted his
capacity of occasional revolt. The persevering attack
of the Trojans on Ajax could be likened only to the
cudgelling by boys of a lazy ass which has strayed into
a cornfield and will not desist from wasting the deep
crop — an episode as modern as it is Homeric. But
for the most part the little beasts carry patiently every-
thing that is portable, as they did when, in the annual
transportation of the properties used in the Eleusinian
Mysteries, their dull share in a great business became
proverbial. Their panniers of lemons and oranges and
crates of water- jars are both antique and modern,
and a famous lost picture of Polygnotus comes to life

in a donkey loaded with fresh green boughs, moving

toward the spectator.
That Dionysus, in search of a carrier, so conveniently
saw a corpse in the street was due to the Athenian cus-
tom of bearing the dead to the grave on open biers.

The same custom, shocking to foreign observers, pre-

vails to-day ;
and at almost any hour, in any thorough-
fare, may be seen one of these funeral processions, with
the cover of the coffin carried in front and the uncov-
ered face exposed to the curious and the indifferent.
Thus exposed, the dead Alcestis was brought out from
her palace, and the cortege, with which the modern
procession seems to mingle, moves off the stage with
prayers that Hermes and Persephone may kindly wel-
 :

1 3o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

come this traveller to their realm. These deities have
been forgotten, but their business is transferred to him
who was once their grim agent. To the modern Greek
peasant Charon is Death. Alcestis dreaded him as a
messenger and ferryman :
—
“I see, I see the two-oar’d skiff. With hand on pole
Charon, the ferryman of the dead, thus calleth me
‘Why dost thou loiter? Hasten! Thou’rt delaying us.*
With words like these in angry haste he urgeth me.”

To-day he rides in his own might :

—
“Why are the mountains so dark, and why so woebegone?
Is it the wind at war there, or does the rain-storm scourge them ?
It is not the wind at war there, it is not the rain that scourges,
It is only Charon passing across them with the dead;
He drives the youths before him, the old folk drags behind,
And he bears the tender little ones in a line at his saddle-bow.” *

Around the next corner, especially toward the end

of Lent when spring lamb is due in the markets and
shepherds troop to town, another song from the “Alces-
tis ” may displace the strain of melancholy. For Apollo,
Pythian lord of song, once served Admetus, —
“Like a shepherd, piping, piping,
Hymeneal echoes raising
Down along the sloping hillside
Where the woolly flocks are grazing.”

In the guise of a young man, the herdsman of a flock,

most delicate, as are the sons of kings, Athena once
appeared to Odysseus. And it was to a man who was
pasturing his flocks on many-fountained Ida that
* Greek peasant song, translated by Passow. Cf. Sir Rennell
Rodd, The Customs and Lore oj Modern Greece p. 286. ,
 OLD GREECE IN NEW ATHENS 131

Aphrodite gave her immortal heart. Perhaps there-

after in the streets of Troy Anchises made people think
suddenly of early dawns on the mountain-side when
the silver car of the moon hangs low over the sea
and the nightingale sings and the bleating flocks an-

swer the pipe’s ethereal cry. In Athens a transient shep-

herd, with his crook and his coat of fleece, may fling
the townsman’s thoughts abroad to the men he has
seen among the hills of Arcadia, where as of old a
misty night is hateful to shepherds and goatherds, and
a bright moon their heart’s delight ;
or in Lesbos, where
still in mountain pastures the hyacinth is trampled
under foot and darkens the ground. A flock of sheep

following the bellwether from the country to the town

is a reminder that the Greeks before Troy were ordered
about like a great flock of white ewes by the thick-
fleeced leader, Odysseus and that the astute one, in the
;

course of his later adventures, saved himself from the

wrath of blind Polyphemus by clinging face upwards
and with a steady heart, beneath the shaggy belly of his
best and goodliest ram. Aristophanes in the “Wasps”
parodies the Homeric ram. Here it is the family donkey
which, led out to be sold, is smuggling under its shaggy
belly the old man imprisoned by his son to cure him of
the “jury habit.” The dejected donkey is addressed by
the son :
—
“Packass! why weepest thou? Because thou shalt be sold
To-day? Come, double-quick! Why these repeated groans
Unless, perchance, that some Odysseus thou dost bear ? ”
 -

132 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

Athens is a bustling capital, but to the on-looker
every Easter lamb becomes a Golden Fleece, and —
“A story lingereth yet,
A voice of the mountains old.” *

The Easter feast is of great importance in Greece

because the Lenten fast is so scrupulously observed.
At all times the working people are temperate enough
to have pleased Aristophanes, who liked to dwell on
the simple living of a generation before his own, when
from the country districts men trooped in to the assem-
bly,
“Each with his own little

Goatskin of wine,
Each with three olives, two
Onions, one loaf in his
Wallet, to dine.” \

But during parts of Lent even vegetables are forbidden,

and a man who has guided you up Pentelicus will

accept from your lunch-basket only a few olives and

an orange to supplement his own piece of coarse bread.
The markets are in the older and most picturesque
part of the city, but only a modern Aristophanes could
make them into scenes of rollicking farce shot through

with political purpose. Provincial Megarians with pigs

to sell, uncouth Boeotians bringing in vegetables and
game, knavish Athenians offering garlic and salt and
anchovies from Phaleron — probably the types are
still here, dialects, morals and all, awaiting their sacred
bard.
* Euripides, Electra, 701, translated by Gilbert Murray,

t Ecclesiazusae, 306, translated by Rogers.

 OLD GREECE IN NEW ATHENS 133

In the same district lies the bazaar known as Shoe

Lane, where cobblers and tailors and carpenters work
in the open, protected by awnings. Socrates, keen-
eyed for handicraft and homely illustrations, often
must have watched their forebears. Not far from the
shoemakers, the coppersmiths, in the same district as

of old, are suitably gathered in Hephaestus Street,

whence the sound of ringing hammers echoes afar.

The Homeric picture of Hephaestus in his forge on

Olympus is duplicated in any little forge along the
modern street, when a workman rises from his anvil

and with a sponge wipes his face and hand and sturdy
neck and shaggy breast. In more than one part of the
city the “bankers’ tables,” at which also Socrates used
to seek his crowd, are reproduced in the much fre-

quented tables of the money changers.

The open-air bakeries of his day also exist again and
tempt with their bread and plain cakes the exhausted
sight-seer, whatever his philosophy. But a Platonist
is deterred at the threshold of a pastry-cook’s in the
fashionable shopping district by the remembrance that
in the ideal life there is no place for “ those celebrated

delicacies, the Athenian confectionery.”

Modern Athens is too arid to afford many public
fountains, but women still draw water from the meagre
spring Callirrhoe, on the edge of the Ilissus, not far
from the Zeus columns. This spring, in name and situ-

ation, is still identified by some experts with the town-

spring of primitive Athens and the later Nine Spouts.
134 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
The traveller who throws in his fortunes with the
archaeological opposition must at least find in the lesser

Callirrhoe the Athenian counterpart of the fountains

which in so many of the towns and villages of Greece
perpetuate, in usefulness and charm, an antique life

of homely activities transmuted into poetry. The

townspeople of Odysseus drew their water just outside
the city from a wayside spring deep in an alder thicket,
where a basin had been fashioned to catch the cold

stream falling from a cliff. In the old days of peace,

when the plain was safe, the wives and daughters of

the men of Troy had washed the family clothes in

broad stone troughs beside the two springs that fed
the Scamander. Nausicaa of Phaeacia and her maidens
did the palace washing so far from the town that the
occasion involved a day’s excursion and a generous
lunch-basket packed by the Queen. But there was a
spring of drinking water nearer, for, when Odysseus
was entering the city, Athena met him in the form of a
young girl carrying a pitcher. At Eleusis, also, in the
royal age, the king’s fawnlike daughters, their crocus-
yellow hair dancing on their shoulders, drew water for
the palace in vessels of bronze from the Maiden Well.
In classical Athens, as to-day, only the poorer women
went for theirown water, and perhaps it was after
meeting one who looked tired and hopeless that Euripi-
des made Electra, Agamemnon’s daughter, given in
marriage to a peasant in Argos to further her mother’s
schemes, cry aloud to the night :
—
 CONTINUED

PANATHENiEA

THE

POLYGNOTUS

AFTER
 OLD GREECE IN NEW ATHENS 135

“ O Night, dark foster-mother of the golden stars,

Thy shelter folds me while this jar bows low my head
As to and from the river-springs I come and go.”

Only in the Panathenaic procession did the carrying

of water-jars become ennobled. To-day a working
girl may be seen in a pose suggesting that of the maidens
of the Phidian frieze.

The folk-lore and customs of modern Greece, as

heirs of the past, have been carefully scrutinized. Any
knowledge that can be culled from special treatises will

everywhere increase the traveller’s sense of historic con-

tinuity and will enrich his pleasure in meeting the coun-

try folk. But by means of only a modicum of Greek
poetry he may discover for himself in Athens certain
ancient beliefs and practices. On the first of March,
associated like the May Day of colder climates with
the blossoming of spring, bands of boys go about the
streets carrying the wooden image of a bird, singing a
carol which announces the arrival of the swallow, and
begging gifts. One of these songs from Thessaly be-
gins:—
“She is here, she is here, the swallow!
Cometh another of honey’d song,
She percheth, twittereth all day long,
Sweet are her notes that follow.”

That the same custom, no newer than the recurrence

of Nature’s happiest gifts, enchanted the boys of an-
cient Athens we may infer from our knowledge of it

in “seagirt” Rhodes. There the carol began: —

136 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
“She is here, she is here, the swallow!
Fair seasons bringing, fair years to follow!
Her belly is white,
Her back black as night!
From your rich house
Roll forth to us
Tarts, wines and cheese:
Or if not these,
Oatmeal and barley cake
The swallow deigns to take.” *

When the spring was late, Aristophanes’s peevish old

man was probably not the only one to say: “Zeus! is

the swallow never going to come ? ” Nor under a punc-

tual March sun was his sneak thief the only one to
talk about the weather :
—
“ Haunting about the butcher’s shops, the weather being mild,
‘
See, boys,’ says I, ‘
the swallow there ! why, summer ’s come,’ I

say,
And when they turned to gape and stare I snatched a steak away.” f

In graver poetry the dusky swallow of Simonides shared

with the lovely-voiced nightingale of Sappho the hon-
our of announcing the fragrant spring.
Other seasons in Athens had their crop of mendicant
carols, and the boyish custom of celebrating Apollo at

one of his summer festivals by going about from house

to house and singing songs of good wishes is suggested
in the modern celebration of New Year’s or St. Basil’s

day. It is even possible that the rough little model of

a ship carried by the boys, as if to illustrate the sea-

* Translated by J. A. Symonds.

f Knights , 570, translated by Frere.

 OLD GREECE IN NEW ATHENS 137

journey of the saint “come from Caesarea,” is a late de-

scendant of the ship that was carried in the Panathe-
naic procession, the origin of which lay in Theseus’s
journey to Crete, and the sail of which was Athena’s
own peplos.
With Easter come the most elaborate of the peasant

dances that accompany all kinds of local religious

festivals. Close at hand are the famous dances of
Megara, but in defiance of tradition the Athenian so-

journer may elect to visit those at Menidi, a large vil-

lage about three miles to the north, whose panegyris

or fair is not overrun by non-participants. There are
several varieties of peasant dances, and a technical
knowledge of the accompanying music will be of great
service in interpreting them but whatever
;
their partic-

ular measuremay be, and whether they are performed

by men and women together or by women alone, they
all possess a dignity and gravity which mark them off

as something quite different from the gratification of

a lively humour. The religious impulse is not wholly

forgotten in the delights of a carnal holiday, and the
dances are the expression, in unison, of a public feeling
which in origin, at least, was reverential. Save for the
leader, no individual assumes liberty of movement.
In long lines or semi-circles the dancers link hands and
sway in monotonous harmony.
Readers of ancient Greek literature will remember
how important dances were in the religious festivals
of all epochs. Their variety and their ancestral rela-
138 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
tion to the modern dances are subjects for technical
study, but the spectator at Menidi is at liberty to let

his imagination travel the Sacred Way to Eleusis, or

cross the ^Egean to Delos, or seek out Argos and dis-

tant Sparta. The modern inheritance is a limited one,
for it recalls only the grave choral movements that
originated in Sparta, and discards the license of the

Dionysiac worship. And altogether preventive of any

real reconstruction of the past is the fact that now only
peasants at a country fair exhibit an art which once
was an important element in city as well as in village
religion, and which tested the grace of the gentlest born.
It is a far call from a country field and the daughters
of Menidi, bedight though they are with embroideries
and necklaces and often fair of form and face, to the

chief temple in Sparta and the choicest maidens of the

Spartan state. But one certain bond there is between

the girls of to-day and the princesses of yesterday. The
Easter fair serves the purpose of a market for brides,
and many a wedding follows it. Dancing is a part of
this happy festival as it was in antiquity in all ranks

of society. And were the maidens of Menidi exiled

to America, they would long for the village green and
the bridal feasts, even as Iphigeneia and her comrades,
exiled among the northern Taurians, longed for Aga-
memnon’s palace and their Argive playfellows :
—
“And it ’s O! that I could soar down the splendour-litten floor
Where the sun drives the chariot steeds of light.
And it ’s O ! that I were come o’er the chambers of my home,
And were folding the swift pinions of my flight.
 OLD GREECE IN NEW ATHENS 139

And that, where at royal wedding the bridesmaids’ feet are treading
Through the measure, I were gliding in the dance;
Through its maze of circles sweeping,
With mine older playmates keeping
Truest time with waving arms and feet that glance.
And it ’s O ! for the loving rivalry,
For the sweet forms costly arrayed,
For the raiment of cunningest broidery,
For the challenge of maid to maid,
For the veil light tossing, the loose curl crossing
My cheek with its flicker of shade.” *

Athens, like most southern cities, impresses an Anglo-

Saxon as having many holidays which “interrupt busi-
ness” ;
but only during the New Year and Easter festi-

vals can he begin to imagine a resemblance to the civic

life of ancient Athens, which was almost a continuous

pageant. “The gods,” said Plato, “in pity for the life

of toil, man’s natural inheritance, appointed holy festi-

vals whereby men alternate their labour with rest.”

But at certain seasons, especially in the spring and

autumn, the festivals were so congested that the days
of labour must have been far from burdensome. Al-
most all the festivals had a religious origin, celebrating

deities and heroes of political importance, like Athena

or Theseus, or forces of nature embodied in Dionysus
or Demeter. But, like Christmas, they gave abundant
opportunity both for public enjoyment and for the cul-
tivation of communal and family sentiment. Sophocles
had in mind all their human charm when he made the

* Euripides, Iphigeneia among the Taurians, 1137. Paraphrased

by Way.
 —

i 4o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

blind (Edipus lament the future of his little daugh-
ters :

“For what gath’ rings of your townsfolk shall you come,

to
Or what festivals from whence you shall not turn
to
Back homeward bathed in tears, instead of any share
In all the holiday?”

The festivals were often connected with the activi-

ties of country folk, with planting and reaping, the vint-

age and the winepress, and yet at the same time played
an important part in a highly cultivated city life. Some
of them were confined to women, like the Thesmopho-
ria, celebrated by matrons in honour of Demeter, the
patroness of fruitful marriages, and used by Aristo-
phanes as occasion and stage-setting for an attack on
the misogyny of Euripides; or like the Tauropolia, in
honour of Artemis, which suggested to Menander a
lover’s opportunity. Others, such as the Hermaea, at
which Socrates first met the young Lysis and discoursed
on friendship, were celebrated by young men at the pa-

laestras, or by school-boys. The “ Mean Man” of Theo-

phrastus was “ apt not to send his children to school
when there was a festival of the Muses, but to say that

they were sick, in order that they might not contribute.”

Still others, like the Panathenaea, which occurred in
July, the first month of the calendar year, united all

classes and ages in a magnificent display of civic loyalty.

Public taste at its highest made the presentation of

plays the chief element in the Greater Dionysia in

March, but the drama had originated in the December
 OLD GREECE IN NEW ATHENS 141

festival of the country Dionysia, which continued to be

celebrated with a jollity and abandon that probably
lost nothing in the descriptions of Aristophanes. The
same poet also found plenty of material to his liking

in the Anthesteria, another Dionysiac celebration, in

which Pots and Pitchers figured in drinking competi-
tions and in offerings to the dead. The statue of Diony-
sus in the Marshes was escorted to the outer Cera-
meicus, and by the time it was brought back again, a
day later, the crowd was doubtless in the state described

by the chorus of Frogs in the underworld: —

“The song we used to love in the Marshland up above
In praise of Dionysus to produce,
Of Nyssean Dionysus, son of Zeus,
When the revel tipsy throng, all crapulous and gay,
To our precinct reeled along on the holy Pitcher day.
Brekekekex, ko-ax ko-ax.” *

The license of some of the Dionysiac holidays was

in reality a break in the even tenor of Athenian tem-
perance. At other times there seems to have been little

more drunkenness among them than among the Spar-

tans, whose uninterrupted self-restraint aroused the
admiration of Plato.
From the crapulous and often naked verses of Aris-
tophanes to the austerely beautiful marbles of Phidias
is a gamut that includes all the characteristics of ancient
festivals, in their appeal to both the natural and the
spiritual man. Religious sincerity, civic pride, and
* Translated by Rogers.
142 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
buffoonery, jostled one another. Music, literature, and
athletics added discipline and beauty.
These things as a coherent whole are long since dead.
The Easter festival of to-day, like the Panathenaea,
absorbs the entire city and has its hours of gaiety as
well as its hours of solemnity, but it lacks the attendant
contests in music, poetry, and gymnastics. If, however,
it includes less of a citizen’s life than Athena’s festival,

it is more Panhellenic than even the Eleusinian Mys-

teries, its prototype in religious significance. The Mys-
teries appealed to all Greeks, but invited them to gather
at pne spot. Those who have seen Easter ushered in

at midnight by King and Metropolitan in front of the

Cathedral of Athens, and who have also shared with
peasant and parish priest in the announcement within
some village church on a lone island of the .Egean,
realize that in every part of modern Greece as never
in old Greece all classes and conditions of men are at
the same hour engaged in a common observance.
But the excited crowds that fill the city streets and
make the Cathedral Square look like a deep cornfield
stirred by a strong west wind, and the gathering of
villagers in the open place in front of their tiny church
alike betray one quality that is no more Christian and
new than it is Pagan and old. An unquestioning and
swift hospitality to strangers is as much in evidence
as is the lighted taper borne by each man, woman,
and child. In Athens this is but a proof on a crucial
occasion of a temper which reveals itself in response
 OLD GREECE IN NEW ATHENS 143

to every need. By this Ionic grace, inherited from the

noble civilization of Homer and eagerly exemplified
by the open-minded Athenians at the height of their

prosperity, the foreigner is transported back to the old

city more surely than by the street names and signs in
the alphabet of Xenophon, or even than by the vision,
wherever his eye turns, of the ageless rock of the
Acropolis.
 ;

CHAPTER VII

ATTICA

“The country of Cecrops, favoured of heroes, rich in its loveliness.”

Aristophanes, Clouds.

M
Attic plain.
sand
odern Athens climbs up around the lower
slopes of Mount Lycabettus, which rises on
the east like an index finger above the
Although this

feet high, its isolated position

peak is less than one thou-
opens out an un-
rivalled panorama of the Cephisian plain from Parnes
and Pentelicus down to Piraeus and the bay, with Sala-
mis, the mountains of the Megarid, the Isthmus, Argo-
lis and iFgina beyond. In the “ Frogs ” of Aristophanes

iEschylus’s many-jointed compounds are likened to

“great Lycabettuses.” Athena, it is said, while carry-

ing Lycabettus through the air to fortify her Acropolis,

dropped it suddenly in its present exclusive position
but, if we are to believe Plato, who had a vague ink-
ling of the geologic truth, her rival, the earth-shaker,

rent it asunder from the Acropolis, with which it was

once continuous. From Lycabettus, it would appear,
the stream of the Eridanus made itsway north of the
Acropolis and flowed out by the channel now laid bare
near the Dipylon gate. The Ilissus, rising on the slopes
 ATTICA T 45

of Hymettus, flows south of the city and, first uniting

with the Eridanus, joins, between Athens and Piraeus,
the Cephisus, which draws its waters from the Penteli-
cus and Parnes ranges. This configuration of the land-
scape, with arable plain-land watered by mountain
streams, was the important factor in country life about
Athens. Clouds on Hymettus, as Theophrastus tells

us, were a sign of rain. The altar of “Shower-giving

Zeus,” whether on Hymettus or, as Pausanias says, on
Mount Parnes, would have no lack of suppliants in
times of drought. The Clouds, in a fragment of the
lost edition of Aristophanes’s play, vanish adown Lyca-
bettus and go off to the top of Parnes. In the play
as preserved, the mock Socrates, instructing his thick-
headed scholar, points out the cloud-goddesses :
—
“ Now please to look here by Parnes anear, now I see they’ll be gently
descending.”

And the Clouds, leaving Boeotia behind, come over

Parnes, showering down the praises that Aristophanes
delighted to bestow on the Attic country :
—
“ Let us, maidens, that bring fresh showers, go unto Pal-

las’s brilliant land to turn our eyes on the country of Ce-

crops, favoured of heroes, rich in its loveliness, there where
is honour to consecrate secrets; there where the temple that
welcomes its votaries flings wide its doors at the mysteries
sacred; there where are gifts for the gods up in heaven;
stately-roofed temples and statues of splendour; there are
processionals unto the blessed ones, hallowed exceedingly;
 ;

i 46 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

fair are the chaplets entwining the offerings unto the deities
ever recurring the festivals, season by season; and, when
the spring cometh on, there ’s the grace of the Bromian god
and incitements to choirs melodious; aye and the Muse
with the music of deep-voiced flutings.”

Colonus, the birthplace of Sophocles, lay a little

more than a mile northwest of Athens. The hill is now

disappointingly bald. Verdure and the song of the

nightingale must be sought by the banks of the Cephi-

sus near by, but the famous lines of Sophocles retouch
the faded picture. The chorus of old men of Attica
address the aged CEdipus :
—
“Thou ’rt come, O guest, unto the fairest of earth’s dwell-

ings in this land that hath good breed of horses — this our
white Colonus, where the clear-voiced nightingale from
covert of green dells sends out her oft-repeated warblings
murmurous and makes her dwelling in the wine-dark ivy
or the god’s impenetrable foliage with countless fruitage
laden; where the sun’s rays strike not nor bloweth any wind
of all the blasts of winter; where Dionysus ever in rapt

frenzy fares along, consorting with the nymphs that nursed

him at the breast.
“ And fed by heaven’s dew, day in, day out, blooms the
narcissus clustering fair in wreaths from days of yore in-
woven for the twain Great Goddesses; blooms, too, the
crocus with its gleam of gold. Nor ever fail the sleepless
fountains of Cephisus and his wandering streams.”

The ramparts of the city of Theseus, seen by Anti-

gone at the opening of the play, are for Sophocles in
 ATTICA i47

reality the Acropolis and walls of his own day. Anti-

gone describes the sacred grove to her blind father :
—
“This place is sacred, for it teems with laurel, olive, and
the vine. Within its very heart a multitude of feathered
nightingales make music.”

The venerable olive trees, self propagated through

generations from the parent stump, are, indeed, a feature
in the Attic landscape. Sophocles does not fail to in-

clude them in his catalogue of Attic blessings :

—
'*
There ’s no such shoot on the Asian coast, of none such do
I hear in Doris great, in Pelops-isle — a plant un vanquished,
self-renewing, terror unto foemen’s spears — nay, none like

this, child-nurturing, that groweth greatest in our land, the

gray-green olive’s foliage.”

And in the neighbouring Academy the youths ran

off their races beneath the sacred olive trees. To the
joyous associations that for nearly two centuries had
been accumulating about the Academy Plato added the
overshadowing greatness of his own name and teach-
ing. He has incidentally perpetuated the name of the
original modest freeholder, Academus, to be a part of
the vocabulary of every school- boy. Near the Academy,
making a fitting goal for the avenue leading from the
Dipylon gate between the monuments of illustrious

dead, the Athenians gave Plato magnificent interment.

An epigram by Antipater transfers to Plato the indif-
ference expressed by Socrates in regard to his unten-
anted body when he says in the prison death-scene :
—
148 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
“ Bury me however you will, — if you can catch me
— for, when I drink the poison, I shall not remain
here with you, but shall make my way to a blissful
life with the Blessed. ... So don’t let Crito be vexed
on my behalf when he sees my body being burnt or
buried as though I were having some awful experi-
ence.”
Shelley in his fine paraphrase of the epigram inex-
actly substitutes Athens for Attica and fails to include
the epithet “earth-born,” the conventional boast of the
autochthonous men of Attica: —
“Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb?
To what sublime and starry-paven home
Floatest thou?
1 am the image of swift Plato’s spirit
1

Ascending heaven —
Athens doth inherit
:

His corpse below.’ ”

If we follow up the Cephisus towards we its sources

pass through the ancient deme of Acharnae and come
on the north to Decelea on the slopes of Mount Parnes,
or, turning to the right, to Kephisia at the south of
Pentelicus, also called Brilessus by the ancients.

Upon the Parnes range, on the northern frontier of

Attica, is the partially ruined fortress of Phyle. Few
places offer a more attractive combination of scenery
and association. There is, as at Delphi, a union of gran-
deur and beauty. In addition to the view that awaits
us above, the ascent amidst trees and flowers by the run-
ning stream makes this a fitting introduction to the more
 ATTICA 149

intimate charm of Attic landscape, and the rugged

gorges, skirted by the climbing pathway, are even awe-
inspiring. Once within the massive walls and towers,
built on a mountain spur commanding the junction of
ravines and passes between Attica and Boeotia, no ex-
tended explanation is necessary of the part played here
(in 404 to 403 b. c.) during the civil war between the pa-
triots and the Thirty Tyrants. Across the shoulder of
iEgaleus the plain of the Cephisus is unrolled to view,
with Athens lying below Hymettus. In the background
are the Saronic Gulf and the Peloponnesian mountains.
Thrasybulus, the hero of the Restoration, is great even
among the great names of Greek history. We can im-
agine him first seizing the fortress with his handful of
seventy followers, and then, through months of waiting
and fighting and watching, looking down on the desired
city, planning how he shall restore the exiled patriots

to Athens, and Athens to herself. We can picture the

fierce snow-storm, filling those wild gorges, which aided
in driving back the knights and hoplites of the Thirty.
Later he swoops down to Acharnae, surprises and routs
the unpatriotic Athenians together with the Spartan
garrison which the Thirty, to their dishonour, had ad-
mitted to the Acropolis. Finally he descends to Piraeus,
joins battle with the “City Party,” breaks the power
of the Thirty and makes the name of “the men from
Phyle” a symbol of patriotism which, see it where we
may on the pages of Lysias or Xenophon, claims the
eye like illuminated initials and rubrics of honour.
 ;

i5o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

At Chasia, the farming village of the foothills whence
the path ascends to Phyle, women, standing in their
doorways with busy distaff in hand, or energetic but
courteous men, ready to discuss politics or crops, recall
the simplicity and charm of country life of hill and
plain known to us from Aristophanes and Menander.

Acharnae itself must have occupied the district be-

tween Epano-Liossia, the nearest railway station to

Chasia, and the charming modern village of Menidi

whose unspoiled peasants, close to the outskirts of

Athens, retain many a reminder of the country demes-

men. The charcoal-burners of Aristophanes or Me-
nander would now be compelled to go further up the
mountain slopes to obtain the tree-stumps for their

“Parnesian coals.” Nor is the famous ivy of Acharnae

now in evidence. The Acharnians, as Pausanias tells

us, called Dionysus “Ivy” because the ivy plant first

appeared on their soil. In the Greek Anthology we

learn that Sophocles often wore a wreath of Acharnian
ivy, and in an epigram of Simmias the ivy climbs over
his tomb which, as it was alleged, had its place in
the burying ground of the Sophocles family beside the
neighbouring road to Decelea :
—
“ Gently, ivy, gently twine,
With pale tresses creep and seize
On the tomb of Sophocles
Where the soft and clustering vine
Droops its tendrils to the ground.
Petals of the rose, around
 ”

ATTICA 151

Spread your fragrant anodyne

For his gracious speech profound,
Muses and the Graces blending,
Honeyed charm to wisdom lending.

In the “ Acharnians ” of Aristophanes the demesman

Dicaeopolis, shut up in the city by the war, grows tired

of hearing: “Buy, buy!” when he would have “coals,

vinegar or oil,” commodities to be had for nothing at
home in the country. He therefore makes a private and
personal treaty of peace, goes back to Acharnae and
proceeds to celebrate the rural Dinoysia. The revel is

on and the wife and mother warns the daughter, who

is to officiate as basket-bearer, to take precautions, —
“ Lest some one ere you know it nibble off your gold.”

To-day the peasant girls of Menidi without fear dis-

play on their persons at the Easter dances their abun-

dant dowries of gold and silver. As the Phallic proces-
sion moves off, Dicaeopolis wisely sends his pretty wife
to a place of safety: —
“ You, wife, up with you to the roof and watch from there;
And you lead on ”
,
!

At this juncture the chorus of Acharnian men rush

in, with the bosoms of their gowns full of stones, indig-

nant at the thought of peace when their vines have been

cut by the enemy. They are a sturdy lot. They had
contributed a Highland regiment at Marathon; they
are regular “old Hickories,” “hardwood- charcoal men,
tough as oak, hard-maple men,” and they are ready
to stone Dicaeopolis. He gains time, however, for a
152 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
parley by seizing for a hostage a basket of their char-
coals and dressing it up as a baby.
Menander, also, in his recently discovered “ Arbi-
tration’ ’ scene, gives details of an encounter between
a shepherd and a charcoal man somewhere
in this
Acharnae district, evidently in the public “ clearings ”
lying between the farm-lands and the undisturbed for-
ests. The shepherd Daos tells a well-to-do property
owner, who happens by and is selected to arbitrate the
dispute, how, —
“ Within this bushy thicket here, hard by this place,
My was a-herding, now, perhaps, good sir,
flock I
Some gone by, and I was all alone,
thirty days
When I came on a little infant child exposed
With necklaces and some such other trumpery.”

He debates whether he can afford to save and rear

the child. Next morning, still perplexed, “I go,” he
says, —
“ back unto my flock again
At daybreak. Comes this fellow — he’s a charcoal-man —
Unto this self-same place to cut out stumps of trees.
Now he had had acquaintance with me back of this,
And so we talked together.”

One of the main sources of the Cephisus is at the

foot of Pentelicus. Here the village of Kephisia with

its generous spring and noble plane tree still retains

its charm and recalls the “Attic Nights” of Aulus

Gellius. As terminus of a short railway from Athens,

it is a convenient starting-place for various excursions

in Attica. An easy drive northward across the plain
MENANDER
 ATTICA i53

brings one to Tatol where King George has his sum-

mer residence at the ancient Decelea, which the Spar-
tans occupied in the Peloponnesian War to cut off the

grain supply which came by this way from Euboea.

But cruel memories of the contest with Sparta are for-

gotten amidst the unusual charm of the surroundings.

The magnificent low-spreading pine trees are a sur-
prise to many visitors unaccustomed to this variety,

and, as one looks southward, Pentelicus, usually seen

from Athens as a long ridge, confronts the spectator,

head on, with unfamiliar and uncompromising majesty.

In the near foreground olive groves and luxuriant fields

of anemones and poppies invite to a long lethe.

The Oropus district on the Euripus, north of Parnes,

belongs geographically to Boeotia. As one descends on

the northern side of the mountain the view is more
suggestive of Switzerland than of rugged Attica. The
fertile plain of the Asopus is green and wooded the ;

Euripus winding between the hedgerows of mountains

on either side seems, even from the lofty summit of
Pentelicus, more like a series of inland lakes than a
continuous arm of the sea ; beyond, the dorsal spine of
the Delph, gleaming white with snow, crowns the blue
Euboean mountains. A marble relief, found at the port

of Oropus, recalls the principal literary association out-

side of the shifting scenes in military history. Amphi-
araus, the seer and hero, is represented in his chariot
as he is about to disappear in the earth and his horses
154 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
start back from the yawning chasm. In the ^Eschy-
lean story Amphiaraus “the one just man” is included
against his will among the invaders, the “ Seven against
Thebes,” and is represented as falling with the rest at
Thebes. Of him were written the famous lines which,

when spoken in the Athenian theatre, turned the eyes

of all the spectators upon “Aristides the Best” :
—
“ Now as for me, know
‘
well, I shall enrich this land,
A priest entombed deep beneath this hostile soil.
Let’s fight. No death dishonour bringing I await.’
Thus spoke the seer while brandishing his good round shield
Of But no device was on his shield,
solid bronze.
For not to seem the best he wishes, but to be,
While harvesting the fertile furrow of his mind
Wherefrom an honest crop of counsels springs to birth.”

Amphiaraus was deified throughout Greece, but he

had his chief sanctuary near Oropus in a glen where
the nightingales sing among the plane trees and the
oleanders. Here may be seen the remains of his temple,

as god of healing the great ;

altar ;
the sacred spring by
the plane trees where the grateful convalescents threw
in their thanksgiving coins. Here were found, in the

ruined theatre, five gracefully carved chairs of honour,

like the three found at Rhamnus.

Rhamnus is on the coast near the southern mouth

of the Euripus, and is one of the most beautiful and
secluded places in the whole peninsula. As a visit to

this northeast corner is needful to complete the physical

outline of Attica, so the contours of Greek character
will be sharpened here in the sanctuary of Nemesis,
 ATTICA i55

the dread goddess of Retribution, whose warning pre-

sence hovered continually in the background of Greek

consciousness. Her beautiful statue, made perhaps by
Phidias or his pupils, was fittingly set up in this place
near the mouth of the Euripus where the Persian fleet

had sailed through to the crushing rebuke at Marathon.

Pausanias calmly states that this statue, dedicated to
“ the goddess most inexorable of all towards overween-
ing men,” was made by Phidias out of some “Parian
marble which the Persians, as if the victory were
already won, carried with them for the erection of a
trophy.” If we could credit this statement it would
enlarge the itinerary of the meagre fragments of the
colossal statue now in the British Museum.
At Rhamnus are to be seen the remains of two
temples, one dedicated to Nemesis, and the other
probably to Themis, the mother of Prometheus, and
identified by ^Eschylus, following Attic tradition, with

Mother Earth herself — “one form for many names.”

Situated at the head of a glen, banked-up by a marble
terrace and shaded by myrtle, green fir trees and shrub-
bery, the ruins look down upon the marble walls and
towers of the ancient acropolis of Rhamnus occupying
a rocky, self-fortified hill that juts out into the channel.
Beyond the Euripus the mountains fill in the back-
ground.
Unwary speech, insolent success or immoderate,
though innocent, good fortune might call down the
retribution of Nemesis. Like our superstitious for-
156 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
mula, “ Knock on wood,” it was a common device in
Greek to deprecate the divine envy towards arrogant
speech, by saying :
“ I being but human make obeisance
to Adrasteia,” or, the equivalent, “to Nemesis.” Pin-
dar describes the happy Hyperboreans as set free from
this scrupulous anxiety, ever present to mortal men :
—
“ And for that sacred race nor pestilence, nor deadening
age is blended in their lot. Apart from war and toil they
dwell, acquittal winning from exacting Nemesis.”

Near the cheerful modern village of Marathona in

the valley of Avlona above the plain of Marathon are
remains of an ancient gateway to the villa of Herodes
Atticus. The inscription placed over his portal by this

beneficent humanist and teacher was: “The Gate of

Immortal Unanimity.” A few miles to the southwest,
on the northern slope of Pentelicus, the American school
excavated on an upland farm, called Dionyso, the
remains of the ancient Icaria, the earliest Attic home
of Dionysus and the birthplace of Thespis, the father

of Attic tragedy. An epigram in the Anthology by

Dioscorides records the claims of Thespis :
—
“Thespis am I, who the tragedy strain
Shaped for the masque and was first to combine
Charms that were new when Bacchus would fain
Marshal his chorus, stained with wine.
Figs Attic grown, or a goat was the prize
Won in the contests, till new I devise.

They that come after all this will revise,

Myriad years reshape, refine,

Little it troubles me — mine are mine.”

 ATTICA i57

Nothing adventitious is needed to call forth a certain

solemn elation at the first sight of the plain of Mara-
thon. But the sunlight of a February day, when the
anemones are bright by the wayside, will blend an
unforgettable natural beauty with the suggestions of a
greatmoment in human history. The level plain is
hemmed in by an amphitheatre of mountains the pro- ;

montory Cynosura runs down like a natural break-

water from the north, and the shore curves gracefully
inward as if enticing seafarers to beach their galleys
where the blue water breaks in soft white upon the
shining sand. When we climb the isolated “soros,”
the great mound heaped up over the dead warriors,
and pass in review the vivid details of the battle as

given by Herodotus, there emerges, even after all ex-

aggeration has been neutralized by the strictures of

some modern iconoclast, a grateful and redoubled
admiration for the unflinching loyalty to liberty dis-

played by the individual soldiers and even more for

the consummate skill of the commanders. The Athe-
nians with the help of the Plataeans repelled forever the
reestablishing of a despot in Attica, and Athens herself
unconsciously entered upon what was to be the intel-

lectual and moral trusteeship of Occidental civilization.

Demosthenes, more than a century later, amidst the
ruins of political liberty, could foreshadow a destiny
greater than material success. He cites the great words
of Simonides that had drifted down from Marathon
and could be used with pathetic propriety of the dead
158 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
at Chasronea. He bids his fellow citizens bow, if need
be, under the strokes of unfeeling fortune, but reject

all thought of having erred in their patriotic struggle

against Macedon. He bursts forth with that impas-
sioned oath by the dead heroes that thrills each genera-
tion born to cherish, or to long for liberty :
“ It cannot

be, it cannot be, Athenians, that ye erred in braving

danger on behalf of freedom and the safety of us all.

No, by those of our fathers, fore-fighters in the battle’s

brunt at Marathon! No, by those who stood shoulder

unto shoulder at Plataea! No, by those who fought
the naval fights at Salamis or in the ships off Artemi-
sium! ”
Marathon, as opening the great contest with Persia,
had given the Athenians the proud distinction of being

champions in the van for Hellas. Simonides had so

hailed them: —
“ Athenians, fore-fighters for the Hellenes all, laid low
at Marathon the power of the gold-decked Medes.”

Within the mound beneath our feet lies buried with

the rest Cynegirus the valiant brother of ^Eschylus.
The poet himself fought in the battle and lived to im-
mortalize his city and himself by his Titanic genius.
But in far off Sicily, when his death approached, ignor-
ing his fame as a poet, he turned with eager longing
to the distant day and plain of Marathon. To him the
battlefield was a consecrated close, an “ Alsos” like the

Altis of Olympia. Almost as if envying his brother and

 ATTICA iS9

other companions-in-arms, buried on the battlefield

in their native land, he writes as his own epitaph: —
“ ^Eschylus, son of Euphorion, here an Athenian lieth,

Wheatfields of Gela his tomb waving around and above;

Marathon’s glebe-land could tell you the tale of his valour ap-
proved,
Aye and the long-haired Mede knew of it, knew of it well.”

The carriage road that leads back to Athens around

the southern end of Pentelicus again combines beau-
tiful landscape with historic association. By this road
the Persians had thought to move with unimpeded
might upon unwalled Athens. Instead, the soldier
Eucles* (or perhaps Thersippus) brought the swift
news to the rejoicing city, followed soon by the
Athenian army, who marched from their camp by the
Marathonian Heracleum and encamped in the Cyno-
sarges gymnasium, also dedicated to Heracles, south-
west of Athens. Here looking down upon the Saronic
Gulf they were ready to repel the great host of Per-
sia which was already rounding Sunium. Games in
honour of Heracles were celebrated at Marathon,

* See chapter xviii, p. 422. This incident, not given by Herodotus,

is recorded by ^lutarch ( De Gloria Atheniensium, 3), who says that
most authorities give the name of the runner as Eucles but Hera-
cleides Ponticus calls him Thersippus. The soldier, as he tells us,
ran the twenty-six miles in armour and, on reaching the city, with
full
his last breath exclaimed: Xoi^'re Kal x a tpo/iev, “Fare well! we are
faring well,” or —
the double meaning is elusive —
“ Greetings Re- !

joice, we too are rejoicing!” Browning followed Lucian’s later ver-

sion, which is apparently a contaminatio with the story of Phidippides,
the courier between Sparta and Athens, for which see chapter iii, p. 72.
i6o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
and Euripides, in his “ Heracleidae,” alludes, though
vaguely, to the Marathonian tetrapolis as one of the
great Attic centres of the worship of Heracles. The
Plataeans by their presence at Marathon won the last-
ing and active friendship of Athens, and it was their

city that gave the name to the final crushing defeat of

the Persians under the combined Greek allies. The

Spartans, detained at home by convenient scruples
until the full moon gave them the signal to start,

arrived at Athens too late for the battle of Marathon,

but, as Herodotus charmingly remarks, “they none the
less wished to take a look at the Medes and, going
out to Marathon, they had a look.”

On the east coast of Attica, between Marathon and

Sunium, are Brauron, “lovely” Prasiae, and Thori-
cus. These with Markopoulo and other sites in the

southern inland plain, Mesogia, have been yielding a

wealth of prehistoric remains that fill out more and
more the dim background of antiquity. Thoricus, a
bay some six miles north of Sunium, was the birthplace
of Philonis, “the daughter of the morning star,” and
grandmother of Thamyris, the Thracian bard who
dared to contend with the Muses. The inhabitants were
not unmindful of their traditions and built a theatre,
unique by reason of its oval orchestra. It is in ruins,

but the absence of all traces of a stage seem to date it

as of the best classic period. Laurium, just below, is the

terminus of the railroad. Its silver mines, now worked

 ATTICA 161

chiefly for lead, play an important role in Greek his-

tory. The chorus in the “Persians” of iEschylus ex-

plains to Queen Atossa that the source of the Athenian
sinews of war is —
“A fountain running silver, treasure of the land.”

The standard coins of Athens, of various denomina-

tions, stamped with an archaic Athena head on the
obverse and the owl on the reverse, are referred to in
the “ Birds ” of Aristophanes as Lauriot owls: —
“ First, what every Judge amongst you most of all desires to win,
Little Lauriotic owlets shall be always flocking in.

Ye shall find them all about you, as the dainty brood increases,
Building nests within your purses, hatching little silver pieces.” *

When the Spartans occupied Attica in 413 b. c., they

cut off Athenian access to the mines, and Plutarch
tells us how a slave described a hoard of Athenian
money secreted by the Spartan Gylippus under his
roof-tiles as “numerous owls roosting under his Cera-
meicus.”

The promontory of Sunium, the prow of Attica,

breasts the ^Egean, and the white temple columns, beau-
tiful in their ruin, stand up boldly like the Samothra-
cian Nike upon an advancing trireme. The view from
the precipitous bluff is one of surpassing beauty, with
the glistening white of the marble against the nearer
foreground of green and against the blue of the over-
arching sky and of the wide expanse of water. The eye
* Translated by Rogers.
162 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
sweeps from ^Egina to the opposite shore of Argolis
and around to the “glittering Cyclades” scattered
over the ^Egean, while far to the south, seventy miles
away, Mount St. Elias on Melos in clear weather lifts

its lofty cone into view, the outline of the island being
sunk, like a vessel’s hull, below the horizon. On the
Acropolis at Athens was preserved the memory of the
contest between Athena and Poseidon, and at Sunium
each of these divinities had a temple. Poseidon has
here retained the supremacy, as was fitting, and only
the foundation walls remain of Athena’s temple on the
lower terrace. The Athenians dedicated at Sunium
to Poseidon one of the triremes captured at Salamis,
and here, on occasion of the quadrennial festival held

in honour of the sea-god, the ^Eginetans seized the

festal galley full of Athenian dignitaries. A defendant,
in one of Lysias’s speeches, tells how he had “won in

the trireme race off Sunium,” which was part of the

panegyris. In Aristophanes the chorus of Knights cry
out to “ Poseidon, lord of horses, rejoicing in the bronze-
shod hoof-beats and the neigh of steeds and swift blue
prows of triremes,” —
“ Come hither to our chorus,
Raise thy golden trident for us,
Thee at Sunium we praise
Whom the dolphin band obeys.”

To catalogue the ships, famous in Greek story, that

have sighted or rounded this headland would cause
to pass in review a mighty and a motley fleet. Nestor
 Sea

j*Egean

The

SUNIUM

Poseidon.

of

Temple
I
 ATTICA 163

tells Telemachus how, sailing home with Menelaus

from Troy, they lost their pilot, —
“ When that we came unto Sunium sacred, the headland of Athens.”

And Sophocles’s chorus of Salaminian sailors long in

Troyland for their native shores :
—
“ O there I would I might be,
Where Sunium’s spreading foreland
Hangs over the surge of the sea,
That straightway our Athens, the holy,
Might be greeted and hailed by me.”

Vessels of commerce or war would double it, bound

from Athens to the JE gean or to Ionia, and grain trans-
ports sailing to Athens from the Euxine. The Persian
warships backing out from the inhospitable bay of
Marathon “sailed around Sunium, making haste to

anticipate the Athenians in arriving at the city.” The

vessel of Theseus sailed past it bringing back safe from
Crete the Athenian youths and maidens, and, in after
days, the look-out, posted at Sunium, hastened back
to Athens to say that the mission-ship from Delos had
been sighted and was beating its way up the Saronic
gulf to put an end, on its arrival, at once to the sacred
holiday and to the life of Socrates.

On the west coast of Attica the place of chief in-

terest, in connection with Greek letters, is Vari, near
the promontory of Zoster, where Mount Hymettus
comes down to the sea. Herodotus tells us that the
frightened Persians, escaping from Salamis, thought
i6 4 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
that the long rocks running out at Zoster were some
more hostile ships and “went fleeing for a long dis-

tance” until they recognised their mistake. Some little

distance inland on the side of Hymettus, back of the

town of Vari, is a grotto dedicated to the Nymphs and
also sacred to the Graces, to Pan, and to Apollo. There
is a tradition that the infant Plato was taken to Hymet-
tus by his parents,who there sacrificed on his behalf

to Pan, the Nymphs and Apollo.

The straits which interrupt the continuity of Mount

iEgaleus with Salamis could not avail to dissever
the island from Attica. The northwestern promontory,
indeed, comes even closer to the outjutting Nisaean
peninsula of the Megarid, and
it was inevitable that

Megara and Athens should contend for this “island

of desire.” The energy of Solon at the beginning of

the sixth century adjudicated the dispute with finality,

and Salamis was permanently incorporated as an es-

sential part of Attica. To a seafaring folk triremes

and sailing craft could annul the interrupting sea,

and the mainland and island were still more firmly

cemented by the blood of Persian and Greek at the

great sea-fight.
The ancestral hero of Salamis was Aias (“Ajax”),
the son of Telamon. Pausanias saw a stone near the
harbour upon which Telamon sat, as it was said, look-

ing after his children departing to join the Greek fleet

at Aulis. When Aias fell upon his sword before Troy

 ATTICA ^5
the hyacinth, according to the usual tale, sprang up
inscribed with the exclamation of woe “Ai! ai!” the
first syllable of his name. But, as Pausanias would
have it, a local flower, different from the hyacinth,
made its appearance in Salamis Inscribed with the
same letters. Ajax, as was to be expected, appeared
and offered divine aid to the Greeks at the battle of
Salamis. In his honour the “Aianteia” festival was
celebrated, and the young Athenian ephebi used to

go over annually to contend at Salamis in friendly

rivalry with the Salaminian youth in foot-races and in
boat-races resembling those rowed from Munychia to

the Cantharus harbour in Piraeus. In addition to the

Ajax traditions, here, as elsewhere, other sagas were
invented or reshaped to give personification to the re-
mote past and to be handed down to satisfy the pride

of succeeding generations. Solon was a more tangible

memory, and Demosthenes, in speaking of his statue

standing in the market-place of Salamis, quotes the

Salaminians as saying: “This statue was set up not
yet fifty years ago.”
But the dominant memory evoked by the name of
Salamis is, naturally, the defeat of the Persians in the
narrow straits. For the Athenians everything was at
stake. The wives and children who had not been sent
to the Peloponnesus were on the island. Euripides,
according to an enticing tradition, was born there
at the time of the battle. Xerxes sat on his throne on
the mainland to overawe disaffection and to watch the
166 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
spectacle. He had no doubt as to the outcome. His
fleet was numerous enough to allow him to detach the

Egyptian squadron for guarding the narrow exit of

the northwest channel and still to leave more ships

than could be used for closing in the eastern approaches.
The Greeks were thus hemmed in, and the unwilling
allies from the Peloponnesus were forced to remain and
give battle instead of withdrawing to the Isthmus. The-
mistocles, the great admiral, had his will.

To-day, if one sails in a small boat across from

Piraeus to the harbour of the modern Ambelaki, the
details of the battle as narrated by ^Eschylus and
Herodotus explain themselves. The long, bare reef of

Psyttaleia cumbers the entrance to the channel. The

messenger, in the “ Persians ” of ^Eschylus, in describing
to the Queen Mother the scene enacted on this tiny
island, introduces Pan, the old ally at Marathon :
—
“An island lies before the shores of Salamis;
’T is small, for ships a risky mooring, but its reef,

Sea-swept, dance-loving Pan frequents.”

Here Xerxes stationed a picked body of Persians to

save their friends and to slay the Greeks escaping from

the wreckage, which, it was plain to foresee, would
come bearing down upon the reef.
Beyond Psyttaleia and overlapping it is the long spit
of land Cynosura (“Dog’s-tail”), like in name and
shape to the promontory at Marathon. The result of
the contest in this narrow channel is not so surprising
as is the foresight of Themistocles and the courage of
 !

ATTICA 167

the Greeks in availing themselves with irresistible dar-

ing of the overconfidence of Xerxes. ^Eschylus’s account
betrays the vivid memories of an actual eye-witness.
The vessels took position by night. Across the deso-
lated plain of Attica the new Day, “by white steeds
drawn, her radiance fair to see, held all the land.” To
the astonishment of the Persians, the Greeks, instead
of fleeing, raised high their shout of happy omen, and
Echo, mate of dance-loving Pan, “back from the island
rock returned a shrill and pealing cry of joy.” The
Persian messenger continues :
—
“ Fell fear on all of us barbarians, deceived
In expectation. For the Greeks a noble hymn
Were singing, not as though in flight, but like to men
Starting for battle with courageous heart. And then
The trumpet’s blare set all of them aflame. Therewith
The even dash of oar-blades, at the word, bit deep
The brine and quickly all of them were visible.
The right wing in good order first led forth, and next
Came out and on the armament entire. Aye then,
As they came onward, loud the cry that reached our ears:
‘
Sons of the Hellenes ! On ! Set free your native land
Your children free, your wives, ancestral shrines of gods
And tombs of fathers’ fathers ! Now for all we strive !
’ ”

The “jargon” of the Persian host rolled back reply.

A Greek ship was the first to grapple. Bronze beak
smote beak. Triremes turned keel uppermost, —
“ Until the water was no longer to be seen,
With wreckage of slain men and splintered vessels packed.
The corpses beached. They filled the ridges and the shores.”

Whether dead or alive the Persians found no refuge

upon land. Aristides with his men, instead of the
 ! —

1 68 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

picked Persians, was now on Psyttaleia to save or to
destroy. The chorus of Persian women, as they hear
the news, imagine their dead now floating with the tide,

now, like struggling swimmers, rising to the waves.

The leader cries :
—
“ Woe, woe is me

Our dear ones lost,

By the sea’s swell tossed
Their bodies, borne along the main.
Rise and dip, and rise again ” !

It was not unnatural that the ineffaceable memory

of the sea covered with wreckage and the dead should
reappear, when ^Eschylus, in the “Agamemnon,” de-

scribes the morning after the storm that wrecked the

ships returning from Troy:
“ When rose the brilliant light of Helios, we see
Th’ ^Egean, spread out far and wide, a-blossoming
With wrecks of ships and corpses of Achaean men.”

Apart from the details of the battle, the “Persians”

is noticeable for the method by which the poet intro-

duces his ethical lesson. The ghost of the great Darius

suddenly appears in the orchestra and attributes the
defeat of Xerxes to his presumption in fettering “like
a slave” the “sacred” Hellespont. ^Eschylus reiter-

ates his favourite doctrine :

“ When Insolence puts forth
the bloom of Ate, the harvest reaped is one of many
tears.” And when later Xerxes himself arrives, the

chorus with un-oriental frankness says: “Xerxes has

packed Hades full with Persians.”
The “Persae” of Timotheus, a sensational find of
 ATTICA 169

the year 1902, with its fantastic and overloaded epi-

thets and the half-comic scene of the drowning Persian

spitting out bitter brine and reproaches together, is a
curious scholium upon ^Eschylus’s poem. The de-

scription of the dead upon the sea is thus retouched :

—
“ Choked was the sea, star-spangled with the corpses reft

of souls departing with the failing breath. The beaches

were weighed down. Other some upon the jutting spits of

land were seated all a-shiver in their nakedness.”

The love of free men for a free country saved Attica.

Euripides, despite the devastation of the country,

might well call his land “unsacked,” “inviolate.” It

was true of the unyielding citizens who, whether upon

the mainland or self-exiled upon their triremes, refused

all dealings with the despot. Plutarch tells us that

Xerxes after Salamis sought to detach the Athenians
from the national cause by promises of liberty and
riches for themselves. The Lacedaemonians, fearing
lest they might yield to the royal bribery, attempted
to remonstrate, but Aristides bade the ambassadors
say at Sparta: “Neither above ground nor below is

there enough gold for the Athenians to accept in pre-

ference to the liberty of the Hellenes.”
It may be that the visitor to Salamis, as his little

craft scuds swiftly home past Cynosura and Psyttaleia,

sees the dark clouds, from which but now came rain,

roll off towards Eleusis, while Attica, the islands, and

the western mountains merge once more in the accus-
tomed beauty of the translucent atmosphere. He may,
i7o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
perhaps, harbour the thought that under such a sky,
when the war-clouds had finally withdrawn, the demes-
men of country and of town came back to their devas-

tated but ransomed Attica.

 CHAPTER VIII

ELEUSIS
“That torch-lit strand whereon the Goddesses revered foster
mystic rites and dread for mortal men whose lips the ministrant
Eumolpidae have locked in golden silence.”
Sophocles, (Edipus Coloneus.

“ Go thou to Attica,
Fail not to see those great nights of Demeter,
Mystical, holy.
There thou shalt win thee a mind that is care-free
Even while living,

And when thou joinest that major assembly

Light shall thy heart be.”
Crinagoras, Greek Anthology.

leusis, like Delphi, was a centre of Greek relig-

E ious life, but its Panhellenism was of a later date

and a direct consequence of the power of Athens
within whose territory it lay. Although the worship
of nature’s productivity, under the form of Demeter
losing her daughter Persephone within the earth and
recovering her again, was indigenous among the early
Pelasgic dwellers in Eleusis, and although upon this
native cult were grafted religious beliefs and practices
imported from Thrace, it is yet true that the Eleusinian
Mysteries waxed famous only as Athens waxed great.
Once established by the most powerful city of Greece
as its highest expression of religious feeling, they drew
172 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
to their modest birthplace in the recurring Septembers
of many centuries the pious and the curious from all

Greek lands. The right of initiation, originally open

only to citizens of Attica, was extended to all Greeks
and later to their Roman conquerors. In this repudia-

tion of “barbarians” Eleusis resembled Olympia

rather than Delphi, where Persian or Scyth or African
might consult Apollo.
But these three centres of Panhellenic life alike pre-

sent a history which begins in the dim age of mythol-

ogy and ends, several centuries after the beginning of
our era, in the final clash of Christianity with Pagan-
ism. Perhaps the history of Eleusis best deserves the
name of “sacred.” Playing no appreciable part in
secular events, the town was repeatedly the scene of
religious events which were of unequalled spiritual

importance. Here an early nature cult, sister to savage

rites in many parts of the world, became not only a
beautified worship of the physical universe but also
an expression of a hope in immortality. “ The fable of

Kore (the Daughter) is as much the image of the destiny

of man after death as it is that of the reproduction of
vegetative life by means of the seed committed to the

earth.”*
Except for the proximity of Eleusis to Athens there
was nothing in the physical qualities of the town to

make the Eleusinian mysteries greater than any others.

* See articles by Francois Lenormant in the Contemporary Review,

1880.
 ELEUSIS i73

Its loveliness befitted rather than promoted the worship

of the Earth Goddesses. Their story clung also to

the seaward looking ledges of “steep Cnidos,” where

was found the noble statue of Demeter that is now in
the British Museum, and to the blossoming fields of
Sicilian Enna. The Corn- Mother had her shrines on
Boeotian farms and in the mountain caverns of Arcadia,
and in more than one locality her worship was as mys-
terious and secret as the processes of nature. And yet
the religious genius of Athens could have had no more
exquisite stage than Eleusis for its larger operations.
Sheltered by hills, washed by the sea and command-
ing a goodly plain, it is still, even in its poverty, one
of the fairest places in Greece. The Thriasian plain,

in the southwestern portion of which, on a low hill, lies

the town, is separated from the plain of Athens by the

long ridge of Mount iEgaleus and from the plain of
Megara by the chain of hills that ends in the twin peaks
of the Kerata, or “Horns,” familiar objects in the west-
ward view from the Acropolis of Athens. The moun-
tains of Salamis also seem to contribute to the girdling

of Eleusis, so near do they rise across the curving and

almost landlocked bay. Empurpled by shadows, the
mountains and the sea are like the deep blue robe of
the mourning Demeter. Subdued to the delicate and
luminous tint of the sky they seem like the veil within
whose folds gleamed the cornlike yellow of her hair.

Near the sea, close around Eleusis, there are still fertile

grain fields to recall that —

174 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
“ Here first the fruitful corn upreared its bristling ears.”

The historical development of the Eleusinian mys-

teries naturally followed the general development of
Greek religious thought. To the primitive duality
of Demeter and Persephone was added Dionysus,
lord of the elements, when he had once been accepted
by the Athens of Pisistratus. At Eleusis he appeared
as the child Iacchus. Later, under the influences of
the strange school of thought known as “Orphic,”
at once mystical and gross, this multiple god became
Zagreus, through whose savage death man, otherwise
destined to be forever brute, came to partake of the

divine nature. But in all periods the mysteries “were

founded on the adoration of nature, its forces and
phenomena, conceived rather than observed, inter-

preted by the imagination and not by reason, trans-

formed into divine figures and histories by a kind of
theological poetry which went off into pantheism on
the one side and into anthropomorphism on the other.”
In this theological poetry the position of power was
held by the long Homeric Hymn to Demeter, although
it antedates the presence of Iacchus at Eleusis and
at least overlooks the importance of Triptolemus, the
young prince of the city, to whom the Earth-Mother
gave the first seed-corn and the commission to teach
the art of husbandry throughout the world. The repre-
sentation of this act was left for fifth century sculpture,
if we may so interpret the beautiful relief discovered
at Eleusis and preserved in the National Museum.
 ELEUSIS *75

Nor is there more than casual mention of Eumolpus,

the legendary first priest and the eponymous ancestor
of the priestly family in Athens which was charged
with the care of Demeter’s worship. But the Hymn
told flawlessly the central story of Demeter and Perse-
phone the ravishment of Persephone by Hades as she
:

was picking roses and crocuses, violets and irises and

the marvelous narcissus which the earth bore to be her
snare the grief of Demeter as she heard the mountain
;

peaks and the deep sea echo her child’s cry, her wan-
dering search, her unrecognised sojourn at fragrant
Eleusis in the courteous household of the king, and
her retarding of the fruits of the earth ;
the reunion of
mother and daughter for two thirds of the year, and
the sending up once more of the grain from the rich
fields and the burgeoning of the leaves and flowers;
and, finally, the command of the Goddess that the peo-
ple of Eleusis should build her a great temple and an
altar below the town and the steep wall, above the
spring Callichorus on the jutting rock.
Homer himself had not known this story. Hesiod
had lacked the Ionic gift to tell it. Euripides, in a later
generation, was led astray by his strain of Orphic im-
agination which needed the roar of rivers and the
thunder of the sea, the wail of flutes and the clatter of

the tambourine to mark the frenzy of a suffering god-

head. The Greeks as a people preferred a story in
which nature perishes and blooms again, in which
grief and love fight with death, while the dignity of life
176 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
is unassailed, and the beauty of hills and sea, flowers

and welling springs irradiates its tragedies.

Only the external facts concerning the celebrations

are open to us. The secrets of the two successive ini-

tiations, one preparatory to the other, were so jealously

hidden by the ancient initiates that the keenest schol-

arship has not been able to discover them in literature

or in art. Alcibiades, idolized as he was, could not
secure acquittal from the suspicion of having parodied
the mysteries. Silence was enjoined by religion, en-

forced by law. This reserve about holy things, which

has appealed to some moderns as the “chief lesson
and culminating grace derived from Eleusis,” was
proclaimed not only as a necessary condition but also
as an integral part of initiation, “imitating,” as Strabo

expressed it, “ the nature of the godhead which is for-

ever eluding our senses.” Knowledge of the outward

events of the festival has been painstakingly gathered
from passages in Athenian literature, a few inscrip-
tions, the excavated ruins, vases and other works of
art, and from the controversial literature, both Chris-
tian and pagan, of the early centuries of our era.

The “Mysteries” lasted nine days, the time of

Demeter’s wanderings. Prior to them the youths —
ephebi — of Athens went to Eleusis and brought thence
certain sacred objects which were to be used in the
later procession. On the 15th of Boedromion, or Sep-
tember, near the time of sowing, the “mystae,” who
in the early spring month of Anthesterion, the season
 ELEUSIS 177

of planting, had participated in the Lesser Mysteries

in a suburb of Athens, were assembled at the Stoa

Poecile to listen to sundry proclamations. The follow-

ing day was one of purification. The cry went out,

“seawards, O mystae,” and every candidate washed
himself and his sacrificial pig in the bay near Eleusis,
following the Greek feeling that the sea purges from
the evils of earth. For two more days sacrifices were
carried on at Athens. And then on the 19th or the 20th
came the great procession to escort the image of the
child Iacchus, myrtle-crowned and carrying in his
hand a torch, back to his Eleusinian home. The day
was a public holiday. Great crowds gathered along
the Sacred Way to watch the long line of ephebi, mys-
tics, priests and officials, who, wearing myrtle and
bearing torches, left the Dipylon Gate early in the morn-
ing and r.eached the precinct at Eleusis after nightfall,
when the mysterious shadows were dispelled only by
the yellow glare of thousands upon thousands of torches
and by the lights that streamed from the sacred build-
ings.
The modern highroad follows very nearly the Sacred
Way. Few travellers now brave the heat and dust of
an Attic September, but in some “month of flowers”
gain their impressions of the beauty of the road, which
still leads over the Cephisus, past gray- green olive
groves, up through the pine-clad pass of Mount ^Ega-
leus, and down again to wind closely beside the curved
shore of the sea. In antiquity the Sacred Way was
178 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
lined with tombs and temples and shrines. Moderns
are detained only by the lovely mediaeval Convent of
Daphne, at the top of the pass, but the ancient pro-

cession lingered not only at the Temple of Apollo which

occupied this spot, but at many other sacred stations,
to offer sacrifices, sing hymns, and engage in dances,
solemn or joyous or wild. This was the reason for

leaving Athens so early to cover only thirteen miles

before another sunrise. The last part of the way fol-

lowed the “torchlit strand” by night. The “voices

of the night,” the moving feet of the multitude owned
Iacchus as lord, with whom the stars also danced, the
stars whose breath is fire. And to the stars of Sophocles
Euripides added the elemental joy of moon and sea :
—
“ When the stars of the ether of Zeus lead out,
And the moon glides on as the dancers’ queen,
And the daughters of Nereus join the rout
Adown the sea or along the swirl
Of the rivers eternal that rush and whirl —
The ether, the moon, and the streams and the sea
They dance to honour Persephone,
The maiden crowned with the golden sheen,
—
And Demeter the Mother ah, Dread is she!”

The singing of the vast throngs, breaking out at sun-

rise, changing its themes in fresh enthusiasms through
the long day and swelling by night into triumphant
volume, must have been unforgettable. Herodotus re-

lates that in the gloomy time when Athens was aban-

doned, and its plain laid waste by Xerxes, even a
Medizing exile was haunted by its ghostly echoes.
ELEUSIS

TO

WAY

THE

ON

TREES

OLIVE
 ELEUSIS 179

Dicaeus of Athens chanced to be in the Thriasian plain

with Demaratus of Sparta, and saw a cloud of dust
advancing from Eleusis, such as a host of thirty thou-
sand men might raise. As he was wondering who the
men could possibly be, a sound reached his ear and
he thought that he recognised the mystic hymn of
Iacchus. Even as they looked, the dust became a cloud
and sailed away to Salamis, making for the station of

the Grecian fleet. This was a sign to the Athenian that

the gods of Eleusis would destroy the fleet of Xerxes.
To us an echo of the singing comes through the seri-

ous lyrics in the “ Frogs” of Aristophanes. At the por-

tals of Hades a band of mystics sing over again the
processional hymns they had often sung on earth, be-
ginning with the sunrise summons to Iacchus to leave
his Athenian shrine :
—
“ O Iacchus, O Iacchus,
Morning star that shinest nightly,
Lo, the mead is blazing brightly,
Age forgets its years and sadness,
Aged knees curvet for gladness,
Lift thy flashing torches o’er us,
Marshal all thy blameless train,
Lead, O lead the way before us; lead the lovely youthful Chorus
To the marshy flowery plain.” *

The days at Eleusis were probably only pauses be-

tween the “great nights” of the worship of Demeter.
The nightly proceedings seem to have consisted of
three elements. The first was an imitation of Demeter’s
* Translated by Rogers.
i8o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
wanderings. The initiates went up and down the shore
by the sea, their restless torches appearing from a
distance like great “swarms of fireflies.” They sat too
upon the Joyless Rock, and by meditation endeavoured
to enter into the passion of the Goddess. The second
element was some sacrament of food and drink in com-
memoration of the fact that Demeter was finally per-

suaded by the merry Iambe to break her fast. Finally

came a series of dramatic representations in the great
Hall of Initiation, by means of which the divine story
was unfolded.
It would be a mistake to suppose that if we knew
more details about these celebrations we should under-
stand more clearly the influence that they exerted on
the minds and spirits of the celebrants. In the mysteries,
we are assured by Aristotle, the initiates did not learn
anything precisely, but received impressions, were put
into a certain frame of mind for which they had been
prepared. The value of subtle influences like these can
never be apprehended save by those who have been
subjected to them. In no age, under no sanction, have
men been able to create sacred rites, whether secret or
open, that could not be construed as mummery, not
only by those of a different age but even by contem-
poraries who stood outside the circle of the elect. Were
every “secret” of the Eleusinian Mysteries to be recov-
ered, we should still be uninitiated into their higher

wisdom. We should still be thrown back, as we are at

present, upon a vicarious sympathy with those who
 ELEUSIS 181

have borne witness to the quickening of their spirits

in the Eleusinian nights. Fortunately this testimony

comes from a few of the most gifted among the Greeks.
The often quoted statement of Cicero, that initiation
taught men not only to live happily but to die with a
fairer hope, only repeats what was said by his literary
master, Isocrates : “Those who have participated in the
mysteries possess sweeter hopes about death and about
the whole of life.” Strangely enough, ^Eschylus, who
was born in Eleusis and whose plays in later times were
acted there because of their religious character, seems
never to have been initiated. But Pindar and Sopho-
cles and Euripides and Aristophanes harboured per-
sonal hopes that those who knew the mysteries were
“blessed” in the hour of death and in the life to come.
In the “Frogs” the dead mystics end their song in
solemn peace :
—
“ O happy mystic chorus,
The blessed sunshine o’er us
On us alone is smiling,
In its soft sweet light;
On us who strive forever
With holy, pure endeavour
Alike by friend and stranger
To guide our steps aright.” *

The impulse that was derived from Eleusis to lead

the earthly life aright must have had as many different
results as there were temperaments among the initiates.

Andocides, merchant and orator, reminded the Athe-

* Translated by Rogers.
1 82 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
nian judges that they had contemplated the sacred rites

in order that they might punish the guilty and save the
innocent. Plato felt that he whose memory of initiation
was still fresh and who at Eleusis had been the spec-
tator of “many glories in the other world ” must see
in every beautiful face or form that he encountered an
imitation of divine or absolute beauty toward which
his spirit would go out in reverential love.

The excavated remains of ancient Eleusis consist of

ground foundations or even fainter traces of buildings

and porticoes dating from the “Mycenaean” period

to the age of the Antonines. Pisistratus, Cimon, Per-
icles and Hadrian have left fragmentary records in
stone of their interest in this religious centre. The Tem-
ple of the Mysteries, which was a great hall rather than
a sanctuary, saw many changes in the course of the

centuries. The older structure of Pisistratus’s day, de-

stroyed by the Persians, was replaced by Pericles, per-

haps according to plans by Ictinus. Left unfinished
by him, it was added to by Greek and Roman until its

boastful splendour aroused the anger of the Gothic

monks who came south with Alaric and compassed its

final ruin.

Homelier memories centre in the Spring of Fair

Dances (Callichorus), now identified. Here, Pausanias
tells us, “the Eleusinian women first danced and sang
in honour of the goddess,” decked perhaps like the

Doric maidens whose worship of the same goddess

charmed the eyes of Aleman :
—
 ELEUSIS 183

“ We came to great Demeter’s fane, we nine,

All maidens, all in goodly raiment clad;
In goodly raiment clad, with necklace bright
Of carven ivory, a radiant gleam.”

A fortunate dream prevented Pausanias from relat-

ing to the uninitiated what he saw within the sacred

precinct. In unpoisoned content, therefore, lured by
the beauty of the “white spring” which Callimachus,
the Alexandrian, included among Demeter’s gifts, the
modern traveller may sit on the temple steps and aban-
don thought, even as many an ancient mystic in the

autumnal days between the holy nights must have

mounted to some place of outlook whence he could
watch the deep blue sea break into foam delicate and
white as the face of Persephone.
The mysteries ended on the 24th, with a public
festival. At Athens games were held, called the Eleu-

sinia, offering as a prize a measure of barley reaped

from the field of Rharos close to the walls of Eleusis

where the first seed corn had fructified. In later times,

with the general increase of holidays, this festival was
prolonged, but in the greatest days of Athens the pro-
cession of mystics returned to the city on the 25th, with
ceremonies of farewell to Persephone now leaving her
mother to return to her gloomy lord, like summer near-

ing the embrace of winter; and with some final ritual,

performed, it may be, at the Dipylon Gate rather than

at Eleusis, of prayer to sky and earth that the one might
impregnate and the other bear. On the curb of a sacred
184 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
well before the city gate has been found the very ancient
formula, not yet outlived by the generations of men
who live upon the fruits of the earth.
The day of return gave one last opportunity for a
public demonstration — this time of hilarity. Justified

by the quips and cranks of Iambe, the initiates yielded

to the impulse which in the natural man follows close

upon exaltation. At the bridge over the Cephisus the
people of the city, wearing masks, met the procession,
and a carnival of scurrilous wit ensued, which was a
savoury memory to Aristophanes’s mystics in the world
of shadows. To us the recollection may bring a sudden
distrust of the sympathy with the past which, within
the unfretted silence of Eleusis, seemed completely to
possess us. Like the spectators in the comedy we
get a whiff of pork. The light of the torches reveals

the vulgarities of a revelling crowd. The cymbals of the

priests, clashed only at this spot, drown the voices “of
no tone.” Is it, after all, true, as the early Christians

believed, that orgies, not prayers, have busied these

men and women ?
But with the crossing of the bridge the mood van-
ishes. The western sun is once more adorning the
Athenian Acropolis. Not only Pindar and Plato faced
this hill with a new reverence after their Eleusinian
many a simpler man and woman must have
nights, but

come home comforted and hopeful to take up old

burdens on the morrow. If, viewed by a Plato from
the heights of “true philosophy,” thousands who came
 ELEUSIS 185

from Eleusis were still blind, or only partially aware

of the meaning of life and death, this was but the
Greek manifestation of a universal fact: “Many are
the thyrsus-bearers but few are the mystics.”
 CHAPTER IX
REGINA

“ Not far from the Graces’ favour falls this island’s lot. She
off

keepeth and hath attained to glory in the valour of the

civic faith
sons of ^Eacus. Flawless is her fame from the beginning; for she is
sung as nurse of heroes, foremost in prize-winning contests numer-
ous, foremost in swift war.” Pindar.

indar’s praise of ^Egina must have been as

P wormwood to the Athenians, for her

blood and commercial supremacy

their natural rival, and her proximity fanned
Dorian
made her
rivalry

into hatred. Athens conquered in the end, and time and

tourists have completed the victory by turning the
island into one of the “excursions in Attica.” No
longer the “eye-sore of Piraeus,” as Pericles called it,

itnow immeasurably enhances the Attic landscape and

beckons to its own shores those who day by day have
watched its mountainous beauty across the estranging
gulf. Only on the western side of the island, where the
town of iEgina occupies the site of the ancient capital,

is the coast free from steep cliffs, and the entire surface,

as it is seen from Athens, consists of mountain-ridges

crowned by the high peak of Oros, once sacred to Zeus
Panhellenios and now bearing a chapel to Saint Elias.
Toward these ^Eginetan hills the eye inevitably turns
 ^)GINA 187

whether the sullen rain-clouds are gathering, as of old,

about the highest summit, or Zeus unrolls his bluest

canopy above the deeper azure of their slopes, or
whether, against the changing sunsets, they darken
into stormy purple or delicately veil themselves in
amethystine, shot with rose.
^Egina’s lodestone for modern travellers is the Doric
temple on a hill above the Bay of Marina in the north-
eastern part of the island. Regular boats ply between
Piraeus and the harbour-town of iEgina, the route taken

by Lucian’s group of friends who hired a tiny boat at

four obols a head in order to see the islanders celebrat-
ing their famous Festival of Hecate. From the town
the temple may be reached by a ride of several hours
across the rough but fertile northern districts of the
island. Excursion boats, however, for those who have
but a day, cross directly from Piraeus to the Bay of
Marina, a route more nearly akin to that followed by
the Athenian ships which began the mad expedition
to Sicily by a race “as far as ^Egina,” and then turned
their prows toward the open sea. From the shore of
the bay it is an easy walk to the isolated hill-top upon
which the ruined temple stands. On an April day this

approach is one of vivid beauty, the bright new green

of fig trees glistening among resinous pines and the
ground rioting in the colour of many flowers. The hill-

top itself offers a scene which is unsurpassed even

among the remoter islands of the Greek seas. The
intense brilliance of the very white marble columns
1 88 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
under the cloudless sky is tempered by the somewhat
sombre green of neighbouring trees. Afar are seen the
broken coast and the varied mountains of the mainland
from Megara to Sunium. Below, in capricious loveli-

ness, now a tranquil plain of ultramarine, now a rest-

less surface of sparkling crystal, stretches the Saronic

Gulf.
The temple was erected to Aphaea, protectress of
women. Of the outer colonnade enough is intact to

reveal the dignity of the original structure, but it was

in the pediment sculptures that the art of ^Egina was
best expressed. Preserved now in the Munich Museum,
they are heirs to the ancient fortune of many /Eginetan
products which were shipped to the north and to the

south, to Egypt and to the barbarous shores of the

Black Sea. These pediment groups, well known as
examples of the work of the ^Eginetan school of sculp-
ture in the early part of the fifth century, probably
represented episodes of the Trojan War. This would
seem to indicate that they were produced after the
victory at Salamis which inspired so many symbolistic
expressions in art and literature of the conquest of bar-

barians by Greeks. iEgina distinguished herself at

Salamis, her sailors being awarded the first honours
for valour. And her older heroes had fought conspicu-
ously in the Trojan War, the earlier act of the long
drama.
But it was the personal bravery of the yEginetans

rather than their national policy which brought them

 REGINA
Temple of Aphaea
 .EGINA 189

glory at Salamis. The island-commonwealth was in-

clined to aid the Persians, and it was the interference

of Athens at this crisis which brought on the open war

between the two maritime powers. By the middle of
the fifth century iEgina was completely conquered and
made a member of the Confederacy of Delos. Twenty
years later the Dorian inhabitants were expelled and
the island freshly settled from Attica.
iEgina’s heyday had antedated that of Athens by two
centuries. Her argosies had been known in all ports

where men bought or sold. Her system of coinage and

of weights and measures had set the standards for the
Greek world. At home her people displayed their rest-

less energies in both industrial and artistic pursuits.

In literature alone were they barren. Their claim to

poetry lies only in the inspiration which one manifesta-

tion of their energy yielded to a foreign poet.

The yEginetans were remarkable athletes as well as

fighters, and Pindar boasted that he held up a mirror
to their noble deeds, and wrought forthem a necklace
of the Muses, “with white ivory and gold inlaid and
coral of the lily flower gathered ’neath the ocean dew.”
The young Pytheas, indeed, who won the pancratium
at Nemea, was celebrated by both Pindar and Bacchy-
lides, and in the ode of the latter poet there lurks the
memory of some spring visit to ^Egina when the young
flowers and reeds were made into garlands, and bare-
footed girls bounded like young fawns toward the flow-
ery hills. Pindar, in the eleven extant odes which he
i 9o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
wrote for HSginetan youths, mingled a “fitting draught
as meed for their toil upon the highway clear of god-

inspired deeds.” His willingness to use his best gifts

in their behalf he explained by the ancient friendship*

between the island and his native city, typified by the
sisterhood of the nymphs Thebe and iEgina, both
beloved by Zeus. And although he praised the athletic
spirit of the ^Eginetans and their justice, their defence
of strangers, and the deliverance wrought by them at
Salamis “when Zeus was showering destruction far and
wide and death came thick as hail upon unnumbered
men,” his most frequent theme was the glory of their

legendary heroes.
The nymph ^Egina had borne HSacus, who was so
just a king that at his death the gods made him a judge
in Hades. His sons were Peleus and Telamon, their
sons were Achilles and Ajax and Teucer.

“Beyond the sources of the Nile and through the Hy-

perboreans they pass, nor is there any city so barbarian or
confused in speech that itknoweth not the hero Peleus and
his fame nor that of Ajax, son of Telamon, whom on his
ships Alcmena’s son led forth to Troy.”

Lords of wide adventure, they drifted away from

^Egina’s shores. Teucer, son of Telamon, ruled in Cy-
prus, a new land, and Ajax held the Salamis of his father.

Peleus ruled in Thessalian Pthia. In the Euxine Sea

Achilles won a “shining isle,” and his son was prince
in “ Epirus, famed afar, where, from Dodona on, the
cattle-pasturing headlands, jutting high, lie out against
 mgina I9I

the Ionian Sea.” But at the invocation of Pindar they

gather once more in their ancient home.
Nor was the significance of human greatness absent
from Pindar’s mind: —
“Within a little space the joys of man spring up; so too
they fall again to earth when shaken by an adverse doom.
We creatures of a day ! What’s man ? What is he not ? —
a shadow’s dream ! But when there comes a glory sent of
God there rests on men a bright light and an age serene.”

Thus to a youth of iEgina who was lifted on the wings

of hope and valour the poet gave a warning and a larger
hope.
 CHAPTER X
MEGARA AND CORINTH THE GULF OF CORINTH
“ Cities which were great aforetime now as a rule are mean, and
those formerly were small which in my day have become great.
Therefore, since I know that human prosperity never remains sta-
tionary, of both alike I shall make mention.” Herodotus.

O n

tween Homeric
the neck of land that unites Attica to the
Peloponnesus two Dorian

civilization

and Athens, those great representatives

and the
cities

prominence in the centuries intervening be-

attained to

rivalries of Sparta
Do-
of the
rian and Ionian races who reduced all other cities to
the position of allies or satellites. Only before the
middle of the sixth century were Corinth and Megara
powers of the first rank.
They are now stations on the way to Athens for those
who enter Greece at Patras. The railroad journey
between these cities, along the coasts of the Corinthian
and Saronic Gulfs, ought to be taken in one direction
or the other by every visitor to Greece, for scarcely any
other displays to better advantage the combination of
mountain, plain, and sea, which are the triad of Greek
landscape. The waters of the Corinthian Gulf, in
swift response to sun, wind, and cloud, vary from pellucid
blue to vivid, foam- flecked emerald, marked by strange
 MEGARA AND CORINTH i93

bands of deep wine red. Along its northern coast the

mountains pile up in restrained and harmonious masses
of blue or purple, crowned in winter or in spring with
snowy white. At times the west wind from the ocean
sweeps up this long narrow gulf as if through a canon,
beating the waves into fury and tilling the air with cold
moisture, even while the sun or the moon denies the
presence of a storm. On the other side of the Isthmus
the Saronic Gulf pushes far asunder the coasts of At-
tica and the Peloponnesus and skirts on the north the
littoral of Megara. From its placid evening surface the
mountains of ^Egina and Salamis rise in curves and
sharp peaks of cool violet and rose. Beyond the Bay of
Eleusis the eye that has not yet seen Athens turns in-
land in strained waiting for the Acropolis. Rising out
of a still distant plain and bearing upon its crest the
half-realized ruins of the Parthenon, the hill of the pil-
grim’s desires becomes a reality — “and from a dream,
behold, it is a waking vision.”
This journey, of scarcely eight hours, serves also to
reveal a surprising amount of Greek territory. Taking
it in the reverse direction, the train passes through
Attica, Megara, the Isthmus and Argolis, and follows
the entire northern coast line of Achaea. The moun-
tains across the Corinthian Gulf include not only
Helicon and Cithaeron of Bceotia, and Parnassus of
Phocis, but also unfamiliar peaks, barren of the Muses,
belonging to Locris, ^Etolia, and Acarnania. From
Patras can be seen the low coast of the ^Etolian bay
194 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
on which lies Mesolonghi, the burial-place of Byron’s
heart. Near it, although unseen from Patras, is Caly-
don, the scene of Meleager’s boar hunt, celebrated by
Homer and Bacchylides, Euripides and Swinburne.
Patras, the western seaport of Greece and surpassed
in commercial importance only by Athens and Piraeus,
is in Achaea. The name of this province evokes Ho-
meric memories only because it was settled by Achaeans
from Thessaly. Its chief contribution to Greek life lay
in the “Achaean League” against Rome which, as
Pausanias says, rose on the ruins of Greece “like a
fresh shoot on a blasted and withered trunk.” Patras
itself was unimportant until the time of Augustus, and
its most valuable associations are with the early history
of Christianity. In physical beauty, however, it is thor-

oughly Greek
— “beautiful Patras,” Lucian called it,

by way of contrast to the knavishness of one of its in-

habitants. The epithet doubtless included not only the

adornments added by the Roman emperors but also
the natural charms of its situation. The fruitful plain,

the height of Mount Voidia in the background, the

splendid waterfront facing the mountainous iEtolian

coast combine to give a suitable welcome to Greece.

This entrance is never fairer than in the hour when the

silver gray of dawn is obliterated by the clear bloom
in the sky that heralds the rising sun. The morning
light reveals outlines in naked distinctness, and tinges
all surfaces with a colour so fresh and buoyant that an
immediate conviction arises of the joyous nobility of
 MEGARA AND CORINTH 195

Greek scenery and of the youthfulness which a race so

nurtured might maintain.

The plain of Megara is separated from Attica by the

Kerata and from the Isthmus by Mount Geraneia, a
massive range extending across the Megarian territory
from the Corinthian to the Saronic Gulf and interposing
a rough and lofty bulwark between Central Greece and
the Peloponnesus.
Megara is now an unpretentious village with very
white houses which gleam from a distance among the
encircling mountains. Its site is that of the ancient

city, on the double summit of a hill above the plain

filled with vineyards, olive orchards, and bright green
fields of wheat, rye and barley. A good road leads to the
coast, little more than a mile away, where once the
harbour of Nisaea focused the large sea business of
Megara. The name of the harbour kept alive the
memory of Nisus, son of Athenian Pandion, the first

king of Megara (the Ionians perhaps preceded the

Dorians in its occupation), as the “island of Minoa,” *
now the promontory of St. George, recalled the inva-
sion by Minos of Crete. The king’s daughter, out of
love for his enemy, betrayed her father. The chorus
in the “Choephoroi” of ^Eschylus uses the story as a
warning to Clytemnestra :
—
* The frequent occurrence of Minoa as a place name in Greece
both indicates the widespread influences of Crete in prehistoric times
and is also one of the arguments for the adoption, at least tentatively,
of the technical term “Minoan” civilization.
 196 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
“ Another murd’rous maid is sung in story and calls forth

our hate. Led on by foeman lover, won by gifts of Minos,

’
gold-wrought Cretan necklaces, she slew a man beloved
and sheared the lock immortal from the head of Nisus
while he breathed in unsuspecting sleep. But Hermes
overtook her!”

The history of Megara was influenced now by Athens

and now by Corinth. At times neighbourhood quarrels
with Corinth turned her toward Athens, but in crises
the bonds of race proved stronger. Her great epoch,
however, was in the eighth and seventh centuries, before
the balance of power had been shifted by the Athenian
conquest of Salamis. During these centuries Megara
rivalled Corinth in colonial expansion, and from Nisaea
adventurers set sail to found Megara Hyblaea in Sicily,

Heraclea on the Euxine, and above all Byzantium on

the Bosphorus, which long before its christening as
Constantinople had forgotten its mother city.

In arts and letters Megara’s achievements were

slight, although tradition assigned to her the creation
of comedy. Only one of her poets, Theognis, belongs
to our canon of Greek literature. A contemporary of
Solon, he exhibited the same tendency to use poetry

as a medium of political discussion, but he was totally

opposed to the democratic influences which in his city,

as elsewhere, were making headway against the aris-

tocracy. Oligarchy and tyranny had been succeeded

by this larger struggle. Although Theognis was in the
thick of the fight, his wide influence in later centuries
 MEGARA AND CORINTH 197

was due rather to his sententious utterances on ethics,

which classed him with the “gnomic poets.” Xeno-

phon called the poetry of Theognis “a comprehensive
treatment concerning men,” and as such it was used
with the works of Homer and Hesiod in the educational
system of fourth-century Athens. Moderns will find

in the extant fragments little of the power which saves

a poet’s politics and ethics from becoming in a later
age either outworn or commonplace. But in the public
square of the village, the old hillside market-place, we
acquire a sympathy for his personal life and his love

of home. Here he stood and looked down upon the

fields of his confiscated estates, wasted in the riotous
living of new masters. The shrill cry of a bird, announc-
ing the autumnal harvests, reminded him that no longer
for him were mules drawing the curved plough through
the furrows. The sea, lying at the door of Megara, bore
him into exile, and with Alcaeus and Plato (and their

Roman and modem imitators) he likened the State to

a ship in danger, sailed by an evil crew, threatened by
leaping waves.
In the Persian wars Megara made a brave show,
sinking all animosity toward Athens in the great need
of Hellas. But fifty years later a bitter quarrel with
Athens became one of the precipitating causes of the
Peloponnesian War. The Athenians had passed a
decree excluding the Megarians from their markets
and from all the harbours in their dominions. The
Spartans demanded its revocation, and the Athenians,
198 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
influenced by Pericles, refused. Opinions differed as
to his disinterestedness. In the judgment of Thucy-
dides he was moved solely by reasons of state. The
more popular opinion that he was involved by Aspasia
in a scandalous affair affecting both cities appears in
Aristophanes, who also does not fail to see the comic
side of a situation which forced the impoverished Me-
garians to work their way secretly into the Athenian
markets bringing cucumbers and sucking pigs and gar-
lic under their cloaks. The later comic poets made a
butt of the Megarians, and the Megarian’s sneer about
the Athenian figs and Propylaea was doubtless only one
of many retorts.

After the Peloponnesian War we have a happier pic-

ture of Megara as the home of philosophy. Plato in

his first grief over the death of his master went there
to visit Eucleides, who had been wont to creep into

Athens by night, in defiance of the decree, to talk with

Socrates. And from the vivid opening scene of the
“ Theaetetus,” a severely metaphysical dialogue written

a few years later, we know that Eucleides and his philo-

sophical friends used to meet each other in the market-

place (where now the peasant women dance at Easter)

or go to the harbour to greet a friend en route from

Corinth to Athens, or gather at home for readings and
conversations. Isocrates praised in Megara a domestic
prosperity finer than the lust for empire which had
ruined Athens and Sparta.
The Megarians shared the Greek lot at Chaeronea.
 MEGARA AND CORINTH 199

The later fate of the city is summed up in the reflections

of the Roman governor, Sulpicius, who, coming from

iEgina, gazed at its ruins from his vessel’s prow and
argued from them the brevity of human glory.
In antiquity travellers by land made their way from
Megara to Corinth either over the difficult heights of

Geraneia or close along the shore of the Saronic Gulf.

The railroad follows the direction of this coast route,
and from a high bridge the old road can be seen below,
skirting the foot of the precipices in which the spurs
of Geraneia end. These precipices crowd so close to the

sea that the space for the road is exceedingly narrow,

and the resulting dangers gave to the pass in modern
days the name of Kake Skala. Even in the nineteenth
century robbers made use of the natural difficulties of
the site as they did in Roman times. Hadrian thought
it important to widen the road as much as possible.
To the ancients the steep precipices were known as the
Scironian Cliffs, and the Athenian story ran that a rob-
ber, Sciron, dwelt beside them and hurled every way-
farer into the sea, where a huge tortoise devoured him.
Theseus killed the villain and threw him down to his

old ally. The sea that surged below the road took its

own toll of travellers. Among the unfortunates in the

fifth century one was either rich or distinguished
enough to have an inscription by Simonides upon his
cenotaph :
—
“ Geraneia, cruel scar,
Where the mist of morning creeps,
200 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Would that thou on Ister far
Ward wert keeping, or where sweeps
Scythian stream of Tanals.
Wert not here where snow-storms’ scourges
Fill Moluriad’s rocky gorges;
Wert not here above the surges
On Scironian rocks that hiss.
As it is, his corpse the Ocean
Death-chilled swings in restless motion;
Mocks his voyage a bitter laugh
Echoing from his cenotaph.”

This spot of frequent shipwrecks had also its sea

deities. The Moluriad Rock, a part of the Scironian
Cliffs, was the scene of Ino’s payment of her share in
the curse laid Cadmus of Thebes.
upon her father,

Chased by an angry husband down the mountain

ridges, she plunged into the sea with her infant son
Melicertes, or, as Euripides said, in comparing her to

Medea, with two children in her arms :

—
“ One woman only have I known
Of all before us, one alone,
Lay hand upon her children dear:
God-maddened Ino, from her home
By Zeus’s wife sent forth to roam,
With impious murder to the mere,
Ah wretched one! from headland springing
Her children twain and self out-flinging,
She perished with them in the foam.”

Ino became Leucothea, the kindly goddess of Odys-

seus’s journey, and Melicertes became Palaemon, the
Greek representative of the Phoenician Melkart, wor-

shipped on the Isthmus. To them, in the Anthology,

sailors prayed on their way to the “sweet shore of
 MEGARA AND CORINTH 201

Piraeus” and fishermen dedicated strange sea crea-

tures that came up in their nets or were found upon
the shore.
The train keeps on its way by the Saronic Gulf,
crosses the canal on a bridge and reaches New Corinth
on the Corinthian Gulf.

The destiny of Corinth was so peculiarly the result

of its situation that to describe the one is to foreshadow

the other. Aristotle might have illustrated by this city
the physical qualities which he considered desirable.
It had “a native abundance of streams and fountains”
to promote health, and its acropolis was one of the

strongest in Greece. Most of all, it was “well situated

in regard both to sea and land.” Thus it was “ a stra-
tegic centre for protecting the whole district,” and was

“convenient for receiving the crops and also for the

bringing in of timber and any other natural pro-
ducts.” Corinth commanded two ports, one on either
side of the Isthmus, and stood also at the entrance to
the Peloponnesus. As “god-built portal of the bright
island of Pelops” she controlled the land routes for the
exports and imports of southern Greece, and as a city
“of two seas” she was mistress of the trade of the far
east and the far west. At the beginning of the Pelo-
ponnesian War she urged the Dorian allies to remember
that if they did not protect her seaboard they would
find it difficult to carry their produce to the sea or
to barter in return for the goods which the sea gives
202 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
to the land. Already in Homer Corinth was “rich,”
and her later history was one of commerce, coloniza-
tion, invention, and the arts and crafts rather than
of literature. For that reason the pathos of her pres
ent desolation is unrelieved by thoughts of a rescued
legacy.

New Corinth, lying close to the shore of the Gulf,

several miles from the ancient western harbour, is a
town of hopeful energy and ambition, its railroad sta-
tion and steamboat quay indicating a potential capac-
ity for growth. Old Corinth, three and a half miles

inland, consists of a few poor houses unified into a

certain village dignity by a great plane tree that shad-

ows the “public square.” These houses have gathered

near the spot to which tourists make their way on foot

or by carriage from the seashore town. Before the

excavations of the American School were begun in
1896, they came in order to ascend the massive rock

of Acrocorinth and to see the remaining monoliths of

a Doric temple which antedates the classical period of
Greek architecture. The excavations have added sites
deserving of close attention, but without effect on the
general features of the landscape. Acrocorinth rules
the Isthmian plain, and its summit offers an outlook,
from Strabo’s time the theme of many panegyrics, over
wide-flung country and sea to the mountain crests of
Delphi and Arcadia, of Attica and Boeotia. The plateau
on the north and east of this acropolis was the site of

the ancient city. Apollo’s columns, which saw its great-

 Acrocorinth

and

CORINTH

Apollo,

of

Temple
 MEGARA AND CORINTH 203

est power and have withstood its successive blights,

alone compete with the impressiveness of the citadel.
Seated on the steps of the temple and watching the
mists break away from the impatient heights of Acro-
corinth, we may recount to ourselves the tale “of Cor-
inth blest, the vestibule of Isthmian Poseidon, nurse
of manly splendour.”
The diversity of legends concerning the pre- Dorian

origin of Corinth illustrates the hospitality of the Greek

mind toward incompatible stories. Ephyre, daughter
of Ocean, in Homer gave her name to the city. Sisy-

phus, the son of ^Eolus, the son of Hellen, was intro-

duced as founder in the effort to trace historical devel-

opment. The Corinthians themselves set great store

by an eponymous hero, Corinthus, the son of Zeus.
Their reiteration of this exasperating claim became
proverbial among the other Greeks. When the Aris-
tophanic Dionysus arrives in Hades and bids his ser-
vant take up the wraps again and carry them inside,
Xanthias exclaims :
—
“ Aye, pick ’em up ! now there it goes again,
They’ve Zeus’s Corinth in ’em, that is plain!”

Sisyphus and his descendants owe a long debt to the

poets, if posthumous fame be a recompense for vicis-
situdes. Sisyphus was found by Odysseus in Hades
in “strong torment,” pushing a monstrous stone up the
hill only to have it roll back again. A great-great-grand-
son fought among the Lycians on Priam’s side at Troy
and, questioned by Diomede of his ancestry, made the
204 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
famous comparison which betrays the melancholy
already lurking in the youth of Hellas :
—
“As with the leaves’ generations so it is with the pass-
ing of mortals. Some wind strews on the
of the leaves the
ground while others the trees of the forest, budding and
blooming, put forth when the spring cometh on in its sea-
son. Thus with the races of mortals, one blooms and an-
other one ceases.”

He also told the story of his grandfather, Bellerophon

of Corinth: his refusal of a queen’s love, his hard
labours in punishment, his rise to fame and power, and
his ultimate failure to retain the favour of the gods, so
that he ended his life far from the paths of men, devour-
ing his own heart in desolate northern plains. Pindar
took up the Homeric legend and shifted the emphasis
to the winged Pegasus, tamed by Bellerophon, with
Athena’s aid, at Peirene, the city fountain, and finally
stabled in the stalls of Olympus, after he had aided his
master “from out the desert bosom of the ether chill”
to “smite and slay the woman brood of archer Ama-
zons, Chimaera breathing fire, and the Solymi.”
In the history of Corinth two periods are of special
interest and might serve as the bases for a study of
important epochs in the larger history of Greece. These
periods, separated by more than four hundred years,

were dominated respectively by the “tyrants” and the

Romans.
Although historians now avoid the restrictive term
“age of the despots,” it is true that from the eighth
 MEGARA AND CORINTH 205

to the sixth centuries tyrannies arose in Greek cities

on the Asiatic coast, on the islands of the .Egean, and

in Greece proper, implying the same conditions of
public life. The tyranny of Corinth, beginning with
Cypselus in the seventh century and ending with his
grandnephew, Psammetichus, in the sixth, was one of
the longest and most notorious. Any tyranny which
endured until the third generation was remarkable, for,

in spite of its apparent vigour, this form of government

was suited to no Greek people. Everywhere democracy
and oligarchy were united in hatred of an hereditary
ruler. In Athens the short-lived despotism was itself

greatly modified, and the picture of the tyrant in Athe-

nian literature, in Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon, was

drawn from the more violent models known from the
histories of Corinth or Sicyon or Miletus, or seen con-
temporaneously in Syracuse. Plato not only as a phi-
losopher but as a Greek interpreted the tyrant’s life as
one of mental misery: “In good truth he turns out a
pauper, if one but knows how to contemplate the soul
in its entirety; and all his life long he is loaded down
with fear, all a-quiver with convulsions and with pangs,
at least if he is like the disposition of the state over
which he holds sway, . . . and he must needs, by
reason of his rule, ever more and more become en-
vious, distrusted, unjust, friendless, unholy, and of
every vice the host and nurse; and by reason of all this

he must first of all become unhappy and then must

make like to himself those near him.”
 6

20 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

In Corinth Periander was the typical despot, power-
ful and violent, killing his wife and earning the hatred
of his sons, overriding the sensibilities of his people,
crushing the stronger and richer citizens. And yet by
masterly statesmanship, a cultivated taste, and careful
paternalism, he brought about the peaceful prosperity
which more than one nation in history has preferred

to liberty, and created a civilization in which brilliant

achievement and temperate life were not incompatible.

At no other time was Corinth so great a city. In addi-
tion to the older colonies of Syracuse and Corcyra,
trading posts were obtained along the northwestern
coast of Greece, controlling the commerce of the
Adriatic. Rivalry with the cities of Euboea and with

iEgina was succeeded by unquestioned superiority.

Alliances were contracted in Asia Minor and in Egypt.

At home the enervation of luxury was guarded against

by sumptuary laws. That some of these outlived the
period may be gathered from a fragment of the comic
poet Diphilus, a contemporary of Menander, in which,
apparently, a Corinthian reproaches a foreign spend-
thrift who has come to town and cornered the vegetable
market so that the natives have to struggle for the

parsley as at the Isthmian games :

—
“ ’T is here the law, good sir, with us Corinthians,
If we anybody in the market-place
see
Forever making showy purchases, to ask
On what he lives ? By doing what ? And then if he
Has capital of which the income balances
The outlay, to permit him to enjoy his mode
 MEGARA AND CORINTH 207

Of life. But if it turns out that beyond his means

He’s spending money, they shut down on this forthwith,
And if he disobeys, impose a fine. And if
A man, possessing nothing, lives expensively
They hand him over to the executioner!”

Periander also, desirous, as Aristotle suggests, of

keeping his people too busy to think, stimulated the

artistic skill which they had always possessed. A per-
sistent tradition has asserted that Corinthian archi-
tects at an early date invented the roof-tiles by means of
which temple roofs could be made to slope, thus form-
ing the pediment or “eagle.” The Temple of Apollo

was probably built at Periander’s instigation. Corin-

thian workmanship in terra-cotta, wood, and metal was
famous from prehistoric to Roman times. Periander
dedicated at Olympia the chest (cypsele) in which his
father Cypselus had been concealed in infancy, made
of cedar wood, gold, and ivory, ornately and exquisitely
carved, in Pausanias’s time still one of the finest sights

of the place. No bronze was better than that dipped

in Peirene, and long before the vases of Corinthian

artists were imported or stolen by Roman capitalists

they were a part of the conventional display of the

bon vivant in Athens.
In literature Periander could accomplish little. The
absence of the literary gift among the Corinthians is

strikingly shown by the name of only one

fact that the

native poet, Eumelus, has been handed down to us,

and that he belonged to the ancient oligarchy of the
eighth century. Two lyric lines traditionally assigned
208 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
to him survive, the only fragment of Corinthian litera-
ture. Their imputed authorship indicates that Eumelus
was not without fame, since the Doric Messenians, even
less literary than the Corinthians, chose him to compose
a song to Apollo to be sung by their embassy at the
great Ionian festival at Delos. But embedded in the
most important literature of Greece is an element which
probably came into life in Corinth under Periander’s
patronage. The choruses of the drama and the so-
called dithyrambs or Dionysiac songs written by such
lyric poets as Pindar, Simonides, and Bacchylides, seem
equally to go back to some outgrowth of the stray wine-

songs extemporized by revellers. A favourite tradition

assigned this new form to a poet called Arion, who,
though a Lesbian by birth, “composed, named, and
taught the dithyramb at Corinth.” Herodotus adds a
story which takes Arion out of the mists of tradition
and places him, a sunlit figure, on the quarter-deck
of a Corinthian ship rounding Cape Taenarum on its

way back from Sicily. He had gone thither and made

money, and on the return journey the Corinthian sailors,
in whom he had thought he could most safely confide,
gave him his choice of killing himself outright, if he
wished a grave on dry land, or of leaping overboard
into the Ionian Sea. In this strait Arion “begged of
them, since such was their determination, that they
would give him leave to take his stand dressed in his

full regalia on the quarter-deck, and promised that from

there he would sing to them and then would make
 MEGARA AND CORINTH 209

away with himself. To the sailors it seemed a pleasant

thing if they might hear the best of living singers, and
from the stern they drew off amidships. And Arion,
clad in his full costume, took his cithara and, stationed
on the planking, went through with the Orthian strain,

and, when the strain was concluded, flung himself into

the sea, just as he was, in full costume dressed. Now
the ship’s crew sailed off to Corinth, but a dolphin, as
they say, took up Arion and carried him to Tasnarum
and he, alighting, went off, regalia and all, to Cor-

inth and told, on his arrival, everything that had be-

fallen.”

Periander’s successor was assassinated after a brief

reign, and the tyranny was succeeded by an aristocracy
of merchants. Corinth joined the Spartan confederacy,
and her life continued to be one of commerce and
peace. Her part in the Persian wars was modest, but
a recently discovered commemorative inscription for
her sons who died at Salamis is of peculiar interest as
an example of the “many epitaphs composed by name-
less authors in those days of joy and sorrow in various
parts of Greece, all marked by the simplicity of a great
age, whose reserve, as has been said truly, is the pride

of strong men under the semblance of modesty.” The

inscription runs: “Salamis the isle of Ajax holds us
now, who once dwelled in the city of Corinth between
*
her waters.”
The brilliant and varied energies of the Cypselids
* Quoted by J. B. Bury, History of Greece p. 284.
,
2io GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
had given way to the dulness of habitual prosperity.

But a light from the past must have seemed to shine

again upon Corinth when Pindar, “ sailing a mere pri-

vate in her ship of state,” drew upon the wealth of all

her experiences in praising her as the native city of

an Olympian victor :
—
“Therein dwelleth Order and —a sure foundation for
the state — her sister Justice, aye and Peace kin-bred,
wealth’s stewards for mankind.”
“Flow’ring richly, oft on you the hours have bestowed
the splendour crowning victory of men preeminent in val-

our at the sacred games, and often manly hearts

in their

inspired subtleties of old. Whoever hath devised, to him

belongs the deed. Whence came to light the gracious gifts
of Dionysus with the dithyramb that wins the ox? Nay,
who set measured check upon, the harnessed steeds or on
”
the gables of the gods the twofold eagle spread?

Thirty-three years after Pindar’s ode Euripides pro-

duced his “Medea.” This is the only Attic drama
which has Corinth as its scene, and in it the local allu-
sions are but vague. Until the writing of St. Paul’s
epistles no other great literature concerned itself with
Corinth.
The city’s policies and life from the Persian wars
until the battle of Chaeronea, though dictated by its

trading interests, centred about the fortunes of Athens,

Sparta, and Thebes. After Chaeronea followed the
common Macedonian domination. The subsequent
Roman occupation of Corinth constitutes the second
 1

MEGARA AND CORINTH 21

great period of its history. In 146 b. c. a last effort at

rebellion against Rome resulted in savage vengeance

executed by Lucius Mummius. Cicero was “moved”
by the “ruins” of Corinth; and Antipater of Sidon, not

long after the destruction, bewailed its desolation :

—
“ Where is thy beauty exciting men’s wonder,

Dorian Corinth, and ramparts that crowned thee?

Where are the blessed ones’ columns, whereunder
Sisyphid wives from their dwellings around thee
Came with glad thousands to meet and to sunder?
Bides not a trace of thee, luckless, devoured,
Ravaged of war! We alone undeflowered,
Nereids, halcyons, daughters of Ocean,
Wait on thy woes with our loyal devotion.”

The existence of the temple of Periander’s age, if

nothing else, betrays the poet’s exaggeration. Pau-

sanias says that the remarkable objects in the city of
his day included “some remains of ancient Corinth.”
Most of them, however, dated from the restoration.

Julius Caesar rebuilt the city, repopulated it with freed-

men from Rome, and made it the seat of the proconsul
of the “province of Achaea.” Corinth is the proper
centre from which to study the Romanized Greek
world. In wealth the Roman city began to equal and
to outstrip the Greek city. But the old moderation in

privatelife, imposed by Periander, was gone. The Ro-

mans of the empire had outlived the precepts of their

own republican Cato, and the riches easily acquired
at Corinth enabled them to satisfy their coarsened de-
sires. Greek refinement was never native to the masters
212 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
of the world, and into a nation, once satisfied at public
festivals with beautiful processions *and serious dramatic
representations, were imported gladiatorial shows and
all the excesses of a brutalized taste. The Greek Cor-
inth had been regarded by the Athenians as rich and
immoral. The Roman Corinth would have seemed to
Plato a cave filled with passion-driven men lost to the
sunlight of wisdom. It was into this Corinth that Paul
came “in weakness and in fear and in much trem-
bling.”
Acrocorinth saw the Roman pass and the Byzantine,
the Venetian and the Turk. It may again see in “New
Corinth” a powerful Greek city. The excavations at
Old Corinth have uncovered but slight traces of the

successive centuries of robust living, but the imagina-

tive observer will soon perceive the archaeologist’s suc-
cess. Although the harbours of Lechaeum and Cen-
chreae are deserted and although the walls that con-
nected them with the city are invisible, yet there are
traces of a “ paved street to Lechaeum” with colonnades
on either side, to bring to life again the crowds of sail-

ors, merchants, and visitors from all parts of the an-

cient world who passed and repassed between the city
and its ports. Aristotle, with characteristic distrust of

cosmopolitanism, questioned the political advantage

of such intercourse, but to Corinth it was the breath of
life.

The trade within the city is suggested by the traces

of “shops” and by the ruins of the Propylaeum of the
 MEGARA AND CORINTH 213

Agora and of fine colonnades and stoas. Of buildings

almost nothing remains, and, save for the foundations of
a small unidentified temple, the Temple of Apollo alone
represents the numerous sacred precincts of ancient
and restored Corinth. The scanty ruins of a theatre
recall picturesque stories. The Corinthian theatre of

the sixth century, according to Plutarch, was the scene

of the discovery of the murderers of the poet Ibycus,
an important figure in the history of Greek lyric. A
native of Rhegium, he led an adventurous life in har-
mony with his passionate temperament, and was finally

killed by robbers on some lonely unknown shore. In

dying he called upon a flock of cranes above his head
to avenge him. Their sudden appearance over the
theatre at Corinth so startled the assassins that they
betrayed themselves, and thus the cranes kept their
promise to a poet who had sung with equal ardour of
birds and flowers and of the beauty of youth. In the
Roman auditorium, according to a story attributed to
Lucian, Nero had his servants crush in with the sharp
edges of their writing tablets the larynx of a popular
professional who had the temerity to out-sing the royal
amateur.
Lucian also tells a delightful story connected with

the Craneum — Skull Place —a frequented suburb

of Corinth, where Diogenes the Cynic had set up his

jar (not the “tub” of English tradition). When the

news came that Philip of Macedon was advancing on
the city, the Corinthians, in a fever of anxiety, set to
 ;

214 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

work on their defences. Diogenes, mocking their ac-
tivity, girded up his blanket, and with a great show of
energy went bowling his jar up and down the Cra-
neum. When some of his intimates asked him “Why
do you do this, Diogenes?” he said, “I too roll my jar

so as not to be the only idle one among so many

workers.”
The most fortunate result of the excavations at
Corinth was the uncovering of the well-house of Peirene.
This spring, compared with which the temple columns
are young, shared with Acrocorinth the ancient soli-
tude of the plain ;
gave its waters to the first nameless
adventurers who made way from north and east
their

served the city of Dorians and Romans and before the;

excavators enclosed it was still being used by the washer-

women of the neighbouring hamlet. From Periander
to the Byzantines, the grateful inhabitants were ever
and again moved to build for Peirene a suitable en-
closure, and traces of six building periods have been
discovered. In the fifth century b. c. the natural rock
was hewn into shape. Later generations added archi-
tectural panels, facades and colonnades.
The name Peirene seems to have belonged not only
to the city fountain but also to another spring, crystal
clear, a little below the summit of Acrocorinth, which,
like Hippocrene on Helicon, was struck out by the hoof
of Pegasus. In a translation of Euripides’s “Trojan
Women,” Mr. Murray goes beyond his original in
specifying this upper Peirene, vividly including in the
 MEGARA AND CORINTH 215

women’s dread anticipation of their Greek slavery the

steep climb up Acrocorinth :
—
“ Or pitchers to and fro to bear
To some Peirene on the hill
Where the proud water craveth still

Its broken-hearted minister.”

Two other fountains have also been discovered in

Corinth, one the spring of Glauke, Medea’s rival, and
the other an unnamed well-house with bronze lion
heads still in situ. It is no wonder that St. Clement
in his epistle to the Corinthians, when he enumerated
the blessings of God, remembered especially the peren-

nial fountains, shaped for pleasure and health, which

give their breasts to sustain the life of men.
The canal across the Isthmus recalls several periods
of Corinth’s history. Periander conceived the idea of
making a canal, inspired perhaps by the engineering
marvels he had seen in Egypt, and probably the lack
of slave labour, rather than the popular Greek feeling

of impiety, prevented him from joining the “two seas”

on either side of the narrow isthmus. Julius Caesar
also thought of undertaking the work, but Nero was
the first to begin its execution. His vanity saw in it an
opportunity for dramatic display. Suetonius relates
that he appeared in person, chanted hymns in honour
of the deities of the sea, and with a golden pick-axe
made a few motions before the thousands of soldiers
and prisoners who were to do the cutting. Troubles at
Rome, however, deflected his attention, and the making
216 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
of the canal was left for the French engineers of 1881.
Two cuttings made by Nero’s workmen were still visi-

ble when the French began.

The absence of a canal in antiquity was not so in-

convenient as might be supposed, for light ships could

be transferred on land from one port to another by
means of a portage or tramway, of which traces are
still visible. This “Diolkos” was invented even before
the age of the tyrants, when the Corinthians were first

developing their naval resources. At Lechaeum they

built the first artificial harbour, and at its docks the
trireme was gradually perfected through the necessity
of protecting the slow and heavy merchantmen by a
fighting convoy. Thucydides refers to the Diolkos in

describing the events of 412 b. c., when a general revolt

against Athens began under Chios. The Spartans had
sent word that thirty-nine ships lying at anchor at
Lechaeum must be dragged across the Isthmus as
quickly as possible to the port on the Gulf of ^Egina
and thence despatched to Chios. Twenty-one had been
transferred and were eager to set sail, but the Corin-
thians insisted on waiting till the Isthmian Games had
been celebrated. The result was that the Athenians

Who went to the games discovered what was going on

and Athens was able to balk her enemies.

The Isthmian Games were held biennially in the Co-

rinthian territory less than a mile southwest of the
little modern town of Isthmia, at the eastern end of
the canal. The Athenians frequented them especially
 MEGARA AND CORINTH 217

because they were said to have been instituted by The-

seus. Socrates visited them on the only occasion of his
leaving Athens “except with the colours.” The sacred
precinct, excavated by the French, has yielded small
remains of the temples and statues, theatre and stadium,
and Pindar’s Isthmian odes are still the noblest me-
morial of the ancient contests. In the Stadium, now
but a natural hollow, two dramatic events took place.
In 336 b. c. Alexander had himself proclaimed leader
of the Greeks before his Persian expedition, and in

196 b. c. Flaminius announced to the Greeks their

“freedom.” It was probably also here, at least it was
at the Isthmian Games, that Nero perpetrated his

mocking renewal of Greek independence.

In this Stadium, within reach of the two seas which
had been highways for wealth and luxury, vigorous
youths from century to century gave proof of restrained
and temperate living. Even those Corinthians to whom
Paul’s preaching was “foolishness” would be hospi-
table to his illustration :
—
“ Know ye not that they which run in a race run
all, but one receiveth the prize ? So run that ye may
obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery
is temperate* in all things. Now they do it to obtain a

corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible.”

 CHAPTER XI
DELPHI
“When to Apollo’s world-famed land we came,
Three radiant courses of the sun we gave
To gazing and with beauty filled our eyes.”
Euripides, Andromache .*

f leisure is the nurse of sympathetic understanding,

“three radiant courses of the sun” are none too
I many to give to Delphi. The inner meaning of this
centre of Greece needs not only to be quarried out of
history and literature, but also to be garnered from the
abundant beauty of a landscape which created as well
as framed a unique religious life.

At the chief oracular seat of the God of Prophecy

antiquarian curiosity about its early legends and prim-
itive cults makes way for the realization of Apollo,

“the Far-Darter, ruling the glorious temple wherein

all men find welcome.” A modern journey is a suc-
cessor to the journeys and pilgrimages undertaken
through many centuries by the men and peoples who
sought from his omniscience foreknowledge and ad-
vice.

Even the protagonists of shadowy antiquity were

brought thither by their hopes and fears. Heracles, the
* Translation (modified) by Way.
 DELPHI 219

national hero of Greece, driven by Hera to madness

and murder, asked at Delphi where he should make his
home, and was sent by the oracle to begin his twelve

labours. Agamemnon, anxious lord of the Greek

armies, sought advice of the god. Io was started on her
long wanderings over the earth and through literature
because her father was commanded by Apollo’s min-
isters to drive her from her home and her country.
Because of a Delphic response, the infant son of Laius
of Thebes was exposed on Mount Cithaeron. (Edipus,
on the fatal day when he killed Laius, was on his way
back from Delphi, whither he had gone to ask if he
were son of the Corinthian king who had reared him
and where he had received the ambiguous answer that
he was fated to slay his father. It was when, as king
of Thebes, he sent to “the Pythian house of Phoebus
to learn by what deed or word he might deliver his

pestilence-stricken city” that he unconsciously invoked

his own doom. And it was again the Delphic oracle
which closed the pitiful story by prophesying (Edipus’s
final reconciliation with the eternal will.

But these ancient demigods and kings move in a

world only half realized by us. Their dooms and their
emotions have the remote nobility, the superb univer-
sality of the Attic drama through which chiefly they are

portrayed. It is in the vivacious pages of the charm-

ingly pious Herodotus that the desires of living men
and women seem to surge, in failure or fruition, about
the Delphic tripod. From the foreign kingdoms of
 —

220 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

Asia, from Greek colonies in Africa and Italy, from
rock-bound island harbours, ships were constantly
spreading sails at the impulse of national distress or
personal ambition, to furl them in the port that lay
below Delphi. From Lacedaemon, deep in the hol-
low of the southern hills, from Thrace’s widespread
plains, swept by the northern tempests, from the wild
mountains of Arcadia, from rich Corinth and bright
Athens and every other city of Hellas, men made their

way in chariots, on mules, and on foot, to the knees of

Apollo. Mountains and rivers, rude valleys and hos-

tile villages offered no obstacles, nor were the suppli-
ants repelled by the “dark sayings, dim and hard to

know,” which were often their only reward. Kings

hurried off embassies at the first signs of rivalry. Ad-
venturers stopped to question the god before carrying
new colonies beyond the seas. Quarrelsome states and
cities asked for advice in their fratricidal plots. Wealthy
cities desired to know if they could always count on
their revenues. Ghost-haunted towns asked the mean-
ing of their spectres. Agricultural communities were
eager to learn how to restore dying crops. Ambitious
politicians sought encouragement in their pursuit of

power. Sick men prayed for health, childless men for

offspring. Indeed, to the irreverent the Pythian priest-

ess must often have seemed to carry a load of oracles

as jumbled as that of Aristophanes’s sausage seller who

came staggering into the market-place at Athens with
“responses” to sell,
 DELPHI 221

“Full of Athenians, and of lentil-porridge too;

Of Spartans; of fresh tunny fish; and of the men
Who in the market measure false the barley-groats;
Of you; of me, and of affairs in general.”

But Aristophanes himself was at heart as conserva-

tive a believer in religion as Herodotus had been. And

to piety like theirs, existing from generation to genera-

tion, was due the position that Delphi held not only as
a source of knowledge but as the conscience of Greece.
Sometimes in public affairs this conscience seemed to
recommend prudence rather than righteousness, as in
the wretched advice distributed at the time of the Per-
sian invasion. In private affairs, such as athletics or
the use of trust money, the oracle was always on the
side of honour.
It must be borne in mihd that along with the wide-
spread acceptance of the oracular responses went a
rationalizing independence of judgment which some-
times overruled the religious instinct. Cases of obsti-
nate self-seeking in spite of the plain injunction of the
god betray the exercise of this judgment on a low plane.
But, soiled though it sometimes was by ignoble use,

the mental independence of the Athenians, at least,

was a magnificent possession. It saved Hellas when
Crete and Argos and all the lesser brood followed the
prudent warnings from Delphi. It chose an uneven
fight for national freedom in the very face of the
accepted conscience of the whole Greek world. Only
an understanding of the noblest aspects of the role
222 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
played by the Delphic oracle in Greek history and life

can throw into sufficiently high relief the splendid

revolt of Athens, when Persia threatened her liberty,
against an ecclesiastical authority which had become
debased. The historian who is the best guide to a duti-
ful belief in Pythian Apollo tells the story with im-
sympathy: “Not even the terrifying oracles that
plicit

came from Delphi and plunged them into fear per-

suaded them to abandon Hellas. They plucked up
courage to await the invader of their land.”
Nor is there here any inconsistency. The faithful

in all religions have refused to identify the sins and

follies of the priests with the will of the gods. The Per-
sians might intimidate or buy the ministers of Apollo.

The Alcmaeonidae, exiled from Athens, might bribe

them to do their selfish will. Cleomenes of Sparta
might purchase his throne from them. But the pious
had always the refuge created by Sophocles for Iocasta

when she declared the oracle was false :

“ It came not
from Phoebus but from his servants.” When the Per-

sians had been defeated, Athens, on the flood tide of

victory, freedom, and power, raised noble memorials

of her struggle in the sacred precinct of the oracle
which had advised her not to fight. When the modern
traveller has brought himself to see that this was not
done in grim humour but in unbewildered piety, he is

ready to undertake his own journey to Delphi.

Of all the possible approaches none can be happier
than a drive on a moonlight night up from the little
 DELPHI 223

port of Itea, the inglorious terminus of the eight hours’

sail from Piraeus through the canal and along the Gulf
of Corinth. The comfortable carriage road winds
through the “moon-blanched” olive orchards and
vineyards of the ancient Crisaean plain, mounting
gradually toward the steep slopes of Parnassus and its

attendant mountains, and twisting in long courses

among shadowy hillsides which only hint at rude crags
and deep ravines. Perhaps it was some such night as
this that led the writer of the Homeric Hymn to Artemis
to see the sister of Apollo, “slackening her fair-curved

bow and going to the mighty hall of Phoebus in the

Delphians’ rich deme and arraying there the Muses’
and the Graces’ lovely dance.” The exquisite grace
of the landscape, half hidden, half revealed through
the fragile veil of silver light, seems like a gentle prepa-
ration for the epiphany, expected on the morrow, of
the god of the golden blade.
The carriage passes very early by Amphissa, the
capital of modern Phocis as it was of ancient Locris,

and an hour later halts, to rest the horses, at a dim

corner of the village of Chryso, a name which preserves
that of the Crisa of antiquity. All this drowsy territory

has been the stage of one of the significant dramas of

history. The modern demarch hospitably presses water
from the village fountain upon modern wayfarers, but
the Crisaeans once used their strategic position as own-
ers of the whole wide plain to plunder pilgrims on their
way to the shrine. This evil monopoly gave way, early
 224 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
in the sixth century, to the powerful confederation of

twelve Greek states, known as the Delphic Amphic-

tyony, whose representatives met at Delphi twice a
year and ruled the affairs of the sacred domain. Dur-
ing almost one hundred and fifty years, with unques-
tioned right, whatever internecine wars were in progress,
delegates from Thessaly and Boeotia, from Athens and
Sparta, from Phocis itself and from other lesser states
could pass and repass through Crisa, while the fertile

plain went untilled. Even after war invaded the pro-

tected territory the existence of the Council was not
endangered. But the constitution of the delegates
changed with the fortunes of battles. By the middle
of the fourth century the Phocians were struck from
the list and the Macedonians added. Philip had be-
come the chief actor, seizing his opportunity when
the men of Delphi, at the instigation of the Athenian
delegate, ^Eschines, attacked the men of Amphissa
because they were turning the consecrated wilderness
of the plain into corn-fields and olive groves and filling

up the empty places with prosperous houses and busy

little potteries. A series of easy steps led to the over-

throw of Greek freedom.

But under the compassionate moon the sentimental-
ist continues his way, in wilful oblivion of the catas-
trophe of the drama, to the point nearest ancient Delphi.
This is the tiny village of Kastri, which less than twenty
years ago was plying its life on the unconscious surface
of earth spread over the ruins of the sacred site. At
 DELPHI 225

great expense of money and trouble it was picked up

by the French excavators and deposited, safe and
whole, a little farther to the west around the sharp
corner of the mountain, where, in fear of slipping into
the deep valley below, it curls close to Parnassus’s side.

Here lodgings may be obtained either in a conventional

hostelry or, preferably, in a low-eaved peasant house,

where on cool nights a wood fire glows in a big stone
fireplace and the light of candles is eked out by diminu-
tive copper lamps which would have seemed primitive
toAgamemnon.
The popular time for ancient pleasure-seekers to visit
Delphi was in the middle of August, when games were
held in honour of Apollo. At that season, if ever, the

slopes and peaks of Parnassus were accessible, but

the burning heat as the rocks reflected the sun’s rays,
alternating with heavy thunderstorms as the wind
rushed up from the valley, must have modified the
comfort of visitors. In the spring the modern traveller
will find an equable and pleasant climate. And also,

prepared as he may be for the solemnity and the lonely

grandeur of the scenery about Delphi, he will discover

unanticipated qualities in the landscape which are

illuminative of certain elements in the significance of
the place. A walk along the highway that leads from
Kastri to and through the ruined precinct reveals both
the expected and the new. Toward the southwest lies

the Crisasan plain filled with olive groves. Beyond its

gray-green breadth gleams the Corinthian Gulf with

226 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
the far-off mountains of Arcadia girding the horizon.
Directly in the west the snow-capped mountains of
Locris, the highest in Central Greece, fret the sky.
Southeastward plunges the valley of Delphi, formed
by Mount Parnassus on the north and by Mount
Cirphis on the south, and watered by the river Plistus
which in a long line of gleaming argent seeks its west-
erlyhome in the bay of Itea.
The valley of the Plistus lies in full sight after the
Crisaean plain and the gulf beyond it have been blotted
out by a turn in the road which leads sharply around
a large, rocky ridge, the barrier between the new town
and the old. This ridge formed the western wall that
isolated Delphi in lonely remoteness between the bare
steep rocks of Cirphis and the cliffs of massive Par-
nassus, which spreads its huge buttresses over the sur-

rounding country. Rising two thousand feet above the

level of the sea, these cliffs present a magnificent ex-
panse of gray and red limestone, and still reflect the
brilliant morning sun, true to their ancient name of

the “Shining Rocks.” Where they bend around, in

their long course, a deep gorge is formed from which
the storied spring of Castalia still issues. Above the
gorge, invisible when one stands under the cliffs but
conspicuous from lower levels, rise twin peaks, seeking
a proud supremacy.
Superb mountains, precipitous cliffs, deep ravines,
lonely valley, all are here. But here too, softening,

transfiguring, some unforeseen influence is at work.

 DELPHI 227

Over the mountains a friendly, familiar sunshine casts

a gentle glamour. Olive trees fearlessly silver the long

slopes that stretch from the shining rocks to the glisten-
ing river. In jocund profusion, tripping through the
valley and climbing up the steep places, pink and white
almond trees flower like blushing dryads. The Far-
Darter has chosen this hour to lay aside his bow. No
longer does he come, —
“angered in heart, with his bow on his shoulders and close-

covered quiver, while in his anger the shafts on his shoulders

are clanging, and like to the Night is his coming, ” —
but he lifts the “golden lyre” that quencheth even the
lightning spear, the bolt of Zeus’s immortal fire.

Or perhaps Apollo has abdicated for a time and it

is Dionysus who is concealing the terror of the oracle
beneath the sparkling audacity of spring. For the wor-
ship of this multiform god had a strong hold on Delphi,
and the “beat of his unseen feet” as he was wont to

lead his Maenads in furious dance among the uplands

of Parnassus echoes through Greek poetry. According
to one set of legends, Dionysus was the first to hold

the oracle. According to another, Apollo regularly de-

parted for three months each year, leaving the more
fiery god of inspiration in charge of the sacred tripod.

In any case the relation between the divine brothers

seems to have been very amicable. An old vase-paint-
ing represents them as affectionately shaking hands
under a palm tree.
228 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
The scene of the Dionysiac revels was the broad
table-land which lies, more than three thousand feet
above the level of the sea, between the Shining Rocks
and the peaks of Parnassus. Here amid the wooded
ravines and open meadows the flashing, flowing Diony-
sus, god of all ardent life, lord of the ichor of spring,
held one of his many courts. It is significant of the

unparalleled inclusiveness of Greek ideals that not

only on “the topmost heights of Caucasus” and in
the “vales of Lydia,” but also above Apollo’s temple
where were inscribed in letters of gold the maxims of

the seven sages, “Know thyself” and “Nothing too

much,” the god of mad impulse and unchartered free-

dom should have been seen to leap and dance, and give
“ to his female followers the note for the Bacchic tune.”

Every two years, “when spring flashed out for the first

time” and sorrow might be swallowed up in joy, a

torch festival was held in his honour by women of the

surrounding country. Even from Attica women made

their way to join in the celebration, travelling over the

same “Sacred Way” by which the Athenians periodi-

cally sent their offerings to Delphi, and which Apollo

had taken on his civilizing march through the wild
places of men, escorted with great reverence by the
road- making people of Athens. The passionate desire
for the mad nocturnal revels which awaited the Bac-
chantes at the end of their long journey was attributed
by Euripides, who must often have seen the procession
starting out from Athens, to Tyrian women on their way
 DELPHI 229

to the service of Phoebus at Delphi. Detained in Thebes

by the civil war of (Edipus’s sons, they tease their im-
aginations with visions of the rock that flasheth a splen-
dour of light and the cloven tongue of the torches’ flame,
of the vine that each morning offers up its giant cluster
to brim the cup of the mystic ritual, of the snow-smitten,
lonely ridges where, with souls unafraid, they might
be wreathing the happy dance.*
But mortal women were not the only companions of
Dionysus. The exuberant play of nature, the change
from death to life as winter made way for spring, not

only goaded human hearts with a divine torture, but

peopled the hills with lithe nymphs of untouched soul,

rollicking with Pan and even with the greater god

whose joy, to spirits touched to finer issues, was more
terrible than sweet. Pan and the nymphs had their

special dwelling-place in the Corycian Cave, which

Pausanias mentions as one of the four most famous
caverns of the whole world, “among a total number
past finding out.” It was certainly the most remark-
able one in Greece, a country abounding in “caves
that open upon the beach or in the deep sea,” and in
mountain caverns due to the frequent honeycombing
by earthquake and subterranean currents. Very large
and containing two chambers, it lies about seven miles
northeast of Delphi, near the top of one of the low hills

which form the northern boundary of the Parnassian

uplands. According to the descriptions of travellers, the
* Cf. Way’s translation of the Phcenissce, 219 ff.
23o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
greater chamber has slender stalactites hanging from the
roof at both ends, and at the inner end stalagmites rise

from the ground to meet them. The other chamber,

like a remote shrine, must be reached through a narrow
passage and lies in almost total darkness. At the mouth
of the cave an inscription was found containing a dedi-
cation to Pan and the nymphs. Certainly a fit abode
for divine embodiments of soulless nature was this

vaulted, echoing grotto, whose cavernous mouth opens

upon the widespread beauty of an untamed world.
^Eschylus may have seen the “Corycian Rock” or he
may have trusted to the eyes of others in describing its

hollow loneliness, “ the home of birds, and the resort of

deities.”

If it is difficult to disentangle the myths which con-

nect several gods with one place, it is still more difficult

to understand the legends which hint at the infinite

complexity of each god in any one of his own several

spheres. In studying the Delphic Apollo, the clear
outlines of the great god as he governed the Greek
world will best be preserved by noticing those stories
which have been preferred by the poets. It was natural
that iEschylus should penetrate beyond any individual-
ized form of divine activity to primeval forces, follow-
ing the legend which made Apollo a late heir to the first

owners of the oracle, to Earth herself and to her daugh-

ter, holy Law. It was equally characteristic that Euripi-
des, with his eye for vivid detail, should have been
attracted by the story which begins with Leto’s golden-
 DELPHI 231

haired son coming from the fruitful meadows of his

birthplace, Delos, to the Dionysus-haunted summit
of Parnassus. Under its shadow, amid the thick-leaved
laurel, lay as guardian of the holy place a dragon with
gleaming talons. This horrid monster the young god
slew, thereafter taking his seat upon the golden tripod.
Earth, appearing only as the mother of the dragon,
sought to wrest from him the right of prophecy. But,
swift of foot, he fled to Olympus and the throne of Zeus,
and the king of the gods laughed and shook his awful
hair and gave to his youthful son in perpetuity the
sovereignty over the Delphic abode.
The Homeric Hymn to Apollo, which contains the
oldest account of the killing of the dragon, also relates
that the god chose Cretans to be his first ministers.

Whatever the historical basis of this story may be, its

telling gives the riotous Ionian poet a chance to trans-

form Phoebus Apollo into a dolphin deflecting from
its course a swift ship sent out from Cretan Cnossus to
Pylos on the border of the Ionian Sea. The dolphin
caused it to traverse strange waters, beyond Pelopon-
nesus and the ford of Alpheus, past the steep ridge
of Ithaca and wooded Zacynthus, into the harbour of
Crisa. Here the dolphin disappeared and the god leaped
from the ship in the guise of a star at high noon, while

sparks of frequent fire flew from him and flash of splen-

dour reached the sky. On shore he appeared as a man,

lusty and strong, and persuaded the Cretans to dance
in his train and to take charge of the temple. By sug-
232 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
gesting that they might use for themselves the flocks
brought for sacrifice, he overcame their fear that they
would fare but meagrely in a country neither vine-bear-
ing nor rich in meadows.
The story of the hymn is too confused to be worthy
of Apollo. He was no music-hall performer, making
lightning transformations, but lord, in simplicity and
dignity, of music and all harmonies, elder brother
and guide in the paths of conduct. So at least he re-

veals himself on a spring morning beneath the Shining

Rocks lit by his sunlight from the south.
But homelier memories also come to life. It may
have been in the “ fragrant dawn” of a day like this that

the boy Odysseus, while he was on a visit to his grand-

father, went hunting with his uncles in the windy hol-

lows of wood-clad Parnassus and killed a great boar.

From its white tusks he had received a wound which
was to leave an indelible scar and years later betray

his identity to his aged nurse. Certainly it must have

been on such a morning that another boy, Ion the
acolyte, was performing his early tasks for the temple

when visitors from Athens arrived to question him

about the sights. They were women who had accom-
panied the queen Creusa when she and her husband,
like many others, came to Delphi in their childlessess.
In her youth, before her marriage to Xuthus, she had
been loved by Apollo and had borne him a son in his
cave below the Athenian Acropolis. The baby had been
abandoned by her, but a servant had carried it to Delphi
 DELPHI 233

and left it as a foundling with the priestess. Unknown

to Creusa, he had grown into the boyish minister of his
divine father. The plot of the Euripidean drama which
uses the story is sensational, including attempted mur-
ders and many complications before mother and child
recognize and accept each other. But the boy Ion is one
of the happiest creations of a poet whom Aristophanes
accused of skepticism. His unstained youth consecrates
his dailywork of sweeping the temple floor, adorning
the doorway with fresh wreaths and laurel boughs and
driving away the wild pigeons. Reared by a holy wo-
man in the remote quiet of the sanctuary, he has become
a vessel, crystal clear, to hold the purest essence of re-

ligious feeling. His morning hymn reflects the unspoiled

reverence with which, among the greedy hordes, many
must have turned to Delphi :
—
“Lo! the radiant Sun, his four horses a-span!
Now with splendour his car flingeth light o’er the earth,
And the stars from the sky at this dazzle of fire

Flee for refuge and hide in the temple of Night,

And inviolate peaks of Parnassus are lit

As they welcome the Day’s car for mortals.

And the wilderness myrrh to Apollo’s high roof
Curls fragrant and dim,
And from tripod divine now the Delphian dread
For the Hellenes intones with oracular cries
What Apollo proclaims from his portals.

“Up, ye Delphians all who to Phoebus give aid!

To Castalian fount with its silvery whirl
Go, wash ye, be cleansed in its pure running stream,
And enter the shrine,
Your lips guarding well, that in silence refrained,
234 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Or with words that are good, you interpret his voice
Unto those who his counsels would follow.
While I’ll serve at the tasks which from childhood are mine
And with consecrate wreaths and with branches of bay
I will make the ways pure to Apollo within.

For a motherless child and unfathered I dwell

As a ministrant here in the fostering care
Of the temple of Phoebus Apollo.”

This unstudied rapture is interrupted by the worldly

women, exclaiming over the wonderful sculptured me-
topes of the temple. Euripides, with the usual license
of the Greek dramatists, put before his legendary
characters the works of art that he himself might have
seen in the latter part of the fifth century before Christ,
when a rich civic and artistic life was occupying the
stage of the vast theatre into which, as Strabo observed,
Nature had moulded the site of Delphi. The semi-
circular valley opens only on the east, and from it ter-

races, like tiers of seats, rise from the Plistus to Parnas-

sus. The ancient city of Delphi lay in two portions
along the base of the Shining Rocks. The modern high-
road approximately marks the division between the
upper terraces, which held the sacred precinct, and
the lower, where were the houses and business buildings
of the permanent inhabitants, and also, east of Casta -
lia, a few temples and other public structures. It is the
upper terraces, west of Castalia, which enchain our at-

tention, although all that is left even here, save for the

small reerected Treasury of the Athenians, made of

Parian marble, are remnants of walls, low-lying founda-
 DELPHI 235

tions, traces of pavement, broken bases, and pieces of

graven stone. But they represent sacred ways and
buildings, monuments and statues which made glo-

rious one of the richest centres of Greece, from long

before the time of Euripides to the destructive epoch
of Nero and beyond. Delphi became the pride of the
Macedonians as it had been of the Athenians and
the Spartans, and under their sovereignty the Delphic
Amphictyony continued and the oracle was the centre
of the new widespread Hellenic world. The Gauls
attacked Delphi in the third century b. c. as vainly
as the Persians had attacked it in the fifth century.

Even the ruthlessness of Rome brought no immediate

destruction. ^Emilius Paulus, the final conqueror of
Macedon, set up near Apollo’s temple, in the most con-
spicuous place of the entire precinct, a monument to

his victory. Even Nero seems to have wished to repair

the temple, but the story that he afterwards tore it down

because of an oracular response which reflected upon his
moral character is at least ben trovato. He divided the
Crisaean plain among his soldiers and carried off an
enormous number of statues from Delphi. But a still

greater number was left, and the glory of the god’s

dwelling place had not vanished. Under Hadrian, the
imperial apostle of culture, new treasures were added,
and a little later Pausanias saw more than he could de-
scribe. It was not until two more centuries had passed
that the oracle itself wdth one last cry became dumb
forever. To the ambassador of Julian the Apostate,
236 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
who was seeking advice in his wars with the Persians,
the message was given :
—
“ Say to the King now that levelled to earth is the temple of splen-
dour,
Phoebus no more has a roof for his head nor the laurel prophetic;
Gone is the voice of the fountain and dried is the chattering
water.”

Theodosius put a formal end to the Delphic cult as well

as to the Olympic games.
From Apollo’s slaying of the earth-born dragon to
the Byzantine emperor’s destruction of the oracle is a
long stretch of centuries. Within them fell the brilliant
epochs which filled Delphi with the opulence of all

the arts.As Greek and barbarian brought hither their

well-wrought schemes and passionate desires, so they
brought also, in offerings to the god, their best skill in

architecture and sculpture and painting, their rarest

workmanship in marble and bronze and gold and
silver. Ghostly proofs of the existence of some of these
offerings the French excavators have within twenty
years evoked from the reluctant soil. Gallic precision

and insight have even made of ruined walls and broken

stones an orderly array easily perceived by the traveller
who is patient enough to follow his guidebook. The
Museum supplements the ground foundations by sev-
eral important sculptural details.

There were many localities and objects made holy

by legendary associations, like the tomb of Neoptole-
mus, Achilles’s red-haired son, whose murder is de-
 DELPHI 237

scribed by Euripides and whose quadrennial worship

brought crowds of Thessalians to Delphi; or like the
marble Omphalos, or navel stone, flanked, in Pindar’s
day, by golden eagles which marked the meeting place
of the winged explorers sent east and west by Zeus in

search of the exact centre of the earth. But of para-

mount importance in the religious life of Delphi was
the Temple of Apollo, built above the deep cleft in the

ground that held the sacred spring of prophecy. The

Priestess sat upon a tripod in the adyton or holy of
holies, directly over the fissure from which a natural
vapour issued, and her ravings were transmitted by the
priests in ambiguous hexameters. The site of the first

primitive temple was preserved, but upon it rose suc-

cessive structures. The temple that was seen by He-
rodotus and Thucydides, by Pindar, by HCschylus and
Euripides was built in the latter half of the sixth century
to replace an older one destroyed by fire. In the fourth
century an earthquake necessitated still another, and
it is to this one that the existing foundations are attrib-

uted, although fragments of the other are not wanting.

Owing to the shifting history of the fourth century,

this temple was long in building and was not yet com-
pleted when Demosthenes thundered out his scorn that

the barbarian of Macedon had assumed the “honours

of the temple, ” to which even all the Greeks could not
pretend. The work had been undertaken by an inter-

national commission, and inscriptional records of the

contributions are richly suggestive of the private life

238 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
of the times. Many individuals and some states pro-
mised first fruits. An actor and a physician of Athens
sent a tithe of their earnings. Among individuals the
Peloponnesians were the most pious, although contri-
butions straggled in from Attica, Boeotia, Northern
Greece, the islands, Africa, and Sicily. Collectors went
from house to house, and by far the larger number of
contributors gave no more than a drachma. Doubtless
in many cases this modesty was due to poverty rather

than to indifference, and the religious sentiment prompt-

ing the gifts must often have been comparable to that
which reared the arches and illuminated the windows
of the Cathedral of Chartres. For the sake of such con-
tributors one could wish that after the Roman restora-

tions the Delphic temple had not been allowed to crum-

ble under earthquakes, corroding rains, and the tread
of the unnumbered years. Of adyton and oracular
chasm the excavators have found no smallest trace, and
not even one column rises from the low foundations to
give evidence of things unseen. But, at least, unlike
the Parthenon and many another great shrine, it was
never converted into a church of an alien faith.

Secular buildings followed in the wake of the religious

importance of Delphi. The Amphictyonic Council had
a hall for its meetings to the west of the sacred precinct,
on or near the site now occupied by the little chapel of
St. Elias. Here, in sight of the Crisaean plain, the
incendiary speech of ^Kschines had its full effect. Within
the precinct, safe from attack in times of war, public
 DELPHI 239

treasuries were erected by Asiatic kings and Greek

tyrants, by Greek states in Asia Minor and colonies
in Italy, and by sovereign cities like Athens and Thebes.
The erection of a treasury often followed upon some
public success, but other monuments and statues also
rose at the feet of Apollo to mark the tidal flow of
national fortunes. A study of all such memorials,
known to have existed at Delphi, would be equivalent

to a detailed study of Greek history. The repulse of

the Persians from the mainland and of the Carthagin-

ians from Sicily, and the stemming of the later inva-

sions of Gallic barbarians required thank-offerings to

the Delphic god. The rise of Athens, the struggle of
Ionian and Dorian, the victory of Sparta, the late
hegemony of Thebes are here commemorated and with ;

these the lesser quarrels of Sparta with Argos and

Arcadia and of Athens with Megara, and the petty
warfare of Phocians and Thessalians.
A myriad of statues and monuments commemorated
personal interests or feeling. From a haul of tunny fish

to the discovery of stolen goods, no event was too pro-

saic to inspire an offering from island or village. And,
throughout Greece, from Macedonia to Crete, towns
delighted to express their reverence by gifts of marble
and bronze. Midas from Asia Minor sent a chair of
stateand Croesus sent a golden lion and silver bowls.
Arcesilas of Cyrene in northern Africa, in the fifth
century, celebrated a Pythian victory by the gift of a
sculptured chariot and charioteer. The statue still
240 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
remains, the most famous single object discovered at
Delphi. Dominating one room in the Museum, he seems
in his bronze dignity as untroubled by the chilling
silence of to-day as was his living prototype, in the

hippodrome in the plain below, by the noise and tu-

mult of the day of victory. The description by Sopho-

cles of the Delphic chariot race in which Orestes was
supposed to be killed reproduces the excitement against
which many a charioteer must have had to steady his

nerves.*
Of statues of mortals dedicated by themselves or by
their admirers there was no end. Among these persons
were the great rhetorician Gorgias, to whose teaching
Greek prose owed its first artistic development, and
Phryne, the famous courtesan of Thespiae. With her
statue, seen by men of Demosthenes’s age between the
figures of the Spartan king Archidamus and Philip of

Macedon, we may surrender the effort to distinguish

the links in the mighty chains which, as in Plato’s

vision, bound the Greek earth to a heavenly throne.
It is less difficult to understand the Greek harmony
between the graver and brighter needs of the common
life which added to the temples and treasuries of Delphi

buildings for recreation and enjoyment. A club-house

was erected by the rich Cnidians, where conversation,
the favourite amusement of all Greeks, could be car-

ried on. Centuries later Plutarch made it the scene of

his dialogue on the decay of oracles. If the age of the
* The passage is quoted in chapter xviii, p. 406.
 DELPHI 241

Antonines showed a loss of faith, art at least held its

own, and the talkers must have added to the pleasure

of skeptical speculation a delight in the decorations

which dated from the fifth century before Christ. They
consisted of pictures by Polygnotus of the capture of
Troy and Odysseus’s journey to hell. Now only bits
of stucco painted blue betray their presence, and frag-

mentary stones alone are left of the splendid building.

Little more is left of the beautiful colonnades which

furnished protection from sun and rain to the frequent
crowds. In fairly good preservation still is the Theatre,
where, as in all the religious centres of Greece, dra-
matic representations added literature to the pageant
of artistic gifts. Equally inevitable was a Gymnasium;
but most important of all was the Stadium, in which
the quadrennial games were held.

This Stadium lay far beyond the sacred precinct to

the west, and occupied a lofty and magnificent situa-

tion. In what Pausanias calls “the highest part of the
city” the slopes of Parnassus break sufficiently to
leave a narrow shelf of flat ground. Every foot of this
was used for the erection of the structure, the northern

side being bounded by the precipices of the great moun-

tain, the southern side being supported by a wall of
polygonal masonry. Part of this wall is still left, and
in the interior there are tiers of seats to tempt the
dreamer. The marble with which Herodes Atticus is

said to have faced them in the second century after

Christ is now all gone. But one may yet sit on the orig-
 242 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
inal stone and see not only the valley of the Plistus far

below, but westward a bright strip of the Corinthian

Gulf. Here once gathered eager thousands to watch
the foot races and the wrestling matches, and to hear
the contesting flutes and the rival lyres. Originally,
before the Crisaean war, the Pythian festival had oc-
curred only once in eight years and had consisted of a
contest in singing, to the accompaniment of the lyre,

a hymn to Apollo. The early musical festival found

its aftermath in the combination of musical with ath-
letic contests in the more frequent “Games” insti-

tuted by the Amphictyons after they had taken Delphi

under their common charge. This was a part of that
general reorganization in the sixth century by which
the Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean, and especially the
Olympic games were thrown into high relief among
the multitudinous festivals of Greece. At Delphi a
hymn in honour of the god of the golden lyre continued
to be an important part of the proceedings. Among
the most conspicuous discoveries of the French are
three fragments of such hymns, engraved on stone,

two of them accompanied by musical notation. The

hymns are late ones, of no especial merit, but their
: scores have furnished a key to that art which played so
large a part in Greek education, literature, and philoso-

phy, and which made the Pythian festival a reminder

of the lord of music.
Of the hymns in honour of mortals victorious in the
games we still have some of the greatest representatives
 DELPHI 243

in the Pythian odes of Bacchylides and Pindar. Pindar

may well boast that his song of triumph was a splen-
dour in the Pythian crown of Hiero of Syracuse ;
that
he would come to him over the deep sea, a light shining
farther than any heavenly star. For only through a
victory at some one of the four great festivals of Greece

was even a tyrant sure of any Panhellenic honour. The

centrifugal forces of Greek life found an antidote in
these expressions of common ideals. It has, indeed,

been often said that the only other antidote lay in the

political organization of Delphi itself. But this politi-

cal unity was limited, and, if Delphi focused Greek

interests in any way that even Olympia could not, the

reason must be sought in facts that lay beneath a par-

ticular form of government. In the lofty Stadium men
from cities whose disparate and jealous memorials lay
below united in self-forgetful applause of all the vic-
tors.

Here the traveller may pause to grasp, amid the chaos

of swift impressions, a picture of the Delphic life. In
it religion and politics, art and amusement coalesced
into a stream of almost illimitable influence. From
month to month without cessation pilgrims sought the
oracle. The store of information about public and
private matters thus brought to the oracular seat gave to
the priests a knowledge of political conditions which
they could easily transmute into an apparently super-
naturalwisdom and a unique power in public life.
Hand in hand with this political power went an ethical
244 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
sovereignty due to the essential religiousness of the
Greeks. And lastly, the more continuous influx of visi-
tors, over against an infrequent and congested festival,

may easily have rendered the artistic influence of Delphi

more insistent than that of Olympia. Xerxes was better
acquainted with what was worthy of note at Delphi
than even with what he had left in his own house, for
many of those about him were continually describing
the treasures. Often the seed of such descriptions, or
of actual sight, must have fallen on richer soil than
an Oriental despot’s imagination. Who knows what
village smithy in Thessaly or Arcadia was stimulated
to a finer output by the iron stand made by Glaucus
of Chios to hold the big silver bowl sent to Delphi by
Croesus’s father? Indeed, the wonderful animals and
plants wrought in relief for the first time upon welded
iron may have inspired many a designer in Athens and
Corinth. And many a young sculptor must have taken
home from his Pythian pilgrimage a knowledge of
Phidias and Praxiteles and Lysippus.
Thus was the wQrld forever pouring itself into Delphi
and again, like a retreating wave, bearing something of
Delphi away with it, something larger and richer even
than the golden honours that were symbolized by the
crown of laurel so eagerly borne home by the victors
in the games. And yet there was a further significance

in the fragile wreath itself, however infrequently real-

ized by athletes and spectators, which pointed beyond

the artistic and moral power of the Pythian God. The
 DELPHI 2 45

wreath was made of leaves brought from, the Vale of

Tempe, where Apollo had plucked his own crown
of victory, when, as lord of light, he had vanquished
the powers of darkness and had been purified from the
evil which the struggle had entailed. Laurel (or bay)
trees grew in the valley of Delphi itself, lingering on
until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the
last one is said to have drooped and died in the little gar-

den of the church of St. Nicholas which, before Kastri

was removed, stood in front of the spring of Cassotis.

This spring, not yet exhausted, was the feeder of the

oracular chasm and watered the grove of Apollo, “ fresh-
ening with an ever-living stream the undying gardens”
from which Ion gathered his laurel broom. Not only did
the acolytes use laurel in their simple tasks, but the
Priestess fumigated herself with burning boughs before
she sat upon the tripod, and chewed laurel leaves before
she delivered her prophecies. But the meaning of
Apollo’s crowning, from which the sacred uses of the
laurel sprang, was beyond the reach of Ion, untroubled
“worshipper within the Temple’s inner shrine.” Nor
to moderns is the revelation likely to come until the

Shining Rocks grow pale and night obliterates the lively

daylight of the spring. Into the dark void left by the
withdrawal of Apollo swings the moon, no longer com-
passionate but majestic. Suddenly upon the receptive
imagination descends the Delphic awe. The almond
trees slip into shadowy insignificance. The hills stand
out dark and brooding, while their ravines deepen un-
246 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
fathomably. And through the fearful silence sounds
the prophetic voice of an unseen god vaster than the
consciousness of the race which created him. The
quality of sublimity and awfulness now apparent in the

landscape explains the influence of that ideal of om-

nipotent righteousness which, among a singularly in-
tellectual people, gradually formed for itself a living
centre. For an understanding of such a god at Delphi

one must turn to ^Eschylus. To him Apollo was a god

“who knew not how to do unrighteousness,” in whose
hands were loosed the tangled skeins of human sin.

Sophocles, in his dramas of (Edipus’s life, represented

the folly and wrong-doing of a noble nature forgiven by
the Pythian god after the willing endurance of a just
punishment. But ^Eschylus, in the “ Eumenides,” deals
with a much subtler aspect of divine law. That its

opening scene is laid at Delphi is appropriate to the

overshadowing importance of its religious meaning.
Orestes had been told by the oracle to kill his mother,

as a divinely ordained punishment for her murder of

her husband. But there is no slaying that does not in-

volve guilt, as Apollo himself knew when he slew the

foul dragoness. The awful Furies hound Orestes from
Argos to the altar in the innermost shrine of the Delphic
temple. Here is laid the ^Eschylean scene. The Furies,

with their hair of coiling snakes, mutter in a savage

sleep, ready at a signal to fall once more upon the
wretch who has obeyed the god against the human con-
science. The suppliant Orestes, doubting and hope-
 DELPHI 247

less, crouches at the altar steps. And towering over

them all stands the saving God who had once, in a fair
vale of purification, put upon his own head the crown of
victorious goodness. He promises Orestes no easy res-
cue from the earthly consequences of his god-directed
act. He must be pursued once more by the hateful
spawn of Darkness over the sea and through sea-girt
cities. But at last he shall come to Athens, a suppliant
of Athena, and Apollo himself will come and gain for

him freedom and the forgiveness of his kind, and jus-

tice among men shall be forever established. This is

no mere praise, however splendid, of the wisdom and

the justice of Athens. It is rather the embodiment
of the idea which to the Greeks shone as a “far-off
heavenly star” above all the expedients of practical re-
ligion, or all the necessities of worldly power. Among
the hills and cliffs of Delphi dwelt a god whose ways
were past finding out, whose commands led to terror

but whose service led to peace.

Thus with the lengthening of day into night rises the
flood tide of fragmentary realizations of ancient thought.

But the tide ebbs with the sinking moon. The cold
night air draws the dreamer back to the waiting fires

and hospitable copper lamps of Kastri. As he makes

his homeward way through the low dark ruins, which
are all that the intrepid archaeologists could summon
from the grave of centuries, he is moved to wonder
whether Delphi, save for its natural beauty by day and
by pight, has any place in modem thought. The ancient
248 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
interpretation of its importance was by no means only
a religious one. The Greeks cannot be understood
only through an ^Fschylus of profound spiritual insight,
or an Herodotus of intelligent piety. Thucydides, amid
the bustle of its life, was as rationalizing in his ideas
about Delphi as we can be amid its dead ruins. To him
as to us, its oracular power was a matter of superstition.
He would have attributed Socrates’s faith in it to his
goodness rather than his knowledge, and doubtless
anticipated the modern explanation of the wisdom of
the priests. And yet Thucydides accepted without
question the political and civic value of such a centre
for the Greek world. Now that that value has disap-
peared with the world it served, we are left to find a
new value in the imperishable human thoughts which
were inspired by Delphi and have outlived its marbles,
its silver and gold, its laurel crowns and echoing lyres.

For any subsequent religion has but created, mutatis

mutandis the differing types of

,
men through whom we
know the pagan god. If the oracle is dumb, and Apollo
but an antique fable, yet men of the twentieth century

may still find in the poets and thinkers of Greece ex-

pressions of their own faith or their own doubt. They
may find also that blending in one mind of belief bom
of idealism with unbelief born of experience which
is familiar to the modern world. Pindar’s piety was
such that “at Delphi they kept with reverence his iron
chair, and the priest of Apollo cried nightly as he
closed the temple, ‘
Let Pindar the poet go in unto the
 —

DELPHI 249

supper of the god.’ ” And yet he uttered the universal

lament:
“ Much tossed, now rise, now sink the hopes of men, the
while they cleave the waves of baffling falsity, and never
yet hath any one on earth obtained from God a token sure
of anything to come. Blind is the verdict of the future. ”
 J

CHAPTER XII

FROM DELPHI TO THEBES

“Ye triple pathways, shrouded crypt of woodland vale,

Coppice, and narrowing pass where three roads meet! O ye
Who drank my father’s blood — my own — from these my hands,
Do ye, perchance, remember what ye saw me do ? ”
Sophocles, (Edipus Tyr annus.

^ dipus onhis way from Delphi and Laius

I 1-^ on his way from Thebes met at the Forked

— Roads — the “Cleft Way” — in a lonely
valley. The traveller who wishes to see the scene of the
ensuing tragedy will have the opportunity to pass
through a country of extraordinary beauty and variety
and also to know the leisured charm of travel by horse
or mule. With the multiplication of railroads these
opportunities are growing rarer year by year, except
for those whom adventure or professional interests lead
into the less famous parts of Greece. The major por-
tion of the country that attracts students of Greek life

at its highest is as easy to traverse as Italy. It is true

that the days which there have long since receded into
historical perspective seem in Greece strangely mingled
with the present, because the same traveller who to-day
can take the train from Athens to Thebes was forced,
ten years ago, to ride or drive over the passes of Cithae-
ARACHOVA

TO

ROAD

THE

AND

DELPHI
 FROM DELPHI TO THEBES 2 5i

ron. But already in the books of Greek travel written

in the second half of the nineteenth century we begin

to perceive that delicate aroma of a more primitive
past which pervades Goethe’s “ Italienische Reise.”
In addition to railroads, the matured police power
of the government has been a transforming agency.
Not only between Athens and Corinth but practically

everywhere in Greece brigandage is now unknown.

And, finally, the onslaughts of dirt and vermin have been
greatly modified, both by the increasing number of
creditable inns in the larger places and by the ability

of the peasants in remoter villages to understand the

prejudices of foreigners. Not very long ago a request
for information about almost any route that led away
from Athens might have been couched in the words of
Dionysus asking about the trip to Hades :
—
“ And tell me too the havens, fountains, shops,
Roads, resting places, and refreshment rooms,
Towns, lodgings, hostesses with whom are found
The fewest bugs.” *

Now, in villages which are near important sites of

antiquity, the rough and ready traveller may meet with

nothing more unfamiliar to him than the Aristophanic
flea that hops in the blankets like a dancing girl, while
those who take a dragoman, at a moderate price, and
mattresses and supplies from Athens may escape even
this enemy, as well as beds of hard boards and coarsely
cooked food. A knowledge of modern Greek enables
* Aristophanes, Frogs 112; translation (modified) by Rogers.
,
252 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
the true Phihellene to dispense with a middleman and
to receive proofs in unexpected places of the unfailing
hospitality and the alternating integrity and guile of

the Greek peasant.

Perched on the crest that forms the watershed be-
tween the eastern and western lengths of the valley of
the Plistus, the lovely village of Arachova serves as a
way-station on the pilgrimage from Kastri to the
Forked Roads. The first part of the road leads famil-
iarly through the precinct of Delphi, past the clump
of plane trees which keep green the memory of their

ancestor planted by Agamemnon, and past Castalia,

whose waters, emerging from the gorge below the Shin-
ing Rocks, are as “sweet to drink” as Pausanias found
them and as clear as when they purified the suppliants
at the oracle and the ministering hands of the priests,

or laved the golden hair of the god himself.

Along the road that now stretches eastward the Per-

sians streamed toward Delphi at the time of Xerxes’s

invasion. But near the temple of Athena Pronaia, on
the lower terrace, they were repulsed by terrible por-
tents. A storm of thunder burst over their heads; at
the same time two crags split off from Mount Parnas-

sus and rolled down upon them with a loud noise,

crushing vast numbers beneath their weight, while
from the temple there went up the war cry and the
shout of victory. The Delphians, who were hiding in
the Corycian Cave, seeing their terror, rushed down
upon them, causing great slaughter. And barbarian sur-
 FROM DELPHI TO THEBES 253

vivors declared afterwards that two armed warriors,

of a stature more than human, pursued after their fly-

ing ranks, pressing them close and slaying them. These

supernatural warriors were two heroes who belonged
to Delphi, by name Phylacus and Autonous. For their

timely aid they received precincts and worship, Auto-

nous by the Castalian spring, his comrade hard by the
road, practically identical with the modem highway,
which ran above the temple of Athena. The traces of

this Heroon may yet be seen, faint reminders of old-

time tumults amid to-day’s oblivious silence. A little

farther is the so-called “Logari,” or likeness of a great

door chiselled in the face of a rock, representing, per-
haps, the Gate of Hell. At least it seems to have marked
the entrance to an ancient cemetery which lay below
the road along the southern slopes now given over to
orchards and to tillage. Through them a road winds
down toward the silvery Plistus, twisting in and out
among the gray- green olives and the almond trees. In
antiquity this was the road to the bustling town of
Ambrosus by the pass of Dhesphina over Mount Cir-

phis. Now the donkeys that saunter along it are bear-

ing peasant girls and their bags to the mills by the river.
The road to Arachova leads in a gentle ascent close

along the lower reaches of Parnassus on the left and'

high above the deep valley on the right. The muleteers
may turn aside to shorter mountain paths, but the easy
highway tempts to leisure while the sun is still warm
in the west and the brilliant pageant of the valley is but
254 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
lightly subdued by the delicate reserves of the approach-

ing evening. Either route leads in less than three hours

to the foot of high precipices rising at the back of windy
Arachova, the representative of Homer’s Anemoreia
(Windswept Town). These cliffs, now called Petrites,

are, perhaps, the Look-Out Place often alluded to in an-

cient literature, the point of vantage from which Apollo,
the Far- Darter, shot his arrow at the dragon in Delphi.
The town itself, two thousand feet above the sea-level,

is one of the most typical of modern Greece both in

situation and in those racial characteristics which are
forming a new nation out of the roots of the old. The
houses, interspersed with vivid green trees, gather about
each other in terraces up the hill to the high-poised
church of St. George, that other dragon slayer, while
in its turn the little Christian edifice is frowned
down upon by the rocky mountain-side. The stony,
twisted streets, alive with children, often become stair-

cases of rock, up and down which the mules indiffer-

ently clatter. Stone courtyards lead to doorways out of
which handsome men and women smile an hospitable
welcome. The inhabitants of Arachova, perhaps be-
cause they live near the Muses of Parnassus, possess a
charm and courtesy of manner that is not duplicated
among the rougher peasants of the Peloponnesus. They
are also famous for their beauty, the gift of the Greeks
from the time of Helen and Achilles through all ad-
mixtures of foreign blood. The men are tall and slim,

with the dignity of carriage and chiselled fineness of

 FROM DELPHI TO THEBES 255

feature which distinguishes the Greek peasantry from

the livelier Italian, and the beauty of the women is

grave and tranquil. The traveller may find himself

served by a fair mother and fairer daughter, whose

name of Sappho is belied by the shy, cool loveliness of
her parted hair and innocent eyes.
The Arachovans cherish brave traditions of their
part in the War of Independence, but their relation to
antiquity is revealed in certain elements of their im-
aginative life. Now, as of old, natural forces are iden-
tified with the activities of divine beings. The snow-
storms and icy winds of winter are attributed to furious
battles waged high up on the peaks of Parnassus by the
spirits of the mountain. Gentler spirits of forest and
fountain seem to have descended directly from antique
prototypes. The Corycian Cave, once the haunt of
Pan and his nymphs, is still a favourite resort of the
Nereids. And these “Maidens,” as the modern like

the ancient Greek often calls them, dwell in many other

pleasant places, lingering in the old trunks of olive or
fig trees, like hamadryads, or tumbling sportively in
mill streams and mountain torrents, like the daugh-
ters of ancient Nereus among the waves of the sea.

Primarily, indeed, the Nereids are still water nymphs,

and the modem Greek word for water, nero so often
,

upon the tourist’s tongue, echoes their immortal play.

Nor has the fashion of their garments greatly changed
since the pictures of antiquity represented them with
long veils, now bound upon the head, now fluttering
256 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
freely in the hand. The peasants say that their Nereids
wear a head cloth, always of the finest quality but in
style like the cloths worn by their own women, hanging
down over the neck and shoulders. At Arachova the
Nereids go with uncovered head and swing the cloth
in their hands, as Leucothea loosened her veil to give

it to Odysseus when she rose like a sea-gull from the

depths of ocean to save his life. The Nereids have pipe-
playing lovers known as demons, in whom Pan and
the sa^ s seem to live on. And Pan has his own
special representative in the protective Lord of Hares
and Wild Goats, who still ranges the slopes of Par-
nassus. An evil spirit in the shape of a he-goat with
long beard, who leaps on the goats to their destruction,
hints at that other aspect of Pan revealed in the malig-
nant power of nature.
Another inheritance from antiquity are the Lamiae.
One of these female monsters dwelt in a large cavern

in the side of Mount Cirphis, still accessible at the end

of a blind path beyond the Plistus, and ravaged the
country all about until a brave hero put her to death.
She, and others of her ilk, were the bugbears of chil-

dren, and they still liveamong the Greek peasantry

as vampirish demons. The name is also used as a term
of reproach for scolding women. But in Arachova,
oddly enough, the Lamia has been transformed by
some kindly alchemy into a good spirit, and is often
seen in the dusk striding through the village streets, or
spinning at a huge distaff by a fountain’s rim. Her
 FROM DELPHI TO THEBES 257

name is given to handsome, well-behaved women, as

beautiful girls are said to be Nereid-descended or
Nereid-eyed.
The modern Greeks also believe in the Fates or

Moirae, either as three dread sisters or as a hierarchy

of twelve who delegate the care of a specified number
of men to a smaller committee. At Arachova three
fates appear within three days of an infant’s birth, two
known as the bearers of good and of ill fortune, who
fight the matter out and agree upon a destiny, and the
who will weave the strands into
third called the Spinner,

theweb of life.
Thus under the very eyes of St. George pagan spirits
make common cause with the angels and demons of
Christianity. A hoof print on the edge of a crag may
betray the presence of the lord of hares and goats or
of the unmentionable Devil. An infant who dies un-
baptised may claim to be the victim of the ruthless
Spinner, or may go to join in the air the imps who war
with the angels for the souls of men. Mountains and
ether, springs and tree-trunks, are filled with the di-

vine forces created, under the influence of two religions,

by a people always sensitive to the intimacy between
the physical and spiritual worlds.

The Cleft Way lies two hours beyond Arachova,

and six hours beyond that is Chaeronea, battlefield and
railroad station. On a morning in March the moon
may be bright at six o’clock when the mules beat their
way out of the rough streets of Arachova to the open.
258 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
The road descends from the village and skirts the
southern sides of Parnassus, leading through vineyards
and gorges and winding over a bare and rocky valley.

The amber moon grows white, and between the open-

ing hills to the east the rising sun sets the sky aflame.
Gradually the gold and rose give way to intense, bril-

liant blue. The twin peaks of Parnassus glisten in their

covering of snow. A pastoral charm, reminiscent of
Theocritus’s Sicilian uplands, mingles with the rugged
impressiveness of mountain scenery. Steep hillsides
alternate with pastures, and here and there cool streams
curl about the heedless feet of mules and muleteers.
Gradually the severity of the landscape predominates.
The road from Delphi along which (Edipus, like our-
selves, was coming, descends through a wild pass en-
closed by the mighty precipices of Parnassus and
Cirphis, and in a scene of impressive loneliness meets

the roads from Daulis and Thebes.* The spot is now

called “Stavrodromi tou Mega,” or Cross-Roads of
Megas, in memory of a hero who was killed here in the

middle of the nineteenth century while destroying a

band of brigands. The story of the ancient deed of

violence is put by Sophocles into the mouth of CEdipus

himself. The Delphic oracle had declared that Thebes
could be healed of its pestilence only by the punishment
* The local guides sometimes place the Cleft Way a little further
along, in a very narrow pass, known as the “Steni.” Although this
spot in some respects better corresponds to the language of Sopho-
cles, the balance of authoritative opinion now supports the locali-
zation of the story at the first cross-roads.
 FROM DELPHI TO THEBES 259

of the murderer of Laius, the former king, and (Edipus

had proclaimed the requisite sentence against the un-

known. Now he has begun to realize that he was the

slayer :
—
“And, wife, I’ll speak out truth to thee. When, journeying,
I came hard by this three-forked road, there met me there,
Just as thou tellest it, a herald and a man
Mounted upon a was drawn by colts.
carriage that
And here the leader and the old man, too, himself,
The pair of them, would thrust me rudely from the path,
And I, enraged, strike him the charioteer — who tried —
To push me off. And then the old man, seeing this,
Fetched me a blow with two-pronged goad full on my head
As I strode by. No equal penalty he paid,
Not he. By one swift blow from staff in this my hand
He’s rolled out straightway from the car upon his back,
And I slay all of them! So, if there’s any kin
’Twixt Laius and this stranger, who is wretcheder
Than this man now before thee? Who? what man, could be
More hateful to the gods? Whom never any one,
Or foreigner or citizen, may in his house
Receive; whom none may speak to, nay, but from his house
Must thrust And this! these curses — none except myself —
Brought down upon me ” !

From the Forked Roads travellers who must push

on to Chaeronea will look regretfully at the path that
leads to “lone Daulis” in “the high Cephisian vale.”
The little town is situated on the uneven summit of a
massive hill which rises abruptly from the glens at the
eastern foot of Parnassus, and of its bowery loveliness

among pomegranates and olives and almonds enticing

tales are told. Here, according to a favourite Greek
legend, was the first home of the nightingale and the
26 o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
scene of that “life enriched with sorrow, which her
clear voice, insatiate, bemoans.” The savage Tereus,
king of Daulis, had married Procne, a prehistoric
princess of Athens, and after the birth of her son Itylus

had cut out her tongue and claimed that she was dead.
He then married her sister Philomela. The betrayed
Procne, however, told Philomela the truth by means
of a web into which she had embroidered her story,

and the two sisters united in slaying the innocent Itylus

and serving him up as a meal to his father. The gods,
in anger, transformed Procne and Philomela into

a nightingale and swallow, forever mourning Itylus,

while Tereus became a pursuing hawk. When spring
comes, whether in Daulis or Ithaca or by the “ tranquil
Thames,” the “pallid-olive” nightingale pours forth

her music, “bewailing her dead child.”

The ride from the Cleft Way to Chaeronea, winding
through the valley of the Platania, a tributary of the
Boeotian Cephisus, is rich in interest and variety. A
little to the west of Chaeronea, on the border between
Phocis and Boeotia, lies Hagios Vlasis, a miserable
village, known to fame only because of its position un-

der the ancient acropolis of Panopeus. The impor-

tance of Panopeus was the subject of legend atid

poetry rather than of history. From its clay Prome-

theus fashioned the human race, and from its people
sprang Epeios, the inventor at Troy of the wooden
horse. Here also the giant Tityos lived and died. He
had violated Leto as she went up to Delphi through
 FROM DELPHI TO THEBES 261

Panopeus “of the fair dancing places,” and for this sin

Odysseus found him in Hades sprawling over nine roods

gnawed by vultures. Pausa-
of levelled ground, his liver
nias was perplexed by the Homeric epithet for the town
until the inhabitants explained to him that the Mae-

nads on their way to Parnassus stopped at Panopeus

for preliminary dances. Dionysus may have passed
this way with his mysterious quickening, as Apollo did
with his ordered inspiration. Thus the insignificant
town was the legendary scene of man’s birth and of
important episodes in his mental and moral develop-
ment.
Beyond Hagios Vlasis lies another modem village

in the shadow of an ancient acropolis. Between Phocis

and Boeotia there is no natural boundary, but the large
plain of Chaeronea sweeps westward into Phocis and
eastward into Boeotia to what used to be the Copaic
lake. On the north and south the plain is enclosed by
barren mountains, and the town of Chaeronea, unlike
Panopeus, spread out from the base of its acropolis at
the foot of the southern and lower hills. Its modern
representative is the hamlet of Kapraena, which dis-
plays a few legacies of antiquity and from which can
be seen the two peaks of Petrachus, the sharp and
steep acropolis. The chapel of Panagia (the Virgin)
contains a chair of white marble called the chair of
Plutarch. The great biographer was bom in Chaeronea,
and the worshipful preservation of his name in the

little Christian church reminds one of the appearance

262 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
of the equally respectable Plinies on the exterior of
the cathedral of their native Como.
But the dominant interest of Chaeronea is the battle
which, in 338 b. c., was lost by the forces of Greece united
against Philip of Macedon. No single account of the

terrible defeat has been handed down by dramatist or

historian, as iEschylus and Herodotus immortalized
the victories of Salamis and Marathon, and only gen-
eral facts in the struggle are known to us from lesser

writers. Before the march to Chaeronea Demosthenes

had risen in the Assembly, at a terrified meeting in the

cold and hopeless dawn, and persuaded the Athenians

to make a hasty alliance with Thebes against the en-
croachments of Philip. In the battle the Athenians
held the left wing while the right, the post of honour,
was given to the famous Sacred Band of the Thebans.
Between them were gathered the other allies. Against
the Thebans at the crucial moment Philip turned his
cavalry under the command of the young Alexander.
As the struggle became hopeless the Athenians re-
treated, but the members of the Sacred Band fought
until they fell, raising one last memorial to their great

founder, Epaminondas, and offering one last atonement

for the cowardice of Thebes in the Persian wars.

The victory of Macedon was not so much wrested from

the Greek arms as it was due to ineradicable defects

in the Greek political character. It was characteristic

of all Greek history that the allies should have formed

no united and harmonious army under one fully em-
 FROM DELPHI TO THEBES 263

powered leader. The intense individualism which

made Greece supreme in the arts and in science and
philosophy left her at the mercy of peoples able to
subordinate single wills to a national purpose. In the
presence of the architecture, sculpture, and literature of
the Greeks it is impossible to deplore their unthwarted
intellectual freedom, their keen sensibilities, their

genius for personal development. But at Chaeronea it

is easy to see not only the disintegration, but also the

demoralization of a national life which lacked the he-
roic sacrifice of self and the persistence of a common
controlling ideal as much as it lacked administrative
genius and political wisdom.
But it must be remembered that such inclusive stric-

tures on the Greek character can be made only when

we follow the prejudices of Philip’s enemies in exclud-
ing Macedon from the Greek states. In the perspective
of history it is clear that Chaeronea opened the way for

a new Hellenic state to create a new national life in

which discord should give way to unity and individual-

ism to a world empire. Nevertheless the rise of Macedon
was not continuous with the former life of Greece as
were the successive hegemonies of the older states. The
monarchy of Philip obliterated not only the existing
commonwealths but their modes of government. Po-
litically the loss was swallowed up in gain. Aristotle’s

polity has rightly been called provincial in compari-

son with his pupil’s empire in which there was nei-
ther Greek nor barbarian. But in the world of ideas
264 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
no substitution was an adequate atonement. The
ideals of liberty which the older states had cherished
and in which their intellectual and artistic life had
been nurtured were lost at Chaeronea. In this sense

the Athenians were right in saying that here ended the

freedom of Greece.
More than two centuries later a lesser victory was
won at Chaeronea by Sulla over the forces of Mithri-
dates, king of Pontus. Two trophies were erected by
the Roman general, and were afterwards seen by Pau-
sanias. “But Philip, the son of Amyntas, set up no
trophy, neither at Chaeronea, nor for any other victory
that he won over barbarians or Greeks, for it was not
a Macedonian custom to erect trophies.” On this field

the only trophy was the one erected by the defeated

to the dead. The Athenians who fell were buried in
the Cerameicus, and Demosthenes, who had fought in

the ranks, pronounced over them a funeral oration.

The Thebans were buried on the field. “No inscrip-

tion,” says Pausanias, “is carved on the tomb, but a

lion is placed on it, perhaps in allusion to the spirit of

the men. The reason why there is no inscription I take

to be that their fortune did not match their valour.”

This lion may be seen to-day about a quarter of a

mile beyond Kapraena, just before one turns toward
the modern railroad station of Chaeronea. For centu-
ries it had lain in fragments, but in 1902 the broken
pieces were fitted together with a result extraordinarily
impressive. Upon a pedestal ten feet high sits erect
 —

FROM DELPHI TO THEBES 265

a great beast of gray stone, lifting into the free air a

massive unbowed head, and rivalling in the guardian-

ship of Chaeronea the greater Inspector who, possibly ^

after this same battle, was invoked by an unknown

poet :

“ O guardian Time, Inspector General

Of mortals’ doings manifold,
Be herald of our fate to men, to all,
How we the holy land of Greece essayed
To save, and, dying, plains Boeotian made
Renowned in story never old.”

The road turns at a sharp angle in front of the lion

and runs in placid monotony to the station situated

near the banks of the Cephisus. Pausanias closes his

chapter on Chaeronea by a rare reference to the com-
mon people of his own day, who gathered flowers and
from them distilled “balms for the pains of men.” In
a modern chapter the end comes, not with the haunting
fragrance through summer fields of plucked lilies and
healing roses, but with the scream of an engine as the
Athens express breaks into the little station. The train

goes straight through Boeotia to the bright city in the

Attic plain. But on the way lies Thebes of the seven
gates.
 CHAPTER XIII

THEBES AND BCEOTIA

“ O Thebe blest, wherein delighteth most thy heart ? in which of

all the noble deeds wrought in thy land in days gone by ? Gone by,
I say, for now the Grace of olden time is fallen upon sleep.”
Pindar.

O f Boeotia more than of any other province of

Greece
be at
is

fault,
our involuntary judgment
for the ancient distinction be-
tween the quick-witted Athenians and the stupid Boeo-
tians has passed into our own proverbial language. But
likely to

our inherited contempt for the Boeotian “clowns” is

rather a tribute to the persistent intellectual domina-

tion of the Athenians than an accurate reflection of the

truth. Indeed, if we examine the sources of the tradi-

tion, we find that the original verdict was popular and
unreasoned, receiving its literary support in comedy
which deliberately appealed to vulgar prejudices. “If
you have good sense, you will avoid Boeotia,” was the
mocking advice of Pherecrates, the distinguished fore-
runner of Aristophanes, and to the comic poets of the
following centuries Boeotian gluttony and Boeotian
clumsiness were an unfailing resource to pleasure the
fickle humours of the crowd.

In the serious literature of the great periods Boeotia

 THEBES AND BCEOTIA 267

is treated with respect. Plutarch complains that Hero-

dotus misrepresented Thebes in the Persian Wars, and
warns his readers that as there are venomous insects at

the heart of roses so beneath the historian’s delightful

and persuasive style lurk defamation and vituperation
of “ the noblest and greatest cities and men of Greece.”
But if Herodotus has diverged from the truth, in this

instance a questionable supposition, he has at least

looked upon Thebes as an enemy and not overlooked
her as a boorish community. In the history of Thucy-
dides also, and even of the bigot Xenophon, Boeotian
make a dignified, if not always virtuous,
cities appear-
ance among the actors on the national stage.
In poetry Boeotia receives her full rights as a contrib-
utor to the imaginative life of Greece. In Homer not
only is the Boeotian harbour of Aulis the meeting place
of the Greek fleet before it sets sail for Ilium, but also
Boeotian landscapes beautify heroic episodes with
their rivers flowing between green banks, their open
meadows and bright groves, their flocks of tame doves
and grassy ways. In the Homeric Hymns Boeotian vine-
yards and furrows bloom under the swift feet of golden-
haired Apollo and mischievous Hermes. Above all, in
the Attic dramatists Boeotian Thebes is the scene of the
epiphany of gods and of the sorrows of humanity. The
legendary past of this city was crowded with person-
ages whose glories and whose dooms were on so grand
a scale that they became to the tragic poets of Athens,
and still are to us, symbols of the unceasing conflict
268 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
between will and destiny. The Theban legends more
than any others, save those of Argos, appealed to ^Eschy-
lus, Sophocles, and Euripides as fitted for their dramatic
purpose of arousing “pity and terror.” In using this

material they displayed a familiarity with the Thebes

of their own day which is a striking proof that men of

sense and feeling could delight in Boeotia. ^Eschylus

perceived the fertility of the land and the fairness of

Dirce, goodliest of streams. Sophocles seems to have

heard and never forgotten the soft murmur of the river
Ismenus. And Euripides knew intimately the wild ivy
growing over the city towers and the berries and flowers
of the city gardens, the golden wheat-fields and cooling
springs of the surrounding country, the “deep pine
greenery” and “fallen oak leaves” within the forests
of Mount Cithaeron, the mountain torrents cleaving
the narrow, crag-topped glens, the gleaming snow for-

ever resting on the mountain’s heights.

Furthermore, Boeotia had its own traditions of cul-

ture. Although creative artistic power was exemplified

only in Hesiod, the originator of a new literary move-
ment, and in Pindar, the most eminent lyric poet of
Greece, there was revealed in the architecture, sculp-
ture, and painting which enriched cities and sanctua-
ries, and in the poetry and music which were conspicu-
ous at festivals, a critical taste as trustworthy as any
outside of Attica. Educational ideals also tended toward
a genuine if not always vigorous cultivation. Plutarch’s
ripe refinement is a late but not a solitary example.
 THEBES AND BGEOTIA 269

Thus accoutred against prejudice we may hope more

fairly to appraise the good and the evil in Boeotian
life.

Bceotia has one of the most fortunate situations in

Greece, for its frontiers are either protected by high
mountains or border on two arms of the sea — the
Gulf of Corinth and the Gulf of Euboea — which in

antiquity connected her with the extended maritime

life of Greece and put her into easy communication with
Attica and the Peloponnesus.
Within the mountain barriers the Boeotian country
consists of two plains separated by hills. The flatness

of the northern plain is unrelieved, and the rivers that

flow into it, like the Cephisus, find no outlets except by

katavothras or channels which they force for themselves
under Mount Ptoon in the north. The frequent stop-
page of these channels turned a large part of the plain
into the famous Copaic Lake, the drainage of which
moved prehistoric engineers to wonderful feats, tempted
to comparative failure the less expert engineers of suc-

cessive historic periods, and has finally been accom-

plished by modern skill. Within a few years a British
company has reclaimed for the growing energies of
modem Greece thousands of acres of land that will

yield two crops a year.

The southern basin of Boeotia is smaller and also
less homogeneous and monotonous than the northern.
Thebes occupies a small plateau of its own on the
northern side of a low range of hills that divides it
270 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
from the larger part of the plain, given over to the

beautiful valley of the Asopus.

The fertility and charm of Bceotia may still be appre-
ciated. In antiquity cities and towns, busied with the
industries of the soil and of the sea, gave evidence also

of the practical resources supplied by Nature. And yet

it must be admitted that the historical importance of
Boeotia falls somewhat short of its obvious advantages.
Only after Athens and Sparta had risen successively
to the hegemony of Greece and again lost their power
did Thebes play a leading role in national politics. And
at no time did Boeotians vie either in energy or genius

with the people of barren Attica. An explanation often

given is that the unhealthful climate and heavy atmo-
sphere of the country modified natural impulses to
enterprise. The Athenians, as we have seen, laid

great stress on the brilliant freshness of their own air

as promoting intelligence. But another explanation

takes into account the mystery of racial characteristics.
Before Boeotia was conquered, sometime in the centu-
ries preceding Homer, by the northern race from Epirus
and Thessaly which gave the country its name and
began the “historic period,” there existed both in the
north and in the south older peoples of evident wealth
and power. For centuries Orchomenus was the leading
city, not only of the northern plain but of the whole
country. Its mighty kings and golden splendour were
still a bright memory to Homer, and excavations have
brought to life for us indications of the richness of its
 THEBES AND BCEOTIA 271

civilization. Exceptionally impressive and interesting

ruins of a fortress now known as Goulas (or Gha or
Gla) have been discovered on what used to be the eastern
bank of the Copaic Lake. And at Thebes also we shall

find traces of a people as advanced as any in prehis-

toric Greece. In the early ages the air of Boeotia does

not seem to have prevented conspicuous progress in
political power or in the arts. The northern invaders,
then, would seem to have been responsible for the

defects of later history, failing to construct a civiliza-

tion equal to the one they had been able to destroy.

In the case of the arts especially, it is significant that

Pindar, the only Boeotian poet of the first order, was

not of unmixed Boeotian blood, but belonged to a
branch of the ^Egidae, who traced their pedigree back
to the pre- Boeotian rulers of Thebes. Of this descent,

distinguished in the eyes of all Greeks, Pindar was

justly proud. And yet he was a loyal son of Thebes and
assumed his share in the “ancient reproach” of “ Boeo-
tian swine.” We are at liberty, therefore, to emphasize
his country before his blood.

Modem Thebes is huddled on the site of the ancient

acropolis, its poverty serving as a reminder of the
desolation which as early as Strabo’s time had fallen
upon one of the great cities of Greece. Pausanias found
the lower city deserted, save for the sanctuaries, the
population being restricted to the acropolis, and Dio
Chrysostom had seen a solitary image standing among
the ruins of the old market-place. In the middle ages
 ;

272 THEBES AND BCEOTIA

Fortune returned to Thebes from time to time, but

under the Turks deserted her in apparent despair.

Doubtless the town will revive as the modem nation
gathers its forces. In the mean time it serves to indicate
the area of the stronghold or acropolis built by the
prehistoric settlers. Before the middle of the fifth

century the city had grown westward to the stream

of Dirce, and eastward to the river Ismenus. After
that time, as is evident from remains of city walls, the
area was even more extended.
The mythological past of Thebes was greater than
any of its historic periods. Her early citizens shone
brilliantly among those —
“ Lights of the age that rose before our own
As demigods o’er Earth’s wide region known,
Yet these dread battle hurried to their end
Some, where the sevenfold gates of Thebes ascend,
Strave for the flocks of (Edipus in fight,
Some war in navies led to Troy’s far shore.” *

The story of Cadmus, the legendary founder of

Thebes, is one of the best examples of the legends by
which the Greeks reconstructed their early history.

As if by “shadows of dreams” they were haunted by

the memory of ancient adventures and enterprises, by
movements of whole peoples and bright deeds of early

heroes. And in spite of their arrogant aloofness in his-

toric times from all “barbarians,” they admitted, in
the stories into which their racial imagination shaped
the formless facts of prehistoric life, a close connection
* Hesiod, Works and Days , 160. Translated by Elton.
 THEBES AND BCEOTIA 273

with foreign peoples. So Cadmus was said to be a

Phoenician going forth from his own land and settling
in Boeotia before it was known by that name. What-
ever the Phoenician connection was, whether direct
or by way of Crete, whether by colonization or merely
by trading stations, it is certain that a pre-Boeotian
people occupied Thebes and were displaced by north-
ern invaders, who in their turn, at one time or another,
seem to have been forced on by the pressure of Illyrians
from Epirus. These facts the Greek people made into

a story of individual adventure, and this story Greek

poets made dramatic and universal. Cadmus was son
of a Phoenician king and brother of the ravished Europa.
Sent by his father to find his sister, and not daring to

return without her, he asked advice of the Delphic

oracle. He was cow until she should
told to follow a

lie down. This strange behest led him through Phocis

to Thebes. Here, like most heroes, including Apollo,
who wished to take possession of strange earth, he was
obliged to slay a dragon. Athena, his special guardian,
bade him sow the dragon’s teeth, and from these sprang
up an armed brood of warriors, known thereafter as
the “Spartoi” or Sown Men. Cadmus watched them
fight with each other until only five were left, with
which doughty remnant he built up the Cadmeia, or
original Acropolis of Thebes. Like Apollo again, he was
forced to atone for the murder of the dragon by serving
Ares for a term of years. At the end Ares gave him
to wife Harmonia, his daughter by Aphrodite, and
274 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Cadmus began a glorious reign. But his patient bond-
age to Ares had won only a temporary pacification, and
to his children and grandchildren passed the relentless

curse. (Edipus was his direct descendant. Even in

Cadmus’s lifetime two daughters and two grandsons
met with and he and his queen Har-
violent deaths,
monia went away to Illyria and became rulers of the
far

Enchelians. There they were changed into serpents,

“bright and aged snakes,” and were compelled by fate
to lead their barbarian people in an invasion of Greece.
Matthew Arnold follows Ovid in making them “ among
the green Illyrian hills,” —
“ Wholly forget their first sad life and home,
And all that Theban woe, and stray
Forever through the glens, placid and dumb.”

But Euripides represents the old king as filled with

evil presentiment :
—
“ Far off to barbarous men,
A grey-haired wanderer, I must take my road.
And then the oracle, the doom of God,
That must lead a raging horde far-flown
I

To prey on Hellas; leadmy spouse, mine own

Harmonia, Ares’ child, discorporate
And haunting forms, dragon and dragon mate,
Against the tomb and altar stones of Greece,
Lance upon lance behind us; and not cease
From toils like other men —
nor dream, nor past
The foam of Acheron find my peace at last.” *

Pindar in his radiant vision of the future life beyond

the foam of Acheron places Cadmus with Peleus in the
* Bacchce, 1354. This and the following quotations from this play
are taken from the translation by Gilbert Murray.
 THEBES AND BCEOTIA 275

company of the mighty dead who dwell at peace for-

ever within the islands of the Blest. The earthly life of

both heroes he uses to illustrate to Hieron, lord of Syra-

cuse and Fortune’s favourite, the adage inherited from

the men of old: “For every boon to men the gods deal
double bane.”
“Blest with life secure was neither Peleus, son of /Eacus,
nor Cadmus, match of gods. And yet, ’t is said, of mortals
all ’t was they who gained the highest bliss. For they could
hear the golden-snooded Muses’ song, or on the mountain-
side, or midst the seven gates of Thebes, when Cadmus took
to wife large-eyed Harmonia and when the other wed the
glorious Thetis, maiden child of Nereus . Gods shared with
both their banquet, and they both beheld the sons of Cro-
nos seated, kings on thrones of gold, and from them wed-
ding gifts received, and Zeus’s grace requited them for
former toil, uplifting high their hearts. Yet in the after-

time sharp anguish of his daughters three robbed Cadmus

of his share of joy. So too from him, whom as her only son
immortal Thetis bare in Phthia unto Peleus, fled his life,

by arrow sped in war.”

Pindar’s song of praise “ flitting like a bee from tale

to tale” paused often upon the legends of his “mother
Thebes.” Among others he tells the story of Heracles’s
birth at Thebes and of his speedy slaying, while yet
in swaddling clothes, of monstrous snakes that ap-
proached his cradle. The most tragic episode of Hera-
cles’s life, his madness and his murder of his children,
also occurred at Thebes, according to the version of
the legend used by Euripides in his drama of “The
276 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Mad Heracles.” But this play is of little poetic im-
portance in comparison with the plays that deal with the
curse-haunted house of Cadmus. Neither Euripides nor
Sophocles, in their single extant experiments with the
tragedy of Heracles, display the sympathetic genius
which has given permanent value to the stories of Pen-
theus and (Edipus. The two plays, however, which
rest upon these legends are famous for antipodal rea-

sons. The “(Edipus Tyrannus” of Sophocles was se-

lected by Aristotle as the most perfect specimen, in

technical construction, of the Greek drama, and is

treasured now as the model of what is most restrained,

most profound yet clear, most “Hellenic” in Greek
literature. The “Bacchse” of Euripides, on the other
hand, more “un-Hellenic” than any play or poem
is

that has come down to us, more resplendent in fancy,

more wild in theme, more incomprehensible in purpose.
Pentheus was the son of Agave and the grandson and
successor of Cadmus. But his fame was bom of his
futile conflict with another daughter’s greater son.
Semele, loved by Zeus and at her own request visited
by him in the full panoply of his splendour, had been
consumed in the lightning’s fire, and her child Diony-

sus had been snatched from her womb by its divine

father and hidden within his own thigh to issue in time
as the strangest of all the gods. Popularly known as
the “god of wine,” he was in reality a Lord of Many
Voices, a Spirit of Guiding Fire, a Mountain Bull, a
Snake of a Hundred Heads, a Master of the Voices of
 THEBES AND BCEOTIA 277

the Night, a Lover of Peace, a Giver of Good Gifts,

a God, a Beast, a Mystery. His worship, originating

among the gloomy Thracians and the mystical yet
sensuous Orientals, was late in winning its place in
cultivated Athens. Only with very great difficulty can
we discover the threads of belief which made out of the
newcomer a gracious lord of the vintage, a dispeller of
care and teacher of mirth, a prophet, a guide in all the
arts of civilization and, more mysteriously still, a suf-

fering god, both redeemer and redeemed, a companion

at Eleusis of Demeter and Persephone. Because, how-
ever, of the persistent clarity of the Greek imagination,
the god now and again emerges from amid the chaos
of functions and attributes in a concrete form of beauty.
In the Homeric Hymn written in his praise he is a
youth with dark hair and dark and smiling eyes stand-
ing on a headland that juts above the unharvested sea,
while the ocean winds blow about his shoulders a pur-
ple robe. To Euripides he is —
“ A man of charm and spell, from Lydian seas,
A head all gold and cloudy fragrancies,
A wine-red cheek, and eyes that hold the light
Of the very Cyprian.”

The distinguishing feature of all Dionysiac worship

was the frenzied raving of its votaries. Women es-

pecially were mastered by the strange desire to join

in the revels, and, since the intellectualized life of Athens

was hostile to insane manifestations of religious fervor,

Athenian women made frequent pilgrimages to places

278 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
where the wildness of nature welcomed the wildness
man. We have already seen them travel-
in the heart of
ling to the uplands of Parnassus. Mount Cithaeron
was another favourite gathering place. The women in
Aristophanes’s “ Thesmophoriazusae ” cry aloud: —
“ Sing, evoe ! and sing again,
Shout for Bacchus the glad refrain.
Cithaeron echoes around thee, hark!
And the mountain coverts green and dark,
And a roaring comes floating adown, between,
Through bosky gorge and rocky ravine.”

Perhaps the most adventurous would sometimes make

their way to the bleak hills near Pella, the capital of

Macedonia, where queen and peasant met in Bacchic

excesses. Euripides spent the last years of his life at

Pella, and it has been thought that there he conceived

the idea of writing a play to portray Dionysus’s tri-

umphal entrance into Thebes against the will of Pen-

theus. Be this as it may, certainly Thebes and Cithae-
ron are more than a perfunctory mise-en-scbne for the
“Bacchae.” In no other Greek play is the reader so
conscious of the presence of landscape.
Dionysus comes from the East to defend his mo-
ther’s memory and to establish his worship in her city.

Pentheus opposes him in spite of the wisdom of Cad-

mus and the warnings of the soothsayer Tiresias. The
god constrains the women of Thebes, including Pen-
theus’s mother and her sisters, who long ago had
tempted the young Semele to her destruction, to follow

him to Mount Cithaeron. Pentheus is then led to spy

 —

THEBES AND BCEOTIA 279

upon their revels. They take him for a wild beast and
his own mother tears him to pieces. At the end, re-
stored to an agonized reason, she becomes an exile

from her home. Cadmus goes to his fate among the

Illyrians. Dionysus is rapt from mortal sight in a cloud.

It is a disputed question whether Euripides was moved
to this portrayal of a cruel godhead by the subtlest im-

piety, or by a belated desire to be considered orthodox,

or by a realization of the savage power that lies at the
heart of life and cannot be gainsaid. At any rate he
has woven into the plot the pathos of which he is mas-
ter, in the reiterated suggestions of the tie between
parent and child : the young god stirred to triumphant
action by the memory of his dead mother; the living

mother wildly bringing her son’s head in from the

mountain, and calling upon him to come and glory in
her lion-hunting; the old father deciding to lead his
daughter back from the shadows of madness, even if

the path of truth ends in grief and pain. And the whole
nexus of religion, pathos, and inherited curse is spread
before us in colours of flame.
The play is pervaded by the dances and the songs of
the Maenads who have followed Dionysus
“ From Asia, from the dayspring that uprises,”

and who irresistibly draw to their ranks the matrons and

maidens of Thebes :
—
“All hail, O Thebes, thou nurse of Semele!
With Semele’s wild ivy crown thy tresses,
Oh, burst in bloom of wreathing bryony,
Berries and leaves and flowers;
28 o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Uplift the dark divine wand,
The oak -wand and the pine-wand,
And don thy fawn-skin, fringed in purity
With fleecy white, like ours.

“Oh, cleanse thee in the wands’ waving pride!

Yea, all men dance with us and pray,
shall
When Bromios companions shall guide
his
Hillward, ever hillward, where they stay,
The flock of the Believing,
The maids from loom and weaving
By the magic of his breath borne away.”

The picture of the women as they finally have taken

possession of Cithaeron is painted for Pentheus by a'

shepherd. Upon this passage and a few others in the

play rests Mr. Symonds’s discriminating statement
that “ the ‘
Bacchae,’ like the ‘
Birds,’ proves what other-
wise we might have hardly known, that there lacked not
Greeks for whom the ‘Tempest’ and ‘A Midsummer
Night’s Dream’ would have been intelligible.” And

for this magic not only Euripides’s brilliant fancy but

also Mount Cithaeron itself is responsible.

“ Our herded kine were moving in the dawn

Up to the peaks, the grayest, coldest time,
When the first rays steal earthward, and the rime
Yields, when I saw three bands of them. The one
Autonoe led, one Ino, one thine own
Mother, Agave. There beneath the trees
Sleeping they lay, like wild things flung at ease
In the forest; one half sinking on a bed
Of deep pine greenery; one with careless head
Amid the fallen oak leaves; all most cold

In purity — not as thywas told tale

Of wine-cups and wild music and the chase
For love amid the forest’s loneliness.”
 THEBES AND BCEOTIA 281

The lowing kine awake them and they gird on their

dappled fawn-skins :
—
“ Then they pressed
Wreathed ivy round their brows, and oaken sprays
And flowering bryony. And one would raise
Her wand and smite the rock, and straight a jet

Of quick bright water came. Another set

Her thyrsus in the bosomed earth, and there
Was red wine that the god sent up to her,
A darkling fountain. And if any lips
Sought whiter draughts, with dipping finger-tips
They pressed the sod, and gushing from the ground
Came springs of milk. And reed-wands ivy-crowned
Ran with sweet honey, drop by drop.”

The curse laid upon Cadmus destroyed all his daugh-

ters, and among his grandchildren not only Pentheus
but also Actaeon who, because he saw Artemis at her
bath in one of Cithaeron’s still pools, was torn to pieces

by his own hunting dogs. Cadmus’s only son, Polydorus,

and his son’s son, Labdacus, were strangely spared.
Then once more Nemesis rose to the pursuit. The son
of Labdacus was Laius, who was unwittingly murdered
by his son, CEdipus, and the doom of (Edipus is the
subject of the “(Edipus Tyrannus.”
Cithaeron still towers on the horizon; in its “winding
glens” the infant CEdipus had been exposed and res-

cued by a vagrant hireling in charge of mountain flocks.

But the play takes us back to the city, with its royal
palace and temples and market-place. As usual, it

is the Thebes of Sophocles’s day that is used for scen-

ery. The drama opens when the fruitful country has
282 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
been laid waste by a pestilence and her citizens are

praying to Artemis, whose temple stands in the Agora,

to Apollo at his oracular seat by the river Ismenus,

and to all the gods by the altar in front of the royal

palace. But in these few hints all localized interest is

exhausted. The austere and disciplined beauty of the

dramatic structure throws into high relief the pitiful-
ness and the terror of a father’s sin at work in the third
and fourth generation, and of the human struggle
against destiny. The universal truth of the tragedy as
apprehended by Sophocles was as independent of the
walls of Thebes as of the confines of the theatre in

Athens. And yet in modem Thebes, itself the shadow

of a greater past, we may realize afresh the catastrophe

that befell the ancient king. He had saved the city by

guessing the riddle of the Sphinx and thus destroying
her. He had been acclaimed as king in place of Laius,
slain by an unknown hand, and had married Iocasta,
Laius’s queen. Now he promises to save his people

from the pestilence by obeying the Delphic command

that the slayer of Laius shall be found and exiled. He
discovers that he is the murderer, and, in a crescendo
of horror, that he is the son both of the man he murdered
and of his own wife. In spite of their effort to kill him
in his infancy, he has reappeared, the innocent agent

of their destruction, as the irrefutable god of prophecy

had foretold. Iocasta hangs herself. (Edipus’s chil-
dren face a world that will remember against them the
sin of their father. He puts out his eyes, and goes into
 THEBES AND BCEOTIA 283

voluntary exile, defeated by fate, a broken-hearted

fugitive, not yet conscious that in the surrender of his
will to God he may atone and be at peace. Borne from
afar upon the quiet air of to-day we may hear ghostly
echoes of the songs of the people that watched him.
He was an example of the emptiness of life :
—
“ O generations of mankind,
How all your life I ever find
With Naught and Nothingness aligned!
For who, what man the wide world o’er,
Of happiness e’er gaineth more
Than only this — to have his own
He dreams, and as he dreams ’t is gone.
Thy fate, thine, CEdipus, beholding,
O luckless one, thy wretched fate,
And from it my opinion moulding
Naught mortal I congratulate.”

And he also exemplified the truth of Solon’s aphorism

that no one should be congratulated before the end :
—
“ Ye who dwell in Thebes our city, look, behold this CEdipus,
He who solved the fam’d enigma, and did prove himself the best.
Now he’s come to what an ocean of calamity and dread!
Well were then, being mortal, to that last and awful day
it

That we onward turn our vision and count no one fortunate

Till the race course he has finished and has reached life’s goal
unscathed.”

In spite of the repentance of CEdipus, the ancient

curse fell upon his children, and their dooms also be-

came the subjects of dramas. ^Eschylus, in the “ Seven

against Thebes,” deals with the story of Eteocles and
Polyneices, whose own folly was the immediate cause
of their ruin. They had agreed to rule Thebes alter-

nately, but Eteocles once in possession refused to ab-

284 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
dicate. Polyneices raises in Argos an army led by
Adrastus, with which he advances against his country.
Civil war follows, and the brothers kill each other.
This story gave ^Eschylus two dramatic opportunities
peculiarly suited to his genius. One was the handling
of the theme of Nemesis, not with grave calm like

Sophocles, but with gigantic vigour, with rough-hewn

figures of triple-crested waves of evil, harvests of blood,
chilling frosts of fear, with a penetrating insistence
upon the “black and full-grown curse” which shadows
city and citizens. Within its gloom Eteocles fights only

with the ardour of despair :

—
“ Since eagerly God urgeth this affair, draw lot,

Cocytus draw and, wind astern, sail down his wave!

Apollo hateth all the race of Labdacus.”

To relieve this gloom ^Eschylus uses his other dramatic

opportunity, that of describing with Homeric eloquence

the seven Argive warriors stationed at the seven gates
and the Theban defenders sent to meet them. In the
full-mouthed trimeters of the messenger who has seen
the enemy, and of Eteocles who is undaunted by his

report, echo stirringly the epic clash of arms, neigh-

ing of steeds, and war-cries of men. Shields of many

devices and crested helmets bedeck the heroes. Cour-
age adorns them all, from Amphiaraus, who foresees
disaster, to Parthenopaeus, the Arcadian metic, repay-
ing to Argos the cost of his nurture :
—
“ Now by his spear he swears — which he is confident
To reverence above the god or his own eyes —
 THEBES AND BCEOTIA 285

The town of the Cadmeans he will surely sack

In spite of Zeus. Thus cries aloud this fair-faced shoot
Of mother mountain-bred, a man though boy in years.
His downy beard is just appearing on his cheeks,
As youth’s prime makes it grow, the thick hair cropping out,
But he with spirit fierce, no maiden’s namesake this,
And terrible bright eye, comes up to take his post.
Nor yet without a vaunt stands he beside the gate,
For on his bronze-wrought shield, his body’s circled screen,
Our city’s shame he wields, the raw flesh rav’ning Sphinx,

Fast riveted with bolts, her body burnish’d-bright

Repousse work, and under in her grasp she bears
A man Cadmean, that upon this warrior
Most thickly fly the bolts. ’T is likely, now he’s come,
He’ll not be retail-dealer in the trade of war,
Nor will he bring discredit on his long road’s track.”

Euripides used the same story in his “Tyrian Wo-

men,” but openly scorned the Homeric note of y£schy-

lus. With the enemy at the gates there is no time to

describe the warriors, and the emphasis is shifted from

the horror of the curse to the burden on Iocasta’s heart.
Still living, she seeks to reconcile her sons, and at last
kills herself on their dead bodies. Polyneices is not
only his country’s enemy but a homesick man whose
eyes grow wet when he sees the familiar altars and
Dirce and the old gymnasium, and who begs his mo-
ther just before he dies to bury him in Thebes. Anti-
gone is brave enough to support her mother, comfort
her father, and promise to bury her brother, but so
tenderly young that an old servant helps her up a
cedam stairway to the palace roof that she may see
the Argive army in the plain. Another vision of brave
286 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
youth is given in the character of Menoeceus, last virgin
descendant of the Sown Men. Informed by Tiresias
that by a voluntary death he can save Thebes, he evades
his father and makes one of the patriotic speeches that

never failed to thrill an Athenian audience in the Diony-

siac theatre :
—
“ Now I will go and, standing on the rampart’s heights
Over the deep dark dragon-pen, the very spot
The seer described minutely, I myself will slay
And liberate my country.”

The fame of Antigone was secured by Sophocles.

Thebes seems to have been always noted for the beauty
of its women, from Semele, the bride of Zeus, to the tall

yellow-haired ladies admired by Dicaearchus, and

Aeschylus suggests the loveliness of Antigone as Euripi-
des suggests her youthfulness. But through Sophocles
we know her unadorned as the embodiment of loyalty
and courage. On the sunny morning that followed the
defeat of the Argives, when the eye of golden day had
at last arisen over Dirce’s stream, she buried her
brother and defied Creon’s edict, which forbade burial
to an enemy of the country, in a noble speech of justifi-

cation :
—
“ Not Zeus hath published this decree, not Zeus for me,

Neither hath Justice, house-mate with the gods below,

Laws like to this defined for men. Nor did I think
Within these edicts, these of thine, such strength inhered
That, being a mere mortal, thou could’st override
Th’ unwritten and unfailing statutes of the gods.
For not of yesterday nor of to-day their life,
But ever from all time. None knows their origin.”
 THEBES AND BCEOTIA 287

The Athenian reverence for Law made natural an

even more magnificent reiteration of this idea in the

“(Edipus Tyrannus:” —
“Be mine the lot to win pure reverence in every word and
work for which the Laws are set on high, in Heaven’s ether
born as children of Olympus, him alone; no mortal nature
among men gave birth to them nor ever shall oblivion lull
them to slumber. Great is God within them and he grows
not old.”

Beneath a neighbouring hill Antigone was walled up

in one of the rock-cut caverns that abound in Greece.
Her lover Hsemon, Creon’s son, kills himself within the
door. His mother takes her life, and Creon is left to a
late and impotent knowledge of the truth. Before the
end the chorus of Theban girls think of Antigone’s
betrothal and in a famous hymn to Love flash brief

fire upon the lonely moral heights of the play. But sud-
denly the song dissolves into a lamentation which still

haunts the ear in Thebes :

—
“But already I too past all bounds of the law
Am swept onward myself as I look on this sight,

And the fount of my tears I no longer can check,

When Antigone here I behold as she fares
To that chamber where all shall be resting.”

In historic Thebes heroism had lost its lustre. When

Greece was tested, the result in this city is revealed in

the laconic words of Herodotus, that among the Greeks

who sent earth and water to Xerxes were the Thebans
and the other Boeotians, except the Plataeans and the
288 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Thespians. “ The grace of the olden time is fallen upon
sleep,” Pindar complained after recounting the “noble
deeds” of the heroic age. His own sympathy with the
national cause is clearly seen in another ode written
after the expulsion of the Persians: “Some god has
turned aside the stone of Tantalus from overhead, a
load that Hellas might not brook.”
Later, when it was regarded as a political asset to

have opposed the Persians, the Thebans defended their

failure on the ground that they had had neither con-

stitutional government nor popular freedom. A cabal
of selfish nobles had forced them into an action abhor-
rent to themselves. Certainly it is true that Thebes was
always aristocratic rather than democratic. And it is

worth noting that Pindar in his art was the true son of
such a city. The great festivals of Greece were the
immediate inspiration of his extant odes, while his life

in Athens and his journeys to Sicily and to the eastern

islands furnished him with much poetic material. But

as far as the “soaring eagle” is to be identified with a
birthplace, we may ascribe to his aristocratic origin
and early environment his persistent selection of the
things that were distinguished and splendid.
At the time of the Peloponnesian War Thebes ap-
pears as the bitter opponent of Athens. But later the

shifting politics of the time brought about an alliance

between these two ancient enemies and set Thebes
against Sparta. Her position, however, was one of
difficulty and humiliation, buffeted about as she was
 THEBES AND BCEOTIA 289

between the greater powers. Finally, in the first quarter

of the fourth century, under the influence of one man,
Thebes entered upon a period of power and distinction.

Brief as it was, it served to awaken the sleeping glory

of the old days and to make men once more mindful
of Thebes of the golden shield. Epaminondas inspired
a young Boeotian party, roused the Theban people,
opposed Sparta and defeated her by new strategic skill

at Leuctra in 371 b. c., renewed the ancient confeder-

acy of Boeotian towns, won the support of neighbouring
states and the sympathy of Delphi, and finally marched
into the Peloponnesus to oppose the unrighteous de-
signs of Sparta. At the battle of Mantinea in Arcadia

he lost his life, before his work for Thebes and Hellas
was finished. It is greatly to be regretted that a career
so admirable and a personality so original should not

have been interpreted by some adequate historian or

poet. He lived too late for the enthusiasm of Herodotus
or the justice of Thucydides. That Xenophon, through
his hatred of Thebes, failed to talk much of the Theban
general is no great loss to our imaginative understand-
ing of a great man. Pausanias in his sincere admiration
contributes something: “Of the famous captains of
Greece Epaminondas may well rank as the first or at

least as second to none. For whereas the Lacedaemo-

nian and Athenian generals were seconded by the
ancient glories of their countries as well as by soldiers
of a temper to match, Epaminondas found his country
disheartened and submissive to foreign dictation, yet
2 9o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
he soon raised them to the highest place.” Plutarch’s
“Life of Epaminondas” has not been preserved, but
this loss is partially repaired by his “ Life of Pelopidas,”
the companion in arms and the passionate imitator
of the hero, and by his return now and again in other
writings to a contemplation of the character of Epami-
nondas. Out of slight sketches like these and out of
the second-rate histories we must fashion our portrait.
Epaminondas was a great soldier and a leader of men.
These facts need not be obscured by the other fact that
he did not, probably could not, establish a national
unity strong enough to live on after him. With him
died the hopes of Thebes. His fear of this must have
been his heaviest burden. Patriotism with him not only
excluded satisfaction in his own power, but included
patience under attack. To us, familiarized with mag-
nanimous patriotism in many nations, this seems more
admirable than strange. But against the background
of Greek history the statesmen are conspicuous who
could have entirely understood the obedient spirit in
which Socrates accepted condemnation from the city

he had tried to serve. In Epaminondas also appear

some of those qualities which his contemporary Plato
thought essential to a wise king. He loved philosophy
more than power, and his early training had been in-

tellectual and moral rather than martial. Like Pindar,

he belonged to the oldest nobility of Thebes, tracing

his pedigree to Cadmus, but his family had long lived

modestly, dissociated from the more vulgar aristocracy,

 THEBES AND BCEOTIA 291

and devoted to the intellectual life. Philosophers ex-

iled from Southern Italy came to Thebes as well as
Athens, and among them Lysis of Tarentum exer-

cised a great influence upon the young Epaminondas.

The boy’s gentle nature and hardy will furnished an
ideal soil for the seeds of the Pythagorean doctrine,
which, before the days of St. Francis of Assisi, taught
the beauty of poverty, of temperance, and of humility,
and insisted upon a moral earnestness and devotion to

duty. Epaminondas, the conqueror and liberator, was

at all times a “practical” follower of the religion in
which he had been nurtured. And with something of
his own fervour he inflamed the Sacred Band, that com-
pany of “friends” like Epaminondas and Pelopidas,
who inspired each other to valour and to virtue and were
united in the cause of patriotism. In this appeal to the
chivalric gallantry of youth Epaminondas was thor-
oughly Greek. In the unmarred consistency of his own
life he was unapproached even by his closest followers.
As Pindar in his generation was “ heavy at heart” over

Thebes, so the martial leader must often have brooded

same city. To travellers
in lonely impotence over the
hemay appear, as dusk comes on, in the guise in which
men found him on an ancient holiday, walking aloof,
ungarlanded and thoughtful. “ I am keeping guard,”
he said, “that all of you may be drunk and revel

securely.”
The visible remains of ancient Thebes are at present
very few, and although archaeological research may
292 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
reveal sites and fragments of great interest, we shall

never see here ruins still clothed upon with beauty.

Nor is the situation of the town impressive enough to
attract travellers who are indifferent to memories of the
past. The chief charm of the place is its view of an
horizon broken by Cithaeron, Helicon, and distant Par-
nassus by ;
Mount Ptoon, where men listened to Apollo,

and the Mountain of the Sphinx.

Fragments of walls are all that remain of the city’s
fortifications. Of the gates no traces have been found.
Pausanias speaks of seeing all seven gates, but he de-
scribes only three of them, and some scholars have
argued that the other four were invented by the lost

epic writers who first gave literary form to the Theban

legends. Certainly the poets themselves, ^Eschylus,
Euripides, and the later Alexandrians, differ in their

lists. The only important ruins of a building are those

recently reported to have been discovered by the Greek
archaeologists near the Agora. They represent a palace
of the “Mycenaean” period which met its destruction
by fire and which has been identified, under the name
of “The House Cadmus,” with the ruins of “the
of
bridal chambers of Harmonia and Semele” seen by
Pausanias. From the historic period nothing remains,
although with the help of broken pieces of marble and
stone we may try to imagine the Temple of Ismenian
Apollo, second only to Delphi as the seat of this oracu-
lar god, in the place of the present church of St. Luke
on the hill that rises by the river St. John.
 THEBES AND BCEOTIA 293

Dismantled as Thebes was in the time of Pausanias,

his guides showed him many places which were asso-
ciated with Pindar or with the legends embodied in the

Attic drama. There was the Observatory of Tiresias,

where the blind prophet had listened intently to the

sharp cries and whirring wings of the prescient birds.

As if ageless in sorrow, he pervades each drama on the
curse of Cadmus with his futile vision of the truth, —
“ His robe drawn over
His old, sightless head,
Revolving inly
The doom of Thebes.”

There was also the tomb of Menoeceus, and near by a

pillar marking the scene of the duel between Eteocles
and Polyneices. The immediate neighbourhood was
still called the “ Dragging of Antigone,” because over
it Antigone had to drag her brother’s heavy body.
In addition to the great Temple of Apollo, with its

statues by Phidias and Scopas, Pausanias saw the

Temple of Artemis, with a statue by Scopas; the
Temple of Heracles, the Champion, the gables of
which held the representations by Praxiteles of the
demi-god’s twelve labours; the Temple of Dionysus;
and the Temple of Cybele and Pan erected by Pindar
so near to his own house that he often heard the music
of the vesper services. Pindar’s house is as unknown
now as if it had not been twice saved when Thebes was
sacked, once by the Athenians, who remembered his
praises of their city, and once by Alexander, who rever-
enced his genius.
294 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
While these things are irretrievably lost or await the

spade, streams of living water seem to link the present

to the past. The little river of Hagios Johannis has but
changed its ancient name of Ismenus, and the Plakio-
tissa, made by several streams which rise south of
Thebes, is easily transformed into the “ Dircaean

streams.” Some old masonry and tablets bearing in-

scriptions mark the tanks which irrigate the neighbour-
ing gardens. Thebes still boasts in trees and flowers a
reminiscence of its ancient fame for bloom and bright-
ness.

Dirce was the queen of Thebes who cruelly treated

her husband’s niece, Antiope. Antiope’s sons, Amphion
and Zethus, ordered to execute their mother’s sentence,
bound Dirce instead to the violent bull. Only a brief

fragment of the play by Euripides, called “Antiope,”

has been preserved, but the sculptured group known
Famese Bull has made the story tritely familiar.
as the
Amphion also raised the walls of Thebes by the music
of his lyre, a story seized upon by the poets from Homer
to Tennyson.
A lively stream now called Paraporti flows into the
Plakiotissa on the southwest, and Theban women use
it for their washing, unconcerned with its ancient name

of “ Spring of Ares.” The cave near it was the Dragon’s

Lair, and from the part of the acropolis that rose above
it Menoeceus plunged to his death. To the northeast,
in the tiny suburb of Hagii Theodori, bubbles the
spring of St. Theodore, anciently called the Spring
 THEBES AND BCEOTIA 295

of (Edipus because in it the king washed his guilty

hands.
The events of the heroic age, if they are baldly cata-
logued in prose, lose for us their charm and their signifi-

cance. Their ineffaceable reality to the historic Greeks

may be illustrated by a story current in antiquity. At
a conference in Arcadia an Athenian envoy taunted the
Thebans and the Argives with having begotten the
patricide (Edipus and the matricide Orestes. “Yes,”
answered Epaminondas, “but Thebes and Argos
exiled them and Athens received them.” And yet he
would have rejoiced could he have known that the
genius of Athens, in receiving the wandering Theban
legends, had given them an immortal life.
 CHAPTER XIV
BCEOTIA, CONTINUED
“ Helicon maidens, the Muses ! Their name be my prelude in singing!
They keeping have Helicon’s mountain, majestical, sacred.
in their
There they go threading the dances by violet pools of the fountain,
Soft are their feet as they circle the altar of mighty Cronion.”
Hesiod, Theogony.

paminondas told the Boeotians that their coun-

E
icance.
try was the stage
fought on their
of Ares,

soil
and several battles
were of national
At Leuctra Epaminondas defeated Sparta. At
signif-

Tanagra Athenians and Spartans first tried their

strength against each other. At Delium the Athenians

were defeated by the Boeotians in a struggle in which
Alcibiades and Socrates took part. Alcibiades, who
saved his master’s life, afterwards told their friends that
in the retreat Socrates behaved exactly as he did in the
streets of Athens, “turning his eyes observantly from
side to side, though drenched with rain, and calmly
looking about on friend and foe.” Above all, at Chae-
ronea and Plataea occurred momentous events.
Late in September of the year 479 b. c., one hundred
and forty-one years before Greek liberty was surren-
dered at Chaeronea, there was fought near Plataea, in
the plain between Cithaeron and the Asopus, the last
 BCEOTIA 297

of the battles “wherein the Medes of the crooked bows

were overthrown.” The work begun at Marathon was
here completed. “ The rest of the army died in Boeotia”

was an ^Eschylean line calculated to arouse an Athenian

audience. And an exquisite Herodotean story was
fostered if not created by the desire of the Greeks to
believe that the Persians had a foreboding of their dis-
aster. Herodotus had the story from Thersander of
Orchomenus. A Theban gave a dinner to Mardonius
and fifty Persian nobles. The Persian who shared
Thersander’ s couch said to him: —
“ ‘
Since here at table thou hast shared my food and
my libation, I would leave with thee a memorial of my
judgment that thou too, informed beforehand, mayest
know how to plan for thy advantage. Dost see these
Persians feasting here, and that host which we left

encamping by the river? Of all these within brief space

of time thou wilt behold a few survivors only.’ And
as the Persian spoke these words he let fall many tears.

Whereat Thersander, struck with wonder at his speech,

replied: ‘Well, then, ’t were fitting to say this to Mar-

donius and to those next after him in honour.’ To that
the other said: ‘My friend, what needs must happen
by the will of God it is not possible for man to turn
aside, and then, too, none is wont to yield to warnings,

however credible, and many of us Persians, although

our eyes are opened, follow on, constrained by neces-
sity. This pang is bitterest of all, for men to know
much and to have power over naught.’ ”
298 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
The battle of Plataea occurred because Mardonius,
the general of Xerxes, undertook to oppose the Spartan
Pausanias, commander of the Greek allies, as he was
making his way from the south, over the passes of
Cithaeron, to attack disloyal Thebes. The Plataeans,
true to the patriotism they had displayed at Marathon
and Artemisium, joined the Greeks. The battle lasted
for some days and was, as usual, retarded and com-
plicated by the inability of the Greeks to cooperate;

but it ended in the defeat and death of Mardonius,

the capture of the luxurious Persian camp, and the
final discouragement of the Orient. Herodotus’s ac-
count of the battle not only contains strategic details but
is full of episodes which, even if they are but traditional
or the creations of his own audacious vivacity, illus-

trate the truth that the conflict was one of civilizations

and of ideals. The Persian cavalry leader, Macistius,
glows in scarlet and gold, and when he is killed his men
fill all Boeotia with the clamour of their grief. The
Greek officers show his naked body to their soldiers

because it is “ worth seeing for its stature and beauty.”

Mardonius gallops in on his snow-white charger where
the fight is hottest and leads to death the picked guard
of one thousand men, the flower of the Persian army.
A Spartan kills him, but Pausanias refuses to maltreat
his dead body even though the Persians had crucified
the body of the Spartan Leonidas at Thermopylae. In
the camp of Mardonius are found a silver throne, a
brass manger for the horses, and countless utensils of
 BCEOTIA 299

Oriental luxury. Pausanias orders served on the same

spot a Spartan supper.
Modem historians have complained that Herodotus
perpetuated and “ consecrated ” the illusion of the Athe-
nians that they played a worthy part in the battle,
while in reality they were but half-hearted and the
battle was won by the “discipline and prowess of the
Spartan hoplites.” Herodotus did, however, admit
that though the Athenians fought well the Lacedae-
monians fought better, and when, with characteristic

Greek emphasis on individuals, he discussed which

single men were most courageous, he assigned the first

four places to Spartans.

In any case the Spartans did not fail to receive full
credit for the victory from their contemporaries. Pin-
dar called Plataea the glory of the Lacedaemonians as
Salamis was the glory of the Athenians. And iLschylus,
even within the Dionysiac theatre, attributed the Per-
sian defeat to the “Dorian spear.” Perhaps no one
regretted that both the Athenian and Spartan dead who
were buried on the battlefield were honoured in epi-

taphs by Simonides. For the Athenians he wrote with

dignity :
—
“If valour’s best apportionment
Be noble death,
To us, elect, hath Fortune lent
This victor wreath.
For Hellas Freedom’s crown to gain
We made the quest,
And ageless glory we attain
Here laid to rest.”
300 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
But the Spartans inspired his finer eloquence :
—
“ Glory unquenchable their country
Hath on her brow,
But death’s pale cloud the men who crowned her
Enfoldeth now.
Yet, dead, they die not. Glory’s herald
Descends the dome
And from the halls of Death, triumphant,
Now leads them home.”

When Plataea next appears in a great passage of lit-

erature she is shorn of her glory, the helpless prey of

a foreign enemy and a hostile neighbour. During the
Peloponnesian War, in 431 b. c., the Spartans con-
quered the city and, to please the Thebans, razed it to

the ground. Thucydides’s account of the tragic oc-

currence includes the speeches made to the Spartans

by the Plataeans, who prayed for their lives, and by the

Thebans, who urged their murder. That no speeches
in Thucydides are more dramatic has been generally
conceded from the time of Dionysius of Halicarnassus.
They have made it bitter even now to remember that
the selfish opportunism and merciless rancour of the
Thebans prevailed against the memories of “the great
days of old,” invoked by the Plataeans: “Look yon-
der to the sepulchres of your fathers slain by the Medes
and buried in this land. Them we have honoured year
by year with public offerings of raiment and such other
things as usage calls for. . . . Pausanias gave them
burial here because he felt that he was placing them
with friends and in a friendly land. But you, if you
 BCEOTIA 301

shall slay us and shall make Plataea Theban land, what

do you else in this than leave your fathers and your kins-
men, bereft of honours that are theirs, among murderers
and in a hostile land ? Nay more, you will actually en-
slave a country in which the Hellenes won their liberty

and bring to desolation sanctuaries of the gods in which

they prayed before they gained mastery over the Medes.”
The desolation fell. Later the little town was rebuilt,

destroyed once more, and finally restored, though

somewhat meanly, in the time of Alexander. Now
not even a modern village brings life to the ancient

site. Only ruins of the Alexandrian walls remain.

Boeotia had several important religious centres out-
side of Thebes. More penetrating than the trumpet
of war were the voices that called the Greeks of north
and south, and even the barbarians of the east, to the
sanctuary of oracular Apollo on the slopes of Mount
Ptoon, or to the oracle of Trophonius (a local deity
probably to be identified with Zeus) at Lebadeia, which
is beautifully situated on the western side of the Copaic
plain looking toward Helicon and Parnassus. The
Ptoon precinct was already abandoned in Plutarch’s
time, and even more deserted than it is to-day when
archaeologists outnumber the occasional shepherds
in search of mountain pasture. But the oracle of

Lebadeia retained its sanctity into Roman times and

was consulted by both Plutarch and Pausanias. In
our day the same river in which the suppliants used
to bathe, in preparation for the difficult sacred rites,
302 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
turns the mills and factories of one of the busiest in-
dustrial centres of northern Greece.
Religion in Boeotia, as everywhere in Greece, fur-
nished an artistic impulse. Contests of poetry and
music were held at almost every centre. Architecture,
sculpture, and painting were represented by the most
famous masters. A temple renowned for its beauty
was that of the Graces at Orchomenus. Within it, on a
happy day in the fifth century, a chorus of boys lustily

sang an ode written by Pindar for one of their fellows

who had won a foot-race in Pisa’s famous valley. The
young champion had doubtless illustrated the influ-

ence of his native divinities whom the poet celebrates :

—
“Oye who have your dwelling in the land of goodly steeds
that shares the waters of Cephisus, Queens of radiant
Orchomenus, O Graces famed in song, ye Guardians of the
Minyans in ages gone, give ear! To you I pray! For by
your gift come all things sweet and pleasant unto man —
his wisdom, beauty, and the sheen of victory. Nay, not
the gods themselves can lord it over dance or festival with-
out the Graces pure, for as comptrollers of all heaven’s
deeds they have their thrones beside Apollo, Python-slayer
with the golden bow, and reverence th’ Olympian Father’s
majesty eterne.”

To modems the most familiar of all the shrines of

Boeotia is Muses on Mount Helicon. So
that of the
familiar, indeed, has it become through tradition and
poetry that its geographical position is as unimportant

as that of Raphael’s Parnassus. It almost perplexes us

 BCEOTIA 303

to localize Helicon as the eastern peak, now called

Zagora, of the southern portion of the group of moun-

tains that lie between the Copaic plain arid the Gulf of
Corinth and to
;
know that at the northern foot of this
peak still nestles the valley, green and shady and tra-

versed by a mountain stream, where once foregathered

the iris-haired, golden-snooded Muses. Hippocrene
even, struck out by the hoof of Pegasus as he flew
toward heaven, is identified with the modern Kryo-
pegadi, a very cold and clear perennial spring high up
on the eastern side of the mountain within a little green
glade encircled by fir trees. Helicon is still the home
of fir-woods, oak groves and strawberry shrubs. Pau-
sanias said that nowhere else could the goats find
sweeter berries, and nowhere else could be found so
many healing herbs. Hellebore, the ancient cure for
madness, grew here in abundance.
In spite of the almost incalculable importance of the
worship of the Muses and their pervasive presence in
poetry, Greek literature scarcely concerns itself with

their localized abode. Sophocles breaks the strain of

the “CEdipus Tyrannus” by a fleeting vision of the

nymphs sporting with Dionysus on the far-off heights

of Helicon. And Hesiod was inspired to write his “ The-
ogony” by a vision of the Muses that came to him as
he slept on the mountain “ majestical, sacred:” —
“ High on the summit of Helicon chorals they sing to their dancing,
Lovely, desire-enchaining, yet strong and with supple feet glanc-
ing.
304 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Thence in tumultuous riot, with veils of the darkness enringing,
Onward they fare in the night, and lovely the voice of their singing.”

For the most part it is only in Alexandrian poetry, from

whichRoman poetry derived a large part of the material
which it passed on to modem poetry, that we find
Helicon and Hippocrene figuratively used as sources
of inspiration.

Certain Boeotian towns illustrate other traditions of

culture. Thespiae, in the territory of Plataea, was used
by Cicero to illustrate what was so little understood
and so greatly scorned by the Romans — the Greek
love of art. Nothing could so embitter the conquered
people of Greece as to take from them or pretend to
buy from them their works of art. “Believe me,”
Cicero urges, “no community in the whole of Greece or
Asia ever sold of its own accord to anybody any statue
or picture or civic ornament. For the Greeks take mar-
vellous delight in things which we despise. What would
the Thespians take for their Eros, the only thing that
attracts visitors to their town ? ” This was the Praxitelean
statue which the sculptor himself ranked with his Faun

as his best work and which Phryne obtained from him

and presented to her native city. Eros was the tutelar
divinity of the place, originally worshipped in the form
of an unwrought stone. The statue, called forth by the
aesthetic taste of a later age and passionately appreciated
by the people, was taken to Rome by Caligula, returned
by Claudius, stolen again by Nero. Pausanias saw only
a copy when he was at Thespiae. Now no copy like the
 BCEOTIA 305

familiar Capitoline copy of the Faun supplies us with

half knowledge. But a visible symbol of Thespiae’s other

claim to remembrance has been left to us, to enrich the

fragmentary wall and the few foundations that alone
at present mark the ancient site. Not only did the city
share in the victory of Plataea, but more daringly in
earlier years, when the struggle with Persia was on the
“razor’s edge” of uncertainty, she had sent her strong-
est men to die with Leonidas at Thermopylae. The
fragments of a stone lion similar to the lion of Chaeronea
are thought to mark the grave of these sons of Thespiae
who were inspired by —
“ An ardour not of Eros’ lips.”

In the eastern valley of the Asopus, or Vourieni, lie

the not inconsiderable remains of ancient Tanagra,

a city more popularly known to-day for its artistic taste

than any other Greek city, except Athens. As early

as 1874 excavations of its necropolis began to yield in
extraordinary abundance the small terra-cotta figures
which now adorn many museums, and in copies, more
or less successful, have become a staple article of mod-
em trade. These figurines, rough in finish but scrupu-
lously lovely in shape, were objects of familiar use to

the Tanagrians, being thrown into graves at burials.

Other things in the city implied more civic pride.
Pausanias mentions approvingly the unusually good
taste of the inhabitants in separating their religious

buildings from the business and residence portions

3 o6 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
of the city. And Dicaearchus is enthusiastic over their
fine houses, adorned with porticoes and encaustic
paintings. Literature also had its place, for here lived

Corinna, a woman of no mean poetic talent. Pausanias

saw her tomb in an honoured place in the city and a
picture of her in the Gymnasium binding on her head
a fillet to celebrate a victory over Pindar at Thebes.
With unexpected acumen he remarks that she prob-
ably owed her victory partly to the fact that she wrote
in a dialect intelligible to the Boeotians, and partly to

her beauty. Modems know her through the story that

she advised Pindar to use mythological allusions, and
after his first experiment told him that she had meant
him to sow with the hand, not with a sack and through
;

her own haunting fragment of song: “Among the

white-armed women of Tanagra, a city made famous
by sweet soprano voices.” Such evidences of culture
are the more surprising when we leam from Dicaearchus
that Tanagra was a town of farmers. Their bluff
straightforwardness, their kindliness and their simple

living greatly impressed him in comparison with the

insolence and dissipation of the Thebans.
Dicaearchus describes also with a few graphic words
the inhabitants of Anthedon, a fishing town on the
Gulf of Euboea: “They are almost all fishermen, earn-
ing their livelihood by their hooks, by the purple shell,

and by sponges. They grow old on the beach, among

the seaweed and in their huts. They are all men of
ruddy countenance and spare figure; their nails are
 BGEOTIA 307

worn away by reason of working constantly in the sea.” *

This town, — still lovely, it is said, when the sunset illu-

mines the lilac hills of Euboea and rose-colour clouds

float above the little fishing-boats in the bay, — furnished
to literature an important character in Glaucus, a
fisherman who, by eating a certain grass, became a sea-
god with the gift of prophecy. Many tales were told
of him from time to time, especially by seafaring men.
^Eschylus wrote two plays, not now extant, with him
as the central figure, and thence the subject passed into
the poetic storehouse of the Alexandrian playwrights.
Plato made use of the legend in one of his noblest
presentations of idealism. The soul marred by its

association with the body and with the evils of human

life is like the old sea-god, overgrown with shellfish and
seaweed, wounded and broken by the action of the
waves. But if the soul would always love wisdom and
pursue the divine, it would be lifted out of the sea in
which it now is and be forever disencumbered of its

rocky covering.
South of Anthedon, on the strait of Euripus, lies

Aulis, of stately memory. To us as to Odysseus it is,

as it were, but “yesterday or the day before” that the

Achaean ships were gathering in Aulis freighted with
trouble for Priam and the Trojans, and hecatombs
were being offered on the altars beneath a beautiful
plane tree by a stream of bright water. Here too Iphi-
geneia was sacrificed at the altar of Artemis. The story
* Translated by Frazer.
308 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
is told by Euripides, in the “Iphigeneia in Aulis,” in a
way to bring out the latent heroism of the young.
Iphigeneia grieves to leave the sunlight and clings to her
mother, but in the end with splendid daring offers her-
self a willing sacrifice: “Mother, hear my words,” she
cries, —
“ Not for thyself alone, but for the Hellenes all

Thou barest me.”

In the lyric recital of ^Eschylus she is pathetically the

victim :
—
“ Father, father! thus she prayed them,
But nor tears nor girl’s youth stayed them,
Umpire captains keen for war.
To his helpers showed her sire
How, like kid, above the altar
Fainting in her robes, still higher
They should hold her, should not falter,
And, lest curse his house should blight,
Ward the fair lips, guard aright,
With the mouth-gag’s muzzling might.

“ Her saffron robe letting sweep to the ground,

She smote in turn her slayers round
With bolt from her eyes, as in picture plain,
Asking for grace. And to speak she was fain,
For aforetimes oft at the tables laden
In her father’s halls she would sing as maiden,
And with virginal voice in his fortune rejoice
When the happy triple libation was poured,
With her loving father in loving accord.

“ What came thereafter I nor saw nor do I say.

But arts of Calchas knew nor let nor stay.

Justice freights the scale with woe
And taught by suffering we know.”
 BCEOTIA 309

Pausanias saw the temple of Artemis, and within it

as a revered relic a piece of the wood from the Homeric

plane tree. The spring was also pointed out to him, and
on a neighbouring hill the threshold of Agamemnon’s
hut. Those were happy days for sight-seers. To-day
a traveller can find only a few remains of the temple,
near the ruined chapel of St. Nicholas, a little dis-

tance up the valley which stretches inland from the

shore. But he may stand on the beach and watch tides

as strange and irregular as they were when ^Eschylus

described the Achaean host, troubled and held fast —
“where tide ’gainst tide comes surging back near by the
shores of Aulis opposite to Chalkis.”

The heart of Boeotia’s literature lies in the Hesiodic

poetry. Hesiod has a dual personality. As a half mythi-
cal “titulary president” of a school of poetry localized
near Mount Helicon and rivalling the epic school, in

Asia Minor and the islands, whose eponymous hero

was Homer; as traditional author of the “Theogony,”
which was the manual of mythology for the Greeks,

ranking in educational value almost with the Iliad

and Odyssey, and of the “Works and Days,” which
was a collection of widely accepted ethical maxims,
he seems to lose his home in Boeotia and to belong like

Homer to the whole of Greece. But unlike Homer he

is universally believed to have existed, and to have
written a definite body of poetry which only later came
to include many additions by unknown hands. We
3 io GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
may, then, for our purposes, justly consider him as an
individual with local habitation and a name. His fam-
ily, either before his birth or while he was a child, immi-
grated from an iTolian colony in Asia Minor to ^Eolian

Boeotia. They were farmers and lived in the little town

of Ascra, which was perched on a conical hill opposite
the larger mass of Helicon, to the north of the entrance

to the valley of the Muses. It was destroyed by Thes-

piae, and was deserted in Pausanias’s time. But “the
tower” was standing which is still a conspicuous
landmark and gives to the entire hill the name of
Pyrgaki. Modern travellers are attracted by the wide
and beautiful view which the hill commands.
Ascra itself, in Hesiod’s peevish opinion, was a miser-
able village, bad in winter, abominable in summer, good
at no time. He could, however, when a boy, tend his
sheep on the slopes of Helicon and see the Muses in his
dreams. At some time he had a lawsuit with his brother
about his inheritance, and became embittered by dis-

appointment. This and the difficulties of his life as a

husbandman led him to see the world in the hard colours
of uncorrected realism. Only a few enthusiasts pretend
to find in his “Works and Days” the beauty of the
“ Georgies,” in w hich Virgil was his avowed imitator.
T

The Roman poet combined with a delicate temperament

the education of his age, and tried to show to his coun-

trymen, the already weary masters of the world, the

victims of an over-luxurious civilization, that in farming
lay a potent charm and a remedial grace. But Hesiod
 BCEOTIA 311

lived in the eighth century b. c. and farmed for his living.

To us, grown more democratic than the later Greeks and

Romans, his chief appeal is that of the “mouthpiece
of obscure handworkers in the earliest centuries of
Greek history, the poet of their daily labours, sufferings

and wrongs, the singer of their doubts and infantine

,,
reflections on the world in which they had to toiL

As agricultural life is concerned with certain per-

manent factors in human experience and is also pro-,

verbially conservative, Hesiod’s picture of it is prob-

ably true, in its broad outlines, of after centuries and
of many another place than Boeotia. Later Greek
writers were not attracted by the homely subject, and
the “Works and Days” is the sole specimen in Greece
of a kind of literature which is practically bom out of
the soil and out of nature’s varied processes.
In this didactic poem we are introduced to a commu-
nity whose work and pleasures were governed by the

seasons. The white blossoms of the spring, the swal-

low lifting her wing at dawn, the song of the cuckoo,
the tender green of the fig tree, the early rains, all

meant the planting and nursing of the seeds. The

summer heat that brought the cicada’s shrill cry
brought, too, a little leisure for picnicking in the shade
of a rock by a stream, off creamy cake and goat’s

milk and wine. But in the cooler hours the corn

had to be threshed on the stone floors, and the hay
stored in the barns. In the autumn the falling leaves

and the crane’s migratory call showed that wood must

312 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
be cut, ploughshares made, the proper servants and
steers procured, and the grapes gathered and pressed.
In the winter the industrious man had to look after

his household store, much as he was tempted to linger

by the forge and saunter in the warm porticoes. For

in January the whirlwind of the north often swept
down from Thrace, the Earth howled and long and
loud the forests roared. The oaks and pines were hurled
from hilltops. The beasts of the wild wood crept low
to escape the drifting snow, the oxen and goats cowered
in their stalls. Only the young daughter in her pretty
chamber under her mother’s roof was safe. The farmer
had to put on thicker underclothing and a woollen
coat and oxhide shoes lined with thick socks, and pull

his cap down over his ears as he hurried home at night-

fall. Thus intertwined in Hesiod’s Boeotian mind were
poetry and prudence. And prudence predominated
in his catalogue of the lucky and unlucky days which
next to the seasons regulated the farmer’s life. From
sheep-shearing to marriage everything must have its

proper day. This was true also of seafaring life, for

which Hesiod gives rather grudging directions. Sailors

and fishermen, potters and smiths mingled in friendly

intercourse with the husbandmen. Beggars and va-
grantscame and went. And news of the distant world
and a kindling of dull fancy came with the wandering
minstrels. Standards in such a world were simple.
Men ate asphodel and mallows and had a creed as
pleasing and as natural : to work hard and save a little
 BCEOTIA 3i3

every year, to be hospitable and neighbourly, to be

good to one’s parents and faithful to one’s wife, never
to abuse a trust and to sacrifice to the gods with clean
hands and a pure heart.
Hesiod has little to say of holidays, but as Boeotia
grew older celebrations of all kinds seem to have flour-
ished conspicuously, even for Greece, which took so
kindly to the bright colours, lively crowds, and stately
processions of feast days. Many of these, occurring
quadrennially, attracted delegates and visitors from
other states, even from contemptuous Athens. Such
were the Musaea, the great national contests in poetry
and music on Mount Helicon in the valley of the

Muses ;
the games and literary competitions at

Apollo’s sanctuary on Mount Ptoon; and the Eleu-

theria, the Games of Freedom, at Plataea. More local

festivals, also, like the athletic and musical contests

at Thespiae known as the Games of Love, and the
Royal Games at Lebadeia in honour of King Zeus,
often drew crowds of visitors. But many of us, could
we have known ancient Boeotia, would have chosen
homelier occasions for our visits. We would have
sought out Tanagra on the feast day of Hermes, the
Ram-bearer, when the handsomest boy of the town, in
memory of a similar service rendered by Hermes at
the time of a plague, bore a lamb on his shoulders

about the city walls. And in the autumn at Plataea

we would have attended the annual memorial service

for those who died in the great battle. At daybreak
314 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
myrrh and garlands were carried to the tombs, young
boys chosen for their free birth bore jars of oil and
precious ointment and of wine and milk, and the chief
magistrate put on a purple robe and poured out a liba-
tion, saying, “I drink to those who lost their lives for
the liberty of Greece.” Or at the sanctuary of Demeter
at Mycalessus we would have watched the people from
the surrounding farms lay at the feet of her image all

kinds of autumn fruits, which they knew would keep

fresh the whole year through.
This festival of Thanksgiving was doubtless of very
ancient origin, as was also the spring festival of the
Little Daedala, celebrated every few years in many
Boeotian communities. The peasants and townspeople
poured into the woods and chose, from certain signs, an
oak tree out of which they made an image; and this

image they set up and worshipped to the accompani-

ment of festal merriment. The custom originated in
Plataea, if we may judge from the story believed by the
common people. Hera, in a not unwonted fit of temper,

had withdrawn to Euboea, and Zeus could not persuade

her to come back. But old Cithaeron, lord of Plataea,

advised him to play on her jealousy by dressing up a

wooden image and telling her that he was going to
marry Plataea, the wife of Asopus. Hera flew back, and
in memory of the divine reunion the “Little Daedala”
was instituted.

Every sixty years all Boeotia, its big and little cities,

its farmsteads and fishing towns, united in the Great

 BCEOTIA 3i5

Daedala. The crowds gathered at Plataea. Long pro-

cessions, representing each town, bore their own wooden
images to the summit of Cithasron, seeking a narrow
plateau where the snows had melted. Here altars were
built and victims burned. And at night the great flames
rose into the sky and were seen from afar, so that the

young men in Attica and beyond the Gulfs doubtless

said to each other, “Boeotia is celebrating as our
fathers said,” and the old men shook their heads and
remembered brighter fires.

Zeus and Hera have been long forgotten, nor are

the feet of Dionysus heard upon the mountain, but
still winter gives way and the heart of man
to spring

is The hard-working people of modern Boeotia

glad.
keep holiday when spring blooms anew, and Mount
Cithaeron gives them as of old the soft green of its bud-
ding oak leaves, the vivacious laughter of its loosened
waters.
 CHAPTER XV
THERMOPYLAE
“ Die, hospes, Spartae nos te hie vidisse iacentes

Dum sanctis patriae legibus obsequimur.”

Cicero, translation of a Greek Epitaph .*

T hermopylae
less

line,
lies

but between
shadowing mountains,” as Achilles might
due north from
than twenty-five miles distant in an air

be more exact, the great Parnassus cluster and the

them lie “many
Delphi,

o’er-

say, or, to

continuation of the (Eta range, the watershed between

the Boeotian Cephisus and the Malian Spercheius.
Just where Doris and Phocis on the south meet Tra-
chian Malis and Epicnemidian Locris on the north
Mount Kallidromos is set like a boundary stone. The
ridge that unites it with Mount (Eta proper is now
pierced by the Larissa railway- tunnel, opened in the
summer of 1908, through which the northern express
* Cicero, in this translation of the famous epigram (see below)
attributed to Simonides, apparently follows a version slightly differ •

ent from that transmitted by Herodotus. A charming old German

translation is preserved in a Heidelberg manuscript :
—
“ Sag, frembder gast, dem Spartenn land,
Wir liegen fast hie inn dem sannd,
Dass wir so schon inn dem gefecht
Gehalten hon satzung unnd recht.”
 ;

THERMOPYLAE 3i7

carries the traveller into the gorge and along the steep
cliffs of the Asopus, the river that flowed down between
Xerxes and Leonidas. To the east of the river’s outlet
into the Malian gulf was the narrow gangway between
cliffs and water, called “Hot- Gates” from the local
“ Thermai,” or hot springs, and the “ Pylai,” or fortified

gateways.
It is not unnatural that the story of Thermopylae
should have found in the imagination of men a place
more secure than have even the victories at Marathon,
Salamis, and Plataea. The very tragedy of defeat stands
out more conspicuously against the background of the
moral victory. The physical surroundings, too, are more
picturesque. At the narrow entrance between cliffs and
sea individual daring emerges, as in the defence of a
mediaeval portcullis, and in the memory remain the de-
tails of the by-path over Mount Kallidromos; the leaves
under foot rustling in the darkness and betraying the
ascent of the Persians to the Phocian rear- guard ;
the
dawn breaking over the blue sea at the foot of the cliffs
and the Persian Immortals descending swiftly upon
the rear of the few resolute men below. Then the long
struggle in the narrow pass comes to an end and Leoni-
das and his men move out into the wider part before
the pass. The “strength of the hills” was rendered
futile by the traitor guide; the water, faithful ally

during the preceding days, would now vainly strive to

engulf the invaders. The Sun, god of both armies,
beat down indiscriminately upon the Oriental worship-
3 i8 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
pers of his heavenly fire and on the heaps of dead
Greeks. Somewhere amongst them lay the unaffrighted
soldier Dieneces, who had welcomed with Laconic hu-
mour the sun-obscuring Persian arrows as a grateful
shade in the heat of battle.

It is disappointing, indeed, that now on the spot the

actual scene requires certain stage directions. The
modem coast line has been pushed far out into the
bay by earthquakes and the detritus of the streams.
The Spercheius now flows through a plain some two
miles wide between the precipices and the sea. But
the configuration of the land was still essentially un-

changed when, under Brennus and his Gauls, in the

third century b. c., there was another invasion hardly

less formidable than that of the Persians. Before the
Gauls reached Delphi there was here at Thermopylae
a repetition of the more famous struggle. The coast
line still lay close to the cliffs. The Athenian fleet stood
in near enough, despite the rapidly shoaling water, to
harass the flank of the enemy, while the other Greeks in
the narrow pass repeated the stubborn resistance of the
Spartans and their allies just two hundred years before.
Other details, too, were duplicated. The Gauls, un-
able to force the pass, resorted, as had the Persians,
to the mountain path. Again it was the Phocians
who strove to stop them, but the invaders, pushing by,
descended on the rear of the Greeks, who were saved
from the fate of Leonidas only by the presence of the
Athenian fleet.
 —

THERMOPYLAE 3*9

The exact topography of Thermopylae is still a matter

of controversy, and a liberal discount has long since
been made from the fabulous total, given by Herodotus,
of Xerxes’s host. Just who and how many of the allies

remained and died after Leonidas sent the others away

is also uncertain. Among those remaining with the
Spartans of their own free will Pausanias mentions
only the seven hundred Thespians and the eighty men
from Mycenae. The inscription written avowedly for

all the Peloponnesian soldiers exaggerates the number

of the Persians and fails to state definitely that all of

the four thousand fought to the finish:

“ Here on a time four thousand of men from the Peloponnesus,

Meeting three millions of men, struggled in battle and fought.”

But all restrictions, made in the interest of historic

truth, only serve to eliminate the miraculous element.

They leave undisturbed the picture of a heroism

combined with military skill which, if properly supple-
mented, might well have kept Xerxes shut out from
lower Greece indefinitely, or as long as the Greek fleet,

aided by the elements, could have restrained him from

moving south by the sea.

The allies of Sparta, both those who fell in the four

days before the betrayal of the pathway and those who
fell at the end, were duly praised, but Leonidas and his

three hundred have always received, and justly, the

lion’s share of honour. They represented the Lacedae-
monians at their best. The moral prestige that the
 —

320 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

Spartans had temporarily forfeited by their absence
from Marathon was now regained, to be still further
emphasized at Plataea. Over the Spartans buried at
Thermopylae was inscribed :
—
“ Stranger, go unto Sparta, aye go and announce to our people
Here we their orders obeyed, here we are lying in death.”

In Lacedaemon also the names of the three hundred

were inscribed upon a pillar, still existing in the time of
Pausanias. On the hill at Thermopylae, where the
Spartans made their last stand, was set up a marble lion
to honour the name of Leonidas. In an epigram, said
to have been written for the monument by Simonides,
the lion is represented as saying to the passers-by :
—
“ Iam the strongest of beasts of the wild, but the strongest of mortals
He it is over whose tomb I as a sentinel stand.
Were he not Leo in courage, as even my name he possesses,
Never had I set foot here on the marble above.”

From the longer “ encomium” by Simonides on the

dead at Thermopylae is handed down a fragment

worthily translated by Sterling:

“ Of those who at Thermopylae were slain,

Glorious thedoom and beautiful the lot;

Their tomb an altar; men from tears refrain
To honour them and praise but mourn them not.
Such sepulchre nor drear decay
Nor all-destroying time shall waste; this right have they.
Within their graves the home-bred glory
Of Greece was laid: this witness gives
Leonidas the Spartan in whose story
A wreath of famous virtue ever lives.”
 THERMOPYLAE 321

In addition to Leonidas there was also singled out

for individual honour and remembrance the seer Megis-
tias of Acamania, who claimed descent, proud as that
of the Levitical priesthood, from the Homeric seer
Melampus. From sacrifices made before sunrise on
that last day, the priest gave out in advance the cer-
tainty of their impending doom. Presently deserters
and scouts came in saying that the Persians had forced
the heights. Leonidas, recognizing that when they were
attacked in the rear also death was a foregone conclu-
sion, commanded Megistias and the greater part of the
allies to withdraw while there was still time. But the
priest, refusing to depart, remained to die with Leoni-
das and set the seal of religious sanction on the struggle
for liberty, as the modern priesthood of Greece, in the
war with the Turks, by their words and blood inspired
and sanctioned the patriotism of the people.

The epitaph for the priest was written by Simonides,

not by public commission as poet laureate, but, as
Herodotus states, by reason of guest- friendship. Even
this special inscription, however, on the tomb of the
Acamanian seer, closes with a complimentary reference
to Sparta. It was Sparta’s day.
“ Famous Megistias here is recorded as one whom the Persians,
Crossing Spercheius’s stream, slew on a day that is gone.
He was the seer, who, though knowing as certain the Fates that were
on them,
Could not endure to desert leaders of Sparta in war.”

A dramatic story is selected by Herodotus to embel-

lish his account of the battle. Two Spartan soldiers,
322 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Eurytus and Aristodemus, lay at the headquarters at
Alpeni, suffering with severe ophthalmia. When the
news came in of the final crisis, Eurytus, putting on
his armour with the help of his helot squire, was led
on his blind way into the thick of the battle and fell

fighting with the rest, while the helot made good his

escape. Aristodemus, as might indeed seem natural

in the case of a man thus incapacitated for service,
remained behind and returned home. But his fellow

citizens at Sparta, incensed at the contrast between the

two, refused him light to kindle fire and nicknamed him
the “Trembler.” Nor did any subsequent bravery
wipe out his disgrace. Even when, in the closing scene

of the great drama at Plataea, he surpassed all others

in the reckless daring with which he fought and died,
he was still excluded from his country’s roll of honour.
Thus imperative did it seem that Spartan courage and
love of liberty should be proclaimed to all as the rule
that knew no exception.
 CHAPTER XVI
ARGOLIS
“ Few for our eyes are the homes of the heroes,
Lowly these few, they scarce lift from the plain;
So once I marked thee, O luckless Mycenae,
Then, as I passed thee, a desert’s domain.
Never goat-pasture more lonely, thou ’rt merely
Something they point at, while driving a-fold.
Said an old herd to me: ‘Here stood the city
Built by Cyclopes, the city of gold.’
”
Alpheus of Mitylene, Greek Anthology.

N the Argolid it seems reasonable to turn aside from

history, in its narrower definition, to recall the tales

I of heroes and the “ grandeur of the dooms imagined

for the mighty dead.” The turbulent and uneven

course of events in which Argolis of historic times ap-
pears now as an ally, now as an enemy of other power-
ful states,' is of less moment than the legends handed
down and crystallized in great literature. Even if the

sagas which may have formed the nucleus of the Iliad

sprang from the older Thessalian “Argos,” the Ho-
meric poems, as known to the classic Greeks and to us,

concern themselves with the mighty fortresses of the

Argolid. The Attic drama reenforced the epic tradi-
tion, and the interchanging use in Homer of Achaeans,

Danai, and Argives to designate the Greeks, suggests

324 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
the elements which gave the later poets opportunity for
varied interpretation.
Argolis was the outpost of the Peloponnesus, and
even of the whole Greek mainland, for the prehistoric
invaders and traders from Crete, the southern ^Egean
or Phoenicia. The rugged eastern peninsula of Laconia,
indeed, extends southward nearly a whole degree of
latitude further than Argolis, but the dangerous pro-
montory, Malea, did not so often entice mariners to
double it as it served for a beacon to direct their course
northward into the deep shelter of the beautiful Gulf
of Argos. It is easy to understand how naturally the
early captains of commerce or conquest would be
guided up the long coast until they beached their boats
under the impregnable rock of Nauplia and the low
hill of Tiryns levelled, as it seemed, by the footprint
of some god at whose bidding the “Cyclopes” reared
its prehistoric and superhuman walls.

But the southward-facing gulf was not the only ap-

proach to Argolis. The earth’s crust, pushed up into
a ridged peninsula between the Saronic and Argolic
gulfs, falls away also at the north to the Corinthian Gulf
and the Isthmus. From this direction migrating bands
came overland
of Achasans to mingle with the more
“
numerous Pelasgians” and to dominate them by their
intellectual power and by their rich and conquering
Greek speech. When, after the lapse of long years,

Achaean imagination, combined with the highly devel-

oped “Pelasgian” skill in building, had reared or
A GALLERY OF THE ACROPOLIS OF TIRYNS
 ARGOLIS 325

developed a fortress on the acropolis of Mycenae, robber

barons could control the mountain gateway. And with
the probably earlier Larisa, the acropolis of Argos, and
with the fortresses of Tiryns and of Midea, they could
take their toll of all who would enter the Argive plain
from the north or the south. The masters of these
palace castles, as their wealth and their wants increased,
could afford to be hospitable to Cretan art or to the con-
tributions from the ^Egean or Asia. They may, per-
haps, as time went on, have visualized the spoken word
in the new characters of the alphabet, whatever its pro-
venance, whether brought over seas to Nauplia by some
Palamedes, who might pose as its inventor, or by the
Phoenician traders, middlemen between the Greeks and
the men of Crete and the iEgean who, centuries before,
had developed writing from their picture script.

The blended prehistoric civilization, with its epochs

checked off in centuries or millennia, and, thanks to
the archaeologists, to-day rapidly emerging through-
out the Greek world in Attica, Boeotia, Asia Minor, the
islands and the Peloponnesus, has received not unnatu-
rally, if prematurely, the general name “Mycenaean”
from the great royal tombs and smaller graves and the
strong walls of Mycenae and from the rich and amazing
treasure recovered from the graves excavated within
the Gateway of the Lions. Accumulating evidence has
indicated the insufficiency of the term to include both
the art and the architecture. Successive periods and
various origins must yet be disentangled. But Mycenae
326 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
and Tiryns, as being the most impressive in their
entirety, continue to represent this prehistoric civiliza-

tion to the majority of visitors, and the term “Myce-

naean” may serve until some happier names are sug-
gested to distinguish at once between the home-bred
and the imported.
On the borderland between mere shadowy tradition
and an approximately exact chronology two events
seemed to the Greeks themselves of preeminent im-
portance and were referred by them to the twelfth
century b. c. — the Fall of Troy, and the Return of the
Heracleidae, or the Dorian conquest, as we should now
describe this movement. Although Thucydides states

that “in the eightieth year after the Trojan War the
Dorians, led by the Heracleidae, conquered the Pelo-
ponnesus, ” it may be found necessary to assume a
much longer interval, especially if we allow for a series
of Dorian conquests.
The Dorians were one of the Greek clans pushed
down from further north into central Greece in pre-
historic times. They have left, as the memorial of this

period, their name attached to little Doris wedged in

between Parnassus and Mount (Eta. When they were
impelled to move still further south, whether by external
pressure or the desire to send out colonies, the Achaeans
already held the land approach to the Peloponnesus
and also the littoral of Achaea on the opposite side of the
Corinthian Gulf. They were thus forced to take to the
sea, and the Dorian settlements in Crete, Thera, Melos,
 ARGOLIS 327

and Asia Minor seem to have been followed by Dorian

invasions of the Peloponnesus from the south and east,
especially in Laconia and Argolis. In Laconia the in-

vaders established themselves as conquerors and re-

tained their own character almost unchanged, while in

Argolis they amalgamated with the people already
in possession. In readjusting pedigrees it was more
agreeable to native pride to assume that these invaders
were themselves of good old Peloponnesian stock, rather
than foreign Dorians, and incidentally to localize the
spreading fame of Heracles. Both of these objects were
provided for in Argolis when Heracles proved to be of
the Perseid line, the original and most distinguished
Argive dynasty. Under his grandchildren the invaders

merely came back to their own. Thus the Dorian in-

vasions came to be described by the senseless and con-

fusing name of the Return of the Heracleidae. With this

event is perhaps to be associated the sudden destruc-

tion of Mycenae and Tiryns by fire and the reinstate-

ment of Argos and the Larisa citadel as supreme.

By way of acquiring the chief poet as well as the chief

hero of Greece, Argos claimed, with other cities, to be
the birthplace of Homer — an echo, doubtless, of the
dimly remembered sagas of Achaean Argos in Thessaly.
In reality, Argolis, like other Dorian cantons, contrib-
uted more subject matter for poets than poetry itself.

Yet it was not wholly parasitical. It partially balanced

the Dorian debt by sending to Athens two poet-musi-
328 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
dans whose activity cannot be justly appraised from
the meagre fragments that have come down to us. The
Dorian contributions to music must be kept in mind.
The Argives, we are told, furnished many of the famous
musicians of Greece.
F rom Hermione on the southern shore of the peninsula
came Lasus, who, as a theoretical and practical musi-
cian, did much to develop the dithyramb. He was the
teacher of Pindar and, under the cultivated tyrant Hip-
parchus, was a rival of Simonides in Athens. The other
poet, Pratinas, came from Phlius, geographically within

the northwestern comer of Argolis, although the in-

dependent Phliasians long maintained their autonomy.
The city lay in green meadowlands high among the
mountains on the grassy banks of the Sicyonian Asopus
which, according to local belief, was generated by the
Carian Meander coming under the sea to link the two
sides of the iEgean together, as the Alpheus, on the
other side, united Sicily to the mother land. Although
Pratinas was inevitably drawn by the lure of the intel-
lectual to live at Athens, he stands out as a Dorian
poet. He is known as the first writer of the satyr
dramas, one of which it was for a while the custom to
add to the trilogy of tragedies, and he competed even
with ^Eschylus.
The literature of Ionian Athens lacked one element
which developed among the ^Eolians and Dorians.
The more independent life of Dorian women called
forth two poetesses in the Peloponnesus. One of
 ARGOLIS 329

these lived at Sicyon. This city, lying on the Asopus,

which comes tumbling down through the deep ravine
from Phlius, early became Dorian. Once included in
the widespread kingdom of the Agamemnon of tradi-
tion, it was now independent, now dependent on Argos
or on Sparta. With the mountains of the Peloponnesus
around it and the Corinthian Gulf and Parnassus in
front, it is beautiful for situation. Its rich treasure-

houses were among the notable sights at Delphi and

Olympia, and it was famous for its schools of painting

and of sculpture. Here Praxilla, the Dorian poetess

par excellence lived in the
,
fifth century b. c. The fame
of her dithyrambs, a few fragments of which have
reached us, survived her, and she was .deemed worthy
of a bronze statue by Lysippus, a later compatriot.

In aristocratic Argos itself another woman, Telesilla,

was honoured both as a writer of choral hymns for

maidens and as a heroine in war. Pausanias adds to the

Herodotean account of the Argive men massacred by

the Spartans in Hera’s grove the story of how Telesilla
manned the walls with old men, boys, and slaves, and
then drew up the Argive women for actual conflict with

the Spartans and repulsed them, partly by stout fight-

ing, partly by the shame inspired in them by the thought

of contending with women. Pausanias saw, further-
more, a carved relief representing the warrior poetess,
her scrolls scattered at her feet as she gazes at a helmet
which she is about to put on.
Kydias, also from Hermione the home of Lasus,
330 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
wrote, in the first half of the fifth century, love songs
highly esteemed by Plato.

The Argolid contains more than a dozen places prom-

inent in Greek literature and in history. Among the
northern mountains were Phlius, Cleonae, and Nemea;
overlooking or on the Argive Gulf were Mycenae,
the Heraeum, Argos and the Larisa acropolis, Midea,
Tiryns, Nauplia, and Lema; on the eastern coast of
Akte, the oldname for the promontory that with other
parts merged its name in that of Argos, were Epidaurus,
Troezen, and Calauria, with Hermione on the south
coast; and on the west side of the gulf was the narrow
strip of land, Cynuria, bone of contention between
Sparta and the Wolf of Argos. Of all these places the
famous group on the Argive Gulf, together with Epi-
daurus, is most easily accessible from Athens, and trav-

ellers who cannot go farther afield may gain from this

brief excursion in the Argolid an adequate impres-
sion both of its prehistoric interest and of its natural
beauties.

Herodotus, in leading up to his account of the Per-

sian War, selects as the origin of the rivalry between the
Orient and Greece the rape by Phoenicians of Io,

daughter of Inachus, the personified Argive river. This

was doubtless a typical scene on the shores of the Medi-
terranean. The seamen landed and “ undid their corded
bales;” the native women crowded about the bargain
counter at the vessel’s stern ;
it was easy for the sailors
 ARGOLIS 33i

to seize the handsomest and, launching their vessel,

to bear them away. The Phoenicians, however, were

merely an episode, and the early “ Outlanders” came
into the Argolid over the northern mountains.
If one were entering Argolis neither by the modern
railway nor in company with one of these instalments

of prehistoric Achaeans that descended from the north,

but were faring along the good highroad from Corinth
in the days of Mycenae’s glory, he would follow up the
Longopotamo River, which flows down west of Acro-
corinth into the Corinthian Gulf. Before crossing the
watershed that slopes to the Argolic plain he would
have come to Homer’s “well-built” Cleonae in a semi-

circle of wooded mountains. Here the ancient roads

part, one going east of Mount Treton more directly to

Mycenae, the other making a detour to the west to the

Argive plain and then to Mycenae, stationed like a huge
spider at the centre of its web. When Lucian’s Charon,
off on a day’s furlough from the Ferry, asks Hermes to

point out the famous cities of antiquity, the latter shows

him Babylon and then adds “ But Mycenae and Cleonae
:

I am ashamed to point out to you, and Ilium above

all. For when you go down home again you’ll certainly

be throttling Homer for his big boasts. Long ago, to be

sure, they were prosperous, but now they are dead and
gone. For cities, Ferryman, die out just like people,

and, queerest of all, whole rivers. For instance, there’s

not so much as a ditch left of the Inachus in Argos
now-a-days.” Lucian forgets his quasi sixth century
332 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
perspective in this pessimistic outlook and descends to
things as they were in his own time, when his contem-
porary Pausanias explained the “summer-dried” con-
dition of the Inachus as due to Poseidon’s anger be-
cause Hera had been given the preference to himself
in the Argive land. But not even the Lynceus vision,

temporarily put at the disposal of Charon by an

Homeric incantation, could have been expected to
reveal, beneath the oblivious Argive soil of the second
century of our era, the rich treasures of Mycenae, to
which the X-rays of the archaeologists have now pene-
trated.

Before descending along the bed of the northern

tributary of the Inachus into the plain we turn aside
to the precinct of Nemea. This lies in a valley of its

own between those of Phlius and Cleonae and, like

them, on a stream, the Nemea, which also flows down
to the Corinthian Gulf. The deep grass, fed by the
overflowing waters, gave the name Nemea, “pasture-
land.” The biennial Nemean games, celebrated on the
high watershed at this entrance to the peninsula, were
especially pan- Peloponnesian. They were instituted,

according to a charming story, by Adrastus and the

rest of the “Seven” on their way to Thebes, as an
atonement for the death of the child Opheltes, carelessly

left by his nurse on a bed of wild parsley (or celery) and

slain by a dragon while she fetched water for the war-

riors. The solemn funereal origin of the games was

kept before the mind by the dun-colored raiment worn
 ARGOLIS 333

by the umpires and emphasized by the cypress grove

which in antiquity surrounded the temple. Pindar
seems to reflect this feeling when he refers to the “sol-

emn plains” in connection with Adrastus. Elsewhere

he speaks of the “lovely contests of Nemea.” Where
the little Opheltes died on his bed of wild parsley and
the Argive champions passed by to Thebes are the
lonely ruins of the Temple of Zeus. Three slender col-

umns still stand to watch over their fallen companions,

stretched upon the ground by the Earthshaker whose
envy has shaken down so many temples of rivals while,
by the cunning of Athena in sharing with him her pre-
cinct, he has left the great rock in Athens unmoved.
Zeus, the virile god of the Achaeans, is lord and master
at Nemea, while Hera presides in the Argive plain as
she did originally at Olympia.
The cave of the Nemean lion slain by Heracles at the

bidding of Eurystheus, king of Mycenae or Tiryns, can-

not be identified with certainty. Indeed, the king of
beasts himself, so far as Argolis is concerned, has been
now confined by the excavators within the narrow
limits of a Phrygian gem. Heracles, in his search for
rare fauna, flora, and other exhibits, completed six of

his twelve labours in the Peloponnesus, two of them

within the borders of Argolis, before he was compelled
to go abroad for the fruit of the Hesperides or the three-
headed hound of Hades. He had already killed a lion
on Mount Cithaeron and assumed its skin as his con-
ventional uniform, and when the spoils of the Nemean
334 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
lion were delivered at Mycenae the king might well, it

may be thought, have deemed it suitable to commemo-

rate by a “ totem” on the Gate of the Acropolis the sub-
jugation of this original autochthon of Mount Treton,
which dominated the two highways leading to the for-

tress.

In the Homeric poems it is Mycenae, “ rich in gold,”

and “well- walled” Tiryns that are predominant in

Argolis. The legendary kingdom of the Atreidae ex-

tended over a large part of the Peloponnesus, and it

was pleasing to Argive pride to reserve Mycenae as

headquarters for Agamemnon, king of men, and to

parcel off Lacedaemon to Menelaus when he was not

represented as also living in Argolis. Mycenae com-
manded the mountain roads to the Corinthian Gulf
and the Isthmus, and a prehistoric network of road-
beds that focus at Mycenae lifts out of the realm of
mere legend the controlling influence of the mighty
fortress over the territory to the northward. To the
south of the mountains it was connected with Tiryns and
Argos in a varying sequence of leagues and rivalries.

Mycenae is now as familiar to the modern world as

the Acropolis of Athens. Its resurrection within our
own times has called forth manifold accounts and
pictures of the “beehive tombs,” the Cyclopean walls,
the Gate of the Lions (never, indeed, wholly buried), the
circle of shaft graves on the acropolis and the treasure
found within them.
 ARGOLIS 335

The three great dramatists all dealt with scenes from

the family history of the Atreidae or Pelopidae, the illus-

trious but blood-stained dynasty that for a few genera-

tions only (if we allow the Heracleidae their pedigree)

broke in upon the continuity of the Perseid line, de-

scended through Danaus from Inachus. When Eurys-

theus was slain, as Thucydides records, by the Hera-
cleidae in Attica, the kingdom passed to his mother’s

half-brother Atreus, the son of Pelops. Agamemnon,

his son, or his grandson, is described by the historian
as “the greatest naval potentate of his time,” and he
cites the Iliad which speaks of him as “lording it

over many ships and over all Argos,” that is, over all

the Argolid.
Although iEschylus, by reason of a contemporary
rapprochement between the Athenians and the Argives,
explicitly lays the scene of his “Agamemnon” at Argos,

the traditional association with Mycenae, handed down

from Homer, has usually prevailed. Sophocles re-

turned to it, and in his “Electra” assumes Mycenae as

the home of the royal pair, while Euripides, in his “ Elec-

tra,” loosely refers to both cities, although in other

plays Mycenae is uppermost in his mind. Thus Iphi-
geneia at Aulis, about to be sacrificed, exclaims :
—
“ O mother mine, Pelasgian land,
O virgin’s home, Mycenae ” !

And amongst the Taurians, overjoyed at her reunion

with her brother, her thoughts likewise revert to

Mycenae :
—
336 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
“ O home and hearth-stone mine,
Built by Cyclopic hand,
Mycenae, fatherland,
Our love is thine ” !

Pausanias speaks of Agamemnon and others of the

family as buried within the walls of Mycenae, and places
the tombs of Clytemnestra and her paramour without.
The various attempts to identify with literary tradition
the beehive tombs below or the shaft graves discovered
by Schliemann on the acropolis above involve varying
degrees of improbability or of contradiction, and from
these ingenious attempts to reconcile facts it is a relief

to turn to the realities of pure fiction.

The “Agamemnon” of iEschylus, the greatest of

extant Greek dramas, opens with a soldier posted on

the palace roof at Argos continuing the ten years’ watch
for the beacon signal* that is to flash across the ^Egean
the news of the capture of Troy, in order that the guilty

Clytemnestra may not be taken unawares. Presently

the beacon flashes out on Mount Arachneum, seen, as

the watcher looks eastward across the plain, between

the Heraeum and Tiryns. The long chorals contain the
kernel of the poet’s thought. The Argive elders enter
chanting their anapaests :
—
“Now this year is the tenth since ’gainst Priam of Troy,
As antagonist great,
Menelaus the lord, Agamemnon besides
Holding power two-throned and two-sceptred from Zeus,
Mighty yoke-pair, two sons they of Atreus their sire,

* See extract from Agamemnon in chapter i, p. n.

 ARGOLIS 337

Sped forth from this land in a thousand of ships

Of our Argives a host
As a warrior band bringing succour.”

The old men even in the hour of victory are filled with
strange foreboding of coming ill and with fear of a still

unadjusted Nemesis. A curse is inbred in the royal

house. “The fearsome wrath, recurrent, house-haunt-
ing, guileful, unforgetting, exacting vengeance for the
children ” more than hints at the grim story of Thyestes

fed by Atreus on the flesh of his children. Iphigeneia’s

sacrifice at Aulis by Agamemnon* is skilfully introduced

to complicate the ethical situation by giving Clytem-

nestra a plausible justification for her unfaithfulness
and for the secret plottings of which the chorus is not
unaware.
Clytemnestra, intoxicated with the thought that
Agamemnon is about to fall into her snare, tells the
chorus how the beacons, her “racers with the torch,”
have brought the news, and then breaks forth with
a recital, swift and vivid, reminding them how, even
while she speaks, the Argive warriors are stalking tri-

umphant through the streets of Troy :

—
“Troy the Achaeans have and hold this very day!
Methinks I hear commingling outcries in the town.”

The captive Trojan women “from throats no longer

free” bewail their dead, while the Argives plunder as
they shout or seat themselves at an impromptu break-
fast :
—
* See extract from Agamemnon, chapter xiv, p. 308.
338 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
“In captured Trojan homes they make their dwelling now,
Set free from roofless bivouac in frost and dew.
How they, the happy men, will sleep the livelong night
Unpicketed ” !

Agamemnon enters in his chariot, with Cassandra, the

captive princess of Troy, in his retinue, driving up from
Nauplia. He addresses Argos and the gods. He boasts
of the capture of Ilium. The interval necessary for the

iEgean voyage is minimized — Troy’s ruins still smoul-

der sulkily :
—
“ From smoke still rising even now conspicuous
Is seen the captured city; blasts of ruin live;
From out the smould’ring ashes there keep jetting forth
Fat puffs of plunder ” !

From the ruined wealth of Troy the thought is

turned to the traditional costly splendour of the Argive

palaces. Clytemnestra cunningly avails herself of
Agamemnon’s only half- concealed vanity to cover her

own murderous intent and, if possible, to transfer to his

-account, in the eyes of the gods, a certain debit to Neme-

sis. She would persuade him to enter the palace tread-
ing presumptuously upon royal purple tapestries, and
with grim ambiguity she says :
—
“ And now to pleasure me, dear heart, down from thy oar!
Set not upon the ground, my lord, that foot of thine
That hath sack’d Ilium. Maid servants! Why delay
To strew the foot-path of his road with tapestries?
Forthwith be purple-paved his way! Let Justice lead
On to a dwelling where he scarce had hoped to come.”

Agamemnon, flattered, makes a show of resistance, and

finally, to ward off the evil consequences of presump-
 !

ARGOLIS 339

tion, compromises by bidding the slaves unloose his

shoes :
—
“ Lest bolt of envy from the gods’ eyes from afar
Shall strike me as the costly purple I tread down.”

As he yields there surges before the vision of the exult-

ant Clytemnestra another sea :

—
“ There is a sea and who shall ever drain it dry ?
It guards the drops of bounteous purple, ever fresh,
As silver precious, raiment’s dye. Our house, my lord,
With God’s help hath sufficient store of these. Our halls
Are far from understanding ways of poverty.”

As she turns to follow her victim she prays :

—
“ O Zeus! O Zeus Fulfiller! these my prayers fulfil.”

The captive Cassandra is left without. Before her

searching but futile insight pass by-gone scenes in the
bloodguilty palace to which she has just come as a
stranger. She points to the murdered infants of Thy-
estes and their “ roasted flesh upon which their father

banqueted.” Then her prophetic vision forecasts the

details presently to be enacted: Agamemnon’s death
and her own, the welcoming bath, the ensnaring robe,
“ hand after hand outstretching blow on blow.” As she
goes in to her death she utters lines unsurpassed in
Greek tragedy, if anywhere, for the pathos of self-

abnegating contrast between the littleness of the in-

dividual and the wider aspects of the universal :

—
“ O life of mortal men ! If that it fareth well,
’T is like a painting sketch’d, but, comes adversity,
The wet sponge, blurring, touches and the picture ’s gone
And this than that I count more piteous by far.”
340 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Two solitary outcries from Agamemnon, struck down
within the palace, float out on the waiting silence as
the chorus ceases its chant. To the elders in their con-
sternation appears Clytemnestra, exultant, glorified

by success, standing over the dead Agamemnon and

Cassandra. One might reconstruct the scene from the
palace bathroom uncovered at Tiryns. She speaks :
—
“ Here stand I where I struck him, o’er the finished work,
And managed
so I —
no denial will I make —
That there was no escape nor warding off of fate.
A netlike wrap without an outlet, as for fish,
I stake around, the evil bounty of a robe.
And thereupon I strike him twice and with two groans
He straight relaxed his limbs and, for him lying thus,
I add a third blow, thereunto, as votive thanks
To Hades underground, the corpses’ saviour god.”

A lyrical dialogue between the Queen and the chorus

follows: exultation and execration; justification and
lamentation. Clytemnestra, to the indignant question
of the chorus, “Who is to bury him?” replies that he
is her dead and adroitly takes refuge once and again in
the necessity of avenging Iphigeneia. The climax of
bitterness is reached when she flings forth the taunting
suggestion that the murdered child will most appro-
priately welcome her dear father as he disembarks at
Charon’s ferry. The chorus, bemoaning him “ laid low
in the bath, on his pallet bedding of silver,” asks
again :
—
“ Praises and requiem who shall be singing,
Loyal heart to the labour bringing,
And shower the godlike man with tears ? ”
 ! !

ARGOLIS 34i

And Clytemnestra replies :

—
“ It becomes not you for this duty to care.
At my hands he fell down and he lies —
down there
And ’t is I that shall bury him —
down below
And ’t is not with laments of his house he shall go,
But his Iphigeneia with welcoming grace,
As ’t is just to require, the daughter her sire
By the swift-flowing Ferry of Groans shall face
And with locked arms kiss and embrace him! ”

The plays by the three dramatists dealing with the

slaying of Clytemnestra by her son and the meeting and
recognition of Orestes and his older sister Electra fill

out many a detail of the Argive land and cities as they

were seen or imagined in the fifth century. Although
Sophocles lays the scene of his “Electra” at “opulent
Mycenae,” his allusions to the “renowned temple of
Hera,” to the “Lycaean agora of the wolf-slaying god,”
and to the “ grove of the frenzied daughters of Inachus”
— all as part of the immediate environment — seem to
imply stage-setting which brought before the spectator
the Heraeum and Argos itself as well as Mycenae. In
all three plays the tomb of Agamemnon, around which
the action goes on, seems to be outside of the city.
The scene of the “Electra” of Euripides is laid on
the mountain frontier, by which way the exiled Orestes
would naturally arrive from Phocis. Not only does this

play give a feeling for the Argive landscape, changing

little while Mycenae rose and fell, but the simple and
dignified peasant farmer, Electra’s husband in name
only, is one of the dramatist’s noblest creations. The
342 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
suggestion of his high-born though remote ancestry
only emphasizes the chivalry, far removed from ser-

vility, with which he reverences his nominal wife as a

princess of the land. When Electra, in the shadow of the
“Night, dark foster mother of the golden stars,” goes
to fetch water, like any peasant girl, with the water- jar
poised on her head, he remonstrates with her, but divin-
ing her mood, withdraws his objection :
—
“ Nay, go thy way, an so thou wilt, not distant far
The fountains from our dwelling. I, when breaks the dawn.
Must with my oxen turn the furrows for the seed.”

In this play the horror of the mother-murder in the

peasant home is sensibly heightened by the back-
ground of simple hospitality. The deed seems more
inevitable in the “Choephoroi” of ^Eschylus, in which
Orestes goes in to slay his mother just where she had
slain his father, and the knocking, knocking at the pal-

ace doors seems more like the hand of fate, or like

the two outcries of the king in the “ Agamemnon.” The
”
play closes, as it should, just as the “wrathful hounds
of his mother have appeared to the matricide.* No assur-
ance of the chorus that they are unreal fancies of his
confused brain can help him. He must away over the
mountains and the Isthmus by the long pathway to

Delphi to seek the restoring purification of Apollo :

—
“ You cannot see them, see them there, but I can see.
I’m driven onward — nay, no longer might I stay.”

* For extracts from the Eumenides the sequel of the Choephoroi,

,

see chapter v, p. 104, and p. 105; also see chapter xi, p. 246.
 ARGOLIS 343

Homer lets Hera, wrangling with Zeus, in regard to

Troy, exclaim; “Verily three are the dearest to me
among cities: wide-wayed Mycenae and Sparta and
Argos.” The Heraeum, the ancient sanctuary of the
goddess, once belonged to Mycenae, and traces of the
Cyclopean road that connected them are still visible.

Here the “kings” took the oath of allegiance before

sailing to Troy with Agamemnon and Menelaus. Here
on their return the Argives dedicated the Trojan spoils

to Hera. The herald in the “Agamemnon” says: —

“ While speeding over land and sea, to yonder light,
The sun’s light, it is fitting that we make this vaunt:
‘
Once, sacking Troy, an Argive host to gods of Greece
Nailed up these spoils, a glorious heirloom in their halls.’
”

Among the spoils was the shield of the Trojan hero

Euphorbus, slain by Menelaus. In the sixth century,
Pythagoras, to prove that in a previous round of exist-
ence he had been Euphorbus, entered the Heraeum and
instantly identified the shield as his own.
From Argos to the Heraeum it was a distance of more
than five miles. Herodotus relates how a woman of
Argos, wishing to be present at Hera’s festival, was
unable to start because the oxen were not forthcoming
in season to draw her car. Her two athlete sons put
on the yoke and drew the heavy car quickly across the
plain and up the hill. When the Argive women con-
gratulated her on being mother of such sons, she, “ ex-
ultant over their deed and fame, stood before the statue
of Hera and prayed that to her sons, Cleobis and Biton,
344 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
who had honoured her greatly, the goddess would give
whatever gift is best for man to have. And the youths,
after sacrifice and banquet, lay down to sleep in the

sacred precinct itself and rose up no more.” This

answer of the goddess so impressed the Argives that
they set up the statues of the young men at Delphi. It

pleases the imagination to identify with these the two

archaic statues there excavated by the French; and a
beautiful Parian marble head of Hera, found by the
American excavators of the Heraeum, has preserved

to us the gracious presentation of the goddess by some

great sculptor of the fifth century.
The dramatis persona of the “ Suppliants” of ^Eschy-

lus vaguely suggest a chapter in the early history of

Argolis. Danaus with his fifty daughters comes from
the south, fleeing over the sea from his brother H^gyptus
and his fifty sons. The early Pelasgian inhabitants of
Argos are represented by the king, Pelasgus, who re-

ceives the suppliant fugitives into the safe refuge of his

Cyclopean walls, which we may identify with the pre-

historic Larisa citadel above Argos “ : Go get ye to my

city fenced with goodly walls, fast locked within the
lofty ramparts, subtly wrought.” Henceforward, as in
Homer, the Argives and Danai are convertible names.
All objection to the newcomers as foreigners is neutral-
ized by realizing that they have only returned to their

original home. Inachus, tjie river god, was the father of

Io, who, half transformed into a heifer by the jealousy
of Hera, had been made to wander frenzied over land
 ARGOLIS 345

and water until in Egypt she brought forth a son, the

great-grandfather of this same Danaus.
In the sequel to the “Suppliants” iEschylus gave his
interpretation of the story of the Danaides and their

trial for the forty-nine murders of that Saint Bartholo-

mew wedding night. Only fragments of this play re-
main, and the romance of Hypermnestra is familiar to
the modern world chiefly from Horace’s incomparable
ode. In the “Prometheus,” however, ^Eschylus both
tells the Io story at length and briefly sketches the story

of Hypermnestra, which, with the “lovely tale” of

Danae and the infant Perseus, sheds around the Perseid
dynasty of Argos a fragrant aroma of romance in strik-

ing contrast to the gruesome annals of the Pelopid

family, which waft now and again to our nostrils the

scent of human blood and the breath of the charnel

vault. Prometheus prophesies to Io that, in the fifth

generation from her Egyptian-born son, fifty maidens,

daughters of Danaus, —
“ Shall come, not willing it, to Argos back again.
Wedlock with kinsmen cousins they are fain to shun,
But these with hearts a-flutter, falcons after doves,
Not distanced far, shall come to hunt their quarry down,
Seeking a wedlock that should not be sought. But God
Shall grudge their mating. In her soil Pelasgia
Shall give them lodging, slain, laid low by women’s hands,
Ares-emboldened, waking sentinels of night.
For wife each husband of his life shall rob, and dye
Her two-edged sword in May God grant,
murder. with love
Like this, that Cypris come upon my enemies!
One maiden only shall love soften and forbid
To slay her love-mate. Nay, her purpose she shall blunt
346 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
And of twain choices offered she shall rather choose
To bear the name of coward than of murderess.
From her in Argos shall be bred a royal line.”

Lynceus is saved, under cover of night, by Hypermnes-

tra, and escaping, as Pausanias tells us, by the Diras
gate, he signals back to her his safety by means of a
beacon light on Mount Lyrcea, and she replies by an-
other from Larisa. On this Larisa mountain, rising
above the plain, there is lavished as a setting for the

picturesque ancient and mediaeval ruins a colour scheme

of green, rich reds and brown that delights the artist’s
eye.

Argos itself, continuously inhabited through the cen-

turies, offers few reminders of antiquity except the steep
seats of the theatre. The beautiful wolf head on the
extant Argive drachmas reminds us of the Wolf Agora
of Sophocles and of the Wolf Apollo dedicated by
Danaus when he had ungratefully snapped away the
kingdom from his Pelasgian host. We are glad to leave
to Pausanias the description of the sights of historic

Argos and to follow Amymone, one of the Danaids, as

she goes down the plain of “ thirsty Argos,” water-jar on
head, to fetch water at Lerna. She went to the fountain
once too often, if we may trust the legend. Lucian
describes how Poseidon, inflamed by Triton’s account
of her beauty, too impetuous to wait for his royal
team, had thrown himself hastily on the fastest dolphin
available and had come riding up the bay. Amymone,
as she is carried off, cries out: “Fellow, where are you
 ARGOLIS 347

carrying me off to? You’re a kidnapper sent after us,

I suppose, by uncle ^Egyptus. I’ll call my father!”
(Triton) “Hush, Amymone, it’s Poseidon.” (Amy-
mone) “What Poseidon are you talking of? Fellow,
why do you drag me and force me into the sea ? I ’ll
choke, poor me, as I go down !” Poseidon comforts her
by telling her that she shall escape, as his bride, not
only her daily five-mile walk as a water-carrier in Argos
but her sisters’ futile task in Hades of carrying water
in a sieve. He promises her also a fountain, called by
her name. This promise was kept; by leaving the
railroad at Myli, the second station below Argos, we
can still see the fountain. Here Heracles, her sister’s

descendant, slew the Lemaean hydra.

If we coast down the west side of the bay we come
to Cynuria, whose autochthonous inhabitants would
seem to have belonged, like their Arcadian neighbours,
to the pre-Dorian “Pelasgic” stock. Herodotus gives
a dramatic account of one of the contests for the pos-
session of this territory between Spartans and Argives,
in the sixth century, which might serve as a pendant for

the Roman story of the Horatii and the Curiatii. Three

hundred Spartans and three hundred Argives, chosen
as champions, engaged while the main armies with-
drew. Two Argives only survived, and they, thinking
the Spartans all dead, ran off home to announce the
victory. One half-dead Spartan, however, Othryades,
was able to write with his blood his name upon a trophy
which he erected of Argive armour. Each side claimed
34S GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
the victory, with the result that the full armies engaged
and the Spartans conquered. Othryades, however,
ashamed to survive his comrades, killed himself on the
field.

Nauplia, across the bay from Lerna, is full of sugges-

tion for the prehistoric settlement of Argolis, and of asso-
ciations with modem history. It has fewer direct points
of contact with classic literature. Nauplius, the founder,
according to tradition, was the son of Amymone and of
Poseidon, who was here able to assert himself against
the predominance of Hera further inland. Hera, in-

deed, had the Achaean Zeus to curb on the north and

may have been glad to compromise with Poseidon for
a safe-conduct permitting her to make her necessary
annual visit to the baths of Kanathos, east of Nauplia.
By way of Nauplia, as we have seen, the alphabet may
have entered Greece, and here the less valuable but
costly cargoes of Trojan spoils were landed, bringing
one and another hint and pattern of trans-^Egean art.

Here Menelaus, detained by storm long after his bro-

ther, finally landed :

—
“ Back to the land has Menelaus come from Troy,
At Nauplia in harbour moored, while near the beach
The oar-blades fall, returned from his long wandering.”

No more beautiful mooring- place for home-coming war-

riors could be found than the w'ater-front of Nauplia,

lying beneath the majestic rock of Palamidi, guard of
the sea-entrance to the Argolid.
On the low acropolis of Tiryns recent excavations
 !

ARGOLIS 349

have uncovered the “Lower Castle” to the north of the

Middle and Upper fortresses already known. Pausa-

nias attributed the founding of Tiryns to members of
the Danaus family, Acrisius remaining in Argos and
Prcetus taking as his share the Heraeum, Midea, Tiryns,
and the coast of Argolis. Acrisius, to forestall an oracle,
according to which he was to be slain by a grandson,
shut up Danae, his daughter, in a tower of bronze.
Zeus descended to her in a shower of gold, and when
Perseus was born Acrisius committed to the sea mother
and child in a chest. The translation by John Adding-
ton Symonds of a fragment from Simonides describing
this event fully preserves the pathos for which Simon-
ides was famous :
—
“ When in the carven chest,
The winds that blew and waves in wild unrest
Smote her with fear, she, not with cheeks unwet,
„ Her arms of love round Perseus set,
And said: ‘O child, what grief is mine!
But thou dost slumber, and thy baby breast
Is sunk in rest,
Here in the cheerless brass-bound bark,
Tossed amid starless night and pitchy dark.
Nor dost thou heed the scudding brine
Of waves that wash above thy curls so deep,
Nor the shrill winds that sweep, —
Lapped in thy purple robe’s embrace,
Fair little face
But if this dread were dreadful too to thee,
Then wouldst thou lend thy listening ear to me;
Therefore I cry, — Sleep babe, and sea be still,

And slumber our unmeasured ill !

* ”

The Nereids, charmed with the beauty of the child,

350 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
guided the chest safely into the net of the fishermen of
the little island of Seriphos. Perseus, on his return to
Argos, went up to Larisa, to which Acrisius had retired,
and while displaying his skill with the quoit acciden-

tally killed his grandfather. Thus was fulfilled the doom

to avoid which Acrisius had shut up Danae in the

bronze tower at Argos. Perseus, ashamed at this homi-

cide, and perhaps disliking Argos by reason of his

mother’s ill-treatment, persuaded the son of Proetus to

change kingdoms with him, and so he came to live at

Tiryns, and from there went up the plain and founded

Mycenae where a mushroom ( mykes) that he pulled up
when thirsty gave him a draught of water. The greater
antiquity of Tiryns implied in this legend is not incon-
sistent with archaeological evidence, and the fable that
Proetus, the first king of Tiryns, imported from Lycia
seven Cyclopes as builders is a vague record of the
foreign contribution made to this ancient centre. The
Cyclopean walls in Argolis, often alluded to in the fifth

century, were at least as conspicuous at Tiryns as else-

where, and this acropolis near the sea would fit the
situation in the “Trojan Women” of Euripides where
the captive, lamenting her dead husband deprived of
burial rites, anticipates with dread the landing at
Nauplia :
—
“ Beloved, O my husband dear,
Thou ’rt wandering, a spectral fear,
Unburied and unlaved.
But me the hull that cleaves the sea
 ARGOLIS 35i

Shall bear with spread wings far from thee

To Argos, nurse of steeds,
Where Cyclopean walls rear high
Their giant stones to flaunt the sky.”

To-day, in the spring, the hill of Tiryns is covered with

slender stalks of asphodel, while amidst flowers delicate
and shadowy as these, along the pathways of the “as-
phodel meadows’’ below, steal the ghosts of the ancient

masters of these Cyclopean walls and galleries.

Mycenae and Tiryns, linked in tradition with the
name of Perseus, both sent men to Plataea to fight

against the Persians. In a more than a decade

little

thereafter they were both captured and destroyed by

Argos, jealous of their proximity and of their place on
the national roll of honour from which she had excluded
herself. At the end of another decade ^Eschylus chose

to flatter the Argives, just then the allies of Athens, by

transferring from Mycenae to their town the scene of the
“Agamemnon.”

In addition to the plain of Argolis the “Akte,” or

peninsula proper, has its own history and associations.

Leaving Tiryns and Nauplia behind, the road to the

inland Epidaurus sanctuary is overlooked from the

north by the naked ridge of Mount Arachneum, from
which flashed to the palace roof at Argos the last relay

of flame in the chain of beacons. The Epidaurian

Asclepieum claimed the honour of the birth of the
god of healing, the foundling son of Apollo, who was
suckled by a goat. From this parent sanatorium others
352 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
were established throughout Greece. The Athenians
even called “Epidauria” one of the days used for the
worship of Asclepius. In a fragmentary hymn to the
god, found at Athens, reference is made to the oracle
quoted by Pausanias as beginning: “Great joy for
mortals all thy birth, Asclepius! Thou, love-child of
Koronis and my own, wast bom in rugged Epidaurus !”
In the precinct of this famous health-resort was found
a tablet inscribed with a hymn by Isyllus, an Epidaurian
poet, containing the genealogy of the god’s mother and
telling how Apollo named the child and called him
“Destroyer of disease, Health-giver, mighty Gift to
men.” Homer’s epithet for Epidaurus is “abounding
in vines, ” and in later days Dionysus was not neglected.
The auditorium, with the circle of the orchestra
f
still

completely marked by a sunken rim of stone, is the

most beautiful and the best preserved of the theatres
in Greece, and one may here better than at Athens
imagine the mise-en-scene of the great dramas for which
the Argolid furnished so largely the subject matter. The
opening scene of the “Ion” of Plato brings before us
the star rhapsodist of his day, relating how he is just
back from the Asclepius festival at Epidaurus where
the Epidaurians held a contest, not only in his own
specialty of reciting Homer but in lyric poetry besides.
In Epidaurus were celebrated the usual games, as the
well-preserved Stadium testifies and as we know from
more than one passage of Pindar. In the Abaton, now
more fully excavated, have been found some of the
 ARGOLIS 353

tablets dedicated by grateful patients who had been

cured by sleeping in the precinct. Cures of blindness,
palsy, ulcers, dropsy, internal maladies and external
wounds are recorded in this medical literature, which
Strabo tells us was here displayed in great abundance,
as in the great Sanatorium of Hippocrates on the island
of Cos.
Troezen, far down the eastern side of the peninsula,
both geographically and by its associations, historical
and mythological, turns our thoughts away from Dorian
Argos and across the Saronic Gulf to Athens. It was
here that some of the Athenian women and children
found a place of refuge during the Persian invasion.
In a colonnade of the market-place Pausanias saw por-
trait statues of those refugees whose rank and wealth
permitted this expression of their gratitude. Here in
the harbour the Greek fleet assembled before sailing to

take its position in the Straits of Salamis. The ruined

remains of the acropolis are insignificant, but our vision,
like that of the refugees, may range over the wonderful
landscape — Parnassus beyond the Isthmus and gulf,

mountains and headlands, and the Higean set with

island jewels — back to the fertile plain below, which
inmodern times has welcomed the beauty of the orange

and the lemon to replace the vanished glory of the

kings and heroes of antiquity.
Plutarch, in his “Life of Theseus,” relates the well-
known story that the young prince in the dawning
vigour of manhood is taken by his mother to test his
354 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
strength on the great rock beneath which lie concealed
the tokens left by his father to guarantee his royal birth.

He lifts the rock and takes the sword and the sandals.
Emulous of the fame of Heracles, he rejects the sug-
gestion of the easy voyage across the Saronic Gulf, and
by the dangerous land route, where wild beasts and
giants must be met and slain, he makes his way past
the ill-famed Scironian rocks to Athens, and claims the
paternity of ^Egeus and becomes the national hero of
his father’s land.

In the “Hippolytus” of Euripides we find Theseus,

self-exiled from Athens for a year, again in Troezen, the

realm of Pittheus, his maternal grandfather, who has

had the rearing of his son, Hippolytus. The handsome
youth has been seen at Eleusis by Phaedra, his young
stepmother, who then and there falls in love with him.
He is, however, a somewhat intractable compound of a
Jehu and a Joseph, wholly absorbed in colourless de-
votion to Artemis and inaccessible to the blandishments
of Aphrodite, who uses the unlucky Phaedra as a cat’s-
paw to punish the intrusion of the divine huntress into
the sphere of influence rightfully belonging to the god-
dess of love. Phaedra, despairing and mortified at her
rejection by Hippolytus, very properly hangs herself,

but by way of securing her posthumous justification

leaves a note for her husband, accusing the innocent

Hippolytus. Theseus, in his rage, banishes his son and
invokes a curse by Poseidon. Faring forth in his chariot
Hippolytus, though an excellent whip, is unable to cope
 ARGOLIS 355

with the great bull sent up from the sea. This so ter-

rifies the horses that their driver is thrown upon the

rocks and dies, after Artemis, a somewhat tardy dea ex
machina, has appeared to the now remorseful Theseus
and has exonerated his son. This favourite drama, in
addition to the admirable drawing of Phaedra’s char-
acter, combines the grandeur of the sea as it roars up
in a tidal wave, envisaging the terrible sea-bull, and the
loveliness of the Troezenian meadows where Hippoly-
tus, a replica of the young Ion in Apollo’s temple, pre-
sented the vision of human beauty, so dear to Greek
eyes, in its appropriate setting of nature’s lonely
charm.*
In addition to these more superficial attractions there
was at Troezen one of the most popular entrances to

the lower world. Here Heracles fetched up Cerberus,

and by this route Dionysus brought back his mother
Semele. It is also reasonable to suppose that Theseus,
from a sense of local pride, must have passed down
this way when he assisted his friend Pirithous in car-
rying off Persephone.
Troezen, however, had a rival in this underground
traffic. Hermione, the home of the poets Lasus and
Kydias, on the south coast of the peninsula, claimed
the rather dubious advantage of the closest proximity
to Hades. Strabo, the geographer, records the boast
of the people of Hermione that on their short line

Charon’s obol is not exacted of the passengers, “and

* See chapter i, p. 26, for hymn to Artemis from the Hippolytus.
356 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
therefore,” he adds, “they do not here put in a fare
for the corpse.” The Hermione would
cost of travel to
have overbalanced for people at a distance the Ferry-
man’s very moderate fee, or perhaps the route may have
been open for local traffic only. At all events this
exception was not known in Greece generally. We
find in Lucian’s dialogues that the Cynic Menippus,
with never an obol to his mouth, takes his chance as a
stowaway or offers to Charon to work his passage, while
the corpse of the poor cobbler Micyllus, also unpro-
vided with the necessary fee, heedless, since he is dead
already, of the risk of drowning, starts in to swim.
Close to the Troezen shore is the island of Calauria,
the modem Poros, where “outrageous Fortune” shot
home one of her most virulent arrows. On a high
plateau near the middle of the island are the remains
of the ancient precinct and temple of Poseidon. Here,
where he could look over to Sunium, the “headland of
Athens,” Demosthenes, a fugitive from the wrath of
Macedon, waited for his pursuers. Plutarch relates
that, discrediting the promises of safety made to lure

him from sanctuary, he withdrew within the temple

and, after taking the poison which he had secreted,
tottered forth to die outside in order to avoid defiling
the sacred precinct. The Athenians later set up his

statue in bronze, and on it was inscribed :

—
“Had but thy power, Demosthenes,
Equalled thy will,

Macedon ne’er had ruled Hellas,

Free were she still.”
 A

Demosthenes

of

death

tlie

of
CALAURI

Scene

Poseidon.

of

Temple
 ARGOLIS 357

The great orator whose powerful will had first, as it was

said,won control over his unruly tongue and weak voice
amidst the roar of the sea, and who by his words had
controlled the still more turbulent populace, died here
with unbroken will under the gray shadow of Poseidon’s
sanctuary. This was one of the oldest stone temples in
Greece, probably contemporary with the sixth century
temple of the sea-god at Posidonia, the modern Paes-
tum. Already dignified by time its columns looked
down on the fleet that put forth for Salamis from the
neighbouring Troezen, relying now for the sea-fight on
the help of Poseidon rather than upon the goddess of
the Heraeum who had presided over the start for Troy,
at the time of the preliminary clash, still unforgotten,
of Asia with Greece.
 CHAPTER XVII
ARCADIA

“The winding valleys deep-withdrawn and ridged crests of Arcady.”

Pindar.

O
these the
f the temples that once adorned the mainland
and the islands of Greece only a brave few
now rear columns from the ground. Among
Temple of Apollo at Bassae constrains the
traveller to penetrate to the heart of Arcadia. The re-

wards of the difficult journey are many, and are en-

hanced by a general knowledge of the whole Arcadian
territory, into which the detached impressions of a
brief stay may be sympathetically fitted.

Homer says that the Arcadians went to Troy in ves-

sels borrowed from Agamemnon, because they had

none of their own. The most potent fact in the history

and development of Arcadia is its isolated position

as the one inland country (save little Doris) of Greece.

Only from the heights of the encircling mountains could
her people catch sight of distant seas. Those whom
the sea-spell lured with irresistible magic left their
hills to seek foreign coasts and enlist in foreign navies.
The Arcadians have rightly been called the mercena-
ries of Greece. Those who stayed at home lived the
 ARCADIA 359

restricted life of a population cut off from intercourse

with the larger world. The entire territory is composed
of high land, its lowest elevation from the sea being
more than two thousand feet. In the east are great
plains of swampy ground, and lakes drained by under-
ground channels. Towards the west the land becomes
an irregular, hilly plateau intersected by rivers. In
antiquity superb forests of oaks and pines, coverts for

many a wild beast, contributed to that general physical

wildness which prevented a people untouched by for-

eign ideas from uniting in a progressive political life.

Even against the background of Greek individualism

their history is conspicuously one of separate towns.
And of these towns few attained to any eminence.
Arcadia contained the oldest and the youngest of all

Greek cities. The latter, Megalopolis, is still in civic

existence, and is the terminus of the modern railroad
ride from Athens for those who are on their way to Bas-

sae. It was the last town founded in free Greece, and

its establishment originated in the ardent hope of
Epaminondas to unite the scattered Arcadians under
one government. In the same southwestern portion of
Arcadia, near the young Megalopolis and easily reached
from it on horses, lie the ruins of old Lycosura, be-

lieved by the Greeks to be the most ancient of all their

cities and to have served as a model for later founda-

tions.

But the chief roles in the political life of Arcadia were

played by Mantinea and Tegea, cities lying in the wide
360 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
eastern plains. Near them lay Pallantium, and within
the territories of these three cities flourishes the modern
Tripolis, in its origin an important Turkish stronghold
and now one of the most prosperous towns of the new
nation. The sanguinary history of Tripolis in the War
of Independence was worthy of the ancient character
of Mantinea and Tegea.
Although Homer called Mantinea “lovely,” her life

was one of military activity. Mantineans fought at

Thermopylae, but it is in the pages of the historians of
later periods, of Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius,
that they chiefly figure, fighting on their own territory

against Sparta or with Sparta against Thebes. This

evil coalition resulted in the famous battle of 362 b. c.,

in which Epaminondas fought for the last time. The

description of the battle forms the close of Xenophon’s
treatise on Greek History, and the chaotic results of the

long-anticipated struggle, whereby “neither party,

though each claimed to have conquered, was seen to

gain any more in land or cities or authority than it pos-

sessed before the battle was fought,” are set forth by
him with considerable vividness. But the momentous
fact that in this battle the great Theban commander
lost his life he disposes of in a subordinate clause. This
petty injustice is the more singular because the fatal

blow was generally believed to have been struck by

Xenophon’s son, Grylus, who received a public burial
and monument at Mantinea. It is Pausanias who
admits us to the last scene of a noble life, enacted among
 ARCADIA 361

the alien, windswept oaks of Arcadia, on the hill now

known as Mytika. “ When Epaminondas received his

wound, they carried him out of the line of battle. He

was still in life. He suffered much, but with his hand
pressed on his wound he kept looking hard at the fight,

and the place from which he watched it was after-

wards named ‘
Scope ’ (the Lookout). But when the
combat ended indecisively he took his hand from
the wound and breathed his last, and they buried him
on the battlefield.”

The memory of Epaminondas inspired a later hero

who not only fought at another battle of Mantinea but
was himself a son of the Arcadian soil. In the period
of the Achaean League, Philopcemen, born in Megalo-
polis, was eight times chosen to be the general of the
united forces, and in 206 b. c. he met and conquered
at Mantinea the recalcitrant Spartans who had refused
to join the league. The description of this battle is

given to us by Polybius, his younger fellow townsman,

who at the hero’s death was the youth selected to bear
his ashes to the tomb. Because all such victories in
the cause of freedom were but fitful gleams of the fire

whose flame had been quenched at Chaeronea, it is the

more necessary to give heed to a character like Philo-
poemen, from the day of whose death, Pausanias sadly
remarks, Greece ceased to be the mother of the brave.
He closes the long line of Greeks who led their peoples
to liberty. At one of the Olympic festivals the whole
audience in the theatre rose to greet Themistocles, who
362 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
had saved Greece from Persia. And centuries later a
similar tribute was paid to Philopoemen. Not long after
his victory over the Spartans it chanced that he was
present at the competition of the minstrels at the Ne-
mean Games. “Pylades, a native of Megalopolis, and
the most famous minstrel of his time, who had gained
a Pythian victory, was singing an air of Timotheus, the
Milesian, calledThe Persians.’ Scarcely had he struck
‘

up the song, The glorious crown of freedom who giveth

‘

to Greece, when all the people turned and looked at

’

Philopoemen, and with clapping of hands signified that

the song referred to him.”
Few men in history are more interesting than Phi-
lopoemen. From youth to a hale old age he lived the
life of his choice, combining rugged and fearless sin-

cerity with keen military knowledge, and uniting in an

unusual degree the reckless impulsiveness of a free-

booter with the patient power of a skilful general.

When one term of his generalship had expired, he hur-
ried over to Crete to help in a war which in no way con-
cerned him but his countrymen, accustomed to depend
;

upon his ability, summoned him back, and he arrived

on the mainland just in time to find that the Romans
had fitted out a fleet against Sparta, and to plunge into
the fray. Being no sailor, however, he unwittingly em-
barked in a leaky galley, which reminded the Romans
and their allies (in those days every man had read his
classics at school) of the verses in the Catalogue in
which Homer speaks of the Arcadians as ignorant of
 ARCADIA 363

the sea. After eight successful generalships and many

brilliant exploits, when he was more than seventy years
old, Philopoemen was captured and poisoned by the
Messenians. In him Arcadia lost her greatest son, in
whom had lived her own wildness and her own patience,
her own flaming spirit and her own honourable aus-
terity. According to Polybius, he had harboured no
illusions about the future of his country and of Hellas,
but had chosen to offer his life, while it lasted, as a
bulwark against the inevitable. “I know full well,” he
said in answer to Aristaenus’s criticism of his policy of
resisting all unjust encroachments from Rome, “ that
there will hereafter come a time when the Greeks will
have to yield obedience under compulsion to every

order issued to them. But would one wish to see this

time come as quickly as possible or, on the contrary,

postponed as late as possible? Methinks as late as

possible! In this, then, the policy of Aristaenus differs

from my own. He is eager to see the inevitable come
as quickly as possible and he helps it on to the best of

his ability, whereas I to the best of my power resist

and thrust it back.” One false hope, according to

Pausanias, he did treasure: “He would fain have
modelled his life on the pattern set by the character
and deeds of Epaminondas, but could not equal him
in all things, for while the temper of Epaminondas
was very gentle, that of the Arcadian was passionate.”
Although Arcadia’s part in the Persian wars was not
heroic, Tegea, like Mantinea, proved her bravery at
364 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Thermopylae, and at Plataea, according to Herodotus,
her citizens struggled with the Athenians for the fore-
most post in the battle. Later wars, civil and foreign,
kept her busy through several centuries. But the arts
of peace also flourished within her walls, and Tegea
must be honoured for having erected one of the most
distinguished temples not only of the Peloponnesus but
of all Greece. This was the Temple of Athena Alea,
built by Scopas early in the fourth century. Only a
few traces are left of its mingled Doric, Ionic, and
Corinthian columns. More important are the frag-
ments preserved in the National Museum at Athens
of sculptures from the hand of Scopas himself, por-

traying the Calydonian boar-hunt, the heroine of which

was the Arcadian maiden Atalanta. The same Museum
contains marble reliefs from Mantinea, coming prob-
ably from the time, if not the workshop, of Praxiteles,
and very interesting sculptures of disputed date from
old Lycosura. The Arcadians, whose native gift was
music, did not lag behind the rest of the Greeks in their
appreciation of the plastic arts.
Pallantium was not important in Arcadian history,
but was reverenced by the Romans as the home of
Evander, whose enterprizing colonization of the Pal-
atine Hill was immortalized by Virgil. In filial remem-
brance of the adventurer the town was rebuilt by An-
toninus Pius.
To the north of the great plain of Mantinea and
Tegea lay another marshy plain containing three other
 ARCADIA 365

important cities, Orchomenus, Pheneus, and Stym-

phalus. But the train from Athens sweeps far toward
the south, and ruined cities slip out of mind among the
“winding valleys deep- withdrawn and ridged crests of

Arcady.” The real significance of Arcadia lay in its

landscape rather than in its towns. If the country con-

tributed few large centres and few splendid deeds to

Greek history, it offered its mountains and streams

to be peopled by the divine progeny of Greek imagi-
nation. Pan himself was born amid the “ wind- tossed
mountain trees of steep Cyllene,” and from many an-
other Arcadian hillside thereafter his pipes reached the
ears of shepherds tending their flocks in upland pas-
tures. Artemis, making her pastime the chase of boars
and swift deer, fairer than the fair wild wood-nymphs
attending her, took especial pleasure in the ridges of
Erymanthus and became the reverently worshipped
Maiden of the Arcadian country.
Later literature in more than one language created
a visionary Arcadia of uninterrupted pastoral charm and
ease, a refuge for the weary, an earthly dream of “ un-
laborious life.” The fashion began in Greek itself

in the artificial period of Alexandrian civilization when

men were sated with city life and began to write cham-
ber poetry about the beauties of nature. Arcadia, with
its still unspoiled hills and woods and rivers, became a
convenient setting for the delicate and charming fancies
of litterateurs. But in the real Arcadia “nature” was
a serious force to be reckoned with. The frowning
366 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
mountains, wild ravines, and stretches of barren soil;

the gusty storms of winter and the close heat of summer;

the difficulties of communication between village and
village, and the remoteness from the great highway of
the sea, all combined to make Arcadian life rude and
elemental. Often the inhabitants were forced to a
hand to hand struggle with poverty. Sometimes they
gave way, as Herodotus indicates when he says that
“some men from Arcadia who were in need of a liveli-

hood and wanted employment” deserted to the Per-

sians. But oftener the Arcadians fought it out at home,

tilling what soil they could, and patiently tending herds
and flocks.

Such a people, busy with the primitive needs of life,

found in Pan and Artemis saviours and graciously

intimate friends rather than fanciful presences with
which to adorn pastoral poetry. Arcadia was, indeed,
a very religious country, teeming both in its cities and
on its lonelier hillsides with sanctuaries to many of the

Olympian hierarchy, and especially to a strange, elusive

divinity, known as the “Mistress.” But the divinities

of life in the open most appealed to them. It is indica-

tive of an important and not always recognized element

in Greek character that some of the most lovely fancies

of Greek mythology should have taken root where life

was hard. The austerity of work and poverty was never

denied by the clear-eyed Greeks. But instead of seek-
ing, like the Celts, to escape from it into dreams of
unreal and fairer worlds, they balanced against it the
 ARCADIA 367

palpable beauty of this world and found much room

for joy and laughter.
Pan’s birth in Arcadia was third in an interesting
series of events. The first was the birth of Zeus himself

on Mount Lycaeus, the isolated mountain peak which

rises northwest of Megalopolis. It is, however, no wide-
spread Hellenic tradition which gave to the king of the
gods an Arcadian birthplace. Of all the places that
claimed that honour, perhaps Crete most impressed her-
self upon the Greek world at large. But the legend of
Arcadia at least resulted in bestowing upon the ruler
of Olympus the well-known epithet “Lycaean,” and in
establishing on the summit of the mountain a sanctuary
involving sacrifices and festivals. Human sacrifices

continued here astonishingly long, and the savagery

of the early Arcadians left traces also in tales of were-
wolves roaming among the desert places of the moun-
tain.

A much more engaging story, especially when it is

clothed in Ionic mirth and grace, brought Zeus as a

lover to another mountain peak in Arcadia and pictured
the second divine birth in the country. The Homeric
Hymn to Hermes, whether it is read in the original or in
Shelley’s inimitable translation, is alive with that witty

and audacious fancy which furnished to naughty mor-

tals delightful brothers among the gods. On Mount
Cyllene, towering above the other mountains of Arcadia
and bulwarking the northeastern portion of the country,
dwelt Maia, a fair- tressed nymph. Zeus loved her and —
 —

368 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

“ She gave to light a babe all babes excelling,

A schemer subtle beyond all belief,

A shepherd of thin dreams, a cow-stealing,
A night-watching, and door-waylaying thief.”
The precocity of the divine infant is the theme of the
story. He is not four days old when he starts for Thes-
saly to steal the cattle of Apollo. But as he crosses the
threshold of his mother’s cave he meets a tortoise
creeping along and feeding on the rich grass, a sight
which moves him to laughter and gives him a fresh
idea. This is no less than the fashioning of the lyre out
of the tortoise’s shell:

“ And through the tortoise’s hard stony skin

At proper distances small holes he made,
And fastened the cut stems of reeds within,
And with a piece of leather overlaid
The open space and fixed the cubits in,
Fitting the bridge to both, and stretched o’er all
Symphonious chords of sheep-gut rhythmical.

“When he had wrought the lovely instrument,

He tried the chords, and made division meet
Preluding with the plectrum, and there went
Up from beneath his hand a tumult sweet
Of mighty sounds, and from his lips he sent
A strain of unpremeditated wit,
Joyous and wild and wanton such you— may
Hear among revellers on a holiday.”

When he has sung enough and is “seized with a sud-

den fancy for fresh meat,” he hurries off to the shad-
owed hills of Pieria and steals fifty of the lowing kine
which are feeding there on flowering, unmown mead-
ows. Cunningly reversing their tracks, and making
 —

ARCADIA 369

for himself sandals of twigs and leaves that will not

betray him, he drives the cattle to the river Alpheus

in Arcadia, by whose banks they munch lotus and
marsh-marigold. He kills and cooks with lusty appe-

tite, in the serene moonshine, and then at dawn,

through a silence broken by no step of god or man nor
bark of dog, he goes back to the crests of Cyllene and
enters the cave, through the hole of the bolt,

“Like a thin mist or an autumnal blast.”

Meantime Apollo, the Far-darter, has been tracking

him from the Thessalian meadows. To the fragrant
Cyllenian hill he comes where sheep are peacefully
grazing, and finds the little thief wrapped once more
in swaddling bands, feet, head and hands curled into a
small space, tortoise shell clasped under his baby arm.

“ Latona’s offspring, after having sought

His herds in every corner, thus did greet
Great Hermes: ‘Little cradled rogue, declare,
Of my illustrious heifers, where they are!’

“To whom thus Hermes slyly answered: ‘Son

Of what speech is this!
great Latona,
Why come you here to ask me what is done
With the wild oxen which it seems you miss?
I have not seen them, nor from any one
Have heard a word of the whole business;
If you should promise an immense reward,
I could not tell more than you now have heard.

“ An ox-stealer should be both tall and strong,

And I am but a little new-born thing,
Who yet, at least, can think of nothing wrong.
My business is to suck, and sleep, and fling
 —

370 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

The cradle-clothes about me all day long, —
Or, half asleep, hear my sweet mother sing,
And to be washed in water clean and warm,
And hushed and kissed and kept secure from harm.’ ”

Apollo is not deceived, but is forced to laughter.

Finally they agree to put the case before Zeus on

Olympus. There, after Apollo’s attack, Hermes makes
a lying and witty defence, at which his immoral and
omnipotent father laughs aloud. Both sons are sent off

to find the kine, and on the way the Cyllenian shows

the Far-darter his tortoise-lyre and entrances him with
its music:
“ unconquerable
Up from beneath his hand in circling flight
The gathering music rose —
and sweet as Love
The penetrating notes did live and move

“Within the heart of great Apollo. He

Listened with all his soul and laughed for pleasure.”

Hermes suggests an exchange, promising the tortoise

shell to Apollo, if he may have in return the glittering

lash and drive the herd. Thus the lyre, invented in

Arcadia, passed to the rightful lord of music and to an
universal sovereignty.
The two brothers became fast friends and sealed
their affection on snowy Olympus by mutual promises.
The older brother reserves for himself the awful gift
of prophecy, but in return for the lyre gives to the
younger lordship over the twisted-horned cattle and
horses and toiling mules, over the burning eyes of lions,
and white-tusked boars and dogs and sheep, and,
 ARCADIA 37i

most important of all, makes him herald to lead the

dead to Hades.
Almost imperceptibly, toward the close of the hymn,
the two gods take on something of the stateliness which
clothes them in more serious poetry. But the rollicking

infant and his half-angry, half-amused victim must be

remembered to complete the idea of a religion which
left a definite place for humour. While the gravely
beautiful Hermes which adorned the temple of Hera
at Olympia revealed, in perfect marble, a serious and
noble conception of divinity, it may well be that among
the many wooden or stone statues of the god which
stood in orchard closes, by cool wayside springs, and
in crossways near the gray seashore, more than one
recalled his lovable and mischievous boyhood. Cer-
tainly it is tempting to imagine the infant trickster in the
Hermes of the Anthology who guarded pleasant play-
grounds and to whom boys offered marjoram and hya-
cinth and fresh garlands of violets.
Hermes would seem to have frequently returned to

his early Arcadian home, and during one of these visits

he fell in love with the daughter of Dryops, and for her

sweet sake became thrall of a mortal man and shep-

herded the fleecy sheep. The fruit of his union with the
shepherd’s daughter was Pan, and another Homeric
hymn describes his birth: —
“ and she in the palace
Brought forth a son that was dear unto Hermes but strange to her
seeing,
Goat-footed, two-horned, noise-loving, taking his pleasure in laughter.
372 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Fleeing she darted away and her man-child the mother abandoned
For that she feared at the sight of his visage unlovely, full-bearded.
Forthwith, however, the luck-bringer, Hermes, accepted the infant.
Took him and held in his hand and the god had delight without
measure.
Lightly he went with the boy to the homes of the gods ever-living,
Wrapping him well in the skins of the wild hare that runs on the
mountains,
There took his seat near to Zeus and the others, the gods ever-living,
Showed them the boy as his own and they in their hearts were de-
lighted,
All the immortals, but chiefly the revelling god, Dionysus.
Pan then they called him because to the Pantheon all he gave joy-
ance.”

Such was the pleasant debut of the god who was to

make glad the hearts of men also, bringing laughter

into a world of tears, and inspiring amid the difficulties

and the ennui of civilization a wholesome passion for

life in the open air. Lord was he of every snowy crest

and mountain peak and rocky path. Soft meadows

where crocuses and fragrant hyacinths nestled in the
grass knew his presence. By still pools within the green
woods he would sit contentedly, or lofty crags would
tempt his lively feet to adventurous climbing. Over the
high white hills he would range in the pursuit of wild
beasts. And in the evening he would sit on some jutting

rock or by the dusky water of a wayside spring and play

on his reeds such melodies of honeyed sweetness as
even the nightingale’s spring song could not surpass.
With him the mountain nymphs, the shrill singers,

went wandering with light feet, and Echo moaned along

the mountain crest. Many a lonely shepherd among
 ARCADIA 373

the hills or tired husbandman in the meadows must

have desired to keep the god within his hearing. A
broken fragment in the Greek Anthology, embedded
among frigid Byzantine conceits, but springing one
knows not out of what fresher age, seems instinct with
such prayers as theirs :
—
“ With lips along thy reed pipe straying,
Dear Pan, abide,
For in the sunny uplands playing
Doth Echo hide.”

Although Pan dwelt all over Hellas, his Arcadian

birth was not disputed, and more than one Arcadian
mountain was especially distinguished by his presence.

Among the Nomian hills, to the south of Lycaeus, he

invented the music of his pipes. Mount Maenalus, near
Tripolis, he often visited, and on Mount Parthenius
he requested recognition at Athens. Over this moun-
tain, named for virginal Artemis, ran one of the regular
passes from the Argolis into Arcadia, a route followed
to-day by the train from Athens to Tripolis. The swift
Athenian courier was passing this way when he was
delayed by the god.
In the northwestern corner of Arcadia, skirting
Achaea and Elis, rises another well-known mountain,
Erymanthus, the favourite hunting ground of Artemis,
who as Leader, Saviour, and Fairest received countless
shrines from the Arcadians. The southern and lower
continuation of Mount Erymanthus was known as
Mount Pholoe, to which, as we know from the “Ana-
374 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
basis,” Xenophon and his sons and their guests used
to come from Elis for the pleasures of the chase. Its

beautiful woodlands were fabled to be one of the homes

of the Centaurs, whose strange dual nature linked the
world of men to the world of beasts. Heracles was
entertained by them when, as one of his labours,

he came to hunt the wild boar in the Erymanthian

thickets.

The forests which spread over the plains and dark-

ened the hills of Arcadia were filled with wild boars
and bears and deer. The bear especially gave rise

to many legends. The Great Bear in the heavens was

once an Arcadian maiden, Callisto, whom jealous

Hera turned into a bear and whom Artemis, as a favour

to her, shot down. But Zeus retransformed the maiden
into shining stars, the guides of mariners before and
since the night when Odysseus “kept looking ever at
the Pleiades and at Bootes setting slow and at the Bear,

by surname called the Wain.” Callisto’s son was Areas,

or Bear, and he first taught the forest dwellers, in the
country that was to inherit his name, how to raise corn

and bake bread. The great oak woods of Arcadia were

responsible for the epithet “acorn- eating,” which the
riddle-loving priestess of Delphi often applied to the
inhabitants. In the time of Pausanias the Arcadian
forests were still conspicuous in all parts of the country.
Driven gradually from the plain to the mountains they
are even there at last yielding to decay.
But the waters of Arcadia are as unchanged as the
 ARCADIA 375

hills. Both the Alpheus and the Eurotas rise within its

borders, the former turning westward, as of old, to its

haunts at Olympia, the latter winding to the south to

delight a new Sparta with its gleaming water and ripple-

washed reeds. And the Ladon, the northern branch of
the Alpheus, flows on with the impetuous charm and
beautiful colour which gave it the reputation of being
the loveliest river in Greece. From out of the range of
the Erymanthian hills springs the river Erymanthus,
which was especially sacred to Pan, as if its reeds above
all others could be shaped into tuneful pipes. In the
river Gortys the nymphs washed the new-born Zeus.
And by the banks of the Aroanius, which flows down a
northern valley to join the Ladon, Pausanias, in envi-
able leisure, awaited Arcadian music. “Amongst the
fish in the Aroanius,” he tells us, “are the so-called
spotted fish. They say that these spotted fish sing like
a thrush. I saw them after they had been caught, but
I did not hear them utter a sound, though I tarried by
the river till sunset, when they were said to sing most.”
A group of renowned Arcadian waters may be
reached in one northward excursion of three days from
Tripolis. The first of these is the Lake of Pheneus, as
famous for its strangeness as for its loveliness. It is so

surrounded by hills that no stream can escape from it

above ground, and the water issues only by two kata-

vothras. The condition of these subterranean channels
determines whether the great mountain basin of the
Pheneus is a fertile plain or a broad lake. In ancient
376 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
times and in our own the changes have succeeded each
other with the fascination of mystery. Pausanias found
a plain, and knew the lake only by tradition. From his
day until the beginning of the nineteenth century there
were no records. But with the ensuing careful descrip-
tions of geographers and travellers come baffling alter-

nations of a “swampy plain covered with fields of

wheat or barley” and a “wide expanse of still water
deep among the hills, reflecting black pine woods, gray
crags, and sky now crimson with sunset.”
To the east of Pheneus and separated from it only
by a mountain ridge the Lake of Stymphalus is sunk
in placid beauty within towering hills. It was the scene
of the fifth labour of Heracles, who killed the mon-
strous man-eating birds that haunted it. They typified,

probably, the pestilence which would arise whenever

the underground channel that served as an outlet for

the lake became stopped. Heracles was the master-

engineer of mythological times. Later engineers also
experimented with the water which flows into the Stym-
phalian Lake from the surrounding mountains and
especially from Cyllene. Its purity and abundance led

Hadrian to have a supply of it carried by an aqueduct

to Corinth. And to-day the Athenians are contemplat-
ing importing it into their arid city.

From the prosperous village of Solos vigorous and

patient pedestrians may reach the most famous of all

the waters of Arcadia, and the most characteristic also

of a country in which gentle charms, however real, are

 ARCADIA 377

always subsidiary to a primitive wildness. These

waters are the Falls of the Styx, as familiar in English
as in Greek literature. They descend over a perpen-
dicular cliff amid scenery which some consider grander
and more imposing than that at Delphi. The surround-
ings so impressed themselves on the sensitive Greek
imagination that from the time of Homer the Styx was
one of the dread rivers of death and the lower world, fit

companion-piece to nether darkness and the monstrous

hound of hell, fit invocation even for gods when on their

oath. “ Let earth be witness unto this and heaven broad

and yon down- flowing water of the Styx, which is the
oath the greatest and most terrible among the blessed
gods,” the immortals, from Zeus to Calypso, are ever
exclaiming. Hesiod contributed the fancy that Iris,

in a vessel of gold, brought water from the Styx to

Olympus, so that the gods might swear by its material

presence. The spray of the falls is said to take on at
midday the lovely colors of the rainbow, which had its

divine personification in the fair messenger of the gods.

And it has also been pointed out that Hesiod, in addi-
tion to describing accurately the Styx as trickling down
from a high and steep rock, by a fine figure suggests

a view in winter when huge icicles form over the cliff

and the clouds settle down so closely upon its summit

that the water looks as if it were descending straight

from the sky. The Styx, he says, dwelt in “glorious

chambers, vaulted with long rocks, and round about a

colonnade of silver pillars reared against the sky.” To
378 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
him also as to Homer the dweller in this icicled palace
was “terrible, hated by all the immortals.”
The traveller who must sacrifice the lakes and rivers

of Arcadia to seeing the temple of Apollo comes directly

by train from Athens to Megalopolis in the great south-

western plain. Here he is detained only by a fourth
century theatre and other more fragmentary remains
of the ancient city before turning northward by car-

riage or horse.

If he is obliged to ride for several hours and meet a

carriage at Karytaena, the grim guardian of the moun-
tainous road to Andritsena, where he is to spend the
night, he will have cause to be thankful for an experi-
ence that has put him on more familiar terms with rude
Arcadia, and has made him more sensitive to the change
from monotonous lowland to vast, solitary mountains
and deep ravines. The town of Karytaena lies on the
slopes of one of the low hills that form the northern
boundary of the plain of Megalopolis. Above it, on the
hill’s summit, loom the ruins of an old Frankish castle,

once the seat of a barony which contributed many a

romantic story to the history of the Peloponnesus in the
Middle Ages. Rarely in Greece is the harmony of his-

torical impression interrupted. But here, like highway-

men to challenge intellectual security, feudalism and the
mediaeval world stalk out upon the unwary. The spec-
tacle is unique. Karytaena stands at the point where
the flat plain startlingly breaks into almost terrifying
mountains. Mount Lycaeus towers on the left, and all
 ARCADIA 379

around serrated heights rise grandly above the castle,

without detracting from own defiant dignity. Past

its

the foot of the hill flows, on its way to Elis, the Alpheus,

here spanned by a striking bridge of six arches, bearing

a Frankish inscription. The ruins of the old barony
of Geoffrey de Villehardouin equal any feudal remains
in Europe in their reminiscent suggestiveness of the
romantic and violent life of the Middle Ages. But even
while the traveller fears that he will become confused
among memories of the Frankish dukes and princes of
the Peloponnesus, of donjons and keeps, of chivalry

and knighthood, of all the insignia and the emotions

and the ideals which make the thirteenth century a. d.

seem more remote from us than the fifth century b. c.,

he finds himself restrained and pacified. Whatever

Greece lays her hands upon seems to lose its ephemeral
or unrelated character and to take its place, individual,

to be sure, but tributary in an harmonious whole. The

ruined mediaeval castle fits into the surrounding land-

scape as no disturbing factor, but rather as an integral

part of what had helped also to shape the ancient life

of Arcadia into its distinguishing forms. The age when

the autochthonous Arcadians were resisting the inroads
of Sparta and the age when the Slavic inhabitants were
yielding to the attacks of the irresistible Franks seem
to have had a common parentage in physical condi-
tions. And the brawling stream of the Alpheus below
seems make the jousts and the romances of Geoffrey
to

de Karytena’s court as much their own as were the

380 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
festivals of Zeus and the love affairs of Pan and the
nymphs.
The mountains into which the carriage turns from
the six-arched bridge are threaded by a long road
which, despite its smoothness and safety, runs near
enough to the tops of precipices and to the sight of noisy

torrents in the gloomy ravines below to engender a

mood of Arcadian wildness. If this mountain region
is reached in time, travellers will become spectators
of the charming scenes which are enacted each evening
over the hills of Greece when the bleating flocks of
sheep and goats come home to their folds. Sappho saw
them in hilly Lesbos :
—
“ Hesperus, all things thou bringest that brightness of morning had
scattered,
Bringest the lamb and the kid, and the child bringest home to his
mother.”

Arcadia is still “rich in flocks” and the “mother of

sheep, ” and to meet and greet her shepherds as they
turn home from the mountain pastures restores the
world of Greek poetry. But if Karytaena is scarcely
rounded before “the sun sets and all the ways are
darkened,” then pastoral idylls make way for Arcadia’s

magnificent solitariness. The mediaeval castle bravely

lifts its head above the lonely country, while red clouds
stretch like tongues of flame over the mountains and
the setting sun turns into molten gold. Suddenly, per-
haps, amid the awful silence of purple crags and burn-
ing sky, one sign of life asserts itself. A little kid is
 ARCADIA 381

stumbling, lost and dreary, in a patch of green wheat

which had enticed it from its mother. Doubtless before
the night is over one tired shepherd who has safely

enfolded his ninety and nine will climb the steeps again
to find the prodigal. But travellers must pass on in the

effort to reach Andritsena before midnight. The sky

pales and cools into night, and stars of singular bril-

liance emerge, using the absence of the fair moon to

“show their bright faces to men.” As one drives hour

after hour through the starlit solitude, while “from
heaven breaketh open the ether infinite,” all geograph-
ical and temporal limitations seem done away with,
and modernity and antiquity meet within the heart of
nature. But finally, as the road from time to time curves
outward, the lights of human habitations begin to
twinkle. Andritsena lifts her little evening beacons
on a mountain-side to offer shelter and food to pil-

grims of the night. The village rivals Arachova in the

charm of its situation, with its outlook over the verdant

hills of the Alpheus valley to the distant pale blue heights

of Erymanthus in the north. Vineyards and mountain
streams and trees add their quota. Those who have
stayed several days in the town in bright weather, or
who have been snowed in, as travellers may easily be
as late as April, report many attractions out of doors,

and many hospitable entertainments within the peasant

houses. Even those whose impressions are gained from
one night’s lodging may forget physical hardships in
the discovery of a Greek inheritance. A girl, reproved
382 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
for stroking the embroidered collar of a guest, says ex-
planatorily, “but it is so pretty,” even as the old men
on the wall at Troy said cf Helen.
Beds of unyielding boards are exchanged before dawn
for hard wooden saddles. The temple of Bassae lies
two hours away, and those who wish to see it without
undue haste and yet return to Megalopolis before night-
fall must begin their ride while the stars are still alight.

Bassae, or The Glens, should be thought of in connec-

tion with Phigalia, although probably only those who
take the long horseback ride to or from Olympia will
see the remains of this ancient city, which, measuring
by the time involved, lies as far beyond Bassae as Bas-
sae is beyond Andritsena. The surrounding country
fell within its territory, but the city itself stood on “ high
and mostly precipitous ground,” bounded on the south
by the deep gorge of the winding Neda, and partially

encircled on the other sides by high mountains. Here

where the air was invigorating and all healthful con-
ditions prevailed it was natural that Apollo should be
worshipped as the Succourer (Epikourios) . In the fifth

century the Phigalians were so impressed by reports

of the new Parthenon in Athens that they determined

to erect by popular subscriptions a new temple to their

chief divinity and to ask Ictinus, the Parthenon’s archi-

tect, to build it for them. Bassae, where already a more

primitive shrine existed, was the place chosen, and
thither from Andritsena in the cool dawn modern pil-

grims are taken by their peasant guides. In spite of the

 ARCADIA 383

promise of the stars, perhaps the day breaks slowly,

dark masses of clouds impeding the progress of the sun.
For an hour and a half the horses make their way along
moderate heights, scrambling up small hills and clat-

tering noisily down very rocky defiles. The waysides,

in March, are bright with irises, violets, hyacinths, and
white and purple crocuses. Then the wildness of the
country begins to increase, and culminates in the stony
slope of a forbidding hill. In half an hour this is scaled

by the horses, and becomes a mount of vision. In un-

usual panoramic grandeur, mountains lift their nearer

or more distant peaks. On the east are the barren hills

that form the western spurs of Mount Lycaeus. Farther
to the south, beyond the valley of the Neda, are the more
thickly wooded slopes of the Nomian hills, and beyond
them are seen the snowy summits of the range of Tay-
getus. To the north* Erymanthus and Cyllene show
their crests. And directly in front, far to the south,

Mount Ithome, rising out of the Messenian plain,

proudly breaks the horizon line. Nor is the sea wholly
wanting, for along the southwestern horizon, as if flow-

ing into the sky itself, stretches a shining length of the

Ionian waters.
Perhaps from this hill Ictinus looked down upon the
place assigned to him by the Phigalians. Even then the
situation must have seemed impressively secluded.
Now, certainly, on descending the easy slope, a mod-
em is almost overwhelmed, as if by the appearance of
a god laying claim to nature’s secrets, by the sudden
384 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
sight of a majestic Doric peristyle. The temple is built
on a narrow plateau on the southern side of a hill called
Cotilius by the ancients. Ictinus’s first approach must
have been from Phigalia (where he would have talked
with the municipal authorities) up the valley of the
Neda, over picturesque and well-wooded hills and dales.

But he must have studied the situation from all possible

points of vantage. Perhaps for him, too, some special
revelation came when out of dark and threatening
clouds the sun, at last divinely swift, cleft the darkness,
and he saw how effectively massive columns of gray
limestone would be illumined by Apollo’s radiant shafts.
Probably the architect’s taste and the Phigalians’
desire united to choose as the material of the temple

the native rock that could be quarried in the neighbour-

hood. Marble was imported for the capitals of the

inner pillars, for the ceilings of the north and south

porticoes, for the roof tiles and for the sculptured frieze

which now honours the British Museum. The columns

of the peristyle and the architrave, barren of adorn-

ment, are singularly noble. They look as if they had

sprung from the rocks about them and belonged more
to the mountains overshadowing them than to men.
Indeed, for many centuries, men forgot the existence

of the temple. Pausanias, in his day, six hundred years

after its building, could still describe it as surpassing

all the temples in the Peloponnesus, save the one at

Tegea built a hundred years later, for the beauty of
its stone and the symmetry of its proportions. But in
 ARCADIA 385

time earthquakes and iconoclasm wrought their deadly

work, and through the Middle Ages and the Renais-
sance the remaining ruins were known only to shep-
herds. The temple was rediscovered in the eighteenth
century, but not until the present time were any efforts
made to reerect some of the interior portions from
the fragments lying on the ground. In the wake of the

archaeologist follows the tourist, and now any one who

will may intrude upon Apollo’s long solitude.
Unlike other temples erected to ‘the gods, whom
iEschylus describes as “facing the dawn” and flashing

back to the worshippers from their “gleaming eyes”

the sun’s early rays, the temple at Bassae lay from north
to south instead of from east to west. But this was due
only to the character of the situation and the exigencies
of the soil. Long before Ictinus’s day a primitive shrine
had existed facing the east in the usual manner. And
the new temple seems to have had a special door built

in its cella in order that the main statue of Apollo, facing

the rising sun, might still be approached from the side
of dawn. The old statue, like the old shrine, was sup-
planted by a finer one. Later the great bronze Apollo
was sent to adorn Megalopolis. But when Ictinus lived

it may well have formed the centre of his noble archi-

tectural design, an incarnation of the ideal of physical
and of spiritual wholeness realized through beauty.
One further fact about the Temple in the Glens has
been emphasized by the great topographer Leake:
“That which forms, on reflection, the most striking
 —

386 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

circumstance of all is the nature of the surrounding
country, capable of producing little else than pasture
for cattle and offering no conveniences for the display of

commercial industry either by sea or land. If it excites

our astonishment that the inhabitants of such a district

should have had the refinement to delight in works

of this kind, it is still more wonderful that they should
have had the means to execute them. This can only
be accounted for by what Horace says of the early
Romans :

‘
Privatus illis census erat brevis,
Commune magnum.’

This is the true secret of national power, which cannot

be equally effective in an age of selfish luxury.”

But it must also be pointed out that although the

Phigalians had taste and patriotism, no architect or
artist rose among them to shape their stone. Ictinus
and his fellow artists must come from Athens worthily
to incarnate their desires. So a generation earlier they

had been obliged to persuade Onatas, the master of the

^Eginetan school of sculpture, to carve for them a
statue of Demeter. Nor were the Phigalians less skilled
than other Arcadians. Scopas had to come from Paros
to build the And it was
temple to Athena at Tegea.
who turned the legends of Cyllenian
foreign poets
Hermes and Pan into literature, and later enshrined
in pastoral verse the tossing mountain forests and the
cool rivers of Arcady.

This was Arcadia’s destiny, to offer the raw material

 ARCADIA 387

of her domain to the shaping hand of more gifted races.

Her greatest son was a soldier. Her own deeds were
deeds of blood and strife, her own life was one of work
and poverty. But because poets and artists of other
blood wrought for her, her name and her inherent
beauty have become forever domiciled in our own liter-

ature, even in our daily speech and commoner affec-

tions.
 CHAPTER XVIII

OLYMPIA
“ What time the mid-month moon in golden car flamed back her
lightand lit the eye of Evening full, pure judgment of Great Games
did Heracles ordain and fifth year’s festival beside Alpheus and his
holy banks.”

W
Pindar.

hatever may be the final decision of archae-

ologists, it was natural for Pausanias to

identify the reclining figures in the east

gable of the Zeus temple at Olympia as the Alpheus

and Cladeus. The right angle made by the junction
of these rivers is in a fertile plain where the Altis,

the sacred enclosure of Olympia, lies at the foot of the

Kronos hill. The Alpheus river is inseparably con-

nected in Greek literature with the Great Games. For

more than one thousand summers successively the full
moon looked down upon the myriads of visitors who
came from inland or from island homes, from Tenedos
in the East, or from Sicily in the West. By the Alpheus
they encamped and sank into dreamless sleep after
their journeyings or, it may be, one or another, himself
a competitor or an anxious relative, would be roused
up by nightmares and outriders of grim Taraxippus,
the Horse Frightener, whose ghost long held in mort-
main the critical turning point in the Hippodrome.
 Altis

the

of

ruins

The
OLYMPIA

Hill.

Kronos
 OLYMPIA 389

When the contests were ended, the same moon would

silver the weather-beaten columns of the old Heraeum
or light up with its benignant splendour the new and
stately shafts of the Zeus temple, the gray-green sacred
olive tree, the great wings of the hovering Victory, the
Parian marbles and the burnished bronzes, or still more
beautiful, the naked ivory of the athletes’ limbs. And
then, crowning all, the epinician hymn, newborn from
Pindar’s brain, rose up on the wings of victorious

music to the very summit of the Kronos hill.

The athletes had not far to journey from their last

training place in Elis. The spectators had come from

various directions, some from the sea-coast, some, as
do the majority of modern visitors, from Patras on the
coast of Achaea. But then, as now, the direct artery
from the heart of Greece was the green valley of the
Alpheus. The river clamps Arcadia and Elis together.
Down this valley year by year in antiquity pilgrims
journeyed to see the games and to attend the great Fair;
here inmodern times bands of tourists still pick their
way up and down over smooth roads and rocky torrent-
beds and cross the ford of the swollen stream; and a
projected railroad, connecting (on paper) Megalopolis
and Olympia, also follows the general course of the
Alpheus. The river has two main sources. Its northern
branch, the Ladon, draws its water from the rugged
mountains of northern Arcadia. The other branch comes
flowing down from the northwest end of Taygetus,
curves through the plain of Megalopolis, plunges
39o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
through the ravine of Karytaena and joins the Ladon
near the western border of Arcadia, and the two united
make their way through Elis to the Ionian sea. Nor
even there is its end. In pursuit of the fountain
nymph, Arethusa, Alpheus must needs reach Sicily.

To the Greeks the Mediterranean was their highway,

not the “salt, estranging sea.” According to Lucian, as

Alpheus enters the sea, Poseidon, brimming over with

curiosity, stops him and enquires: “What’s this, Al-

pheus? You alone of all rivers don’t go in for dissipa-
tion, and you keep your waters fresh and free from
brine as you hurry on?”
(Alpheus) “It’s a love affair, Poseidon, so don’t
cross- question me. You’ve been in love yourself and
often too!”
The sea-god on learning of the object of Alpheus’s
passion expresses much approval. But Alpheus cuts
him short: “ I am pressed with engagements. You de-
tain me, Poseidon, by your superfluous questions!”
(Poseidon) “You’re right. Be off to your Beloved.
Rise up from the water, mingle with the fountain and
be ye twain one stream.”
Lucian’s contemporary Pausanias is troubled with no
doubts, and solemnly reaffirms the wedlock of Alpheus
and Arethusa, although the more sceptical Strabo in

the preceding century had naively argued against the

credibility of the popular belief that a cup thrown into
the Alpheus reappears in the fountain at Syracuse.
Antigonus Carystus had stoutly maintained that “when
 OLYMPIA 39i

the entrails of the victims are thrown into the Alpheus

the waters of Arethusa in Sicily grow turbid.”
Be all that as it may, Alpheus mingling his waters

with the Sicilian fountain is typical of the stream of

competitorswho were constantly returning from the

Olympic games to Magna Graecia. Of Pindar’s four-
teen Olympic odes nine were written for Sicilian or

Italian victors. In general one of the most noteworthy

facts in the history of the games is the widespread dis-
tribution of the clientele. The competitors and visitors
converging from Greece ;
the innumerable votive offer-
ings here dedicated; the common motives of religion
here illustrated in art and literature generated a centri-
petal national spirit that could retard though not de-
stroy the centrifugal individualism of the Greeks.
The only fact more conspicuous than the wide terri-

tory represented is the longevity of the Olympic cele-

brations. The Great Games were continued both under

Macedonian rule and even for long years after the

Hellenic world, east and west, subjugated, dismem-

bered, and rearranged like parti-colored bits of glass

in a kaleidoscope, had fallen into place in the imperial

pattern of the great Roman mosaic. The splendid Phi-

lippeum at Olympia was witness to the eagerness with

which Philip and Alexander made good their legiti-

mate claim to Hellenic blood. Roman emperors, like

Tiberius and Nero, by their very presence, however
arrogant, gave one more sign of the Greeks’ intellectual
suzerainty over their captors.
392 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Although Elis, even in October after the long hot
summer, presents a contrast to the burnt plains and
hills about Athens, yet the traveller will be best re-

warded if he comes to Olympia by the end of Feb-

ruary or early in March. If he comes from Patras and
will penetrate a little inland from the railroad near the
river Stimana, the ancient Larisos, he will find him-
self in the midst of beautiful woodland scenery. The
whole country, with its fine oak trees, reminded the
traveller Mure of “the wilder parts of Windsor Park.”
Even at the little stations are seen shepherds in their

shaggy coats, with conversation-beads and staffs and

flocks of sheep. At Olympia itself the new green of the

trees and grass, the pink of the almond blossoms on

the banks of the Alpheus, and all the awakening of the

early spring help to dissipate the melancholy that is

wont to invade the mind in a lonely site amidst ruins

which record some by-gone efflorescence of human
activity. This Olympian plain, through which the
Alpheus sweeps down to the sea between fields and
vineyards, offered ample room for the vast throngs of

visitors. There was no city accommodation. They

must encamp in the open as they do to-day at many a
modern festival. But the smiling valley was a fit place
to worship Zeus, the god of the open sky. Xenophon,
who lived on his estate just beyond the hills which
bound the plain to the south, tells in the “Anabasis”
how the returning Greeks, when they sighted the Eux-
ine sea from the mountain ridge, held impromptu games
 OLYMPIA 393

and races on an impossible slope where men and horses

tumbled amidst the jeers of the spectators. The plain
of the Alpheus was perfectly adapted both for the games
and all that the festival implied. It is easy to see how
contests would become popular here before they were
instituted on the narrow ledges of Parnassus at Delphi.

For the Greeks of the classical period the mythical

founding of the games in prehistoric times threw back
the first contests into a conveniently dim perspective.
In this penumbra of Greek mythology like-named
replicas of gods, heroes, or mortals now blend together,

now assert their independence. The Cretan Heracles

is said to have brought the infant Zeus from Mount
Ida to the Kronos hill in the Golden Age and to have
first instituted the games. Then again it is the national
hero Heracles, himself Zeus-descended, who cleanses
the stables of King Augeas in Elis with the help of the

Alpheus and the Cladeus river-gods, and thereupon

founds the games.
To the reverent Greek his mythology was not an
entertaining treasury of mere fairy tales. The stories

of two contests were selected with intent as the theme

for the sculptures most prominent of all in the sacred

enclosure. In the east gable of the Zeus temple was

represented Hippodameia, the daughter of CEnomaus.
Her father has already in his swift chariot overtaken
and slain many suitors who had failed to outspeed him
while contending for his daughter’s hand. At the side
of Hippodameia stands Pelops just starting to win, by
 ;

394 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

the favour of Zeus and the treachery of (Enomaus’s
charioteer, a prehistoric Olympic victory.

In the west gable was the contest between the Lapiths

and the Centaurs. The latter are represented as in-

vading the festival at the marriage of another Hippo-

dameia to Pirithous, whose friend and ally of old was
the hero, Theseus of Athens. The brute Centaurs pre-
sumably symbolize the barbaric power of the Persians,
whose defeat by Athens and her allies was here fittingly

celebrated as another Olympic victory. This may be

taken as the official expression, at the supreme moment
of Greek history, of one of the wider meanings of the
games.
The first view of the excavations at Olympia is dis-

appointing and bewildering to the amateur visitor, and

a mere topographical survey hohelessly confounds his-
tory. Even a superficial appreciation of the ruins pre-

supposes a more special preparation than is necessary,

for example, at Pompeii. At Olympia, although it, too,

was overwhelmed, being destroyed by earthquakes and

buried in soft earth by the loyal river-gods, the imag-
ination must concern itself with various epochs: the
prehistoric; the period from the first Olympiad to the

Persian wars the age of Pericles the following century

; ;

the Macedonian period ;

and, finally, that of the Greek
world under Roman sway.
All the buildings for the athletes and for the contests
— the Palaestra, the Gymnasium, the Stadium, and the
Hippodrome — lay outside of the sacred enclosure,
 OLYMPIA 395

while the Altis itself was reserved for the real purpose
of this consecrated spot, the worship of Zeus, under all
his manifold activities, and of the other gods who
helped to round out and to satisfy the aspirations, the

hopes, and fears of the Greek heart that was “in all

things very religious.” To cover all possible oversights

there was at Olympia, as by the Areopagus of St. Paul’s
day, or at Phalerum, an altar to Unknown Gods. Just
as the drama was a religious spectacle, so the games
were conducted by the real Greek in the same spirit.

The athletes went forth from the Altis to the contest,

the victors reentered it to receive the olive crown, and

within it their statues and offerings were set up in the

immediate presence of the gods.

In the Altis the ancient Heraeum, with its indications
of an earlier wooden structure, carries back the thought
far beyond the first Olympiad in the eighth century

b. c. The new god Zeus was just emerging from the

tutelage of his predecessor on the Kronos hill above.
In this early age he seems hardly more than a Prince
Consort by the side of Hera who, in Pindar’s sixth
Olympian, is invoked as the “Maiden” or ever Zeus
had led her to the bridal chamber. One of the least

obtrusive ruins in the Altis marks the site near the

Heraeum of the great altar of Zeus or, possibly, the com-
mon shrine of Zeus and Hera. Annually the priests

kneaded with water from the Alpheus the ashes of the

thighs of victims offered, as in the Iliad, to the god, and
plastered a layer upon this primitive altar. Only the
396 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
water of the Alpheus was acceptable to the god in pre-
paring this clay, and thus year by year was cemented
the union between the visible and the unseen, the benefi-
cent river-god of the land and the Olympian god whose
dome overarched the widespread land of Hellas.
Approaching historic records we read that Iphitus
in 793 b. c. or, by the usual reckoning, in 776 b. c., four

hundred and eight years after the traditional capture of

Troy, renewed the games which had been discontinued

for twenty-eight Olympiads after the time of Pelops and
Heracles. The Heraeum, until recently known as the
most ancient temple in Greece, certainly existed at this

time, although differing in material and in contents from

the temple that Pausanias describes. Both the ground
structure and enough of the lower part of the walls re-

main to enable the expert to reconstruct in imagination

the whole building up to the gable upon which rested

the terra-cotta acroterion now preserved in the Mu-
seum. At the west end of the cella we see the base of

Hera and Zeus. Suitably enough,

the great statues of
while Zeus has disappeared the archaic head of Hera
was found and is now in the Museum. And, prostrate
before one of the side niches, just where Pausanias de-
scribes it, was found the Hermes of Praxiteles with the
infant Dionysus on his arm. This beautiful statue alone
would have repaid the cost of the whole excavation. It

unites the beauty of the athlete’s body with the Greek

conception of divinity in frank, idealizing anthropo-
morphism.
 OLYMPIA 397

The catholicity of Greek polytheism may be illus-

trated by the rest of the company within the Heraeum

as described by Pausanias. It was not that every god
“ had his day,” like the rotation in office of the Athenian

prytanes, but there was a precinct and a function for

each and every manifestation of pulsating life, from the

humblest Nereid to Olympian Hera. “Known to each
other are all the immortal Homer says. They
gods, ” as
were all entered in their Almanach de Gotha and could
upon occasion live in harmony, except when some Eris
threw her apple of discord in their midst or “golden”
Aphrodite struggled in the Council of the Gods for
precedence over the mere bigness of the Colossus of
Rhodes. At any rate, in Hera’s temple were placed
statues of the Seasons and of Themis, their mother, per-

sonifying orderly and unchanging Law; the five Hes-

perides, stimulating the eager Hellenic mind to reach

out after the unknown; Athena, goddess in peace and

war; the Maid and Demeter, embodying the fruitful

beneficence of nature and the mysteries of the unseen;

Apollo and Artemis, welcomed or feared by turns for
their arrows of light or shafts of destruction; Latona,
their mother, whose Delian refuge was firmly moored
to every other sacred shrine in Greece. Here too was
Fortune, who had a not insignificant role in Greek as
in Roman life, and Dionysus, god of Tragedy and of
Comedy, was represented as accompanied by a winged
Victory.
The Prytaneum of the Eleans, trustees of the land
398 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
and of the games, was enclosed within the Altis at the

northwest corner of the Heraeum. It was built over in

Roman times, but the Greek structure beneath seems
to have been of very early date. Here were sung ancient
songs in the Doric dialect, and here, in the banquet-
hall, the Olympic victors were feasted.
Next in historic order come the remains of a row of
twelve treasuries, ranged along close to the Kronos hill

from the Heraeum to the Stadium entrance. They are

ascribed to the sixth century b. C. or, in the case of part
of the most easterly one, to the beginning of the fifth

century. These little buildings are of great architectonic

and historic import. Half of them were dedicated by
communities from over the seas; five by Italian and
Sicilian Greeks. The fragments from the treasury of
Selinus recall at once the archaic temples and sculpture
on the shore of Sicily that faces Carthage. The Syra-
cusan Treasury was re-named “Carthaginian” by rea-
son of spoils, taken by the Syracusans from their Punic
enemies in the battle of Himera and placed here to
unite at this common shrine the victors of Salamis with
their brothers in the west.

In the fifth century b. c. the flush of victory at

Salamis not only lit up the Acropolis at Athens but
spread to this green valley in Elis. The great Zeus
temple was built. Its pediments, as we have already
seen, were adorned with sculptured myths appealing
at once to local pride and to wider Hellenic patriotism.
In the eastern gable Zeus stood upright as arbiter in the
 OLYMPIA 399

chariot contest of Pelops; in the western gable the

archaic yet majestic Apollo appeared as the defender
against the Centaurs, the barbarian invaders. To em-
phasize the honour due to Athens there was painted
on the throne within the temple a representation of
Pirithous, the bridegroom of Hippodameia, and his

friend, the Athenian Theseus. The victories over the

Persians were again symbolized by the contest between

Theseus and the Amazons wrought upon the footstool

of the seated god, and, as if to put the meaning beyond

all doubt, here too were Greece and Salamis personi-
fied, the latter holding in her hand the figurehead of
a ship. The metope sculptures represented the labours
of Heracles who, as founder of the games, typified to
patriot and athlete bodily powers and indomitable will.

The cella of the temple was reserved for the great gold-

ivory statue of Zeus, who was seated while others stood.

Phidias established his workshop by the sacred enclo-
sure and wrought. And the result of his handiwork was
a world’s wonder for long centuries. Into his creation
were breathed Homeric dignity, Attic beauty, and Hel-
lenic pride. Dio Chrysostom in the first century of the
Christian era could say of it: “Methinks that if any
one who is heavy-laden in mind, who has drained the
cup of misfortunes and sorrows in life, and whom sweet
sleep visits no more, were to stand before this image,

he would forget all the griefs and troubles that are inci-
dental to the life of man.”
Time and earthquakes and plunderers have worked
400 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
almost utter ruin. But the ground plan of the temple
remains to tell a detailed story, and some of the great
shafts lie prostrate where they fell. In the Museum is

preserved, more or less complete, the major part of the

gable sculptures, fortunately including the very noble
figure of Apollo, and the mutilated but beautiful me-
topes. The gold-ivory statue has disappeared long since.
It is possible that it may have been destroyed when the

temple was burnt in the reign of Theodosius II, but a

Byzantine historian claims that the statue was still

standing in a palace at Constantinople when it was con-

sumed by firein 475 A. d. In front of the Zeus temple

are still to be seen some blocks of the lofty triangular

column over which Paeonius caused his winged Nike to

hover. The statue itself, in large part intact, is set up

in the Museum and belongs to the more beautiful of our
inheritances from antiquity.
If now we add, in imagination, the great council hall,
possibly lying southeast from the temple, and the older
colonnade bounding the east side of the Altis, and if

we add the pentagonal Pelopion and the minor sanc-

tuaries, and fill in the forest of statues of athletes and
of gods, we shall have the more salient features of the
sacred enclosure down through the great period imme-
diately following the Persian wars. To the beginning
of the fourth century is attributed the little temple of
the Mother of the Gods east of the Heraeum. Running
in a line from this up to the very entrance of the Sta-

dium is a long row of pedestals. Upon these stood the

 OLYMPIA 401

Zanes, or bronze statues of Zeus, which were erected

from fines imposed upon offenders against the rules

of the games. They stood where the contestants must

see them just as they passed from the Aids into the
Stadium. It is significant that the first recorded serious
violation of athletic honour did not occur until 388 b. c.,

only a half century before free Greece was crushed at

Chaeronea, and that the next occasion was in the 112th
Olympiad, six years after Macedonian rule was estab-
lished. This second time it was an Athenian who had
bribed his competitors, and the Athenians, like some
modern sympathizers with athletic criminals, were
shameless enough to press the Eleans to remit the fine.

But the god at Delphi compelled the Athenians to sub-

mit. Standing before the Opisthodomus, the rear porch
of the Zeus temple, from which poet, historian, and
philosopher were wont to utter high words on noble
themes, the crowd may have looked up at the great
Apollo with his hand outstretched and imagined him
dictating the inscription placed, on a similar occasion,
upon the base of one of the Zanes: “An Olympic vic-

tory is to be gained not by money but by fleetness of

foot and strength of body.”

Macedon also left its records. When Philip had de-
feated the Greeks at Chaeronea in 338 b. c., his first care

was to prove that he was Hellene and not the barba-

rian that Demosthenes considered him. The Philip-

peum was dedicated, and in it were erected gold-ivory

statues of Philip’s father Amyntas, of Philip, of the
402 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
mother and grandmother of Alexander, and of Alexan-
der himself. Alexander’s right to contend at the games
was vindicated. In this period also was added on the
eastern side of the Altis the beautiful Echo colonnade
with its sevenfold echo.
When Greece came under Roman rule, no longer
could free-born Greeks boast of exclusive right to par-
ticipate at Olympia. Champions from all parts of the
empire, Tiberius and Nero among them, took part in
the games. Pausanias speaks of a statue of Augus-
tus, made of amber, and a statue of Trajan, dedicated
by the Greek nation, and also of one of Hadrian set

up by the Achaean confederacy. Nero, who contended

both in the Olympic and Pythian games, dedicated
four crowns in the Zeus temple. Under the Antonines
the external splendour of the Altis and the comfort of the
visiting throngs were enhanced by the public-spirited
Herodes Atticus, a Greek from Marathon and the pre-
ceptor of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Lucian, who
was repeatedly at the Games, gives in his “Life’s End
of Peregrinus ” a vivid picture of one of the quadrennial
celebrations in the time of the Antonines. In place of
the deserted ruins of to-day we can see the temples,
statues, marble exedra, the echo colonnade, the athletes,

and the thronging crowds gossiping, wrangling, gaping

after novelty. As the Cynic partisan harangues the peo-
ple from the pulpit of the Opisthodomus we realize how
for centuries Greek life had focused in these gatherings.

The festival had become a Greek Exchange. Here, if

 :

OLYMPIA 403

we are to believe Lucian, Herodotus first gave to the

public his history, the great epinician epic that recounted
the triumphs of the Greek over the barbarian. Among
his audience would be some whose brothers or fathers
had fought at Thermopylae, and all would hear with
pridehow Xerxes asked “ What are the Greeks do-
:

ing?” and how he was answered: “They are holding

the Olympic games, seeing the athletic sports and the
chariot races;” and then, when Xerxes was told that the
prize was a mere olive wreath, how a Persian exclaimed
“What manner of men are these who contend with one
another not for money but for honour!” Brain and
brawn were alike praised at Olympia. The sophist
Hippias was Elis-bom, and the statue of Gorgias from
Sicily was erected among those of the athletes. And

here rhetoricians from Gorgias to Lucian delivered

their epideictic speeches; artists, painters, and musi-
cians appealed to the eye or the ear; philosophies new
or old were hotly debated.
But no Roman patronage could galvanize into real
life the dying spirit of freedom. Professionalism grew
apace. Christianity, established in the eastern empire,

extinguished the fire on the ancient altar of Zeus. The

fitful return to polytheism under Julian the Apostate
only served to show its decadence, and in 393 A. d.

the emperor Theodosius finally suppressed the Olympic

games. When the “truce” of the Olympic god no
longer interposed a defence, the Altis itself became a
Byzantine fortress and the monuments were partially
404 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
destroyed to build its walls. Amongst the ruins of the
Palaestra and the Workshop of Phidias can be seen
the remains of a Byzantine church. Earthquakes in the
sixth century threw down the Zeus temple, and in this
and the following century the Cladeus and the Alpheus,
the only gods who still retained their power, united in
preserving under deep layers of earth the mutilated
monuments for a kindlier age to uncover and to honour.
After this destruction and burial, for more than one
thousand years the summer moons waxed and waned
above the desolated valley disturbed only by the hoof-
beats of the horses ridden by the vassal bands of the
Dukes of the Morea. Here, as elsewhere in Greece,
temples robbed of their acolytes and statues, no longer
symbols of a living religion, forgot the incense of a
happy past and could look forward to no festal renas-

cence. Sterling, in his “ Daedalus, ” pictures these or-

phaned children of Olympus in a loneliness only less

pathetic than their irksome imprisonment within un-

sympathetic Museum walls :
—
“ Statues, bend your heads in sorrow,
Ye that glance ’mid ruins old,
That know not a past nor expect a morrow,
On many a moonlit Grecian wold.”

In 1875 the German government subsidized the sys-

tematic excavations that restored to the modern world
some of its most valued treasures and laid bare the

greater part of the ruined Altis, the adjacent buildings

and the entrance to the Stadium.
 OLYMPIA 405

The remains excavated outside the Altis bring us to

the contests themselves. Close to the western wall
of the Altis were the elaborate Palaestra and Gymna-
sium, where the athletes could keep themselves in form
for the contests. From the northeastern corner of
the sacred enclosure leads the covered way into the

Stadium, which has been only partially excavated at

the two ends. To the south, or possibly east, of the Sta-
dium lay the Hippodrome by the bank of the Alpheus.
Frazer, contrary to the usual belief, thinks it possible
that it may still be intact north of the new bed of the
river. From Pausanias, who fortunately described the
Hippodrome minutely, we can in imagination recon-
struct the scene: the rising tiers of spectators; the
bronze turning- posts, on which respectively stood stat-

ues of Pelops and of Hippodameia, at each end of the

course around which the chariots drove twelve times;
the umpires at the goal ;
the chariots waiting ready for
the signal given at the hoisting of the bronze eagle and
the dropping of the dolphin. For a typical chariot race
of the best period we may turn to the “Electra” of
Sophocles, although the scene of the race is laid at

Delphi, not at Olympia. Sophocles, who himself em-

bodied the Greek perfection of manly beauty, knew
how to give essential details to critical hearers. The
danger involved and the skill required on the race
trackmade the owner of the victorious team, provided
he was his own charioteer, a worthy recipient of Olym-
pic honours. There are ten contestants in all, two of
406 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
them Libyan Greeks. They draw lots for the assign-

ment of inner and outer tracks and take their stations

at command of the judges, and then —

“At the bronze trumpet’s signal forth they shot: the men
Urged on their horses and with both hands loosed the reins.
Now on a sudden all the race course filled with din
Of rattling chariots. Up aloft the dust cloud flew,
Enwrapping all together. Spared they not the goad
That one might pass the others’ horses snorting foam
For horses, breathing neck and neck, now smote with flecks.
Blown backwards, rivals’ flanks and fellies of the wheels.
But he, just grazing past the post each time, would urge
The trace-horse on the right and curb the left inside.
Now thus far all the chariots had fared upright,
But here the ^Enianian’s colts the curb refused,
Ran off with violence and, swerving from the course,
(’T was now the sixth round ended or the seventh now)
Full on the frontlets of the Libyan’s team they crashed.
From this mischancing first another and then one
Fouled with his neighbour, crushing him, till all the course
Crisaean filled with wreckage of the chariot teams.
This noticing, the skilled Athenian charioteer
Held in and swerved to safer offing to pass by
The surge of chariot billows wallowing in the midst.
Last came Orestes driving, holding back his colts,

Placing his confidence upon the final heat.

But when he sees the man from Athens left alone
He stings his swift colts’ ears and whistled shrill the whip
Pursuing. Now abreast the chariots twain drove on,
First one team, then the other leading by a neck.
Now he through allthe other laps unscathed had come,
111 fated, upright on the upright chariot board,
But as the horses doubled now the final turn
He loosed the left rein, recked not of the column’s edge
And struck upon it full the shivering axle-nave.
Over the chariot rim he lurched. The severing straps
Coiled round him. As he fell to earth the colts ran wild
 OLYMPIA 407

Along the race course wide. The people, seeing him

Thus fallen from the team, raise outcries loud and high
At what the youth had done and then this evil hap.
Now borne along the ground, now high again upflung
His legs gleam white, until the charioteers the colts
Had checked, no easy task, and disentangled him
So covered o’er with blood that never had a friend,
Seeing that ruined form, have known him as his own.”

Both the Olympic and Pythian games were held

every four years. The Nemean and Isthmian came every
two years. In all four the prize was similar the wreath
:

of wild olive at Olympia; of mountain bay at Delphi;

of parsley or of native pine at Nemea; of parsley at

Corinth. We are, indeed, justified in emphasizing, until
the period of decadence, the absence of professionalism.
The athlete, after undergoing the severest training, con-
tested, with no degradation of gate-money, merely to win
the honour of a simple wreath. But we need not shut
our eyes to the fact that the honour did not fade with
the wreath. It belonged to the athlete’s native place
and to all his fellow-citizens. Thinking of the evanes-
cent glory of the Isthmian parsley and with the long
. race in the stadium of Eternity in mind, the apostle
Paul might indeed point the contrast for his hearers
between a “corruptible crown” and “one that fadeth
not away;” yet for the shorter race-course of life the
emoluments of honour and preferment were secure.
And, in addition to all these honours, an Olympian
victor had a post-mortem value. He might be wor-
shipped as a divinity and his statue might heal diseases,
4o8 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
like the bones of a mediaeval saint. Thus Lucian’s
Momus, the god of critics, reminds Zeus that their own

prestige is endangered by these new faith-cures: “Ac-

tually,” he says, “ the statues of the athlete Polydamas
at Olympia and of Theagenes at Thasus are curing
fever-stricken patients.”
The athlete’s ambition might issue in a selfish “ op-
portunism,” or it might be of the nobler kind to which
Pindar, thinking perhaps of the altar dedicated in the
Altis to the god “Opportunity” (Ktupos), would lift

the contestant’s ideal in his second Olympian: —

“Winning the contest setteth free the essayer from its
care and pain, and wealth embroidered o’er with virtues
bringeth opportunity for this and that, inspiring mood that
broodeth deeply upon earnest themes.”

There was a sacred truce from hostilities amongst

all Greeks for a month, to allow time for distant com-
petitors and visitors to go and come in safety. The
games were held in summer at the time of a full moon,
whether in July or August is uncertain. The Septem-
ber full moon, in fact, has been suggested as the date
in the even Olympiads. At this later moon the heat
might be almost as great as at the summer solstice, but
it may be that the earlier date, with the longer day,
was in vogue as long as the contests were all held upon
one day. At any rate, the longest midsummer day was
too short for the increasing number of events, and after
472 b. c. we hear of five days. The order of the contests
is uncertain. At first, it would appear, the foot-races
 OLYMPIA 409

had been the only event. Later it seems probable that

the foot-races, the long race, the short race, and the
double course, came upon one day ;
on a second day,
the wrestling, boxing, and pancratium. The chariot-

races and the pentathlum came on one and the same

day. The pentathlum was justly popular as calculated
to secure an all-round development of the human form.
It included leaping, the foot-race, discus- throwing,

javelin-throwing, and wrestling. The Spartans, who

were never charged with being effeminate, were said
to favour it while discountenancing the more brutal
pancratium. We certainly are not much attracted by
the license of the latter, evidently considered legiti-

mate, as we read of two athletes habitually winning

this event by bending back their antagonists’ fingers.

One of them, Sostratus, was surnamed “ Finger-bender.”

But the judges presided with absolute authority and en-
forced severe penalties against violations of the rules.
Women were prohibited under pain of death from
even crossing the river and entering the sacred precinct
during the time of the games. Pausanias records one
violation. Kallipateira, or Pherenike (“Victoria”),
the daughter of Diagoras, the Rhodian victor immor-
talized by Pindar, anxious to see her son compete, dis-

guised herself as a trainer. In her exultation at her son’s

success she betrayed her sex. The penalty attached was
to be hurled from the Typaeum rock on a mountain
south of the Alpheus. In deference to the victories won
by her father, her brothers, and her son, she was par-
4io GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
doned, but thereafter the trainers were compelled to
enter naked like the athletes themselves.

The priestess of Demeter, however, was present ex

officio , and Pausanias expressly states that virgins also

were admitted as spectators. This statement is usually

rejected, but it may have been true for certain times
under the influence of Sparta, whose customs threw the
sanction of public sentiment around the athletic con-
tests of their maidens, the future mothers of their fight-

ing men.
Although the modern reader is apt to think of the
chariot-races in connection with Sicilian tyrants, they
were, as we have seen from Sophocles, an integral part
of Greek life. Herodotus, in the midst of his account
of the battle of Marathon, calmly suspends hostilities

while he tells how Cimon, father of Miltiades, won three

successive Olympic victories with the same mares and,
as fitting climax, adds that the mares were buried
on the stately avenue of Athenian tombs, facing the
grave of Cimon himself. If Herodotus really read this

at Olympia the incident would not have seemed to his

audience an intrusive digression.

In addition to the four-horse and two-horse chariot-
races there was the race with mules — no mean animals
in Greece and the Orient. Pindar repeatedly celebrates
them in his Olympian odes. There was also the single

race-horse ridden by a jockey. One horse from Syra-

cuse, Pherenicus (“Victor”), was celebrated in song
both by Pindar and Bacchylides. Pindar tells how he
 OLYMPIA 411

“ran the course, his body by the goad unurged” and

brought victory to Hieron. Bacchylides, reminding us
that the horse-races opened the events of the day, ex-
claims :
—
“ The Dawn, who touches earth with gold, saw Phere-
nicus, wind-swift sorrel steed, victorious beside Alpheus
eddying wide, and saw him, too, victorious at Pytho the
divine. And I lay hand on earth and swear: Not yet has
dust-cloud raised by horses in the lead e’er touched him in

the race- course as he hastened to the goal.

“ Now sing of Zeus, the Kronos son, Olympian ruler of
the gods and of unwearied Alpheus. Sing of mighty Pe-
lops and of Pisa too, where famed Pherenicus won with
hurrying feet the victory and came back to the ramparts
firm of Syracuse and brought to Hieron the (olive) leaf of

fortune fair.”

Pausanias tells of a Corinthian race-horse, Aura

(“Breeze”), perhaps one of the famous “Koppa”*
breed, sired by Pegasus. The jockey was thrown at the

beginning of the race, but the mare continued without

breaking form, rounded the turning stake, quickened
her pace at the sound of the trumpet, reached the um-

* The old letters Koppa (?) and Sampi (^j) were used to brand the
haunches of blooded horses. The letter f, used as an abbreviation
for Korinthos, when obsolete in many parts of Greece, was retained
in the Corinthian alphabet. It had been carried to Italy by the early
Greek colonists and so passed into our alphabet as the letter Q.
Young Phidippides in the Clouds of Aristophanes had plunged
his father into debt by his race-track operations and had in his

stables a racer of this Koppa breed bought with money borrowed

from the usurer Pasias.

1
412 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
pires first, knew that she had won, and stopped. The
owner of the riderless horse w^as proclaimed victor.

It would be very unsafe to assert that the eager

Greeks, if called back to our own age of ingenious

mechanisms, would turn uninterested from the vicari-

ous competition by motor-cars, or feel nothing but dis-

gust at human forms crooked into the semblance of

brutes over a flying bicycle, but it is safe to emphasize
that all their contests, whether exhibiting the develop-
ment of the perfect human body or the beauty of the
horse, ministered to that sure sense of form and pro-
portion which they demanded and obtained from poet,
painter, and musician, sculptor, architect, and athlete.

But horse and chariot- racing involved certain special

temptations. As time wxnt on, the “anything to win”
spirit was sure,now and then, to assert itself. The
legend of the lynch-pin withdrawn from the chariot
of (Enomaus by the bribery of Pelops must have called

for strenuous casuistry from the priests of Zeus when

it was necessary to punish offenders for shady practices
towards rivals. Pindar magnificently ignores the
thought of treachery. With him it is a god that —

“glorified him with the gift of golden chariot and winged

untiring steeds: mighty (Enomaus he overtook and won
the maiden for his bride.”

Although in later times the peripatetic professional

developed and could claim as precedent the victories

repeatedly won at various centres by the athletes of old,
 OLYMPIA 4i3

yet, at least for their own times, Pindar and Bacchylides

were justified in assuming, alike for their Sicilian

princes or for their boyish winners in the foot-race, the

genuine amateur spirit of athletic rivalry. In the fourth
century b. c. a Cretan, victor in the long race, was bribed
to transfer his citizenship to Ephesus. The Olympian
athlete had not then become, like the modern base-ball
pitcher, a legitimate commodity of interstate commerce,
and the Cretans with justifiable indignation pronounced
the sentence of perpetual exile against Sotades the
offender.
For Pindar, indeed, it was necessary that every song
should rise above the sordid, either in belief or practice.

He was at once a supreme artist and a herald of the

ideal. He even expurgates canonical mythology to in-

fuse into his odes some deeper, nobler lesson suggested

by the external and physical victory. And this, although
several of his odes were addressed to rich tyrants like
Hieron of Syracuse, at whose court were welcomed and
honoured iEschylus, Simonides, Pindar, Bacchylides
and many more. “He was to them in some measure
what Augustus was to Virgil and Horace, what Lorenzo
de’ Medici was to the members of the Florentine Acad-
emy.” * Pindar honestly regarded him as the patron of
letters and as a bulwark against the barbarians. He
had fought under Gelon against the Carthaginians, and,
soon after the battles of Himera and Salamis, the Etrus-
cans, who were also threatening Greek supremacy, were,
* Compare Jebb’s Bacchylides , p. 200.
4i4 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
in 474 b. c., defeated by him. Early in the nineteenth
century, from a partial excavation at Olympia, a
bronze helmet of Etruscan make found its way to the
British Museum. On it is the inscription “ Hieron, son
:

of Deinomenes, and the Syracusans (dedicated) to Zeus

these Tyrrhene spoils from Cumae.” It tantalizes with
the sequence of historic associations. From lips within
this helmet came words of war in the dead Etruscan
tongue that still baffles linguistic classification; on it

were inscribed Greek words in the dialect of the proud

Greek colonists in Sicily; mingled Greek dialects
greeted when dedicated in the sacred
it centre of the
motherland; and now it is again held as spoils by
another and mightier island folk.

Pindar could not prophesy the fatal conflict between

the tyrants of the west and the greedy imperialism of
Athenian demagogues. He could not peer into the
stone quarries at Syracuse and see the legatees of Sala-
mis scorched under the lidless eye of a Sicilian sun. He
could not foresee a Macedonian ruling over Hellas nor
forecast the Greek world under Roman sway. He could
not have understood how even Plato, with the addi-
tional perspective of another half century, crowded with
disturbing shifts of value both in literature and govern-
ment, would seek relief from the spectre of tyranny not
in democracy but by converting the baser metal of the
despot into the pure gold of the philosophic King. Yet
Pindar is not without his misgivings. In words none
too vague he warns the ruler, whose gold called forth
 —

OLYMPIA 4i5

his songs, of the dangers inherent in power. In the first

Olympian he tells Hieron:

“A man erreth if he thinketh that in doing aught he

shall escape God’s eyes. . . . Man’s greatness is of many
kinds ;
the highest is to be achieved by Kings. Crane not
thy neck for more. And be it thine to walk life’s path with
lofty tread.”

With better right and greater force ^Eschylus, him-

self warrior of Marathon and Salamis, in the “Aga-
memnon” covertly warns his Athenian contemporaries,
then engaged in imperial schemes of expansion in
Egypt and elsewhere, against the haughty spirit that

goeth before a fall. His words easily connect themselves

with this Pindaric ode because the return of the Greek
host from Troy brings out on Clytemnestra’s lips the
metaphor drawn from the double racecourse — the
StauXos. Ilium is but the turning- post at the farther
end Argos
;
is both the starting-point and the goal ;
the
stadium is the ^Egean sea :
—
“ But beware lest some desire
May fall upon our men, succumbing to their greed,
To ravage what they should not: they for safe return
Unto their homes must bend them back again, adown
The double race-track’s other leg.”

To make selections from Pindar is to pry out jewels

from an antique setting. But his Olympic odes give

the best interpretation of the best meaning of the games.
Some were impromptu odes crystallized under the
stress of the victory and sung in the Altis while the full
4i 6 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
moon shone upon the hero of the day. Some were longer
and written at leisure for the supplementary celebra-
tion at the victor’s home. But in any case the thought
was not impromptu. The Theban eagle soared habit-
ually and paused for a moment only at Olympia, sent
by —
“ the Hours, circling in the dance to music of the lyre’s

changing notes, to be a witness to the greatest of all

games.”

Yet with all his soaring Pindar never forgot the

gracious beauty of human life. The Graces are ever
near. Victory, he tells us, by the Graces’ aid is won, and
the charioteers —
“ Charis transfigures with the beauty of their fame, as they

drive foremost in the twelfth round of the race.”

Pindar calls his song “ a writing tally of the Muses.”

Not he that runs may read, but whoever will be at pains
to wrap the Greek scroll around the tally-stick can

read the cypher and can find the clue to lead him safely
through “ the sounding labyrinths of song.” * Pindar
could presuppose an acquaintance with mythology at
least as familiar as was to every child of a generation
ago the knowledge of the Old Testament. Conflicting
myths lived side by side in the popular consciousness.

The sculptor and the poet could choose or reject at will.

However recondite may seem at times the application

of the myth to the Olympic victor in question, the

* Olympian Odes, i, translated by E. Myers.

 OLYMPIA 4i7

pages of Pindar are constantly illuminated by some

flash-light that photographs upon the particular a
glimpse of the universal. From Olympia in Elis we are
transported to Olympus. Heracles brought from Olym-
pus the charter for the games; there, too, is both the
starting-line and finish of the poet’s courser: “Pegasus
is stabled in Olympus.” Pindar does not belittle the

mysteries of the unseen. When the fame of Theron of

Acragas (Girgenti) is said to over-pass Sicily and to

touch the pillars of Heracles, the thought of the path-

less ocean suggests a wider and uncharted Cosmos.
His search- light projects for a moment its stare into
infinity, but it is forthwith checked with characteristic
restraint :
—
“ What lies beyond nor foot of wise man nor unwise has
ever trod. I will not follow on. My quest were vain.”

Pindar’s description of the ancient consecration of

the Altis may serve to justify the Labours of Heracles
carved upon the Zeus temple :
—
“ Heracles there measured off a sacred grove unto the

sovereign father and he ordained the plain around for rest

and feasting. He honoured the Alpheus stream together
with the twelve lord gods and he gave utterance to the name
of Kronos hill, till then unnamed.”

His praise of the discus victor comes to mind when we

see a copy of Myron’s Discobolus or the graceful throw
of a contemporary Greek in the Stadium of modem
Athens :
—
4i 8 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
“ In distance passing all, Enikeus hurled the stone with
circling hand and from his warrior mates a mighty cheer
swept by.”

And we seem ourselves to share in the evening cele-

bration in the Altis when —
“ the lovely shining of the fair-faced moon illumined it and
all the precinct rang with song and festal mirth.”

We can share too in the undertone of pathos in Pin-

dar’s reference to the dead father of a young athlete.

Asopichus is winner in the boys’ footrace, and the

news of his victory is sent to his father in Hades. The
Arcadian nymph Echo is the messenger :
—
“Fly, Echo, to the dark-walled palace of Persephone and
to his father bear the tidings glorious. Seek Cleodamus,
tell him how for him his son hath crowned his boyish hair

with wreaths of th’ ennobling games in famous Pisa’s

vale.”

Perhaps the most radiant picture of “festal mirth”

is called up by Pindar’s seventh Olympian, written for

Diagoras of Rhodes. Diagoras’s two sons and his

grandson were also Olympic victors. This acted, on at
least two occasions, as a family prophylactic. His
daughter, as we have seen, was pardoned by reason of
this for her intrusion in disguise at the Olympic games,
and Dorieus, his son, when captured by the Athenians
in a sea-fight, escaped the only alternatives usual in

the case of a prisoner of war. He was neither put to

death nor forced to pay a ransom, but set free, just as
 ;

OLYMPIA 419

Balaustion, the Rhodian girl, was set free by the Syra-

cusans because she delighted her captors by repeating
a new drama of Euripides. And the Rhodians wrote
up Pindar’s ode in letters of gold in the Athena temple
on the acropolis of Lindus. The modern visitor to .this

enchanting island climbs up the lofty headland that

rises abruptly between the shining water of the two
indenting bays, and, before he passes through the ruins
of the ancient propylaea and the still imposing por-
tals of the fortress of the Knights of St. John, he sees
upon the solid rock the after part of a huge trireme with
the steering-oar and the rippling water carved in stone.

He can imagine a trireme of a former day entering the

harbour below with triumphal sweep of oars, bringing
Diagoras and his victory back to his townsfolk in this

far-off corner of the Greek world. He can picture the

procession of Lindians to Athena’s temple; the bril-

liant colouring of robes and chitons the choral music

;

the exultation in their townsman’s physical prowess

and their intoxication of delight because the greatest of
lyric poets is reaching out to them, as to the bridegroom
at a wedding- feast, a chalice of pure gold resplendent,
brimming with the “distilled nectar” of his song.

But Pindar soars beyond the pride of life even as he

universalizes the individual experience. It was not only
St. Paul’s idealism that perceived the great contest in
which humanity is forever engaged. In Pindar’s second
Olympian the athlete’s triumph suggests the victory
over Death, and the Kronos hill becomes the “tower
420 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
of Kronos” to which the victor travels over “the high-
way of Olympian Zeus.” So the arch-idealist Plato, in
closing his great constructive vision of the Ideal State,
can find no more fitting comparison for him that over-
cometh than by likening him to the victors in the
Games :
“ If we take my advice, believing that the soul
is immortal, we shall ever hold to that upward path-
way and at every turn shall practice justice joined to
intelligence that we may be at once friends of ourselves
and of the gods and may fare well both while we
. . .

abide here and when, like the prize-winners, we come

to gather in the prizes of the games.”
But aside from lofty thoughts like these, native to

the greater interpretative intelligences of Greece, the

recently discovered poems of Bacchylides tell us much
of the actual spirit of the games. Bacchylides was
nephew of Simonides, the poet- laureate of the nation
from Thermopylae to Plataea, and he was also the grand-

son and namesake of a famous athlete. He was quali-

fied to sing both the Games and the Graces. And the
native of the little island of Ceos did not hesitate to
enter the contest with the splendidly arrogant Theban
who could compare his inferior rivals to “crows that
chatter against the divine bird of Zeus.” *
Of the twelve epinician odes of Bacchylides three
were addressed to Hieron, at whose court he enjoyed
especial favour. Two Olympic odes were written for

Lachon, a young athlete from the poet’s native island.

* Pindar, Olympian Odes, ii, translated by E. Myers.
 OLYMPIA 421

One of these is a short serenade sung before the victor’s

own house by his fellow-citizens. Nothing could better
illustrate the intensity of local pride and enthusiasm.
Now the victorious athlete is praised, now his very

identity is merged in the personification of his native

land. It is Ceos herself that has won the boxing and

the foot-race. Lachon, as the ode reminds us, has
already been greeted by the impromptu choral sung at
Olympia on the evening of his triumph. Now he is

welcomed at home by another choral for which there

has been ample time to make ready. Bacchylides may
well have written this little serenade not as a paid
commission but as a spontaneous outburst of patriotic

pride and affection for his country and his fellow coun-
trymen. We should prefer to have it so. In any case we
feel a human interest in the young athlete whose strong
body and swift feet have won the prize :
—
“Lachon has lot of such renown
From Zeus most-high as yet had none,
Enhancing fame with feet that run
Beside Alpheus flowing down.
For which e’er this with hair wreath-bound
Olympic youths sang songs around
How Ceos, with her vineyards crowned,
The boxing and the foot-race won.

“Thee now song-queen Urania’s hymn

Ennobles — O thou wind-fleet one,
Of Aristomenes the son —
Thy praise as victor homeward bringing
And here before thy lintel singing
How thou, thy course through stade-race winging,
Brought Ceos fame no time shall dim.”
422 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
From little Ceos, the second in order of those bright
stepping-stones that dot the ^Egean from Attica to
Rhodes, we may quickly cross to the mainland and
find our way to Marathon. From there to Athens
we trace that greatest of all ancient race- courses over
which the Greek runner ran in full armour to give with

his dying breath the warning and the news of victory,

and to win a memorial beside which the olive-wreath

might well turn pale.*
When the modern Athenians revived the Olympic
Games the chariot- races were beyond their resources.
Contests of personal, physical strength and skill con-
stitute the fitting nucleus of the games held in the
old Stadium, now newly covered with marble from
“
the mountain that looks on Marathon.” And it was
a happy and natural thought to add as the closing
event the great Marathon race. While perpetuating
the glory of the Athenians it reenforces the loyalty of
all the Greeks to their national capital. In this race

centres the chief ambition of the Greeks. The other

events are of secondary importance. If fanciful critics

demand any further excuse for the change of venue

from Olympia to Athens, it may be enough to re-

mind them that Heracles (according to one tradition)

brought in the first place from the banks of the Ilissus
the original graft of the sacred olive-tree from which,
at Olympia, the victor’s crown was cut with the golden
sickle. With graceful sentiment, however, the olive
* For this story see chapter vii, p. 159, and note.
 OLYMPIA 423

sprigs are now in turn brought to Athens from Olym-

pia.

Despite all the modem barnacles that encrust the

ancient torso, the student of old Greek life can find
much to stimulate him in the revival of contests in-

herited, or directly developed, from ancient times —

such as the foot-race, short and long distance; javelin-
throwing; leaping; and, chief of all, the discus-throw
in the ancient style. The interest of the Greeks to-

day in this latter event is second only to that in the

Marathon race.

A modern, seated in the Stadium at Athens, has cause

for meditation. Behind the gaudy hats and parasols
of women, the more sombre clothing of men, or the
brilliant uniforms of officials gleams Pentelic marble.
Over many tens of thousands of spectators, gathered
from all Greece and Europe and from beyond the
Atlantic, float the flags of powerful nations: of Turkey;
upon the northern seas; of the
of the lands that look
mighty spawn of the Anglo-Roman; and of the New
Atlantis. None of these nations had emerged from

barbarism when this same choir of encircling hills sang

together the triumph song of Salamis. Prometheus,
the incarnation of human self-assertion, rebel to the

rule of Zeus, pinioned on a crag overlooking those same

northern seas, is made by the Greek prophet to utter
the pessimistic cry: “New gods rule Olympus.” Now,
as a modern Greek remarked to an American visitor,

“the old gods have migrated to a new Olympus.”

424 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
But although the gold-ivory statue of Zeus cannot
reappear from the ruins of Olympia, yet “the godhead
of supernal song” remains in the literature of the

Greeks, interpreting and interpreted by the contribu-

tions of the archaeologists. Swinburne’s words are not
mere poetic license :
—
“Dead the great chryselephantine god, as dew last evening shed;
Dust and foam of ocean is the symbol of his head:
of earth
Earth and ocean shall be shadows when Prometheus shall be dead.”
 CHAPTER XIX
MESSENIA

“A land where fruit trees blossom, myriad fountains flow

And flocks and herds are grazing in the meadows fair.
Nor wintry are the winds of winter, nor too near
The flaming Sun comes driving in his four-horse car.”
Euripides, Fragment of the Cresphontes.

T
and by
elemachus,

this old friend

laus at Lacedaemon.
in search of his father, sailed
down the western coast of the Peloponnesus,
landed at “ sandy Pylos,” the home of Nestor,
was sent across country
The long drive was broken by a
to Mene-

night at Pherae. According to a tradition that still has

its supporters the modern site of Pylos is Navarino, in
the centre of the western coast of Messenia, while
Pherae is represented by Kalamata, on the northeastern
shore of the Messenian Gulf. A growing tendency to push
Nestor’s realm further up the coast, out of Messenia,

and to place Pherae in Arcadia is due, in part, to the dis-

crepancy between the lot of modern travellers on their
way from Kalamata to Sparta and that of the two young
princes of the Homeric story. Telemachus and the son
of Nestor mounted an inlaid chariot at early dawn,
their two horses, touched lightly by the whip, flew
eagerly onward, and at sunset, as all the ways were
426 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
darkening, the wheat-bearing plain of Lacedaemon
opened before their eyes. Moderns, whether merchants
or sightseers, must spend an equally long or longer day
in riding on mules or plodding horses over the difficult

paths of Mount Taygetus, whose massive bulk forms an

almost impenetrable barrier between Messenia and
Laconia. The narrow bridle paths of the Gorge of the
Nedon, which is the trade route, and the savage
beauty of the Langada Gorge exclude highways for
royal cars and on- rushing steeds.

Whether or no Kalamata was once an insignificant

way-station between two princely domains, it is now
one of the most prosperous towns of the new nation,
separated from Athens only by a day’s ride in an ex-
press train, and the natural starting point for excur-

sions in Messenia.

From this rich southern plain it is easy to reach

the confines of the more northern plain, which was the
country’s heart. Here was the capital of its prehistoric

kings, and here about the mountain fortresses of Ithome

and Eira occurred the chief events of its pitiable his-

toric life. Ithome is one of the highest fortified moun-

tains in Greece, but can be ascended by roadways which
only below the fortress peaks change to rocky paths,
insecure even for mountain horses. From this summit,
by the favour of Zeus of the open sky whose sanctuary
it once was, all Messenia can be overlooked. It is in-

deed a lovely country. The mountain ranges to the

north and east have reserved their sterner influences
 MESSENIA 427

for other peoples, while the open sea along the western
and southern coasts bestows the largess of a perfect
climate. The country between Kalamata and Ithome
is one of great fertility and beauty. Orchards of gray-
green olives are broken by dark cypresses, while lemon
and orange groves, unknown to Euripides, add their

peculiar radiance to the landscape. In the spring,

almond trees delicately lift their pink blossoms above
long hedges of glistening green cactus, and the green
grass of the wayside fields nurses buttercups and scarlet
anemones, purple and yellow irises, and thick clusters
of deep blue flowers.

The loveliness of Messenia decided her history, which

was one of passionate and futile resistance to foreign

greed. The Spartan poet Tyrtaeus said that the soil

of Messenia was “good to plough and good to plant.”

Long before his day the Spartans had stretched out

their hands for it, and from the eighth century to the

fourth they never relinquished their grasp. During

the more important epochs of Greek history Messenia
w as but a province
T
of Laconia.
But it was a province capable at any time of revolt.

The two early “Messenian Wars,” of the eighth and

seventh centuries, were the stepping stones by which
Sparta rose to a place of power in the Peloponnesus.
Beset by agrarian difficulties, she needed more land,
and the most fertile land of Greece was to be had for a
little blood. Of the second war we have a few fragmen-
tary memorials in the contemporaneous martial verses
 ;

428 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

of Tyrtaeus. But in general both wars would be almost
obliterated from history were it not for the fact that
Pausanias, having access to some late prose and poetry
which repeated the native legends, in an unwonted
mood of imaginative sympathy gave himself up to

recounting the pathetic efforts of Messenia toward free-

dom. There is the usual material heroes and : fortresses,

Aristodemus and Ithome in the first war, Aristomenes

and Eira in the second; oracles and portents; fair

maidens and faithless wives kings and cowherd lovers

;

storms and marvellous escapes; courage and despair.

Aristomenes, as Pausanias says, shines out like Achilles
in the Iliad, “the first and greatest glory of the Mes-
senian name.” But in spite of his heroic and pro-
longed defence of Eira, the Messenians by the sixth
century were serfs of the Spartans, paying to their
masters a half of all the produce raised by their own
hands from their own farms, — asses, Tyrtaeus called

them, worn by intolerable loads.

In the fifth century they took advantage of an earth-
quake and an insurrection of slaves at Sparta to rise

once more and encamp on Ithome. They were de-

feated and obliged to choose between serfdom and

exile. But by this time their petty rebellions had be-
come important in the affairs of the greater powers of
Greece. Ithome was the rock on which the political

life of Cimon of Athens suffered shipwreck.

During the next ninety years the nationalism of
Messenia was a homeless and restless force, seeking,
 MESSENIA 429

wherever it might, to harm Sparta and to glorify itself.

During the Peloponnesian War the Messenians by their

knowledge of the country materially aided the Athe-
nians in the dramatic battle of Sphacteria off the Mes-
senian Pylos, and the surrender of the Spartans, Thu-
cydides says, amazed all Hellas.
At last, about 370 b. c., the “Poland of Greece”
found a friend in the man whose practical idealism was
dominating the period. Epaminondas, in pursuance
of his policy of weakening Sparta by reviving other
Peloponnesian states, determined to found a new cap-
ital of Messenia, Messene by name, on the slopes of
Ithome. Ruins of this city still exist, and the most im-
posing of them, the fortification known as the Arcadian
Gateway, is famous as an example of skilful Greek
engineering. Lying toward Megalopolis, also a bene-
ficiary of Epaminondas, it seemed to reunite in a new
hope the old Arcadia and the old Messenia whose
friendship had been so futile. To-day, still a strangely
impressive monument, it may serve as a symbol of
Messenia’s share in the spirit of Greece. Impotent in
literature and art and unsuccessful even in war, the
men of this country conserved through many genera-
tions and vicissitudes that intense national feeling

which existed at the core of every Greek state, shaping

Greek history and penetrating Greek literature. Wher-
ever history became large and literature became uni-
versal the force of national consciousness was likely

to become diffused, but in a state like Messenia it was

430 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
obscured neither by other national gifts nor by its own
success.
The Messenians, Pausanias tells us, “wandered for

nearly three hundred years far from Peloponnese, and

in all that time they are known to have dropped none
of their native customs, nor did they unlearn their
Doric tongue.” After the victory at Leuctra “the
Thebans sent messengers to Italy, Sicily and the Eues-
peritae inviting all Messenians in any part of the world
whither they had strayed to return to Peloponnese.
They assembled faster than could have been expected,
for they yearned towards the land of their fathers and
hatred of Sparta still rankled in their breasts.” And
for them Epaminondas made a new city, sending “men
who were skilled in laying out streets, building houses

and sanctuaries and erecting city walls.” The Arcadi-

ans sent victims for the sacrifices. The exiles, home at

last, prayed to their ancient gods and called upon their

ancient heroes to come and dwell among them. “But
loudest of all was the cry for Aristomenes, and the
whole people joined in it.” This call from his own
people has been, we may hope, full compensation to his

dead ears for the dumb or sneering lips of history.

 CHAPTER XX
SPARTA

“Lacedaemon’s hollowed vale by mountain-gorges pent.”

Homer, Odyssey.

n the Spartans’ theory of life adventures abroad

or the welcome of strangers into their own territory
I had no place. Perhaps nothing more sharply dif-

ferentiated them from the Athenians, whose love of

roving was equalled only by their delight in seeing the
rest of the world drawn to their city. The instinctive

and reasoned reserve of the Spartans was reenforced

by the physical conditions of their country. Laconia
is bulwarked on three sides by mountains, through
which, in antiquity, all entrances but one were difficult,

and its southern boundary is the open and stormy

sea. The Laconian Gulf splits the country into two
peninsulas, ending in the famous promontories of Tae-
narum and Malea, in rounding which so many sailors,
from the days of Menelaus and Agamemnon and
Odysseus, have looked for violent winds.
Far inland, within the rifts of the northern hills, lies
the plain of Sparta. By those to whom the sea is not
an essential element in Greek landscape this city is

held to be more beautifully situated than any other in

432 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Greece. The brilliant luxuriousness of a southern low-

land is combined with the austere grandeur of moun-

tain scenery. Some twenty miles in length, the plain is

only five miles broad between the ranges of Taygetus

and of Pamon, whose bases show extraordinary caverns
and fissures. Taygetus stretches along the whole western
side of Laconia, but rears the highest of its long line of
summits just over Sparta. These magnificent summits,
covered with snow for two thirds of the year, ennoble
many a landscape outside of Laconia. Below them
extend the wide tracts of forest where Artemis once
took her pleasure, and Spartan hunters tracked the wild
boar with dogs that shared their “bravery” and “love
of toil ” and won a guerdon of praise from Pindar and
Sophocles. In front of these woodlands rise the five

peaks which have given to the mountain the modern

name of Pentedactylon.
It is characteristic of the Greek attitude toward
nature that the mountain is not praised in poetry as
much as is the beautiful plain, richly fertilized by the
river Eurotas on its way from Arcadia to the sea. Tele-

machus, in spite of his greater affection for the rough

goat- pastures of his native Ithaca, appreciated the wide
courses and the meadowland of Sparta where “ abound-
ed! the clover, the marsh grass, the wheat and the rye
and the broad white ears of the barley.” Euripides
knew that the reedy bed of the Eurotas, the trees and
meadow flowers of its banks, its hungry foam in the

season of heavy rain and the lovely gleam of its calmer

TAYGETUS
 SPARTA 433

waters would haunt the homesick hearts of Helen and

the Spartan maidens who shared Iphigeneia’s exile

among the Taurians.

Modern Sparta, founded after the War of Indepen-
dence, lies in the southern district of the Sparta of an-
tiquity. Mediaeval Sparta, called Mistra, lay some dis-

tance west of the old site, very near the entrance to the
Langada Pass. Homeric Sparta lay to the southeast,
across the Eurotas, at Therapne, later a suburb of the
Doric city. Here flourished that noble court which
amazed the young Ithacan and the tale of which is still

to us “a fountain of immortal drink.” Telemachus

arrived just as Menelaus was marrying his son to a

native princess, and his daughter, the inheritor of her

mother’s loveliness, to Thessalian Neoptolemus, Achil-

les’s son. Never could the great vaulted hall of the

palace have displayed a gayer splendour. The son of

Odysseus has grown up in no mean castle, but this

gleam of gold and silver, like sun and moon, this flash-

ing bronze and shining ivory and glowing amber make

him feel as if he were on Olympus at the court of Zeus.
Tumblers perform wonderful tricks. A divine minstrel
sings. Silver basins and golden ewers are passed around.
Supper is served on a polished table in dishes of gold.
Menelaus, noticing the boy’s charming admiration,
him how he has gathered his wealth in Cyprus and
tells

Phoenicia and Egypt, but how it means little to him over

against the loss of his old comrades and friends. And
as they talk Helen comes in, like Artemis of the golden
434 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
arrows, and her willing servants bring her a carved
chair and cover it with a rug of soft wool. And sitting

there, her white hands busied with the deep blue wool
wound about her golden distaff and with the dressed
yarn heaped in her silver basket that runs on little

wheels and rimmed with gold, she talks with them

is

of what happened once in Troy and of Odysseus of the

hardy heart and, quite easily, of how she had wanted
to come home again to her own country and her child

and to her lord “who was lacking in naught, nor wis-

dom, nor beauty of manhood.” And into their drinking
cups she put a drug and “they drank of it, quenching
all anger and pain and all of their sorrows forgetting.”

The memory of the royal pair never died in Sparta.

Therapne contained a sanctuary called the “Mene-
laeion,” where prayers were offered for the physical

beauty which was keenly desired by an athletic people.

Helen sometimes walked abroad to bestow in turn the
gift she had received from Aphrodite. At least, Hero-
dotus tells a story of a nurse taking a very ugly girl baby
to the temple and meeting a strange woman who in-

sisted upon seeing the child and who then gently

stroked its head and said, “One day this child shall
be the fairest lady in Sparta.” And from that very day
her looks began to change and the ugly baby became
the beauty of the town and married the king.
It is not difficult to prolong the associations with
Homeric Laconia by following Helen on her guilty

flight southward; lingering to see Amyclae, a rich city

 SPARTA 435

in Homeric times, and the beehive tomb of Vaphio,

which in 1889 yielded up two incomparable vessels of
goldnow in the Museum at Athens; and going on to
the busy seaport town of Gytheion, from whose docks
Paris took his stolen bride to the little island of Cranae,
now Marathonisi, before spreading his defiant sails

for the longer voyage. But sooner or later the fact of

the Dorian invasion must be reckoned with, and the

resultant birth at Sparta of a civilization totally at odds
with that which it displaced.
In Laconia the invasion was one of conquest and
subjection, and the victors prided themselves on keep-
ing their blood pure, much as the Laconian Maniotes
of modern times have clung fiercely to their Spartan
descent. Sparta became the Dorian city par excellence ,

the protagonist of Dorian ideals, the natural leader of

the forces which both in war and peace were in oppo-

sition to the Ionic elements in Greek life. The historical

events in this development are so interwoven with the
history of the other states of Greece, especially with
that of Athens, that they will already have become
familiar to travellers who visit Sparta last. The con-
quest of Messenia first increased her resources. By
the middle of the sixth century she won signal victories
over Tegea and Argos and became the head of the
Peloponnesian Confederacy, which included every
state in the Peloponnesus except Achaea and Argos.
Before the end of the century she was the leading state
of Greece, for Thessaly was losing ground and Athens
436 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
had not yet risen. In the first part of the fifth century
Sparta was the natural leader of the Greek allies

against Persia, and in the autumn of 481 b. c. was the

head of the congress at the Isthmus. To her generals
was given the command of both the army and the navy.
But her conduct of the wars at best did not increase her
prestige, nor did she afterwards exhibit any skill in

using new conditions. This was the opportunity of

Ionic Athens to create the greatest period of Greek his-
tory. But Sparta was also strong and possessed in
Brasidas a general unparalleled among the Laconians
for eager enterprise, trustworthiness and personal popu-
larity. A final struggle was inevitable. The Dorians
won, and, at the end of the fifth century, once more for

a generation held the balance of power in Greece. But

Sparta’s despotism within the Peloponnesus and her de-
sire for foreign aggrandizement created new hostilities.

Early in the fourth century Persia undermined her

maritime power, and Greek friendships as strange as
the iEschylean truce between fire and water were
formed to her detriment. Athens and Thebes, Corinth
and Argos forgot old enmities in hatred of Sparta, but

she maintained her supremacy and forced upon Greece

the arbitration of the Persian king. For fifteen years

Greek politics veered hither and thither, and then at

Leuctra Epaminondas conquered Sparta and won the
leadership of Greece for Thebes. His death gave one
more opportunity to Athens, but before she could use
it Macedon arose and at Chseronea united her with
 SPARTA 437

Sparta in a common humiliation. Never again did

either Dorian or Ionian state have power to alarm the
other.

Thucydides described Sparta as a straggling village

like the ancient towns of Hellas. Polybius added that

it was roughly circular in shape and level, although it

inclosed certain uneven and hilly places. It had no

real acropolis, but the highest of its several hills re-
ceived this conventional name; and it was not forti-

fied by walls until long after the greatest days of its

history. Four districts or wards, Pitane, apparently the

aristocratic quarter, Limnae, Cynosura, and Mesoa,
perhaps represented an early group of villages which
later were united in one city.

This city was extraordinarily barren of artistic adorn-

ment. The citizens of no other leading state in the

whole of Greece were so indifferent to the value of archi-

tecture and sculpture, nor is it likely that they were per-

turbed by the prophecy of Thucydides: “If the com-
munity of Lacedaemon should become a desert with
only the temples and ground foundations remaining,
I think that, after the lapse of much time, men of the
future would be very slow to believe that the power
of the Lacedaemonians was equal to their fame. And
yet they possess two of the five divisions of the Pelo-
ponnesus and hold the hegemony of the whole and of
many outside allies. But this community is not a city
regularly built with costly temples and edifices and
would seem rather insignificant.”
438 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
Temples and edifices of course there were for the busi-
ness of life and of religion, but the need for them was
not, as in Athens, or even in certain cities of rude
Arcadia, identified with the larger need of inspiring or
importing the genius of architect, sculptor, and painter.
Sparta had an early school of sculpture, influenced by
Cretan teachers, specimens of whose work may be seen
in the Museum. But the impulse shrivelled and died
in an uncongenial atmosphere. Nor do we find the
Spartans in the great artistic centuries clamouring for
”
the work of foreign artists as did the towns of “ stupid
Boeotia. The British School of Archaeology is success-
fully engaged in the exploration of Sparta, but we can-
not anticipate the discovery of statues like the Hermes
of Olympia or the restoration of buildings like the
Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi.
With this chastening of his imagination the traveller
may turn his attention to the few discoveries which up
to this time have been made. By far the most signifi-

cant of these are fragmentary remains of the temple of

Athena Chalkicekos and of the sanctuary of Artemis

Orthia. Athena’s Brazen House, existing in some form

from a very early epoch, was so associated with the
public life of the city that it became known to foreign-

ers as an object of peculiar national sentiment. Euripi-

des makes the Trojan women attribute to Helen a
desire to see it once more when, praying to die at sea
before the consummation of their captivity, they seek
to involve her in their own fate :
—
 SPARTA 439
" And, God, may Helen be there.
With mirrors of gold,
Decking her face so fair,
Girl-like; and hear and stare
And turn death cold,
Never, ah, never more
The hearth of her home to see,
Nor sand of the Spartan shore,
Nor tombs where her fathers be
Nor Athena’s Brazen Dwelling
Nor the towers of Pitane ” *

The discovery of the Temple of Artemis is of great

importance, not only because it was the pivot of the
religious life of Sparta but because its eighth century
foundations, excavated beneath the traces of a sixth
century structure, may belong to the earliest temple in
Greece. The image, called Orthia because it had been
found “ upright ” in a thicket of willows, was believed
by the Spartans to be the ancient wooden one brought
by Orestes and Iphigeneia from the land of the Tauri-
ans, where Iphigeneia, rescued by Artemis from the
sacrificial altar at Aulis, had been its priestess and
guardian. Euripides naturally preserves the Athenian
tradition that the image was brought to Brauron. But
Pausanias presses the Spartan claim and explains the
hoary custom of annually scourging the boys in front
of the image by the “relish for blood” that it had ac-
quired in the days when human sacrifices were offered
to it in a barbarian land.

The brutality in the training of Spartan youth has

* Translated by Gilbert Murray.

440 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
bulked so large in tradition that local associations with
it perhaps impress the traveller more sharply than any
others. In the southwestern region of the town, near
the large ruins of a Roman bath, lay, it is thought, the
Dromos or race course, and the Platanistas or Plane-
tree Grove, surrounded by a moat and entered by two
bridges, where the boys, as a part of their education,

fought very savage battles. This grove is an excellent

illustration of the danger of claiming too much for the

influence on the mind of external forms. Plato held

that even the shapes of trees might influence the spirit
of those who walked among them, and Walter Pater,
in his study of Lacedaemon, compresses the idea into
a definite application by describing the plane tree, the
characteristic tree of Sparta, as “a very tranquil and
tranquillizing object, regally spreading its level or
gravely curved masses on the air.” Yet within a circle
of these tranquillizing objects Cicero, and later Lucian
and Pausanias, saw the Spartan boys fighting with

incredible fury, kicking, scratching, biting, and dying

rather than confess themselves beaten.
In literature as well as in the plastic arts the Spartans
failed to express themselves. Only four poets of any
widespread fame had their homes in Sparta, and no
one of these was a native bom. Significantly, too, they
all lived at least as early as the seventh century, at the
only period when Spartan life showed any pliability.

Individual freedom was not wholly repressed, and an

acknowledgment of the graces of life was at times per-
 SPARTA 441

mitted. Only under these conditions could art live at

all, and poetry outran sculpture in permanent achieve-

ment. This was, perhaps, due to its immediate con-
nection with music (including dancing), the only art
which the later Spartans, although they did not give
it a place in their educational curriculum, seem to have
appreciated.
According to tradition, Sparta’s poets all came to her

in response to a call for foreign aid in her domestic

broils. Terpander of Lesbos and Thaletas of Crete

successively founded two musical epochs in a city that

was intent upon controlling its serfs and developing

its soil. Terpander’s service was almost incalculable,
for he modified the existing lyre into an instrument
which was universally used until the fifth century and
which gave the first great impulse to vocal music. But
“ the strings he fingered are all gone, ” and of the verses
that he wrote we have only a few fragments to recall
his life in Sparta, his invocations at public festivals of

Apollo, the chief god of the city, and of Castor and

Polydeuces, the city’s heroes, and his praise of the city
herself :
—
“ Bursts into bloom there the warrior’s ardour,
Clear lifts the note of the shrill-voiced Muse.
Justice walks down the wide highways as Warder,
Ever their Helper glory to choose.”

Thaletas, coming from an island where the dance

had been important from prehistoric times, and finding
in Sparta the same friendly atmosphere of open Dorian
442 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
life, introduced the festival of the Gymnopaedia, in
which boys displayed the perfected beauty of their
naked bodies in athletic dances and, by means of formal
songs in unison, began the “choral lyric.” This poetic
form, passing far beyond its birthplace, became every-
where in Greece the chief expression of public worship
of gods and heroes and stimulated the powers of such
poets as Simonides and Pindar and Bacchylides. Tha-
letas was lost sight of in his greater successor Aleman,
who not only was credited with the creation as well as
with the cultivation of the choral lyric, but also was
adjudged so successful in all his work that Alexandrian
scholars included him in their canon of the melic poets,

with Pindar and Sappho.

Terpander and Thaletas are little more than names,
familiar only to those who study origins. Aleman and
Tyrtaeus, the poet of the Messenian War, are represen-
tatives of the vital poetry which Sparta cherished in

her supple youth before her ideals had matured and her
life had irreparably settled into its narrow grooves.
Tyrtaeus was probably an Athenian, even if it is mere
legend that he was a lame schoolmaster sent by Athens
in derision when Sparta appealed for help in the second

Messenian War. Aleman was bom in Sardis, though

probably of Hellenic blood. If our traditional dates are
correct, some years at least of their lives must have
coincided. Their poetry in general represented differ-

ent modes, Tyrtaeus being the earliest master, outside

of Ionia, of the flute-accompanied elegiac distich, the
 SPARTA 443

lusty heir of the Homeric hexameter, while Aleman

established many of the more delicate measures per-
mitted by the versatile lyre. Their poetic purposes,
however, were influenced in common by the Dorian
atmosphere in which they lived.

In Tyrtaeus this showed itself in the creation of mar-

tial verse, which seems to have been powerfully influ-

ential in arousing into active service, at a time of need,

the courage and the perseverance ingrained in the

Doric character. But his own racial gift made it im-

possible that his poetry should be confined to one
country. In all parts of Greece, through many centu-
ries, it expressed the ideal of courage. One of his ana-
paestic songs, intended to be sung by Spartan soldiers
as they marched to battle, has been called the Mar-
seillaise of Greece. A fragment of it still stirs the
blood :
—
“ Up !
youths of the Spartan nobles,
Ye citizen sons of the elders!
With the left hold out your targes,
And fling your spears with boldness.
Spare not your lives. To spare them
Was never known in Sparta.”

The Dorian element that appealed to Aleman was

the publicity of the daily life. Men lived in common,
ate at large public tables, trained their children in
groups, and believed always in the sacrifice of the
individual to the necessities of the state. Hence they
took kindly to public festivals where choruses of men
and women, boys and girls could sing hymns that gave
 —

444 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

expression to common and national sentiments. These
hymns Aleman wrote in great numbers. Especially
famous and never displaced by later poets were his par-
theneia, written for the choruses of Spartan maidens
whose share in the athletic training of their brothers

made them the most beautiful in Greece. Travellers

in Sparta who look at the lifeless ruins of the Temple of

Artemis will rejoice that among the broken fragments

of Aleman’s poetry exist seven complete strophes of a
partheneion which probably was sung before the temple
at one of the festivals of the goddess. Helen as a child
had danced at such a festival, and doubtless many a
girl in Aleman’s chorus was pointed out by the sur-
rounding crowd as her fit successor. In his vigour the
poet must often himself have led the dances of these
tall, straight maidens. In his old age, too stiff to keep
pace with their lithe movements, he added to a song
he wrote for them “des images aimables” of gallant
regret :

“Nay, now no longer, ye sweet-voiced maidens, lovely in singing,

Can my limbs bear me. Would God, would to God, that a hal-
cyon were I

Who with his married mates over the flowering meadows of Ocean
Fluttereth, heart -free of trouble, the sea-purple bird of the spring-
time.”

Verses like these betray an un-Dorian element in Ale-

man’s genius which came from his ^Eolian ancestry.

It crept into his choral lyrics and claimed its own in

his lighter verses. Love and feasting and Bacchic joy
furnished him with subjects. No other set of lyric frag-
 SPARTA 445

merits contains so many traces of the consciousness of

natural beauties. If all his poetry were preserved, it

would not surprise us to find in it a complete and sen-

sitive response to the extraordinary loveliness amid
which he lived. We know already that by night in the
valley of the Eurotas he watched sleep descend upon the
crests and crags of Taygetus and the waiting earth,*
was aware of the dew of moonlit evenings and the
songs of birds, and felt the charms of the alternating
seasons, especially the invigorating bloom of spring.
After the seventh century Sparta entered the Greek
world with an offering that excluded art and the con-
sciousness of external beauty. This was her mode of
life, dedicated to one austere end. The citizens of

Sparta were a small body of men, of pure Dorian blood,

freed from the cares of self-support by the serfs or

helots who were descendants of the original possessors

of the soil they tilled. The whole time of the masters
could be devoted to the state, and the pivotal demand
of the state was for strong, brave and skilful soldiers.

All life was a vast system of education directed toward

the end of military efficiency. This explains each one
of their customs : the exposure of sickly infants on the
slopes of Mount Taygetus ;
the savage training of their
boys and the severe training of their girls, who were to

be the mothers of soldiers; the repression of personal

luxury, the equalizing of rich and poor, the detailed
elimination of individual pursuits. Conservatism was
* For this fragment see chapter i, p. 22,
446 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
the breath of their life. Their institutions were of very
ancient origin, although Lycurgus is now regarded as
merely a legendary designer, and, once in possession
of their imaginations, could not be shaken off or essen-
tially modified. At the crucial period following the

Peloponnesian War their inability to use new conditions

played havoc with their political opportunities. Exclu-
siveness and reserve were corollaries of their single

purpose. Indifference to the arts of peace was inevitable

in a nation consecrated to preparation for war.

The spectacle presented by the Spartans never failed

to excite the lively interest of the other Greeks. Men
as diverse as Xenophon and Aristotle wrote about their

institutions, and popular judgments were always in evi-

dence. An opinion which was probably held by many

just before the Peloponnesian War is contained in
Thucydides’s rehearsal of a speech made in Sparta by
a Corinthian delegate to the conference which the allies

had forced upon her. Impatiently he tells the Spartans

that they do not know how utterly unlike them the
Athenians are :
—
“ They are revolutionary and swift to plan and to

execute whatever they conceive, but you are all for con-

serving the existing state of things, inventing no new

policy and in action not even coming up to what ne-
cessity demands. Again, they are daring beyond their

strength and run risks contrary to their judgment, and

in the midst of terrors they are full of hope. Whereas
your way is to act within your strength, to have con-
 SPARTA 447

fidence not even in your best secured plans and, when

terrors threaten, to think that you will never be set
free from them. Nay, they are energetic and you are
laggards ;
they go abroad while you cling to home.”
The Spartan king, Archidamus, justified his nation

in a speechmade in a private session :

—
“We have ever dwelt in a free and most illustrious

state, and this policy of conservative self-control may

well be equivalent to sound reason. We have become
good warriors and wise in counsel by our careful disci-

pline ;
good warriors, because self-control best quick-

ens the sense of honour, and from this noble sense of

shame springs courage; wise in counsel, because we
are too unlettered to be superior to the laws, too
severely self-controlled to disobey them.”
A generation earlier Herodotus had paid his tribute
to the Spartan loyalty to law in his story of the conver-
sation between Xerxes, meditating his attack on Greece,
and Demaratus, the ruined Spartan king who had fled

to the court of Darius. Want, the exile tells the mom

arch, had always been a fellow-dweller in his land,

but courage was an ally they had gained by wisdom and

laws. “The Lacedaemonians even when fighting man
for man are inferior to none, but in a body they are the
best of all. For although they are free they are not

wholly free, for over them there is a master, Law, whom

they fear far more than thine fear thee. At any rate,

they always do his bidding.” And that the Athenians,

with their reverence for law, were by no means unwilling
 —

448 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS

to attribute to the law-abiding Spartans a love of lib-

erty as passionate as their own is seen in another story

of Herodotus. Two young nobles yolunteered to go to
Xerxes and offer their lives in atonement for the murder
of his father’s heralds. On their way to Persia they

were entertained by the governor Hydames, who, call-

ing attention to his own prosperity, urged them to

make their submission to the king. “Hydarnes,” they

answered, “ thy advice to us is one-sided. Thou hast

tried the one side, but art inexperienced in the other.
For thou knowest how to be a slave, but liberty thou
hast not tried as yet, whether it be sweet or no. Shouldst
thou taste it, thou wouldst urge us to fight for it not only
with the spear but also with the battle-axe.”
One base alloy historians and poets alike found in the
character of the Spartans. This was their corruptibil-
ity, their sordid greed of gain, as Aristophanes called it

when angered by their rejection of peace. To the same

political period belong savage attacks of Euripides
on Spartan treachery and dishonesty. He also takes

occasion to question the chastity of the daughters of

Sparta :

“No Spartan maiden, even wishing it, were chaste!

Not they. Their homes deserting, with their chitons slit

Along the thigh, with robes loose-girdled, they with youths

Share in the foot-race and —
a thing I can’t endure —
In wrestling bouts.”

Probably this exactly expressed the sentiment of the

average Athenian theatre-goer, accustomed to identify
 SPARTA 449

the virtue of women with their obedience to conven-

tional restrictions, which men in the fifth century in-

sisted upon as well as the husband in Menander’s

play: —
“You’re overstepping, wife, a married woman’s bounds,
The front door passing; for to ladies of good birth
The house door is the limit by convention set.
This chasing and this running out into the street,
”
Your billingsgate still snapping, Rhode, is for dogs !

Men possessed of these ideas could not appreciate that

in Sparta, in the great periods, freedom and sobri-
ety went hand in hand. Aristotle, in his arraignment
of the license and luxury of the Spartan women as
one of the defects of the Spartan system, may have
been dealing with some special facts of his own day.
In the fourth century Sparta had in certain ways dete-
riorated.

But this deterioration could not do more than blur

the outlines of a system of life which for three centuries

had stood before the world, a “whole serene creation.”

Comic writers might show up the boorishness of the
unlearned Spartans, and irritable tragic poets might
vent their spleen on their country’s enemy, but in the
end Spartan institutions had to be respected and
admired. Indeed, many Athenians affected a special
predilection for qualities unlike their own and “lacon-
ized” in dress, manner, and speech. Philosophy flour-
ished in Sparta, Plato tells us, and with it a rare skill

in conversation. The typical Spartan, after pretending

450 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS
that he could not talk, would throw into the discussion,
“ like a clever javelin- thrower,” a remark “worth listen-

ing to, brief, compressed.”

Thinkers as well as Laconomaniacs displayed enthu-
siasm for Spartan ideas. Aristotle, to be sure, while
praising the love of education among the Lacedaemo-
nians, deplored their absorption in one object and also
complained that they preferred the good they gained
to the virtue by means of which they gained it. But,
true as this may be, the nobility of the effort, the flawless
harmony of details, the perfect adjustment of the sys-
tem to the use for which it was intended, resulted in a
product as truly Greek as is a Doric temple or an Attic
trilogy. It is not strange that its apotheosis is found in
the ideal state of the great visionary of Athens. Plato’s
“Republic” is Sparta idealized and interpreted by an
Athenian.
A state combining the character of the Dorians and
the genius of the Ionians history has failed to produce.
Isocrates cherished a hope that Athens and Sparta
might divide the headship of a gloriously united Greece.
After Chaeronea he was even far-sighted enough to
plead for the willing union of Hellas under Philip of
Macedon. Hopes like these proved either futile or too
mean. But his pride in the spiritual achievements of

hisown city has been approved by Time, “ the Inspector-

General of men’s deeds.” The institutions of Sparta
like every other product of the Greek mind went into
the crucible of Athens. And this city, triumphing
 SPARTA 45 1

beyond the orator’s boast, “has caused the name of

Hellene to seem to be matter no longer of birth but
of intellect, and has made them bear it whose claim is

that of culture rather than of origins.”

 , , , ;

APPENDIX
Usually only the first line of citations is noted.

Chapter I. Page 2 (third paragraph) Cf. Curtius,

Greek History, 1, p. 23 and passim. Plato, Timceus, 22 B.

3 Quotation from Curtius, Greek History, 1, p. 32. 5

Hatzidakis, Neugriechische Grammatik, p. 4. 9 Quota-
tionfrom Tozer, Geography of Greece, p. 44. Cf. passim.
10-12 Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 281. 17-18 Aeschylus,
Agamemnon, 454. 19 Homer, Odyssey, vi, 130; v, 51;
Iliad, vih, 553. 20 Homer, Odyssey, vi, 162. Pindar,
Olymp., 11, 70. 21 Pindar, Olymp., vi, 54. 22 Aischy-
lus, Agamemnon 1390. 23 Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 563
Prometheus, 1, 88. 24 Sophocles, 936; (Edi -
Philoctetes
pus Tyrannus, 204. 25 Aristophanes, Clouds, 275. 26
Aristophanes, Peace, 571. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 142.
Euripides, Hippolytus, 70. 27 Euripides, Trojan Women,
845; Bacchce, 1084. Plato, Phcedrus, 229, 230. 28 Greek
Anthology, Pal., vh, 669. Very probably by Plato; App.
Plan., 13, attributed to Plato, but probably of later date.
Theocritus, Idyl, vn, 134.
Chapter II. Page 37 Thucydides, vi, 30. 38 Aeschy-
lus,Agamemnon, 763; 433. 39 Lucian, When My Ship
Comes In (Navigium), 43 Aeschylus, Suppliants, 715.
5.

44 Isocrates, 45 Plato, Symposium,

Areopagiticus, 66.

173 B. Lucian, Navigium 35. 46 Xenophon, Helle- ,

nica, n, 4, n. 47-48 Lysias, Against Eratosthenes, 4.

49 Menander, Fragments. 50 Plato, Republic 439, E.

54 Greek Anthology, Pal., vii, 639.
 , ,

454 APPENDIX
Chapter III. Page 57 Euripides: Suppliants 403-
408. Jebb, Modern Greece p. 70. 59 Isocrates, Panegy-
ricus, 23, 24. 62 iElian, apud For
Stob. Serm., xxiv, 53.
Solon’s apothegm cf. Herodotus, 1, 32; .Eschylus, Aga-
memnon, 928. 63 “The Guardian,” cf. Lucian: The
Fisher, 21. 64 Plutarch, Life of Solon (end). 66 Euri-
pides, Trojan Women, 801. 67 G. Murray, Rise of the
Greek Epic p. 173. 68 Homer, Iliad, n, 557-558. Lucian,
,

True History, 11, 20. 69 Dyer, The Gods in Greece, p.

125. See Gardner and Jevons, Greek Antiquities, p. 296.
72 Eschylus, Persians, 241-242. Herodotus, vh, 105. 73
Lucian, Twice Accused, n.
Chapter IV. Page 74 Plato, Republic, 532, C.
Howe, Greek Revolution (1828), p. 340. 76 Plato, Phce-
drus, 279 B. 78 Cf. Gardner, Ancient Athens, p. 256.
80 Bayard Taylor, Travels in Greece and Russia (1859),
p. 39. 81 Homer, Iliad, 11, 546-551. 82 Homer, Odyssey,
vh, 78. Herodotus, vi, 137. 83 Herodotus, vin, 41; 55.
Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 758. 84 Aristophanes, Birds,
828. 85 Demosthenes, 597, 8. Aristophanes, Knights,
1321. 85-86 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 256, 641. 88
Plutarch, Life of Pericles, 13. Lucian, The Fisher, 39.
Chapter V. Page 91 Thucydides, 11, 64. 92 Eschy-
lus, Persians, 347. Euripides, Medea, 826. Demosthenes,
Olynthiac, 111,25,29. 103 Second paragraph, cf. Lucian,
Cock, 26. 104 Eschylus, Eumenides, 328. 105 Eschy-
lus, Eumenides, 778; and 1032. 106 Cf. J. I. Manatt,
The Pauline Areopagus, Andover Rev., 1892. 107 Plato,
Phcedo, 1 14, C. ff. Pindar, Olymp., h. 108 Plato, Apol-
ogy, 41, C. Aristophanes, Wasps, 31 ff. 109 Plato, Re-
public, 514. See note on p. 129 of J. Harrison’s Primitive
Athens, and cf. J. H. Wright, Harv. Stud. Class. Phil.,

1906, pp. 131-142. See also below, chap, vii, p. 164.

 , , ,,

APPENDIX 455

Barathrum. See Aristophanes, Frogs 574; Herodotus,

vh, 133; Plato, Gorgias, 516, E. no Cf. Gardner, An-
cient Athens p. 127; Plato, Apology 36, D; Plutarch,
, ,

Aristides 27. ,
no-in Aristophanes, Peace, 1183; Birds
450. in Bacchylides, Fragments. Lysias, Or. xxiv, 20.
1 12 Aristophanes, passim, and Birds, 1080-1081. Menan-
der, Fragments. 114 ^Eschylus, Seven Against Thebes
854. 115 Thucydides, n, 34. 115-116 Thucydides, 11,
52, 54 ;
Sophocles, (Edipus Tyrannus, 171. 1 17 Aristopha-
nes, Clouds, 17, 18 & 56; Wasps, 246. 118 Demosthenes,
Against Conon, 9. 120 Lucian, Icaromenippus ,
16. Aris-
tophanes, Birds , 1421; Wasps, 835. 123 Homeric Hymn
to Dionysus, 51. Bacchylides, xix, 5. 1 23-1 24 Pindar,

Fragments. Aristophanes, Acharnians, 636. Euripides,

Medea, 824. 125 Plato, Phcedrus 247, A; Republic,
592 ,
A, B.
Chapter VI. Page 127 Pindar, Olymp., vi, 1. Aris-
tophanes, Wasps, 600. Homer, Odyssey, xv, 459. 128
Aristophanes, Frogs, 17 1. 129 Homer, Iliad, xi, 558.
130 Euripides, Alcestis, 252, 433, 575. Homer, Odyssey,
xm, 221. 131 Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Euripides ( ?),

Rhesus, 546. Homer, Iliad, hi, 10; vm, 555; 111, 198.
Homer, Odyssey, xi, 444. Aristophanes, Wasps, 179.
133 Homer, Iliad, xviii, 414. Plato, Republic, m, 404.
134 Homer, Odyssey, xvn, 205. Homer Iliad, xxn, 147. ,

Homer, Odyssey, vi, 70; vn, 19. Homeric Hymn to

Demeter, 105. 135 136 Aris-
Euripides, Electra, 54.
tophanes, Thesmophoriazusce, 139 Plato, Laws, 653.
1.

140 Sophocles, (Edipus Tyrannus, 1489. Aristophanes,

Thesmophoriazusce. Menander, Epitrepontes. Plato,
Lysis.
Chapter VII. Page 144 Aristophanes, Clouds, 300.
Aristophanes, Frogs, 1056. V\dAo, Critias, 112. 145 Theo-
 , ,

456 APPENDIX
phrastus, De Signis Tempestatum, 1, 20, 24. Aristophanes,
Clouds 299-313; and see chap, i, p. 25. 146-147 Sopho-
cles, (Edipus Coloneus, 668-687; 16-18; 694-701. 147
Cf. chap, iii, p. 65. 148 Plato, Phcedo, 115, C. Antipa-
ter, Anth. Grceca ed. ab De Bosch, Lib. m, Tit. xxxii.

149 Xenophon, Hellenica, n, 4, 2-4. 150 Simmias, Anth.

Pal., vii, 22. 1 51 Aristophanes, Acharnians, 34-36; 179;
257-2635325-348. 152 Menander. Parts of four come-
dies of Menander were found in Egypt 1905, published
1907 (Lefebvre). For translation of this scene see N. Y.
Nation ,
p. 266, Mar. 19, 1908. 154 ^Eschylus, Seven
against Thebes 587. 156 Pkto, Republic 451, A; Pindar,
, ,

Pyth., x, 41-44. Dioscorides, Anth. Pal., vn, 410. 158

Demosthenes, De Corona, 208. 159 Epitaph of ^Eschylus.
See Vita ^Eschyli, Medicean MS. Cynosarges Gymnasium.
The site is now put somewhere near the present American
and British Schools. Cf. Gardner, Anc. Ath., 528. 160
Herodotus, vi, 120. 16 1 iEschylus, Persians, 238. Plu-
tarch, Lysander, xvi. 162 Lysias, xxi, 5. Aristophanes,
Knights, 550-560. 163 Homer, Odyssey, 111, 278. Sopho-
cles, Ajax, 1216 if. Herod., and vi, 115. Plato, Crito, 43,
Phcedo, 58, B. 164 Zoster Herodotus, vm, 107. Vari cf.
: :

Frazer on Pans., 1, xxxii, and see note on chap, v, p. 109.

Solon cf. chap, iii, p. 58.
: 165 Demosthenes, De Falsa Le-
gatione, 251. 166- 168 Aeschylus, Persians, 447-449; 386
passim to 421; 274-277; 821-822; 923; Agamemnon, 658-
660. 169 Timotheus, Persce, 105. Plutarch, A ristides, x.
Chapter VIII. Page 174 Euripides, Suppliants, 30.
175 Euripides, Helena, 1301. 176 Strabo, x, 3, 9. 178
Sophocles, (Edipus Coloneus, 1146. Euripides, Ion, 1078.
Herodotus, vm, 65. 179 Aristophanes, Frogs, 341. 180
Aristotle, fragment, quoted by Synesius. 181 Pindar,
fragment. Sophocles, fragment. Euripides, Hercules
 , , ,

APPENDIX 457

Furens 613. Isocrates, Panegyricus 28. Aristophanes,

Frogs 455.
,
182 Andocides, On the Mysteries ,
31. Plato,
Phcedrus, 251 A. 183 Aleman (probably). 184 Aris-
tophanes, Frogs 338, 397. ,
185 Plato, Phcedo, 69 C.
Chapter IX. Page 186 Pindar, Pyth., vm, 21. Plu-
tarch, Zi/e 0/ Pericles ,
156. 187 Lucian, Navigium , 15.
Thucydides, 189 Pindar, Nem., VH, 78. Bac-
vi, 32.
chylides, Epinician Odes 13. 190 Pindar, Zs//*., iv, 23;
,

vii, 16; iv, 49; v, 23. Pindar, Nem., v, 23. 191 Pin-
dar, Pyth., vm, 92.
Chapter X. Page 192 Herodotus, 1, 5. 193 Pindar,
Olymp., xm, 65. 194 Homer, Iliad, ix, 529. Bacchyli-
des, Epinician Odes, 5. Euripides, Meleager (not extant).
Lucian, Life’s-end of Peregrinus, 30. 196 ZEschylus,
Choephoroi, 602. 197 Theognis, 667, 825, 1197. 198
Thucydides, 1, 140. Aristophanes, Acharnians, 509. Iso-
De Pace, 117. 199 Greek Anthology, Pal., vn, 496.
crates,
200 Lucian, Marine Dialogues 9. Euripides, Medea,
1282. 201 Greek Anthology, Pal., vi, 349; vi, 223. Aris-
totle, Politics, 1327 a, 1330 b. Bacchylides, Fragment.
202 Homer, Iliad, 11, 570. 203 Pindar, Olymp., xm, 4.
Aristophanes, Frogs, 439. Homer, Odyssey, xi, 593. 204
Homer, Iliad, vi, 144. Pindar, Olymp., xm, 63. 205
Plato, Republic, ix, 579 E. 208 Herodotus, 1, 24.
210 Pindar, Olymp., xm, 6. 21 1 Greek Anthology, Pal.,
ix, 15 1. 213 Plutarch, On Garrulity, xiv. Lucian, How
to Write History, 3. 215 Euripides, Trojan Women, 205.
216 Thucydides, vm, 7.

Chapter XI. Page 218 Euripides, Andromache, 1085.

Pindar, Pyth., vhi, 61. 219 Homer, Odyssey, vm, 79.
ZEschylus, Prometheus, 679. Sophocles, (Edipus Tyr., 70;
(Edipus Col., 84. 220 Homer, Odyssey, iv, 1. ZEschylus,
Persians, 568. ZEschylus, Prometheus, 680. Herodotus,
 .

458 APPENDIX
passim 221 Aristophanes, Knights, 1007. 222 Hero-
dotus, vii, 139. Sophocles, (Edipus Tyr., 711. 224
iEschines, Against Ctesiphon, 115. 227 Homer, Iliad, 1,

44. Pindar, Pyth., 1, 1. 228 Himerius, quoted in Whar-

ton’s Sappho, p. 165. iEschylus, Eumenides 13. Plato, ,

Protagoras, 343. 230 ^Eschylus, Eumenides, 23, 1. Eu-

ripides, Iphigeneia in Tauris, 1234. 232 Homer, Odys-
sey,xix, 392. Euripides, Ion, 82. 234 Strabo, ix, 3.

237 Euripides, Andromache, 1085. Pindar, Pyth., iv, 4.

Demosthenes, Philippics, 111. 240 Plato, Republic, x,

616. 243 Pindar, Pyth., 111, 75. 244 Herodotus, viii, 35.
248 Cf. Myers, Pindar, p. 10. 249 Pindar, Olymp.,
xii, 5.

Chapter XII. Page 250 Sophocles, (Edipus Tyr.,

1398. 251 Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusce, 1180.
252
Herodotus, 259 Sophocles, Edipus Tyr., 800.
viii, 37.

260 iEschylus, Agamemnon, mi. Homer, Odyssey, xix,

518. 261 Homer, Odyssey, xi, 576. 262 Demosthenes,
On the Crown, 218. 265 Greek Anthology, Pal., vii,

245 -

Chapter XIII. Page 266 Pindar, 267

Isth ., vi,
1.

Plutarch, On the Malice of Herodotus. Homer, Iliad, iv,

384; 11, 495. Homeric Hymns to Apollo and Hermes.
268 Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes, 296. Sophocles,
Antigone, 1124. Euripides, Bacchce, passim. 271 Pin-
dar, Olymp., vi, 89. 275 Pindar, Pyth., 111, 87 ;
Isth., 1,

1; Nem., 1, 33. 276 Sophocles, Trachinice. Sophocles,

Antigone, 1148; Euripides, Bacchce, passim. 277 Euripi-
des, Bacchce, 233. 278 Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusce ,

990. 279 Euripides, Bacchce, 64, 105, 677. 281 Sopho-

cles, Edipus Tyr., 1026. 283 Sophocles, Edipus Tyr.,
1186, 1524. 284 iEschylus, Seven Against Thebes, 524,
686. 286 Euripides, Phoinissce, 1009. Sophocles, An-
 APPENDIX 459

tigone , 450. 287 Sophocles, (Edipus Tyr ., 867. Sopho-

cles, Antigone 781, 800. ,
288 Pindar, vn, 291
5.

Pindar, Isth ., vn, 5. Plutarch, Apothegms. 293 Pindar,

Pyth., hi, 79. 295 Plutarch, Apothegms.
Chapter XIV. Page 296 Hesiod, Theogony, 1. Plato,
Symposium 221 A. 297 Pindar, Pyth., 1, 78. ^Eschylus,
,

Persians, 484. Herodotus, ix, 16. 298 Herodotus, ix,

25. 299 Pindar, Pyth., 1, 77. TEschylus, Persians, 813.

Simonides, Greek Anthology, Pal., vn, 253, 251. 300
Thucydides, in, 53. 301 Plutarch, On the decay of ora-
cles. On the daemon of Socrates. A friend of Plutarch, not

Plutarch himself, visited the oracle of Trophonius. 302

Pindar, Olymp., xiv, 1. 304 Cicero, Against Verres, tv,

2, 59. 307 Plato, Republic, x, 611. Homer, Iliad, 11, 303.

308 Euripides, Iphigeneia in Aulis, 1386. TEschylus,
Agamemnon, 220. 309 TEschylus, Agamemnon, 181. 310
Hesiod, Works and Days, 640. 31 1 Cf. Symonds’ Greek
Poets, 1, chap. 5. 314 Plutarch, Life of Aristides, 21.
Chapter XV. Page 316 Iliad, 1, 156. 317-322
Herodotus, vn, 210-233. 318 Cf. Pausanias, 1, 4, 1-4;
x, xix-xxiii.

Chapter XVI. Page 323 Alpheus of Mitylene, Anth.

Pal., ix, 101 ;
sometimes attributed to Antipater of Thes-
salonica. 330 Herodotus, I,* 1. 331 Lucian, Charon,
23. 332 Pausanias, 11, 15, with Frazer’s notes. 333
Pindar, Nemean, x, 28; vi, 12.335 Thucydides, 1, 9;
Iliad, n, 108. Euripides, Iphigeneia in Aid., 1498. Iphi-
geneia in T., 845-846. 336-343 TEschylus, Agamemnon,
40-47; 154; 334-337; 818-820; 905-9115947; 958-
3 2 °;
962; passim, 973; 1327-1330; 1379-1387; 1548-1559;
577-579. 341 Cf. Browning’s Agamemnon for several
phrases. 342 Euripides, Electra, 54; 77. TEschylus, Choeph.
1061. 343 Iliad, iv, 52. Pythagoras: Horace, Od., 1, 28,
 ,

460 APPENDIX
11. Iamblichus, Life oj Pythag., 63, and see Lucian, Cock,
16, 17. Herodotus, 1, 31. 344 yEschylus, Suppliants ,

954-956. 345 ^Eschylus, Prometheus, 854-869. 346

Lucian, Marine Dialogues, 6. 347 Herodotus, 1, 82;
Lucian, Charon, 24. 348 Euripides, Orestes, 53-55.
349 _ 35 <> Lucian, Marine Dialogues, 12. Euripides, Tro -
jan Women, 1081-1088. 352 Isyllus, cf. Smyth, Melic
Poets, p. 528. 355 Strabo, vm, cap. 6, 12. 356 Lucian,
Cataplus, 18. Plutarch, Lije oj Demosthenes, xxx.
Chapter XVII. Page 358 Pindar, Olymp., hi, 27.
Homer, Iliad ,
11, 612. 360 Homer, Iliad 11, 607. 361 ,

Polybius, xxiv, 15. 365 Greek Anthology App. Plan., 188.

366 Herodotus, vm, 26. 371 Greek Anthology, Pal., ix,

314; App. Plan. 188. 374 Xenophon, Anabasis, 5, 3, 10.

Homer, Odyssey, v, 272. 377 Hesiod, Theogony 775. 380 ,

Pindar, Olymp., vi, 100. Homeric Hymn to Pan, 30.

Homer, Odyssey, 111, 497. 381 Sappho; Homer. See chap,
i, 19, 21. 385 iEschylus, Agamemnon, 519.
Chapter XVIII. Page 388 Pindar, Olymp., 111, 19.
390 Lucian, Marine Dialog., 3. Strabo, vi, cap. 2, 4. 391
Antigonus Carystus, Historia Mirab., 140 (155). 392
Xenophon, Anabasis, tv, viii, 26. 397 Odyssey, v, 79;
Lucian, Jupiter as Tragedian, 10, n. 403 Lucian, He-
rodotus, 1. Herodotus, vm, 26. 408 Lucian, Council oj
the Gods, 12. Pindar, Olymp., 11,51. 410 Herodotus,
vi, 103. 41 1 Pindar, Olymp., 1, 18. Bacchylides, v, 37-

45, and 178-186. 412 Pindar, Olymp.,

1, 86. 413 Pin-
dar, Olymp., 415 ^Eschylus, Agamemnon, 341.
1, 28.

416 Pindar, Olymp., iv, 1; vi, 75; vi, 91. 417 Pindar,
Olymp., xm, 92; hi, 44; xi (x), 45. 418 Pindar, Olymp.,
xi (x), 72; 73-76; xiv, 20. 419 Pindar, Olymp., vn. 420
Plato, Republic, 621, C, D. 421 Bacchylides, vi. 423
iEschylus, Prometheus, 95.
 , :

APPENDIX 461

Chapter XIX. Page 425 Homer, Odyssey hi, 491.

429 Thucydides, iv, 40.
Chapter XX. Page 431 Homer, Odyssey, iv, 1 432 .

Pindar, fragment. Sophocles, Ajax, 8. Homer, Odyssey,

iv, 603. Euripides, Helen, 348; Iphigeneia in Tauris ,

132. 433-434 Homer, Odyssey, iv. Herodotus, vi, 61.

436 iEschylus, Agamemnon, 650. 437 Thucydides, 1, 10.
Polybius, v, 22. 440 Lucian, Anacharsis, 38. Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations, 5, 27. 446 Thucydides, I, 70.
447 Herodotus, vn, 104, 135. 448 Euripides, Andro-
mache, 595. 449 Plato, Protagoras, 342. 450 Aristotle,
Politics , 1271 B. Isocrates, Letter to Philip; Panegyricus,

51*

Note on pages 154-5 ‘Euripus.’ Strictly speaking,

this applies only to the narrower channel between Aulis

and Chalkis. Also used of the whole southern channel

see Bury’s and Frazer’s Maps of Attica.
'
 3 ;;

INDEX
Acamania, 13, 193, 321. Alexander, at Chaeronea, 262; at
Achaea, 13, 194, 326, 373, 435. Isthmus, 217; at Olympia, 391
Achaeans, 14, 324. death of, 3; empire of, 99;
Acharnae, 148, 150 ff. statue at Olympia, 402.
Acrocorinth, 8, 212, 214; view Alexandrian period, 4.
from, 202. Alpheus, god and river, 231, 328,
Acropolis, see under Athens. 369* 375> 379> 3 8 i> 388-91, 404.
iEgaleus, Mt., 149, 164, 173, Altis, at Marathon, 158; at Olym-
177. pia, 388, 395, 402-5.
Aegean, 1, 2, 5, 6, 10, 13, 17, 57, Amorgos, 7.
3 2 5 353
>
- Amphiaraus, sanctuary of, 153-4.
ASgina, 144, 162, 186-91. Amphictyony, Delphic, 224, 238.
iEgospotami, 101, 102. Amphissa, 223.
iEmilius Paulus, 235. Amyclae, 434.
^Eolians, 328; in Boeotia, 310. Anacapri, 2.
Aeschines, place in literature, 97; Anacreon, 70.
cited, 224. Anaxagoras, 96.
iEschylus, Delphi, 237; at
at Andocides, place in literature, 96;
Eleusis, 181; at Marathon, cited, 181.
158-9; character of, 125; Andritsena, 378, 381-2.
competition with, 328; influ- Andros, 7.
ence of, 104, 415 place in liter- ;
Anthedon, 306-7.
ature, 95 ; treatment of nature, Anthesteria, 141.
22; youth of, 70 ff.; cited, 10, Anthology, Greek, 4-5; cited,
11, 38, 43, 64, 72, 83-4, 91, 104, 28, 54, 147, 150, 156, 171, 201,
*54, i 55 > * 59 l6l > l6 6, 167,
> 211,265,299, 300, 2 3>37 I » 373-
168, 196, 230, 246, 268, 283-5, Antiphon, 96.
292, 297, 299, 308, 309, 336, Antisthenes, 99.
342, 344, 385, 415, 436. Antoninus Pius, 364.
iEtolia, 13, 193. Aphaea, temple of, 188.
Africa, 220, 239. Aphrodite, 397, 434; at Piraeus,
Akte, of Argolis, 330, 351; of 54 on Mt. Ida, 1 3 1 of Melos, 5.
; ;

Piraeus, 36, 42, 55. Apollo, at Olympia, 397; at

Alcibiades, at Delium, 296; in- Ptoon, 301; Delphic legends,
fluence of, 101; parody of 230 ff. god of prophecy, 2 1 8 ff
; .

Mysteries, 176; picture of, 77; Hymn to, 231 ; in Alcestis, 130;
Sicilian expedition, 37. in Euntenides, 105 ff. ; in Hymn
Aleman, 442 ff. ;
cited, 18, 22, 182, to Hermes 368,
ff. ;
significance
444 - 5 - at Delphi, 246 ff.; statue at
464 INDEX
Olympia, 399, 400 — at Sparta,
;
Ascra, 310.
441; summer festival of, 136; Asia, 1, 220, 325.
temple —
at Bassae, 382 ff. ; at Asia Minor, 1, 9, 239, 325,
Corinth, 202, 203, 207, 213; — 32 7 -

at Delphi, 237-8; — on Sacred Asopus, river, in Boeotia, 12, 153,

Way, 178; — at Thebes, 282, 270, 296, 305; in Malis, 317;
292 — in Vale of Tempe, 245.
;
in Sicyon, 328, 329.
Appian, 43. Astypalaea, 7.
Arachneum, Mt., 336. Athens (ancient), 10, 13, 436,
Arachova, 30, 252, 253 381. ff., 442, 450 after battle of Salamis,
;

Arcadia, 14, 29, 131, 220, 239, 91-125; before Salamis, 57-
358-87, 425, 429. 73 Academy of, 65, 119,
;

Arcesilas, 239. 147; Acropolis of, 60, 73,

Archidamus, 240, 447. 74-90, 92, 107, 144, 162, 173,
Areopagus, see under Athens. 184, 193, 232; Agora, 72, 99,
Arethusa, 390, 391. no ff. Areopagus of, 69, 72,
;

Argolic Gulf, 324, 330. 99, 104 ff., no; Asclepieum,

Argolid, Argolis, 8, 13, 162, 323- 122; Barathrum, 109; Callir-
57 - rhoe, 61, 65, 109, 133; Cyno-
Argos, 10, 11, 221, 239, 325, 327, sarges Gymnasium, 65, 99, 159;
329 -30 346, 435 436
, >
. Dipylon Gate, 113, 144, 177,
Arion, 208-9. 183; Dionysiac Theatre, 120 ff.;
Aristides, 100, 124. Erechtheum, 75, 77, 81, 84, 97;
Aristodemus, 428. Gymnasia, 65, 118; Lenaeum,
Aristogeiton, 71. 61, 69; Lyceum, 94, 99, 119;
Aristomenes, 428, 430. Lysicrates Monument, 122;
Aristophanes, place in literature, Market-place (old), 65; Nike
95; treatment of nature, 24; temple, 77, 79; Old Athena
cited, 25, 26, 35, 65, 70, 71, 83, temple, 75, 92; olive in, 66;
85-6, 108, 1 1 2, 1 1 7, 120, 127, Olympieum, 57, 65, 119 Par- ;

128, 131, 132, 136, 144, 145, thenon, 77, 78, 80-1, 85, 87-9,
150, 151, 161, 162, 179, 184, 382; Pnyx, 108; Propylaea, 77-
221, 251, 448. 78, 79, 85, 89, 94; — ,
old, 65,
Aristotle, Lyceum of, 119; philos- 76; Prison of Socrates, 89, 107;
ophy, 97 ff.; cited, 66, 180, 201, Prytaneum, no; Street of
212, 446, 449, 450. Tombs, 1 13; Theseum, 94;
Aroanius, river, 375. Tholus, no; Modern, 29, — ,

Artemis, 24; at Olympia, 397; 126-43.

Brauronia, 86; hymn to, 223; in Athena, Alea, 364; Archegetis,
Arcadia, 365, 373, 374; in Hip- 86; at Piraeus, 52
;
Chalkioekos,
poly tus, 26, 355 on Taygetus,
; 438; importance at Athens, 67;
432; Orthia, 438-9; temple at old temple of, 75; statues on
Aulis, 309;— at Piraeus, 46; Acropolis, 78-9; the Watch-
— at Thebes, 282, 293. er, 62.
Artemisium, 298. Athos, Mt., n, 13.
Asclepieum, at Athens, 122; at Attic age, 5.
Epidaurus, 352; modern sub- Attica, 5-8, 13, 15, 144-70, 325.
stitute for, 30. Aulis, 267, 307 ff.
 3

INDEX 465

Bacchus, see Dionysus. Claudius, 304. N

Bacchylides, place in literature, Cleft Way, 250, 257 ff.

420; cited, hi, 123, 189, 243, Clement, St., cited, 215.
411, 421. Cleonae, 330, 331.
Bassae, temple at, 358, 382 ff. Cnidus, 35, 173.
Bendis, festival of, 48 ff. Cnossus, 231.
Bion, 4. Colonists, 58, 414.
Boeotia, 4, 7, 8, 260, 266-315, Colonus, 24, 146-7.
3 2 5> 4 8 - Comedy, 95.
Brasidas, 436. Common dialect, 3.
Brauron, 160. Conington, cited, 71.
Brennus, 318. Conon, 35, 56, 102; Wall of, 33,
Byron, 5, 79, 194; cited, 422. 36, 39, 41, 44-
Byzantine, churches, 29, 404; Constantinople, fall of, 3; foun-
Greek, 5; ruins, 29, 404; age, dation of, 196.
40, 212. Copaic Lake, 269, 271.
Corcyra, 206.
Cadmus, 200, 272 ff. Corinna, 306.
Caesar, Julius, 21 1, 215. Corinth (New), 201, 202; (Old),
Calauria, 330, 356. 201-17, 22 °> 436.
Caligula, 304. Corinthian Gulf, 5, 7, 8, 9, 192 ff.,
Callichorus, 175. 223, 269, 324, 326, 329, 331.
Callimachus, cited, 183. Corycian Cave, 229, 252, 255.
Callirrhoe, see Athens. Cos, 353.
Calydon, 194. Cotilius, Mt., 384.
Calydonian boar hunt, 194, 364. Cranae, 435.
Carthage, 43, 239, 398. Craneum, 213.
Cassotis, 245. Cretan, 20; Cretans, 231, 413;
Castalia, 226, 252, 253. Eteo-Cretans, 14.
Cecrops, 59, 144. Crete, 9, 15, 221, 239, 324, 325,
Cenchreae, 212. 326, 362, 441.
Ceos, 7, 95, 420, 421. Crimea, 58.
Cephisus, river, Attic, 146, 148, Crisaean plain, 223-4, 238.
152, 177, 184; Boeotian, 260, Cumae, 2.

265, 269, 316. Cybele, at Piraeus, 49.

Chaeronea, 97, 115, 198, 210, 257, Cyllene, Mt., 8, 9, 365, 367, 369,
260, 261-5, 401, 43 6 * 45°- 376, 383*
Chasia, 150. Cynuna, 330, 347.
Chryso, 223. Cyprus, 1, 433.
Cicero, 97; cited, 1, 32, 181, 21 1, Cypselus, 205; chest of, 207.
304, 316, 440. Cyrene, 239.
Cimon, 100-101; at Eleusis, 182; Cythnus, 7.
in Messenian affairs, 428.
•Cirphis, Mt., 226, 253, 256, 258. Danai, 323, 344.
Cithaeron, Mt., 12, 193, 219, 268, Dances, ancient and modern, 137,
278, 280, 281, 292, 296. 139-
Cladeus, river and god, 388, 393, Danube, 9.
404. Daulis, 258, 259.
 .

466 INDEX
Decelea, 148, 150. Eleusis, bay of, 48, 193; mys-
Delium, 296. teries, 114, 129, 171-85; town-
Delos, 7, 101 107, 163, 397; con-
,
spring of, 134.
federacy of, 100. Eleutheria, 313.
Delphi, 218-49, 289, 344, 401. Elis, 9, 373, 389, 392.
Demaratus, 179, 447. Elton, cited, 272.
Demeter, at Olympia, 397, 410; Epaminondas, 262, 295, 296; char-
in Arcadia, 173; in Bceotia, acter of, 289 ff., 363; death of,

i73> 3U; to,Hymn

174-5; 360 ff. ;
founds Messene, 429-
patroness of marriage, 140; 3°*
shrines of, 30; statue of, 173; Epicurus, 99.
worship of, 1 73 ff Epidaurus, 330, 351 ff.

Demosthenes, at Chaeronea, 262; Epirus, 14, 270.

place in literature, 97; suicide Erechtheum, see under Athens.
of, 103, 356-7; cited, 85, 92, Erechtheus, 59, 83.
118, 158, 165, 237. Eridanus, river, 144.
Dicaearchus, cited, 286, 306. Eris, apple of, 397.
Dinarchus, 97. Erymanthus, Mt., 8, 9, 373, 381,
Dio Chrysostom, 271, 399. 383; river, 375.
Diogenes the Cynic, 213. Etruscan, 414.
Dionysia, Greater, 69, 140 Lesser, ;
Eubcea, 7, n, 153, 206; Gulf of,
141. 269.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 300. Eumelus, 208.
Dionysus, at Athens, 68 ff., 72; Euripides, at Piraeus, 50; ceno-
at Delphi, 227 ff., at Eleusis taph, 55; place in literature,
(Iacchus), 174, 177, 179; at 95-6; theology of, 49, 97 treat- ;

Olympia, 397; at Panopeus, ment of Nature, 16, 26; cited,

261 brings Semele from Hades,
; 26, 27, 57, 91, 114, 124, 132,
355; Hymn to, 122,277; infant, i35> r 3 8 > l6o, 169, 175, 178,
396; in Frogs, 128, 129, 203; 200, 210, 215, 218, 228-9,
in the Marshes, 141; old cult, 230-1, 233-4, 268, 274, 276,
30; on Helicon, 303; temple at 277, 279-81, 285-6, 292, 308,
Thebes, 293. 354, 425, 432-3, 43 8 -9, 448.
Diphilus, cited, 52, 206. Euripus, 11, 153, 154, 307.
Dirce, 272, 294. Eurotas, river, 375, 432-3.
Dodona, 14. Eurymedon, 71.
Donkeys, 128-9. Excavations by, Americans at
Dorians, 326 ff., 328. Corinth, 202, 212 ff. British ;

Doric, dialect, 398. at Sparta, 438; French at

Doris, 316, 328, 358. Delphi, 225, 236 Germans ;

at Olympia, 404; Greeks at

Easter, festival of, 132, 137, Thebes, 292.
142.
Echo, 372-3, 418. Festivals, ancient and modern,
Egypt, 9, 433. 1 39-1 42.
Egyptians, 2. Flaminius, 217.
Eira, 426, 428. Funerals, ancient and modern,
Eleusinia, 183. 1 29—130.
 ; ;;

INDEX 467

Games, Isthmian, 216-17, 407; Hermes, Homeric Hymn to,

Nemean, 333, 407; Olympic, 367 ff. ;
Ram
Bearer, 313; stat-
ancient, 388 ff., 407, 408-13; ues of, 5, 371, 396.
— ,
modem, 422-3; Pythian, Hermione, 328, 329, 330, 355.
242 ff., 407. Herodas (Herondas), 4.
Gauls, at Delphi, 235; at Ther- Herodes Atticus, 156; gifts of,
mopylae, 318. 88, 241, 402.
Geoffrey de Villehardouin, 379. Herodotus, at Athens, 93; piety
Geraneia, Mt., 195, 199. of, 222, 248; place in literature,
Glaucus, of Chios, 244; sea-di- 96; cited, 66, 82, 83, 109, 157,
vinity, 307. 160, 166, 179, 192, 208, 222,
Goethe, cited, 22, 251. 267, 287, 297, 299, 319, 321,
Gorgias, place in literature, 97; 33°> 343-4, 347, 366, 403, 410,
statue at Delphi, 240; at — 434, 44;-8-
Olympia, 403. Hesiod, life and works, 268 ff.;
Gorgopis, Lake, 12. cited, 272, 296, 303, 309 ff.,

Gortys, river, 375. 377-8-

Goulas (Gha, Gla), 271. Hieron of Syracuse, 243, 413-4.
Graces, the, 20, 416, 420; temple Himera, battle of, 398.
of, 302. Hipparchus, 70, 328.
Graeco-Roman period, 4. Hippias, 33, 70 sophist, 403. ;

Grylus, 360. Hippocrates, 93, 353.

Gytheion, 435. Hippocrene, 303.
Hippodamus, 45.
Hadrian, aqueduct, 376; at Ath- History, 3, 14, 15, 96 -

ens, 60; at Delphi, 235; at Homer, connection with Argolis,

Eleusis, 182; at Olympia, 402; 323 ff. with Athens, 67-8;
;

road of, 199. treatment of nature, 18 ff.

Hagios Vlasis, 260. cited, 18, 19, 81-2, 163, 202,
Harmodius, 71. 204, 227, 267, 343, 358, 360,
Hatzidakis, G. N., cited, 5. 374, 377, 397, 43 1 , 433-4-
Helicon, Mt., 7, 193, 292, 301, Homeric Hymns, 267; to Apollo,
302-4, 313. 231; to Artemis, 223; to Diony-
Hephaesteum, 60. sus, 122, 277; to Hermes, 367 ff.
Hephaestus, at Athens, 59-60 to Pan, 371 ff.
in Prometheus, 23; street, 133. Horace, cited, 345.
Hera, at Olympia, 395-6; in Ar- Hydames, 448.
golis, 329, 348; head of, 344. Hymettus, Mt., 13, 109, 145, 163.
Heraclea, 196. Hypereides, place in literature,
Heracles, at Marathon, 159; at 97; cited, 103.
Olympia, 393, 422; birth, 275;
Cretan, 393; journey to Hades, Iacchus, see under Dionysus.
355; labours of, 218-19, 333, Ibycus, 213.
347> 374, 37 6 3995 temple at
>
Ictinus, 182, 382, 383, 385, 386.
Thebes, 293. Ida, Mt., in Asia Minor, n, 130;
Heraeum, Argolis, 330, 336, 343- in Crete, 393.
4, 3575 at Olympia, 389, 395-8. Ilissus, river, 27, 28, 125, 133,
Hermaea, 140. 144, 422.
468 INDEX
Inachus, river, 332. Leuctra, 289, 296, 430.
Ionia, 97. Lindus, 29, 419.
Ionian, 14; sea, 383. Lipari Islands, 10.
Isaeus, 97. Literature, Greek, 3-5; 93-100
Ismenus, river, 272, 294. Locris, 7, 14, 193, 223, 226; Epi-
Isocrates, place in literature, 97; cnemidian, 316.
cited, 59, 181, 198, 450. Lucian, 4; cited, 39, 53, 54, 68,
Isthmus of Corinth, 10, 144, 193, 73, 88, 120, 213, 331, 356, 390,
201, 215, 324, 334, 353, 436. 402, 403, 408, 440.
Italy, 58, 220. Lucius, Mummius, 21 1.
Itea, 223, 226. Lycabettus, Mt., 144.
Ithaca, 231, 432. Lycaeus, Mt., 8, 367, 373, 378,
Ithome, Mt., 8, 383, 426, 428. 383-
Lycosura, 359, 364.
Jebb, Sir Richard, cited, 57-8, Lycurgus, lawgiver, 446; orator,
103, 413* 97 -

Julian the Apostate, 235-6, 403. Lyric poetry, 95.

Lysander, 102.
Kalamata, 10, 425-7. Lysias, place in literature, 97;
Kallidromos, Mt., 317. cited, 47, 76, hi, 149.
Kapraena, 261. Lysippus, 244, 329.
Karaiskakis, Place, 30, 36. Lysis, disciple of Socrates, 140;
Karytaena, 29, 378—9'; Geoffrey of Tarentum, 291.
de, 379.
Kastri, 224 ft. Macedon, 15, 96, 100, 356, 401,
Kephisia, 148, 152. 436.
Kerata, Mt., boundary between Macedonia, 2, 239.
Attica and Megara, 8, 173, 195. Macedonian rule, 39, 102, 210,
Kronos Hill, 388 ff. 391, 394, 401, 436.
Kydias, 329. Maenalus, Mt., 373.
Malea, 324, 431.
Lacedaemon, 426, 431.
8, Malis, 316.
Laconia, 8, 324, 327, 426, 431, Malian Gulf, 7.
435 *.
Mantinea, 289, 359 ff., 364.
Laconian Gulf, 431. Marathon, 70 ff., 103, 157-60,
Ladon, river, 375, 389, 390. 298; —
race, 159, 422.
Langada Gorge, 426. Marathonisi, 435.
Language, Greek, 3 ;
dialects, Markopoulo, 160.
414; modem, 5. Meander, river, 328.
Larisa of Argos, 325, 327, 330. Mediterranean, 1, 3, 40, 390.
Lasus, 328. Megalopolis, 9, 359, 378, 382,
Laurium, 160-1. 385. 429-
Leake, cited, 385-6. Megara, 8, 48, 164, 1 92-9; —
Lebadeia, 301, 313. Hyblaea, 196.
Lechaeum, 212, 216. Megarid, 144, 164.
Leonidas, 298, 3 17-321. Megistias, 321.
Lema, 330, 346-7. Melicertes, 200.
Lesbos, 131, 441. Melos, 5, 162, 326.
 ;

INDEX 469

Menander, death, 4 friend of

; at Olympia, 391, 402; at Thes-
Theophrastus, 99 place in
;
piae, 304.
literature, 96 ;
plays of at Nike, by Paeonius, 400; of Samo-
Piraeus, 50; tomb, 55; cited, 49, thrace, 1 61 temple of, see un-
;

•
55, 112, 121, 152, 449. der Athens.
Menidhi, 137, 150, 151. Nisaea, in Megarid, 195.
Mesogia, 160. Nomian Mts., 373, 383.
Mesolonghi, 30, 194. Norton, Charles Eliot, cited, 16.
Messene, 429.
Messenia, 5, 8, 13, 14, 425-30; (Eta, Mt., 7, 316, 326.
Bay of, 10, 13. Olympia, 9, 243, 382, 388-424.
Messina, Straits of, 10. Olympus, Mt., 6, 14, 15, 370, 404,
Midas, 239. 423-
Midea, 325. Onatas, 386.
Minoa, in Megarid, 195. Oratory, 96.
Minyae, 14, 302. Orchomenus, in Arcadia, 365 ;
in
Mistra, 29, 433. Bceotia, 270, 302.
Moluriad Rock, 200. Oropus, 153.
Monemvasia, 29. Orphic School, 174.
Morea, 8; dukes of, 404. Ossa, Mt., 7.
Moschus, 4. Othrys Mts., 7.
Munychia, 33, 41, 42, 45, 50,
55- Paeonius, 400.
Murray, Gilbert, cited, 132, 214, Paestum, 2, 357.
274 ff., 439. Palermo, 10.
Musaea, 313. Pallantium, 360, 364.
Mycalessus, 314. Pan, at Athens, 72—3 ; Homeric
Mycenae, n, 319, 325, 327, 330, Hymn to, 371 flF. in modem ;

33 I 33 2 334ff-».3S I
> >
- folk-lore, 255; at Delphi, 229;
Mycenaean civilization, 182, 292, at Psyttaleia, i66j at Thebes,
325-6 293-
Myconos, 7. Panathenaea, 67, 71, 135, 137, 140.
Myron, 78. Panopeus, 260.
Mysteries, see under Eleusis. Parmenides, 97.
Mytika, 361. Parnassus, Mt., 7, 193, 223, 225,
226, 227,. 232, 234, 253, 254,
Nature, Greek treatment of, 15- 256, 258, 259, 261, 292, 301,
28. 316, 326, 329, 353, 393.
Nauplia, 30, 324, 325, 330, 348. Parnes, Mt., 7, 144, 148, 153.
Navarino, 425. Pamon, Mt., 8, 432.
Naxos, 7, 13, 30. Paros, 29, 386.
Neda, river, 382, 383, 384. Parthenius, Mt., 373.
Nedon, river, Gorge of, 426. Parthenon, see under Athens.
Nemea, 330, 332 ff. Patras, 192, 194-5. 39 2 -

Nemesis, 154 ff. Paul, St., 210, 212, 395; cited,

Nereid, 255-56, 397. 106, 217, 407.
Nero, at Corinth, 213; at Delphi, Pausanias, general, 298, 299 ;
235 ; at Isthmus, 215, 217 topographer, cited, 76, 88, 145,
 ;

470 INDEX
150, 165, 183, 207, 235, 241, 264, Phoenicides, cited, 84.
265, 271, 289, 292, 293, 301, Pholoe, Mt., 373-4.
304, 309, 310, 319, 329, 336, Phryne, 240, 304.
346, 35 2 353» 360, 361-2, 374,
>
Pieria, 368.
375> 376, 3 8 4, 39°> 405, 411, Pindar, age of, 31; art of, 288;
428, 430, 440. in Athens, 95; descent of, 271;
Pegasus, 204, 214, 303. house of, 293; place in litera-
Peirene, 204, 207, 214. ture, 268; treatment of nature,
Pelasgians, 14, 82, 324, 344, 347. 20-1; cited, 20-1, no, 114,
Pelion, Mt., 7. 122, 124, 156, 186, 189, 190,
Peloponnesian War, 34, 101, 153, 191, 204, 210, 218, 237, 243,
288, 300, 429. 249, 266, 275, 288, 291, 299,
Peloponnesus, 8, 15. 3° 2 333> 35 8 > 3 88 4©8,
> > 410,
Pelops, 393, 399, 405, 412. 411, 412, 415, 420, 432.
Peneius, river, 7. Pindus, Mt., 7, 13.
Pentedactylon, Mt., 432. Piraeus, 30, 32-56, 85, 100, 102,
Pentelicus, Mt., 5, 7, n, 13, 25, 145, 186, 187.
132, 144, 148, 152, 153, 159. Pisistratus, 64 ff., 174, 182.
Periander, 206 £f. Plataea, 71, 91, 296-301, 313, 320.
Pericles, age of, 394; death, 1 15 Plato, Academy
of, 119, 147;
at Eleusis, 182; Megarian de- age 39 cave of, 109 legend
of, ; ;

cree of, 198; oratory of, 96, of, 164; opinion of Kydias,
*08; political influence of, 34, 330; place in philosophy, 98;
56, 97, 100, ioi, 104. treatment of nature, 28; cited,
Persephone, 355 ; worship of, 28, 46-7, 74, 107, 125, 139,
171 ff. 144, 182, 185, 198, 205, 307,
Persian Wars, 15, 96, 100, 197, 352, 414, 420, 449, 450.
210* 31 %330 . Plistus, river, 226, 234, 242, 252,
Phaeacia, 134. 2 53-
Phalerum, 45, 125, 132, 395. Plutarch, 4; birthplace, 2 61 char- ;

Pheneus, 365.; lake of, 375-6. acter of, 268; cited, 64, 88, no,
Pherae, 425. 169, 213, 240, 267, 301, 353,
Phereerates, cited, 82, 266. 356 .

Phidias, 135* 244, 293, 399. Polybius, cited, 360, 361, 363,
Phigalia, 382. 437-
Phigalians, 383, 386. Polygnotus, 129, 241.
Philip, 39, 115, 451; at Chae- Poros, 356.
ronea, 262; in Delphic Am- Poseidon, at Athens, 59; in Ar-
phictyony, 224 ; of Hellenic golis, 348; in Elis, 390; tem-
blood, 102, 391; statues of, ple of at Calauria, 356; at —
240, 401. Paestum, 2; —
at Sunium, 162.
Philopcemen, 361-3. Potidaea, 119.
Philosophy, 97 ff. ;
closing of Prasiae, 160.
schools of, 3. Pratinas, 328.
Phlius, 328, 329, 330. Praxilla, 329.
Phocis, 14, 223, 260, 316. Praxiteles, 5, 244, 293, 304, 364,
Phoenicia, 324, 433. 396 .

Phoenicians, 127, 273, 330. Propylaea, see under Athens.

 ; ;

INDEX 47i

Ptoon, Mt., 269, 292, 301, 313. Solos, 376.

Pylos, 231, 425, 429. Sophists, 94, 96, 97.
Pythagoras, 97, 291. Sophocles, place in literature, 95
tomb of, 150; treatment of na-
Rhamnus, 154 ff. ture, 24 ff. cited, 24, 116, 140,
;

Rhodes, 1, 29, 127, 135, 419; 146, 163, 171, 178, 222, 240,
“Colossus of, 397. 250, 268, 276, 281-3, 286-7,
Rogers, B. B., cited, 70, 132, 141, 3°3> 335> 34i, 4°5~7> 43 2 *

161, 179, 181, 251. Sparta, 8, 10, 13, 100, 102,

Roman rule, 39-40, 172, 211-12, 153, 239, 288, 425, 429, 431-
391, 394, 402, 414. 45i.
Romans, 204, 362. Spercheius, river, 316, 318.
Sphacteria, 429.
Salamis, 48, 62, 68, 144, 353, Sphinx, Mt., 292.
357> 3995 battle of 7 1 9 1 i°3>
> , ,
Sterling, John, cited, 320, 404.
165-70, 188, 209, 299, 398. Strabo, cited, 234, 271, 355, 390.
Samos, 70, 99. Stymphalus, 365 ; lake of, 376.
Sappho, read by Solon, 64; treat- Styx, 377.
ment of nature, 18 ff., cited, Suetonius, cited, 215.
18, 19, 20, 21, 136, 380. Sunium, 161 ff. 356. ;

Saronic Gulf, 8, 32, 41, 163, 193, Swinburne, cited, 106, 424.
3 2 4, 353> 354- Symonds, J. A., cited, 114, 136,
Scamander, 134. 349-
Scironian Cliffs, 199 ff., 354. Syracusans, 38, 102, 414.
Scopas, 293, 364, 386. Syracuse, 10, 38, 43, 206, 414.
Selinus, 398.
Seriphos, 7. Taenarum, 208, 431.
Servius Sulpicius, cited, 32, 199. Tanagra, 296, 305-6, 313.
Shelley, cited, 25, 56, 148, 368. Tatoi, 153.
Sicily, 1, 9, 10, 15, 58, 239, 328, Tauropolia, 140.
388, 390; Sicilian Greeks, 391, Taygetus, Mt., 8, 13, 383, 389,
398, 414 ; — expedition, 37, 426, 432, 445.
101, 187. Tegea, 359, 363-4, 435-
Sicyon, 329. Telesilla, 329.
Simmias, cited, 150. Tempe, Vale of, 7, 245.
Simonides, at Athens, 70, 95 poet ;
Tenedos, 388.
laureate, 420; rival of Lasus, Tenos, 7.
328; cited, 64, 136, 157, 158, Terpander, cited, 441-2.
200, 299-300, 320, 321, 349. Thaletas, 441-2.
Socrates, on Acropolis, 76 ff. ; in Thebes, 15, 229, 239, 266-95, 436.
Assembly, 108; at Delium, Themistocles, fortification of Pi-
296; a’t Isthmian Games, 217; raeus, 33, 34, 36; policy of,
by Ilissus, 27; in Gymnasia, 44, 101; at Olympia, 361; at
1 19, 140; in Piraeus, 46 ff. Salamis, 166; tomb of, 41.
place in philosophy, 98-9. Theodosius, 236, 403.
Solon, in Egypt, 2 influence in
;
Theocritus, 4, 16, 258; treatment
Athens, 58 ff. ; statue at Sala- of nature, cited, 28.
mis, 165; cited, 62, 63, 283. Theognis, 196-7.
 ;

472 INDEX
Theophrastus, 99; cited, 51, 62, Treton, Mt., 331.
121, 140. Tripolis, 360, 373, 375.
Thera, 326. Triptolemus, 174.
Theramenes, 102. Troezen, 330, 353 ff-, 35 8 -

Therapne, 433. Troy, 10, 27, 134, 336, 337, 338,

Thermopylae, 7, 9, 298, 316-22, 343> 357-
360. Tyrtaeus, cited, 427, 428, 443.
Theseus, in art and literature, 60,
399; Bacchylides on, 95; city Vaphio, 435.
of, 104, 107, 146; in Hippo- Vari, 163-4.
lytus,354 ff.; Isthmian Games, Virgil, 310, 364.
217; the Panathenaea, 67, 137;
return from Crete, 79, 163. Way, cited, 139, 218, 229.
Thesmophoria, 140. Wordsworth, cited, 17, 21.
Thespiae, 304-5.
Thespians, 288, 313, 319. Xenophon, place in literature,
Thespis, 63, 156. 96; treatment of Epaminondas,
Thessaly, 6, 7, 13, 14, i 35 > 270, 289; cited, 46, 51, 149, 267,
368, 435- 289, 360, 374, 392, 446.
Thoricus, 160. Xerxes, at Plataea, 298; at Sala-
Thrace, 2, 5, 171, 220. mis, 165; at Thermopylae, 317;
Thrasybulus, 149. invasion of Delphi, 252; of —
Thriasian Plain, 173, 179. Greece, 447.
Thucydides, historian, at Delphi,
248 place in literature, 96
;
Zacynthus, 231.
cited, 91, 115, 116, 216,
37, Zanes, 401.
267, 289, 300, 326, 335, 360, Zeno, 99.
429, 437, 446-7 statesman, 101.
;
Zeus, 14, 23, 27; birth of, 367,
Tiberius, 391, 402. 393 ;
Lebadeia, 301
at at ;

Timotheus, cited, 168, 362. Nemea, 333; at Olympia, 392,

Tiryns, 324, 325, 327, 330, 336, 393> 395r 396, 423; at Piraeus,
348 - 51 -
52; temple at Olympia, 398-
Tragedy, 95. 401.
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