Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Volume VIII Part 11

BY BAYARD TAYLOR

As we approached Sparta, the road descended to the banks of the Eurotas.

Traces of the ancient walls which restrained the river still remain in places, but, in his shifting course, he has swept the most of them away, and spread his gravelly deposits freely over the bottoms inclosed between the spurs of the hills. Toward evening we saw, at a distance, the white houses of modern Sparta, and presently some indications of the ancient city. At first, the remains of terraces and ramparts, then the unmistakable h.e.l.lenic walls, and, as the superb plain of the Eurotas burst upon us, stretching, in garden-like beauty, to the foot of the abrupt hills, over which towered the sun-touched snows of Taygetus, we saw, close on our right, almost the only relic of the lost ages--the theater. Riding across the field of wheat, which extended all over the scene of the Spartan gymnastic exhibitions, we stood on the proscenium and contemplated these silent ruins, and the broad, beautiful landscape.

It is one of the finest views in Greece--not so crowded with striking points, not so splendid in a.s.sociations as that of Athens, but larger, grander, richer in coloring. Besides the theater, the only remains are some ma.s.ses of Roman brickwork, and the ma.s.sive substructions of a small temple which the natives call the tomb of Leonidas....

We spent the night in a comfortable house, which actually boasted of a floor, gla.s.s windows, and muslin curtains. On returning to the theater in the morning, we turned aside into a plowed field to inspect a sarcophagus which had just been discovered. It still lay in the pit where it was found, and was entire, with the exception of the lid. It was ten feet long by four broad, and was remarkable in having a division at one end, forming a smaller chamber, as if for the purpose of receiving the bones of a child. From the theater I made a sketch of the valley, with the dazzling ridge of Taygetus in the rear, and Mistra, the medieval Sparta, hanging on the steep sides of one of his gorges. The sun was intensely hot, and we were glad to descend again, making our way through tall wheat, past walls of Roman brickwork and scattering blocks of the older city, to the tomb of Leonidas. This is said to be a temple, tho there are traces of vaults and pa.s.sages beneath the pavement which do not quite harmonize with such a conjecture. It is composed of huge blocks of breccia, some of them thirteen feet long.

I determined to make an excursion to Maina. This is a region rarely visited by travelers, who are generally frightened off by the reputation of its inhabitants, who are considered by the Greeks to be bandits and cut-throats to a man. The Mainotes are, for the most part, lineal descendants of the ancient Spartans, and, from the decline of the Roman power up to the present century, have preserved a virtual independence in their mountain fastnesses. The worship of the pagan deities existed among them as late as the eighth century. They were never conquered by the Turks, and it required considerable management to bring them under the rule of Otho....

Starting at noon, we pa.s.sed through the modern Sparta, which is well laid out with broad streets. The site is superb, and in the course of time the new town will take the place of Mistra. We rode southward, down the valley of the Eurotas, through orchards of olive and mulberry. We stopt for the night at the little khan of Levetzova. I saw some cows pasturing here, quite a rare sight in Greece, where genuine b.u.t.ter is unknown. That which is made from the milk of sheep and goats is no better than mild tallow. The people informed me, however, that they make cheese from cow's milk, but not during Lent. They are now occupied with rearing Paschal lambs, a quarter of a million of which are slaughtered in Greece on Easter Day. The next morning, we rode over hills covered with real turf, a little thin, perhaps, but still a rare sight in southern lands. In two hours we entered the territory of Maina, on the crest of a hill, where we saw Marathonisi (the ancient Gythium), lying warm upon the Laconian Gulf. The town is a steep, dirty, labyrinthine place, and so rarely visited by strangers that our appearance created quite a sensation....

A broad, rich valley opened before us, crossed by belts of poplar and willow trees, and inclosed by a semicircle of hills, most of which were crowned with the lofty towers of the Mainotes. In Maina almost every house is a fortress. The law of blood revenge, the right of which is transmitted from father to son, draws the whole population under its b.l.o.o.d.y sway in the course of a few generations. Life is a running fight, and every foe slain entails on the slayer a new penalty of retribution for himself and his descendants for ever.

Previous to the revolution most of the Mainote families lived in a state of alternate attack and siege. Their houses are square towers, forty or fifty feet high, with ma.s.sive walls, and windows so narrow that they may be used as loopholes for musketry. The first story is at a considerable distance from the ground, and reached by a long ladder which can be drawn up so as to cut off all communication. Some of the towers are further strengthened by a semicircular bastion, projecting from the side most liable to attack. The families supplied themselves with telescopes, to look out for enemies in the distance, and always had a store of provisions on hand, in case of a siege. Altho this private warfare has been supprest, the law of revenge exists.

From the summit of the first range we overlooked a wild, glorious landscape. The hills, wooded with oak, and swimming in soft blue vapor, interlocked far before us, inclosing the loveliest green dells in their embraces, and melting away to the break in Taygetus, which yawned in the distance. On the right towered the square, embrasured castle of Pa.s.sava on the summit of an almost inaccessible hill--the site of the ancient Las. Far and near, the lower heights were crowned with tall, white towers.

MESSENIA[59]

BY BAYARD TAYLOR

The plain of Messenia is the richest part of the Morea. Altho its groves of orange and olive, fig and mulberry, were entirely destroyed during the Egyptian occupation, new and more vigorous shoots have sprung up from the old stumps and the desolated country is a garden again, apparently as fair and fruitful as when it excited the covetousness of the Spartan thieves. Sloping to the gulf on the south, and protected from the winds on all other sides by lofty mountains, it enjoys an almost Egyptian warmth of climate. Here it was already summer, while at Sparta, on the other side of Taygetus, spring had but just arrived, and the central plain of Arcadia was still bleak and gray as in winter. As it was market-day, we met hundreds of the country people going to Kalamata with laden a.s.ses....

We crossed the rapid Pamisos with some difficulty, and ascended its right bank, to the foot of Mount Evan, which we climbed, by rough paths through thickets of mastic and furze, to the monastery of Vurkano. The building has a magnificent situation, on a terrace between Mount Evan and Mount Ithome, overlooking both the upper and lower plains of the Pamisos--a glorious spread of landscape, green with spring, and touched by the sun with the airiest prismatic tints through breaks of heavy rain-clouds. Inside the courts is an old Byzantine chapel, with fleurs-de-lis on the decorations, showing that it dates from the time of the Latin princes. The monks received us very cordially, gave us a clean, s.p.a.cious room, and sent us a bottle of excellent wine for dinner.

We ascended Ithome and visited the ma.s.sive ruins of Messene the same day. The great gate of the city, a portion of the wall, and four of the towers of defense, are in tolerable condition. The name of Epaminondas hallows these remains, which otherwise, grand as they are, do not impress one like the cyclopean walls of Tiryns. The wonder is, that they could have been built in so short a time--eighty-five days, says history, which would appear incredible, had not still more marvelous things of the kind been done in Russia.

The next day, we rode across the head of the Messenian plain, crossed the Mount Lycaeus and the gorge of the Neda, and lodged at the little village of Tragoge, on the frontiers of Arcadia. Our experience of Grecian highways was pleasantly increased by finding fields plowed directly across our road, fences of dried furze built over it, and ditches cutting it at all angles. Sometimes all trace of it would be lost for half a mile, and we were obliged to ride over the growing crops until we could find a bit of fresh trail.

The bridle-path over Mount Lycaeus was steep and bad, but led us through the heart of a beautiful region. The broad back of the mountain is covered with a grove of superb oaks, centuries old, their long arms m.u.f.fled in golden moss, and adorned with a plumage of ferns. The turf at their feet was studded with violets, filling the air with delicious odors. This sylvan retreat was the birthplace of Pan, and no more fitting home for the universal G.o.d can be imagined. On the northern side we descended for some time through a forest of immense ilex trees, which sprang from a floor of green moss and covered our pathway with summer shade....

We were now in the heart of the wild mountain region of Messenia, in whose fastnesses Aristomenes, the epic hero of the state, maintained himself so long against the Spartans. The tremendous gorge below us was the bed of the Neda, which we crossed in order to enter the lateral valley of Phigalia, where lay Tragoge. The path was not only difficult but dangerous--in some places a mere hand's-breath of gravel, on the edge of a plane so steep that a single slip of a horse's foot would have sent him headlong to the bottom.

In the morning, a terrible sirocco levante was blowing, with an almost freezing cold. The fury of the wind was so great that in crossing the exposed ridges it was difficult to keep one's seat upon the horse. We climbed toward the central peak of the Lycaean Hills, through a wild dell between two ridges, which were covered to the summit with magnificent groves of oak. Starry blue flowers, violets and pink crocuses spangled the banks as we wound onward, between the great trunks. The temple of Apollo Epicurius stands on a little platform between the two highest peaks, about 3,500 feet above the sea.

On the day of our visit, its pillars of pale bluish-gray limestone rose against a wintry sky, its guardian oaks were leafless, and the wind whistled over its heaps of ruin; yet its symmetry was like that of a perfect statue, wherein you do not notice the absence of color, and I felt that no sky and no season could make it more beautiful. For its builder was Ictinus, who created the Parthenon. It was erected by the Phigalians, out of grat.i.tude to Apollo the Helper, who kept from their city a plague which ravaged the rest of the Peloponnesus. Owing to its secluded position, it has escaped the fate of other temples, and might be restored from its own undestroyed materials. The cella had been thrown down, but thirty-five out of thirty-eight columns are still standing. Through the Doric shafts you look upon a wide panorama of gray mountains, melting into purple in the distance, and crowned by arcs of the far-off sea. On one hand is Ithome and the Messenian Gulf, on the other the Ionian Sea and the Strophades....

We now trotted down the valley, over beautiful meadows, which were uncultivated except in a few places where the peasants were plowing for maize, and had destroyed every trace of the road. The hills on both sides began to be fringed with pine, while the higher ridges on our right were clothed with woods of oak. I was surprised at the luxuriant vegetation of this region. The laurel and mastic became trees, the pine shot to a height of one hundred feet, and the beech and sycamore began to appear. Some of the pines had been cut for ship-timber, but in the rudest and most wasteful way, only the limbs which had the proper curve being chosen for ribs. I did not see a single sawmill in the Peloponnesus; but I am told that there are a few in Euboea and Acarnania....

As we approached Olympia, I could almost have believed myself among the pine-hills of Germany or America. In the old times this must have been a lovely, secluded region, well befitting the honored repose of Xenophon, who wrote his works here. The sky became heavier as the day wore on, and the rain, which had spared us so long, finally inclosed us in its misty circle. Toward evening we reached a lonely little house, on the banks of the Alpheus. n.o.body was at home, but we succeeded in forcing a door and getting shelter for our baggage. Francois had supper nearly ready before the proprietor arrived. The latter had neither wife nor child, tho a few chicks, and took our burglarious occupation very good-humoredly. We shared the same leaky roof with our horses, and the abundant fleas with the owner's dogs.

TIRYNS AND MYCENae[60]

BY J. P. MAHAFFY

The fortress of Tiryns may fitly be commented on before approaching the younger, or at least more artistically finished, Mycenae. It stands several miles nearer to the sea, in the center of the great plain of Argos, and upon the only hillock which there affords any natural scope for fortification. Instead of the square, or at least hewn, well-fitted blocks of Mycenae, we have here the older style of rude ma.s.ses piled together as best they would fit, the interstices being filled up with smaller fragments. This is essentially cyclopean building. There is a smaller fort, of rectangular shape, on the southern and highest part of the oblong hillock, the whole of which is surrounded by a lower wall, which takes in both this and the northern longer part of the ridge. It looks, in fact, like a hill-fort, with a large inclosure for cattle around it.

Just below the northeast angle of the inner fort, and where the lower circuit is about to leave it, there is an entrance, with a ma.s.sive projection of huge stones, looking like a square tower, on its right side, so as to defend it from attack. The most remarkable feature in the walls are the covered galleries, constructed within them at the southeast angle. The whole thickness of the wall is often over twenty feet, and in the center a rude arched way is made--or rather, I believe, two parallel ways; but the inner gallery has fallen in, and is almost untraceable--and this merely by piling together the great stones so as to leave an opening, which narrows at the top in the form of a Gothic arch. Within the pa.s.sage, there are five niches in the outer side, made of rude arches in the same way as the main pa.s.sage. The length of the gallery I measured, and found it twenty-five yards, at the end of which it is regularly walled up, so that it evidently did not run all the way round. The niches are now no longer open, but seem to have been once windows, or at least to have had some lookout points into the hill country.

It is remarkable that, altho the walls are made of perfectly rude stones, the builders have managed to use so many smooth surfaces looking outward, that the face of the wall seems quite clean and well built. At the southeast corner of the higher and inner fort, we found a large block of red granite, quite different from the rough, gray stone of the building, with its surface square and smooth, and all the four sides neatly beveled, like the portal stones at the treasury of Atreus. I found two other similar blocks close by, which were likewise cut smooth on the surface. The intention of these stones we could not guess, but they show that some ornament, and some more finished work, must have once existed in the inner fort. Tho both the main entrances have ma.s.sive towers of stone raised on their right, there is a small postern at the opposite or west side, not more than four feet wide, which has no defenses whatever, and is a mere hole in the wall.

The whole ruin is covered in summer with thistles, such as English people can hardly imagine. The needles at the points of the leaves are fully an inch long, extremely fine and strong, and sharper than any two-edged sword. No clothes except a leather dress can resist them. They pierce everywhere with the most stinging pain, and make antiquarian research in this famous spot a veritable martyrdom, which can only be supported by a very burning thirst for knowledge, or the sure hope of future fame. The rough ma.s.ses of stone are so loose that one's footing is insecure, and when the traveler loses his balance, and falls among the thistles, he will wish that he had gone to Jericho instead, or even fallen among thieves on the way.

It is impossible to approach Mycenae from any side without being struck with the picturesqueness of the site. If you come down over the mountains from Corinth, as soon as you reach the head of the valley of the Inachus, which is the plain of Argos, you turn aside to the left, or east, into a secluded corner--"a recess of the horse-feeding Argos," as Homer calls it--and then you find on the edge of the valley, and where the hills begin to rise one behind the other, the village of Charvati.

When you ascend from this place, you find that the lofty Mount Elias is separated from the plain by two nearly parallel waves of land, which are indeed joined at the northern end by a curving saddle, but elsewhere are divided by deep gorges. The loftier and shorter wave forms the rocky citadel of Mycenae--the Argion, as it was once called.

I need not attempt a fresh description of the Great Treasury. It is in no sense a rude building, or one of a helpless and barbarous age, but, on the contrary, the product of enormous appliances, and of a perfect knowledge of all the mechanical requirements for any building, if we except the application of the arch. The stones are hewn square, or curved to form the circular dome within, with admirable exactness. Above the enormous lintel-stone, nearly twenty-seven feet long, and which is doubly grooved, by way of ornament, all along its edge over the doorway, there is now a triangular window or aperture, which was certainly filled with some artistic carving like the a.n.a.logous s.p.a.ce over the lintel in the gate of the Acropolis. Shortly after Lord Elgin had cleared the entrance, Gell and Dodwell found various pieces of green and red marble carved with geometrical patterns, some of which are reproduced in Dodwell's book. Gell also found some fragments in a neighboring chapel, and others are said to be built into a wall at Nauplia. There are supposed to have been short columns standing on each side in front of the gate, with some ornament surmounting them; but this seems to me to rest on doubtful evidence, and on theoretical reconstruction. Dr.

Schliemann, however, a.s.serts them to have been found at the entrance of the second treasury which Mrs. Schliemann excavated, tho his account is somewhat vague. There is the strongest architectural reason for the triangular aperture over the door, as it diminishes the enormous weight to be borne by the lintel; and here, no doubt, some ornament very like lions on the other gate may have been applied.

There has been much controversy about the use to which this building was applied, and we can not now attempt to change the name, even if we could prove its absurdity. Pausanias, who saw Mycenae in the second century A.D., found it in much the same state as we do, and was no better informed than we, tho he tells us the popular belief that this and its fellows were treasure-houses like that of the Minyae at Orchomenus, which was very much greater, and was, in his opinion, one of the most wonderful things in all Greece.

Standing at the entrance, you look out upon the scattered masonry of the walls of Mycenae, on the hillock over against you. Close behind this is a dark and solemn chain of mountains. The view is narrow and confined, and faces the north, so that, for most of the day, the gate is dark and in shadow. We can conceive no fitter place for the burial of a king, within sight of his citadel, in the heart of a deep natural hillock, with a great solemn portal symbolizing the resistless strength of the barrier which he had pa.s.sed into an unknown land. But one more remark seems necessary. This treasure-house is by no means a Greek building in its features. It has the same perfection of construction which can be seen at Eleutherae, or any other Greek fort, but still the really a.n.a.logous buildings are to be found in far distant lands--in the raths of Ireland, and the barrows of the Crimea.

"And yet how lovely in thine age of woe, Land of lost G.o.ds and G.o.dlike men, are thou!

Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow, Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now: Thy fanes, thy temples to the surface bow, Commingling slowly with heroic earth, Broke by the share of every rustic plough:

"Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild: Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, Thine olives ripe as when Minerva smiled, And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields; There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air; Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare; Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair."

--From Byron's "Childe Harold."

IX

THE GREEK ISLANDS

A TOUR OF CRETE[61]

BY BAYARD TAYLOR

Crete lies between the parallels of 35 degrees and 36 degrees, not much farther removed from Africa than from Europe, and its climate, consequently, is intermediate between that of Greece and that of Alexandria. In the morning it was already visible, altho some thirty miles distant, the magnificent snowy ma.s.s of the White Mountains gleaming before us, under a bank of clouds. By ten o'clock, the long blue line of the coast broke into irregular points, the Dictynnaean promontory and that of Akroteri thrusting themselves out toward us so as to give an amphitheatric character to that part of the island we were approaching, while the broad, snowy dome of the Cretan Ida, standing alone, far to the east, floated in a sea of soft, golden light. The White Mountains were completely enveloped in snow to a distance of 4,000 feet below their summits, and scarcely a rock pierced the luminous covering. The sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Khania, retaining their amphitheatric form, rose gradually from the water, a rich panorama of wheat-fields, vineyards and olive groves, crowded with sparkling villages, while Khania, in the center, grew into distinctness--a picturesque jumble of mosques, old Venetian arches and walls, pink and yellow buildings, and palm trees. The character of the scene was Syrian rather than Greek, being altogether richer and warmer than anything in Greece.

Khania occupies the site of the ancient Cydonia, by which name the Greek bishopric is still called. The Venetian city was founded in 1252, and any remnants of the older town which may have then remained, were quite obliterated by it. The only ruins now are those of Venetian churches, some of which have been converted into mosques, and a number of immense arched vaults, opening on the harbor, built to shelter the galleys of the Republic. Just beyond the point on which stands the Serai, I counted fifteen of these, side by side, eleven of which are still entire. A little further, there are three more, but all are choked up with sand, and of no present use. The modern town is an exact picture of a Syrian seaport, with its narrow, crooked streets, shaded bazaars, and turbaned merchants. Its population is 9,500, including the garrison, according to a census just completed at the time of our visit. It is walled, and the gates are closed during the night....

Pa.s.sing through the large Turkish cemetery, which was covered with an early crop of blue anemones, we came upon the rich plain of Khania, lying broad and fair, like a superb garden, at the foot of the White Mountains, whose vast ma.s.ses of shining snow filled up the entire southern heaven. Eastward, the plain slopes to the deep Bay of Suda, whose surface shone blue above the silvery line of the olive groves; while, sixty miles away, rising high above the intermediate headlands, the solitary peak of Mount Ida, bathed in a warm afternoon glow, gleamed like an Olympian mount, not only the birthplace, but the throne of immortal Jove. Immense olive trees from the dark-red, fertile earth; cypresses and the canopied Italian pine interrupted their gray monotony, and every garden hung the golden lamps of its oranges over the wall. The plain is a paradise of fruitfulness....