In the Land of Temples Part 1

In the Land of Temples.

by Joseph Pennell.

NOTES--ON MY LITHOGRAPHS IN THE LAND OF TEMPLES

I WENT to Greece for two reasons. First, because I wanted to see Greece and what remained of her glory--to see if the greatest work of the past impressed me as much as the greatest work of the present--and to try to find out which was the greater--the more inspiring. And second, I went because I was told by a Boston authority that I was nothing but a ragtime sketcher, couldn't see Greek art and couldn't draw it if I did.

I have been there--and did what I saw in my own way. To me Greece was wonderful and was beautiful, but anyone can see that--and can rave over it with appropriate quotations from appropriate authors. I know no Greek and have scarce read a translation. I say this regretfully--I wish I had--I should have seen more. I know, however, if I had not before seen the greatest art of the rest of Europe, I could not have been so moved as I was by what I saw in the Land of Temples, the land whence we have derived most of our ideas, ideals, and inspirations.

I drew the things that interested me--and it was, and is, a great delight to me to be told by those who have, some of them, spent their lives studying Greeks and Greece, that I have given the character of the country. What impressed me most was the great feeling of the Greeks for site in placing their temples and shrines in the landscape--so that they not only became a part of it, but it leads up to them. And though the same architectural forms were used, each temple was so placed that it told from afar by sea or land, a goal for pilgrims--a shrine for worshippers to draw near to--yet each had a character of its own--always the same, yet ever differing. I know, I am sorry to say, little of proportion, of scale, of heights, of lengths, but what I saw, with my own eyes, was the way these monuments were part of the country--never stuck about anyhow--always composed--always different--and they were built with grand ideas of composition, impressiveness, and arrangement.

Has there been any change in the black forest before Aegina--the "wine dark sea" at Sunium--the "shining rocks" at Delphi--the grim cliffs of the Acropolis?--these prove in their various ways that the Greeks were great artists.

These were the things I saw. Had I known more I might have seen less--for it seems to me that most artists who have gone to Greece have been so impressed with what they have been told to see, that--there are, of course, great exceptions--they have looked at the land with a foot-rule, a translation, and a dictionary, and they have often been interfered with by these aids. I went ignorant of where to go--or what to see. When I got to Athens I fell among friends, who answered my only question that "I wanted to see temples that stood up." They told me where they were--and there they were. And for this information, which resulted in my seeing these sites and making these lithographs, I want to thank many people, but above all Mr. R. M. Dawkins, late Director of the British School at Athens, who, now that he has seen the work, agrees with others that it has something of the character and romance of the country. If it has those qualities, they are what I went out to see--and having seen them--and I have tried to express them--I know I can see more, if I have the chance in the future in the Wonder of Work of my time, for in our great works to-day we are only carrying on the tradition of the great works of the past. I have seen both, and it is so.

JOSEPH PENNELL.

INTRODUCTION.

IT is a happy thing that the Greek race came into being, because they showed the world once at least what is meant by a man. The ideal Greek virtue s?f??s??? means, that all parts and faculties of the man are in proportion, each trained to perfection and all under control of the will: body, mind, and spirit, each has its due place. Elsewhere we see one of these in excess. Thus the Indian philosopher soars in the highest regions of speculation, and sees great truths, but they intoxicate him: he does not bring them to the test of daily life, nor does he check them by reason. The Hebrew prophet has his vision of one G.o.d, and in rapt devotion prostrates himself below the dignity of manhood. The Roman deals with practical politics and material civilisation; he has a genius for organizing, and for combining the rule of the best with the freedom and direct influence of all: he, however, despises the spirit and the imagination. In our own day, what is called science arrogates almost divine honours to the faculty for measuring and observing, and neglects both the religious instinct and the philosopher's theoric; nor is this ideal less deadly than the Roman's to imagination and the sense of beauty. In modern times also, each person strives to excel in some one specialty, mental or bodily; and if there is any feeling at all for proportion it is the proportion of a group, while the members of the group are pe??tt??, excessive in one way and defective in the others.

But the Greek aimed at perfect proportion for the man; and his ideal was, that the man's will should use all the faculties to some worthy end. His body is to be trained by music and gymnastic: the aim of the first being grace and beauty; of the second, strength; of the whole, health and joy in all bodily uses. His mind is to be trained by poetry, oratory, and philosophy; his spirit by the worship of the G.o.ds, in which all that was best in his life is concentrated into a n.o.ble ritual. Such would be the life of the ordinary Greek; the greater intellects would look beyond the ritual to the essence; and we have ample evidence to show that their ideals were as high as any that have been known to other peoples. Aeschylus dealt with the same problems that baffled the Hebrew prophets, divine justice and mercy, and the immutable moral law; Plato's speculation took him into regions where logic and formal philosophy had to be cast aside; Pheidias by his art added a new dignity to G.o.dhead.[1]

Nowhere is the Greek s?f??s???, their sense of restraint and proportion, shown better than in their architecture: and this both in the method of growth and in the final results. The Doric style has grown out of a wooden building. When and how the first steps were taken, we do not know, nor whether the Doric be directly descended from the Mycenaean style, as Perrot and Chipiez will have it. There is this great difference: that the Mycenaean and Cretan columns are like a Doric column reversed, the thick end upmost, and they show none of the Greek refinements to which we shall come later. A simpler origin is possible: for to-day the traveller may see, in the verandah of some wayside cottage (Homer's a'????sa ???d??p??) a primitive Doric column, some bare tree-trunk with a chunk of itself for capital, supporting a primitive architrave of the same sort. In the Doric order, other traces of woodwork are left in the stone, such as the triglyphs, or beam-ends, with round pegs beneath, or the gouged flutings of the column itself.

And we have direct evidence in the history of the Olympian Heraeum; where we are told that the columns were once of wood, and that stone columns were put in place of these as they decayed, one of the ancient oak columns being preserved down to the time of Pausanias. The early architects would seem to have been nervous as to how much weight stone would bear, so that their columns are very thick and set close together; in fact, less than one diameter apart. By degrees they learnt from experience, but the changes were slow and careful. The plan of the temple always remained the same, and there is little variation in the number of pillars at each end, or in any of the general features. As in statuary, here also they kept to their tradition as much as they could, and got their effects with the least possible change. But what effects!

Compare the heavy ma.s.ses of Corinth or Paestum with the airy grace of the Parthenon, and measure the infinite delicacy of the changes which produce this effect. The builders found out that straight lines do not look straight, and that if the lines of a building do not look straight, the building looks as if it is going to topple over and fall. A column which decreases upwards in straight lines looks to the eye concave; and this illusion they tried to correct by making the columns bulge from the top about one third down, and then decreased this curve towards the bottom. The first attempts gave too much convex curving, but this again was corrected until the architect found perfection: yet the differences measured in inches are small. Again, each column was inclined slightly inwards, because a column that stands quite straight looks as though it were inclined out-wards; and the stylobate, upon which the columns stand, is curved from each end upwards to the centre. Other adjustments were necessary in the abacus and capital, to make all harmonious; and we may say that there was hardly a straight line in the building. Sculpture and ornament were adjusted to the eye in the same way; and it would seem that the effect of the whole building also was judged not alone, but in connection with the lines of the landscape--that background of hills, always n.o.ble but never over-powering, which is found all over the Greek world. For instance, in the Parthenon certain minute corrections were made because of the way in which the sun's rays fell on it. These adjustments have been measured and tabulated--or at least a great many of them, for there are doubtless many we do not notice, and the building is a ruin--but they show a delicacy of sense which is nothing short of miraculous. These builders, however, were not only artists with miraculous keenness of sense, but members of a true trade-guild, with its acc.u.mulated wisdom handed down from generation to generation, and themselves were men who worked with their own hands. Neither could they have built the Parthenon with books of logarithms in an office; nor can we ever have n.o.ble buildings again so long as the architect and the builder are not one. Every common workman must have had his share of this traditional skill. Indeed, inscriptions lately discovered show that the building of the Parthenon went on after Pheidias was banished; so that the sculptures which are the wonder of the world must have been done in part at least without their designer. But even without such evidence, the perfection of every detail of building, the fitting of the joints, the strength and finish of each part, is enough to show what the Athenian workman was like.

[1] Quintilian, Inst. Orat. xii., 10, 9. Olympium in Elide Jovem ... cuius pulchritudo adiecisse aliquid etiam receptae relligioni videtur: adeo maiestas operis deum aequavit.

But we must remember also that the stones that remain are only ruins.

Even in these we may trace many of the perfections of the ancient artist; but if we could see them as they were, we should see, not stones bleached and weathered, but buildings resplendent with colour and gold.

Columns, capitals, architraves, all were a blaze of colour, decorated with graceful patterns and painted to match the blue sea and the golden sunlight. And now for us Sunium is a white ghost like the light of the moon, the Parthenon a rose in decay.

We may not now feel the want of what is lost. The hills once covered with forest trees are bare, the countryside is untilled and empty, and these ruins are invested with a sentimental charm in the thought of what has been lost. The traveller is in the mood of Sulpicius as he consoles Cicero for his daughter's death. "Returning from Asia, as my voyage took me from Aegina towards Megara, I began to survey the regions round about: behind me was Aegina, before me Megara, to the right Peiraeus, to the left Corinth, all cities at one time prosperous and flourishing, but now they lay p.r.o.ne and ruined before my eyes. And I began thus to ponder within myself: 'Ah! shall we frail creatures resent the death of one of ourselves, seeing that our life must needs be full short, when in one place so many dead cities lie before us?'" Indeed the Greek cities are most aptly compared to humanity. There never was anything grandiose about them, nothing monstrous like the empire of China, no desire to thrust Greek manners or religions upon the rest of the world, no attempt to monopolize trade even by honest methods. They wished to live and let live, loved and hated fiercely, but like men; and if they must die they did not whine about it--indeed, for their country's sake they held it glorious to die. And now they are gone, and their place knows them no more, no one can feel that touch of triumph that Sh.e.l.ley felt over his Ozymandias. They have left behind them everywhere a poignant regret, such as one feels for a very dear friend gone for ever. Most strong is this feeling when our steps wander over some desolate spot, once a populous city, such as Paestum or Myndos. I mention Myndos because there the contrast is most vividly brought out by the second idyll of Theocritus. There is the old harbour, there is the ring of the city walls a mile across, and the whole s.p.a.ce between is brushwood and stones. Yet from this city sailed to Cos opposite the hot-blooded youth whom Simaitha loved, whose story is told in the poet's words of pa.s.sion.

And these cities, once so full of life and happiness, are a desert now.

Even the new Greece, which rose from the ashes of the old not a hundred years ago, which has sprung into new life and honour within the last few months, cannot console us for the Greece that is gone. The quick intelligence is still here, the courage, the idealism; but Greece can hardly escape the corruption of the modern world, with its grasping after wealth; and the sincerity of the ancient spirit exists chiefly amongst peasants and fishermen. A false and pedantic way of thought is spreading from the schools and the newspapers, which must spoil the people unless the efforts of a few wise and longsighted men shall prevail.

The pictures in this volume follow roughly the history of the Doric style. In Olympia lies the floor of the Heraeum, most ancient of all existing Greek temples, built before 1000 B.C. Unhappily this view tells us nothing of what it looked like: earthquake and flood, and the hand of man, have done all they could to destroy. The temples in Sicily and Magna Graecia, with Corinth, belong to the earliest stage known to us.

Corinth was built about 650; the temples of Athena at Syracuse, now the cathedral, and of Zeus at Selinus (which are not represented here) are as old or older. Segesta comes next, in the early sixth century; and in the same century temples at Girgenti (Agrigentum), Aegina, and Paestum.

The temple of Zeus at Olympia was built between 469 and 457, the Parthenon 454-438, Sunium and Eleusis about the same time, and two buildings at Paestum. The theatres belong to a later date, and the Corinthian temple of Zeus Olympian at Athens, begun by Peisistratus, was not finished until the time of Hadrian.

Olympia is the epitome of the Greek race, as the forum is of the Roman dominion: the Roman ideal being law, order, and government; the Greek, all the powers of man at their best, used and enjoyed in the holy precinct of their great G.o.d. The difference is shown at once, in that the Olympian a.s.sembly was enforced by no lawgiver, but the voluntary gathering of men of one blood, who for a set time laid aside all their quarrels, and remembered that they were marked off by a great gulf from all other men. They came for no material gain: their prize was not dominion and power, nor wealth and trade, but the crown of wild olive and glory incorruptible. Elis, a state small and insignificant politically, had the honour of presiding over these games; no man might compete save those of pure h.e.l.lenic blood, and no woman might approach them. And here, every four years, from a time before the beginning of history, the men of Greece met, kings and potentates competing with private men, high and low, rich and poor, all acknowledging the one tie greater than all others. The celebrations lasted all through the glorious days of Greece, and until the glory of Greece had long departed, and they were abolished for ever in 394 A.D. by Theodosius.

Art and literature formed no part of the contests, which were nearly all athletic; but painters and other artists exhibited their works there, and it was common for orators and philosophers to recite: Herodotus is said to have read his history at the festival.

The picture is taken from the small hill of Kronos: we look over the site of Hera's temple to the great temple of Zeus. To the left, out of sight, is the entrance to the racecourse. Just beneath us, under the hill, is a row of small shrines called Treasuries, which mighty states and monarchs had built to contain their own chief offerings. In the distance is the river Alpheius. We cannot imagine how this plain looked when it was the encampment of thousands, covered with booths, and full of goodly men and horses; the crowds, the processions, the feastings, litany and sacrifice; but every man must feel the same thrill as when he stands in Westminster Hall, or St. Sophia at Constantinople: for here have pa.s.sed all the great men of the Greek race.

If the games show the physical side of the Greeks, the theatre above all shows the intellectual. While they invented, and perfected, nearly all kinds of literary art, it is the theatre that touched their life most closely, and most fully gave scope for their genius. This also grew out of religion, and was always a part of their religion. But the Greek G.o.ds were no puritans. They exacted awe and worship, and they punished the impious; but they were genial good fellows, who might be thought, without blasphemy, to share in the happiness of their people--indeed, took it in good part when they were the subject of rollicking jests. In the theatre, Aeschylus found room for his profound religious feeling, Euripides for his scepticism, Sophocles for a mirror of the mind of man, Aristophanes for his political and social satire and his merry fun.

Every town and even hamlet must have its theatre. A suitable place could be found almost anywhere in the hill country--that is, in almost all parts of Greece proper--before any buildings needed to be put up. Then the hillsides were cut into seats, as at Argos and Segesta, or seats ranged around in a semicircle, and carried on when it was necessary by means of retaining walls. Below them was a round s.p.a.ce for dancing, and beyond this the stage. There is a controversy whether the Greeks ever used a raised stage before the Roman conquest; probably they did, but at any rate all existing theatres had them. Vitruvius (who wrote about 20 A.D.) says that the Greek stage was higher and narrower than the Roman; and the stage at Taormina has been built, or rebuilt, in the Roman way.

It is proper to say this, but the onlooker will think little now of the stage, or indeed of the actors and the play, in view of one of those scenes which can never be forgotten. The sight of Etna over the stage, with his rolling steam, absorbs the whole force of imagination. Etna is tremendous. Beneath Etna Hephaistos had one of his forges, as at Lipara, Imbros, and Lemnos; and that smoke you see shows that his workmen are forging the thunder-bolts of Zeus. The very name of Volcano is Hephaistos himself. Or is it the giant Typhoeus, defeated by Zeus in the battle of G.o.ds and giants, and buried beneath the mountain, who by his struggles causes the earth thus to heave, and these fiery streams to pour forth? What wonder that the pious made offerings of incense at the top! Was it really true that Empedocles, that great philospher and healer, whose intellectual pride seems almost to claim divine honours, cast himself into the crater, that he might seem to have been swept away by the G.o.ds? Probably it was not true: but the story shows how the mountain worked on men's imaginations.

If the theatre of Segesta has no Etna behind it, the surroundings to the eye are in other ways grand. It is seated upon the acropolis hill, whence a view can be taken at once of that corner of Sicily which was held by the mysterious Elymians, with their citadel and sanctuary of Eryx. Segesta was founded by a people who wanted protection, and feared the sea. But, like the rest of Sicily, it came under Greek influence; and its buildings, the two temples and the theatre, are Greek. This small town has played a part in history: it was the bone of contention which led Athens to interfere with Syracuse, and so on to her ruin. The columns of the temple are unfinished, the fluting has never been done.

There is something that moves the sympathy in these unfinished places.

No doubt the city was overwhelmed in some catastrophe, which perhaps left it quite desolate in the old cruel way. So the blocks of the Pinacotheca on the Athenian acropolis still keep the k.n.o.bs which were used in mounting them; they were never cut off, for Athens fell. So, most striking of all, there lies in the quarry near Baalbek an enormous block of stone, seventy-seven feet long by fifteen and fourteen, squared and ready, one end tilted for moving; but it was never moved: there it has lain perhaps for three thousand years, and there it will lie till the world ends.

Girgenti, Agrigentum, Akragas, called by Pindar ?a???sta ??te?? p?????, fairest of mortal cities; lofty Akragas, in Virgil's words, spreading her walls so wide, mother of high-spirited horses--

"Arduus inde Acragas ostentat maxima longe Moenia, magnanimum quondam generator equorum"--

although late founded in Greek history (B.C. 582), is set on a hilltop like some primaeval acropolis. Two rocky hills, with a s.p.a.ce of level land between, were enclosed within a wall six miles round; below this the land slopes gently to the sea; the whole lies between two rivers.

The existing remains, and the modern town, lie on one of the two hills.

Akragas calls up only one name from the memory. Phalaris the Tyrant and his brazen bull. But Empedocles was born here. The great temple of Zeus Polieus, which Phalaris was said to have built, has perished, and those that remain cannot be certainly identified. One is called after Concord, but the Latin name cannot have properly belonged to it. The pictures here show some of the wonderful effects, which vary from hour to hour in this land of colour and sunlight. But the glory of Girgenti is the grouping of its remains: wall, temples, and rocks. If we could see the city as it was, it may well have been ?a???sta ??te?? p?????. But in 406, the Carthaginians descended upon it, and starved out the people.

All who could go migrated to Gela; the rest were ma.s.sacred, and the city sacked. From this blow it never recovered, although it was afterwards inhabited.

Paestum, the Greek Poseidonia, is one of those cities that have no history; at least, this city played no great part in ancient history and gave the world no great men. But Paestum was not happy. It had its day, from the foundation in the seventh century for some two hundred years; but it fell early into the hands of the barbaric Lucanians. After this it existed, but it never became great. We know Paestum for its roses, _biferi rosaria Paesti_, which flower twice a year in May and November; and until lately, for its loneliness and desolation. Not a living soul was there in the circuit of the city walls, nothing but a bare plain with hundreds of flowering gra.s.ses, and the great temples in their grandeur. All its charm is gone now: a factory stains the sky with its smoke, and the modern world, whose G.o.d is its belly, has put its foul mark upon the quietude of Paestum. Those who saw Paestum when it was one of the most impressive sights in the world, will be careful not to go thither again.

Corinth, on the other hand, takes us back to the heart of the ancient world. From time immemorial Corinth was a great place. It lay on the high-road of the seas, in the time when voyagers hugged the coasts.

Traders from Asia and Phnicia would not ply to Italy and Spain along the open sea when they could go from island to island and along the sheltered waters of the two gulfs: all these must ship their goods across the Isthmus, and the Isthmus was dominated by the impregnable rock of Corinth. Thus the masters of Corinth could levy tolls on all commerce: they grew rich, as in older days Troy did, and later Constantinople, because they lay across a trade route. Here was built the first Greek navy of war-ships: here were the rich and powerful tyrants; here was worshipped Poseidon, with his famous Isthmian games, and Phoenician Aphrodite. A few years ago, the precinct of Poseidon was dug out, and there appeared a ma.s.s of votive tablets, on which we may see the daily life of Corinth in the seventh century before Christ.

Pre-eminent amongst all the scenes are those of the potter's trade: the pottery is seen being made on the wheel, baked in the furnace, and loaded into the ships for export to Italy and elsewhere. Corinth reminds us of some of the best stories of Herodotus: Cypselus and his chest, Arion and the dolphins, and that attractive scatterbrain Hippocleides, who at Sicyon hard by danced away his marriage, and did not care one jot. No great man of letters ever came out of Corinth, no poet and no orator; but Corinthian bronze was famous, and the city was full of works of art. When Mummius sacked Corinth and left it desolate, he made his famous bargain with the contractors who removed the spoil: if they damaged any of the works of art, they were to replace them with others as good. Corinth was afterwards rebuilt; all will remember St. Paul's connection with the city, and the riot when Gallic was governor of Achaia.

The Acrocorinthus is one of the most magnificent sights in the world: it has the common quality of the Greek mountains, grandeur without excessive size; but standing as it does isolated from other hills, and visible everywhere, from Athens to Parna.s.sus, its effect on the imagination is never to be forgotten. Its height is not far short of 2000 feet, and it is crowned with a fortress as it has been all through history. From the summit we see the whole centre of Greece; even the Parthenon itself, the centre of Greek artistic achievement. Here too is the sacred spring Peirene, struck out by the hoof of Pegasus.

The view here given towards the gulf shows Parna.s.sus in the distance, like a ghost.

Athens is the heart of Greece, and Greece is the soul of mankind. No man who loves what is beautiful, or who admires what is n.o.ble, can fail to feel at home in Athens. Here in this little plain, girt with purple mountains, lived those men who discovered human reason, who showed how to express man's greatest ideas, who pitted courage and intellect against brute force, who for a few short years lived the fullest life possible for mankind: we have lived on their thoughts ever since.

The beauties of the place have been often sung: they are summed up in one immortal phrase, "city of the violet crown." The continued changes of colour, especially towards evening, in that clear air, with sea and cloud and mountain, make the scene a continual delight. In the midst of this fertile plain rises the sharp peak of Lycabettus, and beside it the b.u.t.tressed Acropolis, from which the temples grow like flowers. And from every side this is a landmark: whether from Aegina opposite, or from some frontier fortress like Phyle, or even from Acrocorinth, this rock, not high in itself, stands out to the view, and makes us remember Athens. Here, more easily than anywhere, can we see how the Greek architect saw each building as part of a whole. I have already spoken of the refinements of the Parthenon, and how it is set with regard to the sunlight: but the Parthenon is only one of a group of temples. There yet remain a great part of the Erechtheum, the oldest shrine on the Acropolis, and site of the King's house before history began: and a little shrine of Victory, built on a bastion of the rock. But there were others; and the whole precinct was entered by the Propylaea, which also remains in part, to which led a flight of steps. The idea of this gateway was a stroke of genius. The visitor entering by it saw the whole ma.s.s of buildings as it were framed by the marble pillars and architrave; and if he turned, he looked out through the same frame upon the plain and the sea, the strait of Salamis, with the island beyond it.

The rock falls steep under the gate, so there is nothing to bar this view, which must have reminded the Athenian of the great past every time he looked forth from it. To the right, as one looks out of this gateway, lies the spur of the Areopagus, seat of that most ancient court and council, upon which place St. Paul told the Athenians of the Unknown G.o.d. To the left, but not visible, is the precinct of Dionysus, with the theatre. Straight ahead, the ancient Athenian would see the long walls joining his city to Peiraeus and the sea, where in fortified harbours lay his mighty fleets. Over the market-place westward he could see the Dipylon Gate with its place of tombs, and the sacred way leading to Eleusis and the Mysteries. Eastward lies Hymettus with its honey-bees; northwards Lycabettus, where the Persian host was first sighted pouring over the hillside, and beyond it Pentelicon, that looks down on Marathon plain; north-westwards are the hills of Acharnae, where the fires of the invading Spartans were first seen in that war which ended the greatness of Athens. And all round about are caves and clefts and shrines that belonged to the immemorial religion of the place, each linked with memories, many with immortal works of literature. We can no longer know the magnificence of the past; but we can name many of the things that were seen there, from the description of Pausanias which has come down to us.

Up this slope, once in every four years, after the games, came the great procession of the Panathensae, which is portrayed for us on the frieze of the Parthenon itself. Was there ever such a picture of beauty and strength and life? There went the victors, crowned and rejoicing; the flower of the Athenian cavalry, such men and such horses as the world can show no finer (see them on the Parthenon frieze!), all the chief soldiers and statesmen, elders bearing branches of olive, the fairest of Athenian women with baskets upon their heads, and the sacred robe to be offered to the most ancient and reverend image of Pallas, borne as the sail of the Panathenaic ship. The whole scene is portrayed upon the sculptured frieze of the Parthenon. One of the plates in this book represents the modern idea of a religious festival, and the hundreds of dotted figures give a far-away notion what this great day must have looked like. But how faint! These dark-clad forms have not a hint of the gorgeous colour of the ancient world. On the Acropolis, too, was held the feast of Brauronian Artemis, when the little Athenian maidens dressed up in bearskins for some mysterious ceremony. Here was the mark of Poseidon's trident, under the Erechtheum; here was Athena's sacred olive-tree, and her snakes. And the whole place crowded with statues and offerings, and inscriptions carved on stone, treaties of peace, and records of honour--the history of Athens open for all to read.

The story of the Athenian Acropolis is unique amongst its fellows, while at the same time it sums up the history of the Greek states. It is unique, because here alone, it seems, a state existed from the beginning to the end without violent interference. Many Greek sites were occupied in the Pelasgian age, when Crete was mistress of the Aegean, and later when its place was taken by Mycenae and the cities of the mainland: but the country was swept later by the Achaeans, and after them by the Dorians, who naturally chose the more fertile and wealthy places to stay in. So the Acropolis was the site of a royal palace and a Pelasgian settlement; but the ancient population was here never displaced, it was only added to and changed gradually. Attica did not tempt the invader as other plains did; nor did her rulers grow too rich and destroy each other for greed; but her land was the refuge of strangers. Her ancient civilisation and art remained untouched by the ravages of war, and her people always prided themselves on being a?t?????e?--born of the very soil.

Perhaps this unbroken tradition explains the prominence of Athens in the arts. Here too, the worship of Athena joined the older worship of Poseidon, without rooting it up, and both flourished side by side. Then came the great dynasty of the tyrants, Peisistratus and his family, who made the city magnificent with buildings and engineering works, and attracted to their court the finest intellects of their day. The huge underground aqueduct which has lately been dug out belongs to this time, the sixth century before Christ. Peisistratus is followed by Solon and the reign of law: and when the barbarian came, it was Athens who barred his path and drove him back at Marathon and at Salamis. Xerxes burnt the city, but he did not destroy Athens, for the people had left it for the time; and when they returned, they built up their fortifications with the ruins of their temples and monuments, as they may still be seen piled slab on drum by the visitor of to-day. Xerxes burnt all he found, but he only cleared the ground for a finer art, which at once filled the empty s.p.a.ces with buildings and monuments of a n.o.bler kind, the remains of which we now see. Great names now stand out in plenty, Miltiades, Themistocles and Aristeides, Pericles and Pheidias and Ictinus; Plato over yonder in the olive groves of Academeia, Aeschylus and Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes in the theatre or the winepress; Socrates walking the streets, or conversing in agora or gymnasium; Demosthenes moving men's minds in the Pnyx. When Athens fell, her conqueror spared her with a generosity not usual in those days; so it came about that her buildings remained for many hundreds of years, and the Parthenon even lasted through the devastating ruin of the Turks, until a Venetian sh.e.l.l dropped upon it and blew it up (1687). There is no use in trying to record what the Acropolis of Athens calls to mind: it is the best of what educated men know.

Fair and goodly in life, the Athenians were also fair in death. Without the gate, on the sacred road to Eleusis, lies the place of tombs. Not bare slabs are these, nor broken columns; here are no wreaths of artificial flowers, no ugliness and gloom, for the tombs are monuments of grace. Many, indeed, are quite simple, in shape of vases or the like; but others show delicate reliefs, with the dead in their habit as they lived--the woman at her toilet, the warrior on his horse, or one seated in a chair and clasping hands with his friends as they say, Fare you well! The inscriptions are as simple as they can be: no sentiment and no preaching, but a manly acceptance of fate, an honest regret for life, or the bare name. The reader who wishes to learn how the Greek looked on death, would do well to read the epitaphs in the Greek anthology. Here in the place of tombs we cannot fail to remember that scene which Thucydides describes: how in each year of the war the bodies of those slain were buried with public honour, and Pericles or some notable man p.r.o.nounced their eulogy; and in that speech of Pericles we may read in brief the ideal of the Athenian.

From this place led forth the Sacred Way, over the hills to Eleusis, where perhaps more than anywhere else in the Greek world those higher emotions were aroused which we a.s.sociate with religion. In the ritual these were lacking; and philosophy was sceptical rather than religious, except with a rare soul now and then, a Socrates or a Plato, with whom feeling and intellect seem to be fused into one force. But the Eleusinian mysteries gave what both philosophy and ritual lacked. They were mysteries in so far that no one might reveal them unlawfully; but not in the sense of a riddle or a concealment, for all Greeks might qualify for admission. The ancient mysteries recall more the Freemasons than anything else we know. Their origin is lost in darkness, and they lasted long after all else in Greece was dead, when Alaric the Goth in 396 did what Goths do in all ages--destroyed, but built not up. There were rites of purification, and two stages of initiation; first, usually as a child, and later into the higher grades as a man or woman. There were two Mysteries: the Lesser, celebrated by the Ilissos bank and close under the Acropolis, being usually a preliminary to the Greater at Eleusis. What the mysteries were, we know not: the secret has been kept, although Clement of Alexandria was initiated before he became a Christian, and he tells us whatever he thinks will discredit them.

Undoubtedly, they included dramatic representations, which struck awe and admiration into the observers; but the inner meaning of these was known only to the Hierophant, who revealed it to those whom he thought fit to receive it. And now the gorgeous ceremony is over, priests and worshippers have for ever gone, and nothing remains but the pavement of the temple, with a tiny church of the Virgin perched on a bluff above it.

Aegina, like all else in Greece, is small, only about forty square miles; yet Aegina has left her mark on history. Here, according to the tradition, Pheidon, tyrant of Argos, first struck coins in Greece.

Whether it was so or not, Aegina was a centre of trade very early, and founded a famous city, Naucratis, in North Africa, Cydonia in Crete, and another in Umbria: the Aeginetan tortoise, the Athenian owl, and the Corinthian horse were the three types of coins best known to the Greek world, pa.s.sing everywhere as good. Aegina was also famous for the arts, especially sculpture. Before the Persian wars Aegina came into conflict with Athens: Pericles called it the eyesore of the Peiraeus, before it was conquered and colonised by Athenian settlers. The temple which still remains, was not in the chief town, but in a lonely spot amidst the wild woods. It was sacred to Aphaia, not to Zeus--so Furtw.a.n.gler infers from inscriptions found there--but we know nothing of its building. The pediments, which appear to represent scenes from the Trojan wars, are remarkable in the history of sculpture; they are now at Munich. Close by the beach at which we land is a small rocky islet, upon which lives a lonely hermit in a hut made with his own hands. If at Eleusis we think of exalted religious emotion, Delphi puts every man in awe. Well was the spot chosen for the most famous oracle of antiquity: it needs no help of man to show the powrer of G.o.d. But here, as everywhere in Greece, the awe is not too great for humanity to bear: it is not the crushing sense of impotence in the face of natural forces that one feels in the Alps or the Himalayas, it is the awe that may be felt for a being both mighty and kindly. Human beings may live here and be happy; they may mount above the cleft and the shining rocks, and still live and be happy--indeed, those uplands were the scene of many a merry revel when the Greeks worshipped their G.o.ds. But the great black rocks above Delphi, themselves only the foot of the approach to Parna.s.sus, are awful enough to make them a fit habitation for a G.o.d. I shall never forget my first visit to Delphi. It was winter: I rode from Lebadeia to Arachova over the rocky and precipitous paths, and past the Cloven Way where dipus slew Laius, through a blinding storm of rain and snow. Next morning the sky was clear as in springtime, and a bright sun shining, and a short ride brought us to the top of the valley, whence could be seen a plain covered with olive trees which seemed from that height like a flood rolling up the valley from the plain. But Delphi's rock was grim and gloomy as ever over this bright scene. In Delphi was an oracle from time immemorial; the legends told of it show that the Greeks found one already on the spot. According to the Homeric Hymn, which we may rationalise if we like, Apollo found the place possessed by a huge serpent, which he slew, and as the body rotted (p??e??) the place got the name of Pytho. Here was the Omphalos, or navel-stone, marking the centre of the earth; and the sacred spring Castalian rose between the cleft rocks. The Pythia, or priestess, would seat herself on a tripod over a chasm within the temple, and her ravings contained the G.o.d's answer; but it must be interpreted by the prophet, who stood by her side. Since the oracle was consulted by great and small, the priests were able to exercise a strong influence on politics; and their influence was generally for good, until the mind, of Greece outgrew oracles. Recorded answers do not explain the repute of the oracle, or its influence; and the tablets that have actually been found here and at Dodona are mostly questions on personal or trivial subjects. Perhaps that was the most far-reaching of its behests when Sparta was commanded to free Athens from her tyrants; and its most noteworthy revelation, that Socrates was the wisest of men. One of Herodotus's best stories tells how Crsus consulted the oracle, and what came of it. Twice Delphi was miraculously saved from pillage: once when the army of Xerxes was driven back by falling rocks, and once when a storm beat off the Gauls. Philip made it a pretext for interfering in the affairs of Greece; but then he would have found a pretext somewhere in any case.

The Pythian Games were celebrated here every two years. Sulla plundered the treasures, and so did Nero; Constantine carried off what he could find to Constantinople, where one still stands: the base of the golden tripod dedicated after the defeat of the Persians, three bronze snakes intertwining, and engraved with the names of Greek tribes who took part.

The oracle lost its high standing about the time of the Peloponnesian War, but it continued to be consulted, until it was silenced by Theodosius.