{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_45132/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_45132","id":"gutenberg_45132","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45132","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: History - Other","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Travel Writing","Greece -- Description and travel"],"text":"Transcriber\u2019s Note\n\nThis version of the text is unable to reproduce certain typographic\nfeatures. Italics are delimited with the \u2018_\u2019 character as _italic_.\nAny text printed using \u201csmall capitals\u201d was shifted to all upper-case.\n\nPlease see the transcriber\u2019s notes at the end of this text for a more\ncomplete account of any other textual issues and their resolution.\n\n\n\n\n                                 Greece\n\n[Illustration]\n\n[Illustration: _The Parthenon_\n               _South-west Corner_\n\n               _From a drawing made by H. W. Williams in 1829_]\n\n\n\n\n\n                           Studies of Travel\n\n                                   by\n\n                           Edward A. Freeman\n\n                                 Greece\n\n     \u201cIN THE LIFE OF CITIES NOTHING PRESERVES LIKE EARLY OVERTHROW,\n            NOTHING DESTROYS LIKE CONTINUOUS LIFE.\u201d--P. 120\n\n                          G. P. PUTNAM\u2019S SONS\n\n                 NEW YORK                       LONDON\n         27 & 29 West 23d Street        24 Bedford Street, Strand\n                        The Knickerbocker Press\n\n                            COPYRIGHT, 1893\n                                   BY\n                          G. P. PUTNAM\u2019S SONS\n               _Entered at Stationers\u2019 Hall, London_\n                        BY G. P. PUTNAM\u2019S SONS\n\n                  Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by\n                   The Knickerbocker Press, New York\n                         G. P. PUTNAM\u2019S SONS\n\n                             TO THE MEMORY\n                                   OF\n                            MARGARET EVANS,\n                     THE COMPANION IN GREEK TRAVEL\n                             OF HER FATHER,\n                      THE WRITER OF THESE PAPERS,\n                        THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED\n                             BY HER SISTER\n\n\n\n\n                                Preface\n\n\nThe papers that have been brought together in these small volumes are\nthe results of three several journeys made by my father in Greece\nand Italy. He visited Greece for the first time in 1877, but of the\npapers written in that year, which appeared in the _Saturday Review_,\nonly those on Corfu have been reprinted. They form part of the volume\nof _Sketches from the Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice_, in\nthe preface to which work the hope was held out that some out of\nmany papers on the more distant Greek lands might one day be put\ntogether. It has been thought that these papers will not prove the\nless welcome that they must now lack the re-casting that my father\nwould undoubtedly have given to them. Since his Greek journey was made,\nfresh light has been thrown on many points by the German excavations at\nOlympia as well as by those conducted by the Greeks themselves on the\nAthenian Akropolis, at Eleusis and elsewhere.\n\nThe papers on the two Italian journies of 1881 and 1883 also stand as\nthey were written with the exception of a few verbal alterations which\nhave seemed needful in such a reproduction of what was originally\nintended for the columns of a newspaper.\n\nI have to thank the editors of the _Saturday Review_, the _Guardian_,\nand the _Pall Mall Gazette_ for their courtesy in allowing the reprint\nof these articles which have appeared in their pages.\n\n                                            FLORENCE FREEMAN,\n\n   ALICANTE:\nJanuary 17, 1893.\n\n\n\n\n                                Contents\n\n\n                                                              PAGE\n\n  ROUND PELOPONN\u00caSOS                                             1\n\n  THE ATHENIAN AKROPOLIS                                        16\n\n  ATHENS BELOW THE AKROPOLIS                                    32\n\n  MARATH\u00d4N                                                      52\n\n  THE SARONIC GULF                                              68\n\n  TIRYNS                                                        85\n\n  ARGOS                                                        106\n\n  THE AKROPOLIS OF MYK\u00caN\u00ca                                      122\n\n  THE TREASURIES AND TREASURES OF MYK\u00caN\u00ca                       140\n\n  MYK\u00caN\u00ca TO CORINTH                                            162\n\n  CORINTH                                                      183\n\n  THE CORINTHIAN GULF                                          202\n\n  CORINTH TO ELEUSIS                                           220\n\n  SOUNION                                                      239\n\n  OLYMPIA AND ITS CHURCH                                       257\n\n\n\n\n                          Round Peloponn\u00easos.\n\n\nThe traveller who enters the older Hellenic world by way of Corfu,\nand who leaves that island by an evening steamer, will awake the next\nmorning within a region which even modern geography and politics allow\nto be wholly Hellenic. As long as light serves him, he still keeps\nalong the channel which divides free Corfu from enslaved Epeiros;\nnight cuts him off from the sight of the mouth of the Ambrakian\nGulf, and of the point where modern diplomacy has decreed that Greek\nnationality shall, as far as diplomacy can affect such matters, come to\nan end. The next morning\u2019s dawn finds him off the mouth of the outer\nCorinthian Gulf. To the east he is shown the position, on one side, of\nPatras, the old Achaian city which St. Andrew a thousand years back\nso manfully defended against Slave and Saracen, on the other side, of\nMesolongi, whose fame belongs wholly to our own day. We call up the\ntwo sieges--the one where the civilian Mavrokordatos, the one hero\nwhom the Fanariot aristocracy gave to the cause of Greece, beat back\nthe Ottoman from its mud walls; the other made more famous still by\nthat fearful sally of the besieged, when, like the men of Ith\u00f4m\u00ea or\nEira, they cut their way through the thickest bayonets of the Egyptian\ninvader. There may be some to whom the record of those great deeds may\nbe an unknown tale, but who may yet remember how Mesolongi saw the\nlast and worthiest days of the life of Byron. Of Patras, of Mesolongi,\nhowever, we have hardly so much as a distant glimpse; we are told\nwhere they are, and that is all. For a while, too, the Peloponnesian\ncoast itself is more distant and less attractive than the islands to\nthe west of it, now parts, no less than Peloponn\u00easos itself, of the\nHellenic realm. Yet we may remember that, as we pass by the Eleian\nshore--\u0392\u03bf\u03c5\u03c0\u03c1\u03ac\u03c3\u03b9\u03cc\u03bd \u03c4\u03b5 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f2c\u03bb\u03b9\u03b4\u03b1 \u03b4\u1fd6\u03b1\u03bd, while we are shown where\nlies the path to Olympia, we are now passing by the true _Morea_, the\nland which once distinctively bore that name before it gradually spread\nover the whole peninsula. The mainland as yet hardly attracts us. The\ndawn has hardly given way to full sunlight as we see Ithak\u00ea fade away\nin the distance, while Kephall\u00eania lifts her bold height full before\nus. Half the Odyssey rushes on our memory, and the memory of some may\nbe English enough to remember the happy description of our own \u00c6lfred,\nhow Aulixes--his form of _Odysseus_--was king of two kingdoms, Ithak\u00ea\nand something else, which he held under the _casere_ Agamemn\u00f4n. A\nhappy power of seeing the analogies between the institutions of his\nown day and those of remote ages enabled the West-Saxon King who had\nseen Rome in his childhood, the prince under whom English, Welsh, and\nDanish rulers held their kingdoms, to understand the imperial position\nof the lord of many islands and of all Argos better perhaps than it\nwas understood again till the light of comparative research broke on\nour own age. We pass by, hoping for some future chance of prying into\nthe geographical difficulties of the Homeric Ithak\u00ea, but feeling at\nall events that it is a stirring moment when we look on islands which\nlegend at least pictures to us as the realm of Odysseus, and in seeing\nwhich we may take in a lesson of comparative politics from the noblest\nruler of our own people.\n\nStill the insular side is more prominent than the peninsular.\nZakynthos, Zante, the isle of flowers, the flower of the Levant, plays\nno great part in Hellenic history, but as the height of Kephall\u00eania\npasses away, the beautiful island, with its hills, its valleys, its\ncity spread along the shore and climbing up the mountain-side, is the\nchief object to draw the eye to itself as long as it remains in sight.\nIt is not till we have passed the curve of the Kyparissian gulf, not\ntill we have passed the great islands, that the coast itself becomes\nthe main object of study. For a study it is, whether in geography,\nin history, or in simple contemplation of the grand coast-line with\nthe inland mountains soaring above all, and changing their seeming\ngeographical position with the various shiftings of the vessel\u2019s\ncourse. The snow-capped height of Pentedaktylos, once Ta getos, rises\nover all, seen from this point and from that, but always suggesting\nthe same thought, and commonly bringing with its mention the same\nanswer--There lies Sparta. The shape of southern Peloponn\u00easos lends\nitself well to a coasting survey of this kind. The three long fingers\nin which the peninsula ends, and the two deep gulfs between them, allow\nthe whole country to be seen as in a map, and allow most objects to\nbe seen from several points, and therefore to assume several shapes.\nFrom Zante to Cerigo--a name which can hardly be a corruption, but\nwhich must have by some process supplanted the earlier Kyth\u00eara--the\ncoast-line is everything. Islands there are not a few, but they are\nsmall islands near to the coast, entering into the general scenery\nof the coast, and, near as they are, some of them were, like Cerigo\nitself, part of the dominion of Venice and of the powers which stepped\ninto the place of Venice. Any map earlier than the cession of the\nIonian Islands to Greece will show a boundary passing between the\ncoast and several islands which seem to lie within a stone\u2019s throw\nof it. Along the whole line, the possessors of the mainland, first\nOttoman, then Greek, were hemmed in, and as it were blockaded, by a\nseries of floating outposts planted off their shores by the successive\npossessors of the Seven Islands. One is apt, in using a map of the\ndays of \u201cthe Protection,\u201d to mistake the odd-looking frontier drawn\nin the sea for the probable course of the steamer. Now the frontier\nis gone; the great islands and the tributary islets all form part of\nthe same kingdom as the mainland. All are now Hellenic in every sense,\nyet the most striking object in the journey brings forcibly to the\nmind how recent and artificial is the modern use of the Hellenic name.\nTainaros runs far into the sea, as it did when the temple of Poseid\u00f4n\ncrowned its height, and when the Helot refugee sought shelter under\nhis protection from his Spartan master. Behind it rises Pentedaktylos,\nor rather Tainaros carries on Pentedaktylos into the sea. All the\nfolk of those heights called themselves Hell\u00eanes in the old days,\nand all call themselves Hell\u00eanes now. But in those intermediate days\nwhich are painted for us by the Imperial geographer, the name of\nHell\u00eanes was confined to a very narrow range indeed. The only Hell\u00eanes\nwhom Constantine knew, the only people who were so called by their\nneighbours--for they do not seem to have borne that name on their own\ntongues--were the men of Tainaros, the wild and, down almost to our\nown day, unconquerable land which had in his time already got the name\nof Maina. These, he tells us pointedly, were no Slaves, distinguishing\nthem from their Slavonic neighbours on Pentedaktylos itself. They\nwere called Hell\u00eanes, but it was not in distinction from the Slaves\nthat they were so called. They were, he says, descendants of the old\nRomans. Let no one dream of colonists from the Palatine or even from\nthe Aventine. The \u201cold Romans\u201d of Constantine are what we should\ncall Greeks, Hell\u00eanes, in this particular case the Eleutherolak\u00f4nes,\nthe people of the Lakonian towns set free under Roman patronage from\ntheir subjection to Sparta. The Roman, the subject of the Empire, is\ndistinguished from the Slave, but these particular Romans bore the\nHellenic name because they, or at least their immediate forefathers,\nclave to the Hellenic Gods. Late in the ninth century, till the\napostolic zeal of the first Basil brought them within the Christian\nfold, the men of Maina still sacrificed to Poseidon and the other gods\nof their fathers. Thus they were Hell\u00eanes, Hell\u00eanes in the sense which\nthe name bears in the New Testament, Hell\u00eanes in the sense in which\nJovianus of Korkyra despoiled the temples and altars of the Hell\u00eanes\nto raise the church of the Panagia. No piece of nomenclature is more\ninstructive than this. The name of Hell\u00ean would have been an insult to\nthe Orthodox Roman of the purest Hellenic blood. It clave to the men\nof Tainaros only because they clave to Hellenic idols. Yet, whether as\nEleutherolak\u00f4nes, as Hell\u00eanes, or as Mainotes, the men of Tainaros have\nfor many ages continued to have a name of their own.\n\nThe most historic spot, however, in the whole voyage is reached some\nwhile before we come to Tainaros. Pentedaktylos, the specially Slavonic\nmountain of Constantine\u2019s day, suggests its Hellenic neighbours, and\nPentedaktylos comes in sight before we have doubled the first of the\nthree great Peloponnesian promontories. Among the islands which lie\nalong the coast is one which at first sight is hardly known to be an\nisland. Sphagia keeps close watch over the haven of Navarino--watch\nso close that the whole length of Sphagia has to be passed before we\nsee the narrow mouth which leads into the landlocked harbour which saw\nthe last great sea-fight fought in Hellenic waters. Sphagia is there;\nNavarino is there; but some have ventured to doubt whether Sphagia is\nSphakt\u00earia, and whether Navarino is Pylos. Some have held that, in the\nchanges of the coast, what was Sphakt\u00earia has now become part of the\nmainland, and that the island which we now see is not that where Sparta\nendured her first great humiliation, where Kle\u00f4n and D\u00eamosthen\u00eas, in\nthe teeth of all expectation, of every seeming impossibility, brought\nback \u201cthe men,\u201d the Spartan captives, in triumph to the harbour of\nPeiraieus. Such questions as this cannot be settled by one who sees the\nsites only as the power of steam hurries him alongside of them. In this\ngeneral view the question is of no great moment. There is the coast,\nwhatever may be the exact spot, where the legend makes Nestor entertain\nT\u00ealemachos, and whence T\u00ealemachos and Peisistratos drove a carriage\nand pair in two days from Pylos to Sparta. Now whether T\u00ealemachos\nand Peisistratos be real men or mere creations of fancy, the road at\nleast is no creation of fancy. The poet would not have ventured to\nmake his heroes perform such a drive, as something perfectly easy and\nusual unless Peloponn\u00easos had been better supplied with roads in his\nday than it is in our own. Here then we get a kind of history out of\nthe legend. There again is the coast, whatever may be the exact spot,\nwhere happened the most remarkable episode of the Peloponnesian war,\nthe occupation of Pylos-the Laced\u00e6monian Koryphasion-and all that came\nof it. With yet more certain knowledge of the exact spot, we can point\nto the harbour where the fetters of Greece were broken, and where the\nmight of Turk and Egyptian fell before the combined powers of Orthodox\nRussia, Catholic France, and Protestant England.\n\nWe pass on from promontory to promontory, the gulfs taking different\nshapes and bringing different objects into sight at every moment. At\nlast\n\n          Slow sinks, more lovely ere his work is done,\n          Behind Morea\u2019s hills the setting sun.\n\nPentedaktylos and Tainaros are lighted up, as the sun, in Greek phrase,\nreigns (\u03b2\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03bb\u03b5\u03cd\u03b5\u03b9) over the heavens from which he is about to sink\ninto his golden cup. Cerigo and Malea are seen only by the help of the\nlesser lights, but we can still see the long harbourless coast of\nLakonia stretching away to the Argolic lands, and we have found out\ntoo the site of the Lakonian Epidauros, more famous in later days as\nMonembasia. As we woke one morning about the islands of the West, so we\nwake the next along the islands of the \u00c6g\u00e6an. T\u00eanos, Andros, Mykonos,\nM\u00ealos, Naxos, D\u00ealos itself, come into view at different points, till we\nstand before the haven which has in modern times made itself the centre\nof the commerce and navigation of these seas. The isle of Syros stands\nbefore us, bleak and barren. There is the steep conical hill, covered,\nevery inch of it, with houses rising up to the church of St. George,\nthe cathedral church of Latin Syra, the medi\u00e6val city, the city of\nrefuge in days when men were driven to fall back on the hill-fortresses\nof the earliest day. On the shore, on the site of ancient Syros, but\nspreading over the adjoining hills, is the modern Hermoupolis, the busy\nmart of all the islands. Another night, a fair starry night, on the\ndeep, and we reach the goal of the whole pilgrimage. Day has hardly\ndawned enough to see clearly Sounion and its marble columns, but there,\nhowever dimly seen, is the shore of Attica, and the thought comes that\ncame into the heart of the sailors of Salaminian Aias, that before long\n\n                         \u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03b5\u03af\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03bc\u2019 \u03b1\u03bd \u1f08\u03b8\u03ac\u03bd\u03b1\u03c2.\n\n\n\n\n                        The Athenian Akropolis.\n\n\nIt may not seem easy to say anything new on so well-worn a subject as\nAthens and her Akropolis, but of all subjects in the world there is\nnone which has been more steadily looked at from a single inadequate\npoint of view. It is moreover a subject whose history is not yet ended,\nand which supplies new points of view by the fact that new pages in\nits history are still happening. Nowhere is the unity of history more\nneeded to be taught as a practical lesson than on the spot where we\nmay fairly say that the political history of the world begins. There,\non the spot whose history begins before the beginning of recorded\nhistory, we feel perhaps more keenly than anywhere else how blind\nand narrow is the way in which the history of that spot has been so\ncommonly looked at, how large a part of the true interest, the true\nlife, of the spot is lopped away, if we look only at some two or three\ncenturies of its long and varied history. In the city of Athens, as\na whole, we are painfully struck by the glaring contrast of extreme\nantiquity and extreme newness. There are buildings of yesterday; there\nare buildings of a thousand years back; there are buildings of two\nthousand years back, but the three classes stand out in marked and\nindeed unpleasant contrast to one another. There are no intermediate\nlinks such as there are at Rome, binding the great classes of objects\ntogether, and making them all fit into their places as members of one\nunbroken series. Hence, while at Rome we never forget that we are at\nRome, at Athens we may sometimes forget that we are at Athens, That\nso it is no fault of the Athenians, old or new. It comes of the fact\nthat the Turk once ruled in Athens, and therefore had to be driven out\nof Athens; while, as the Turk never ruled in Rome, he never had to be\ndriven out of Rome. If this is true of the city in general, it is far\nless true of the Akropolis. There we can never forget that we are in\nAthens; and, if we use our eyes aright, we can never forget that the\nAthens in which we stand did not exist, as some seem to fancy, only\nfor two or three centuries two thousand years back, but that its long\nhistory spans the whole range from our first glimpses of civilized\nEurope down to the warfare in which men still living have borne a\npart. It is but a narrow view of the Akropolis of Athens to look on it\nsimply as the place where the great works of the age of Perikl\u00eas may\nbe seen as models in a museum. A truer and a wider view will begin\nearlier and will go on later. The Parthen\u00f4n and the Propylaia are but\nthe records of one stage, though doubtless the most brilliant stage, in\nthe history of a city which ought equally to number among its records\nthe prim\u00e6val wall which was venerable and mysterious in the days of\nThucydides and the bulwarks which were raised by the last Odysseus in\nwarfare with the Turkish oppressor. In the eye of the true historian\nthose earliest and those latest records, and the records of the long\nages which passed between them, all have, perhaps not all an equal\nvalue, but at least value enough to stamp them all as alike parts of\nthe history of the city, all alike entitled to respect and veneration\nfrom every one in whose eyes the history of the city is precious.\nOn the hill of the Akropolis and its buildings the whole history\nof Athens, from its earliest to its latest days, has been clearly\nwritten, and there it may still be clearly read wherever the barbarism\nof classical pedantry has not wiped out the record. The prim\u00e6val wall,\nthe wall of Themistokl\u00eas, the wall of Kim\u00f4n, all come within the\ncharmed period. No one is likely to damage them. It needs, however,\na wider view than that of the mere student of the writings, the mere\nadmirer of the art, of two or three arbitrarily chosen centuries, to\ntake in the full meaning even of the works of those arbitrarily chosen\ncenturies. Those remains of the earliest masonry, for which we have to\nsearch behind the great buildings of the days of the democracy, those\nstones which rival aught at Argos or at Tiryns, have a tale to tell\nsuch as Argos and Tiryns cannot tell. Why was Athens Athens? How came\nthat one city to fill that particular place in the world\u2019s history\nwhich no other city ever did fill? In the Homeric catalogue Athens\nstands alone; all Attica is already Athens, while every other part of\nthe catalogue is crowded with the names of those smaller towns many of\nwhich passed away before recorded history begins. Marathon and Eleusis\nfind no place in the great record. The work had already been done, be\nthe name of the doer of it Th\u00easeus or any other, which made Athens all\nthat Athens was--which fused together into one commonwealth the largest\nextent of territory, the largest number of citizens which, according\nto Greek political ideas, could act together as members of a single\ncommonwealth. Athens could become all that she did become, because, in\nan unrecorded age, in an age of which those rude stones at least are\nthe only record, all Attica became Athens. To that great revolution,\nnone the less certain because in its own nature unrecorded, it is\nalike owing that Athens in one age could rear the trophy of Marath\u00f4n,\nand that in another she was chosen to be the head of regenerate Greece.\nThe oldest wall--we may call it the wall of Th\u00easeus--and the latest\nwall of Odysseus are but the earliest and the latest pages of one\nstory, bound together by the direct tie of cause and effect.\n\nIf then, fully to take in the historic greatness of the Athenian\nAkropolis, we must look to facts and their records alike far earlier\nand far later than the days of Perikl\u00eas, the works of the days of\nPerikl\u00eas lose half their value if we look at them simply as the\nworks of the age of Perikl\u00eas, and do not bear in mind the long ages,\nthe stirring events, of their later history. The house of Ath\u00ean\u00ea is\nemphatically the _Parthen\u00f4n_. When D\u00eam\u00eatrios the Besieger was lodged\nin its _opisthodomos_, the satirical remark was made that he and his\nfollowing were by no means fitting guests for its virgin owner. It\nshould, however, be remembered that that ancient temple has remained\nthe house of the Virgin under three distinct forms of worship. The\nclassical purist might disdain to notice---or, if he noticed, he might\nbe eager to wipe out such a memory--that on the walls of the _cella_\nmay still be seen the paintings, the \u03b5\u1f30\u03ba\u03cc\u03bd\u03b5\u03c2 of another creed,\nanother form of art, from those of Pheidias and Iktinos. Yet those\npainted forms tell us of one of the great moments in the history of\nSouth-Eastern Europe--one might rather say one of the great moments\nin the history of the world. It speaks of the day when the New Rome\nwas again queen of all the nations, from Crete to the Danube, from the\nEuphrates to the Bay of Naples, when the Slayer of the Bulgarians, in\nthe moment of his triumph, chose, out of all the holy places of his\nEmpire, the church of the Panagia on the rock of Athens as the scene\nof his thanksgiving for the great salvation which his arms had wrought.\nWe stand on the rock, and run over in our minds the long ages between\nPerikl\u00eas returning from the recovery of Samos, and Basil returning from\nthe recovery of Ochrida. We look down upon the lands which endured the\nravages of the last Philip in the cause of Rome, on the city which\nendured the storm of Sulla in the cause of Mithridat\u00eas. We look down\non the works of Hadrian and the works of H\u00ear\u00f4d\u00eas, and the eye wanders\nto a spot where the monument of a Syrian prince is the most prominent\nobject on an Athenian hill. We think how long Athens remained the\nschool of Rome, how the Goth turned away from her walls, how Justinian\nat once strengthened her as a fortress and took away from her her crown\nas the seat of heathen philosophy and heathen worship. Yet we mark\nthe slight lingering of ancient memories which, in re-dedicating her\nancient temples to the new faith, still kept a certain analogy between\ntheir older and their newer functions. We mark how the Parthen\u00f4n still\nremained the Parthen\u00f4n; how the temple of the heathen warrior Th\u00easeus\nbecame the church of the Christian warrior George. We think--Athens\nis not expressly mentioned in the tale, but she can hardly be deemed\nto have lagged behind her fellows--how the Greeks, the \u1f19\u03bb\u03bb\u03b1\u03b4\u03b9\u03ba\u03bf\u03af, as\nthe Byzantine writer scornfully calls them, set forth on their strange\nand bootless errand of delivering Constantinople from Isaurian and\nIconoclastic rule. Below us lie the churches of Eir\u00ean\u00ea, monuments of\ndays when Athens and Constantinople were united in a common orthodoxy,\nwhen Athens had given an Empress to the Eastern world, and when men\nagain dreamed of a union of East and West by the marriage of an\nAthenian and a Frank. All these memories lead up naturally to the great\nscene of Basil\u2019s day of triumph, when a prince who might be deemed at\nonce Roman, Greek, and Slave, chose Athens and her still abiding\nParthen\u00f4n for the greatest ceremony of his long reign of warfare and\nof victory. We pass on to another age. The spirit which will hardly\nendure the memory of a Greek-speaking C\u00e6sar on the holy hill of Ath\u00ean\u00ea\nwill find times even less to its taste when an Italian prince, in his\nwill drawn up in the Italian tongue, bequeaths the city of Athens to\nthe Church of St. Mary. Things had indeed changed, alike from the days\nof Perikl\u00eas and from the days of Basil, yet Athens under the French\nand Italian Dukes had in some sort come back nearer to her ancient\nplace than when she beheld the thanksgiving of the Macedonian Emperor.\nAthens, by that name, was again one of the powers of the world, no\nlonger a mere province of Rome, either in her older or her newer\nseat. It was indeed a time of foreign rule. A Latin Duke had made\nhis palace in the Propylaia of Perikl\u00eas; a Latin Bishop had displaced\nthe Orthodox rite of Basil\u2019s day in the church which was still the\nParthen\u00f4n. Yet those were days when Athens was the seat of a brilliant\ncourt, when the fame of her princes was spread through Europe. The\nformula of our own Shakespeare, so strange in the ears of many, when he\nspeaks of Th\u00easeus Duke of Athens, is a mark of days when her Kings and\nArchons had been forgotten, but the memory of her Dukes still lived in\nthe minds of men. But the wanton barbarism of classical exclusiveness\nwill not endure the memory or the record or the monuments of days like\nthese. Only yesterday the tower of the Dukes of Athens was standing.\nIts stern and heavy mass well broke the horizontal lines of the Greek\narchitecture, and gave to the whole group somewhat of that outline\nwhich the hill of Laon has, and which the hill of Athens has not. But\nthe tower was late; it was barbarous; it did not belong to the two or\nthree favoured ages; it was a reminder of times which the exclusive\nvotaries of those two or three favoured ages would fain wipe out from\nthe records of mankind. Mr. Mahaffy, indeed, who cannot distinguish\nbetween the taking of Constantinople in 1204 and the taking of Athens\nin 1687, believed that Morosini had found time to build this massive\ntower during the few weeks of his occupation. Mr. Mahaffy, who looks\non the Akropolis as so sacred that it was a sin to bombard it, even to\ndrive the Turks out of it--who seems to think freedom and national\nbeing something of less moment than the preservation of this or that\nstatue or column--calls for its destruction in his text and crows over\nits completed destruction in a note. Of this piece of wanton barbarism\nDr. Schliemann must bear the blame. Who, if any, were his Greek\naccomplices, we have forborne to ask. But the tower is gone; a most\nstriking memorial of one age in the history of Athens has been swept\naway, under the paltry pretext that inscriptions might be found among\nits materials. By a righteous Nemesis, when the destroyers had finished\ntheir work of havoc, they found nothing to reward them.\n\nWe can conceive nothing more paltry, nothing more narrow, nothing more\nopposed to the true spirit of scholarship, than these attempts to wipe\nout the history of any age. So far from destroying the ducal tower,\nwe would have kept the Turkish minaret. For the Parthen\u00f4n, already the\ntemple of heathendom and of two forms of Christianity, became in the\nend the temple of Islam. A mosque had of course its minaret. Its lower\npart is still there in the form of a staircase, but the characteristic\nupper part has vanished. We know not how it vanished, whether through\nwanton destruction or in one of the sieges in the seventeenth or the\nnineteenth century. In any case, we should have been well pleased to\nsee both minaret and tower breaking the outline, and speaking of days\nwhich have been, but which have passed away. Greece is free; the rule\nboth of the Frank and of the Turk is gone; but that is no reason why\nthe memorials of either Frank or Turk should be swept away. A higher\nnational feeling would keep them carefully as trophies of victory. At\nall events, let not men, calling themselves scholars, lend themselves\nto such deeds of wanton destruction. The name of Morosini is unfairly\nheld up to execration because an accident of warfare, which he could\nnot control, made him the destroyer of the Parthen\u00f4n. A far heavier\nblame rests on those who were the deliberate destroyers of the ducal\ntower. On them indeed may well fall the words of withering scorn in\nwhich Byron so well couples the destroying names of Eratostratos and\nElgin.\n\n\n\n\n                      Athens Below the Akropolis.\n\n\nThe main characteristic of modern Athens, and one of its chief points\nof contrast with Rome, is that whatever is not very old is so very\nnew. But the visitor is apt at once to press this characteristic\nfurther than strict truth warrants, and to draw a more strongly marked\ngeographical limit between old and new than strict truth warrants\neither. At first sight we are apt to fancy that everything that is old\nstands above, and that everything that is new lies below. The fact\nthat the greatest work of all, the temple of Olympian Zeus, happens\nto lie below, hardly makes a practical exception. By the loss of so\nmany of its columns it has ceased to be in appearance the greatest\nwork of all, and, what is more to the point, it has practically ceased\nto be part of the city. It lies outside and alone, apart both from\nthe Akropolis and the modern city. It joins indeed to make one of the\nbest and most familiar views of the Akropolis, but it joins only as a\nforeground to a distant object. To take Mr. Mahaffy\u2019s illustration, it\nhas come to stand to the Akropolis as Hoar Abbey stands to the Rock of\nCashel. On another side, the Th\u00easeion, in its absolute perfection as\nit is seen in any general view, stands as a kind of intermediate link\nbetween the upper and the lower region. Otherwise the impression given\nby the general view of Athens is that the old things are all above, as,\nwith one or two exceptions which need not be dwelled on, the new things\nundoubtedly are below. The Akropolis seems to throw out the hill of\nthe Mouseion with the monument of Philopappos as a kind of outwork;\nand, if we take in objects which cannot be seen at the first glance,\nthe most remarkable and venerable objects, the remains of the ancient\nwalls, the tombs cut in the rock, the seats of the Pnyx, the steps on\nthe hill of Ar\u00eas, all lie on the upper ground. Against these, setting\naside very recent diggings, the low city seems to have nothing to set,\nexcept a mass of modern and ugly houses and one modern house bigger and\nuglier than the rest.\n\nThis impression is not untrue as regards the general aspect of the\ncity, but it breaks down when we come to examine things somewhat more\nin detail. There is more of antiquity in the modern city of Athens than\none thinks at first sight; still the comparative rarity of ancient\nremains, and the strong contrast between such as there are and the\nmodern buildings, form a distinct feature in the character of Athens,\nas distinguished from cities which present to us an unbroken series\nof monuments from the earlier times to the latest. Again, it is true\nthat, of such ancient remains as there are, the greater part seem, as\nit were, to shelter themselves under the shadow of the Akropolis, and\nbut few of them belong to the most brilliant times of Athenian history.\nThe Th\u00easeion, standing as a link between the upper and the lower city,\nhas a position of its own. The most perfect of existing Greek temples,\nit might alone make the fortune of Athens as a place of artistic\npilgrimage, even were there nothing else there to see. In the general\nview it seems to be absolutely perfect. The one small change which it\nhas undergone reminds us at once of a living page of history and of\nthe folly of those who labour in vain to wipe out history. The temple,\nlike its greater fellow on the Akropolis, became a church, but in its\nnew character it still kept a certain appropriate remembrance of its\nolder use. As the house of the Virgin still remained the house of the\nVirgin, so the house of the warrior hero remained, as the church of\nSt. George, the house of a warrior saint. If, as some say, the older\ndedication was really not to Th\u00easeus but to H\u00earakl\u00eas, the parallel is\nin no way weakened, but rather strengthened. Th\u00easeus indeed overthrew\nthe Marathonian bull; but H\u00earakl\u00eas and St. George were alike victorious\nover dragons. To fit the building for its new use, no change seems to\nhave been needed, beyond taking down two columns of the inner range of\nthe eastern front to make room for the apse of the converted basilica.\nThe caprice of a generation back took away the apse without restoring\nthe columns, and so left the building in a state which would seem\nincomplete in the eyes of either its heathen or its Christian patrons.\nTh\u00easeus might ask for his columns; George might ask for his apse; and\nthe common robber of both would be hard put to for an answer. Now, as\none of the many detached museums of Athens, the Th\u00easeion contains a\ncollection of sculptures, inscriptions, and architectural fragments,\npre-eminent among which is the archaic statue wrought by Aristi\u00f4n,\nwhich looks so unpleasantly like a specimen of barbaric art. Still, why\nmay we not hold that in sculpture, as in so many other things, likeness\ndoes not prove direct connexion, but merely analogy of stage? At all\nevents, Assyria never made anything better than the work of Aristi\u00f4n,\nwhile Athens went on and grew from the stage of Aristi\u00f4n into the stage\nof Pheidias.\n\nBefore the diggings in the Kerameikos which have brought to light such\nchoice sculptures, as well as a large part of the city wall and the\nDipylon gate, the Th\u00easeion stood almost alone as a representative of\nthe great days of Athens on ground lower than the Akropolis and the\nhills which front it. The theatre of Dionysos and the other buildings\nwhich have been dug out from the side of the hill are rather part of\nthe Akropolis itself. The temple of Olympian Zeus, and its feeble\ncompanion, the Arch of Hadrian, stand apart and make a feeble company\nby themselves. In that part, however, of the modern city which lies\nnearest under the Akropolis, we still have a collection of remains\nof later Greek and Roman times, while such of the Byzantine churches\nas are left scattered here and there through the city form a study\nof surprising interest in their own class. All the world knows the\nmonument of Lysikrat\u00eas and the later _h\u00f4rologion_ of Andronikos\nKyrrhest\u00eas, better known as the Temple of the Eight Winds. Perhaps all\nthe world does not know the singular way in which they were adapted\nto the uses of rival creeds, how Franciscan friars found a home under\nthe graceful Corinthian finial of Lysikrat\u00eas, while howling dervishes\nquartered themselves under the pagan symbols of Andronikos. We mourn as\nwe look at the graceful toy of Lysikrat\u00eas, the parent of a whole class\nof structures at St. Remi and Igel--is it sacrilege to add Northampton,\nGeddington, and Waltham? Genuine Greek Corinthian capitals are so rare\nthat it is sad to see that not one is altogether perfect.\n\nThe _h\u00f4rologion_ of Andronikos--if it is lawful to speak so freely of\nanything built at Athens before the Christian era--has never struck\nus as anything specially graceful, but it is one of the links which\ndirectly connect the ancient and the modern city. It stands at what\nwe may call the ancient end of one of the great modern streets, one\nwhich seems to represent an ancient street and which from this monument\nbears the name of Aiolos. But the quarter where the _h\u00f4rologion_ stands\nis one of the quarters where these later and lesser antiquities stand\nthickest on the ground. Not far off is the _Stoa_ of Hadrian, where\nthe Imperial architect, forsaking the fashion of his own day, tries,\nlike our modern architects, to call up the forms of a past time, and\nreproduces the ancient Doric, of course in its slenderer form. But this\nwhole quarter is full of remains of one kind and another. The bazaar is\nin every sense a link to past times; an ancient wall fences it in, and\nthe sight within, so unlike the European streets of the more polished\nquarters, reminds us that Athens once was an Eastern city. Various\nscraps lie around us; here are two little forsaken churches side by\nside forming in a manner one building; the cupola of one is half broken\ndown, and its bell-gable, its \u03ba\u03c9\u03b4\u03c9\u03bd\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03ac\u03c3\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd, is perched on a\nneighbouring colonnade. Not far off are two buildings, works of\nintrusive powers and intrusive architecture, both of which form part\nof the history of the city, and of which the one ought to be preserved\nas carefully as the other. No one is likely to propose to destroy the\ncolonnade of Roman Corinthian work because its capitals are not of the\nsame types as the capitals of Lysikrat\u00eas. But it is equally needful to\nkeep the one mosque which remains from Turkish Athens, a building whose\nstyle stands to that of the Byzantine churches in somewhat the same\nrelation in which the Roman colonnades stand to the true Grecian. The\nmosque stands applied to some military purpose. A worthier use for it,\na better badge of triumph and deliverance, would have been to make it\na memorial church for some of the heroes of the War of Independence.\nIn the same quarter, drawing near to the Th\u00easeion, are the remains of\nthe _gymnasion_ of Ptolemy, where a crowd of inscriptions of various\ndates tempt us to spell them out, till we light on one which contains\nthe name of the wife of H\u00ear\u00f4d\u00eas of Marath\u00f4n. His theatre is on the\nother side of the Akropolis, forming part, like the elder theatre,\nof the Akropolis itself. But it is in the quarter to the north of\nthe Akropolis, the quarter of the new _agor\u00ea_, in which the visitor\nto Athens finds more than elsewhere the opportunity for the process\nso delightful in the old cities of Gaul and Germany, and Italy, the\nprocess of prowling hither and thither, and lighting on some fragment\nof antiquity--the more varied date of style the better--at every\nquarter. The Akropolis is too carefully cleared of all that is new;\nthe modern city keeps too little that is old; here, in this quarter of\nAthens, old and new are mingled together in that way which gives to the\ninquirer the full interest of discovery.\n\nBut, among the later antiquities of Athens, it is the churches which\nclaim the highest place. To the traveller from the West they have a\nspecial interest. As no other city of his pilgrimage gives him the\nsame store of buildings of pagan Greek architecture, so there is no\nother which gives him such a store of buildings of the second--the\nChristian-Greek architecture. Nor is their interest any the less\nbecause of the small size of the modern Athenian churches. There is\nnot only nothing to rival St. Sophia, St. Vital, or St. Mark; there\nis nothing to rival even their own neighbour at Daphn\u00ea. The Eastern\nChurch, like the ancient Church of Ireland, seems always to have been\nbetter pleased to build a crowd of small churches rather than a single\none on the scale of the great minsters of Western Europe. One cause\nof this peculiarity doubtless was the use of a single altar in the\nEastern rite, which suggested the building of several distinct churches\nin cases where a Western architect would rather have built a single\nlarge church with several chapels. Athens, therefore, is full of small\nchurches, the survivors, we fear, of a larger number, some of which\nperished in the laying out of the modern city. A crowd of them cling,\nas it were, to the roots of the Akropolis, in the region of the bazaar\nand of the monument of Andronikos. The eye soon gets used to, but it\ndoes not get tired of, their little cupolas and apses, which always\nadd a pleasing feature to the corners where they are found, though\nnone of them rival either the stateliness or the picturesque effect\nof the churches of the West. A few are of greater size and of higher\narchitectural character, and one, without being of greater size, is one\nof the greatest curiosities in Christendom. This is the metropolitan\nchurch of Athens, surely the smallest church out of _Scotia_--we seek\nfor a word which shall take in both Cashel and St. Andrew\u2019s--that ever\nwas designed for metropolitan or cathedral rank. It looks like a toy;\nit has been wittily said that it seems meant to receive the throne\nof the Boy Bishop. But it has the thorough Byzantine air; it has the\napse, the cupola of the Athenian form, the heads of the windows cutting\ninto the cupola--a form which stands to such cupolas as we have seen\nat Corfu and Daphn\u00ea in the same relation in which a German apse or\ntower with many gabled sides stands to an apse or tower of the more\nusual form. The church, small as it is, is rich, covered with plates of\nsculpture, some of which at least are ancient fragments used up again.\n\nIt is not easy, at all events for the traveller to whom Byzantine forms\nare still new, to fix the exact date of the Athenian churches. Nor\ncan he find, at least off-hand, much to help him in easily accessible\nbooks. Messrs. Texier and Pullan have put out a splendid book, most\nvaluable for the illustrations of the particular buildings which they\nthink good to describe, but which is useless as a general view of\nByzantine architecture, and which does not contain a single Athenian\nor other Greek example. Mr. J. M. Neale, in his _History of the Holy\nEastern Church_, goes far more fully into the matter, though we are\nsometimes tempted to kick at the guidance of a writer who talks about\n\u201cArta in Ambracia,\u201d and who attributes \u201ca long and peaceful reign\u201d to\nthe Slayer of the Bulgarians. Of the periods into which he divides\nByzantine art he places the metropolitan Church in the second, which\nreaches from 537 to 1003. This takes in the time of Eir\u00ean\u00ea, the\nAthenian Empress to whom Athenian tradition is fond of attributing\nthe churches of her native city. But most of the Athenian churches,\nincluding the two which call for most special notice, he assigns to\nhis third period, 1003-1453. This period, we do not exactly know why,\nis said to be one of Latin influence; but why should Latin influence\ncome in in 1003 of all years? and what Latin influence is there to\nbe seen in such buildings as the churches of St. Theodore and the\nKapnikarea? These are, on the whole, the two most striking churches in\nAthens. They stand well in open places of the modern city, a relief,\nthough a strange contrast, among its modern forms--a contrast indeed\nso strong that we have heard it whispered that their destruction has\nsometimes been dreamed of. If there is any Latin element in either,\nit is in the church of the Kapnikarea which has a kind of secondary\nchurch, with a cupola of its own, alongside of the main building, with\nits Greek cross and central cupola. This secondary church does not\nappear at St. Theodore, but the Kapnikarea has another feature which\nSt. Theodore has not, in the form of a large _narthex_, which is surely\na special sign of orthodoxy. The remembrance of Peterborough flashed\nacross our mind as we saw this noble portico with its six arches, two\nwider and four narrower, crowned by four gables. It has suffered much\nin its effect from the glazing of some of the arches, as well as from\nthe rising of the ground, which has covered the columns up to nearly\nhalf their height. This portico is indeed worthy of study; it is a\nlegitimate translation into the language of an arched style of the old\nportico with its entablature, as the west front of Peterborough is\na further translation into the language of a style, not only arched,\nbut pointed. Joining on to the _narthex_ is also a porch on the north\nside, a porch clearly forming part of the same design, with arches\nresting on columns, and finished with three gabled faces. Instead of\nthese features, St. Theodore has a simple west front, composed, like\nordinary west fronts, of doors and windows. Its most marked external\nfeature is the large bell-gable perched on the south transept. Within,\nthe Kapnikarea has the advantage, as its cupola rests on columns with\nquasi-Corinthian capitals. Those of the portico have capitals of\nvarious forms, mostly unclassical. The material of both these churches\nis mainly that later form of the alternation of stone and brick which\ngrew out of the earlier Roman masonry, and which we have already seen\nin Corfu. These churches, and a crowd of others, smaller and less\nstriking, will not be passed unheeded by any one in whose eyes history,\nwhether political or artistic, is one unbroken tale. They are, unless\nwe may claim a place for their corrupt follower in the Turkish mosque,\nthe latest among the antiquities of Athens, and they are not less\nworthy of study than the earliest. With them we will take our leave\nof the city of the violet crown, and of the land of which the wisdom\nof some pr\u00e6-historic reformer made her more than the head. We pass\nfrom Athens and from Attica; one stage more, one bound rather, over\nthe central sea of Greece, will lead us beyond the bounds of Hellas\nitself. One thought more comes across us as we pass from Athens, as we\nmake ready to pass from Greece. Between the work of the earliest and of\nthe latest Grecian heroes there is a strange likeness. Th\u00easeus--that\nname will do as well as any other--brought together rival cities to\nform one abiding commonwealth, and thereby to create the Athens alike\nof archons, emperors, dukes, and kings. As rival cities forgot their\nrivalry in the presence of Th\u00easeus, so rival party leaders forget their\nrivalries in the presence of Kanar\u00eas. The hero is gone; and while we\nwrite this, Greece, and those who care for Greece, are wondering who\ncan fill his place. His place in truth no one can fill, but the lesson\ntaught by the close of his life ought not to pass away. If rival\nleaders could work side by side at the bidding of the one man whom all\nwere proud to own as their master, they may go on in the same unselfish\npath when the voice which calls them to union is no longer the voice of\none man, however illustrious, but the voice of their country itself.\n\n\n\n\n                               Marath\u00f4n.\n\n\nThe visitor to Athens, even if he has not time to examine every\nhistoric spot in Attica, must at least visit the most historic spot\nof all, the spot where it was fixed that Attica should remain Attica\nand that Europe should remain Europe. Mr. Lowe, we may well believe,\nstood alone in looking on the fight of Marath\u00f4n as a matter of small\nimportance, because the day which fixed the destiny of the world saw\nonly a comparatively small amount of slaughter. Mr. Lowe of course\nreally knew better; but there are those who really seem not to know\nbetter, those who measure things only by their physical bigness, and\ncannot take in either their results or their moral greatness. There\nhas often been far more blood shed to decide which of two Eastern\ndespots should have the mastery than was shed to decide that Europe\nshould not fall under the dominion of Eastern despots. Never surely\ndid the future fate of the world hang in the same way on the will of a\nsingle man as when the arguments of Miltiad\u00eas won over the Polemarch\nKallimachos to give his vote for immediate battle. That vote was, as\nit were, the very climax of European constitutional life. All rested\non the voice of one man, not because all authority was vested in one\nman, but because it was vested in many. When the ten generals were\nequally divided, Kallimachos gave the casting vote, and Europe remained\nEurope. It is inconceivable that, if Athenian freedom had been then\ncrushed when it was still in its first childhood, the course of the\nworld\u2019s history could have been what it has been. Enslaved Greece could\nnever have been what free Greece was. Athens and Megalopolis could have\nbeen no more than an Ephesos or Mil\u00eatos. It may well be that, even if\nthe Eastern peninsula had been rent away from the Western world, the\ncentral peninsula might still have stood its ground. The barbarian\nmight still have been checked, and checked for ever, by the hands of\nRomans or Samnites or Lucanians. The Roman power might still have been\nspread over the world; the Teuton and the Slave might still have come\nto discharge their later mission within the Roman world; but a Roman\nworld, untutored by Greece, could never have been what the Roman world\nof actual history was and is. The men who fought at Marath\u00f4n fought as\nthe champions of every later generation of European man. If on the\nAkropolis of Myk\u00ean\u00ea we feel that we have some small share, the share\nof distant kinsmen, in the cradle of the oldest European civilisation,\nthe subject of the oldest European literature--so, as we stand on the\nbarrow of the one hundred and ninety-two who died at Marath\u00f4n, we feel\nthat we have a nearer claim, the claim of men who come on pilgrimage to\nthe resting-place of men who died that European lands and European men\nshould be all that they have been.\n\nIn fact, on the plain of Marath\u00f4n, the famous saying of Johnson becomes\nclothed with a fuller meaning than its author is likely to have thought\nof. \u201cThat man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain\nforce upon the plain of Marath\u00f4n.\u201d The saying is true, if we think\nmerely of association, of example, of analogy. It becomes true in a\nyet higher sense, if we look on the day of Marath\u00f4n as being all\nthat it truly is, as having fixed, not only the destiny of Athens,\nbut the destiny of Europe. And we may look on that spot from another\npoint of view, less wide indeed than this, but wider than that which\nlooks on it simply as the scene of a single event of the year 490\nbefore our era. Even setting aside the event which has made Marath\u00f4n\nfamous with an undying fame, Marath\u00f4n would still have a considerable\nhistory, mythical and real--a history some chapters of which come\nwithin the memory of many of us. We must remember that, besides the\nview which looks on Greece as being almost in her first youth on the\nday of Marath\u00f4n, there is another view which looks on Greece as being\nthen already in her decline. The one view is true, if we think only of\nAthenian democracy, of Athenian art, of Athenian poetry; the other\nview is no less true in the general history of the Greek nation. When\nthe fight of Marath\u00f4n was fought, the bondage of the Greek nation had\nalready begun; the work which was ended by Mahomet the Conqueror had\nbeen already begun by Cr\u0153sus and Cyrus. Asiatic Greece was already\nenslaved; the fight of Marath\u00f4n was fought in order that European\nGreece might not be enslaved like it. It may also flash across the\nminds of some who tread the plain of Marath\u00f4n that the fight which\nMiltiad\u00eas waged there in the cause of Hellenic freedom was not the last\nfight which has been waged on the same ground in the same cause. On\nthat same plain, where the Athenians of one age fought to save Greece\nfrom coming under the yoke of the Persian, the Athenians of another age\nfought to free enslaved Greece from the yoke of the Turk. The modern\nfight of Marath\u00f4n, the fight of July, 1824, hardly ranks among the\ngreat events of the War of Independence, as its leader certainly does\nnot rank among the purest heroes of the War of Independence. Yet when\nGouras smote the janissaries of Omar of Karystos on the same ground on\nwhich Miltiad\u00eas had smitten the hosts of Datis and Artaphern\u00eas, to an\neye which takes in the whole range of Grecian and European history,\nthe fact has something more about it than mere association, than mere\ncoincidence. The two fights of Marath\u00f4n were in truth only two stages\nin one long tale, the tale of the undying struggle between civilisation\nand the freedom of the West and the barbarian despotism of the Eastern\nworld.\n\nMarath\u00f4n, like Eleusis, gives us the usual lesson in Greek geography,\nand makes us better understand the greatness of that wonderful change\nwhich fused all the towns of Attica into a single commonwealth. We see\nat once that Marath\u00f4n--the name was, at least in later use, extended to\nthe whole Tetrapolis--was, no less than Eleusis, designed, according\nto the common laws of Greek political geography, to form a separate\nstate, distinct from Athens. Indeed it is more thoroughly cut off than\nEleusis. In the view from the Akropolis, Pentelikos altogether hides\nthe Marath\u00f4nian plain; while, though Eleusis is actually kept out of\nsight by Aigale\u00f4s, Kithair\u00f4n and the other greater heights beyond it\nsuggest the existence of the Thriasian plain. Marath\u00f4n therefore,\nnaturally enough, has a long mythical history distinct from that of\nAthens. Not only Th\u00easeus, but H\u00earakl\u00eas and the H\u00earakleidai figure in\nit, and legend tells of a fight of Marath\u00f4n earlier than either of\nthose which history records. H\u00earakl\u00eas remained in historical times the\nchief object of local worship, and it was by his sanctuary that the\nAthenian host encamped before, what we suppose we must call, the second\nbattle. Ath\u00ean\u00ea too, as on other spots of Attic soil, was not without\nher temple by the marsh. Marath\u00f4n does not appear in the Catalogue any\nmore than Eleusis, and for the same reason as Eleusis. But its name\nappears in the Odyssey in a passage which may suggest some geographical\nreflections:\n\n         \u1f6c\u03c2 \u1f04\u03c1\u03b1 \u03a6\u03c9\u03bd\u03ae\u03c3\u03b1\u03c3\u2019 \u1f00\u03c0\u03ad\u03b2\u03b7 \u03b3\u03bb\u03b1\u03c5\u03ba\u1ff6\u03c0\u03b9\u03c2 \u1f08\u03b8\u03ae\u03bd\u03b7\n         \u03a0\u1f78\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u1f10\u03c0\u2019 \u1f00\u03c4\u03c1\u03cd\u03b3\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd\u00b7 \u03bb\u03af\u03c0\u03b5 \u03b4\u1f72 \u03a3\u03c7\u03b5\u03c1\u03af\u03b7\u03bd \u1f10\u03c1\u03b1\u03c4\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd\u03ae\u03bd\u00b7\n         \u1f3c\u03ba\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf \u03b4\u2019 \u1f10\u03c2 \u039c\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03b8\u1ff6\u03bd\u03b1 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03b5\u1f50\u03c1\u03c5\u03ac\u1f08\u03b3\u03c5\u03b9\u03b1\u03bd \u1f08\u03b8\u03ae\u03bd\u03b7\u03bd,\n         \u0394\u1fe6\u03bd\u03b5 \u03b4\u2019 \u1f18\u03c1\u03b5\u03c7\u03b8\u1fc6\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c0\u03c5\u03ba\u03b9\u03bd\u1f78\u03bd \u03b4\u03cc\u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u00b7\n\nIf Scheri\u00ea really be Corfu, this may seem a most unexpected route to\nAthens, and yet it is hardly more wonderful than the route by Syra\nby which the modern traveller often actually goes. In history the\nfirst appearance of Marath\u00f4n is when Peisistratos lands there on his\nreturn from exile. The second is when the son of Peisistratos led the\nPersian host thither, as a fitting place for the use of the cavalry\nwhich after all they seemed not to have used. No battle in history\nhas been more minutely examined, and that in some cases by men who\nunited technical military knowledge with a thorough knowledge of the\ncountry. Colonel Leake, to mention only one inquirer, has done all\nthat the union of both qualities could do, though one is amazed at\nhis constantly referring to Herodotus as a contemporary writer. Yet,\nafter all his labours, after all the labours of Mr. Finlay and others,\neverybody complains that the narrative of Herodotus is unsatisfactory.\nThe comments of Dean Blakesley strike us as among the most acute\nthat have been made. One may doubt whether Herodotus had ever been\nthere; he certainly shows no knowledge of the ground. He makes no\nmention of the marshes which form so marked a feature in the character\nof the Marath\u00f4nian plain. The marshes lie between the sea and the\nfighting-ground, as the fighting-ground lies between the marsh and the\nmountains. The marsh is not only not mentioned by Herodotus, but his\naccount seems almost inconsistent with its existence. But Pausanias\nsaw the picture in the Poikil\u00ea which showed the Persians falling into\nthe marsh. It is like appealing to the Bayeux Tapestry from the later\naccounts of the battle of Senlac. Pausanias, though he lived so many\nages after, was in this way really nearer to the time than Herodotus.\nThe picture commemorated the fact; Herodotus tells the story as it\nhad grown up a generation later. By that time, as Dean Blakesley says,\nthe story had come under the operation of the law by which \u201cpopular\ntradition rapidly drops all those particulars of a battle which evince\nstrategic genius, and substitutes for them exaggerated accounts of\npersonal bravery.\u201d Miltiad\u00eas, as a good general, took advantage of\nthe ground, and largely owed his success to the nature of the ground.\nPopular tradition made everything be done by sheer hard fighting.\n\nIn short, almost every detail of this memorable fight seems shrouded in\nuncertainty. It is hard to fix the exact position of either army, and\nthe very name of Marath\u00f4n has perhaps shifted its place. The site of\nthe old town seems quite as likely to be, not at the modern Marath\u00f4n,\nbut, as Colonel Leake puts it, at Brana. Yet, amid all this doubt,\nthere is essential certainty. Of the work that was done that day, of\nthe general site, there is no doubt, and the most living and speaking\nmonument of all is there to bear its witness. We stand, not, as the\npoet puts it, on the Persians\u2019 grave, but on the mound which covers the\nashes of the men of Athens who fell that day. Within the space between\nthe bay with its blue waters and the hills which fence in the plain,\nthe fate of Europe was fixed. We stand on the mound; the eye passes\nover the hills, from Probalinthos to the cape of Kynosoura. We look\non the older and the newer candidate of the name of Marath\u00f4n; we look\non the hill where older legends fixed the home of Pan, and where the\nlater name of Drakonera speaks of some older or later dragon myth. We\nknow that it was within these bounds that the might of Asia was broken\nby the force of two Hellenic cities. Standing on that mound, instead\nof dreaming, as the poet dreamed in the days of enslaved Greece, we\nmay call to mind how, in the cycle of human things, another triumph of\nEurope over Asia was won on the same spot, and if there be, as other\npoets tell us, two special voices which call to freedom, no spot could\nbe better chosen for the work that was done there than the Marath\u00f4nian\nplain. Once that land was said to be\n\n               Unchanged in all except its foreign lord.\n\nNow the foreign lord is gone, and for the rest no change is needed. The\nmountains are there, the sea is there, and, almost as imperishable as\nthemselves, the mound of the fallen heroes is there also. At no great\ndistance from the mound, some stones remain which are held to mark the\nseparate monument of the leader of that day\u2019s battle. Standing there,\nby the grave of Miltiad\u00eas, we think of that day only. On the plain of\nMarath\u00f4n, we will not think either of Paros or of Cherson\u00easos.\n\nWhile we write, perhaps no inopportune moment, the news comes that\nGreece has lost the last and the noblest of her later heroes. The man\nof other times in whom all his countrymen trusted--the man before whom\nthe chiefs of contending parties could lay their jealousies aside--is\ntaken away from his country in the moment of her utmost need. One tie\nwhich binds us to the past is rudely snapped, when the last of the\nheroes of the past, the last of the \u1f21\u03bc\u03b9\u03b8\u03ad\u03c9\u03bd \u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u1ff6\u03bd, passes away\nfrom the work to which his county had again called him. After a life\nof ninety years and more--a life in which the severest of censors,\nwhose scourge spared neither Greek nor Englishman, could not find\na single flaw--the hero of the fire-ships is no more. The name of\nConstantine Kanar\u00eas is added to the same roll of departed worthies as\nMiaoul\u00eas and Botzar\u00eas, as Church and Hastings. And in the long list of\nmen who for so many ages have done honour to the Hellenic name, among\nthe chosen few whose glory no speck tarnishes, along with Phormi\u00f4n and\nKallikratidas, men of his own calling and his own element, the pen of\nhistory will engrave no nobler name than the name of him who has just\ngone, of him who has as truly died in the service of his country as if\nhe had fallen fifty years back, like Kynaigeiros himself by the shore\nof Marath\u00f4n.\n\n\n\n\n                           The Saronic Gulf.\n\n\nTravelling in Greece has in some measure to be done backwards. The\nstranger who reaches Athens, as it will often be convenient to reach\nit, by way of Syra, and who does not mean to cross the bounds of the\nGreek kingdom, will naturally take Athens on his way homewards. The\nvoyage from Syra to Athens is a voyage made from the rising to the\nsetting sun. In the like sort Athens itself is the practical centre\nfor many points which lie to the west of it, and which geographically\nform further steps on the return journey. To a traveller of the age\nof Pausanias, one of the earliest of antiquarian travellers in the\nmodern sense, Athens might have seemed a strange centre for a journey\nin the Argolic land, with Myk\u00ean\u00ea as its main object. Myk\u00ean\u00ea was in his\nday as desolate as it is now, but Argos and Corinth were in a very\ndifferent case. In his day Argos and Corinth were united by a carriage\nroad, as there is hope that they may before long be united again. The\nsea was then less thoroughly the highway of Hellas than it had been\nin earlier times, or than it has become again in later times. Now the\ntraveller who has not a frame of extra hardihood will most likely\nlook on Myk\u00ean\u00ea and what naturally goes with Myk\u00ean\u00ea as an excursion\nto be done from the capital, an excursion as great a part of which\nas possible is to be made by water. That is to say, the most natural\napproach to the Argolic land will be to most travellers by sea from\nPeiraieus to Nauplia. The traveller will thus begin his researches\nwith one of those charming voyages among islands and peninsulas which\nform so special a feature in Greek travel. The voyage from Peiraieus\nto Nauplia strongly brings out some of the characteristics of Greek\ngeography and history. As Sulpicius remarked long ago, famous cities\nlie close together. We better understand the nature of Greek politics\nand Greek warfare when we fully take in the fact that so many of the\ncontending powers lay within sight of one another. This feeling comes\nstrongly into the mind when we look down from such a point as the hill\nof Brescia and see the commonwealths of Lombardy grouped as it were in\norder before us. But there is a wide difference between commonwealths\nthus grouped, almost as it were in regular array, marked each by its\ntower rising from the boundless plain, and commonwealths the site of\neach of which forms a marked natural feature, an island, a promontory,\nan inland hill. We see why the duration of the Greek commonwealths was\nfar longer than those of Lombardy, and why they were not in the same\nway easily brought together under the hands of a few powerful lords.\nMr. Mahaffy, who occasionally arrives at untrustworthy conclusions on\nthings which he has not sufficiently studied, but who yields to few\nin keenness of observation on the things which he has really studied,\nhas some good remarks on the geographical separation between state and\nstate which was brought about by the physical features of the country,\nabove all by the mountain ranges. Athens and Thebes were, as modern\nstates go, very near to one another, but Athens and Thebes had real\ndifficulties in getting at one another. The sea indeed was, whether\nfor peaceful or for war-like purposes, not a barrier but a highway,\nbut just as the physical position of the Greek commonwealths gave them\na more distinct national being, so the long and winding coasts of the\nislands and peninsulas on which so many of them were placed gave them,\nnear as they lay together, an actual extent of territory altogether\nout of proportion to their nearness. Thus, short as the life of the\ncommonwealths of ancient Greece seems to us, it was at least far longer\nthan the life of the commonwealths of medi\u00e6val Italy. Of the last, the\nfew that survived were just those whose geographical position enabled\nthem to survive. Venice and Genoa speak for themselves; so does Ragusa\non the other side of the great gulf. Lucca too, it has been well\nobserved, was, just like Athens and Thebes, cut from its neighbour Pisa\nby mountains which hindered either of the once rival states from seeing\neach other.\n\nWith this train of thought in our minds, we may start on our voyage\nfrom Peiraieus to Nauplia, the first stage of our journey from Athens\nto Myk\u00ean\u00ea. The heights of Megaris, the Akrokorinthos itself, come\nwithin the distant view; but, as our course is marked out, of Megara\nand Corinth we shall see something more and nearer, while of the other\nstates which border the gulf we take our nearest glimpse on the present\nvoyage. From the Akropolis of Athens, from not a few other points of\nAttic soil, we have looked down on the varied outlines of the two rocky\nislands which form the main features of the maritime landscape. Farther\nfrom us lies Aigina, eyesore of Peiraieus; nearer lies Salamis, the\nproudest name, save one, in Athenian history. In the general view one\nisland is as prominent as the other, and we naturally ask the cause\nof the wide difference in their history. Aigina is itself a famous\nisland; Salamis is simply an island which became the scene of one of\nthe most famous of events. One of those caprices of destiny which,\nabove all, make and mar the fortunes of commercial states, made Aigina\nfor a while one of the great powers of Greece. The rival of Athens on\nthe element which belonged to Aigina before it belonged to Athens,\nshe became first the subject, then the victim, of her rival. So, when\nagain an independent state in after days, she underwent a blow no less\nfearful at the hands of Rome and her Aitolian and Pergamene allies.\nSalamis has no such history. The isle of the Aiakids, the subject\nof the poetical oratory of Solon, once disputed between Megara and\nAthens, became an integral part of the Attic land, the scene of the\ngreat fight where Athenian and Aiginetan fought side by side against\nthe barbarian. But Salamis had no share in the glories of Aigina,\nthough she had some share in her sorrow. Aigina has a history of her\nown, though a history in which her relations towards Athens play the\nchief part. The history of Salamis is simply a part of the history of\nAttica. Long indeed after the days of Sol\u00f4n or of Perikl\u00eas she suffered\nat Athenian hands only less severely than Aigina had done, but that was\nwhen Athens, tossed to and fro from one Macedonian lord to another,\nsuspected Salamis of treacherous dealings with one to whom the city\nwas for a while hostile. Salamis has gained a separate being in the\ndays of Kassandros, as Eleusis has again a separate being in the days\nof the Thirty. Is the cause of this difference between the conquered\nrival and the incorporated territory to be found in the fact that there\nwas no power in the Argolic _Akt\u00ea_ which could possibly draw Aigina to\nitself--the island was far more likely to attract its neighbours on\nthe mainland--while Salamis lay near enough to the Attic coast to come\nwithin the range of that strange influence which made the history of\nAttica so opposite to that of all other Hellenic lands? As Eleusis and\nMarath\u00f4n could be fused into Athens, so could Salamis; but Aigina lay\nout of that influence, and lay within no other. Aigina, too powerful\nto be incorporated with Athens, became, as we have seen, the rival\nand victim of Athens, while Salamis, weaker and less powerful, became\nindeed her victim, but in the character, not of a foreign enemy, but of\na home district charged with treason.\n\nWe pass then by Salamis. We muse on the great sea-fight; we muse\nspecially as we pass by the little dependency of Salamis, that isle\nof Psyttaleia, beloved by Pan, where Aristeid\u00eas dealt the last blow\nagainst the noblest of the Persian host. These things happened at\nSalamis and Psyttaleia, but they were not the work of the men of\nSalamis and Psyttaleia, even if Psyttaleia had any men. But we do see\nthe work of the men of Aigina, the memory of the greatness of Aigina,\nas we draw near the coast of the historic isle, and the temple of\nPanhellenian Zeus looks down upon us from its height. We pass round\nthe northern end of the island; we mark the modern town, and the\nfringe of fertile land which lies between the sea and the soaring and\njagged heights of the island. We catch a glimpse of Epidauros, city of\nAskl\u00eapios, and our thoughts wander away to the second Epidauros on the\nLakonian coast, to the third Epidauros far away, parent of Ragusa and\nall her argosies. We pass by Methana, of all peninsulas the nearest\nto an island, cleaving to the Argolic _Akt\u00ea_ as the _Akt\u00ea_ cleaves to\nPeloponn\u00easos, as Peloponn\u00easos cleaves to Hellas, as Hellas and the\nadjoining lands cleave to the general mass of Europe. We pass on to\nthe spots famous in later as well as in earlier times, to some which\nare famous in later times only. Kalaureia, with its Amphiktiony, is\nperhaps less thought of than modern P\u00f4ros, the arsenal of Greece, the\nscene of stirring events in the war which made Greece free. We skirt\nthe Troizenian land, but Troiz\u00ean itself hardly comes within our ken;\nand, if P\u00f4ros disputes the place with Kalaureia, Hermion\u00ea cannot even\nattempt to dispute the place in our thoughts with the islands lying off\nher shore which the warfare of modern days has made so illustrious.\nThere lie the homes of those famous Albanian colonists, two of the\nthree great nurseries of the seamen of Hellas. Their fate has been what\nto shallow observers may seem a strange one, but which simply follows\nthe commonest laws of human nature. Specially privileged under the\nTurk, they were foremost in the war against the Turk. Delivered from\nhis yoke, they have greatly fallen from the position which they held\nunder his yoke. The explanation is simple. The Hydriots, independent\nin their own island on the single condition of furnishing men to the\nSultan\u2019s navy, enjoyed that kind of half-freedom which makes men long\nmore keenly for perfect freedom. They know better what freedom is than\nthose who are utterly crushed down, and, as they know better what it\nis, they also know better how to win it. In such cases we always hear\nthe silly charge of ingratitude--gratitude seemingly being due to the\ninvader if, for his own ends, he leaves his victim something. Hydra\nthen, the land of Miaoul\u00eas, was foremost in the strife simply because\nit could be foremost. But when the strife was over, Hydra lost not\na little. That is to say, what was lost by Hydra was won by Greece\nas a whole. In the days of bondage Hydra flourished, because it was\ncomparatively free. With the establishment of general freedom, Hydra\nlost all special privilege; commerce, as commerce always will, went to\nsuch spots as best suited it; Peiraieus and Syra rose as Hydra went\ndown. Yet Hydra and Spetza at least form part of free Greece. Psara,\nthe isle of Constantine Kanar\u00eas, is still in bondage. It is something\nto stand before the house of the last of the old heroes, to look out on\nSalamis, and to remember that, when the battle was fought, Themistokl\u00eas\ntoo was \u1f04\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03b9\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03ae\u03c1. By a happy analogy men speak of that house as\nCaprera; the owner of Caprera is \u1f04\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03b9\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03ae\u03c1 also.\n\nHydra then, like Aigina in an earlier day, is a witness of the way\nin which commerce flits from one shore to another. With its fellow,\nSpetza, the main interest of our voyage itself, as distinguished from\nthe interest of the spots to which our voyage is to lead us, pretty\nwell ends. We now turn the last main corner; we enter the specially\nArgolic gulf. Before long, eyes familiar with the scene begin to point\nout to us the whereabouts of the great objects of our pilgrimage. We\nsee--we at least see where we ought to look for--Tiryns on her lonely\nhill in the plain, the Larissa of Argos crowning her peaked height,\nMyk\u00ean\u00ea herself darkly spied out among the mountains. With these\nobjects before us, we may be forgiven if, as soon as we are once on\nthe shore, we hasten towards them, even to the prejudice of a spot\nwhich has some claims, both earlier and later, upon our thoughts.\nWe land at Nauplia. With the great sites now close to us, we may be\nagain forgiven if we pass by the fortress which preserves the name of\nthe legendary Palam\u00ead\u00eas, and the remains which show that Nauplia too,\nthough its fame and importance belong mainly to far later times, was\na dwelling-place and a fortress of prim\u00e6val Hellas. Of little fame in\nthe old days of Hellenic freedom, Nauplia held under the later Empire,\nunder the Venetian, and under the Turk, so high a place that forsaken\nand forgotten Tiryns came in popular speech to bear no other name than\n_Old Nauplia_. To Old Nauplia then we hasten, but we do not hasten so\nfast but that we catch a glimpse of the winged lion over the gate of\nthe younger city, the symbol of ages of Peloponnesian history which we\nare too apt to forget. In those ages, if Tiryns had to take the name\nof Nauplia, Nauplia had to take the name of a far more distant city.\nBy one of the many attempts to make a name in one language bear a\nmeaning in another--in this case it would be more accurate to say, to\nmake the name bear another meaning in its own language--Nauplia, the\nport of Argos, became the Venetian stronghold of _Napoli di Romania_.\nPeloponn\u00easos, no longer _Sclavinia_ was still Romania; on no man\u2019s\nlips in those days was it Hellas. Nowhere, least of all in such a seat\nof its power as this, can the badge of the great republic be seen\nwithout interest, wonder, and admiration. Another lion not far off,\ncommemorating the coming of a Bavarian king, it is only kindness to\npass by. We are on the road--for a road there is--to the most wondrous\nrelic of the pr\u00e6-historic ages of the land. We soon stop before an\nelevation in the plain which suggests our own Old Sarum, which, at a\nsecond glance, may suggest Worlebury. We have at last reached one of\nthe objects which alone would repay us for coming from Old Sarum or\nfrom Worlebury to see them. Salamis, Aigina, P\u00f4ros, Hydra itself, all\nseem but mere stages on the way as we stand below the vast and desolate\nwalls of Tiryns.\n\n\n\n\n                                Tiryns.\n\n\nWe have slightly sketched the main objects which flit before the eye\nin the delightful voyage from the harbour of Athens to what we may in\nsome sort look on as the harbour of Argos. Once on the Argolic soil,\nclose in the very centre and cradle of Hellenic legend, among the\ncities whose names have from childhood been surrounded with a halo of\nmythic lore, we must pause and muse at greater length on each of the\nfamous and wondrous objects before us. Each has its own charm, its\nown lesson. Myk\u00ean\u00ea is the special goal of our pilgrimage, the object\nwhich--even putting modern discoveries apart--would of itself fully\nreward a journey from the Western world. But half the charm, half the\nlesson, of Myk\u00ean\u00ea comes from its relation to the other cities in the\nneighbourhood. Argos and Myk\u00ean\u00ea, the destroyer and the destroyed,\nsuggest one another, and are coupled together, confounded together, in\nmany a verse and many a legend. But they do not stand alone. Before\nwe reach them we come to another spot, less famous, less striking in\nmany points, but still having its own fame, its own charm, a spot\nwhich must not be passed by even by those who are hastening on to\nthe most famous spot of all. The first of our hill-fortresses plays,\nbeside its fellows, a comparatively small part either in legend or in\nhistory. Fixed on a less striking spot than either, not crowning such a\nheight as the Larissa of Argos, not backed by mountain and gorge like\nthe akropolis of Myk\u00ean\u00ea, desolate as Myk\u00ean\u00ea itself, but containing\nno such wonders of primitive art within its walled circuit, Tiryns\nstands before us, claiming our study simply by its walled circuit and\nnothing else. It is the hill-fort, and nothing but the hill-fort. But\nit is something to gaze on a hill-fort whose walls were ancient and\nwonderful in Homer\u2019s day, and which abide much as they must have stood\nin Homer\u2019s day. Argos, Myk\u00ean\u00ea, Corinth, are all to be seen and studied;\nbut we shall lose no small part of the teaching of those cities and of\nthe land of which they form a part, unless we begin our research with\nthe wonderful spot which enabled the first of Greek poets, the first\nno less of Greek geographers, to fill up his verse with the sounding\nformula:\n\n                     \u03a4\u03af\u03c1\u03c5\u03bd\u03b8\u03ac \u03c4\u03b5 \u03c4\u03b5\u03b9\u03c7\u03b9\u03cc\u03b5\u03c3\u03c3\u03b1\u03bd.\n\nThere is moreover one aspect of Tiryns which will give it a special\ninterest to any one who has already seen something of the primitive\ncities of Italy, but to whom Tiryns itself is his first introduction to\nthe primitive cities of Greece. He who has visited F\u00e6sul\u00e6 and Tusculum,\nhe who has looked thoroughly at Rome itself, will feel a certain\nimpression come strongly upon him that his work is imperfect as long\nas he keeps himself on the western side of the Hadriatic. Tusculum,\nabove all things, points to Tiryns. The collection of prim\u00e6val remains\nin Greece and Italy made long ago by Dodwell--an observer, we may\nadd, second only to the great name of Leake--was perhaps unlucky in\nhelping to give greater currency to the dangerous word Pelasgian. But\nit was a great gain to bring the Greek and Italian examples together.\nIt would be a greater gain still to bring together as many examples\nas possible of the same kind from all parts of the world. The rash\ntheorist may be indeed led into any number of those wild imaginings\nwhich find their expression in names like \u201cDruidical\u201d in Britain, and\n\u201cPelasgian\u201d in Italy and Greece. But the critical inquirer, the votary\nof the Comparative method, will be strengthened in his researches\nby seeing how in the art of building, as in everything else, like\neffects spring from like causes, how the same stage of process leads\nto the same results in distant lands and distant ages. The helpless\ndevisers of theories about the origin of the arch, and especially of\nthe pointed arch, may profitably learn that the arch has been striven\nafter in endless places--that it has been successfully striven after\nin many places--that the pointed arch, simply as a constructive form,\nis as old as the round, and most likely older. The guide who shows the\nsingle \u201carco Gotico\u201d at Tusculum illustrates the state of mind in which\nprofessed inquirers into architectural history were only two or three\ngenerations back. To them the Gothic style and the pointed arch meant\nthe same thing. That belief, as well as many other kindred beliefs, may\nbe well unlearned on the akropolis of Tiryns.\n\nTiryns lies on the way to Argos; and Argos lies on the way from Tiryns\nto Myk\u00ean\u00ea. The three should be studied together; their position and\nhistory supply at once so much of likeness and so much of contrast.\nAll alike, no less than F\u00e6sul\u00e6 and Tusculum, no less than Athens\nitself, no less than \u201cthe great group of village communities by the\nTiber,\u201d are examples of the primitive hill-fort which has grown into\nthe later city. All show, in different ways, the peculiarities which\nare characteristic of cities of this immemorial type. But they show\nalso the different forms which that immemorial type might assume,\naccording to difference of local or other circumstances. Athens,\nCorinth, a crowd of others, all belong to the same general class. We\nmight say that all the strictly immemorial cities of Greece did so.\nFor the river city the small streams of Greece gave no room; and, even\nwhere the river city was possible, it doubtless marks a later stage\nthan the hill-fort. The cities of colonial Greece, founded close by or\nactually in the sea, mark a later stage still. Tiryns, Argos, Myk\u00ean\u00ea,\nare all hill cities; but they occupy hills of very different heights\nand figures. They all stand at no great distance from the sea, but\nnone of them ever grew into a maritime city like Athens, Corinth,\nor Megara. Near together, but not so near that they could be fused\ntogether like the constituent elements of Rome or Sparta, they had to\nendure the other alternatives which commonly waited on cities which lay\nnear together, but where such union was impossible. Rivalry, enmity,\ndestruction of the weaker by the stronger, formed the staple of the\nhistory of the three most famous among the cities of the Argolic land.\n\nWe stand then before Tiryns. We are almost surprised at finding that we\nhave so soon reached it from modern Nauplia. Itself as utterly forsaken\nas Myk\u00ean\u00ea, it does not stand in the same way as Myk\u00ean\u00ea, utterly cut\noff from all signs of modern life, from all signs of any date later\nthan that of the prim\u00e6val days of Greece. There is indeed something\nstartling in finding a prim\u00e6val city, and that a city so rich in\nmythical renown, standing at only a small distance from the roadside.\nMore than seventeen hundred years back Pausanias lighted on it in the\nsame way, and found it as desolate as it is now; then, as now, the\nwall remained, and nothing more. The site is not for a moment to be\ncompared with that of either of the rival cities. The site of Myk\u00ean\u00ea\nwould be striking indeed as a mere piece of scenery, even though Myk\u00ean\u00ea\nwere not there. So would the site, if not of Argos itself, at least\nof its Larissa and its theatre. But the hill of Tiryns is simply one,\nand that the lowest, of several small isolated hills in the low ground\nbetween the gulf and the mountains. Had other hill-forts arisen on\nthose other nearer hills, the group might have been fused together into\none great city by the same process which girded the hills of Rome with\na single wall. But this was not to be; Argos was to grow, but it was\nto grow only by the utter wiping out of Tiryns and Myk\u00ean\u00ea as inhabited\ncities. There then, wholly forsaken, not containing so much as a\nshepherd\u2019s hut, stand the mighty walls, the walls which supplied Homer\nwith a speaking epithet, the walls which in later days men deemed to be\ntoo great to be the work of mortal hands, and set down as having been\nwrought by the superhuman skill of the legendary Kykl\u00f4pes. The name\nmarks a change in the idea which had come to attach to that name since\nthe days of Homer. The Kykl\u00f4pes of later Grecian legend, always artists\nof one kind or another--sometimes builders of gigantic walls, sometimes\nforgers of the thunderbolts of Zeus--have no likeness but in name and\nstrength to the solitary and savage Kykl\u00f4pes of the Odyssey. But when\nwe see, not only a vast expenditure of mere force, but the display of\nreal skill which is shown in these primitive works of defence--works,\nas we are tempted to think, of a rude age, when, if force was abundant,\nno great skill was to be looked for--it is not wonderful if men in\nlater days looked on them as the work of more than mortal hands. For\nornament, for polish or finish of any kind, we are not to look in the\nstage represented by Tiryns. Yet the way in which the rugged material\nis dealt with, the piling together of these vast unhewn rocks so as\nto fit them together and to bring to the front so many comparatively\nsmooth surfaces, was, in the ages and under the circumstances of the\nbuilders, as true a work of artistic skill as the care which dictated\nthe delicate curves, the minute differences in distance and direction,\nin the portico of the Parthen\u00f4n itself. Who those builders were it is\nin vain for us to guess. They belong to the prim\u00e6val, the unrecorded,\ndays of Hellas, to the days before even legendary history begins.\nMyk\u00ean\u00ea has a history--a history which different minds may set down\nas truth, as mere fable, as fable grounded upon truth, but which\nstill is a history, which still is something different from that mere\nguessing at the names of founders which was prescribed by the supposed\nnecessity of finding an eponymous hero for every land and city. The\nlegends of Tiryns hardly get beyond this stage. H\u00earakl\u00eas indeed figures\nin its story, but H\u00earakl\u00eas is in his own nature ubiquitous. That Myk\u00ean\u00ea\ncontains monuments marking a far higher stage of art than anything at\nTiryns proves nothing as to the relative date of the two cities. For\nthe works at Tiryns and the oldest work at Myk\u00ean\u00ea may well be of the\nsame date. All that we can say is that these walls belong to an age\nbefore history, before tradition. If Homer had spoken of these walls as\nthe works of Kykl\u00f4pes, we might have seen in it a dim tradition that\nthey were the works of some race of men older than his own Achaians.\nAs it is, we can only say that they are the works of the earliest\ninhabitants of Peloponn\u00easos of whom any works remain to us. Whatever we\nmay guess from the analogy of other lands, we have no evidence of the\nexistence of any inhabitants of Peloponn\u00easos earlier than the Achaians\nof Homer.\n\nWe come then somewhat suddenly on the hill-fortress by the roadside.\nWe are guided to the southern face of a hill much longer from north to\nsouth than from east to west, and we find ourselves before the main\napproach of Tiryns, or at least of its akropolis. The great gate has\nperished; there is nothing to set against the lions of Myk\u00ean\u00ea. But to\nthe right of where it stood is one of the two main features which have\ngiven the walls of Tiryns their special fame. This is what the Greek\nantiquaries call the \u03c3\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03b3\u03be, what in English may be called the\nsally-port, the long passage with its roof made of the great stones\nof prim\u00e6val masonry so placed together as to make the form, though\nnot the construction, of the pointed arch. Of the many examples of\nstriving after the archaic construction without ever actually reaching\nit which are to be found scattered through so many parts of the world,\nnone is more instructive than this. In the history of architectural\nconstruction it fully deserves a place alongside of the Mykenaian\ntreasuries. Here is a great military work of the earliest times, the\nbuilders of which were striving hard, though without perfect success,\nto form an arch. This fact at once puts a barrier between the primitive\nand the historical buildings of Greece. It is indeed strange that a\npeople which had come so near to the greatest of mechanical discoveries\nshould have failed of altogether reaching it, and should have developed\nits historical architecture from a principle altogether different. In\nItaly it was otherwise. We there see exactly the same strivings after\nthe arch which we see in Greece; but here the strivings were rewarded\nwith success at an early time. The attempt succeeded; the perfect arch\nwas lighted on, and the historical architecture of Rome was developed\nfrom the principle of the arch. Thus, while F\u00e6sul\u00e6, Tusculum, Signia, a\ncrowd of others have their Greek parallels, there is no Greek parallel\nto the _cloaca maxima_ of Rome.\n\nThen, again, as we have already hinted, these examples show that the\npointed arch, simply as a constructive form, is as old as the round.\nBecause the pointed arch happened to become the leading feature of an\narchitectural style later than the round arch, we are apt to fancy that\nthe form is later in its own nature, that it must have been developed\nout of the round, that he who built the first pointed arch must have\nseen round arches. Yet the pointed form is just as natural in itself,\njust as likely to occur to a primitive builder. Indeed we might almost\nsay that it was more likely. The first step towards the arch would\ndoubtless be setting two stones to lean against one another, and this\nwould lead much more easily to the pointed arch than to the round. It\nso happened that the first Italian builders whose strivings after the\narch were quite successful were led to the round and not to the pointed\nform. But had the Tusculan or the Tirynthian engineer actually reached\nthe construction to which he came so near, an architectural style, with\nthe pointed arch for its great constructive feature, might have arisen\nin Latium or Argolis a thousand years before it actually did arise\nunder Saracenic hands.\n\nAgain, in considering these matters, we must carefully keep ourselves\nback from any tempting ethnological theories, above all from such\nethnological theories as lurk in the dangerous word Pelasgian. No one\ndoubts the near connexion of the old Italian and the old Greek races, a\nconnexion nearer than that of common Aryan origin. But the same kind of\nanalogies which may be seen in their earlier buildings may be seen also\nin the early buildings of races which are much further apart. If Tiryns\nfinds its best parallel at Tusculum, Myk\u00ean\u00ea finds its best parallel at\nNew Granga. Nearly just the same strivings after the arch may be found\nin more than one land altogether beyond the pale of European or Aryan\nfellowship, as for instance in the ruined cities of Central America.\nThe analogies in the prim\u00e6val architecture of remote nations exactly\nanswer to the analogies in their weapons, dress, and customs. They\nbelong to the domain of Mr. Tylor.\n\nBut, while the remains at Tiryns have this special interest for the\nstudent of architectural history, they show also how far the primitive\nengineers had advanced in the scientific study of the art of defence.\nEven the non-military observer can well take this in on the eastern\nside. There rises what, seen from within, seen in a direct view from\nwithout, the beholder is apt to call a tower. But it is merely that\nthe wall is either better preserved at this point or else was higher\nfrom the beginning. Here was one chief approach to the fortress, and\nit was guarded by what, in the technical language of Colonel Leake,\nis called a ramp. The only approach to the gate was by going up an\nascent formed by an advanced wall, made so that an assailant would\nexpose his unshielded side to the defenders of the fort. This skilful\npiece of fortification, with the sally-port which is so nearly perfect,\nand another, traces of which remain on the other side, shows that the\nprimitive engineers, call them Kykl\u00f4pes or anything else, had advanced\na long way beyond mere mechanical piling together of stones.\n\nThe walls doubtless fence in only the akropolis, the primitive city,\nanswering to the oldest Athens, to the oldest Rome on the Palatine.\nHow far the town may have spread itself over the surrounding plain we\nhave no means of judging. We cannot believe that Tiryns ever became a\ngreat city like Argos and Corinth. Its name vanishes from history too\nsoon for that. But at Tiryns, as we shall also see at Myk\u00ean\u00ea, there was\nan upper and a lower city within the fortified enclosure itself. Greek\nantiquaries call the higher level a \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03c6\u03cd\u03b3\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd, a place of refuge, but\nit is the strongly fortified part to which the approaches lead. Was\nthis the royal citadel, and was the lower part the dwelling-place of\nthe other original settlers before the town had spread at all beyond\nthe present akropolis? The military objects of the two levels are\ngone into by Colonel Leake, but we must remember that these ancient\nstrongholds were not, like modern forts, built simply to be attacked\nand defended. They were dwelling-places of man, fortified because they\nwere dwelling-places of man. One would think that the whole of the\nfirst body of settlers would find shelter within the walls. There was\nthe king on the higher level; the rest of the tribe was below. A \u03b4\u1fc6\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2\nmight or might not arise beyond their defences. At Rome and Athens such\na \u03b4\u1fc6\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2 did arise, and made the history of Rome and Athens different\nfrom that of Tiryns.\n\nIt is a wonderful thing to stand beneath these mighty walls, raised\nout of the huge blocks which seem too great for mortal men to have\npiled. Nowhere else does the line of thought which they suggest come\nout so strongly. On the Athenian akropolis there are blocks ruder than\nthose of Tiryns itself, but they are hidden by the great works of more\npolished days. At Myk\u00ean\u00ea the walls, mighty as they are, have almost\nyielded to tombs, gates, and treasuries. At Tiryns it is the walls and\nthe walls alone which seem to speak of its days of power. Tiryns struck\nmen as being \u03c4\u03b5\u03b9\u03c7\u03b9\u03cc\u03b5\u03c3\u03c3\u03b1 in the days of the Homeric Catalogue. It is as\n\u03c4\u03b5\u03b9\u03c7\u03b9\u03cc\u03b5\u03c3\u03c3\u03b1 and as \u03c4\u03b5\u03b9\u03c7\u03b9\u03cc\u03b5\u03c3\u03c3\u03b1 only, that it strikes us still.\n\n\n\n\n                                 Argos.\n\n\nA short drive--we are still within the region where driving is\npossible--takes us from Tiryns to Argos, from the destroyed city to the\ndestroyers. The contrast is striking. Argos, through all changes, has\nalways remained a dwelling-place of man, and not only a dwelling-place\nof man, but a town of some importance, according to the standard of its\nown age and place. Modern Athens is an artificial city. It is a town\nwhich might have stood anywhere else, built at the foot of the ancient\nakropolis and around the churches of Eir\u00ean\u00ea. Modern Argos is not an\nartificial town; it has come to be what it is by the gradual operation\nof ordinary historical causes. It shows us what an ancient Greek city,\nneither ruined nor forsaken nor artificially fostered, but left to\nthe working of natural circumstances, finds itself after long ages of\nRoman, Venetian, Turkish, and restored Greek rule. The chief remark\nwhich the place suggests to a Western eye is how little there is to\nremark. In the modern town there is no remarkable building of any kind,\nold or new. The modern cathedral is large and is meant to be of some\npretensions, but one would gladly exchange it for the tiny metropolitan\nchurch of Athens, or for any other church of genuine Byzantine\nstyle and date. The town itself covers a large space, and contains\na considerable population. Setting apart the capital and the great\nseaports, Argos ranks high among the existing cities of Greece. Yet to\na Western eye it has an unpleasing, almost a barbarous, look. It is\ndirty, irregular, with neither Western neatness nor Eastern picturesque\neffect. An old Venetian possession, one might have expected that St.\nMark might have planted somewhat of his impress here, as he has done\non so many of his subject cities. If Argos were even as Tra\u00fc, no one\nwould complain, but, since the Venetian, Argos has seen the Turk, and\nthat is enough to account for the difference. Argos is not lacking in\nrecent history. It was the scene of important events during the War of\nIndependence, when it acted several times as the common meeting-place\nof Greece. It is still, we believe, a thriving place after its own\nstandard, but that is not the standard of Western Europe, nor yet the\nstandard of Syra and Patras. Yet it sets us thinking whether a town in\nWestern Europe, five or six hundred years back, may not have looked\nmuch the same. In one point indeed there was a difference. No Western\nmedi\u00e6val town of the same population as modern Argos would have spread\nover the same space. That is to say, the modern town lies scattered,\ndoubtless because it represents an ancient city of far greater extent.\n\nBut the objects which give Argos its main interest in the eyes of the\nhistorical inquirer, the objects which bear witness to the existence of\nArgos in the days of its greatness, lie outside the modern town. One,\nthe chief of all, proclaims its presence from afar. The akropolis of\nArgos, the famous Larissa, the soaring height crowned by the stronghold\nwhich from a prim\u00e6val fortress grew into a modern castle, is an\nakropolis in quite another sense than the lowlier hill of Tiryns, or\neven than that of Athens. The name leads to a long train of thought.\nIt is the Larissa of Argos. How many spots bear the name of Larissa?\nHow many lands and cities bear the name of Argos? He who has a taste\nfor Pelasgian speculation has a wide field opened to him. He who keeps\nhimself within the range of recorded history and of such tradition as\nmay be said to prove itself, may perhaps be led to think how largely\nthe fame of Argos is a borrowed fame. Argos and the Argeians meet us in\nevery page of the Homeric tale; they seem to be the most familiar names\nfor Greece and the Greeks before Greece and the Greeks had as yet an\nacknowledged common name. A little thought will, however, show that in\nmost of the places where they are named there is no immediate reference\nto the local city of Argos. The Bretwalda of Hellas ruled over many\nislands and over all Argos. Whatever this means, it can hardly mean\nanything short of all Peloponn\u00easos; at least it cannot mean the local\nArgos, which did not come within his immediate kingdom. To suppose any\nreference to the local Argos would be like quartering a Karling at\nParis or a West-Saxon at York. But the local Argos dealt with Myk\u00ean\u00ea\nlike the savage who swallows the eye of his slain enemy in order to\ntake to himself his strength, courage, and glory. Only a few years\nafter Myk\u00ean\u00ea fell we find the Attic dramatists transferring the whole\ntale of Pelops\u2019 line from its own place to the destroying city. The\nconfusion has become hopeless. Argos becomes surrounded by a mythical\nglory to which it has no claim. The name of Argos brings up a crowd\nof associations, most of which it is our first duty to drive back. We\nmust remember that Agamemn\u00f4n--we take the personal name to express the\nfact of the Myk\u00eanaian empire--was lord of the local Argos only in the\nsense in which he was lord of any other spot in Peloponn\u00easos. The two\nneighbouring cities were the heads, as the Catalogue shows us, of two\nkingdoms of strangely irregular shape, but whose very shape is the sign\nthat the geography is genuine. No inventor could have hit on anything\nso unlike the arrangements of historic Greece. Argos destroyed Myk\u00ean\u00ea\nand took its glories to itself. If we can conceive Paris and Laon--or,\nby a still bolder flight, Paris and Aachen--within sight of one\nanother, and if we can further conceive the elder seat of rule not only\nrobbed of its history, but actually rased to the ground, by the younger\nseat, we shall get a fair illustration of what really happened in the\ncase of Argos and Myk\u00ean\u00ea.\n\nYet Argos has a history of its own, and that a long and stirring\nhistory, though it is a history which can seldom be called honourable,\nand one which never, in the days of contemporary record, places the\ncity in the first rank, along with Sparta, Athens, and, for a moment,\nThebes. In contemporary history Argos seems chiefly to live on the\nmemory of earlier days when she did hold such a place. And it is one\nof Mr. Grote\u2019s services to those parts of Grecian history which lie\nrather out of the range of his main strength that he has brought out\nclearly that there was a time when Argos did hold the first place in\nPeloponn\u00easos. In the Iliad she is one of the three cities which H\u00ear\u00ea\nbest loved, but which she could endure to see overthrown as the price\nof seeing the overthrow of hated Ilios. Argos there ranks with Sparta\nand Myk\u00ean\u00ea. When the day of overthrow came, when Achaian rule gave way\nto Dorian, when Argos in the wider sense became Peloponn\u00easos, the local\nArgos appears as first of three chief Dorian powers, with Sparta and,\nno longer Myk\u00ean\u00ea, but Mess\u00ean\u00ea--the land and not the later city--as her\nsecondary yokefellows. _Prima inter pares_ among these, she gradually\nloses the first place to Sparta, and spends the rest of her days as\na Greek city in feeble assertion of the place which she had lost. In\nevery age of Greek history, in the days of Persian, Peloponnesian,\nCorinthian, Macedonian, and Achaian warfare, the name of Argos meets\nus at every page, but the annals of the city are nowhere adorned by\nany great strokes of heroism or wisdom. Her policy is often isolated,\noften cowardly, almost always dictated by jealousy of Sparta. In her\nlast age Pyrrhos dies beneath her walls, and she joins the League under\na reclaimed tyrant. But the distance between Aristomachos and Lydiadas\nmay mark the distance between Argos and the first of Grecian cities,\nwhen that name had passed away from Argos, Sparta, Athens, and Thebes\nto Megalopolis, mother of Achaian statesmen.\n\nStill with all this, Argos is a great name. A continuous being,\na continuous history, from the Homeric Catalogue to the War of\nIndependence, is something which Megalopolis and even Sparta cannot\nboast of. Sparta--_Lakedaimonia_ in later phrase--gave way to Misthra;\nmodern Sparta is a new and artificial creation. But Argos, the Argos\nthat we now see, with its queer-looking streets and shops and open\nspaces, is, by unbroken succession, the city of Diom\u00ead\u00eas, the city of\nKleobis and Bit\u00f4n. We look in vain for the temple which witnessed the\nfilial piety of Kleobis and Bit\u00f4n, but the Larissa of Diom\u00ead\u00eas, the\n_Aspis_--the shield of Argos--which was stormed by the last Kleomen\u00eas,\nis there still. The huge hill with the ruined buildings at the base,\nwith the castle containing remains of almost every age on its crest,\nwith the signs of human occupation covering almost every step of its\nsteep sides, all are now utterly desolate, but they bear witness to\nthe lesson that the modern town over which they soar is the unbroken\nsuccessor of the dwelling-place of man in pr\u00e6-historic times. The\nLarissa of Argos is an akropolis indeed, utterly dwarfing, as far as\nthe works of nature go, the far lowlier height of prim\u00e6val Athens. No\nParthen\u00f4n, no Propylaia, crowned the hill of Argos. The nature of the\nsite could hardly have allowed them to stand there, and, if it could,\nthey would have seemed out of place on that mountain-top. The fortress\nhowever is there, shattered and forsaken as it is; the walls of the\nmedi\u00e6val castle are propped on the walls of unrecorded days with their\nvast Kyklopean masonry. Other parts rest on masonry of later date, but\nstill masonry of early Hellenic times, stones which were there before\nArgos thought it her interest in the greatest national peril of Greece,\nto find out that her hero Perseus was the forefather of the invading\nbarbarian. We look down from the height on the modern city, on the\nplain, on the gulf which parts the Argolic _Akt\u00ea_ from the main mass\nof Peloponn\u00easos; we mark the coast stretching away towards the hostile\nLakonian land; we gaze on the mountain heights of the central land of\nthe peninsula, fencing in the home of that old Arkadian race which\nboasted that alone among Greeks it had never changed its dwelling.\nThere rises Artemision, there rises the hoary peak of Kronion, its\nsnow-capped crest seeming no unfit dwelling-place of the aged god\nwho reigned before Zeus and his children. At the foot of the hill\nlie a number of buildings, all forsaken and shattered, witnessing to\nthe many changes which Argos has seen, to the many masters who have\nruled over her. There is one piece of mighty ancient walling strangely\nbrought together with sculpture of Roman times. There is the theatre\nwith its ranges of seats cut deep in the hill-side, a theatre looking\nout on the wide expanse of city, plain, sea, and mountains. Almost\nat its foot stands a ruin of the days when Argos formed part of the\nsubject lands of the city by the Tiber, a ruin which bespeaks its\nkindred with the baths of Antoninus, and shows us in all its boldness\nthe great constructive invention after which men strove at Tiryns, but\nwhich Greece, in all other things the mother of arts, had to learn\nfrom her Roman masters. We look at the broken brick vault of the Roman\nbuilding, but if our eye turns a little to the right, we soon see how\nit was the lands east of the Hadriatic which first learned how to give\nthe great constructive invention of Italy its noblest form and to\napply it to its highest use. At no great distance from the Roman ruin\nstands a church of Byzantine days, which fitly finishes the series.\nThe forms to which men were feeling their way in the sally-port of\nTiryns and in the treasure-house of Myk\u00ean\u00ea reached their perfection\nwhen the architects of the East taught the cupola, soaring or spreading\nas it might be, to rise on its supporting columns over the centre of\nthe churches of Eastern Christendom. Prim\u00e6val Greece strove after the\narch; historic Greece, if she knew its constructive use, confined it\nto a few purposes of constructive usefulness. Prim\u00e6val Italy strove,\nand strove with more success, in the same path, and made the form\nwhich Greece used so timidly the life of her national architecture.\nOn Roman ground the arch grew into the cupola, but it was on the\nground that was Greek and Roman alike, on the ground of the Eastern\npeninsula, that the cupola took its noblest form. On the Larissa of\nArgos a few traces have been found of galleries like those of Tiryns.\nPausanias bears witness that Argos once had her subterranean chamber\nlike those of Myk\u00ean\u00ea, and doubtless following the same construction.\nAt Tiryns and Myk\u00ean\u00ea the series goes no further; the destroying hand\nof Argos decreed that it should go no further. The long life of Argos\nallowed every form to stand there side by side, from the gallery and\nthe treasury to the Roman bath and the Byzantine church. Yet it is not\nin Argos itself that the series can be really studied. In the life of\ncities nothing preserves like early overthrow, nothing destroys like\ncontinuous life. Of the members of the Argive series the latest alone\nis perfect. The vault of the Roman bath is broken down; the gallery\ncan scarcely be traced; for the existence of the treasury we have only\nthe witness of a traveller seventeen hundred years back. It is among\nthe victims of Argos that early overthrow has preserved to us the works\nof the earliest times. In forsaken Tiryns and Myk\u00ean\u00ea we learn more of\nthe earliest days of Greece than we can learn in the city which has\nsurvived them by three-and-twenty centuries. We have mused over the\nwalls, the guarded gate, the sally-port of Tiryns; we must go on to\nmuse on the walls, the mightier gate, the treasuries, the rifled tombs,\nof Myk\u00ean\u00ea, Imperial city of Hellas in her earliest day.\n\n\n\n\n                        The Akropolis of Myk\u00ean\u00ea.\n\n\nEuripides was perhaps after all not so far wrong as he seemed to the\nmocking genius of comedy, when he raised the question whether life and\ndeath were not in truth things which had exchanged their names:\n\n     \u03c4\u03af\u03c2 \u03bf\u1f36\u03b4\u03b5\u03bd \u03b5\u1f30 \u03c4\u1f78 \u03b6\u1fc6\u03bd \u03c0\u03ad\u03bd \u1f10\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9 \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b8\u03b1\u03bd\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd, \u03c4\u1f78 \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b8\u03b1\u03bd\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd \u03b4\u03ad \u03b6\u1fc6\u03bd;\n\nIt is at least very often so in the case of cities; it is emphatically\nso in the case of the great cities of the Argolic land. Argos, as we\nhave seen, if it has not altogether died, has at least been brought\ndown to a kind of life which, judged by its ancient standard, might\npass for little better than death. Its continued being has destroyed\nwell nigh every trace of its ancient state within the circuit which\nstill remains inhabited. Argos is thus dead because it has lived.\nMyk\u00ean\u00ea, on the other hand, has remained alive because it died. Had\nMyk\u00ean\u00ea remained a ruling city, or even a dwelling-place of men in any\nshape, during all the ages which have passed since the fifth century\nbefore Christ, we should not see, as we now see, what the imperial\ncity of the Pelopid house really was. Thanks to its happy destruction,\nno work of Turk, or Venetian, or Roman has ever arisen to jar on the\nassociations of the prim\u00e6val city. Even the works of those whom at\nMyk\u00ean\u00ea we must call the later Greeks, the men who dwelled there from\nthe Dorian invasion to the days of Perikl\u00eas, have passed away as though\nthey had never been. No columns rise, as at Nemea, over the forsaken\nspot; we meet no tomb by the wayside, no legend graven on the rock,\nsuch as we light on as we tread the holy way from Athens to Eleusis.\nHouse and wall, temple and tower, were either utterly swept away by\nArgive wrath, or else they have crumbled away into nothingness since\nthe scourge of Argos passed over the devoted city. Where once stood\nthe wide streets of Myk\u00ean\u00ea, we meet only the shepherd with his crook\nto guide his flock, or the peasant woman, with Paionian industry,\nplying her distaff as she gathers her sheep or her goats to watering.\nFor the hum of assembled citizens in the _agor\u00ea_, for the tramp of\ngathering warriors on the akropolis, we hear only the pipe of the\nshepherd himself and the bark of the shepherd\u2019s dog. The shepherds who\nwander over the site of Myk\u00ean\u00ea may not wholly answer to the pictures of\nTheokritos or Virgil, but the crook, the pipe, the distaff, are here no\nfigures of speech. They may be seen and heard daily as the sun rises\nover the deep gorge which fences in the Myk\u00eanaian akropolis, or when\nhe \u201creigns\u201d at eve over the heights of Artemis and Kronos. But even\nthose few shepherds do not, like the few inhabitants of modern Corinth,\ndwell on the old site of Myk\u00ean\u00ea, nor do they profess to carry on the\nMyk\u00eanaian name. At the foot of the lower hill, the hill of the city as\ndistinguished from the hill of the akropolis, a small church and a few\nhouses, seeming almost to grow out of the rocky soil, form the small\nvillage, not of Myk\u00ean\u00ea but of Chorbati. Yet in one sense Chorbati has\nbecome Myk\u00ean\u00ea. Gathered there in a small museum are the less splendid\nand precious of the relics which modern discovery has brought to light\non Myk\u00eanaian soil. And there too is one relic, torn from a rifled tomb\non the akropolis, which to the eye of faith must be more precious even\nthan the treasury and the lion-gate. There lies the nearly perfect\nskeleton which those who have trodden doubts and difficulties under\ntheir feet believe to be the very bones of Agamemn\u00f4n. The more cautious\nGreek antiquary is less rash in committing himself. Mr. Stamat\u00e2k\u00eas, the\nlearned and zealous guardian of the Myk\u00eanaian treasury, points to it\nwith a wise qualification. The rest of his explanation is given in the\ntongue which is alike his own and Homer\u2019s. But, to express his doubts,\nthe Hellenic lips have learned to form a Teutonic genitive. He does not\ncommit himself to the belief that they are the bones of \u201cAgamemn\u00f4n,\u201d\npure and simple; they are the bones of \u201cSchliemann\u2019s Agamemn\u00f4n.\u201d Yet\nprim\u00e6val Hellas, prim\u00e6val Myk\u00ean\u00ea, has a history which may well live\nthrough alike unreasonable doubts and undiscerning faith. Call him what\nwe will--Agamemn\u00f4n or anything else--the name matters little. It is a\nmarked moment in one\u2019s life when one looks on the bones of one who, we\nneed not doubt, was, in days long before Hekataios wrote or even before\nHomer sang, a lord of many islands and of all Argos.\n\nThe position of the akropolis at Myk\u00ean\u00ea differs widely from that of\neither of the neighbouring akropoleis of Tiryns and Argos. The hill\nof Tiryns is a mere mound in the plain. The loftier hill of Argos,\nthough far outtopped by the mountains behind it, still stands out as\na marked object. But the akropolis of Myk\u00ean\u00ea, though we find it to\nbe in a manner isolated, when we come to it, seems like an outpost\nof the far loftier hills immediately behind it. On one side the rock\nrises precipitously above a narrow gorge whose limestone cliffs at\nonce, to an eye familiar with the West of England, suggest the gorges\nof Mendip, and, above all, the great pass of Cheddar. In the early\ndays of fortifications, when there was no missile to be feared but\ndarts and arrows, a fortress was not deemed to be in greater danger by\nreason of being thus overlooked. Indeed, to be overlooked by high and\ninaccessible mountains was in itself a kind of shelter. The Myk\u00eanaian\nakropolis thus stands upon the rocks and among the hills in a way in\nwhich its fellows at Tiryns and Argos do not. For that same reason\nit does not stand out in the same way as an object in the distant\nview. Its true form and position grow gradually upon us as we rise\nfrom the modern village along the paths--paths only of the shepherd\nand his flock--which are now all that represent the wide streets of\nthe city beloved of H\u00ear\u00ea. More than one path may be chosen, and each\nwill lead by one or more of the wonderful remains of the city itself,\nthe so-called treasuries, as distinguished from the remains of the\nakropolis. But the path to be taken by choice, as it is the path to\nwhich the traveller\u2019s instinct will most likely lead him, is that\nmost to the right, that which skirts the brook which runs down from\nthe limestone gorge, and which will lead his steps by the greatest\nmonuments of all, the first and the second treasuries. But let the\ntreasuries wait for a moment; they are works, though of unrecorded\ndays, yet still of days far later than the defences of the akropolis\nitself. We will gaze first at the very centre of all, the centre,\nwe may say, of pr\u00e6-historic Hellas. And, as we draw near, we cannot\nhelp having our wrath slightly kindled against the last discoverer of\nMyk\u00ean\u00ea. Dr. Schliemann has done well in what he has brought to light;\nwe cannot think that he has done well in what he has hidden. As we\ndraw near, the height and outline of a great part of the outer wall\nof the akropolis are utterly hidden, the general view is spoiled, the\nproportion of the whole work is sadly damaged, because Dr. Schliemann\nchose to throw the rubbish which he dug out of the tombs anywhere\nwhere it might light. He has for the most part thrown it in vast heaps\nover the wall, by which a really large part of the course of the wall\nis hidden, and the whole view blurred and confused. A little trouble\nmight have avoided this at first; a little more trouble might get rid\nof the rubbish now. In the last diggings at Athens much more care has\nbeen taken. The rubbish has been all carried away, and is piled in\nheaps where it does no harm. If in times to come those heaps should\ngrow into hills like the \u201cmons testaceus\u201d at Rome, no harm will have\nbeen done, and an odd little piece of history will have been made. But\nDr. Schliemann\u2019s heaps of rubbish do seriously mar the general effect\nof the Myk\u00eanaian akropolis. They make it hard to understand the real\nline of the walls until we come quite close to them. Among the rocks\nand the walls, the walls growing out of the rocks, we see something\nwhich is neither rock nor wall, but which confuses the outline of both;\nas we come nearer, we find it to be the former contents of the royal\ntombs and of the other works which have been brought to light within\nthe walls. As at Tiryns, there is a higher and a lower, an inner and\nan outer fortress within the akropolis itself. But the greater height\nof the Myk\u00eanaian hill makes this arrangement far more prominent, far\nmore effective than it is at Tiryns. Only at Myk\u00ean\u00ea the lower enclosure\nhas more of the air of an excrescence or an appendage than the lower\nenclosure of Tiryns. But it is this lower enclosure, the enclosure\nimmediately entered by the famous lion-gate, which, whether an\naddition or not to the fortress above, has become the great centre of\nthe associations of the place. There lie the empty tombs, thence came\nthe wondrous treasures, which have carried us back into the depths of\nwhat we may fairly call pr\u00e6-historic history, which have made us stand\nface to face, if not with the personal heroes of Homer, at least with\nthe men of that age of Hellenic culture which the songs of Homer set\nbefore us.\n\nThe buildings of Myk\u00ean\u00ea have been described over and over again till\ntheir general effect must be almost as familiar to those who have not\nseen them as to those who have. But here, as everywhere else, it is\nthe merely artistic character which can be thus taken at a distance.\nTo feel Myk\u00ean\u00ea, as to feel any other place, we must see it. And even\nsome of the artistic points can, as usual, be thoroughly made out only\non the spot. One must see the place thoroughly to take in the wide\ndifference between the masonry and artistic finish of the lion-gate and\nof the two chief treasuries. The lion-gate--we mean the gate itself,\nas distinguished from the lions--is a mere piling together of stones.\nThe work is done doubtless with great mechanical skill, and it has the\nwonderful effect which all such primitive buildings have; still it is\naltogether without any claims on the score of art. But in the gateways\nof the treasuries, instead of the vast erect jambs of the lion-gate,\nwe find well-wrought courses of stone in two orders, with something\nthat may almost be called a moulding. These gateways had columns too.\nUnluckily nearly all are gone, even the precious fragment which was\nseen and drawn by the earlier travellers. This last, be it remembered,\nwas of a kind which would not have looked out of place in any\nRomanesque building in England or Normandy. This is a most instructive\nfact, as the likeness must have been purely accidental; and this may\nserve to remind us that there are such things as accidental likenesses,\nand to warn us against leaping to conclusions when such likenesses\nare found in times and places far distant from one another. In the\nsecond treasury, the one lately brought to light by Dr. Schliemann,\nthere is a fragment of another column, no longer in its place, which\nlooks like the first rude attempt at the later Doric. Now over both\nthese gateways, and also over the lion-gate, are openings of the same\ntriangular form, though of course wrought far more carefully in the\ntreasuries than in the lion-gate. In the treasuries these openings are\nopenings; they are at present filled up with nothing. That over the\nlion-gate is filled, as all the world knows, with a basaltic stone\nwhich would seem more natural at Bamburgh than at Myk\u00ean\u00ea, carved with\nthe famous lions, if lions they be, which guard a column that would\nnot seem out of place in the _duomo_ of Fiesole, in the apse of La\nCouture at Le Mans, or even in the slype at Worcester. Can we believe\nthat the lion-gate and the lions, that the lion-gate and the gates of\nthe treasuries, are all of the same date? And in point of work the\nlions at once connect themselves with the gateways of the treasuries,\nnot with the gateway over which they stand. Surely we have in these\ngateways signs of an abiding type which lived on through several stages\nof advancing art. Over the square-headed gate there was to be, for\nwhatever reason, a triangular hole, doubtless meant to be filled with a\nstone of its own shape. In the treasuries either this stone was never\nput in or it is gone. In the lion-gate it was put in, as it seems to\nus, when art had passed the stage represented by the lion-gate itself,\nand had reached the stage which is represented by the gateways of the\ntreasuries.\n\nAnother thought suggests itself. At Myk\u00ean\u00ea, as less clearly at Tiryns,\nthe lion-gate, with its skilfully guarded approach, does not lead at\nonce into the higher enclosure of the akropolis, but into the outer\nand lower one. Does this go at all to show that this outer enclosure,\nat Myk\u00ean\u00ea at least, was an addition to the primitive fortress of all,\nfencing in the upper part of the hill? The fact that the tombs were\nfound in the lower enclosure also looks this way. There must have been\na time when this ground was looked upon as being outside the city, or\nit would hardly have been used for purposes of burial. The argument\ndoes not quite reach demonstration; burial within the walls was not\nabsolutely unknown even in historical Greece, and it may not be safe\nto argue from historical to prim\u00e6val Greece. Still the two arguments\nso far fall together as at least to suggest the idea that we have in\nthe inner enclosure something yet more ancient and venerable than\nall--something which may have been ancient and venerable, not only in\nthe days of Homer, but in the days of those whose tale Homer has told.\n\nFor the present we keep within the akropolis, within the old hill fort\nwhich forms the inner circle of the Ekbatana of the imperial lords\nof pr\u00e6-historic Hellas. We stand here within the walls which struck\nthe minds of so many of the poets of Greece in the days when their\ndesolation was a thing of yesterday--walls which seemed too mighty to\nbe the work of mortal men, and which, like their fellows elsewhere,\nwere deemed to have been wrought by the same hands which forged the\nthunderbolts of Zeus. Here we may in truth\n\n  \u03a6\u03ac\u03c3\u03ba\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd \u039c\u03c5\u03ba\u03ae\u03bd\u03b1\u03c2 \u03c4\u1f70\u03c2 \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03c5\u03c7\u03c1\u03cd\u03c3\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u1f41\u03c1\u1fb7\u03bd, \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03cd\u03c6\u03b8\u03bf\u03c1\u03cc\u03bd \u03c4\u03b5 \u03b4\u1ff6\u03bc\u03b1 \u03a0\u03b5\u03bb\u03bf\u03c0\u03b9\u03b4\u1ff6\u03bd\n  \u03c4\u03cc\u03b4\u03b5--\n\nand we may deem that the house of the Pelopids was something which grew\nup as a new thing beneath the shadow of the Cyclopean walls. That inner\nfortress may well be to the Myk\u00eanaian empire of Homeric times what Roma\nQuadrata on the Capitol was to the Rome which bore rule over all Italy.\nBut not a word is there in the Homeric tale to make us think that that\nempire was a dominion of foreign princes, or that the patriarch of\nthe Pelopids was other than a son of the peninsula to which the race\ngave its name. From the akropolis one may look down on the enclosure\nwhich holds the rifled tombs, on the space beyond--the site of the\nwide streets of Myk\u00ean\u00ea--which holds the treasuries, and so on to\ndestroying Argos and to Tiryns, the fellow-sufferer in overthrow. There\nis no other spot where we are carried so deep into unrecorded ages,\nand where unrecorded ages tell their tale so clearly. But the tale of\nthe akropolis, even the tale of the inner fortress, is enough for one\nwhile. The tombs of the lower enclosure, the treasuries, if treasuries\nthey be, of the outer city, may supply their own materials for separate\nthought.\n\n\n\n\n                The Treasuries and Treasures of Myk\u00ean\u00ea.\n\n\nThe Treasuries of Myk\u00ean\u00ea we have heard of all our days; the Treasures\nhave become famous only since the diggings of Dr. Schliemann brought\nthem to light. The names are perhaps unlucky; as, to those who have\nnot seen the spot, they may suggest a connexion between the treasuries\nand the treasures which does not exist in fact. The treasures were\nnot found in the treasuries, nor even in the same part of the city as\nthe treasuries. The treasures come from the tombs, and all the tombs\nthat have been opened lie in the outer and lower enclosures of the\nakropolis. The treasuries, one of which has long been famous, lie\naltogether outside the akropolis, in what must have been the outer\ncity, among the wide streets of Myk\u00ean\u00ea. The word \u201ctreasures\u201d again may\nsuggest a false idea. Objects thrown into tombs as part of the honour\ndone to deceased persons are hardly \u201ctreasures\u201d in any ordinary sense\nof the word. A treasure is something which may be drawn upon for use;\nobjects which are thrown into tombs are, in the nature of the case,\nnever meant to be used again. But, by whatever name they are to be\ncalled, there they are; remains of a great age, of an age which, though\nbeyond the reach of chronology, we can hardly call unrecorded. Though\nthe great works of Myk\u00ean\u00ea are manifestly of various dates, yet all may\nin a general way be said to belong to one period--the period, whatever\nits length, whatever its distance from ourselves, when Myk\u00ean\u00ea was\nthe head of Hellas. To some stage of that period the objects found in\nthe tombs must belong. It is enough to say that they are work of the\nperiod which Homer had before his eyes when he sang of the transfer of\nthe sceptre through the successive generations of the house of Pelops,\nno stranger house in his song. To attempt to assign the tombs, the\nskeletons, the ornaments, to particular persons is rash. And, on the\nother hand, the time is hardly come for those who take a general view\nof history to commit themselves to any decided judgment as to the place\nwhich these objects have in the history of art, or as to their relation\nto objects found in other lands. It is well that the specialists\nshould for a little time longer have that branch of the subject in\ntheir keeping. Some new light will doubtless be thrown on the matter\nby the find which has just been made in Attica. When all these points\nhave been thoroughly sifted, the historian will be glad to accept the\nresults. As it is, it is enough for him that here are the tombs of the\nMyk\u00eanaian lords of Hellas, that here are the objects which the creed of\ntheir days deemed becoming offerings of reverence for the dead.\n\nBesides the field which these objects open for the more direct student\nof art, they open also a field of almost higher interest for the\nhistorian of customs. The mode of disposing of the dead seems to have\nbeen a strange kind of compromise between burning and burying. If we\nrightly understand the process, the bodies were placed in the tombs;\nthey were then half burned; lastly the masks were placed upon them, and\nthe tombs were filled up with the vases and other objects. Here indeed\nis work for Mr. Tylor and any other labourers in that field. The\neffect of the masks is wonderful. Whether they are really likenesses or\nnot, we accept them as such while we look on them; we feel ourselves\nbrought more directly into the presence of the men of old than we are\neven by the sight of the skeleton. Physically the actual bones of the\nman are more truly part of himself; but we really feel brought nearer\nto him as we see the thin covering which has rested on his face, and\nwhich seems at least to profess to keep the stamp of his features. We\nwill not dare to call him Agamemn\u00f4n or any other name. We look at least\non what would be the likeness of one of those on whom our own Alfred\nso happily bestowed the name of the C\u00e6sars that were to be, on one\nwhose historic position is best brought home to us if we call him, in\nAlfred\u2019s tongue, the Bretwalda of prim\u00e6val Hellas.\n\nThe ornaments and other objects have been described and discussed over\nand over again by those who have a special object in their study. But\nthere is one among them which we do not remember to have seen described\nin any of the published accounts, one which, if it has been already\nmentioned, will certainly stand being mentioned again. Of all the\nobjects which Mr. Stamat\u00e2k\u00eas has under his care, and which he so fully\nand clearly explains to all who can follow him in his own tongue, there\nis none more curious in itself, none which speaks more directly home\nto us, than those pieces of thin gilding which were found in one of\nthe tombs over the breast of one of the female bodies, and which, when\nput together, were found to make the complete figure of a young babe.\nThere is nothing wonderful in this. A royal infant--a _clitunculus_,\nas some of our own chroniclers would have called him--may have died\nat Myk\u00ean\u00ea and have been buried with his mother, as well as anywhere\nelse. But the sight of the impression of the little limbs seems to\nbring us more nearly into the presence of the home-life of those old\nkings than any other object in the whole collection. Criticism for a\nmoment holds back; we are more inclined than usual to listen to the\nvoice of legend, when we are told that we are looking on the masks of\nKassandra and her child. Neither the Homeric nor the \u00c6schylean story\nwould ever put it into our heads to attribute children to Kassandra;\nbut the local tradition in the days of Pausanias showed the tombs of\nthe twin sons of Kassandra and Agamemn\u00f4n, slain and buried with their\nparents. In our fit of belief we even put aside the obvious question,\nWhere is the mask of the other brother? The legend doubtless erred;\nin all cases where any tyrant seeks the destruction of a pair of twin\nbrothers, or of young brothers of any kind, one, whether in history or\nin legend, escapes and lives. In our own eleventh-century history two\ndoubly widowed mothers are left with twin children, each pair sought\nafter by the Aigisthos of their own day. Of the original \u201cclitunculi,\u201d\nthe twin babes of Eadmund and Ealdgyth, both indeed were saved, but\none only lived. Of the second pair, the babes of Harold and the second\nEaldgyth, one fell into the hands of the Conqueror, safe in his hands\nfrom death, though it might be to drag on life only in a dungeon; the\nother lived to show himself like a shadow on the fleet of Magnus. And,\nwhile we are believing, we may for a moment believe that, of a later\npair of princes, one escaped, and that Perkin Warbeck was truly Richard\nthe Fourth. The Myk\u00eanaian tradition must have erred in boasting of the\ntomb both of Pelops and of T\u00ealedamos. One must have been carried away\nalong with Orest\u00eas his half-brother. The impression of the other\u2019s form\nin beaten gold we will for a moment indulge ourselves in believing that\nour eyes have looked upon.\n\nBut, leaving dreams and analogies, leaving too the strictly scientific\nexamination of the objects as works of art, the picture which they give\nus of the state of things in the age to which they belong is wonderful\nand interesting beyond words. We are indeed in the age of Homer, the\nage of gold and bronze, when, if we cannot strictly say with Hesiod\nthat black iron was not yet, we can at least say that it had gone no\nway at all to displace the elder metal. We see before our eyes that\nabundance of gold the tradition of which clave to the Pelopid capital\neven in the days of the tragedians, and made Sophokl\u00eas speak of Myk\u00ean\u00ea\nas \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03c5\u03c7\u03c1\u03cd\u03c3\u03bf\u03c2. It jars indeed slightly on the feelings to see the tombs\nthemselves rifled and the more precious part of their contents borne\noff to distant Athens. As a mere matter of sentiment we might have said\nof the old King whose skeleton lies in the museum, \u201cLet him alone, let\nno man move his bones.\u201d We might be tempted to wish that the treasures\nthemselves had remained in the state of\n\n          Aurum inrepertum, et sic melius situm\n          Cum terra celat.\n\nBut, without thus rifling the tombs of the dead, we should never have\nknown that the dead and their treasures were there. When once the tombs\nwere opened, the treasures could not be left in them; and, if they were\nto be borne away at all, they were best borne away to the national\ncapital. In other cases we might plead for the capital of the district,\nbut in this case we could not bear to give Argos another triumph. We\nmust take the relics as they are, in their new place under the best of\nguardianship. But what a moment it must have been to have stood by the\ntombs themselves when they were first brought to light!\n\nFrom the treasures, better perhaps called the relics, let us turn to\nthe treasuries. What were they? Tombs, treasuries, or what? In the time\nof Pausanias they were clearly deemed to be treasuries. His words are\nexplicit:--\u1f08\u03c4\u03c1\u03ad\u03c9\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03c0\u03b1\u03af\u03b4\u03c9\u03bd \u1f51\u03c0\u03cc\u03b3\u03b1\u03b9\u03b1 \u03bf\u1f30\u03ba\u03bf\u03b4\u03bf\u03bc\u03ae\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1, \u1f15\u03bd\u03b8\u03b1 o\u1f30 \u03b8\u03b7\u03c3\u03b1\u03c5\u03c1\u03bf\u03af\n\u03c3\u03c6\u03b9\u03c3\u03b9 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03c7\u03c1\u03b7\u03bc\u03ac\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd \u1f26\u03c3\u03b1\u03bd. He pointedly distinguishes them from the tombs\nof Atreus and of those who perished with Agamemn\u00f4n on his return, among\nthem Kassandra and her babes. These tombs can hardly fail to be the\ntombs which have been lately brought to light, though we should hardly\nfind out from Pausanias\u2019s account that the tombs are in the outer\ncircle of the akropolis, while the treasuries are in the outer city of\nall. The treasuries--at least the great one, that known specially as\nthe Treasury of Atreus--have been described and engraved over and over\nagain. Yet when we at last stand before the gateway, when we pass in\nand stand beneath the mighty roof, the thing is not the less wonderful\nbecause we come to it as to an old friend. The feeling of familiarity\nis stronger than in the case of the lion-gate. Of this last we may know\nevery detail, but certainly none of the ordinary engravings, hardly\nthe best and latest photographs to be found at Athens, can thoroughly\nset before us its peculiar effect in the position where it stands. The\ntreasuries we know to be underground works--one is strongly tempted to\nsay vaults or cupolas--and we have a general notion of what they must\nbe. But our previous knowledge takes away nothing from the feeling of\nthe approach--the part which the common views least bring out; and the\nfact that the building is one which we have so long known and thought\nof, that it is the goal of a long-hoped-for pilgrimage, brings out\nfeelings as strong and as keen, though of quite another kind, as those\nwhich are drawn forth by the act of discovery. And, after all, the\nbest representation cannot fully bring home to us such features as the\nmighty stone which covers the entrance to the great treasury. Whence\ncame it? who raised it, and wherefore? Was it a proud display of mere\nmechanical skill on the part of men whose works showed that they had\nadvanced far beyond mere mechanical skill? Our thoughts flit beyond the\nsea to the yet mightier stone beneath which Theodoric once lay. In\nboth cases, in the age when constructive art was slowly feeling its way\nand in the age when constructive art had reached all but its highest\nstage, there is a display of mere power, when the same result might\nhave been brought about by easier means. There was no absolute need to\nseek and to raise so vast a block as that under which we pass into the\ngreat treasury. Still less was there any need to bring that gigantic\nblock across the sea from Istria, when Theodoric might have been as\neasily covered with a dome of the ordinary construction as Galla\nPlacidia had been.\n\nWe enter. It needs some effort of faith to believe that this roof, so\ncunningly put together of stones which have all but reached the secret\nof the true cupola, was once covered with brazen plates--that we are,\nin fact, in what once was one of the brazen chambers of which the\npoets tell us. From one point of view we may be glad that they are\ngone, as otherwise we could not so well have studied this wonderful\nconstruction. It is as marked a moment in a course of constructive\nstudy when we stand in the treasury of Myk\u00ean\u00ea as when we stand in the\nperistyle of Spalato. Each marks a great step in the history of art. In\none we see how nearly men could come to the arched construction without\nactually reaching it. In the other we see the perfect construction\napplied for the first time to its highest artistic use. But Spalato\nis the direct parent of all that came after it. Myk\u00ean\u00ea is the parent\nof nothing. It surely points to some great revolution, some overthrow\nof the more civilized people by the less civilized, that the art\nof prim\u00e6val Greece should have stopped where it did. In all these\nearly buildings we find the arched construction only not brought to\nperfection. In the artistic architecture of historical Greece the arch,\nor any approach to it, as an artistic feature, was utterly unknown.\nAt the outside, it is barely used here and there, in works which did\nnot claim to be works of art, where the merest constructive necessity\ncalled for it.\n\nTo any one who is familiar with Irish remains the treasury of Myk\u00ean\u00ea\ncannot fail to suggest New Grange. The essential construction of the\ntwo works is the same. But here again the ever needful warning comes\nin. All that the undoubted likeness really proves is that the same\nstage of constructive skill was reached, in times perhaps far removed\nfrom one another, in Ireland and in Peloponn\u00easos. It does not prove, it\ndoes not even suggest, any nearer connexion than this. Otherwise, no\nfield could be more tempting for a mystic ethnologist. Were there not\nDanaoi in Argolis? And was there not in Ireland also a people with a\nname very like Danaoi, but which we will not attempt to spell without\nan Irish library at hand?\n\nThe treasuries are, as Pausanias says, underground, wrought in the\nhill-side. There is something very singular in a work of this kind, a\nwork of real building as much as anything that ever was built above\nground, a work which has nothing in common with rock-hewn tombs,\ntemples, churches, or houses, hidden so that a wayfarer who was not on\nthe look-out might pass by without notice. Was concealment or safety\nthe object sought? Then why were they not made within the fortified\nakropolis, and not in the midst of the outer city? And, be they tombs,\nbe they treasuries or anything else, why were they so many and so\nscattered? Five have been reckoned up in all. One, the best preserved\nafter the great one, has been, if not actually discovered, at least\nbrought more fully to light, during Dr. Schliemann\u2019s researches. The\nroof is broken through, so that it can be looked into from above; but\nthe entrance is as perfect as that of the great treasury. Here it is\nthat the quasi-Doric column is found, a sign perhaps of later date\nagain than the great one. The others are partly pushed down, partly\nchoked up. The great stone of the gateway thus brought near to the\nground has much the air of a cromlech. We need hardly say that in\nmechanical construction a cromlech and the Parthen\u00f4n are exactly the\nsame.\n\nSuch are some of the thoughts which press upon the mind as we walk\nwhere once were the wide streets of Myk\u00ean\u00ea rich in gold. There is no\nother spot like it. It is something to stand among the temples of\nPoseid\u00f4nia, standing well nigh perfect within the Hellenic walls,\nwhile the remains of Roman P\u00e6stum have to be sought for around them.\nIt is something to stand on the akropolis of Kym\u00ea, and to feel that\nits very desolation has in sort brought things back to their ancient\nstate. But at Myk\u00ean\u00ea the temples of Poseid\u00f4nia would seem modern.\nThey would seem as much out of place as the Roman amphitheatre seems\nat Poseid\u00f4nia. They would, like them, speak of foreign invasion and\nforeign conquest, of the invading Dorian instead of the invading Roman.\nAt Myk\u00ean\u00ea, not only is there no trace of later times, Macedonian,\nRoman, Frankish, Turkish; the very works of the Dorian are swept away.\nThe Pelopid city is there, and the Pelopid city only. The Argive swept\naway the memorials of his own kinsfolk; he left the memorials of the\nelder race. There is nothing to disturb, nothing to keep us back from\nthe thoughts of prim\u00e6val times, and of none other. Beside Myk\u00ean\u00ea,\nKym\u00ea itself seems modern, as Poseid\u00f4nia seems modern beside Kym\u00ea.\nThe colony far away on the Italian shore, with the akropolis rising\nalmost straight above the sea, belongs to a state of things many stages\nlater than the akropolis nestling among the inland mountains of Hellas\nitself, with the sea which brought so many dangers as a mere distant\nobject in the landscape. The works at Myk\u00ean\u00ea stand as relics neither\nof a recorded nor of an unknown time; they stand as relics of days\nbefore history, but of days of which they are themselves the history.\nOnce more we may give the warning: let names and dates be eschewed. It\nis enough that the stones were piled, the gold was hammered, the lions\nwere carved in their slab of basalt, the skeleton on which we gaze was\nburied with its strange rites, by men of the race and age whose picture\nlives in the oldest and noblest songs of European man. At Myk\u00ean\u00ea we\nhave reached the hearth and cradle of all Hellas; we have reached the\nhearth and cradle of all Europe. There we can give thanks for those\nlights of modern science which teach us to feel that in that hearth and\ncradle we are not wholly strangers. There we can feel that we come of\nthe same ancestral stock, that we speak a form of the same ancestral\nspeech, that we have our share in the ancestral institutes, which the\ncommon forefathers of Greek and Teuton brought from the common home.\nOn the wonders of Egypt and Nineveh we may gaze with simple wonder; in\nthem and their makers we have no share. At Myk\u00ean\u00ea we may say, as we\ngaze on the imperial skeleton, \u201cThe man is near of kin to us.\u201d Within\nthose walls the lay of Agamemn\u00f4n and the lay of Beowulf seem like\nstrophes of the same poem. We may say, with our own Traveller in our\nown tongue:--\n\n              Mid Creacum ic w\u00e6s,\n              And mid C\u00e1sere,\n              Se \u00fee win-burga\n              Ge-weald \u00e1hte.\n\nNowhere else do the remains of a time at once so famous and so distant\nstand up with such full life before our eyes. There is in truth no spot\nlike it on earth.\n\n\n\n\n                           Myk\u00ean\u00ea to Corinth.\n\n\nMyk\u00ean\u00ea and Tiryns have taught us a lesson in the history of those Greek\ncities which perished in days which we are used to look on as still\nancient. Argos has given us one type of the Greek city which has lived\non through all changes down to our own times. Corinth, a city hardly\nless famous than Argos, from some points of views even more famous,\nhas had yet another destiny. After perishing utterly and rising again,\nCorinth has lived on through all later changes down to recent times,\nto give way, in recent times, to a new city bearing its own name. And\non the way which leads us from Myk\u00ean\u00ea to Corinth we pass by a site of\nanother kind, the site of a spot which never was a city, but which was\nas famous and venerable in Hellenic legend and Hellenic religion as\nany city not of the very foremost rank. Olympia is yet far off, but a\nforetaste of Olympia may well be had in the plain which was hallowed\nby the lesser festival, beneath the columns of Nemea, alongside of its\nruined church.\n\nBut how is Nemea to be reached? It is perhaps a tribute to the ancient\ngreatness of Myk\u00ean\u00ea that it is there that civilization in one important\nbranch may be said to come to an end. From Nauplia the journey by\nTiryns and Argos may be made in a carriage; but it cannot be said that\nthe latter part of the road from Argos to Myk\u00ean\u00ea is made according\nto the principles of Macadam. Indeed, we think it would be possible\nto carry the drive a little further than Myk\u00ean\u00ea, or, to speak more\naccurately, than Chorbati. But as such a drive would not take the\ntraveller to any point in particular, and as he certainly could not\ncontinue it to Corinth, we may say that the carriage-road ends at\nMyk\u00ean\u00ea. Myk\u00ean\u00ea is the last point which the traveller can examine by\nthat mode of journeying. At Chorbati he will begin his really Greek\njourney. He will have to go after the fashion of the country so far as\nto travel, as one of a cavalcade, on one of the small and hardy horses\nof the country, which seem, very much like their guides or drivers, to\nbe able to do anything and to eat nothing. Perhaps however he may not\nso far conform to the fashion of the country as himself to become a\npackage on the back of his pack-horse, and to sit there with both his\nlegs on one side. Such a manner of going, besides other things to be\nsaid against it, has this manifest disadvantage, that it compels the\ntraveller to take a one-sided view of the land which he goes through.\nOn a journey on which the traveller has to take everything with him,\nhe will hardly forget to take European saddles also. But, even with a\nEuropean saddle, it needs a calm head and good horsemanship to take in\nmuch of the view, or to call up many of its associations, when you are,\nnot indeed, like General Wolfe, \u201cscrambling up,\u201d but, if the phrase be\naccurate, \u201cscrambling down\u201d\n\n                      ... Rough rugged rocks\n                Well nigh perpendiklar.\n\nThe scrambling up is well enough; it is with the scrambling down, that\nthe hardship comes. It is easy to convince one\u2019s intellect that there\nis really no danger, that the beast on which one is mounted, most\nunfairly called \u1f04\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03bf\u03bd, knows thoroughly what he is about, and is far\nwiser than the \u03b6\u03c9\u1f78\u03bd \u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc\u03bd whom he carries. To give him his head, and\nto let him go where he pleases, is the dictate of common-sense; but\nthere are moments when common-sense will not be heard. At such moments\nthe traveller begins to wish that he was like Pheidippid\u00eas--most\nrightly named as sparing horses and not sparing his own feet--to whom\nthe journey from Myk\u00ean\u00ea to Corinth would clearly have been no more than\na pleasant morning\u2019s walk. Or better still would it be, if the days\nof Pausanias could come back, as there is indeed fair hope that they\nsoon may, and that the whole road from Nauplia to Corinth may again be\npassed by the help of wheels. To the young and adventurous the novelty\nand roughness of the mode of going seem to have their charms. The\ntraveller more advanced in life would be better pleased even to go on\nhis own feet, and he might think it better still if he might enjoy the\nEastern luxury of going\n\n                  \u1f10\u03c6\u2019 \u1f01\u03c1\u03bc\u03b1\u03bc\u03b1\u03be\u1ff6\u03bd \u03bc\u03b1\u03bb\u03b8\u03b1\u03ba\u03cc\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03ba\u03b5\u03af\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9.\n\nOne thing however is certain--a land without inns is in every\nway better than a land with bad inns. The travelling party is\nself-supporting, and carries along with it all the necessaries of life,\nas well as some of its comforts and conveniences. It is wonderful\nhow shortly and how thoroughly a sleeping-room and a well-furnished\ndinner-table can be called as it were out of nothing. It may be better\nnot to ask too minutely what becomes of the hospitable inhabitants\nwho so readily turn out to make way for the strangers. Certain it\nis, that for the native part of the travelling party, reasonable and\nunreasonable, any quarters for the night will do. One point, however,\ncalls for a protest; if the man chooses to look on his fustanella and\nhis other garments as an inseparable part of himself, that is his\nown look-out; but it is hard to treat the unreasonable beast as if\nhis pack-saddle were an inseparable part of him, and to give him no\nrest from his burthen either by day or by night. As for the traveller\nhimself, he certainly would not exchange the fare, he might not always\nbe anxious to exchange the lodging, which he makes for himself in\nthe museum at Myk\u00ean\u00ea or in the house of the single priest of fallen\nCorinth; for those that he could get in some lands where, as there are\ninns, people do not take everything with them.\n\nThe cavalcade leaves Chorbati to make its way to Corinth by way of\nNemea. Pausanias gives a choice of routes; the one chosen is that\nwhich he distinguishes as the \u03c4\u03c1\u03b7\u03c4\u1f78\u03c2, which he describes as narrow,\nbut passable for carriages. Narrow enough it is, and well it deserves\nits name as a passage cleft through the rocks, but the wheel tracks\nare there to show that carriages did once go that way. We are between\nCorinth and Argos, not between Thebes and Delphi; but we can well\nfancy the difficulties and the likelihood of quarrel if Laios and\nOidipous met in such a strait as this.\n\nWe pass on, over ground which five-and-fifty years ago beheld one of\nthe fiercest struggles of the War of Independence. Each of the passes,\neach of the heights, was held and stoutly contested in the August\nof 1822, when the men of Peloponn\u00easos beat back the Turkish host of\nDramali in utter defeat. On our immediate path the ground rises and\nfalls, but we are led over no special heights till, as we descend, the\nplain of Nemea breaks upon us. The columns rise in all the stateliness\nof solitude. Beyond rise the hills in which the ancients placed the\ncave of the Nemeian lion. This then is one of the seats of Pan-hellenic\nreligion and Pan-hellenic festive gathering. If its glory did not reach\nthat of Olympia or Delphi or even of the Isthmus, it is the first of\nthe four to which our journey leads us, and we remember that Nemeian\nvictories called forth the song of Pindar, and that Alkibiad\u00eas did\nnot disdain either to win triumphs there, or to have those triumphs\nrecorded in the choicest art of the sculpture of his day. There is\nthe temple in the plain, a plain well fitted for the purposes of the\ngames, and, cut out of one of the hills to the right as in the Larissa\nof Argos, we see where the theatre of Nemea once was. Though the place\nhardly ranks among sites of first-rate interest, though it calls up\nno such prim\u00e6val associations as Myk\u00ean\u00ea which we have left, no such\nlater associations as Corinth to which we are going, there is much to\nmuse upon in the plain of Nemea. The legend of the lion comes home to\nus all the more strongly after seeing the sculptured forms which the\nworld has agreed to call lions in the Myk\u00ean\u00eaan akropolis. Science and\nscholarship going hand in hand have given him a new interest. The lion,\nwhose cave we cannot see, though we see the mountain side in which\nit is hollowed, may be mythical in his own person, but he is no mere\ncreature of fiction. If, with Mr. Dawkins, we trace out the retreat\nof the lion from Europe, we see at Nemea one very important stage in\nhis retreat. We trace him from the day when he made his lair in the\ncaves of Mendip to the day when Herodotus so accurately marked out\nhis geographical limits within the European continent. In his day the\nlion was still found in the region which stretched from the Achel\u00f4os\nto the Nestos; and when we look at the evidently careful nature of the\nnotice itself, and when we go on to put that notice in its right place\namong other notices, we shall not be tempted for one moment to think\nthat the lions of Herodotus were other than real lions. Some indeed\nhave suggested that Herodotus was so poor a naturalist as to mistake\nlynxes or wild cats for lions. No one will be likely to think this when\nhe has once put the whole evidence in its right order. Just as we can\nbelieve in a Myk\u00eanaian empire without pledging ourselves to a personal\nAgamemn\u00f4n, so we can believe in lions in Peloponn\u00easos without pledging\nourselves to a personal H\u00earakl\u00eas. The constant references to the lion\nin the Homeric poems must come from actual knowledge or from very\nrecent tradition. The beast has a two-fold name; he is not only \u03bb\u03ad\u03c9\u03bd\nbut \u03bb\u1fd6\u03c2, and we are tempted, though it is slightly dangerous, to carry\nour thoughts on a little further with regard to his name. We ourselves\nseem never to have called him by anything but a name borrowed from the\nLatin; but are not _L\u00f6we_ and \u03bb\u1fd6\u03c2 strictly cognate, signs of a time\nwhen the king of beasts had a name common to the whole Aryan family?\nAnyhow we may be sure that primitive legend would not have quartered\nthe lion at Nemea, that primitive art would not have sculptured him at\nMyk\u00ean\u00ea, except at times when his presence in Peloponn\u00easos was, if a\nthing of the past at all, a thing of a very recent past.\n\nThe modern fauna of Nemea, as it strikes the passer-by, is of a\nlowlier and more harmless kind. The shepherdesses are there with their\ngoats among the ruins, and a draught of their milk in the Greek May\nis a refreshment not to be scorned. And he who uses his eyes as he\npasses along may have the same luck as the infant Herm\u00eas when he met\nthe tortoise in his path. The tortoise of that adventure willingly\nsacrificed himself for the good of mankind, that the baby-god might\nmake a lyre out of his shell. The tortoise kept his place in the human\nnursery speech of Greece, and we may still ask the question of the\nGreek girls,\n\n              \u03c7\u03b5\u03bb\u1f76 \u03c7\u03b5\u03bb\u03ce\u03bd\u03b7, \u03c4\u03af \u03c0\u03bf\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c2 \u1f10\u03bd \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03bc\u03ad\u03c3\u03c9;\n\nThere is a temptation to carry him off as a living memorial of the\nspot; but the way from Nemea to Britain is long.\n\nBut we must not forget man and his works when we are in one of the\nchief seats of Hellenic worship. Here is the temple of Nemeian Zeus,\nstanding desolate in the plain, almost as some of our Cistercian\nabbeys stand in their valleys. The history of the holy place is\ncharacteristic of Greek religion and of Greek politics. As Elis wrested\nthe possession of Olympia from Pisa, so Argos wrested the possession\nof Nemea from Kle\u00f4nai. In each case the possession of the temple and\nall that belonged to it was a source of dignity and political power.\nIt was therefore eagerly sought for, and unscrupulously seized, by\nthe greater city at the expense of the smaller. In the Olympian case\nindeed, one ground of refusing the ancient claim of the men of Pisa\nwas that they had no city at all, but were mere villagers, unable and\nunworthy to preside over one of the great religious solemnities of the\nGreek nation. With our Northern notions, we are inclined to ask why\nOlympia and Nemea did not themselves grow into cities. Why did not a\ntown grow up around the sanctuary? Not a few English towns, some of\nthem of considerable size, grew up round some venerated monastery or\nother great church. A few devotees of the saint, a few dependents of\nhis ministers, began the settlement. Traffic, shelter, all the motives\nwhich draw men together, increased the colony. In course of time it\neither wrested municipal rights from its ecclesiastical lords or\nreceived them as a free gift. In either case a new borough was formed,\na borough which had not been made but had grown. But in Greek ideas\na city was something which did not grow but was made. It might grow\nindefinitely after it was once made; but its first making did not take\nthe form of growing. A new city was called into being by special and\nsolemn acts, and no such foundation would have been endured at Olympia\nby Elis or at Nemea by either Argos or Kle\u00f4nai. Some accommodation\nthere must have been for the ministers of the God and his worshippers,\neven in ordinary times. At the great festival seasons, so we gather\nfrom the story of the assault on the tents of the envoys of Dionysios\nat Olympia, the crowds which assembled were encamped in the open plain\nlike an army. But such a camp did not, like so many of the camps of\nRome, grow into a permanent city. One might have fancied that it might\nbecome an object of Pan-hellenic policy to remove these national\nsanctuaries from the power of particular cities, and to place them\nunder some kind of management in which all who had a right to share in\nthe festival might be represented. But such an idea was foreign to the\nGreek political mind. The presidency of the temple and the games was\nessentially a privilege of this or that city. Pisa or Kle\u00f4nai, Elis\nor Argos, were hosts, and the rest of Greece were their guests. There\nwere, indeed, Amphiktionies, where a temple belonged to several cities\nin common; but the action of the most famous of their number in Greek\naffairs did not do much to impress the general Greek mind in favour\nof that system of management. Throughout Grecian history the Delphic\nAmphiktiony either does nothing or becomes the tool of some powerful\ncommonwealth or prince.\n\nBut, besides the memories of Nemea and the thoughts which it suggests,\nthere is the temple itself. There is enough left to trace out the\nwhole ground plan, and three columns soar above the plain, catching\nthe eye as a prominent object in the descent. We say \u201csoar,\u201d for these\nare perhaps the only Doric columns which do soar. They are taller and\nslenderer than any others to be seen in Greece, and they have thereby\nlost much of the true Doric character. That they are of much later date\nthan the Attic Parthen\u00f4n none can doubt. Greek antiquaries are even\ninclined to fix them as late as Macedonian times. One almost wonders\nthat an architect who departed so far from the primitive Doric idea in\nthe proportion of his columns did not venture to adopt either of the\nlater forms of capitals, one of which at least must have come into use\nbefore his time. We have seen the Ionic capital in use on the Athenian\nakropolis, and it certainly would have looked more in place as a finish\nto the columns of Nemea than the form which seems the natural finish\nat Poseid\u00f4nia and even at Athens. But they are grand objects all the\nsame. Nothing can wholly take away the inherent majesty of the Doric\narchitecture, and beside them is a relic of even greater interest\nthan themselves. Within the precinct, built out of the remains of the\nheathen sanctuary, are the ruins of a small church, clearly of early\ndate, one of the many instances in which the professors of the new\nfaith turned the holy places of the old faith to their own purposes.\nA train of thoughts are suggested by the neighbourhood of the two\ntemples, now alike equally fallen. But on this head we shall do well to\ncheck ourselves; a greater opportunity for musings of this kind will be\nfound on the western side of Peloponn\u00easos.\n\nWe leave the temple; we pass by the remains of the theatre; we climb\nto a fountain where the women gathering around may afford a study in\nthe varied ornaments of their dress. We pass on; we come down again,\nmarking a number of quarries which supplied stone for the neighbouring\nbuilding and which have almost the look of buildings themselves. It\nis to our shame that we pass by the remains of Kle\u00f4nai, its akropolis\ncovering a low hill, without stopping for a nearer examination? Such\nquestions are not always decided by the traveller for himself; they are\nfor the most part settled for him. And he who has lingered at Myk\u00ean\u00ea in\nthe morning and must needs reach Corinth in the evening may be forgiven\nif he fail to give Kle\u00f4nai her due. A halt and a meal are taken at a\nmore convenient point, within sight of the hill of Kle\u00f4nai, where a few\ntrees give shade, and where a few ruined and forsaken houses remain as\nmemories of the last earthquake. Of that earthquake we shall hear and\nsee more at Corinth. We press on to the city of the two seas and the\nmountain crowned by its citadel. Before we reach them, we learn again\nat once how thoroughly Greece is a land of mountains, and how near one\npart of Greece is to another. Here in Peloponn\u00easos we see over the gulf\nto the mountains of Northern Greece. The hoary head of Parnassos rises\nbefore us,\n\n          Not in the phrensy of a dreamer\u2019s eye,\n          Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,\n          But soaring snow-clad through its native sky,\n          In the wild pomp of mountain majesty.\n\nThere in truth it soars, as no figure of speech, but as the mountain\nwhich guarded a Pan-hellenic sanctuary greater than that of Nemea.\nPresently we reach a winding descent, and a flat meadow alone lies\nbetween us and Akrokorinthos. The hills of Tiryns, Myk\u00ean\u00ea, and\nKle\u00f4nai, the Athenian akropolis itself, are as nothing to the Larissa\nof Argos; but the Argive height itself yields utterly to the great\nCorinthian steep. Still, as yet we see only the hinder side, the\nland side, of the mountain; we see the highest point of the fortress\nwhich crowns it, but we do not yet see how Akrokorinthos stands to\nCorinth, New and Old, and to the seas on either side of it. We have\nyet to study one of the sites of Greece than which none is of higher\ninterest in general history, a site which has to tell a tale of ruin,\nof restoration, and of renewed ruin, of a different kind from any with\nwhich we have as yet met.\n\n\n\n\n                                Corinth.\n\n\nThus far on our Hellenic journey we have been able to contrast cities\nwhich were swept away for ever in days which we call ancient with\ncities which have kept on an uninterrupted being to our own day.\nThe city of the two seas, the city which guards the Isthmus, the\ncity beside whose hill-fortresses all rival hill-fortresses seem as\nmolehills, has a history which is unlike either, a history which,\namong the great cities of Greece, is wholly her own. And, as none of\nthe great cities of Greece has seen such ups and downs of fortune as\nCorinth, so none has won for itself a more varied fame. There is no\nGreek city whose name has entered into more familiar sayings; it even\nsank to be a kind of a byword in very modern times. Holding, never\na first, but always a high secondary place, alike in Grecian legend\nand in the most brilliant times of Grecian history, Corinth came to\nbe the centre of all Grecian history in the days of the second birth\nof Grecian freedom; it was swept from the earth by Roman vengeance as\nnone other of the great Grecian cities ever was; it arose afresh as\na Roman colony, again under the influence of sky and soil to change\ninto a Greek city; it kept on its Greek character through the ages of\nSlavonic invasion, to become one of the points most fiercely struggled\nfor in the warfare of Turk and Venetian, to be taken and retaken by\nthe patriots and the oppressors of yet later warfare. And now, after\nso long and so busy a life, after the endurance of so many blows at\nthe hand of man, the last blow has been dealt by the hand of nature.\nThe last of many earthquakes has sealed the doom of Corinth yet more\neffectually than it was sealed when Mummius swept it with the besom\nof destruction. Mummius simply destroyed, and what Mummius destroyed\nC\u00e6sar could restore. But the last overthrow of Corinth has given her a\nneighbour and a rival. Old Corinth is forsaken; New Corinth has sprung\nup by the shore. New Corinth may well grow, and she may have ages of\nprosperity in store for her. But while New Corinth grows and flourishes\nby the shore, the only chance for Old Corinth at the foot of the\nmountain is that New Corinth may grow to such a degree as some day to\nannex the venerable site as one of its suburbs.\n\nThose who believe in Semitic or other foreign settlements in Greece\nare apt, though they have no legend like those of Pelops or Kekrops to\nhelp them, to quarter a Ph\u0153nician settlement on Akrokorinthos. A name\nor two is all that they have to show, and a hill called \u03c6\u03bf\u03b9\u03bd\u03af\u03ba\u03b1\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd,\nand an \u1f08\u03b8\u03ae\u03bd\u03b7 \u03a6\u03bf\u03b9\u03bd\u03af\u03ba\u03b7 do not prove much. No site can be more thoroughly\nGreek; the hill-top, near the sea, but not on it, is the ideal position\nfor a Greek coast town of the earliest type; and at Corinth we have\nthe mightiest of hilltops, near but not on, not one sea only, but two.\nIt is the central point of Hellas, looking all ways, commanding her\ncoasts and her mountains on every side. Its earliest name of Ephyr\u00ea\nis one scattered over many sites of central and northern Greece, from\nArgolis and Sikyonia to Thessaly and Thesprotia. Semitic elements may\nhave mingled with the local worship of Aphrodit\u00ea without supporting\nany Semitic occupation. Corinth traded with all the world, and she\nmay have learned many things from Ph\u0153nician visitors without Ph\u0153nician\nsettlers ever occupying her soil. The most Hellenic in its position of\nall Hellenic cities cannot be given up to the barbarian. Instead of a\nPh\u0153nician origin, the votaries of the East must be satisfied with the\nmost striking of Ph\u0153nician analogies. If Corinth and Carthage were not\nsisters in origin, they were at least sisters in destiny. They perished\ntogether, and they rose again together, if the foundation of the\nRoman colony can be called a rising again of either the Greek or the\nPh\u0153nician city.\n\nThe old memories of far-distant Poseid\u00f4nia come again on the mind--not\nunfittingly in a place where Poseid\u00f4n was so highly honoured--when we\nlook on the one surviving building of the lower city. Old Corinth is\nnow a mere village of a few houses. A few memorials of Roman times\nare there; but, as at Poseid\u00f4nia, they have to be looked for. The one\nancient building which strikes the eye and gives a character to the\nplace is the shattered temple, where seven columns still stand in all\nthe stern majesty of the earliest and severest Doric. Corinth gives her\nname to the latest, the richest, the most graceful form of architecture\nof Greece. But her one surviving relic is, of all buildings on old\nHellenic soil, the one which is furthest removed from the character\nof her own order. The birthplace, so men deemed, of painting, one of\nthe chosen seats of sculpture, a city crowded with splendid temples\nof later date, has now nothing to show but these half-fallen columns,\ncarrying us back to the earliest days of the historical being of the\ncity. Young as they seem beside the gates and vanished columns of\nMyk\u00ean\u00ea, the Parthen\u00f4n is young beside them. They carry us back to the\ndays of Bacchiads and Kypselids, the days when Corinth was the mistress\nof the Western seas, and sent forth her colonists and artists to follow\non the peninsular of Korkyra the models which she had reared at the\nfoot of her own guardian mountain.\n\nThe columns stand over the modern village, over a site almost as\ndesolate as that over which they must have stood in the hundred years\nbetween Mummius and C\u00e6sar. The other fragments, Greek and Roman, hardly\ncome into the view. But the lower city is not the true Corinth. It is\nthe mountain citadel round which the great associations of the city\ngather. As we look on from far, as we climb up its steep sides, we\nthink of the two great moments of its deliverance, the day\n\n                  When first Timoleon\u2019s brother bled,\n\nand the night when Aratos, in his earlier and nobler days, climbed\nup that steep in the teeth of Macedonian guards and baying dogs, and\nmade Corinth once more a free Hellenic city. We picture him the next\nmorning in the _agor\u00ea_, leaning wearied on his spear, and telling\nto the citizens whom he had delivered the tale of the night\u2019s work\nwhich had set them free. And with such a scene before us, we are not\ntempted to dwell on the darker day when the deliverer undid his own\nwork, when, rather than divide the possession of Peloponn\u00easos with a\nSpartan rival, he could give back the mount of Corinth to a Macedonian\nlord. High indeed the mount soars above the city, as high above the\nLarissa of Argos as the Larissa of Argos soars above the little hill of\nTiryns. Stern and bare it rises above the city; stern and bare it rises\nabove the open land on either side. But where the mountain sinks more\ngently towards the lesser height on its Sikyonian side, we may climb\nthe winding path; we may enter the gateway of the forsaken fortress;\nand here indeed we find the history of Corinth, the history of Hellas,\nwritten legibly in stone. The fortress which, but fifty-five years\nback, was so fiercely disputed between the men of the land and their\nbarbarian masters is now a fortress only in name. The warder keeps the\ngate; but he keeps it only as a form. The walls shelter only ruins. But\nthey are ruins which tell their tale, fragments which tell how\n\n          Many a vanish\u2019d year and age,\n          And tempest\u2019s breath, and battle\u2019s rage,\n          Have swept o\u2019er Corinth.\n\nEvery age, from the earliest to the latest, has left its living and\nspeaking memorials on that memorable hill, and no classical barbarian\nhas yet taken in hand the cruel work of wiping out that long and\nwondrous history. Here, in the very gateway, is a prim\u00e6val wall,\nreared, it may well be, before Corinth was Dorian, a wall of stones\nsuch as Corinth\u2019s own Sisyphos might have been set to roll up the\nmountainside. Hard by is an arch of the thirteenth century of our era,\nan arch, not of Venetian, but of genuine French work, work of the days\nwhen there were Latin Princes of Achaia and Latin Emperors of the New\nRome. We pass on among the fortifications, the dwellings, the temples,\nof all the creeds and races which Corinth has seen as citizens or as\nmasters. Here is work of Hellenic days, of days when Corinth sent forth\nher colonies on her one sea and met the Persian in arms on the other.\nHere are traces of the temples of the Roman colony, traces of the\nCorinth where Paul taught and which Alaric entered as the first armed\ndisciple of Paul\u2019s teaching. Here is the Byzantine church, witness of\nthe long years when Corinth stood as an outpost of Christendom, in one\nage against the heathen Slave, in another against the Mahometan Turk.\nHere is the Turkish mosque, the Turkish dwelling, telling of the long\nstruggle when the Turk wrested the fortress from the Greek, when the\nVenetian wrested it back from the Turk, when the Turk wrested it once\nmore from the Venetian, till the happier day when the fetter of Hellas,\nthe horn of Peloponn\u00easos, again passed into the hands of her sons. All\nare in ruins, all are fittingly in ruins, seeing that all are memorials\nof powers which have passed away. But as ruins let them be guarded and\nrevered, as ruins which tell their tale, the tale of Corinthian and\nHellenic history. The blind fury of the destroyer has decreed that the\nhistory of Athens shall no longer be read on the akropolis of Athens.\nLet Corinth harbour no such enemies. Let not a wall be touched, let not\na stone be swept away, which still lives to tell how many times and by\nhow many hands\n\n                       Was Corinth lost and won.\n\nThe ascent is long; to any but the young and active or else the\npractised mountaineer it is toilsome. But the toil is broken by the\nrelics on which we stop to gaze on our path; it is repaid by the\nmighty landscapes on which we gaze. It is not too much to say that\nwe look on Hellas from its centre. The small ruined church on the\nheight brings Akrokorinthos within the company of the sacred hills of\nChristendom, the hills where a sanctuary on the height looks down on\ntown or city at its feet. Cashel has been seized by another hand as a\nparallel to the akropolis of Athens; a miniature more like the model\nis found in our own island, where the Tor of Glastonbury looks down on\nthe battle-fields of Western England. Nearer in size however, in the\nmountain fittings of the landscape, are the twin hills of Sitten. But\nthe giant alps which fence in the Rhone valley of themselves hinder\nthe varied prospect of mountain and plain and sea and island which\nmeets us from the hill of Corinth. The lowlier English height really\ncomes nearer, both in effect and in historic sentiment, to the central\ncitadel of Hellas. If the Sugarloaf, as we prosaically call it--the\nPen-y-val of its own people--which so proudly guards the entrance to\nthe Usk valley, had the castle and church of Abergavenny on its summit\ninstead of at its foot, we should have a nearer approach than all to\nAkrokorinthos, though it would be Akrokorinthos without its seas. But\nwithout the seas there could be no Corinth, there could be no Hellas.\nThe point where the Eastern and Western seas most nearly touch is in\ntruth the centre, the key-stone as the poet puts it, of the whole\npeninsular land south of Olympos. From the citadel of Corinth, if all\nHellas does not itself lie within our sight, yet all Hellas lies within\nsight, as it were, by representation. Peloponn\u00easos and Attica, the land\nnorth and south of the gulf, the shores of the two great confederacies,\nthe mountains of Arkadia and of Ph\u00f4kis, and the snowy head of Aitolian\nKorax, stand there as if to speak of the lands north and south of\nthem. And if the Western islands, once the special scene of Corinthian\nenterprise and Corinthian dominion, are beyond our sight, we may pass\non to them in thought along the gulf over which the triremes of Corinth\nwere rowed to their first sea-fight with revolted Korkyra. The eastern\nsea opens to the right, and the curved shore of Salamis speaks of\nthe nobler warfare where Corinth joined with Athens and with Aigina\nto beat back the invading lord of Asia. At some favourable moment the\neye may even catch the pillared steep of the akropolis of Athens, that\nAthens which Corinth once hoped to see turned into a sheep-walk, but\nwhose help she was so soon to crave against the very Sparta which held\nback her destroying hand. From that height the Isthmus seems but a\nflat plain between the two seas--the Isthmus so often fortified, so\noften stormed by successive invaders. By that narrow neck Ag\u00easilaos\nand Antigonos, Mummius and Alaric, James of Avesnes and Francesco\nMorosini, Amurath and Mahomet and Ali Koumourgi have all made their way\ninto the peninsula. But in all that long history there are two days,\nnot far apart in so long a tale, which stand out conspicuously above\nall. There is the day of the Roman deliverer and the day of the Roman\ndestroyer, the day of Flamininus and the day of Mummius. Not that it\nwas the freedom of Greece which Flamininus proclaimed in the _agor\u00ea_ of\nCorinth; such a proclamation would have been an insult to the allies of\nRome and to all those Greek states which in name at least kept their\nfreedom then and for ages after. But he proclaimed the freedom of\nCorinth, the freedom of all the Greek lands which the last Philip held\nin bondage. Fifty years later Corinth was swept from the earth; but\nlet no man deem that even then Achaia became a Roman province. Corinth\nfell, Corinth rose again, to live a longer and a more varied life as\nthe foundation of C\u00e6sar than as the foundation of Al\u00eat\u00eas. And those\nseven aged columns have stood and looked on all these changes; they\nbeheld the reign of Periandros; they have lived to behold the reign of\nGeorge of Denmark.\n\nThe Akrokorinthos is a mountain covered with ruins; the lower city has\nsunk to a small village. A few houses are all that remain of that busy\nmeeting-place of two worlds; the shattered temple alone speaks of the\ncreeds that are fallen; one mean church and another small chapel are\nall that are there to tell of the church which an Apostle founded. Yet\nthe single priest of Corinth and his small flock may boast themselves\nthat they have two epistles of the New Testament all their own, a\nprivilege of which those few Christian households may seem more worthy\nthan the mixed multitude of the modern Thessalonians. A night may be\nspent in Corinth, and that unharmed by the enemies on whom the comic\npoet of Athens has so grotesquely bestowed the Corinthian name. There\nis no fear of the \u03b4\u03ae\u03bc\u03b1\u03c1\u03c7\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f10\u03ba \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03c3\u03c4\u03c1\u03c9\u03bc\u03ac\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd--no fear that the traveller\nmay have to cry \u1f10\u03be\u03b5\u03af\u03c1\u03c0\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd \u03bf\u1f31 \u039a\u03bf\u03c1\u03af\u03bd\u03b8\u03b9\u03bf\u03b9. But in Greece all animals\nseem to send forth louder and clearer notes than in other parts of the\nworld; and in Corinth, the centre of Greece, they seem, though it may\nbe merely fancy, to be louder and shriller than in the rest of Greece.\nA poet more recent than he whom we have so often quoted has sung of\n\n     The deep grey of the morning, when Bulgarian cocks are shrill.\n\nOf the vocal powers of Bulgarian cocks we can say nothing; but there\nmust just now be many witnesses either to confirm or to correct the\npoet\u2019s description. But in the solitude of modern Corinth the few\nvoices that are heard, whether of man or beast or fowl, seem certainly\nto sound louder and shriller even than in Athens itself. Aphrodit\u00ea had\none of her special homes in Corinth, though the seven massive columns\nare said to belong, as surely they ought to belong, to her greater\nsister Ath\u00ean\u00ea. But the bird who once played Aphrodit\u00ea so sorry a trick,\nand the beast which carried Dionysos and Zanthias on their journey to\nthe lower world, call us betimes, with a power of voice which surely no\nBulgarian cock could surpass, to make our way, not to Kenchrea\u00ef, but\nto its modern substitute Kalamaki--thence once more to draw near to\nAthens, this time by way of the shore of Megara and of her own Salamis.\n\n\n\n\n                          The Corinthian Gulf.\n\n\nCorinth, we have said, with its mountain citadel, is truly the central\npoint of Greece. But we do not thoroughly feel how the Isthmus parts\nasunder two different spheres of Greek life and history till we find\nourselves on the gulf which takes its name from the city on the\nIsthmus. We can, if we will, make our way to Athens first of all by\nway of the gulf; but we shall perhaps better understand the position\nin Grecian history which is held by the shores of the gulf, if we take\nthem at a later stage of our journey. It may, in short, be well to\nleave Greece by the Corinthian gulf, to make it our way back again to\nthe western islands from whence we started. It is impossible to study\nGreece in strict chronological order, unless we could anyhow drop from\nthe clouds on the akropolis of Myk\u00ean\u00ea. But by taking the Corinthian\ngulf and its shores late in our course, we shall be enabled to end\nour survey with those parts of Greece which, at least in the days of\nher old independence, were the last to come to the front. And by this\ncourse we shall perhaps better understand why those parts came to the\nfront later than others.\n\nGreece, the most eastern of the three great peninsulas of Europe,\nbegins to play its part in the history of the world earlier than\nthe peninsulas of Italy and Spain; and in the like sort, it is the\neastern side of Greece which begins to play its part in the history\nof Greece earlier than the western side. Is it answered that the\nposition of Athens, the most eastern part of the Greek continent,\nas a leading state in Greece, is of comparatively late date? As\nfar as dominion goes, Myk\u00ean\u00ea, Argos, Sparta, all came to the front\nbefore her. But it was Athens which, in some unrecorded age, made the\nfirst advance in Greek and in European political life by that union\nwhich made one commonwealth--we might say, one city--of Athens and\nEleusis, of Marath\u00f4n and Sounion. Here was in truth the beginning of\npolitical history, the foundation of a state of such happy dimensions\nas to become the model of city-commonwealths for all time. And as\nfor the cities which came before Athens in dominion, they too lie,\nif not so far east as Athens, yet on the eastern side of their own\npeninsula. All the earliest greatness, the earliest history, of Greece\ngathers round her \u00c6g\u00e6an, not round her western, shores. Her colonies\ngo eastward and northward, covering all the eastern coast with an\nHellenic fringe, while far distant Kym\u00ea was the single outpost in the\nwest. Down at least to Macedonian times the eastern side of Greece\nkeeps its predominance; the western side is important mainly as the\nroad to a distinct Hellenic world in Italy and Sicily. Ever and anon\nthis distinct western world influences the eastern Hellenic world,\nsometimes, as in the great Athenian overthrow before Syracuse, with\nterrible effect. But, on the whole, the western side of Greece, the\nside where Corinth was greater than either Sparta or Athens, remained\nsecondary in Grecian affairs, while the Greek world still further to\nthe west lived a life of its own, broken only by occasional dealings\nwith the states of the older Hellenic land. Politically the older\nGreek world looks in the main eastward. It is only the great religious\ncentres of the nation which in any sort cast their eyes towards the\nislands of the blessed. D\u00f4d\u00f4n\u00ea lies to the west, in a land whose\nHellenic character was called in question. So does Olympia within\nPeloponn\u00easos itself, while Delphoi, if it does not look absolutely\nwestward, if its connexion with Thermopylai binds it in some sort\nto the eastern side of Greece, still looks directly on that central\ngulf which forms the great highway to the western shores. At Corinth\nindeed the rule is reversed; the city of the two seas and the two\nhavens looks far more to her western than to her eastern outlet; but\nher great Isthmian sanctuary looks to the Saronic and not to the\nCorinthian gulf. The names are well chosen. The western gulf was the\ntrue gulf of Corinth. No other city of equal rank stood on its shore,\nwhile its waters formed the highway to the insular and quasi-insular\ndominion of Corinth on the western seas, to Leukas and Korkyra and\nlong-lived Epidamnos, to Ambrakia, fated to be the capital of Pyrrhos,\nto mightier and more distant Syracuse, fated to be the capital of whole\ndynasties of tyrants and kings.\n\nWe at last then bid farewell to Athens and Attica; and, in bidding\nfarewell to Athens and Attica, we bid farewell to something more. We\npass from one Hellenic world to another. We once more cross the head\nof the Saronic gulf to Kalamaki; thence carriages bear us, it may be\nto New Corinth, it may be to Loutraki to the north of it, according\nto exigencies of which the landsman is a poor judge. In either case\nwe are carried far more distinctly away from one geographical and\nhistorical region to another than when we simply cross from one side of\nthe Saronic gulf to another. As we are borne over the Isthmian hills,\nwe look to Peloponn\u00easos on one side, to Northern Greece on the other;\nwe look forward on the Corinthian gulf, and we are borne along to all\nthat it suggests in the further West. On the East we have turned our\nbacks; and we feel that we have done something more than turn our backs\nin the way which the physical necessities of travel compel us to do. We\nbegin to understand that the northern, the southern, and the western\nview really make up a system in which the lands and seas which we\nleave behind us have no share. And when we once find ourselves on the\nwaters of the Corinthian gulf, we begin to feel ourselves in another\nworld from the world of the eastern Hellas, the world of Athens and\nSparta. In both of the great divisions of the inland sea, within and\nwithout the straits, in the gulf of Krissa and in the gulf of Patrai,\nwe feel that we have left the Greece of Herodotus, Thucydides, and\nXenoph\u00f4n behind us. We are in a world which their history touches\nonly by fits and starts; we have sailed into the Greece of Polybios.\nWe have made our way from the world of city-commonwealths into the\nworld of federations; as we pass along, the lands of the two great\nLeagues lie on either side of us. Through nearly the whole of our\njourney we skirt the Achaian shore to the south, and what, in later\ntimes at least, became the Ait\u00f4lian shore to the north of us. Lesser\nLeagues, Boi\u00f4tia--for in those later times Boi\u00f4tia must count among\nlesser Leagues--Ph\u00f4kis, and Lokris, fill up whatever space Ait\u00f4lia\nleft unannexed. And, when we have cleared the gulf and are fairly in\nthe western sea, we draw near to another federal land on the shores of\nAkarnania. We may even cast, if not our eyes, at least our thoughts,\nto the great northern mainland which in those days had become both\nHellenic and federal as the Confederation of Epeiros. Here then is a\nworld where we go by many spots which call up both earlier and later\nassociations, but where the main interest as distinctly belongs to\nthe second and third centuries before our \u00e6ra as the main interest of\nthe lands washed by the \u00c6g\u00e6an belongs to the fourth, fifth, and sixth\ncenturies before our \u00e6ra.\n\nWe should be the last to shut out either the earlier or the later\nassociations. We do not forget that Ait\u00f4lia, poor in early history,\nis rich in yet earlier legend, or that it reached the height of its\nlegendary fame when the divine Epeians gave way to the Ait\u00f4lian colony\nwhich was to grow into the Eleian guardians of Olympia, the special\nservants of Zeus. As we skirt the inner bay of Krissa, we may think of\nall the sacred wars from Sol\u00f4n to Aischin\u00eas. Naupaktos has its place\nalike in legend and in history; in the waters of the outer gulf we\nremember alike Phormi\u00f4n of Athens and Don John of Austria. As we pass\nby Patras, we remember how well St. Andrew fought for his city against\nSlave and Saracen. As we look on the southern shore, we remember that\nthere were once Frank Princes of Achaia no less than Frank Dukes of\nAthens. As we look to the northern shore, we remember that there was\na day when the Empire of Servia stretched, without a break, from the\nDanube to the Corinthian gulf. And, beyond all this, as we skirt the\nnorthern shore of the outer gulf, we pass by a spot whose fame in later\ntimes outshines every other association from Meleagros to Don John. We\npass by Mesolongi, the city of the two immortal sieges, of the long\ndefence where the Fanariot Mavrokordatos, alone among his class, placed\nhis name alongside of the men of Souli and the men of Hydra--of the\nnight of the great sally which places the name of Mesolongi alongside\nof Ithom\u00ea and Eira, of Saguntum, of Numantea, and of Zaragoza. All\nthese memories go to make up the history of the shores along which\nwe pass; still they lie outside its main and special interest. They\ncome either before or after the days when the two shores of the gulf\nformed the main centre of Hellenic history. The Achaian cities line\nthe shore, and, with our usual protest against vain attempts to call\nback a past which is gone for ever, for a moment we hardly regret that\nSlavonic Vostizza has again become Hellenic Aigion. But before we reach\nthe older Achaian shore, we pass by the territory of the city but for\nwhose help those Achaian cities, whose place in earlier history is so\nsmall, could never have risen to become one of the two leading powers\nof Greece. There is the land of Siky\u00f4n, city of Aratos, deliverer and\nbetrayer of Corinth to the right--the man who taught the cities to\nthe left the art of Themistokl\u00eas, the art which teaches how a small\nstate may become a great one. And we see plainly written on the two\nshores, why, in the warfare of those times, the League of the North\nwas commonly the aggressor, the League of the South was commonly the\nvictim. Save here and there some more favoured spot, the shore of\nAit\u00f4lia seems bare beyond the common bareness of Grecian hills; the\nshore of Achaia seems rich with a richness the like of which we have\nhardly seen on any other part of the Hellenic mainland. The narrow\nstrait, the strait by which Phormi\u00f4n won his glory, brings into that\nclose neighbourhood which is so characteristic of Greek geography--a\nneighbourhood as near as that of Euboia to Boi\u00f4tia at one point and\nto Northern Achaia at another--two races as unlike one another as any\ncould be who worshipped the same ancestral gods and spoke dialects of\nthe same ancestral tongue. The development and the rivalry of those\ntwo powers give us our second lesson in Grecian history, the lesson\nof the days when, if the scale of men is smaller, the scale of things\nis larger, when cities have grown into federations, when the range of\nGrecian politics is no longer shut up within the Grecian seas, but when\nMacedonia and Pergamos, Syria and Egypt, Carthage and Rome herself,\nhave begun to appear as actors on the scene. The seas of Eastern Greece\nbelong to the days of her more brilliant yet narrower fame, when\nGreece was her own world, when the teachings of her history are mainly\nteachings of example and analogy. The seas of Central and Western\nGreece belong to the days when Greece, less free it may be, less\nbrilliant, less rich in great deeds and mighty men, had become part of\na greater world, and when her destinies had become connected with the\ndestinies of later days by a direct chain of cause and effect. The\nhistorical position of the Corinthian gulf is that it is, above all the\nwaters of Hellas, the sea which washes the shores of the Federal lands.\n\nAs we get clear of the gulf, by the mouth of Achel\u00f4os, the White River\nof later nomenclature, we are again among the Western islands, though\nwe now see them from wholly different points, and in wholly different\nrelations to one another from those in which we saw them as we first\nmade our way from Corfu round Peloponn\u00easos. Our course is somewhat\nerratic; but it enables us to see a coast which has a character of its\nown and a history of its own. We skirt the shore of Akarnania. Here is\na land which has no place in the Homeric Catalogue--a land therefore\nwhich has no place in the Hellas of those days, so far as we have any\nright in these days to make use of the name of Hellas at all. It was\nthen the _Epeiros_, the nameless mainland, the non-Hellenic shore, as\nopposed to the Hellenic islands, the realms of Meg\u00eas and of Odysseus.\nIn the Federal age we find it a Federal commonwealth, weak besides its\nrobber neighbours of Ait\u00f4lia, but holding the first place in Greece\nfor what Livy calls the \u201cfides insita genti,\u201d the people who never\nbroke their faith to either friend or enemy. Yet they had enough of\nworldly wisdom to plead their absence from the Catalogue as a merit\nin Roman eyes. Ait\u00f4lians, Achaians, all the rest, had a share in the\noverthrow of the mother city of Rome; Akarnania was guiltless. Here is\na special history, and the coast has a special character. It is, like\nother Grecian coasts, a coast of bays and islands and peninsulas; but\nnowhere else have we seen such a crowd of small islands, mere spots of\nrock some of them, among which we thread our way, reminding us less\nof anything that we have seen in Greece than of the northern and more\ndesolate part of the Dalmatian archipelago. There are the Echinades,\nthe Oxeiai, the sharp islands, the urchin islands of later times;\nbut can these dots be Doulichion and the holy Echinai, islands which\nsent forty ships to the war of Ilios? We pass in and out among them,\nsteering northward between Leukas and the mainland, with the Epeirot\nmountains in the distant view; but we ourselves do not even reach the\nchannel--after so many changes it is a channel--which divides Leukas or\nSanta Maura from the mainland. We turn; above the smaller islands rises\nIthak\u00ea; above Ithak\u00ea rises Kephall\u00eania. We enter the haven, as we would\nbelieve, of the realm of Odysseus, but not without feeling a difficulty\nhow an island which clearly lies to the north-east can be said to lie\n\u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03b6\u03cc\u03c6\u03bf\u03bd. We pass in and in, hardly dreaming beforehand of the\nwindings of the deep bay which so truly bears the name of Bathy.\nScepticism vanishes for a time, and we cannot keep ourselves from\ngreeting the men of Ithak\u00ea as countrymen of the elder Odysseus.\n\nBut there is still one spot of the mainland to be seen. Before we\nleave the Hellenic islands, we have still to make another, a more\nmomentary, incursion on the Peloponn\u00easian mainland. We have seen the\nsites of Isthmian and Nemeian games; we have still to take a glimpse\nof the scene of the great festival of Zeus himself. We have passed\nby the Ait\u00f4lian shore; we must visit the great Ait\u00f4lian colony. Our\nlast record of Hellenic travel must draw its inspiration from the spot\nwhere--\n\n                  ... \u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03af\u03bd\u03c9\u03bd \u1f10\u03c6\u03b5\u03c4\u03bc\u1f70\u03c2\n                  \u1f29\u03c1\u03b1\u03ba\u03bb\u03ad\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c4\u03ad\u03c1\u03b1\u03c2,\n                  \u1f00\u03c4\u03c1\u03b5\u03ba\u1f74\u03c2 \u1f19\u03bb\u03bb\u03b1\u03bd\u03bf\u03b4\u03af\u03ba\u03b1\u03c2 \u03b3\u03bb\u03b5\u03c6\u03ac\u03c1\u03c9\u03bd\n                  \u0391\u1f30\u03c4\u03c9\u03bb\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u1f74\u03c1 \u1f51\u03c8\u03cc\u03b8\u03b5\u03bd\n                  \u1f00\u03bc\u03c6\u1f76 \u03ba\u03cc\u03bc\u03b1\u03b9\u03c3\u03b9 \u03b2\u03ac\u03bb\u03bf\u03b9 \u03b3\u03bb\u03b1\u03c5\u03ba\u03cc\u03c7\u03c1\u03bf\u03b1\n                  \u03ba\u03cc\u03c3\u03bc\u03bf\u03bd \u1f10\u03bb\u03b1\u03af\u03b1\u03c2.\n\nIt is hard to conceive the rude Ait\u00f4lian discharging such a duty.\nWe may be inclined to fall back on the doctrine of oppressed\nnationalities, to say,\n\n                  \u1f26\u03c4\u03bf\u03b9 \u03a0\u03af\u03c3\u03b1 \u03bc\u1f72\u03bd \u0394\u03b9\u03cc\u03c2,\n\nbut to deny all place as his ministers to strangers from the northern\nshore of the gulf. What if we make our way to Olympia, under the belief\nthat the Olympiad of B.C. 364, held by genuine Pisatans under the\nprotection of Arkadian spears, was the only lawful celebration of the\nfestival within historic times?\n\n\n\n\n                          Corinth to Eleusis.\n\n\nWe could never understand why Lord Palmerston called the horse-races at\nEpsom \u201cour Isthmian Games\u201d rather than Olympic, Pythian, or Nemeian.\nBut, as it was Lord Palmerston who said it, the saying was accepted\nas having some special point; as doubtless many people believed on\nthe same authority that Gothic architecture was a style specially\nappropriate to Jesuit colleges. The only point of special connexion\nbetween Epsom and the games of the Isthmus would seem to be that these\nlast were dedicated to Poseid\u00f4n, \u03a0\u03bf\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9\u03b4\u1f7c\u03bd \u1f35\u03c0\u03c0\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2, and might therefore\nperhaps seem to be in some way more specially \u201chorsey\u201d than the\nothers. Anyhow the connexion with Poseid\u00f4n was a connexion with Th\u00easeus\nand with Athens, and Athens always claimed a special right in the\nIsthmian festival, alongside of Corinth its proper president. It was\nsomewhat strange then that, during the century when Corinth was not,\nthe presidency of the games was bestowed on Siky\u00f4n, rather than on\nAthens, the cherished ally of Rome. But in any case the games supply a\nlink between Corinth and Athens. It is well then that the road--we were\ngoing to say between the two cities, but we must now rather say between\nthe village and the capital--lies by the site of the games. We tread\nthe path across the Isthmus which looks so flat from the mountain top,\nbut which we now find to have its ups and downs. We pass by the traces\nof the _stadium_; we pass by the foundations of the great temple of\nPoseid\u00f4n; we see traces of the wall which in so many ages has proved\nso vain a barrier; we see signs of the canal which has been so often\nno less vainly tried as a means to make the Isle of Pelops truly an\nisland. Now that Athens and Corinth are no longer enemies, the work\nis more needful than ever. No small amount of commerce which now goes\nelsewhere would, we are told, pass at once through an Isthmian canal to\nthe haven of Peiraieus. We leave the site of Kenchreia to the right,\nand take ship again at the modern Kalamaki; we thus better see that\nnorthern part of the Saronic Gulf which we saw only in the distance as\nwe passed from Peiraieus to Nauplia. We skirt the shore of Megaris; we\nbetter take in the outline of Salamis and its satellite Psyttaleia,\nthe scene of the bloody exploit of Aristeid\u00eas. We land once more; we\npass along the now familiar road, this time perhaps less anxious than\nbefore to catch the first glimpse of the holy rock of Ath\u00ean\u00ea. We may\nperhaps rather feel that, as we near the olive groves of Kol\u00f4nos, we\nare still within the domain of Poseid\u00f4n. We may perhaps rather fix our\neyes on the lowlier and more perfect Th\u00easeion than on the mightier and\nmore shattered Parthen\u00f4n. Fresh from the site of the Isthmia, we are\ninclined to dwell on the legend which tells us how near Athens once was\nto being Poseid\u00f4nia. The sea-god thus follows us on our way back from\nCorinth to Athens. He will follow us through some of the journeys which\nwe must make in Attica itself, before we steer our course back again\nto the western shores of Peloponn\u00easos and to the islands more western\nstill. He who cannot see the whole of the Attic land, he who must be\nsatisfied with picturing to himself from the Athenian akropolis how\nAgis sent forth his plundering bands from Dekeleia, and how the spirit\nof freedom set with Thrasyboulos on the brow of Phyl\u00ea, must at least\nmake his way by the Sacred Way to the holy place of Christendom at\nDaphn\u00ea, and to the holy place of heathendom at Eleusis. He must muse on\nthe mound of Marath\u00f4n, not to dream that Greece may yet be free, but to\nwonder and to hope how soon the freedom which stops at Othrys may reach\nat the very least to Olympos. He must stand too on the marbled steep\nof Sounion, no longer to shrink from the land on which he stands as a\nland of slaves. And on two at least of these three journeys he will\nstill find himself in the company of the same deity who reigned on the\nIsthmus and on Kol\u00f4nos. If D\u00eam\u00eat\u00ear and her child held the first place\nat Eleusis, yet by the bay which is guarded by Salamis, the sea-god\nwas not forgotten, and on the height of Sounion the two powers who\nstrove for the rule of Athens divided the sacred spot between them.\nThe Isthmus with its games, Eleusis on its bay, Sounion on its height,\nmay all be fittingly taken, as nearly as may be at a glance, as being\nall of them spots where the sea-god received at least a partial local\nworship.\n\nThe traveller who goes from Corinth to Athens by land will take\nEleusis on his way; and those who, like the wearied Ten Thousand at\nKerasos, have had enough of their land passage, and who prefer to pass\ntoillessly--it may be asleep like Odysseus--over the waves, may well\nmake Eleusis the object of an early journey after they again find\nthemselves at Athens. We have come back to civilized life. From Athens\nto Eleusis the journey may be made along the Sacred Way by the same\nmeans by which the still abiding wheel-tracks tell us that it was made\nof old. The journey is one of the highest interest; it is a journey\nof double interest for those at least who count Daphn\u00ea and its abiding\nchurch no less worthy of interest than Eleusis and its fallen temple.\nThe Sacred Way of Athens has its Roman parallel; but it is not to\nbe found in the Sacred Way of Rome, but in the road which bears the\nname of the great Censor. The Sacred Way, like the Appian Way, like\nall ways more or less, though these two seem to have been conspicuous\nabove others, was a street of monuments, a few of which may still be\ntraced. Parting from the monumental quarter of Athens, from the tombs\nlately brought to light in Kerameikos, the Sacred Way started from the\nDipylon--itself brought to light with the tombs--and passed through\nthe olive groves, leaving Poseid\u00f4n\u2019s hill of Kol\u00f4nos to the right. The\nstarting-point of the modern road is not exactly the same, but the two\njoin at no great distance from the ancient walls. The tombs, which are\nthere no longer, may be studied in the itinerary of Pausanias. But one\nconnects itself with a monument of which some traces are to be found\nfurther on. The most splendid of all the monuments by the Sacred Way is\nthat which commemorated the most worthless ashes in its whole course.\nWe feel that Athens had indeed fallen when the most splendid of all the\ntombs was raised by the son-in-law of Ph\u00f4ki\u00f4n, at the bidding and the\ncost of Harpalos, to commemorate Pythionik\u00ea. Further on our journey\nwe come to the spot where the ancient temple of Aphrodit\u00ea was turned\nto the worship of Phil\u00ea, Phil\u00ea-Aphrodit\u00ea, the wife of D\u00eam\u00eatrios the\nBesieger. Phil\u00ea was indeed one of the noblest of women, as Pythionik\u00ea\nwas one of the vilest; but tomb and temple alike mark the spirit of a\ntime when strangers were turning the men, and even the gods, of Hellas\nout of their native homes and altars. But, before we reach the temple\nof Phil\u00ea, we reach one of those sites where long ages of Greek history\nare gathered together in a single spot. There, in the pass, was the\ntemple of Apollo; there, girded by its _peribolos_, standing on its\nsite with the foundations built out of its stones, is the monastic\nchurch of Daphn\u00ea. It is well to gaze and study while we can. Daphn\u00ea has\nonce been sacked already; here, as at Athens,\n\n                Quod non fecerunt Gothi fecerunt Scoti;\n\nhere, as on the Athenian akropolis, we may curse the name of Elgin, and\nbewail the columns carried off from their own place to lose beauty,\nvalue, and interest in an English museum. And so in our own time the\nmodern spoilers of Athens, in their zeal to wipe out the history of\nthe land, may some day doom the apses, the cupola, the campanile, of\nDaphn\u00ea to be swept away, in the hope of finding inscriptions among\ntheir ruins. On a foundation of the temple-stones rises the church with\nits mingled stone and brickwork, its elaborate windows, its spreading\ncupola on a far greater scale than those at Corfu or at Athens. And\nthere, perhaps more interesting than all, is the Frankish work at the\nwest end, the defences of the fortified church, raised by the Latin\nprinces, with the contemporary cloister, all alike the work of Western\narchitects on Eastern soil. The barbarians who stole the columns seem\nto have left something behind them besides mere fragments. An Ionic\ncolumn embedded in the wall helps to support an arch, once evidently\npart of a greater number, which carries off our thoughts to the\nbasilicas, not of Ravenna, but of Rome.\n\nNot much further on we can mark wheel-tracks on the rock, and we see\nthe rude foundations--the \u1f00\u03c1\u03b3\u03bf\u1f76 \u03bb\u03af\u03b8\u03bf\u03b9 of Pausanias--of the _peribolos_\nof the temple of the two-fold Aphrodit\u00ea. We are brought nearer to the\ndays of heathendom, heathendom in so strange a form, when we see the\nniches carved in the rock to receive the votive offerings--exactly the\nsame fashion which has lingered on in our own times in many churches\nin Southern lands--and when we see from the inscription \u03a6\u03af\u03bb\u1fc3 \u1f08\u03c6\u03c1\u03bf\u03b4\u03af\u03c4\u1fc3\nthat the Macedonian Queen really had Attic worshippers. By this time we\nbegin better to understand the geography of the country, and to see,\nwhat no view from Athens itself would teach us, how strong was the\ngeographical barrier between Athens and Eleusis. This has been well\npointed out by Mr. Mahaffy; it is the kind of thing which Mr. Mahaffy,\nso unlucky on some points, is as well able to take in as any man. In\nthe view from the Athenian akropolis the eye rests on the mountains\nwhich part the Attic land from the B\u0153otian; it passes over the lower\nrange which parts the more specially Athenian land from the Eleusinian.\nFrom that range itself, even from the pass that crosses it, we see how\ncompletely the two districts were shut out from one another, how--no\nsmall point in Grecian political geography--they lie out of sight of\none another. We now better understand the tales in the Hymn to D\u00eam\u00eat\u00ear\nand in Sol\u00f4n\u2019s story of Tellos, which set before us Eleusis as a state\ndistinct from Athens, and as having its wars with Athens. We understand\nhow it alone among the Attic \u03b4\u1fc6\u03bc\u03bf\u03b9 kept, in honour doubtless of its\nsacred character, the name of \u03c0\u03cc\u03bb\u03b9\u03c2, and how once in later times, after\nAthens was cleared from the Thirty, it did for a moment again become\na separate state. We pass along the shore of the bay, by the Rheitoi,\nthe reservoir once sacred to the Eleusinian goddesses, in whose waters\nonly their priests might fish. Then comes the tomb of Strat\u00f4n, where\nwe meet with our first sign that Eleusis was a great and flourishing\ntown even in later Roman times. Strat\u00f4n had a wife both whose names\nare Roman; and in the name of her birthplace we get one of those happy\nmisspellings which help us to trace the history of Greek pronunciation.\nHer description, \u03a0\u03ce\u03bb\u03bb\u03b1 \u039c\u03bf\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03c4\u03af\u03b1 \u1f29\u03c1\u03ac\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03b1, teaches us that, when the\nmonument was set up, at some time after the days of Pausanias, \u03b7 and\n\u03b5\u03b9 had already the same sound, but that Greek \u03b1\u03c5 no longer represented\nLatin _au_.\n\nWe have come to Eleusis in the guise of votaries of Poseid\u00f4n; but it\nis to be confessed that, when we reach the sacred city, we have to\ntake it on trust from Pausanias that the sea-god ever was worshipped\nthere. He tells us that there was at Eleusis a temple of Poseid\u00f4n\nthe Father; but the remains which we have to study are the remains of\nthe temple of the powers which were emphatically the Mother and the\nDaughter. Eleusis, like other cities, began as a hill-fort; it still\nhas its akropolis, part of the circuit of whose wall can be traced. It\nis crowned by a church and bell-tower, of no wonderful architecture\ncertainly, but which we trust may be allowed to abide, even though\nthere may be the ten-thousandth part of a chance that a stone with\ntwo or three letters upon it might be found in their foundations. The\nhill of the Eleusinian akropolis forms a long irregular ridge, rising\nin the greater part of its course close above the bay, but running\na little inland at the point where it becomes an akropolis. It thus\nleaves a considerable space for the lower city between the hill and\nthe haven. In a walk along the hill, a shattered tower of Frankish\ntimes, standing on a nearly detached height, is a prominent object.\nWhen reached, it presents no details for study. But in the walk thither\nwe look out on Salamis and the bay which it guards--a lake, as it might\nseem, between the mainland and the curved island--while on the other\nside we look down on the Thriasian plain, the plain so often ravaged\nby Peloponnesian invaders before they crossed the ridge of Aigale\u00f4s to\ndeal havoc in the neighbourhood of Athens itself. And, on the ridge\nbefore we reach the tower, one of the smallest and humblest of churches\nwill not be scorned by those who deem that no aspect of the history\nof the land is beneath their notice. At the foot of the hill, at the\nopposite end from the tower, lay, as Athens might lie were its haven\nclose at hand, the holy city of the Great Goddesses. At the very end\nof the ridge, keeping away, as it would seem, from the sea, are the\nruins of the temple which was once the greatest in size among the holy\nplaces of Hellas. Little now can be made out of its vast circuit. The\nconfused and shattered ruins which are left are those of the temple\nof Ath\u00ean\u00ea Propylaia. Its plan may be made out with no difficulty; the\nresults may be seen in more than one book from Colonel Leake onward.\nBut one feature, which is not the least instructive of all, seems\nhardly to have drawn to itself any notice. Among its ruins lie capitals\nof the same class as those in the baths of Antoninus, capitals in which\nthe traditional trammels are forsaken, and in which a wider scope is\ngiven for representation of forms divine, human, or animal. These are\nmemorials of what was in truth one of the most flourishing times in\nEleusinian history; when, under the _Pax Romana_, no Tellos could fight\nin warfare between Athens and Eleusis, no traitors driven from Athens\ncould find shelter in Eleusis, but when Athens and Eleusis flourished\nside by side, the one as the university of the world, the other as one\nof its chief seats of pilgrimage. Are these remains of the temple, as\nrebuilt by the philosophic Marcus? In any case they are links in that\nlong chain of the history of art which here, as we stand in Eleusis,\ncarries off our thoughts to Lucca and to Wetzlar. The last age then of\nthe glories of Eleusis begins with the saint of heathendom, the prince\nin whose days the martyrs of Lyons bore their torments and Polycarp\nplayed the man at the stake. They were avenged when Eleusis fell before\nthe attack of a Christian and a Teutonic invader. The desolation which\nwe see around us dates from that inroad of Alaric which marked so great\nan epoch in Grecian history, the great turning-point when pagan Hellas\nchanged into the Christian land which scorned the Hellenic name. Since\nthat day Eleusis has never again raised her head. A time came when\nshe had passed away as utterly as Tiryns or Myk\u00ean\u00ea. Not an inhabited\nhouse was there when Spon and Wheler rode to Eleusis. A small town\nwhich had arisen in the days of Leake had become yet smaller during the\nWar of Independence. And now Eleusis seems to be beginning to arise\nagain at the point of her circuit which lies furthest away from her\nancient sanctuary. Vessels are in the bay; a modern factory--we forget\nits exact object--covers a large space between the hill and the sea.\nSigns of life are to be welcomed everywhere; they are especially to be\nwelcomed when they show that Greece has life in other spots than her\nencroaching capital. Let the factory grow and prosper; let the vessels\ncome in greater numbers, they will do no harm to what remains of the\ntemple of D\u00eam\u00eat\u00ear and Ath\u00ean\u00ea; only we should be glad to be equally sure\nthat some \u00e6sthetic doctor, Greek or German, may not some day meditate a\nraid on the churches, the campanile, and the ruined tower.\n\n\n\n\n                                Sounion.\n\n\nOne more excursion, this time not on the Attic soil, but on the Attic\nsea, must be added to the Eleusinian and the Marath\u00f4nian pilgrimage,\neven by those who cannot undertake to follow the keen guidance of\nColonel Leake into every corner of the Attic \u03b4\u1fc6\u03bc\u03bf\u03b9. The survey of the\nAttic land may well be ended at the point where, in geographical\naccuracy, it ought, by those at least who approach by way of Syra, to\nhave begun. But to one thus drawing nigh for the first time, Sounion\nis at most the beacon which points to Athens; it may even be that, if\nhe chances to draw nigh on a dim and cloudy morning, he may fail to\ndistinguish the marbled steep of Sounion among the other lofty points\nover which his eye wanders. He expects, it may well be, that the height\nand the temple will front him boldly as the first point of Attic ground\nto catch his eye. He may not thoroughly take in the fact that the\npromontory lies in a manner round a corner. Unless he has studied his\nmap very carefully, he may draw near under the belief that the Attic\npeninsula ends in a point, in the same way in which the three southern\npeninsulas of Peloponn\u00easos, that of Tainaros above all, certainly do.\nPausanias indeed begins his picture, not only of Attica, but of all\nGreece, with the \u201cheight of Sounion, stretching forth from the Attic\nland and the mainland of Hellas towards the Kyklades and the \u00c6g\u00e6an\nsea.\u201d Yet it is certain that some who have approached the mainland of\nHellas from the Kyklades have not been lucky enough to catch a sight\nof Ath\u00ean\u00ea on the promontory as a harbinger of Ath\u00ean\u00ea on the inland\nrock. Even he who is more favoured cannot, at that moment, stop to\nstudy the arrangement of the columns which still keep their ancient\nwhiteness. Nor will he, as he sails by, find out that there too the\nrival of Ath\u00ean\u00ea was not wholly ousted, that the sea-god kept at Sounion\na secondary place, at least as important as that which he kept at\nEleusis alongside of D\u00eam\u00eat\u00ear and her Child.\n\nA voyage to Sounion forms then a necessary part of even a short sojourn\nin Athens and Attica. He who is careful about mines, old or new, might\nprefer a land journey which should combine Sounion with Laureion.\nOtherwise it may be better to put oneself under the guardianship of the\nlord of the dolphins, to whom men prayed on Sounion (\u1f66 \u03c7\u03c1\u03c5\u03c3\u03bf\u03c4\u03c1\u03af\u03b1\u03b9\u03bd\u2019,\n\u1f66 \u03b4\u03b5\u03bb\u03c6\u03af\u03bd\u03c9\u03bd \u03bc\u03b5\u03b4\u03ad\u03c9\u03bd \u03a3\u03bf\u03c5\u03bd\u03b9\u03ac\u03c1\u03b1\u03c4\u03b5), and to trust to his golden trident to\nclear the way. That way leads by several striking points of coast,\neach cape having, as a rule, an island placed before it as a kind of\noutpost. Such above all is Z\u00f4st\u00ear, where the narrow isthmus, as Dean\nBlakesley hints, tied the promontory to the shore, but where pious\netymologers at a later time saw the spot where L\u00eat\u00f4 loosed her girdle.\nSuch an etymology is much of a piece with many popular etymologies\nin our own land. From the hill of Battle we look out on Telham, so\ncalled, says the local legend, because the advancing Norman there\n_told_ his army. Not far off flows one of the \u201ccold becks\u201d which have\ngiven their names to so many spots from Normandy to Scotland. Here it\nis said to mark the spot where the Duke _called back_ his flying men.\nThe derivation of Z\u00f4st\u00ear from L\u00eat\u00f4\u2019s zone is a guess essentially of\nthe same kind as these; yet there is a difference between them which is\nnot uninstructive in comparing the history of the Greek and the English\nlanguage. In the English derivations the real meaning is absolutely\nforgotten; wholly wrong words, having merely an accidental likeness\nin sound, are pressed into the service. In one of the two cases the\nword thus misapplied has itself in that meaning become obsolete. It\nis not unlikely that a new legend may arise, and that Telham, instead\nof the spot where William _told_--that is, numbered--his army, may\nbecome the spot where he _told_ them to do this or that. But Greek\nhad not, in the days at least when the Z\u00f4st\u00ear legend was invented,\nbeen so utterly broken up as that men were likely to go off to an\naltogether wrong root. The tale kept within the prescribed range of\ntying or untying something or other; and L\u00eat\u00f4, Artemis, and Apoll\u00f4n\ngained a fresh seat of worship through the etymological guess. But\nZ\u00f4st\u00ear has its place in history as well as in legend. The Persians,\nafter Salamis, took, so says Herodotus, the three small peaks which\nform the peninsula for Athenian ships, and fled all the more till\nthey found out their mistake. One sceptical historian suggests that\nit must have been a moonlit night. But, after all, may not this story\nbe less legendary than that of L\u00eat\u00f4, only so far as that real actors\nare brought in? That the Persians took the rocks of Z\u00f4st\u00ear for ships\nand fled all the more is the kind of mocking saying which was likely\nto be said at the time, whether true or false. And, even if it was a\nmere mocking saying, it might well have passed into serious belief\nbefore Herodotus, a four-years-old child at the time, had grown into an\ninquiring historian. After all, the story belongs to a class. There\nare the thistles which the armies took for spears after the fight\nof Montl\u2019hery. There are the Welshwomen in the red cloaks, whom the\nFrench at Fishguard took for regular soldiers coming to the help of\nthe valiant militia of Pembrokeshire. Did all these things happen, or\nare they all mere sayings which have found their way into history? Let\ncomparative mythologists argue the point.\n\nBut we are followed by etymologies along the whole coast. Every one who\nhas ever looked at the map knows the long island, immediately east of\nthe southern point of Attica, whose name fluctuates between the mere\ndescription Makris and the more attractive name of Helen\u00ea. How came\nHelen hither? We may be sure, with all deference to Strabo, that this\nis not the Krana\u00ea of the third book of the Iliad; that was far away\nby the Lakonian shore, and the Homeric reference was commemorated by\na temple of Aphrodit\u00ea with an unseemly surname. So Pausanias tells\nus, though he does not explain what brought Helen to the long island\noff Sounion. We will not hint that according to one Homeric story\n(see Odyssey iii. 278) she must have been, if not on the island, at\nleast near it, in better company and at a later and better part of her\nstory, than that in which Strabo would bring her into these parts.\nBut on Attic soil or on Attic waters we must learn to feel an Attic\npatriotism, and, so minded, we can give her a chance from another\nquarter. We must not forget that Helen has her independent place in\nAttic as well as in Peloponnesian legend. She was carried off by\nTh\u00easeus as well as by Paris. She was known at Aphidna, at Dekeleia,\nand at Rhamnous; and it would be only a fair freak of etymological\ninvention to give her an island off the Attic as well as off the\nLakonian coast.\n\nBut with Helen in this way to guard the eastern side of the southern\nextremity of the Attic land, it is a little disappointing when we find\nthe real origin of the name of the much smaller island which guards its\nwestern side. There lies the isle of Patroklos. Helen and Patroklos\nseem well matched; and a charm seems to be broken when we find that\nthe island takes its name, not from the Homeric antitype of Jonathan,\nbut from the Admiral of Ptolemy Philadelphos, who there dug a trench\nand threw up a wall when he came to help Athens against Antigonos\nGonatas. Such a fall from poetry to prose, from legend to history, is\nreally sad. Yet we may draw some small comfort. Everything is a gain\nwhich reminds us that the history of Athens did not end with the war of\nChair\u00f4neia or with the war of Lamia, but that Ptolemy and Antigonos,\nand men later by ages on ages than Ptolemy and Antigonos, had something\nto do with fixing her destinies.\n\nThe island of Patroklos is the last of the series of capes and islands\nbetween Peiraieus and Sounion. All have lost their names, unless any\none takes _Phaura_ and _Phleua_ to be forms of the same name. All the\nrest have descriptive names ending in \u03bd\u03b7\u03c3\u03af--the diminutive form, which,\naccording to rule in modern Greek, has supplanted the older \u03bd\u1fc6\u03c3\u03bf\u03c2--just\nas along our own shores they might end in _holm_ or _ey_. We turn round\nthe last point, and now--\n\n               \u03a3\u03bf\u03cd\u03bd\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd \u1f31\u03c1\u1f78\u03bd \u1f00\u03c6\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc\u03bc\u03b5\u03b8\u2019, \u1f04\u03ba\u03c1\u03bf\u03bd \u1f08\u03b8\u03b7\u03bd\u1ff6\u03bd.\n\nA sceptical thought will flash across the mind. Ought we not to read\n\u1f08\u03b8\u03ae\u03bd\u03b7\u03c2 for \u1f08\u03b8\u03b7\u03bd\u1ff6\u03bd? But if we stifle the thought, we have again another\nwitness to the way in which all Attica had even in Homeric times\nalready become Athens. There is the little bay fenced in by the height,\ncrowned by the white columns, which gives the cape its modern, its\nItalian, name. The name is well applied; Sounion is before all things\nthe Cape of the Columns. The pure white which their marble still keeps\nis striking to the eye which has been for some time accustomed to the\nyellowish brownish hue of the standing columns of Athens. We say the\nstanding columns, because those columns of the Parthen\u00f4n which have\nbeen thrown down are as white as those on Sounion. But for this last\nfact, it would be easy to account for the difference in the hue of the\ncolumns by the difference between the pure sea-air of Sounion and the\nair of an akropolis rising above a great city. Only here comes in the\ndifficulty which is suggested by the whiteness of the fallen columns\nat Athens. Either the discolouring of the columns which are still\nstanding has happened since Morosini\u2019s siege, or else the columns that\nare overthrown have regained their whiteness since their fall. We do\nnot pretend to explain the difficulty; we only state it. All that we\nare concerned with is the striking effect of the white marble of the\ncolumns on Sounion as contrasted either with the discoloured columns\nof the Parthen\u00f4n, or with the primitive columns of rougher stone which\nwere covered with some kind of plaster from the beginning. The actual\nmaterial of the columns of Sounion is something intermediate between\nthe two. It is marble, but marble from the neighbouring hills, much\nless fine than the Pentelic marble of the Parthen\u00f4n. Another point at\nonce strikes the eye. Thirteen architectural objects stand up, but\nit is soon seen that only twelve are of the usual shape of columns.\nWhat is the thirteenth? It looks like a square pier, such as we should\nexpect to find inside a basilica at Lucca, but not outside a temple\nat Sounion. The appearance is puzzling until we actually reach the\nsite of the temple and there carefully spell out the ground plan.\nBut before we do this two other remains have to be studied. Sounion,\nbesides being a holy place, was also a fortress. When the news of the\noverthrow at Syracuse came to Athens, when every means was used to prop\nup the tottering commonwealth, one means of defence that was taken was\nthe fortification of Sounion. This was done with the special object\nof supplying a defence to the corn ships which brought in the foreign\nfood that Athens needed more than ever when the Peloponnesians were at\nDekeleia. A large part of the wall which cut off the promontory is\nstill to be traced, a wall of the best Hellenic masonry, strengthened\nby square towers at intervals. Within this military circuit again we\ncome to the remains of the Propylaia, the entrance, as at Eleusis and\nat Athens itself, to the immediate sacred precinct. But the summit of\nall, crowning the promontory and immediately overlooking the sea, is\nthe temple itself. And when we come carefully to study its plan, we see\nthe meaning of the anomalous square object which seemed so puzzling\nfrom below. The temple was one _in antis_, and the square object is the\nend of one of the walls of the _cella_. The fellow to it may be traced,\nthough it does not rise high enough to make a feature in the general\nview. One of the columns ranging with the _ant\u00e6_, two on the northern\nside towards the land and nine on the southern or seaside, are still\nstanding with their architraves; but the eastern and western fronts,\nwith their columns and pediments, have perished.\n\nIt is indeed a spot to stand and gaze, though now with quite other\nand happier feelings than those which Byron put into the mouth of\nhis imaginary Greek poet. The impulse is to gaze on the sea and the\nislands, the realm of Athens, the realm which her fortress on Sounion\nwas to guard. But it is well to look landward also, and a short walk\nfrom the temple will show that Ath\u00ean\u00ea was not the only power that was\nworshipped on Sounion. That the sea-god, lord of the Sounion dolphins,\nwas worshipped there is plain from Aristophanes. The jokes in the\nBirds, where the god is addressed,\n\n           \u1f6e \u03a3\u03bf\u03c5\u03bd\u03b9\u03ad\u03c1\u03b1\u03ba\u03b5 \u03c7\u03b1\u1fd6\u03c1\u2019 \u1f04\u03bd\u03b1\u03be \u03a0\u03b5\u03bb\u03b1\u03c1\u03b3\u03b9\u03ba\u03ad,\n\ngive us another title of the sea-god. Poseid\u00f4n at Sounion, like Zeus\nat Dod\u00f4n\u00ea, was prayed to as Pelasgian. The comic poet, when he had\nonce got into Nephelokokkygia, does not scruple to change the epithets\nof the deity into \u201chawky\u201d and \u201cstorky.\u201d We might be sure from this\nthat Colonel Leake was misled in fancying that Poseid\u00f4n had nothing\nmore than a mere altar on Sounion. We come down from the temple of\nAth\u00ean\u00ea, we pass the Propylaia; we pass the ruins of the wall; we reach\nthe little isthmus--for the site of the temple is peninsular--and on\na lower height we find remains, not enough to enable us to make out\nthe plan of any building, but enough to show that a building of some\nimportance must have stood there. Surely here we have the site of the\ntemple of the god who was prayed to on Sounion. Poseid\u00f4n is here, as\nwell as at Corinth, at home on his isthmus.\n\nThe men of Sounion are the subject of an allusion of the poet\nAnaxandrid\u00eas, quoted by Ath\u00eanaios, which at first sight is not very\nclear:--\n\n\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf\u1f76 \u03b4\u1f72 \u03bd\u1fe6\u03bd \u03bc\u03ad\u03bd \u03b5\u1f30\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd \u03bf\u1f50\u03ba \u1f10\u03bb\u03b5\u03cd\u03b8\u03b5\u03c1\u03bf\u03b9, \u03b5\u1f30\u03c2 \u03b1\u1f54\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd \u03b4\u1f72 \u03a3\u03bf\u03c5\u03bd\u03b9\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c2, \u03b5\u1f36\u03c4\u2019 \u03b5\u1f30\u03c2\n\u03c4\u03c1\u03af\u03c4\u03b7\u03bd \u1f00\u03b3\u03bf\u03c1\u1fb7 \u03ba\u03ad\u03ba\u03c1\u03b7\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9.\n\nSome say that this refers to their prosperity as living near the\nmines of Laureion. The words in themselves would seem rather to point\nto a class intermediate between the slave and the full citizen. But\nhow could there be such in any part of Attica after the union of the\nAttic towns? Of their modern successors, a few might be seen near the\nmouth of a cave by the sea, some contemplating the strangers, others\nfollowing the useful occupation of Nausikaa. The whole scene--the\nlittle bay, with its beach beside the blue waters; the hills behind,\nwith their white columns against the sky; the cave, suggesting endless\nHomeric remembrances of nymphs and sea-gods--even the homely work\ngoing on by the shore--all seems in harmony; all seems to carry us back\nto the days when the powers which had striven for Athens seem to have\nagreed to hold Sounion as a joint possession.\n\n\n\n\n                        Olympia and its Church.\n\n\nOlympia, when the German diggers have fled before the heat of a Greek\nsummer, when they have left all the statues and other beautiful things\nthat they have found sealed up against all men, Greek and barbarian,\nmay seem to be, even literally, Olympia with the spring taken out of\nits year. But Olympia can, for all general historical purposes, be\nOlympia without them; some minds may not greatly regret their absence.\nTo some minds galleries, museums, collections of all kinds, are\nsimply wearisome. The weariness is one which may be well endured for\nthe sake of the knowledge which may be gained through it; still the\ncontemplation of objects in rows and cases, catalogued and numbered,\nis weariness compared with the pure pleasure of contemplating the same\nobjects, each in its right place, each forming part of the whole of\nwhich it was meant to form part. Better one statue without a nose, in\nthe place where the sculptor first put it than ten statues with noses\nset up apart from their context in any collection in Athens, Rome, or\nLondon. No blame of course attaches to the diggers at Olympia. The\nobjects which they found were not in their places, and could not be\nkept in their places. They can only be kept in a museum; and to our\nminds that museum should not only not be at Berlin or London--an evil\nof which Greek law forbids all danger--but it should be at Olympia\nand not at Athens. The little collection at Eleusis is in its right\nplace; it is at Eleusis; so it should be with the greater collection at\nOlympia. But the feeling that a museum, with all that it teaches, is in\nitself a bore, that its lessons are painful lessons, somewhat tempers\nthe traveller\u2019s disappointment at finding that the relics are all\nshut up, and that the key is somewhere in Germany. For the buildings\nthemselves are not carried away; they can be studied without let or\nhindrance, and perhaps with even a deeper feeling of thankfulness to\nthose whose untiring zeal and energy have uncovered them. And the plain\nof Altis, the stream of Alpheios, the hill of Kronos, the mightier\nArkadian mountains, are there in any case. And they, with the immortal\nremembrances of the spot, are the true Olympia.\n\nFrom the port of Katakolon to the town of Pyrgos there is a road, and\nthat road goes on further to Olympia itself. The venerable spot can\ntherefore be reached in a carriage. The question might, however, be\nraised whether a carriage journey over such a road as that between\nPyrgos and Olympia--a journey moreover modified by occasional spaces\nwhere it is better to go on foot--is not at least as tiring as the ride\nfrom Myk\u00ean\u00ea to Corinth. But, as the traveller goes along from Pyrgos to\nOlympia, especially as he nears the immediate object of his pilgrimage,\nhe can hardly fail to draw the comparison between the nakedness of\nAttica and the land through which he passes, rich with trees and with\ncultivation, the bleak mountains replaced by lower hills which are\noften green with verdure, with villages scattered thick among them,\nthe scenery in many places coming nearer to that of the hillier parts\nof England than might have seemed possible in Greece. It is only here\nand there, when the eye catches some of the more distant points of the\nlandscape, especially when the vast heights of Arkadia come in view,\nthat it is brought strongly home to his mind that it is through Hellas\nthat he is journeying. At last, however, he reaches the spot which was\nthe religious centre of Hellas, and there the Arkadian heights, soaring\nover the lower hills which surround the Olympian plain itself, fully\nremind him where he is. Here is the spot where, more than in any other,\nevery Greek was reminded that, however war and policy might divide\nthem, he was still a sharer with every other Greek in a heritage of\nlanguage, religion, and general culture in which the barbarian had no\nshare, where the Greek from the Spanish Zakynthos and the Greek from\nthe Tauric Cherson\u00easos could feel themselves, if not countrymen, at\nleast brethren, before the temple of the common Father of Gods and men.\nHere were the victories won which were recorded in the odes of Pindar;\nhere, we would fain believe, Herodotus recited his history to assembled\nGreece; here the Macedonian King had to prove his descent from an\nArgeian stock before he could be admitted as a worthy competitor of\nHellenic freemen; here Alkibiad\u00eas made that display of lavish splendour\nwhich at least proved that the resources of Athens were not worn out.\nAnd as we read inscription after inscription recording the name of Elis\nand her citizens, our thoughts go back to the never-forgotten claims\nof the true people of the land. We remember how Pisa--the name may\nalmost seem strange in this, its more ancient seat--deemed herself to\nbe the lawful President of the Olympian feast by an older right than\ncould belong to the intruders from Aitolia. And we think too of that\none day in later times when the arms of Thebes won back for them their\nancient right for one passing moment. All this might press on the mind\nas we look on the plain by Alpheios, and people it in imagination with\ncompetitors, spectators, worshippers, the very realm and trysting-place\nof the scattered Hellenic nation. All this we might call up, even if no\nactual monument of those days were there to remind us of them. Yet it\nis something to think of all this beside the uncovered foundations of\nthe great Pan-hellenic temple; and it is something more still to trace\nout all that Olympia suggests in the presence of remains which tell us\nof the times when the Pan-hellenic temple and its festival had passed\naway.\n\nThe foundations of four principal buildings have been brought to light\nby the German diggings. Two of them belong to the days alike of pagan\nworship and of Hellenic freedom. There is the lesser, the older temple,\nthe temple of H\u00ear\u00ea, in the spreading capitals of its massive Doric\ncolumns--capitals, be it remembered, now lying shivered around their\nfeet--carrying us back to the solemn and solid style of Poseid\u00f4nia\nand of Corinth. Side by side with this venerable fragment we find\ninscriptions of Roman date, bearing witness to the unity of history,\nand showing how Olympia still remained holy after captive Greece had\nled captive her conquerors. Hard by stands the great central monument\nof all, the temple of Zeus itself, not a column of its vast ranges\nstanding perfect, but with, frequently enough, capitals of less antique\nform than those of the lesser temple, to show the date and style and\ncharacter of the building which held the greatest work of Pheidias.\nBut it is not only the days of Pheidias, the days of free Greece, the\ndays of Athenian, Spartan, and Theban rivalry, which are represented\nin their remains with that memorable precinct. Two periods of the\nhistory of Greece and the world have still to be represented. There\nis that vast semicircle of Roman brickwork, looking like the apse of\na vast basilica, but which is in truth the exedra of H\u00ear\u00f4d\u00eas Atticus;\nfor the bountiful man of Marath\u00f4n extended his bounty to the shrine\nof the common gods of Hellas as well as to the temples, the theatres,\nand all the public works of his own city. But the cycle is not yet\ncomplete; there is one age more to be represented, one phase more of\nthe history of man to furnish its contribution to the architectural\nremains of Olympia. And that age, that phase, has, from one point of\nview at least, the highest claims on us of all. We take our chance\nof being set down as irreclaimable barbarians when we say that, after\nall, the building of highest interest of which the remains are now to\nbe seen at Olympia is the admirable basilican church which occupies the\nsite of the temple of Hippodameia. Enough remains to enable us to make\nout nearly the whole of its arrangements. It marks a very narrow view\nof things, a strange imprisonment of thought within a few arbitrarily\nchosen centuries when we see not a few who reverence every stone of\nthe great and the little temple, even, it may be, every brick of the\n_exedra_ of H\u00ear\u00f4d\u00eas, but who seem to turn up their noses at a monument\nat least as historical as any of them. No doubt the special interest\nof this particular building is largely due to the place where it is\nfound. It is because it is found in the Altis of Olympia, because\nit is built on the site of one of the ancient temples of Olympia,\nbecause its materials have been supplied by that and by others of\nthose temples, that the church which now stands as a ruin alongside\nof them has much of its special charm. To take the lowest view, it is\na memorial of the greatest revolution of the whole course of history,\nthe revolution which installed the worship of Christ and the Panagia on\nthe site of the shrines of Zeus and H\u00ear\u00ea and Hippodameia. The classical\npurist cannot get rid either of the general history of mankind or of\nthe more enlarged view of the history of art merely by shutting his\neyes to both of them. The basilica is there; it is a fact; it is also\na fact that those who placed it there had a special motive in placing\nit there--that of specially marking the triumph of the new faith by\nsetting up its altars on the site of the fallen altars of heathendom.\nAnd it is a fact also that, however mere classical pedantry may\ndespise the style in which that basilica was reared, it is simply\npedantry that will despise it. The style, constructively perfect in\nitself, contained in itself the germ of all that was to come after. We\ncannot reach K\u00f6ln and Westminster, except by the necessary stages of\nSpalato and Olympia.\n\nWe may for a moment sympathize with the pedants as we read the\ninscription of Jovianus at Corfu. Jovianus destroyed, and he put very\nlittle in the place of that which he destroyed. We treasure his work\nand his boast as pieces of history; but we must allow that art, as\nsuch, has no reason to thank him. But the case is quite different with\nthe basilica of Olympia. Its architect may take his place alongside of\nthose who did the bidding of Diocletian and Theodoric. He destroyed\nindeed, but he destroyed only to put to new uses. The shrine of the\nnew faith was reared out of the very stones of the shrine of the old.\nThe columns which, in a past state of things, had known only how to\nbear the dead weight of the entablature, were now taught to lift up\nthe arch, as a living thing rising from their own substance. Enough is\nleft of the basilica of Olympia to show that it might have held its own\neven among the basilicas of Ravenna. But at Olympia the name of Ravenna\nseems to awake no echo, to carry with it no meaning. In all accounts\nthat we have seen the building is said to be Byzantine. That perhaps\nsimply means that it is Christian and not heathen. Byzantine, in any\narchitectural sense, the church assuredly is not. It is essentially\nbasilican, without any Byzantine features. Nor can the date be late\nenough to be called Byzantine in any political sense. We may talk about\nByzantine after the final separation of the Empires in 800; before\nthat time the word leads to confusion. One cannot conceive this church\nto be later than Justinian\u2019s time; it may well be earlier. When could\nsuch a building have been so utterly overthrown and swallowed up? We\ncan think of no time so likely as the Slavonic and Avar inroads of\nJustinian\u2019s own day and of the days of his immediate successors.\n\nThe church itself is a not very large basilica of the purest and\nsimplest type. There is no dome, no approach to Byzantine arrangement,\nnot even the _chalkidik\u00ea_ or transept. Two arcades supported by the\nsmaller columns of the former building, showing Ionic capitals of\ntwo types, led to an apse of which the arch of triumph has unluckily\ntogether vanished. But of the well-wrought _cancelli_, carrying the\nmind across the sea to St. Clement\u2019s, a large part still remains. The\napse has its windows divided by what at first sight seem to be coupled\ncolumns--the type which ranges from St. Constantia to the Moissac\ncloister--but which really form a single block within and without.\nThe walls are of brick; several of the windows are preserved, and in\ntheir jambs we see long stones set upright, just as in the primitive\nwork both of England and Ireland. Everywhere we find these witnesses\nto the universality of the earliest form of Christian architecture.\nThe pavement contains many inscribed stones of various dates. Some\nare Pagan, recording votes of the city of Elis in the days of the\nearly Emperors; some are Christian, as that which records the zeal of\na certain pious reader \u1f00\u03bd\u03b1\u03b3\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03c4\u03ae\u03c2 towards the making of the pavement\nitself. To the west of the nave is a range of Ionic columns forming\nthe portico, but their arches or entablature has perished. But to the\nsouth-west is an attached building where alone the arches are preserved.\nThey are set on the Ionic columns with an intervening stilt set\ncrosswise in a most ingenious fashion. The column becomes a mid-wall\nshaft.\n\nSuch a building, on such a site, found in such a case, suggests\nthoughts which bring all the ages of the world together. The old glory\nof Olympia passed away; free Elis--whatever we say of free Pisa--no\nlonger gathered the competitors of free Hellas from Massalia to\nTrapezous to strive in a national solemnity before the national gods\nof Hellas. But Olympia lived on as long as the Roman masters of Hellas\nclave to the gods of Rome, and saw the gods of Rome in the gods of\nHellas. A day came when the lord of Rome cast away his faith alike in\nZeus of Olympia and in Jupiter of the Capitol; a day followed when a\nlater prince forbade either worship, when the games of Olympia ceased\nas a rite of the forbidden worship, when her temples were forsaken or\ndestroyed or made into materials for new temples of the new creed.\nPresently barbaric invasions swept away the new temple and the old\nalike. Zeus was still worshipped on Tainaros; St. Andrew still helped\nhis votaries at Patras; but the temples, pagan and Christian, of the\nOlympian Altis lay hidden and forgotten, and the hill of Kronos looked\ndown on solitude instead of on the great religious centre of the\nHellenic race. Ages after, the zeal of strangers working on Hellenic\nground brings to light the ruins of the pagan temples, and with them\nthe ruins of the Christian Church. We rejoice in both discoveries; only\nlet it be remembered that each alike is part of the history of Hellas\nand of the history of man. We will at least believe that there is no\nfear that the recovered church of Olympia may share the same fate which\nthe narrowness of classical barbarism decreed for the ducal tower of\nAthens.\n\n\n\n\n                                 INDEX.\n\n\n  A\n\n  _Acciauoli_, Nerio, his bequest of Athens, 26\n\n  _Achaia_, League of, 209;\n    cities of, 212;\n    contrasted with Ait\u00f4lia, 213, 214\n\n  _\u00c6g\u00e6an Sea_, islands of, 14;\n    Greek colonies on, 204\n\n  _\u00c6lfred_, King of the West Saxons, his view of the rule of Odysseus,\n      3, 4\n\n  _Agamemn\u00f4n_, \u201cSchliemann\u2019s,\u201d preserved at Chorbati, 126, 149, 160\n\n  _Aigina_, position and history of, 73-77;\n    compared with Salamis, _ib._\n\n  _Ait\u00f4lia_, League of, 209;\n    her legendary fame, 210;\n    contrasted with Achaia, 213, 214\n\n  _Akarnania_, not in the Homeric Catalogue, 215, 216;\n    special character of, 216\n\n  _Akrokorinthos_, pre-eminence of, 182, 186, 189, 199;\n    its historical associations, 190-194;\n    compared with Glastonbury Tor, 195\n\n  _Akropolis_ of Athens, how its history should be studied, 18-24;\n    its position, 33, 35\n\n  _Akt\u00ea_ (Argolic), 77, 117\n\n  _Alaric_, King of the West-Goths, at Athens, 24;\n    at Corinth, 192;\n    at Eleusis, 236\n\n  _Andronikos Kyrrhest\u00eas_, octagonal tower of, 38-40\n\n  _Appian Way_, the, its analogy with the Sacred Way of Athens, 226\n\n  _Aratos_, deliverer and betrayer of Corinth, 190, 212\n\n  _Arch_, the pointed, as old or older, in its constructive form, than\n      the round, 89, 99, 153, 154;\n    its beginning in the sally-port of Tiryns, 97;\n    earlier perfection of the round arch in Italy, 99, 100, 119;\n    development of the arch at Spalato, 118, 154;\n    its perfection in the Eastern Churches, 119\n\n  _Argos_, contrasted with Myk\u00ean\u00ea and Tiryns, 86, 90, 93, 96, 97, 106,\n      121, 123;\n    increase of her power, 93;\n    modern Argos contrasted with modern Athens, 106, 107;\n    Turkish influence on modern Argos, 107, 108;\n    its later history, 108;\n    use of the name Argos, 110;\n    Homeric position of, _ib._, 113;\n    her destruction of Myk\u00ean\u00ea, 111, 112, 120, 124, 158;\n    her early history and its continuity, 112-115, 162;\n    ancient wall and theatre of, 118;\n    Roman remains in, _ib._, 120;\n    Byzantine church at, 119, 120\n\n  _Arta_, modern Greek frontier fixed at, 1\n\n  _Athens_, continuity of its history, 16-22, 247, 248;\n    the birthplace of political history, 16, 204;\n    contrast between old and new Athens, 17, 32, 34;\n    compared with Rome, _ib._;\n    results of Turkish rule in, 18;\n    her prim\u00e6val and later walls, 19, 20, 22;\n    historical importance of the earliest wall, 20, 22;\n    her position in the Homeric Catalogue, 21;\n    visit of Basil the Second to, 23, 24, 26;\n    Alaric at, 24;\n    extinction of her schools by Justinian, _ib._;\n    bequeathed by Nerio Acciauoli to Venice, 26;\n    fame of, under foreign Dukes, 27;\n    a piece of history wiped out by the destruction of the tower of the\n      Dukes, 28-31, 274;\n    temple of Olympian Zeus at, 32, 33, 38;\n    how Athens differs from other cities, 34, 35;\n    growth of art in, from Aristi\u00f4n to Pheidias, 37;\n    one remaining mosque at, 41, 50;\n    variety of remains in the _agor\u00ea_, 42;\n    study of Christian-Greek architecture in, 43-50;\n    metropolitan church at, 45, 47;\n    date of Byzantine architecture in, difficult to fix, 46, 47;\n    latest buildings at, not less worthy of study than the earliest, 50;\n    the practical centre of modern Greek travelling, 68-70;\n    modern Athens contrasted with modern Argos, 106;\n    its geographical separation from Eleusis, 230, 231\n\n  _Attica_, 15;\n    not mentioned as a land in the Homeric map, 21;\n    merged in Athens, _ib._\n\n\n  B\n\n  _Basil I._, the Macedonian, converts the Mainotes, 9\n\n  _Basil II._, the Slayer of the Bulgarians, visits Athens after his\n      Bulgarian conquests, 23, 24, 26\n\n  _Blakesley_, Dean, value of his comments on the narrative of Herodotus,\n      61, 63;\n    on Z\u00f4st\u00ear, 242\n\n  _Byron_, at Mesolongi, 2;\n    application of \u201cthe curse of Minerva\u201d to the destroyers of the ducal\n      tower, 31\n\n\n  C\n\n  _Carthage_, her fate compared with that of Corinth, 187\n\n  _Cashel_, Rock of, serves as a parallel to the Athenian Akropolis, 33,\n      194\n\n  _Cerigo_, 6, 13\n\n  _Cheddar_, pass of, its Myk\u00eanaian character, 128\n\n  _Chorbati_, 125, 164\n\n  _Commonwealths_, Greek and Lombard, compared, 70-73\n\n  _Constantine Porphyrogenn\u00eatos_, his use of the name _Hell\u00eanes_, 8-10\n\n  _Corinth_, her position in Grecian legend and history, 183, 184,\n      195-198;\n    taken by Mummius, 185, 198;\n    her final overthrow by earthquake, _ib._;\n    her origin Hellenic, not Ph\u0153nician, 186, 187;\n    her fate compared with that of Carthage, 187;\n    temple of Ath\u00ean\u00ea at, 188, 189, 198, 201;\n    her freedom proclaimed by Flamininus, 198;\n    absence of \u201cCorinthians\u201d in, 199, 200;\n    special vocal powers of man, beast, and fowl in, 200, 201;\n    her western position, 206\n\n  _Corinthian Gulf_, the, its historical position, 215\n\n\n  D\n\n  _Daphn\u00ea_, church of, 226, 228, 229\n\n  _Dawkins_, W. Boyd, on the retreat of the lion from Europe, 171\n\n  \u201c_Druidical_,\u201d abuse of the name, 89\n\n\n  E\n\n  _Eir\u00ean\u00ea_, Empress, her marriage with Leo the Fourth, 25, 26, 47\n\n  _Eleusis_, not in the Homeric Catalogue, 21, 60;\n    its geographical separation from Athens, 230, 231;\n    tomb of Strat\u00f4n at, 232;\n    temple of D\u00eam\u00eat\u00ear and Ath\u00ean\u00ea at, 233, 235, 238;\n    its akropolis, 233;\n    Roman period of its history, 235, 236;\n    Alaric at, 236;\n    modern Eleusis, 237\n\n  \u201c_Epeiros_,\u201d use of the name, 216\n\n  _Epidauros_, city of Askl\u00eapios, 77\n\n  _Epidauros_ (Dalmatian), 77\n\n  _Epidauros_ (Lakonian), 14, 77. See _Monembasia_.\n\n\n  F\n\n  _Flamininus_, proclaims the freedom of Corinth, 198\n\n\n  G\n\n  _Glastonbury Tor_, compared with Akrokorinthos, 195\n\n  _Greece_, Ionian Islands ceded to, 7;\n    origin of cities in, 176;\n    history of eastern earlier than that of western, 203-209, 214;\n    western, position of her religious centres, 205, 206;\n    leagues in, 209\n\n  _Greek_ hill-cities, compared with Italian, 88, 90;\n    colonial cities mark a later stage, 91\n\n  _Grote_ George, on the position of Argos in Peloponn\u00easos, 113\n\n\n  H\n\n  _Hadrian_, Arch of, at Athens, 24, 38;\n    _Stoa_ of, reproduces the Doric order, 40\n\n  _Helen\u00ea_, her island off Sounion, 245;\n    her place in Attic legend, 246\n\n  _Hellas_, insular, more striking than peninsular, 5\n\n  _Hell\u00eanes_, use of the name, 7;\n    confined by Constantine Porphyrogenn\u00eatos to the Mainotes, 8-10\n\n  _H\u00earakl\u00eas_, 36;\n    worship of, at Marath\u00f4n, 59, 60;\n    at Tiryns, 96\n\n  _Hermoupolis_, 15. See _Syros_.\n\n  _H\u00ear\u00f4d\u00eas Atticus_, theatre of, at Athens, 24, 42;\n    his _exedra_ at Olympia, 265, 266\n\n  _Herodotus_, his account of Marath\u00f4n, 61, 62;\n    range of the lion fixed by, 171\n\n  _Homer_, his description of Tiryns, 87\n\n  _Homeric Catalogue_, the, position of Athens in, 21;\n    Marath\u00f4n and Eleusis have no place in, _ib._, 60;\n    Tiryns how described in, 105;\n    Akarnania has no place in, 215, 216\n\n  _Hydra_, its history, 78-81\n\n\n  I\n\n  _Ionian Islands_, 7;\n    merged in the Greek kingdom, _ib._\n\n  _Isthmian Games_, the, strange application of the name to Epsom races,\n      220\n\n  _Isthmus of Corinth_, its varied history, 197\n\n  _Ithak\u00ea_, Homeric, 3, 217, 218\n\n\n  J\n\n  _Johnson_, Samuel, application of his saying on the battle of\n      Marath\u00f4n, 55, 56\n\n  _Justinian_, fortifies Athens and extinguishes her schools, 24\n\n\n  K\n\n  _Kalaureia_, 78\n\n  _Kallimachos_, fate of Europe decided by the casting vote of, 53\n\n  _Kanar\u00eas_, Constantine, compared with Theseus, 50, 51;\n    his death, _ib._, 66, 67;\n    his home in Psara, 80\n\n  _Kapnikarea_, the, church of, at Athens, 47;\n    its _narthex_ compared with the west front of Peterborough, 48, 49\n\n  _Kephall\u00eania_, 3, 5, 217\n\n  _Kyklop\u00eas_, their change of character, 94\n\n  _Kym\u00ea_, contrasted with Myk\u00ean\u00ea, 158, 159;\n    her western position, 205\n\n\n  L\n\n  _Larissa_, the, of Argos, 86, 109, 110, 116, 120, 182\n\n  _Laureion_, mines of, 241, 255\n\n  _Leake_, Colonel, on the battle of Marath\u00f4n, 61, 63;\n    on Tiryns, 102, 104;\n    on the worship of Poseid\u00f4n at Sounion, 254\n\n  _Lion_, the, range of, in Europe, 171;\n    cognate forms of his name, _ib._\n\n  _Lowe_, Robert (late Lord Sherbroke), his view of the battle of\n      Marath\u00f4n, 52\n\n  _Lysikrat\u00eas_, choragic monument of, 38, 39\n\n\n  M\n\n  _Mahaffy_, J. P., his views on the destruction of the tower of the\n      Dukes in Athens, 28, 29;\n    his illustration of the position of the temple of Olympian Zeus,\n      33, 144;\n    on the physical position of the Greek commonwealths, 71;\n    on the geographical separation of Eleusis from Athens, 230\n\n  _Maina_, name of Hell\u00eanes confined to, 8\n\n  _Mainotes_, their independence, 8;\n    how distinguished from the Slaves by Constantine Porphyrogenn\u00eatos,\n      8;\n    their conversion, 9\n\n  _Marath\u00f4n_, not in the Homeric Catalogue, 21, 60;\n    the most historic spot in Attica, 52;\n    battle of, the most memorable in the world\u2019s history, 54 _et seq._;\n    the earliest and the latest fight compared, 57, 58;\n    geographical use of the name, 59;\n    its mythical history, _ib._;\n    temple of Ath\u00ean\u00ea at, 60;\n    named in the Odyssey, _ib._;\n    earliest historical notices of, 61;\n    the marshes not mentioned by Herodotus, 62;\n    Pausanias\u2019 account of the battle, _ib._;\n    site of ancient Marath\u00f4n uncertain, 63;\n    the barrow of the one hundred and ninety-two at, 64;\n    grave of Miltiad\u00eas at, _ib._\n\n  _Mavrokordatos_, at Mesolongi, 211\n\n  _Mesolongi_, two sieges of, 2, 211\n\n  _Methana_, 77\n\n  _Miltiad\u00eas_, influence of his arguments on Kallimachos, 53;\n    his success at Marath\u00f4n largely owing to the nature of the ground,\n      63;\n    his grave, 65\n\n  _Monembasia_, Latin conquest of Peloponn\u00easos completed by the taking\n      of, 14\n\n  _Morea_ (M\u00f4raia), earlier application of the name, 3\n\n  _Morosini_, Francesco, Venetian occupation of Athens under, 28, 31\n\n  _Myk\u00ean\u00ea_, contrasted with Argos and Tiryns, 86, 90, 93, 96, 97, 121;\n    history of, 95, 126;\n    its point of likeness with New Grange, 101, 155;\n    destroyed by Argos, 111, 112, 120, 124, 158;\n    preserved by destruction, 123;\n    its prim\u00e6val relics, 126;\n    position of the akropolis, 127 _et seq._;\n    the walls, 130, 131, 137;\n    the lion-gate, 132, 134-136, 159;\n    the tombs and treasures, 132;\n    gateways of the treasuries, 133, 134;\n    the inner fortress, 136-138;\n    Homeric description of, 138;\n    the treasuries and treasures, 140 _et seq._;\n    use of the word \u201ctreasures,\u201d 141;\n    process of burial, 143;\n    striking effect of the masks, 144, 146;\n    beginnings of the arch, 154;\n    its special prim\u00e6val character, 158-161;\n    carriage-road practically ends at, 164\n\n\n  N\n\n  _Naupaktos_ (Lepanto), 210\n\n  _Nauplia_, high position of, under the Venetian and Turkish power, 82,\n      83\n\n  _Navarino_ (Pylos), battle of, 11, 13\n\n  _Neale_, J. M., his _History of the Holy Eastern Church_, 46, 47\n\n  _Nemea_, temple of Zeus at, 169, 170, 174, 178, 179;\n    the seat of Pan-hellenic worship, 169, 175;\n    legendary lion of, 169-172;\n    theatre at, 170, 180;\n    modern fauna of, 173\n\n  _New Grange_, its point of likeness with Myk\u00ean\u00ea, 101, 155\n\n\n  O\n\n  _Olympia_, the religious centre of Hellas, 261-264;\n    temples of H\u00ear\u00ea and of Zeus at, 264;\n    _exedra_ of H\u00ear\u00f4d\u00eas, 265;\n    special interest of the basilican church at, 266-274;\n    desolation of, 273\n\n\n  P\n\n  _Parnassos_, 181\n\n  _Parthen\u00f4n_, the, 17, 22;\n    its continuance as such in different ages, 23, 25, 27, 36;\n    thanksgiving of Basil the Second in, 23, 24;\n    changed into a mosque, 30;\n    its destruction in the Venetian occupation, 31\n\n  _Patras_, siege of, 2, 210, 273\n\n  _Patroklos_, Admiral of Ptolemy Philadelphos, his island off Sounion,\n      247\n\n  _Pausanias_, how his story of the battle of Marath\u00f4n differs from that\n      of Herodotus, 62;\n    Greek travelling in his day, 68, 69, 166, 168;\n    his description of Tiryns, 92;\n    on Argos, 120;\n    on the treasuries of Myk\u00ean\u00ea, 150, 151, 156;\n    distinguishes the treasuries of Myk\u00ean\u00ea from the tombs, 150, 156,\n      157;\n    records the tombs of the Sacred Way, 227;\n    the temple of Phil\u00ea-Aphrodit\u00ea, 230;\n    the worship of Poseid\u00f4n at Eleusis, 232;\n    his description of Sounion, 240\n\n  \u201c_Pelasgian_,\u201d abuse of the name, 88, 89, 100, 101\n\n  _Peloponn\u00easos_, southern, characteristics of its coastline, 5, 6;\n    lack of good roads in, 12\n\n  _Pentedaktylos_, 5, 8, 10, 13\n\n  _Perikl\u00eas_, works of, how they should be studied, 18, 22\n\n  _Peterborough_ Cathedral, its west front compared with the _narthex_\n      of the Kapnikarea at Athens, 48\n\n  _Phil\u00e9-Aphrodit\u00ea_, temple of, 227, 230\n\n  _P\u00f4ros_, 78\n\n  _Poseid\u00f4n_, his worship at Eleusis, Sounion, and the Isthmus, 224,\n      225;\n    at Sounion, 241, 253, 254\n\n  _Poseid\u00f4nia_ (P\u00e6stum), contrasted with Myk\u00ean\u00ea, 158;\n    with Kym\u00ea, 159;\n    analogy between its temples and the temple of Ath\u00ean\u00ea at Corinth,\n      187, 264\n\n  _Psara_, under the Turk, 80\n\n  _Psyttaleia_, 76, 77, 222\n\n  _Ptolemy_, gymnasion of, at Athens, 42\n\n  _Pylos_, occupation of, 11, 13. See _Navarino_\n\n  _Pyrrhos_, his death at Argos, 114\n\n  _Pythionik\u00ea_, tomb of, 227\n\n\n  R\n\n  _Rome_, her unbroken series of historical monuments, 17\n\n\n  S\n\n  _Sacred Way_, the, of Athens, 225 _et seq._;\n    its analogy with the Appian Way, 226\n\n  _Saint Andrew_, his defence of Patras, 2, 210, 273\n\n  _Saint Theodore_, church of, at Athens, 47, 49\n\n  _Salamis_, how her history differs from that of Aigina, 74-76;\n    battle of, 74, 76, 197\n\n  _Scheri\u00ea_, whether Corfu, 60\n\n  _Schliemann_, Dr., his share in the destruction of the ducal tower\n      at Athens, 29;\n    his work at Myk\u00ean\u00ea, 126, 129, 130, 134, 140, 157\n\n  _Scotia_, use of the name, 45\n\n  _Siky\u00f4n_, 212, 221\n\n  _Sounion_, 15;\n    its geographical position, 240;\n    temple of Ath\u00ean\u00ea at, 241, 249-255;\n    worship of Poseid\u00f4n at, 241, 253, 254;\n    fortification of, 251\n\n  _Spalato_, development of the arch at, 118, 154\n\n  _Sparta_, 6;\n    ancient and modern, 114, 115\n\n  _Sphagia_ (Sphakt\u00earia), 11\n\n  _Stamat\u00e2k\u00eas_, guardian of the Myk\u00eanaian treasury, 126, 145;\n    his qualification of the skeleton of Agamemn\u00f4n, _ib._\n\n  _Strat\u00f4n_, his tomb at Eleusis, 232;\n    inference drawn from his wife\u2019s description, _ib._\n\n  _Syros_ (Syra), 14\n\n\n  T\n\n  _Tainaros_, 7, 8, 13, 240, 273\n\n  _Ta\u00ffgetos_. See _Pentedaktylos_.\n\n  _Telham_, its legendary etymology compared with that of Z\u00f4st\u00ear, 242,\n      243\n\n  _Th\u00easeion_, the, re-dedicated to St. George, 25, 36, 37;\n    its position, 33, 35, 38;\n    architectural changes in, 36;\n    serves as a museum, 37\n\n  _Th\u00easeus_, wall of, at Athens, 19-22\n\n  _Th\u00easeus_, Temple of, dedicated to St. George, 25, 36, 37\n\n  _Theodoric_, tomb of, its Mykenaian character, 153\n\n  _Timophan\u00eas_, Tyrant of Corinth, his death, 189\n\n  _Tiryns_, called _Old Nauplia_, 82;\n    compared with English sites, 83;\n    its position and history, 86 _et. seq._;\n    Homeric description of, 87, 93, 105;\n    special point of likeness with Tusculum, 88, 89, 101;\n    desolate aspect of, 92, 93;\n    its mighty walls, 93, 97, 103, 104, 105;\n    their prim\u00e6val origin, 96;\n    earliest beginnings of the pointed arch in the sally-port, 97-100\n\n  _Tusculum_, its special point of likeness with Tiryns, 88, 89, 101\n\n  _Tylor_, E. B., 101, 143\n\n\n  V\n\n  _Vostizza_ (Aigion), 212\n\n\n  W\n\n  _War of Independence_, the, 58, 108, 169\n\n\n  Z\n\n  _Zante_ (Zakynthos), 5\n\n  _Z\u00f4st\u00ear_, its place in legend and in history, 242-245;\n    its legendary etymology, 242, 243\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s Note\n\nA number of obvious printer\u2019s errors have been corrected, and are\nlisted below.\n\nGiven the context, the Greek phrase on p. 15, \u201c\u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03b5\u03af\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03bc\u2019 \u03b1\u03bd \u1f08\u03b8\u03ac\u03bd\u03b1\u03c2\u201d,\nis most likely a version of line 1222 of Sophocles\u2019 _Ajax_,\n\u201c\u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03b5\u03af\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd \u1f08\u03b8\u03ac\u03bd\u03b1\u03c2\u201d.\n\np.  11 brough[t] back \u201cthe men,\u201d                      Added.\n\np.  18 so it [is] is no fault                         Removed.\n\np.  21 Greek po[t/l]itical ideas                      Corrected.\n\np.  41 as the capitals of Lysikrat\u00eas[.]               Added.\n\np. 149 [D/C]um terra celat.                           Corrected.\n\np. 157 a si[g]n perhaps of later date                 Corrected.\n\np. 169 we are led over no special[s] heights          Removed.\n\np. 216 Yet they had enough of world[l]y wisdom        Added.\n\np. 275 \u00c6g[ae/\u00e6]an Sea                                 Corrected.","title":"Studies of Travel: Greece","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":44192}