Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Volume VIII Part 6

And again, we may be sure that the admiration and reverence which they may awaken in the mind of the mere cla.s.sical purist is cold beside that which they kindle in the mind which can give them their true place in the history of art. The temples of Paestum are great and n.o.ble from any point of view. But they become greater and n.o.bler as we run over the successive steps in the long series by which their ma.s.sive columns and entablatures grew into the tall cl.u.s.ters and soaring arches of Westminster and Amiens.

VII

SICILIAN SCENES

PALERMO[34]

BY WILL S. MONROE

While not one of the original h.e.l.lenic city-states, Palermo has a superb location on the northern sh.o.r.es of the central island of the central sea; its harbor is guarded by the two picturesque cliffs and the fertile plain that forms the "compagne" is hemmed in by a semicircular cord of rugged mountains. "Perhaps there are few spots upon the surface of the globe more beautiful than Palermo," writes Arthur Symonds. "The hills on either hand descend upon the sea with long-drawn delicately broken outlines, so delicately tinted with aerial hues at early dawn or beneath the blue light of a full moon the panorama seems to be some fabric of fancy, that must fade away, 'like shapes of clouds we form,' to nothing.

Within the cradle of these hills, and close upon the tideless water, lies the city. Behind and around on every side stretches the famous Conco d'Oro, or golden sh.e.l.l, a plain of marvelous fertility, so called because of its richness and also because of its shape; for it tapers to a fine point where the mountains meet, and spreads abroad, where they diverge, like a cornucopia. The whole of this long vega is a garden, thick with olive-groves and orange trees, with orchards of nespole and palms and almonds, with fig-trees and locust-trees, with judas-trees that blush in spring, and with flowers as mult.i.tudinously brilliant as the fretwork of sunset clouds."

During the days of Phoenician and Carthagenian supremacy Palermo was a busy mart--a great clearing-house for the commerce of the island and that part of the Mediterranean. But during the days of the Saracens it became not only a very busy city but also a very beautiful city. The Arabian poets extolled its charms in terms that sound to us exceedingly extravagant. One of them wrote: "Oh how beautiful is the lakelet of the twin palms and the island where the s.p.a.cious palace stands. The limpid waters of the double springs resemble liquid pearls, and their basin is a sea; you would say that the branches of the trees stretched down to see the fishes in the pool and smile at them. The great fishes in those clear waters, and the birds among the gardens tune their songs. The ripe oranges of the island are like fire that burns on boughs of emerald; the pale lemon reminds me of a lover who has pa.s.sed the night in weeping for his absent darling. The two palms may be compared to lovers who have gained an inaccessible retreat against their enemies, or raise themselves erect in pride to confound the murmurs and the ill thoughts of jealous men. O palms of two lakelets of Palermo, ceaseless, undisturbed, and plenteous days for ever keep your freshness."

With the coming of the Normans Palermo enjoyed even greater prosperity than had been experienced under the liberal rule of the Saracens. This was the most brilliant period in the history of the city. The population was even more mixed than during Moslem supremacy. Besides the Greeks, Normans, Saracens, and Hebrews, there were commercial colonies of Slavs, Venetians, Lombardians, Catalans, and Pisans.

The most interesting public monuments at Palermo date from the Norman period; and while many of the buildings are strikingly Saracenic in character and recall similar structures erected by the Arabs in Spain, it will be remembered that the Normans brought no trained architects to the island, but employed the Arabs, Greeks, and Hebrews who had already been in the service of the Saracen emirs. But the Arab influence in architecture was dominant, and it survived well into the fourteenth century.

GIRGENTI[35]

BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN

The reported luxury of the Sikeliot cities in this age is, in the double-edged saying of Empedocles, connected with one of their n.o.blest tastes. They built their houses as if they were going to live for ever.

And if their houses, how much more their temples and other public buildings? In some of the Sikeliot cities, this was the most brilliant time of architectural splendor. At Syracuse indeed the greatest buildings which remain to tell their own story belong either to an earlier or to a later time. It is the theater alone, as in its first estate a probable work of the first Hieron, which at all connects itself with our present time. But at Akragas[36] and at Selinous the greatest of the existing buildings belong to the days of republican freedom and independence. At Akragas what the tyrant began the democracy went on with. The series of temples that line the southern wall are due to an impulse which began under Theron and went on to the days of the Carthaginian siege.

Of the greatest among them, the temple of Olympian Zeus, this is literally true. There can be little doubt that it was begun as one of the thank-offerings after the victory of Himera, and it is certain that at the coming of Hannibal and Hamilkon it was still so far imperfect that the roof was not yet added. It was therefore in building during a time of more than seventy years, years which take in the whole of the brilliant days of Akragantine freedom and well-being.

To the same period also belong the other temples in the lower city, temples which abide above ground either standing or in ruins, while the older temples in the akropolis have to be looked for underneath buildings of later ages. It was a grand conception to line the southern wall, the wall most open to the attacks of mortal enemies, with this wonderful series of holy places of the divine protectors of the city. It was a conception due, we may believe, in the first instance, to Theron, but which the democracy fully entered into and carried out. The two best preserved of the range stand to the east; one indeed occupies the southeastern corner of the fortified enclosure.

Next in order to the west comes the temple which bears a name not unlikely, but altogether impossible and unmeaning, the so-called temple of Concord. No reasonable guess can be made at its pagan dedication; in the fifteenth century of our era it followed the far earlier precedent of the temples in the akropolis. It became the church of Saint Gregory, not of any of the great pontiffs and doctors of the Church, but of the local bishop whose full description as Saint Gregory of the Turnips can hardly be written without a smile. The peristyle was walled up, and arches were cut through the walls of the cella, exactly as in the great church of Syracuse. Saint Gregory of Girgenti plays no such part in the world's history as was played by the Panagia of Syracuse; we may therefore be more inclined to extend some mercy to the Bourbon king who set free the columns as we now see them. When he had gone so far, one might even wish that he had gone on to wall up the arches. In each of the former states of the building there was a solid wall somewhere to give shelter from the blasts which sweep round this exposed spot. As the building now stands, it is, after the Athenian house of Theseus and Saint George, the best preserved Greek temple in being. Like its fellow to the east, it is a building of moderate size, of the middle stage of Doric, with columns less ma.s.sive than those of Syracuse and Corinth, less slender than those of Nemea.

Again to the west stood a temple of greater size, nearly ranging in scale with the Athenian Parthenon, which is a.s.signed, with far more of likelihood than the other names, to Herakles. Save one patched-up column standing amid the general ruin, it has, in the language of the prophet, become heaps. All that is left is a ma.s.s of huge stones, among which we can see the mighty columns, fallen, each in its place, overthrown, it is clear, by no hand of man but by those powers of the nether world whose sway is felt in every corner of Sicilian soil.

These three temples form a continuous range along the eastern part of the southern wall of the city. To the west of them, parted from them by a gate, which, in Roman times at least, bore, as at Constantinople and Spalato, the name of Golden, rose the mightiest work of Akragantine splendor and devotion, the great Olympieion itself. Of this gigantic building, the vastest Greek temple in Europe, we happily have somewhat full descriptions from men who had looked at it, if not in the days of its full glory, yet at least when it was a house standing up, and not a ruin. As it now lies, a few fragments of wall still standing amid confused heaps of fallen stones, of broken columns and capitals, no building kindles a more earnest desire to see it as it stood in the days of its perfection.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CITY AND BAY OF NAPLES WITH VESUVIUS IN THE DISTANCE Courtesy International Mercantile Marine Co.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TEMPLE OF THESEUS AT ATHENS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PALERMO, SICILY, FROM THE SEA Courtesy L. C. Page & Co.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GREEK THEATER AT SEGESTA, SICILY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TEMPLE OF CONCORD, GIRGENTI, SICILY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TEMPLE OF JUNO AT GIRGENTI, SICILY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: AMPHITHEATER AT SYRACUSE, SICILY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GREEK TEMPLE AT SEGESTA, SICILY Courtesy L. C. Page & Co.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HARBOR OF SYRACUSE, SICILY Courtesy L. C. Page & Co.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SO-CALLED "SHIP OF ULYSSES" OFF CORFU Courtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TEMPLE OF THE OLYMPIAN ZEUS AT ATHENS Courtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PLAIN BELOW DELPHI Courtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ROAD NEAR DELPHI Courtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENTRANCE TO THE STADIUM AT OLYMPIA Courtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THRONE OF MINOS IN CRETE (Minoan civilization in Crete antedates the Homeric age--perhaps by many centuries) Courtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.]

SEGESTE[37]

BY JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The temple of Segeste was never finished; the ground around it was never even leveled; the s.p.a.ce only being smoothed on which the peristyle was to stand. For, in several places, the steps are from nine to ten feet in the ground, and there is no hill near, from which the stone or mold could have fallen. Besides, the stones lie in their natural position, and no ruins are found near them.

The columns are all standing; two which had fallen, have very recently been raised again. How far the columns rested on a socle is hard to say; and without an engraving it is difficult to give an idea of their present state. At some points it would seem as if the pillars rested on the fourth step. In that case to enter the temple you would have to go down a step. In other places, however, the uppermost step is cut through, and then it looks as if the columns had rested on bases; and then again these s.p.a.ces have been filled up, and so we have once more the first case. An architect is necessary to determine this point.

The sides have twelve columns, not reckoning the corner ones; the back and front six, including them. The rollers on which the stones were moved along, still lie around you on the steps. They have been left in order to indicate that the temple was unfinished. But the strongest evidence of this fact is the floor. In some spots (along the sides) the pavement is laid down; in the middle, however, the red limestone rock still projects higher than the level of the floor as partially laid; the flooring, therefore, can not ever have been finished. There is also no trace of an inner temple. Still less can the temple have ever been overlaid with stucco; but that it was intended to do so, we may infer from the fact that the abaci of the capitals have projecting points probably for the purpose of holding the plaster. The whole is built of a limestone, very similar to the travertine; only it is now much fretted.

The restoration which was carried on in 1781, has done much good to the building. The cutting of the stone, with which the parts have been reconnected, is simple, but beautiful.

The site of the temple is singular; at the highest end of a broad and long valley, it stands on an isolated hill. Surrounded, however, on all sides by cliffs, it commands a very distant and extensive view of the land, but takes in only just a corner of the sea. The district reposes in a sort of melancholy fertility--every where well cultivated, but scarce a dwelling to be seen. Flowering thistles were swarming with countless b.u.t.terflies, wild fennel stood here from eight to nine feet high, dry and withered of the last year's growth, but so rich and in such seeming order that one might almost take it to be an old nursery-ground. A shrill wind whistled through the columns as if through a wood, and screaming birds of prey hovered around the pediments.

TAORMINA[38]

BY JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE