Rambles and Studies in Greece Part 15

Such an inference would be as absurd as to accept the hypothesis of Dr.

Schliemann. The tombs are undoubtedly very ancient, certainly far more ancient than the supposed date of Homer, or even of Agamemnon. The treasures which have been carried to Athens, and which I saw and handled at the National Bank, are not only really valuable ma.s.ses of gold, but have a good deal of beauty of workmanship, both in design and decoration.

Though the masks are very ugly and barbarous, and though there is in general no power shown of moulding any animal figure, there are very beautiful cups and jugs, there are most elegant geometrical ornaments-zigzags, spirals, and the like-and there are even imitations of animals of much artistic merit. The celebrated silver bull's head, with golden horns, is a piece of work which would not disgrace a goldsmith of our day; and this may be said of many of the ornaments. Any one who knows the Irish gold ornaments in the Academy Museum in Dublin perceives a wonderful family likeness in the old Irish spirals and decorations, yet not more than might occur among two separate nations working with the same materials under similar conditions. But I feel convinced that the best things in the tombs at Mycenae were not made by native artists, but imported, probably from Syria and Egypt. This seems proved even by the various materials which have been employed-ivory, alabaster, amber; in one case even an ostrich egg. So we shall, perhaps, in the end come back upon the despised legends of Cadmus and Danaus, and find that they told us truly of an old cultured race coming from the South and the East to humanize the barbarous progenitors of the Greeks.

I can now add important corroborations of these general conclusions from the researches made since the appearance of my earlier editions. I then said that the discoveries were too fresh and dazzling to admit of safe theories concerning their origin. By way of ill.u.s.tration I need only allude to those _savants_ (they will hereafter be obliged to me for omitting their names) who imagined that all the Mycenaean tombs were not archaic at all, but the work of northern barbarians who occupied Greece during the disasters of the later Roman Empire! Serious researches, however, have at last brought us considerable light. In the first place Helbig, in an important work comparing the treasures of Mycenae with the allusions to art, arms, and manufactures in the Homeric poems, came to the negative conclusion that these two civilizations were distinct-that the Homeric poets cannot have had before them the palace of Mycenae which owned the Schliemann treasures. As there is no room in Greek history for such a civilization posterior to the Homeric poems, it follows that the latter must describe a civilization considerably later than that we have found at Mycenae. Placing the Homeric poems in the eighth century B. C. we shall be led to about 1000 B. C. as the latest possible date for the splendors of Mycenae. But this negative conclusion has been well-nigh demonstrated by the positive results of the various recent researches in Egypt. Not only has the Egypt Exploration Society examined carefully the sites of Naucratis and Daphne, thus disclosing to us what Greek art and manufacture could produce in the sixth and seventh centuries B. C. (665565 B. C.), but Mr. Flinders Petrie has enriched our knowledge by his wonderful discoveries of Egyptian art on several sites, and of many epochs, fairly determinable by the reigning dynasties. He has recently (1890) examined the Mycenaean and other pre-historic treasures collected at Athens, by the light of his rich Egyptian experience, and has given a summary of the results in two short articles in the _Journal of h.e.l.lenic Studies_.

He finds that the materials and their treatment, such as blue gla.s.s, even in its decomposition, alabaster, rock-crystal, hollowed and painted within, dome-head rivets attaching handles of gold cups, ostrich eggs with handles attached, ties made for ornament in porcelain, are all to be found in Egyptian tombs varying from 1400 to 1100 in date. His a.n.a.lysis leads him to give the dates for the tombs I.-IV. at Mycenae as 12001100 B. C.

That an earlier date is improbable is shown by the negative evidence that none of the purely geometrical false-necked vases occur, such as are the general product of 14001200 in Egyptian deposits. But as several isolated articles are of older types, as in particular the lions over the gate are quite similar to a gilt wooden lion he found of about 1450 B. C. in date, the Mycenaean civilization probably extended over a considerable period. He even finds proof of decadence in grave IV. as compared with the rest, and so comes to the conclusion, which I am disposed to question, that the tombs within the circle at Mycenae (shaft-tombs) are later and worse interments made by the same people who had already built the more majestic and costly bee-hive tombs. Instead therefore of upholding a Phrygian origin, Mr. Petrie a.s.serts an Egyptian origin for both Mycenaean and parallel Phrygian designs. The spiral pattern in its various forms, the rosettes, the keyfret, the palmetto, are all used in very early Egyptian decoration. The inlaid daggers of Mycenae have long been recognized as inspired by Egypt; but we must note that it is native work and not merely an imported article. The att.i.tude of the figures and of the lions, and the form of the cat, are such as no Egyptian would have executed. To make such things in Greece implies a far higher culture than merely to import them.

The same remark applies to the glazed pottery; the style of some is not Egyptian, so that here the Mycenaeans were capable of elaborate technical work, and imitated, rather than imported from Egypt.... The familiarity with Egypt is further proved by the lotus pattern on the dagger-blade, by the cat on the dagger, and the cats on the gold foil ornaments, since the cat was then unknown in Greece. That the general range of the civilization was that of Africa, is indicated by the frequent use of the palm (not then known in Greece) as a decoration, and by the very scanty clothing of the male figures, indicating that dress was not a necessity of climate. On the other hand this culture reached out to the north of Europe. The silver-headed reindeer or elk, found in grave IV., can only be the result of northern intercourse. The amber so commonly used comes from the Baltic.

And we see in Celtic ornament the obvious reproduction of the decorations of Mycenae, as Mr. Arthur Evans has shown. Not only is the spiral decoration indistinguishable,(182) but also the taste for elaborately embossed diadems and breastplates of gold is peculiar to the Mycenaean and Celtic cultures. The great period of Mycenae seems therefore to date 13001100 B. C., with occasional traditional links with Egypt as far back as 1500 or 1600 B. C.

Such is an abstract of Mr. Petrie's estimate.(183)

I will only here point out, in addition, the remarkable unity of style between the ornaments found at a depth of twenty-five feet in the tombs, the sculptured tombstones twelve or fourteen feet over them, and the lions on the gate of the citadel. It is, indeed, only a general uniformity, but it corroborates Mr. Petrie's inference that there was more than mere importing; there was home manufacture. But still among the small gold ornaments in the tombs were found several pairs of animals placed opposite each other in this strictly _heraldic_ fashion, and even on the engraved gems this symmetry is curiously frequent. It seems, then, that the art of Mycenae had not changed when its early history came to a close, and its inhabitants were forced to abandon the fortress and submit to the now Doric Argos.

We are, indeed, told expressly by Pausanias and Diodorus that this event did not take place till after the Persian wars, when old h.e.l.lenic art was already well defined, and was beginning to make rapid progress. But this express statement, which I saw reason to question since my former remarks on the subject in this book, I am now determined to reject, in the face of the inconsistencies of these historians, the silence of all the contemporaries of the alleged conquest, and the exclusively archaic remains which Dr. Schliemann has unearthed. Mycenae, along with Tiryns, Midea, and the other towns of the plain, was incorporated into Argos at a far earlier date, and not posterior to the brilliant rule of Pheidon. So it comes that historical Greece is silent about the ancient capital of the Pelopids, and the poets transfer all its glories to Argos. Once, indeed, the name did appear on the national records. The offerings to the G.o.ds at Olympia, and at Delphi, after the victory over the Persians, recorded that a few patriots-460 in all-from Mycenae and from Tiryns had joined the Greeks at Plataea, while the remainder of the Argives preserved a base and cowardly neutrality. The Mycenaeans were very few in number; sixty are mentioned in connection with Thermopylae by Herodotus. They were probably exiles through Greece, who had preserved their traditions and their descent, and gloried in exposing and insulting Argive Medism. The Tirynthian 400 may even have been the remnant of the slave population, which Herodotus tells us seized the citadel of Tiryns, when driven out from Argos twenty years before, and who lived there for some years. In the crisis of Plataea the Greeks were not dainty or critical, and they may have readily conceded the t.i.tle of Tirynthian to these doubtful citizens, out of hatred and disgust at the neutrality of Argos. However these things may be, the mention of Mycenaeans and Tirynthians on this solitary occasion afforded an obvious warrant to Diodorus for his date of the destruction of Mycenae. But I am convinced that his authority, and that of Pausanias, who follows him, must be deliberately rejected.

On the other hand, the origin of Mycenae, and its greatness as a royal residence, must be thrown back into a far deeper antiquity than any one had yet imagined. If Agamemnon and his house represent h.e.l.lenic princes, of the type of Homer's knowledge and acquaintance, they must have arisen after some older, and apparently different dynasties had ruled and had buried their dead at Mycenae.(184) But it is also possible that the Homeric bards, describing professedly the acts of a past age, imposed their new manners, and their own culture, upon the Pelopids, whom they only knew by vague tradition, and that thus their drawing is false; while the chiefs they glorify were the ancient pre-h.e.l.lenic rulers of the country. This latter supposition is so shocking a heresy against "Homer" that I will not venture to expand it, and will leave the reader to add any conjectures he chooses to those which I have already hazarded in too great number.

When the splendid findings of Dr. Schliemann are taken out of their bandboxes in the Bank of Athens, and arranged in the National Museum;(185) when the diligence of Greek archaeologists investigates thoroughly the remainder of the site at Mycenae, which is not nearly exhausted; when new accidents (such as the discoveries at Sparta and Vaphio) and new researches enlarge these treasures perhaps a thousand-fold, there will be formed at Athens a museum of pre-historic art which will not have its equal in the world (except at Cairo), and which will introduce us to an epoch of culture which we hardly yet suspected, when writing and coinage were unknown, when the Greeks had not reached unto their name, or possibly their language, but when, nevertheless, considerable commerce existed, when wonderful skill had already been attained in arts and manufactures, and when men had even acc.u.mulated considerable wealth and splendor in well-established centres of power.

The further investigation of the remains of Mycenae, with the additional evidence derived from the ruins of Tiryns, presently to be described, have led Dr. Adler to explain Mycenae as the record of a double foundation, first by a race who built rubble masonry, and buried their dead in narrow rock-tombs or graves, piling on the bodies their arms and ornaments; secondly, after some considerable interval, by a race who built splendid ashlar masonry, with well-cut blocks, and who constructed great beehive tombs, where the dead could lie with ample room in royal state. The second race enlarged, rebuilt, and refaced the old fortifications, added the present lion gate, and built the so-called treasure-houses. For convenience' sake he calls them, according to the old legends, Perseids and Pelopids respectively. Hence the tombs which Dr. Schliemann found were really far older than any one had at first supposed, and if the record of Homer points distinctly to the Pelopids, then the gold and jewels of a far earlier people were hidden deep underground in the foundation of Agamemnon's fortress, merely marked by a sacred circle of stones and some archaic gravestones.

To which of these stages of building do the ruins of Tiryns belong?

Apparently to the earlier, though here, again, the size of the stones used is far greater than those in the first Mycenae, and it is now certain that the beginnings of artificial shaping are discernible in them. Since the second edition of this book the walls have been uncovered and examined by Dr. Schliemann, with the valuable advice and a.s.sistance of Dr. Dorpfeld, so that I may conclude this chapter with a brief summary of the results they have attained.

The upper part of the rock of Tiryns, which consisted of two plateaus or levels, was known to contain remains of building by the shafts which Dr.

Schliemann had already sunk there in former years. But now a very different method of excavating was adopted-that of uncovering the surface in layers, so that successive strata of debris might be clearly distinguished. This exceedingly slow and laborious process, which I saw going on for days at Tiryns with very little result, brought out in the end the whole plan of a palace, with its gates, floors, parting walls, and pillar bases, so that in the admirable drawing to be seen in the book called _Tiryns_, Dr. Dorpfeld has given us the first clear view of an old Greek, or perhaps even pre-h.e.l.lenic, palace. The partial agreement with the plan of the palaces of Troy, and of Mycenae, since discovered, and the adoption in h.e.l.lenic temples of the plan of entrance, here several times repeated-two pillars between antae-show that the palace at Tiryns was not exceptional, but typical.

All the gates leading up into this palace are still distinctly marked by the threshold or door-sill, a great stone, lying in its place, with grooves inserted for the pivots of the doors, which were of wood, but had their pivots shod with bronze, as was proved by the actual remains. These doors divided a double porch, entered either way between two pillars of wood, standing upon stone bases still in their place, and flanked by antae, which were below of stone and above of wood dowelled into the stone piers.

All the upper structure of the gates, and, indeed, of all the palace, seems to have been of wood. There are clear signs of a great conflagration, in which the palace perished. This implies the existence of ample fuel, and while the ashes, mud-bricks, etc., remain, no trace of architrave, or pillar, or roof has been found. There are gates of similar design leading into the courts and princ.i.p.al chamber of the palace, the floors of which are covered with a careful lime concrete marked with line patterns, and so sloped as to afford easy drainage into a vent leading to pipes of terra cotta, which carried off water. The same careful arrangements are observed in the bath-room, with a floor of one great stone, twelve feet by nine, which is likewise pierced to carry off water.

The remains of a terra cotta tub were found there, and the walls of the room were panelled with wood, set into the raised edge of the floor-stone by dowels sunk in the stone. No recent discovery is more interesting than this.

Of the walls little remains but the foundations, and here and there a couple of feet of mud-bricks, with signs of beams let into them, which added to the conflagration. But enough remains to show that the walls of the better rooms were richly covered with ornament. There is a fresco of a bull still preserved, and reproduced in Dr. Schliemann's book; and there was also found a very remarkable frieze ornament in rosettes and brooch patterns, made of blue gla.s.s paste (supposed to be Homer's _??a???_) and alabaster. This valuable relic shows remarkable a.n.a.logies in design to other prehistoric ornaments found in Greece.

The size of the main hall, or men's apartment, is very large, the floor covering about 120 square yards, and the parallel room in the palace at Troy was consequently taken to be the cella of a temple. But there seems no doubt that the great room at Tiryns, with a hearth in the middle and four pillar bases near it, supporting, perhaps, a higher roof, with a clerestory, was the main reception room of the palace; a smaller room of similar construction, not connected with the former, save by a circuitous route through pa.s.sages, seems to have been the ladies' drawing-room.

If I were to attempt any full description of this wonderful place I should be obliged to copy out a great part of the fifth chapter in Dr.

Schliemann's book, in which Dr. Dorpfeld has set down very modestly, but very completely, the results of his own acuteness and research. Many things which are now plain enough were perfect riddles till he found the true solution, and the acuteness with which he has utilized the smallest hints, as well as the caution of his conclusions, make this work of his a very model of scientific induction.

He says, rightly enough, that a minute description is necessary, because a very few years will cover up much of the evidence which he had plainly before him. The concrete floors, the remains of mud-brick walls, the plan of the various rooms, will be choked up with gra.s.s and weeds, unless they are kept covered and cleared. The rain, which has long since washed all traces of mortar out of the walls, will wash away far more now that the site is opened, and so the future archaeologist will find that the book _Tiryns_ will tell him much that the actual Tiryns cannot show him.

The lower platform on the rock is not yet touched, and here perhaps digging will discover to us the remains of a temple, from which one very archaic Doric capital and an antefix have found their way to the higher rock. There are traces, too, of the great fort being the second building on the site, over an older and not yet clearly determined palace.

Two things are plain from these discoveries, and I dwell on them with satisfaction, because they corroborate old opinions of mine, put forth long before the princ.i.p.al evidence was forthcoming. First, the general use of wood for pillars and architraves, so showing how naturally the stone temple imitated the older wooden buildings. Secondly, the archaic or ante-h.e.l.lenic character of all that was found at Tiryns, with the solitary exception of the architectural fragments, which certainly have no building to correspond to them where they were found. Thus my hypothesis, which holds that Tiryns, as well as Mycenae, was destroyed at least as early as Pheidon's time (660 B. C.), and not after the Persian wars, receives corroboration which will amount to positive proof in any mind open to evidence on the point.

CHAPTER XVI.

MEDIaeVAL GREECE.

When I first went to Greece, nearly twenty years ago, the few travellers one met in the country never thought of studying its mediaeval remains. We were in search of cla.s.sical art, we pa.s.sed by Byzantine churches or Frankish towers with contemptuous ignorance. Mr. Finlay's great book, indeed, was already written; but those who knew German and were bold enough to attack the eight volumes which Ersch and Gruber's _Encyclopaedia_ devote to the article on Greece, had been taught by Hopf's _Essay on Mediaeval Greece_ to fathom what depths dulness could attain. Whether the author, or the odious paper, and type in its double columns, contributed to this result, was of little consequence. The subject itself seemed dreary beyond description. All the various peoples who invaded, swayed, ravaged, colonized the country in the Dark Ages, seemed but undistinguishable hordes of barbarians, of whom we knew nothing, about whom we cared nothing, beyond a general hatred of them, as those who had broken up and destroyed the splendid temples and fair statues that are now the world's desire. Even the very thorough and learned scholars, who produced _Baedeker's Greece_, a very few years ago, never thought of putting in any information whatever, beyond their chronological table, upon the many centuries which intervened between the close of paganism and the recent regeneration of the country. The contempt for Byzantine work in the East was in our early days like the contempt of Renaissance work in the West. We were all Cla.s.sical or Gothic in taste.

Now a great reaction is setting in. Instead of the dreadful Hopf, we have the fascinating Gregorovius, whose _Mediaeval Athens_ clothes even dry details with the hue of fancy; the sober _Murray's Guide_ includes Mt.

Athos and its wonders as part of its task. Recent travellers, and the students at the Foreign Schools of Athens, tell us of curious churches and their frescoes, and now Mr. Schultz, of the British school, has undertaken to reproduce them with his pencil. Following the example of Pullen, whose pictures have secured for posterity some record of the churches of Salonica, so often threatened by fire, he will perpetuate the remnants of an architecture and an art which were rapidly perishing from neglect. When I was first at Athens men were seriously discussing the propriety of razing to the ground the most striking of all the Byzantine churches at Athens, because it stood in the thoroughfare which led from the palace to the railway station! Historians tell us the dreadful fact, that over seventy of these delicately quaint buildings were destroyed when the new cathedral, a vulgar and senseless compromise in style, was constructed. A few more years of Vandalism in Greece, a few more terrible fires at Salonica and at Athos, and the world had lost its best records of a very curious and distinctive civilization.

There are indeed no mean traces of this art in Adriatic Italy; the exarchate at Ravenna, the eastern traffic of Venice, have shown their influence on Italian art and architecture. The splendid mosaics of Ravenna, nay, even the seven domes of S. Antonio at Verona, the frescoes of the Giotto Chapel at Padua, above all, the great cathedral at Venice, are all strongly colored-those of Ravenna even produced-by Byzantine art.

Yet most travellers who visit S. Mark's at Venice have never seen a Byzantine church, and do not feel its Eastern parentage; still fewer visit the splendid basilica of Parenzo, which is a still more unmistakable example. But to those who have turned aside from Olympia and Parthenon to study the early Christian remains in Greece, all this art of Eastern Italy will acquire a new interest and a deeper meaning.

These are the reasons which have tempted me to say a few words on this side of Greek travel. I do not pretend to speak as an authority; I only desire to stimulate a nascent interest which will presently make what I say seem simple and antiquated. But as yet even high authorities are very much in the dark about these things. What would a student of Gothic architecture say to a discussion whether an extant building belonged to the fourth century or the eleventh? and yet such divergent views are still maintained concerning the origin of the Athenian churches.

Let us begin with the best and quaintest, the so-called _Old Cathedral_, which was fortunately allowed to stand beside its ugly and pretentious successor. The first thing which strikes us is the exceeding smallness of the dimensions, it is like one of the little chapels you find in Glendalough and elsewhere in Ireland. I do not know whether the Greeks contemplated a congregation kneeling in the open air, as was the case around these chapels in Ireland, but such edifices were certainly intended in the first instance as holy places for sacerdotal celebrations, not as houses of prayer for the people. I was told on Mt. Athos that it was not the practice of the Greek church to celebrate more than one service in any one Church daily. Hence the monks, who are making prayer continually, have twenty or thirty chapels within the precincts of each monastery. Perhaps a similar motive may have led to the construction of a great number of smaller churches at Athens, where seventy have already been destroyed, and at Salonica, where remains of them are still being frequently discovered.

Perhaps, also, that desire to consecrate to the religion of Christ the hallowed places of the heathen, which turned the Parthenon and the temple of Theseus into churches, also prompted the Byzantine bishops to set up chapels upon smaller heathen sanctuaries, where no stately temple existed, and mere consecration would have left no patent symbol of Christian occupation.

But if this Cathedral is small, it has the proper beauty of minute art; it is covered with rich decoration. All its surfaces show carved fragments not only of cla.s.sical, but of earlier Byzantine work-friezes, reliefs, inscriptions, capitals-all so disposed with a general correspondence or symmetry as to produce the effect of a real design. Moreover, this foreign ornament is set in a building strictly Byzantine in form, with its rich doorway, its tiny windows with their high semicircular arches supported on delicate capitals, and toned by the centuries of Attic dust to that rich gold brown which has turned the Parthenon from marble almost to ruddy gold. Never was there greater harmony and unity attained by the most deliberate patch-work. In the earlier works on Byzantine art, this church was confidently a.s.signed to the sixth century. Buchon found upon it the arms of La Roche and of Villehardouin, so that he a.s.signed it to the thirteenth. The character of the other buildings of these knights makes me doubt that they and their friends could have constructed such a church-the Western monks then built Latin churches in Greece-and I suppose that the arms, which I could not find, were only carved by the Franks upon the existing building. But I will not therefore subscribe to the sixth-century theory.

Of the remaining churches three only, the Kapnikarea, the Virgin of the Monastery, and S. Theodore, are worth studying, as specimens of the typical form of such buildings. The main plan is a square, surmounted by a cupola supported on four pillars, with a corridor or porch on the West side, and three polygonal apses on the East. Lesser cupolas often surround the central dome. The height and slenderness of this central dome is probably the clearest sign of comparative lateness in these buildings, which used to be attributed to the fourth and fifth centuries, but are now degraded to the eleventh. The earliest form is no doubt that of the ma.s.sive S. George's at Salonica-a huge Rotunda covered with a flat dome, not unlike the Pantheon at Rome, with nothing but richly ornamented niches, and a splendid mosaic ceiling in the dome, to give relief to a very plain design. The successive complications and refinements added to this simple structure may be studied even in the later churches of Salonica.

The traveller who has whetted his taste for this peculiar form of mediaeval art, and desires to study it further, will find within reach of Athens two monasteries well worth a visit, that of the Phaeneromene on Salamis, a very fair specimen of an undisturbed Greek monastery, and that of Daphne, which may be ranked with the ruins of Mistra as showing clear traces of the conflict of East and West, of Latin with Greek Christianity. This sanctuary, with its now decaying walls, succeeded as usual to a pagan shrine with hardly altered name. The Saints, still pictured in black and gold upon the walls, and worshipped upon their festivals, have become fantastic and unreal beings, well enough adapted to that mixture of superst.i.tion and nationalism which is the body of the Greek religion, and, despite a purer creed, not very far removed from the religious instincts of the old h.e.l.lenic race. Five or six wretched monks still occupy the dilapidated building, vegetating in sleepy idleness; they do nothing but repeat daily their accustomed prayers, and receive dues for allowing the people of the neighboring hamlets to kiss, once or twice a year, a dreadful-looking S. Elias, painted olive-brown on a gold background, or to light the nightly lamp at the wayside shrine of a saint black with smoke.

The structure as we now see it is chiefly the work of the Cistercians who accompanied Otho de la Roche from Champagne to his dukedom of Athens, and was established round a far older Byzantine church and monastery. Like all mediaeval convents, it is fortified, and the whole settlement, courts and gardens included, is surrounded by a crenelated wall, originally about thirty feet high.

There are occasional towers in the wall, and remains of arches supporting a pa.s.sage of sufficient alt.i.tude for the defenders to look over the battlements. The old church in the centre of the court has had a narthex or nave added in Gothic style by the Benedictines, and here again are battlements, from which the monks could send down stones or boiling liquid upon a.s.sailants who penetrated the outer walls. Three sides of the court are surrounded by buildings; beneath, there are ma.s.sive arcades of stone for the kitchen, store-rooms, and refectory; above, wooden galleries which supplied the monks with their cells. Most of this is now in ruins, occupied in part by peasants and their sheep. But the church, both in its external simplicity and its internal grandeur, is remarkable for the splendid decoration of its walls with mosaics, which, alas! have been allowed to decay as much from the indolence of the Greeks as the intolerance of the Turks. In fact, while some care and regard for cla.s.sical remains have gradually been instilled into the minds of the inhabitants-of course, money value is an easily understood test-the respect for their splendid mediaeval remains has only gained Western intellects within the last two or three years, so that we may expect another generation to elapse before this new kind of interest will be disseminated among the possessors of so great a bequest from the Middle Ages.

The interior of the church at Daphne is a melancholy example. From the effects of damp the mortar has loosened, and great patches of the precious mosaic have fallen to the ground. You can pick up handfulls of glazed and gilded fragments, of which the rich surfaces were composed. Here and there a Turkish bullet has defaced a solemn Saint, while the fires lit by soldiers in days of war, and by shepherds in time of peace, have, in many places, blackened the roof beyond recognition. Within the central cupola a gigantic head of Christ on gold ground is still visible, or was so when I saw the place in 1889; but the whole roof was in danger of falling, and the Greek Government, at the instigation of Dr. Dorpfeld, had undertaken to stay the progress of decay, and so the building was filled with scaffolding. This, however, enabled us to mount close to the figures, which in the short and high building are seen with difficulty from the ground, and so we distinguished clearly round the base of the cupola the twelve Apostles, in the bay arches the prophets, in the transepts the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Baptism, and the Transfiguration of Christ-all according to the strict models laid down for such ornaments by the Greek Church. The drawings are indeed stiff and grotesque, but the gloom and mystery of the building hide all imperfections, and give to these imposing figures in black and gold a certain majesty, which must have been felt tenfold by simple worshippers not trained in habits of aesthetic criticism.

We have, unfortunately, no records of the history of these convents, as in the case of many Western abbeys, and the old chronicles of wars and pestilences seldom mention this quiet life. We should fain, says M. Henri Belle, have followed the fortunes of these monks who left some fair abbey in Burgundy to catechise schismatics in this distant land, and bring their preaching to aid the sword of the Crusaders; but these Crusaders were generally intent on changing their cross for a crown, and were therefore not at all likely to favor the rigid proselytism of the Cistercians. It is very interesting to know that Innocent III., that great pope, who from the outset disapproved of the violent overthrow of the Christian Empire of the East, was the first to recommend, both to the conquerors and their clergy, such moderation as might serve to bring back the schismatic Greeks to the Roman fold. There are still extant several of his letters to the abbeys of the Morea, and to this abbey of the duchy of Athens, showing that even his authority and zeal in this matter were unable to restrain the bigotry of the Latin monks. There were frequent quarrels, too, between these monks of Daphne and their Duke, and frequent appeals to the sovran pontiff to regulate the relations between the civil authority, which claimed the right of suzerain, and the religious orders, which claimed absolute independence and immunity from all feudal obligations. Still, in spite of all disputes, the abbey was the last resting-place of the Frankish Dukes of Athens, and in a vault beneath the narthex were found several of their rude stone coffins, without inscription or ornament. One only has carved upon it the arms of the second Guy de la Roche, third Duke of Athens-two entwined serpents surmounted with two fleurs-de-lis. Guy II., says the chronicle, behaved as a gallant lord, beloved of all, and attained great renown in every kingdom. He sleeps here, not in the darkness of oblivion, but obscured by greater monuments of the greater dead. Yet I cannot but dally over this interesting piece of mediaeval history, the more so as it explains the strange t.i.tle of Theseus, Duke of Athens, in Shakespeare's immortal _Midsummer Night's Dream_, as well as the curious fact, at least to cla.s.sical readers, that the poet should have chosen mediaeval Athens as a court of gracious manners, and suitable for the background of his fairy drama.

Neglecting geography, I shall carry the reader next to the very a.n.a.logous ruins of Mistra, where, however, it was rather the Greek that supplanted the Latin, than the Latin the Greek ecclesiastic.

When the Franks invaded Greece a very remarkable family, the Villehardouins, seized a part of the Morea, and presently built Mistra, above Sparta; it was adorned with fair Gothic churches and palaces, and surmounted by a fortress. Sixty years after the conquest, William Villehardouin was captured by a new Byzantine emperor Palaeologus, who was recovering his dominion. The Frank was obliged to cede for his ransom the forts of Mistra and Monemvasia, which from that time were strongholds of the Byzantine power till the conquest of the Turks. Still the Villehardouins long kept hold of Kalamata and other forts; and to the pen of one of the family, Geoffrey, we owe the famous old chronicle _La Conquete de Constantinople_, which is unique in its importance both as a specimen of old French and a piece of mediaeval history.

The architecture of Mistra, begun at a n.o.ble epoch by the Latins, was taken up by the Byzantine Greeks, so that we have both styles combined in curious relics of the now deserted stronghold. For, since 1850, when an earthquake shook down many houses, the population wandered to the revived Sparta, which is now a thriving town. But as the old Sparta in its greatest days was only a collection of shabby villages, showing no outward sign of its importance, so the new and vulgar Sparta has no attractions (save the lovely orange and lemon orchards round it) in comparison with the mediaeval Mistra. The houses are piled one above another till you reach the summit crowned by the citadel which, itself a mountain, is severed from the higher mountains at its back by a deep gorge with a tumbling river. "The whole town is now nothing but ruined palaces, churches, and houses. You wander up rudely-paved streets rising zigzag, and pa.s.s beneath arches on which are carved the escutcheons of French knights. You enter courts overgrown with gra.s.s, but full of memories of the Crusaders. It is the very home of the Middle Ages. Pa.s.sing through these streets, now the resort of lizards and serpents, you come upon Frankish tombs, among others that of Theodora Tocco, wife of the Emperor Constantine Palaeologus, who died in 1430. The Panagia is the only church well preserved-a Latin basilica, with a portico in the form of an Italian loggia, and a Byzantine tower added to it. This building is highly ornamented with delicate carving, and its walls are in alternate courses of brick and stone, while the gates, columns, and floor are of marble. The interior is adorned with Byzantine frescoes of scenes from the Old Testament. Higher up is the metropolitan church, built by the Greeks as soon as William Villehardouin had surrendered the fort in 1263. This great church is not so beautiful as that already described, but has many peculiarities of no less interest.

The palace of the Frank princes was probably at the wide place on a higher level, where the ruined walls show the remains of many Gothic windows. The citadel was first rehandled by the Greek Palaeologi, then by the Turks, then by the Venetians, who in their turn seized this mediaeval 'Fetter of Greece.' And now all the traces of all these conquerors are lying together confused in silence and decay. The heat of the sun in these narrow and stony streets, with their high walls, is intense. But you cannot but pause when you find in turn old Greek carving, Byzantine dedications, Roman inscriptions, Frankish devices, emblazoned on the walls. The Turkish baths alone are intact, and have resisted both weather and earthquake. But the churches occupy the chief place still, dropping now and then a stone, as it were a monumental tear for their glorious past; the Greek Cross, the Latin Cross, the Crescent, have all ruled there in their turn. Even a pair of ruined minarets remain to show the traces of that slavery to which the people were subject for four hundred years."

The occupation of the Frankish knights had not found an adequate historian, since old Villehardouin, till Gregorovius wrote his _Mediaeval Athens_. The traveller still sees throughout Greece frequent traces of this short domination, but all of one sort-the ruins of castles which the knights had built to overawe their subjects, and of which Mistra was perhaps the most important. The same invaders built the great towers at Kalamata, and most picturesque of all is the keep over the town of Karytena in Arcadia, the stronghold of Hugo de Bruyeres. But the Frankish devices which adorned these castles have been mostly torn down by the Turks, or replaced by the Venetian lion, according as new invaders turned the fortifications of their predecessors to their own uses. Nor are any of these castles to be compared in size or splendor with those of northern Europe. The most famous of them, the palace at Thebes, was so completely destroyed by the Catalans, that all vestige of it has disappeared, and we owe our knowledge of it to the description of the Catalan annalist, Ramon Muntaner, who tells of the ravages of his fellows not without some stings of his aesthetic conscience.

But let us pa.s.s from these complex ruins, which speak the conflict of the East and West, to the peculiar quiet homes of the Greek monk, who spends his time not in works of charity, not in labors of erudition, not in the toil of education, like his western brother, but simply in performing an arduous and exacting ritual, in praying, or rather in repeating prayers, so many hours in the day, in observing fasts and vigils, above all in maintaining the strict creed which has given the t.i.tle of orthodox to his Church. These resting-places (_???_ is the suggestive word) are of course settled in quiet regions, in the mountains, upon the islands, so that we cannot expect them near a stirring capital like Athens. Yet in the gorge of the defile which leads up to Phyle there is a little _skete_ (the house of _ascetics_) lonely and wild in site; and by the sea on Salamis, nearly over against Megara, the traveller will find a small but very characteristic specimen of the Greek monastery, the _Panagia Phaeneromene_.

There he will see the tiny cells, and the library, almost as small as any of them, at the top of dark stairs, and containing some twenty volumes; he will be received by the Hegoumenos with mastic and jam, and then with coffee, and strive to satisfy the simple curiosity of the old men, who seem so anxious to hear about the world, and yet have turned away their eyes from seeing it. Above all, he will find in the midst of the enclosure a little model Byzantine Church, built with the greatest neatness, of narrow bricks, in which string courses and crosses are introduced by an altered setting of the bricks. Here too he will see the curious practice, which led to marble imitations at Venice, of ornamenting the walls by building in green and blue pottery-apparently old Rhodian ware, for it is not now to be found in use. It is a simpler form of the decoration already described in the Cathedral of Athens, that of ornamenting a wall with foreign objects symmetrically disposed, and no one who sees it will say that it is inartistic. Within are the usual ornaments of the Byzantine Church, but not in mosaic; for all the walls are covered with frescoes by a monk of the early eighteenth century, a genius in his way, though following strictly the traditions of the school of Athos. The traveller who ascends the pulpit will thence see himself surrounded by very strange pictures-over the west door, as is prescribed, the Last Judgment, with the sins of men being weighed in a huge balance, and devils underneath trying to pull down the fatal scale. The condemned are escorted by demons to an enormous mouth breathing out flames-the mouth of h.e.l.l. Beat.i.tudes and tortures supply the top and bottom of the composition. Even more quaint is the miracle of the swine of the Gadarenes running down a steep place into the sea. They are drowning in the waves, and on the head or back of each is a little black devil trying to save himself from sinking. Similar creatures are escaping from the statues of heathen G.o.ds which tumble from the walls as the infant Jesus pa.s.ses by on his flight to Egypt. This points to the belief that the statues of heathen G.o.ds were inhabited by an evil spirit, and so far actually bodies with souls within them!

These few details are sufficient to tempt the reader to visit this monastery, which is far better worth seeing than the beautifully situated and hospitable Vourkano described elsewhere in this work. I have no s.p.a.ce to speak of Megaspilion, for this book must be kept within handy limits, and can never aspire to even approximate completeness. So also will I here pa.s.s by with a mere mention the eyries of Meteora in Thessaly, perched upon strange pinnacles of rock, like S. Simeon upon his pillar. The approach to, and descent from, these monasteries in a swinging net is indeed a strange adventure to undergo, and more painfully unpleasant than most such adventures, but at the top there is little of interest. The h.o.a.rds of precious MSS. which Curzon describes in his delightful volume, over which the monks quarrelled when he offered gold, and would not sell them because none would allow his brother to enjoy the money-these splendid illuminated books have either been cozened away by antiquarians, or are gathered in the University Library at Athens. They are there in their right place. I understand the peaks of Meteora, when the present occupants die out, are to receive not holy men, but criminals, who are to suffer their solitary confinement not in dungeons beneath the earth, but far above the haunts of men.

But all these monastic settlements pale into insignificance when we turn to Mount Athos, the real Holy of Holies of the Greek Church, which is indeed far from the kingdom of Greece, and therefore beyond the scope of this work, and yet a chapter on the mediaevalism of Eastern Europe can hardly be written without some consideration of this strange promontory, in its beauty surpa.s.sing all description, in its history unique both for early progress and for subsequent unchangeableness, in its daily life a faithful mirror of long past centuries, even as its buildings are now mediaeval castles inhabited by mediaeval men. I will here set down the impressions, from a visit made in 1889, not merely of the art, but of the life of this, the most distinctive as well as the largest example of Greek monasticism.