Prof, Cr. W. Bunnell 
 
TOM!; IN I UK (KRAMKICUS ( AT H KNS). 
 
 l-tontispid 
 
RAMBLES AND STUDIES 
 
 G R E E C E. 
 
 7 
 
 ^fifl^MUrilW^Ml^t tff. 
 
 BY 
 
 J. P. MAHAFFV, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 'PROLEGOMENA TO ANCIENT HISTORY ;' 
 
 K ANT'S PHILOSOPHY FOR ENGLISH READERS 
 
 'SOCIAL LIFE IN GREECE;' 
 
 ETC. 
 
 H o n U o n : 
 M A C M I I, L A N A N D C O. 
 
 1876 
 

 N \ 
 
AMICO 
 
 ED M UNDO WYATT EDGELL 
 
 OB INSIGNEM 
 
 INTER 
 
 C ASTRA ITINERA OTIA NEGOTIA 
 
 LITERARUM AMOREM 
 
 S1S05G 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 At the present crisis in the East of Europe, 
 when there seems some hope that a new order of 
 things may be established, and the basis of some 
 better progress attained, it would be unjust to the 
 Greek nation, were this book with its various 
 strictures and complaints to go forth without a 
 clear statement of the other side of the picture. 
 It is very much the fashion of travellers from 
 the great nations to compare the little which the 
 Greeks can do, and have done, with what might 
 have been done with larger resources by other 
 nations ; and hence we have constant criticism, 
 and wholesale detraction, of the new Hellas, its 
 government, and its people. 
 
 I confess myself not to have been free from 
 this impatience when I travelled in Greece, and 
 that the daily reflection upon what remained un- 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 done was but too .apt to obscure the merits of 
 those who have done what they could, and have 
 done a great deal, for the resuscitation of their 
 country. This feeling appears in many parts of 
 the following sketches. But though it be too out- 
 spoken — a fact which I sincerely regret — I have 
 resolved to retract nothing which had been written,, 
 because it will show that what I am now about 
 to say on behalf of the modern Greeks is not 
 the advocacy of a partisan, but the admission 
 forced with difficulty from a somewhat adverse 
 critic. I am no enthusiast about the modern, any 
 more than about the ancient, Greeks, as I have 
 elsewhere plainly shown. But common fairness de- 
 mands that, if we are ready to blame and to advise 
 the Greeks about their internal dissensions in days 
 of peace and quietness, we ought also in days of 
 trouble and agitation — when the rights of neigh- 
 bour nations are being urged by powerful and 
 partial advocates — to stand forth and declare on 
 behalf of the Greeks their greater promise, and 
 their juster claims. 
 
 It is indeed ridiculous to agitate Europe about 
 the rights of Bulgarians and Servians, when the 
 vastly more intelligent, more peaceable, more 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 civilised Greek subjects of the Porte are suffering 
 under equal oppression, and are harassed with even 
 greater injustice. "What have the southern Slavs 
 of Europe to show in comparison with the Greeks ? 
 Consider the trade of Smyrna and of Alexandria, 
 of Syra and of Patras; it is due to the enterprise of 
 the Greeks. Consider the education given free at 
 Athens to all who desire it — the numerous schools, 
 the fine university, the archaeological and clas- 
 sical periodicals which it produces ; and compare 
 all this with Servia ! I will say even more — that 
 through the wildest parts of Greece there is an 
 average of education, and of general intelligence, 
 which is not equalled by many parts of the great 
 kingdoms of western Europe. 
 
 It is this very intelligence and activity of mind 
 which has often endangered the peaceful develop- 
 ment of Greece, and has tended to falsify the esti- 
 mates of modern Greece among foreign nations. 
 The people find agricultural pursuits not to their 
 taste ; they think with the son of Sirach, ' How can 
 he have wisdom, whose talk is of bullocks V On 
 the contrary, trade and politics have for them, 
 as they had for their ancestors, endless attractions. 
 It follows that the agricultural resources of the 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 country are not developed, while the study of poli- 
 tics has been driven too far. 
 
 Both these defects have been greatly aggravated 
 by the miserably narrow boundaries assigned by 
 European politicians to the Greek kingdom. By 
 refusing to include Thessaly and Epirus within the 
 kingdom, the Turkish frontier has been left so near 
 Athens that any criminal or miscreant can escape 
 over the border — still worse, that bands of bri- 
 gands can reside in Turkey, and carry on their 
 depredations in the neighbourhood of Athens. 
 Nothing has created a stronger and a more lasting 
 prejudice against the Greeks than this matter of 
 brigandage. Yet it is impossible to deny the force 
 of the perpetual and consistent reply of the Greeks, 
 that the Morea, which they are able to control, 
 has been for years perfectly free from all danger, 
 and that the existence of brigandage in northern 
 Greece up to 1870 is simply due to the want of 
 honest co-operation in the Turkish authorities on 
 the frontier. Ever since the appointment of a 
 vigorous governor in Thessaly, even this danger 
 has disappeared. But as the duration of such 
 security depends altogether on the strange acci- 
 dent of the Porte appointing an efficient and 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 honest officer, it seems quite plain that the fron- 
 tier should be rectified, and that the Greek- 
 speaking islands, and provinces of Thessaly and 
 Epirus should be added to the kingdom of Greece. 
 The main body of the population will readily join 
 the Greeks, and the small minority of Turks will 
 continue unmolested in the enjoyment of a greater 
 liberty. This is proved by the case of Eubcea, 
 where some 10,000 Turks are to the present day 
 living in peace and contentment under Greek 
 government. The latter fact, which seems hardly 
 known, speaks volumes for the justice and the liber- 
 ality of the Greeks, and shows how different is the 
 rule of Greek over Turk from that of Turk over 
 Greek. Whether the Servians, who have been 
 lately persecuting the Jews, would show similar 
 
 forbearance, is more than doubtful. 
 f 
 I But it is difficult to speak with patience of the 
 
 'A. 
 
 claims of the turbulent and mischievous Servians, 
 in comparison with the Greeksj Yet, when all 
 men are talking of the expulsion of the Ottoman 
 government from Constantinople, and the estab- 
 lishment of a great Slavonic confederation in its 
 European provinces, it is monstrous that the ob- 
 vious claims of the Greeks to hold Constantinople, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 and the islands of the Levant, should be over- 
 looked. Such a settlement of the European ques- 
 tion is perhaps far too good to be hoped for; but 
 the advantages to the world are so manifest that 
 we cannot refrain from indulging in the prospect. 
 While the insurgent provinces would resume their 
 pristine insignificance under some sort of parlia- 
 mentary, and therefore unsuitable and mischievous 
 government, the Greek empire would become, like 
 the Athenian hegemony of old, a great stretch 
 of coasts and islands round the Levant, and now 
 too, as it formerly was, attexta barbarice — a fringe 
 round barbarism. Thus an intelligent and neu- 
 tral power would hold the Bosphorus, and save 
 Europe from the impotence of its present, or the 
 ambition of its expectant, masters. 
 
 But if the newer Hellas is to revive the memo- 
 ries and the bounds of the Athens of Pericles, and 
 again be a civilising border on barbarism, it must,, 
 I feel sure, imitate the Athens of Pericles in ano- 
 ther respect, and become Aoy^ \x\v ^rumoKparia, ioyi* 
 Si virb rov ttqwtov avSpbg Svvaarua. The admiration 
 for constitutional government is so excessive in 
 modern Europe, that any one who says a word in 
 favour of limited freedom is likely to be insulted 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 by his best friends\ But in spite of this danger, 
 I will insist upon it, that hardly any nations of 
 the world are fit for parliamentary government, 
 especially as that sort of government means go- 
 vernment by party 7\ The case of Ireland is con- 
 stantly before me ; and I speak the opinion of most 
 men whom one knows as experienced in Irish poli- 
 tics, and who are not themselves trading on party, 
 when I maintain that a Governor-General, with 
 large powers, and a fixed tenure of office, would 
 rule the country vastly better than the ever-chang- 
 ing Chief Secretaries, and the ever ignorant or 
 impatient House of Commons. 
 
 I believe the Greeks to be in a somewhat similar 
 stage of political development ; and therefore the 
 best form of rule for them would be an intelligent 
 and disinterested Dictator — an a\av\xvy]Tr\c, like old 
 Pittacus — chosen, as the king was, by themselves, 
 but entrusted with the interests of the country for a 
 considerable number of years. If this be impos- 
 sible — not only because of the bugbear of des- 
 potism, but because they already possess a king 
 too constitutional to undertake such a position — 
 then let the Greeks determine to appoint their 
 Ministry, not upon the precarious basis of a party 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 majority, but for a fixed term, say five years, so 
 that Greek ministers maybe relieved from the per- 
 petual anxiety about their majority, and consider 
 exclusively the serious interests of their country. 
 
 Such a law would obviate the second great op- 
 probrium under which they lie among foreigners — 
 the perpetual changes of ministry, and the per- 
 petual combinations of bitter opponents to over- 
 throw the party for the moment in power. This 
 is, no doubt, a serious reproach to the Greeks, 
 -an almost necessary impotence in their policy, and 
 apparently the strongest illustration of that old 
 national feature — jealousy — with which they. are 
 universally credited. It is idle to deny that this is a 
 prominent feature in the Greek character, and that 
 it has constantly brought them into disagreeable 
 contact with foreigners nationally; so that, while 
 travellers uniformly attest the hospitality and 
 kindliness of the individual Greeks whom they 
 meet, they constantly make reflections upon the 
 general jealousy which the nation displays towards 
 foreign interference. Well-known examples of this 
 are the matter of the Laurium mines, and the 
 late discussions about the German excavations at 
 Olympia. The former question is very compli- 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 cated, and there is a good deal of conflicting evi- 
 dence ; as to the latter, it has been fairly and ably- 
 handled in the June number (1876) of the Greek 
 Athen(Bum> in reply to some remarks of Professor 
 S. Colvin in the Academy. The writer shows that 
 the government ceded to the Germans the right 
 of withholding their discoveries for five years, 
 in order to secure the first publication of them, 
 and that notices in the Greek papers were even 
 prohibited. It is not therefore unnatural that many 
 Greeks should grumble, seeing that part of the 
 expense of excavating was borne by the Greek 
 government, and that all discoveries made by 
 Greeks are forthwith publicly exhibited. 
 
 But, apart from these special controversies, it is 
 obvious that the Greeks are in a very difficult and 
 delicate position as to their antiquities, and that 
 any natural jealousy must necessarily be brought 
 out strongly by the force of circumstances. Let 
 me again cite the parallel case of the Irish. Here 
 is a nation, once impoverished and oppressed by 
 unjust laws and restrictions, so that now, when 
 these obstacles are removed, they find themselves 
 behind-hand in comparison with the Scotch and 
 English, and have neither the capital nor the 
 
xiv PREFACE. 
 
 energetic habits necessary for developing the re- 
 sources of their country. Yet, though the natural 
 riches of the country are buried in the earth, and 
 though there is no immediate prospect of recover- 
 ing them, there is a sort of vague pride in them — 
 a sentimental feeling that they are national pro- 
 perty, which would have been utilised but for 
 foreign tyranny; and, accordingly, when English 
 capitalists come over, and propose to invest their 
 money in Irish enterprise — be it fisheries, or mines, 
 or agriculture — the jealousy of the natives has 
 been known to overcome their common sense : 
 they damage machinery, they write a threatening 
 letter, they even sometimes use personal violence, 
 and so a few malcontents frighten away the very 
 capital of which we are ever regretting the ab- 
 sence. All this is very sad ; but it is natural, and 
 is to be cured, not by scolding, but by education. 
 
 The case of the Greeks is even more natural, 
 and therefore more excusable. The greatest 
 wealth of the country, and that which gives it an 
 inestimable value in the eyes of all Europe, is its 
 rich store of art remains, which are not the natural 
 product of the soil, but the handiwork of people 
 whom the modern Greeks regard as their direct 
 
PREFACE, xv 
 
 .ancestors. It cannot be expected that they should 
 avoid being jealous of foreigners carrying away 
 these treasures, and adorning with them the 
 museums of foreign capitals. Most of them are, 
 indeed, as yet undiscovered or unrestored, and 
 strangers are quite willing to spend their own 
 money in excavating sites which the Greeks have 
 no means to explore. But even in this case, it 
 is not fair to call the Greeks jealous and selfish, 
 when they object or refuse, and insist on wait- 
 ing for the day when they can recover them for 
 themselves, and preserve them as imperishable 
 treasures for their country. For while the agri- 
 cultural capitalist must enrich the country which 
 he improves, the archaeological capitalist, if not 
 bound under the strictest conditions, does nothing 
 of the sort, and may even strip the country of all 
 its wealth. It is then fairly to be expected that 
 the Greeks should be jealous of foreign inter- 
 ference in this matter; nor do I think that their 
 present want of means is at all a fair argument 
 to use in silencing their objections. 
 
 As to the agricultural development of Greece, 
 there is no doubt that the Morea is in some parts 
 really well cultivated; the plain of Argos, for 
 
xvi PREFACE. 
 
 example, looks as rich and fair in early summer 
 as a scene in Kent or Surrey. But in northern 
 Greece such great tracts as the plains of Thebes 
 and Orchomenus, and the valley of Marathon, 
 present a very different aspect, partly on account 
 of the recent presence of bandits, but partly for 
 want of adequate population. Here, if anywhere, 
 the Greeks should master their jealousy, and in- 
 vite settlements, either of their own oppressed 
 brethren in Turkey, or from other nations, that 
 these waste plains should again be peopled, and 
 the land bring forth her increase. The tide of 
 emigration has flowed westward too long, and 
 the day will come when the original homes of 
 population must be re-peopled by their long- 
 estranged offspring. Of these, Greece and Asia 
 Minor are the nearest and the fairest. 
 
 The advance of science may yet explain to us 
 the curious variations in fertility, not only of pro- 
 duce, but of population, which we find in the 
 same country at different epochs. The most as- 
 tonishing cases, such as that of Upper Asia, may 
 arise from great changes of climate. But there 
 are other countries, such as Italy and Greece, 
 where the change of climate seems not very great, 
 
PREFA CE. xvii 
 
 and where, most certainly, the population became 
 sterile too suddenly to admit of such an explana- 
 tion. The Italy of Polybius is an astonishing 
 picture to the traveller in the Italy of the present 
 day, though, many centuries, and even changes 
 of race, have since intervened. But the Greece 
 of Strabo and of Pausanias was already depopu- 
 lated, at a time when no great change of climate 
 could have occurred, and though this may depend 
 upon still subsisting natural obstacles, yet they 
 may also have long since vanished away. These 
 are not inquiries for historians, but for naturalists, 
 in the widest and most scientific sense. 
 
 So many splendid and thorough works have 
 been written about modern Greece, and its anti- 
 quities, that it seems difficult to justify the publi- 
 cation of so small and insignificant a book as 
 this, upon so great a subject. I can only urge 
 the curious fact, that the constant repetition of the 
 same thing in a new form seems necessary to 
 stimulate public interest, which will not be kept 
 alive by old books, however perfect, and how- 
 ever superior to their imitations. It is to me a 
 cherished object to make English-speaking people 
 
 intimate with the life of the old Greeks, and that 
 
 b 
 
xviii PREFACE. 
 
 object will be promoted if this little book persuades 
 even a few to study the monuments in Greece for 
 themselves, or, at least, to turn to the splendid 
 literature on the subject. 
 
 I must again apologise to all sensitive modern 
 Greeks, if I have ventured to advise them about 
 their mistakes. It is far too fashionable among us 
 to insist upon the weak points of that struggling 
 kingdom ; nor does it receive even scant justice 
 from the English newspaper press. The only really 
 just picture of the nation which I have seen in mo- 
 dern books is that of Mr. Tuckerman in his ' Greeks 
 of To-day.' But this is an American, not an Eng- 
 lish, estimate. I hope my readers will correct any 
 bad impression produced in the following pages, by 
 consulting his instructive and interesting volume. 
 
 The present crisis in the East will, in my 
 opinion, have an unfortunate result, unless the 
 boundaries of Greece are enlarged, and a greater 
 scope for development provided for that intelli- 
 gent and enterprising people. If their chief na- 
 tional fault be jealousy, let me repeat that this 
 is always the vice of limited communities, and 
 that there is no better way of curing people's 
 jealousies than by enlarging their resources and 
 their interests. 
 
PREFACE. xix 
 
 I have to thank my old pupil, Mr. R. J. Polden, 
 for many valuable corrections of the proof sheets 
 and Mr. A. S. Murray for information about the 
 lion of Chaeronea. My obligations to books are 
 too many to be enumerated. 
 
 The illustrations were to some extent an after- 
 thought, but will help to explain some of my criti- 
 cisms on Greek art. Those representing the older 
 and ruder stages (pp. 61-6) are of peculiar interest, 
 and some of them not easily accessible to the stu- 
 dent elsewhere. They will give him a clearer insight 
 into the extraordinary advance of Pheidias, and 
 his School, over their predecessors. The Attic 
 tombs are not long discovered, and will be new 
 to most of my readers. They are unfortunately 
 much stained and defaced, and must be appre- 
 ciated, as here given, rather for their feeling than 
 for their execution. All the illustrations are taken 
 from photographs obtained at Athens from Mr. 
 Constantine, the obliging proprietor of the New 
 York hotel, which I recommend to travellers. 
 
 Sutton, October 25th, 1876, 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 . 24 
 
 . 50 
 . 80 
 . 106 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION— FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE COAST, 
 
 II. GENERAL IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS AND ATTICA, . 
 
 IIT. ATHENS — THE MUSEUMS— THE TOMBS, .... 
 
 IV. THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS, 
 
 V. EXCURSIONS IN ATTICA — PHALERUM — LAURIUM, . 
 
 VI. EXCURSIONS IN ATTICA— SUNIUM — MARATHON— ELEUSIS, I32 
 
 VII. FROM ATHENS TO THEBES — THE PASSES OF MOUNT 
 
 CITH^ERON, ELEUTHER^E, PLAT/EA, 1 57 
 
 VIII. THE PLAIN OF ORCHOMENUS, LEBADEA, CH^RONEA, . . 1 86 
 
 IX. ARACHOVA— DELPHI— THE BAY OF CIRRHA, 210 
 
 X. CORINTH, MYCENAE, TIRYNS, .235 
 
 XI. ARGOS, NAUPLIA, AND COAST OF ARGOLIS, 263 
 
 XII. GREEK MUSIC AND PAINTING 282 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 I. Tomb in the Cerameicus {Athens), .... Frontispiece. 
 
 n. The Temple of Theseus {Athens), 31 
 
 III. The Marathonian Theseus, 61 
 
 IV. The Stele of Aristion [Athens), 63 
 
 V. Archaistic Artemis [Naples), 64 
 
 VI. Archaistic Apollo (Naples), 65 
 
 vn. Tomb in the Cerameicus (Athens), 69 
 
 viil. The Parthenon ( West Front), 82 
 
 IX. The Parthenon, a Block from the Cella Frieze, 93 
 
 X. The Temple of Poseidon at Corinth, 239 
 
CORRIGENDA. 
 
 Page ii, line 14, for won read even. 
 „ 102, ,, 11, for Petrarchus read IUTpa\ot. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION — FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE COAST. 
 
 A voyage to Greece does not at first sight seem 
 a great undertaking. We all go to and fro to Italy 
 as we used to go to France. A trip to Rome, or 
 even to Naples, is now an Easter holiday affair. 
 And is not Greece very close to Italy on the map ? 
 "What signifies the narrow sea that divides them ? 
 This is what a man might say who only considered 
 geography, and did not regard the teaching of 
 history. For the student of history cannot look 
 upon these two peninsulas without being struck 
 with the fact that they are, historically speaking, 
 turned back to back ; that while the face of Italy is 
 turned westward, and looks towards France and 
 Spain, and across to us, the face of Greece looks 
 eastward, towards Asia Minor and towards Egypt. 
 Every great city in Italy, except Venice, approaches 
 or borders the Western Sea — Genoa, Pisa, Florence, 
 Rome, Naples. 
 
 All the older history of Rome, its development, 
 its glories, lie on the west of the Appenines. When 
 you cross them you come to what is called the back 
 
 B 
 
2 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 of Italy ; and you feel in that dull country, and that 
 straight coast line, you are separated from the 
 beauty and charm of real Italy. Contrariwise, in 
 Greece, the whole weight and dignity of its history 
 gravitate towards the eastern coast. All its great 
 cities — Athens, Thebes, Corinth, Argos, Sparta — are 
 on that side. Their nearest neighbours were the 
 coast cities of Asia Minor and of the Cyclades, but 
 the western coasts were to them harbourless and 
 strange. If you pass Cape Malea, they said, then 
 forget your home. 
 
 So it happens that the coasts of Italy and Greece, 
 which look so near, are out-lying and out-of-the- 
 way parts of the countries to which they belong ; 
 and if you want to go straight from real Italy to 
 real Greece, the longest way is that from Brindisi 
 to Corfu, for you must still journey from Naples to 
 Brindisi, and from Corfu to Athens. The shortest 
 way is to take ship at Naples, and to be carried 
 round Italy and round Greece from the centres of 
 culture on the west of Italy to the centres of culture 
 (such as they are) on the east of Greece. But this 
 is no trifling passage. When the ship has left the 
 coasts of Calabria, and steers into the open sea, you 
 feel that you have at last left the west of Europe, 
 and are setting sail for the Eastern Seas. And I 
 may anticipate for a moment here, and say that 
 even now the face of Athens is turned, as of old, to 
 the East. Her trade and her communications are 
 through the Levant. Her intercourse is with Con- 
 
i.] FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 3 
 
 stantinople and Smyrna, and Syra, and Alexandria, 
 to which a man may sail almost any day in the 
 week. You can only sail to Italy — I had almost said 
 to Europe — on Saturdays, and upon an occasional 
 Thursday. 
 
 This curious parallel between ancient and modern 
 geographical attitudes in Greece is, no doubt, greatly 
 due to the now by-gone Turkish rule. In addition 
 to other contrasts, Mohammedan rule and Eastern 
 jealousy — long unknown in Western Europe — first 
 jarred upon the traveller when he touched the coasts 
 of Greece ; and this dependency was once really part 
 of a great Asiatic Empire, where all the interests and 
 communications gravitated eastward, and away from 
 the Christian and better civilized West. The revo- 
 lution which expelled the Turks was unable to root 
 out the ideas which their subjects had learned ; and 
 so, in spite of Greek hatred of the Turk, his influ- 
 ence still lives through Greece in a thousand ways. 
 
 For many hours after the coasts of Calabria had 
 faded into the night, and even after the snowy dome 
 of Etna was lost to view, our ship sailed through 
 the open sea, with no land in sight ; but we were 
 told that early in the morning, at the very break of 
 dawn, the coasts of Greece would be visible. So, 
 while others slept, I started up at half-past three in 
 the morning, eager to get the earliest possible sight 
 of the land which still occupies so large a place in 
 our thoughts. It was a soft grey morning ; the sky 
 was covered with light broken clouds, and the deck 
 
 B 2 
 
4 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 was wet with a passing shower, of which the last 
 drops were still flying in the air ; and before us, some 
 ten miles away, the coasts and promontories of the 
 Peloponnesus were reaching southward into the 
 quiet sea. These long serrated ridges did not look 
 lofty, in spite of their snow-clad peaks, nor did they 
 look inhospitable, in spite of their rough outline, 
 but were all toned in harmonious colour — a deep 
 purple blue, with here and there, on the far Ar- 
 cadian peaks, and on the ridge of Mount Taygetus, 
 patches of pure snow. In contrast to the large 
 sweeps of the Italian coast, its open seas, its long 
 waves of mountain, all was here broken, and rugged, 
 and varied. The sea was studded with rocky islands, 
 and the land indented with deep, narrow bays. I 
 can never forget the strong and peculiar impression 
 of that first sight of Greece ; nor can I cease to won- 
 der at the strange likeness which rose in my mind, 
 and which made me think of the bays and rocky 
 coasts of the west and south-west of Ireland. There 
 was the same cloudy, showery sky, which is so com- 
 mon there ; there was the same serrated outline of 
 hills, the same richness in promontories, and rocky 
 islands, and land-locked bays. Nowhere have I 
 seen a like purple colour, except in the wilds of 
 Kerry and Connemara; and though the general 
 height of the Greek mountains, as the snow in May 
 testified, was far greater than that of the Irish hills, 
 yet on that morning, and in that light, they looked 
 low and homely, not displaying their grandeur, or 
 
I.] FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 5 
 
 commanding awe and wonder, but rather attracting 
 the sight by their wonderful grace, and by their va- 
 riety and richness of outline and colour. I stood 
 there, I know not how long — for I was alone, and 
 could stand without guide or map — telling myself 
 the name of each mountain and promontory, and so 
 filling out the idle names and outlines of many books 
 with the fresh reality itself. There was the west 
 coast of Elis, as far north as the eye could reach, 
 the least interesting part of the view, as it was of 
 the history, of Greece ; then the richer and more 
 varied outline of Messene, with its bay, thrice famous 
 at great intervals, and then for long ages feeding 
 idly on that fame ; Pylos, Sphacteria, Navarino — 
 each of them a foremost name in Hellenic history. 
 Above the bay could be seen those rich slopes 
 which the Spartans coveted of old, and which, as I 
 saw them, were covered with golden corn. The 
 three headlands which give to the Peloponnesus its 
 plane-leaf form, as Strabo observed, 1 were as yet 
 lying parallel before us, and their outline confused ; 
 but the great crowd of heights and intersecting 
 chains, which told at once the Alpine character of 
 the peninsula, called to mind the other remark of 
 the geographer, who calls it the Acropolis of Greece. 
 The words of old Herodotus, too, rise in the mind 
 with new reality, when he talks of the poor and stony 
 soil of the country as a ' rugged nurse of liberty. 
 
 1 VIII. C. 2. tffTi TOivvv ■/] U.e\oir6vvr)(Tos ioiKvla <£vAA-9> irKaTavov rb 
 ■crxvv-a. 
 
6 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 For the nearer the ship approaches, the more 
 this feature comes out ; increased, no doubt, greatly 
 in our time by depopulation and general decay,, 
 when many arable tracts are lying desolate, but 
 still at all times necessary, when a large pro- 
 portion of the country consists of rocky peaks and 
 precipices, where a goat may graze, but where the 
 eagle builds secure from the hand of man. The 
 coast, once teeming with traffic, is now lonely and 
 deserted. A single sail in the large gulf of Koron, 
 and a few miserable huts, discernible with a tele- 
 scope, only added to the feeling of solitude. It 
 was, indeed, ' Greece, but living Greece no more/ 
 Even the pirates, who sheltered in these creeks and 
 mountains, have abandoned this region in which 
 there is nothing now to plunder. 
 
 But as we crossed the mouth of the gulf, the eye 
 caught with delight distant white houses along the 
 high ground of the eastern side — in other words, 
 along the mountain slopes which run out into 
 the promontory of Tainaron ; and a telescope soon 
 brought them into distinctness, and gave us the 
 first opportunity of discussing modern Greek life. 
 We stood off the coast of Maina — the home of those 
 Mainotes whom Byron has made so famous as 
 pirates, as heroes, as lovers, as murderers ; and 
 even now, when the stirring days of war and of 
 piracy have passed away, the whole district retains 
 the aspect of a country in a state of siege or of 
 perpetual danger. Instead of villages surrounded 
 
I.] FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 7 
 
 by peaceful homesteads, each Mainote house, though 
 standing alone, was walled in, and in the centre 
 was a high square tower, in which, according to 
 trustworthy travellers, the Mainote men used to 
 spend their day watching their enemies, while the 
 women and children alone ventured out to till the 
 fields. For these fierce mountaineers were not only 
 perpetually defying the Turkish power, which was 
 never able to subdue them thoroughly, but they 
 were all engaged at home with internecine feuds, 
 of which the origin was often forgotten, but of 
 which the consequences remained in the form of 
 vengeance due for the life of a kinsman. "When 
 this was exacted on one side, the obligation changed 
 to the other; and so for generation after generation 
 they spent their lives in either seeking or avoiding 
 vengeance. This more than Corsican vendetta was, 
 by a sort of mediaeval chivalry, not extended to the 
 women and children, who were thus in perfect 
 safety, while their husbands and fathers were in 
 daily and deadly danger. 
 
 They are considered the purest in blood of all 
 the Greeks, though it does not appear that their 
 dialect approaches old Greek nearer than those of 
 their neighbours ; but for beauty of person, and 
 independence of spirit, they certainly rank first 
 among the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus, and 
 most certainly they must have among them a good 
 deal of the old Messenian blood. Most of the 
 country is barren, but there are orange woods, 
 
8 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 which yield the most delicious fruit — a fruit so 
 large and rich that it makes all other oranges 
 appear small and tasteless. The country is now 
 perfectly safe for visitors, and the people ex- 
 tremely hospitable, though their diet is not very 
 palatable to the northern traveller. 
 
 So with talk and anecdote about the Mainotes — 
 for everyone was now up on deck and sight-seeing — 
 we neared the classic headland of Tainaron, almost 
 the southern point of Europe, once the site of a great 
 temple of Poseidon — not preserved to us, like its 
 sister monument on Sunium — and once, too, the 
 entry to the regions of the dead. And, as if to re- 
 mind us of its most beautiful legend, the dolphins, 
 which had befriended Arion of old, and carried 
 him here to land, rose in the calm summer sea, and 
 came playing round the ship, showing their quaint 
 forms above the water, and keeping with our course, 
 as it were an escort into the homely seas and 
 islands of truer Greece. Strangely enough, in many 
 other journeys through Greek waters, never again 
 did we see these dolphins ; and here, as else- 
 where the old legend, I suppose, based itself upon 
 the fact that this, of all their wide domain, was 
 the favourite resting-place of these creatures, with 
 which the poets of old felt so strong a sympathy. 
 
 But, while the dolphins have been occupying 
 our attention, we have cleared Cape Matapan, 
 and the deep Gulf of Asine and Gytheion — in fact, 
 the Gulf of Sparta is open to our view. We strained 
 
I.] FIRST IMPRESSIONS. o 
 
 our eyes to discover the features of * hollow Lace- 
 daemon/ and to take in all the outline of this 
 famous bay, through which so many Spartans had 
 held their course in the days of their greatness. 
 The site of Sparta is far from the sea, probably 
 twelve or fifteen miles, but the place is marked for 
 every spectator, throughout all the Peloponnesus 
 and its coasts, by the jagged top of Mount Tayge- 
 tus, even still in June covered with snow. Through 
 the forests upon its slopes the young Spartans and 
 their famous Laconian hounds would hunt all day, 
 and after their rude supper beguile the evening 
 with stories of their dangers and their success. 
 But, as might be expected, of the five villages 
 which made up the famous city, not a stone or 
 vestige remains. The old port of Gythium is still 
 a port; but here, too, the 'wet ways/ and that 
 sea once covered with boats, which a Greek comic 
 poet has called the 'ants of the sea,' have been 
 deserted. 
 
 We were a motley company on board — Russians, 
 Greeks, Turks, French, English ; and it was not 
 hard to find pleasant companions and diverting 
 conversation among them all. I turned to a Turkish 
 gentleman, who spoke French indifferently, and 
 used chose for every name or word where his know- 
 ledge failed him : ' Is it not,' said I, < a great pity 
 to see this fair coast so desolate ?' ' A great pity, 
 indeed, 5 said he, 'but what can you expect from 
 these Greeks ? They are all pirates and robbers 
 
io RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 they are all liars and knaves. Had the Turks been 
 allowed to hold possession of the country, they 
 would have improved it, and developed its re- 
 sources ; but since the Greeks became independent, 
 everything has gone to ruin. Roads are broken 
 up, communications abandoned ; the people emi- 
 grate and disappear — in fact, nothing prospers/ 
 
 Presently, I got beside a Greek gentleman, from 
 whom I was anxiously picking up the first neces- 
 sary phrases and politenesses of modern Greek, 
 and, by way of amusement, put to him the same 
 question. I got the answer I expected. 'Ah!' 
 said he, ' the Turks, the Turks ! When I think how 
 these miscreants have ruined our beautiful country I 
 How could a land thrive or prosper under such 
 odious tyranny V I ventured to suggest that the 
 Turks were now gone five and forty years, and that 
 it was high time to see some fruits of recovered 
 liberty in the Greeks. No, it was impossible. The 
 Turks had cut down all the woods, and so ruined 
 the climate ; they had destroyed the cities, broken 
 up the roads, encouraged the bandits — in, fact they 
 had left the country in such a state that centuries 
 would not cure it. 
 
 How far both were right, or both wrong, is not a 
 question for me to decide ; but it might have been 
 suggested, had we been so disposed, that the 
 greatest and the most hopeless of all these sorrows — 
 the utter depopulation of the country — is not due 
 to either modern Greeks or Turks, nor even to the 
 
i.j FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 1 1 
 
 slave hordes of the Middle Ages. It was a calamity 
 which came upon Greece almost suddenly, imme- 
 diately after the loss of her independence, and which 
 the historians and physiologists have as yet been 
 only partially able to explain. Of this very coast, 
 upon which we were then gazing, the geographer 
 Strabo, about the time of Christ, says, ' that of old, 
 Lacedaemon had numbered ioo cities; in his day 
 there were but ten remaining.' So, then, the sum 
 of the crimes of both Greeks and Turks may be 
 diminished by one. But I, perceiving that each of 
 them would have been extremely indignant at this 
 historical palliation of the other's guilt, ' kept 
 silence, won from good words.' 
 
 These dialogues beguiled us till we found our- 
 selves, almost suddenly, facing the promontory of 
 Malea, with the island of Cythera (Cerigo) on our 
 right. The island is one little celebrated in his- 
 tory. The Phoenicians seem, in very old times, to 
 have had a settlement there for the working of 
 their purple shell fishery, for which the coasts 
 of Laconia were celebrated ; and they doubtless 
 founded there the worship of the Sidonian goddess, 
 who was transformed by the Greeks into Aphrodite 
 (Venus). During the Peloponnesian War we hear 
 of the Athenians using it as a station for their fleet, 
 when they were ravaging the adjacent coasts. It 
 was, in fact, used by their naval power as the same 
 sort of blister [lirirux^^) on Sparta that Dekeleia 
 was when occupied by the Spartans in Attica. 
 
12 RAMBLES IN GREECE, [ch. 
 
 Cape Malea is more famous. It was in olden 
 days the limit of the homely Greek waters, the bar 
 to all fair weather and regular winds — a place of 
 storms and wrecks, and the portal to an inhospi- 
 table open sea. 'Pass Malea/ said the Greek 
 sailor, 'and forget your home;' and we can well 
 imagine the delight of the adventurous trader who 
 had dared to cross the Western Seas, to gather 
 silver and lead in the mines of Spain, when he 
 rounded the dreaded cape, homeward bound in his 
 heavy-laden ship, and looked back from the quiet 
 ./Egean. The barren and rocky Cape has its new 
 feature now. On the very extremity there is a little 
 platform, at some elevation over the water, and 
 only accessible with great difficulty from the land 
 by a steep goat-path. Here a hermit has built 
 himself a tiny hut, cultivates his little plot of corn, 
 and lives out in the lone seas, with no society but 
 stray passing ships. When Greece was thickly 
 peopled, he might well have been compelled to 
 seek loneliness here ; but now, when in almost any 
 mountain chain he could find solitude and desola- 
 tion enough, it seems as if that poetic instinct 
 which so often guides the ignorant and uncon- 
 scious anchorite had sent him to this spot, which 
 combines, in a strange way, solitude and publicity, 
 and which excites the curiosity, but forbids the 
 intrusion, of every careless passenger to the East. 
 
 So we passed into the ^Egean, the real thorough- 
 fare of the Greeks, the mainstay of their communi- 
 
I.] FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 
 
 cation — a sea, and yet not a sea, but the frame of 
 countless headlands and islands, which are ever in 
 view to give confidence to the sailor in the smallest 
 boat. The most striking feature in our view was 
 the serrated outline of the mountains of Crete, far 
 away to the S. E. Though the day was grey and 
 cloudy, the atmosphere was perfectly clear, and 
 allowed us to see these very distant Alps, on which 
 the snow still lay in great fields. The great chain of 
 Ida brought back to us the old legends of Minos 
 and his island kingdom, nor could any safer seat 
 of empire be imagined for a power coming from 
 the south than this great long bar of mountains, 
 to which half the islands of the ^Egean could pass 
 a fire signal in times of war or piracy. The legends 
 preserved to us of Minos — the human sacrifices to 
 the Minotaur — the hostility to Theseus — the identifi- 
 cation of Ariadne with the legends of Bacchus, so 
 eastern and orgiastic in character — make us feel, 
 with a sort of instinctive certainty, that, in spite of the 
 opinions of learned Germans, the power of Minos 
 was no Hellenic empire, but a Phoenician outpost, 
 from which, as afterwards from Carthage, they com- 
 manded distant coasts and islands, for the purposes 
 of trade. They settled, as we know, at Corinth, at 
 Thebes, and probably at Athens, in the days of their 
 greatness, but they seem always to have been 
 strangers and sojourners there, while in Crete they 
 kept the stronghold of their power. Thucydides 
 thinks that Minos' main object was to put down 
 
i 4 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 piracy, and protect commerce ; and this is probably 
 the case, though we are without evidence on the 
 point. The historian evidently regards this old 
 Cretan empire as the older model of the Athenian, 
 but settled in a far more advantageous place, and 
 not liable to the dangers which proved the ruin of 
 Athens. 
 
 The nearer islands were small, and of no reputa- 
 tion, but each, like a mountain top reaching out of 
 a submerged valley, stony and bare. Melos was 
 farther off, but quite distinct — the old scene of 
 Athenian violence and cruelty, to Thucydides so 
 impressive, that he dramatises the incidents, and 
 passes from cold narrative and set oration to a dia- 
 logue between the oppressors and the oppressed. 
 Melian starvation was long after proverbial among 
 the Greeks, and there the fashionable and aristo- 
 cratic Alcibiades applied the arguments, and car- 
 ried out the very policy which the tanner Cleon 
 could not propose without being pilloried by the 
 great historian whom he made his foe. This and 
 other islands, which were always looked upon by 
 the mainland Greeks with some contempt, have of 
 late days received special attention from archaeolo- 
 gists. It is said that the present remains of the 
 old Greek type are now to be found among the 
 islanders — an observation which I did not find true, 
 but which I cannot deny, for want of fuller investi- 
 gation. The noblest and most perfect type of 
 Greek beauty has, indeed, come to us from Melos, 
 
I.] FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 15 
 
 but not in real life. It is the celebrated Venus of 
 Melos — the most pure and perfect image we know of 
 that goddess, and one which puts to shame the lower 
 ideals so much admired in the museums of Italy. 
 
 Another remark should be made in justice to the 
 islands, that the groups of Therasia and Santorin, 
 which lie round the crater of a great extinct vol- 
 cano, have supplied us with far the oldest vestiges 
 of inhabitants in any part of Greece. In these, be- 
 neath the lava slopes formed in the last great erup- 
 tion — an eruption earlier than any history, except, 
 perhaps, Egyptian — have been found the dwellings, 
 the implements, and the bones of men, who cannot 
 have lived there much later than 2000 B. c. The 
 art, as well as the implements, of these old dwellers 
 in their Stone Age, has shown us how very ancient 
 Greek forms, and even Greek decorations, are in 
 the world's history : and we may yet from them 
 and from farther researches, such as Schliemann's, 
 be able to reconstruct the state of things in Greece 
 before the Greeks came from their Eastern homes. 
 The special reason why these inquiries seem to 
 me likely to lead to good result is this, that what 
 is called neo-barbarism is less likely to mislead us 
 here than elsewhere. Neo-barbarism means the 
 occurrence in later times of the manners and 
 customs which generally mark very old and 
 primitive times. Some few things of this kind 
 survive everywhere ; thus, in the Irish Island of 
 Arran, a group of famous savants mistook a stone 
 
1 6 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [chl 
 
 donkey-shed of two years' standing for the build- 
 ing of an extinct race in grey antiquity. As a matter 
 of fact, the construction had not changed from the 
 oldest type. But the spread of culture, and the 
 fulness of population in the good days of Greece, ' 
 make it certain that every spot about the thorough- 
 fares was improved and civilized ; and so, as I have 
 said, there is less chance here than anywhere of our 
 being deceived into mistaking rudeness for old- 
 ness, and raising a modern savage to the dignity 
 of a primaeval man. 
 
 But we must not let speculations spoil our obser- 
 vations, and must not waste the precious moments 
 given us to take in once for all the general outline 
 of the Greek coasts. While the long string of 
 islands, from Melos up to the point of Attica, 
 framed in our view to the right, to the left the 
 great bay of Argolis opened far into the land, 
 making a sort of vista into the Peloponnesus, so 
 that the mountains of Arcadia could be seen far 
 to the west standing out against the setting sun ;, 
 for the day was now clearer — the clouds began to 
 break, and let us feel touches of the sun's heat 
 towards evening. As we passed Hydrea, the night 
 began to close about us, and we were obliged to 
 make out the rest of our geography by the aid 
 of a rich full moon. 
 
 But these Attic waters, if I may so call them, 
 will be mentioned again and again in the course of 
 our voyage, and need not now be described in detail. 
 
i.] FIRST IMPRESSIONS. i 7 
 
 The reader will, I think, get the clearest notion 
 of the size of Greece by reflecting upon the time 
 required to sail round the Peloponnesus in a good 
 steamer. The ship in which we made the journey — 
 the Donnaiy of the French Messagerie Company, — 
 made about eight miles an hour, as I ascertained 
 from frequently questioning the officers. Coming 
 within close range of the coast of Messene, about 
 five o'clock in the morning, we rounded all the 
 headlands, and arrived at the Peiraeus about eleven 
 o'clock the same night. So, then, the Pelop- 
 onnesus is a small peninsula, but even to an 
 outside view ' very large for its size ; ' for the 
 actual climbing up and down of constant moun- 
 tains, in any land journey from place to place, 
 makes the distance in miles very much greater 
 than the line as the crow flies. If I said that 
 every ordinary distance, as measured on the map, 
 is doubled in the journey, I believe I should be 
 under the mark. 
 
 One more reflection, and that a bold one, here 
 suggests itself. If England, instead of being con- 
 tent with Malta and the Ionian Islands, had, in the 
 days of her naval greatness and general reputa- 
 tion, obtained Sicily and Southern Greece, what 
 precious results might have been gained for these 
 countries themselves, and for Europe at large ! 
 While our invalids and sybarites would have 
 spread wealth and refinement through the beau- 
 tiful uplands of Sicily, our route to India would 
 
 C 
 
1 8 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 have lain through Greece, and years ago every 
 curious traveller might have gone by rail to Athens, 
 as he now goes to Brindisi. Greek art and anti- 
 quities would have become the household property 
 of good society, instead of being seen only by a 
 few privileged people, to the great disgust of their 
 envious neighbours. 
 
 I will add a word upon the form and scope of 
 the following work. It seeks to bring the living 
 features of Greece home to the student, by connect- 
 ing them, as far as possible, with the facts of older 
 history, which are so familiar to most of us. It will 
 also say a good deal about the modern politics of 
 Greece, and the character of the modern popula- 
 tion. A long and careful survey of the extant 
 literature of ancient Greece has convinced me that 
 the pictures usually drawn of the old Greeks are 
 idealised, and that the real people were of a very 
 different, if you please of a much lower, type. 
 What is very remarkable and worth quoting in 
 confirmation of my judgment is this, that intelli- 
 gent people at Athens, who had read my opinions 
 formerly hazarded upon the subject, were so struck 
 with the close resemblance of my pictures of the old 
 Greeks to the present inhabitants that they con- 
 cluded I must have visited the country before 
 writing these opinions, and that I was, in fact, 
 drawing the classical people from the life of the 
 moderns. If this is not a proof of the justice of 
 these views, it at least strongly suggests that they 
 
I.] FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 
 
 19 
 
 may be true, and is a powerful support in argu- 
 ing the matter on the perfectly independent ground 
 of the inferences from old literature. After all, 
 national characteristics are very permanent, and 
 very hard to be shaken off, and it would seem 
 strange, indeed, if both these and the Greek lan- 
 guage should have remained almost intact, and yet 
 the race have either changed or been saturated 
 with foreign blood. Foreign invasions and foreign 
 conquests of Greece were common enough ; but 
 here, as elsewhere, the climate and circumstances 
 which have formed a race seem to conspire to 
 preserve it, and to absorb foreign types and fea- 
 tures, rather than to permit the extinction or total 
 change of a distinct race. 
 
 I feel much fortified in my judgment of Greek 
 character by finding that a very smart, though too 
 sarcastic, observer, M. E. About, in his well-known 
 Grece contemporatne y estimates the people very nearly 
 as I am disposed to estimate the commoner ancient 
 Greeks. He notices, in the second and succeeding 
 chapters of his book, a series of features which make 
 this nationality a very distinct one in Europe. Start- 
 ing from the question of national beauty, and hold- 
 ing rightly that the beauty of the men is greater 
 than that of the women, he touches on a point which 
 told very deeply upon all the history of Greek art. 
 At the present day, the Greek men are much more 
 particular about their appearance, and more vain 
 of it, than the women. The most striking beauty 
 
 c 2 
 
2o RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch- 
 
 among them is that of young men ; and as to the care 
 of figure, as About well observes, in Greece it is the 
 men who wear stays — a fashion unknown among 
 Greek women. You may see any day at Athens a 
 dandy so pinched in the waist as to remind one of 
 the Wasps of Aristophanes. Along with this hand- 
 some appearance, the people are, doubtless, a very 
 temperate people ; although they make a great deal 
 of strong wine, they never drink much, and are far 
 more critical about good water than wine. Indeed, 
 in so warm a climate, wine is disagreeable even to 
 the northern traveller; and, as Herodotus remarked 
 long ago, very likely to produce insanity, the rarest 
 form of disease among the Greeks. In fact, they are 
 not a passionate race — having at all ages been 
 gifted with a very bright intellect, and a great rea- 
 sonableness; a love of intellectual insight into 
 things, which is inconsistent with the storms of 
 wilder passion. 
 
 They are, probably, as clever a people as can be 
 found in the world, and fit for any mental work 
 whatever. This they have proved, not only by get- 
 ting into their hands all the trade of the Eastern 
 Mediterranean, but by holding their own perfectly 
 among English merchants in England. As yet 
 they have not found any encouragement in other 
 directions ; but there can be no doubt that they, if 
 settled among a great people, and weaned from the 
 follies and jealousies of Greek politics, would (like 
 the Jews) outrun many of us, both in politics and in 
 
I.] FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 21 
 
 science. However that may be — and perhaps such 
 a development requires moral qualities in which 
 they seem deficient — it is certain that their work- 
 men learn trades with extraordinary quickness ; and 
 their young commercial or professional men learn 
 languages, and the amount of knowledge necessary 
 to make money, with the most singular aptness. But 
 as yet they are stimulated chiefly by the love of 
 gain. 
 
 Besides this, they have great national vanity, 
 and, as M. About remarks, we need never despair 
 of a people who have intelligence, and are at the 
 same time vain. They are very fond of displaying 
 their knowledge on all points — especially I noted 
 their pride in shewing off their knowledge of old 
 Greek history and legend. When I asked them 
 whether they believed the old mythical stories they 
 repeated, they seemed afraid of being thought 
 simple if they confessed they did, and afraid of 
 the reputation of their ancestors if they declared 
 they did not. So they used to preserve a discreet 
 neutrality. 
 
 The instinct of liberty appears to me as strong in 
 the nation now as it ever was. In fact, the people have 
 never been really enslaved. The eternal refuge for 
 liberty afforded by the sea and the mountains has 
 saved them from this fate ; and, even beneath the 
 heavy yoke of the Turks, a large part of the nation 
 was not subdued, but, under the profession of ban- 
 dits and pirates, enjoyed the great privilege for 
 
22 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 which their ancestors had contended so earnestly. 
 The Mainotes, for example, of whom I have just 
 spoken as occupying the coasts of Messene, never 
 tolerated any resident Turkish magistrate among 
 them, but ' handed to a trembling tax-collector a 
 little purse of gold pieces, hung on the end of a 
 naked sword/ 1 Now, the whole nation is more in- 
 tensely and thoroughly democratic than any other 
 in Europe. They acknowledge no nobility save that 
 of descent from the chiefs who fought in the war of 
 liberation ; they will allow no distinction of classes;, 
 every common mule-boy is a gentleman [kvqloq),. 
 and fully your equal. He sits in the room at meals, 
 and joins in the conversation at dinner. The only 
 reason they tolerate a king is because they cannot 
 endure one of themselves to be superior. This jea- 
 lousy is, unfortunately, a mainspring of Greek 
 politics, and when combined with a dislike of agri- 
 culture, as a stupid and unintellectual occupation,, 
 fills all the country with politicians, merchants, and 
 journalists. But they want the spirit of subordina- 
 tion of their great ancestors, and are often accused 
 of lack of honesty — a very grave feature, and the 
 greatest obstacle to progress in all ages. But it is 
 better to let points of character come out gradu- 
 ally in the course of our studies than to bring 
 them together into an official portrait. It is impos- 
 sible to wander through the country without seeing 
 and understanding the inhabitants ; for the travel- 
 
 1 The words are M. About's. 
 
I.] FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 23 
 
 ler is in constant contact with them, and they 
 have no scruple in displaying all their character. 
 
 M. About has earned the profound hatred and 
 contempt of the nation by his picture, and I do not 
 wonder at it, seeing that the tone in which he writes 
 is flippant and ill-natured, and seems to betoken 
 certain private animosities, of which the Greeks tell 
 numerous anecdotes. 
 
 I have no such excuse to be severe or ill-natured, 
 as I found nothing but kindness and hospitality 
 everywhere, and sincerely hope my free judgments 
 may not hurt some sensitive Greek who may 
 chance to see them. Even the great Finlay — one 
 of their best friends — is constantly censured by 
 them for his writings about Modern Greece. 
 
 But, surely, any real lover of Greece must feel 
 that plain speaking about the faults of the nation 
 is much wanted. The worship lavished upon them 
 by Byron and his school has done its good, and 
 can now only do harm. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 GENERAL IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS AND ATTICA. 
 
 THERE is probably no more exciting voyage, to 
 any educated man, than the approach to Athens 
 from the sea. Every promontory, every island, 
 every bay, has its history. If he knows the map of 
 Greece properly, he needs no guide-book or guide to 
 distract him ; if he does not, he needs little Greek 
 to ask of anyone near him the name of this or that 
 object; and the mere names are sufficient to stir 
 up all his classical recollections. But he must 
 make up his mind not to be shocked at j^Egina or 
 Pkalerum, and even to be told that he is utterly 
 wrong in his way of pronouncing them. 
 
 It was our fortune to come into Greece by night, 
 with a splendid moon shining upon the summer 
 sea. The varied outlines of Sunium, on the one 
 side, and ^Egina on the other, were very clear, but 
 in the deep shadows there was mystery enough to 
 feed the burning impatience of seeing all in the 
 light of common day ; and though we had passed 
 iEgina, and had come over against the rocky Sala- 
 mis, as yet there was no sign of Peirseus. Then 
 
CH. II. J A THENS AND A TTICA . 2 5 
 
 came the light on Psyttaleia, and they told us that 
 the harbour was right opposite. Yet we came 
 nearer and nearer, and no harbour could be seen. 
 The barren rocks of the coast seemed to form one 
 unbroken line, and nowhere was there a sign of in- 
 dentation or of break in the outline. But, suddenly, 
 -as we turned from gazing on Psyttaleia, where the 
 flower of the Persian nobles had once stood in de- 
 spair, looking upon their fate gathering about them, 
 the vessel had turned eastward, and discovered to 
 us the crowded lights and thronging ships of the 
 famous harbour. Small it looked, very small, but 
 evidently deep to the water's edge, for great ships 
 seemed touching the shore ; and so narrow is the 
 mouth, that we almost wondered how they had 
 made their entrance in safety. But we saw it some 
 weeks later, with nine men-of-war towering above 
 ■all its merchant shipping and its steamers, and 
 among them all crowds of ferry-boats were skim- 
 ming about in the breeze with their wing-like sails. 
 Then we found out that, like the rest of Greece, the 
 Peirseus was far larger than it looked. 
 
 It differed little, alas! from more vulgar harbours 
 in the noise and confusion of disembarking ; in the 
 absurdity of its custom-house ; in the extortion and 
 insolence of its boatmen. It is still, as in Plato's 
 day, ' the haunt of sailors, where good manners 
 are unknown.' But when we had escaped the 
 turmoil, and were seated silently on the way to 
 Athens, almost along the very road of classical 
 
26 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 days, all our classical notions, which had been 
 scared away by vulgar bargaining and protesting, 
 regained their sway. We had sailed in through 
 the narrow passage where almost every great 
 Greek that ever lived had sometime passed ; now 
 we went along the line, hardly less certain, which 
 had seen all these great ones going to and fro be- 
 tween the city and the port. The present road is 
 shady, and the moon had set, so that our approach 
 to Athens was even more mysterious than our 
 approach to the Peirseus. We were, moreover* 
 perplexed at our carriage stopping under some 
 great plane trees, though we had driven but two 
 miles, and the night was far spent. Our coach- 
 man would listen to no advice or persuasion. We 
 learned afterwards that every carriage going to 
 and from Peiraeus stops at this half-way house, that 
 the horses may drink, and the coachman take 
 * Turkish delight/ and water. There is no excep- 
 tion made to this custom, and the traveller is 
 bound to submit. At last we entered the unpre- 
 tending ill-built streets at the west of Athens. 
 
 The stillness of the night is a phenomenon hardly 
 known in that city. No sooner have men and horses 
 gone to rest than all the dogs and cats of the town 
 come out to bark and yell through the thorough- 
 fares. Athens, like all parts of Modern Greece,, 
 abounds in dogs. You cannot pass a sailing boat 
 in the Levant without seeing a dog looking angrily 
 over the taffrail, and barking at you as you pass. 
 
ii.] A THENS AND A TTICA . 
 
 Every ship in the Peiraeus has at least one, often a 
 great many, on board. I suppose every house in 
 Athens is provided with one. These creatures seem 
 to make it their business to prevent silence and 
 rest all the night long. They were ably seconded 
 by the cats, as well as by an occasional wakeful 
 donkey; and both cats and donkeys seemed to have 
 voices of almost tropical violence. 
 
 So the night wore away under rapidly-growing 
 adverse impressions. How is a man to admire art 
 and revere antiquity if he is robbed of his repose ? 
 The Greeks sleep so much in the day that they 
 seem indifferent about nightly disturbances ; and, 
 perhaps, after many years' habitude, even Athenian 
 caterwauling may fail to rouse the sleeper. But 
 what chance has the passing traveller ? Even the 
 strongest ejaculations are but a narrow outlet for 
 his feelings. 
 
 In this state of mind, then, we rose at the break 
 of dawn to see whether the window would afford 
 any suggestion of ancient days to serve as a re- 
 quital for angry sleeplessness. And there, right 
 opposite, stood the rock which of all rocks in the 
 world's history has done most for literature and 
 art — the rock about which poets, and orators, and 
 architects, and historians have ever spoken with- 
 out exhausting themselves, which is ever new and 
 ever old, ever fresh in its decay, ever perfect in its 
 ruin, ever living in its death — the Acropolis of 
 Athens. 
 
28 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 When I saw my dream and longing of many- 
 years fulfilled, the first rays of the rising sun had 
 just touched the heights, while the town below was 
 still hid in gloom. And I saw rock, and rampart, 
 and ruined fanes — all coloured in uniform tints ; 
 the lights were of a deep rich orange, and the sha- 
 dows, of dark crimson, with the deeper lines of 
 purple. There was no variety in colour between 
 what nature and what man had set there. No 
 whiteness shone from the marble, no smoothness 
 showed upon the hewn and polished blocks ; but 
 the whole mass of orange and crimson stood out 
 together into the pale, pure Attic air. There it 
 stood, surrounded by lanes and hovels, still per- 
 petuating the great old contrast in Greek history, 
 of magnificence and meanness — of loftiness and 
 lowness — as well in outer life as in inward motive. 
 And, as it were in illustration of that art of which 
 it was the most perfect bloom, and which lasted 
 in perfection but a day of history, and then faded 
 aw^ay, so I saw it again and again, in sunlight and 
 in shade, in daylight and at night, but never again 
 in its perfect and singular beauty. 
 
 If we except the Acropolis, there are only two 
 striking remains of classical antiquity within the 
 modern town of Athens — the Temple of Theseus 
 and the few standing columns of Hadrian's great 
 temple to Zeus. The latter is, indeed, very re- 
 markable. The pillars stand on a vacant platform, 
 once the site of the gigantic temple : the Acropolis 
 
II.] A THENS AND A TTICA . 29 
 
 forms a noble background; away towards Pha- 
 lerum stretch undulating hills which hide the sea ; 
 to the left (if we look from the town), Mount Hymet- 
 tus raises its barren slopes ; and in the valley, im- 
 mediately below the pillars, flows the famous little 
 Ilisus, glorified for ever by the poetry of Plato, and 
 in its dried-out bed the fountain Callirrhoe, from 
 which the Athenian maidens still draw water as of 
 old — water the purest and best of the city. It wells 
 out from under a great limestone rock, all plumed 
 with the rich Capillus Ve?terts y which seems to find 
 out and frame with its delicate green every natural 
 spring in Greece. But the pillars of the Temple of 
 Zeus, though very stately and massive, and with 
 their summits bridged together by huge blocks of 
 architrave, are still not Athenian, not Attic, not 
 (if I may say so) genuine Greek work; for the 
 Corinthian capitals, which are here seen perhaps 
 in their greatest perfection, can hardly be called 
 pure Greek taste. As is well known, they were 
 hardly ever used, and never used prominently, 
 till the Roman-Greek stage of art. The older 
 Greeks seem to have had a fixed objection to intri- 
 cate ornamentation in their larger temples. All 
 the greater temples of Greece and Greek Italy are 
 in the Doric Order, with its perfectly plain capital. 
 They admitted groups of figures upon the pedi- 
 ment and metopes, because these groups formed 
 clear and massive designs visible from a distance. 
 But such intricacies as those of a Corinthian capi- 
 
So RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 tal were not approved, except in small monuments, 
 which were merely intended for close inspection, 
 and where delicate ornament gave grace to a build- 
 ing which could not lay claim to grandeur. Such is 
 clearly the case with the only purely Greek (as 
 opposed to Grseco-Roman) monument in the Corin- 
 thian Order, which we have been able to find — the 
 Choragic monument of Lysicrates at Athens. 1 It 
 was also the case with that beautiful little temple, 
 or group of temples, known as the Erechtheum, 
 which, standing beside the great massive Parthe- 
 non on the Acropolis of Athens, presents the very 
 contrast upon which I am insisting. It is small 
 and essentially graceful, being built in the Ionic 
 style, with rich ornamentation ; while the Parthe- 
 non is massive, and in spite of much ornamenta- 
 tion, very severe in its plainer Doric style. 
 
 But to return to the pillars of Hadrian's Temple. 
 They are about fifty-five feet high, by six and a-half 
 feet in diameter, and no Corinthian pillar of this 
 colossal size would ever have been set up by the 
 Greeks in their better days. So, then, in spite of 
 the grandeur of these isolated remains — a grandeur 
 not destroyed, perhaps even not diminished, by 
 
 1 This beautiful monument has been so defaced and mutilated that 
 the photographs of to-day give no idea of its decoration. The careful 
 drawings and restorations of Stewart and Revett were made in the last 
 century, when it was still comparatively intact, and it is through their 
 book alone that we can now estimate the merits of many of the ancient 
 buildings of Athens. 
 
ii.] A THENS AND A TTICA . 3 1 
 
 coffee tables, and inquiring waiters, and military 
 bands, and a vulgar crowd about their base — to 
 the student of really Greek art they are not of the 
 highest interest ; nay, they even suggest to him 
 what the Periclean Greeks would have done had 
 they, with such resources, completed the great tem- 
 ple due to the munificence of the Roman Emperor. 
 Let us turn, then, in preference to the Temple of 
 Theseus, at the opposite extremity of the town, it 
 too standing upon a clear platform, and striking 
 the traveller with its symmetry and its complete- 
 ness, as he approaches from the Peiraeus. It is in 
 every way a contrast to the temple of which we 
 have just spoken. It is very small — in fact so small 
 in comparison with the Parthenon, or the great 
 temple at Psestum, that we are disappointed with 
 it ; and yet, being very old, it is built, not in the 
 richly-decorated Ionic style of the Erechtheum, but 
 in severe Doric ; and though small and plain, it is 
 very perfect — as perfect as any such relic that we 
 have. It is many centuries older than Hadrian's 
 great temple ; it could have been destroyed with 
 one-tenth of the trouble, and yet it still stands 
 almost in its perfection. The reason is simply this. 
 Few of the great classical temples suffered much 
 till the Middle Ages. Now, in the Middle Ages 
 this temple, as well as the Parthenon, was usurped 
 by the Greek Church, and turned into a place of 
 Christian worship. So, then, the little Temple of 
 Theseus has escaped the ravages which the last 
 
32 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 few centuries — worse than all that went before — 
 have made in the remains of a noble antiquity. 
 To those who desire to study the effect of the Doric 
 Order this temple appears to me an admirable 
 specimen. From its small size and clear position, 
 all its points are very easily taken in. l Such/ 
 says Bishop Wordsworth, * is the integrity of its 
 structure, and the distinctness of its details, that 
 it requires no description beyond that which a 
 few glances might supply. Its beauty defies all : 
 its solid yet graceful form is, indeed, admirable; 
 and the loveliness of its colouring is such that, from 
 the rich mellow hue which the marble has now 
 assumed, it looks as if it had been quarried, not 
 from the bed of a rocky mountain, but from the 
 golden light of an Athenian sunset/ And in like 
 terms many others have spoken. 
 
 I have only one reservation to make. The Doric 
 Order being essentially massive, it seems to me that 
 this beautiful temple lacks one essential feature of 
 that Order in which it is built, and therefore, after 
 the first survey, after a single walk about it, it loses 
 to the traveller who has seen Paestum, and who 
 presently cannot fail to see the Parthenon, that 
 peculiar effect of massiveness — of almost Egyptian 
 solidity — which is ever present, and ever imposing, 
 in these huger Doric temples. It seems as if the 
 Athenians themselves felt this — that they felt the 
 plain simplicity of its style was not effective with- 
 out size, and that they accordingly decorated this 
 
II.] A THENS AND A TTICA . 3 3 
 
 structure with colours more richly than their other 
 temples. All the reliefs and raised ornaments 
 seem to have been painted : other decorations were 
 added in colour on the flat surfaces, so that the 
 whole temple must have been a mass of rich varie- 
 gated hues, of which blue, green, and red are still 
 distinguishable — or were in Stewart's time — and in 
 which bronze and gilding certainly played an im- 
 portant part. 
 
 We are thus brought naturally face to face 
 with one of the peculiarities of old Greek art most 
 difficult to realize, and still more to appreciate. 
 We can recognise in Egyptian and in Assyrian art 
 the richness and appropriateness of much colour- 
 ing. Modern painters are becoming so alive to 
 this, that among the most striking pictures in our 
 Royal Academy in London have been seen, for 
 some years back, scenes from old Egyptian and 
 Assyrian life, in which the rich colouring of the 
 architecture has been quite a prominent feature, e.g., 
 Mr. Poynter's Israel in Egypt, and Mr. Long's 
 Babylonian Slave Market. But in Greek art — in the 
 perfect symmetry of the Greek temple, in the per- 
 fect grace of the Greek statue — we come to think 
 form of such infinite and paramount importance 
 that we look on the beautiful Parian and Pentelic 
 marbles as specially suited and adapted for the ex- 
 pression of form apart from colour. There is even 
 something in unity of tone that delights the modern 
 eye. Thus, though we feel that the old Greek 
 
 D 
 
34 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 temples have lost all their original brightness, 
 yet, as I have myself said, and as I have quoted 
 from Bishop Wordsworth, the rich mellow hue 
 which has toned all these ruins has to us its 
 peculiar charm. The same rich yellow brown, 
 almost the colour of the Roman travertine, is one 
 of the greatest features in the splendid remains 
 which have made Psestum unique in all Italy. 
 This colour contrasts beautifully with the blue sky 
 of southern Europe ; it lights up with extraordinary 
 richness in the rising or setting sun. We can 
 easily conceive that were it proposed to restore the 
 Attic temples to their pristine whiteness, we should 
 feel a severe shock, and beg to have these venerable 
 buildings left in the soberness of their acquired 
 colour. Still more does it shock us to be told 
 that great sculptors, with Parian marble at hand, 
 preferred to set up images of the gods in gold and 
 ivory, or, still worse, with parts of gold and ivory ; 
 and that they thought it right to fill out the eyes 
 with precious stones, and affix gilded wreaths round 
 coloured hair. 
 
 When we first come to realise these things, it is 
 impossible not to exclaim against such a jumble, 
 as we should call it, of painting and architec- 
 ture — still worse, of painting and sculpture. Nor 
 is it possible or reasonable that we should at once 
 submit to such a revolution in our artistic ideas, 
 and bow without criticism to these shocking 
 features in Greek art. But if blind obedience to 
 
n.] ATHENS AND ATTICA. 35 
 
 these our great masters in the laws of beauty is not 
 to be commended, so neither is an absolute resist- 
 ance to all argument on the question to be re- 
 spected ; nor do I acknowledge the good sense or 
 the good taste of that critic who insists that nothing 
 can possibly equal the colour and texture of white 
 marble, and that all colouring of such a substance 
 is the mere remains of barbarism. For, say what 
 we will, the Greeks were certainly, as a nation, the 
 best judges of beauty whom the world has yet seen. 
 And this is not all. The beauty of which they 
 were evidently most fond was beauty of form — 
 harmony of proportions, symmetry of design. They 
 always hated the tawdry and the extravagant. As 
 to their literature, there is no poetry, no oratory, 
 no history, which is less decorated with the flowers 
 of rhetoric : it is all pure in design, chaste in detail. 
 So with their dress ; so with their dwellings. We 
 cannot but feel that, had the effect of painted 
 temples and statues been tawdry, there is no people 
 on earth who would have felt it so keenly, and 
 disliked it so much. There must, then, have been 
 strong reasons why this bright colouring did not 
 strike their eye as it would the eye of sober 
 moderns. 
 
 To anyone who has seen the country, and thought 
 about the question there, many such reasons pre- 
 sent themselves. In the first place, all through 
 southern Europe, and more especially in Greece, 
 there is an amount of bright colour in nature, 
 
 D 2 
 
RAMBIES IN GREECE. [ch.. 
 
 which prevents almost any artificial colouring from 
 producing a startling effect. Where all the land- 
 scape, the sea, and the air are exceedingly bright, 
 we find the inhabitants increasing the brightness of 
 their dress and houses, as it were, to correspond 
 with nature. Thus, in southern Italy, they paint 
 their houses pink and yellow, and so give to their 
 towns that rich and warm effect which we miss so 
 keenly among the grey and sooty streets of northern 
 Europe. So also in their dress, these people wear 
 scarlet, and white, and rich blue, not so much in 
 patterns as in large patches, and thus a festival in 
 Sicily or in Greece fills the streets with intense 
 colour. We know that the colouring of the old Greek 
 dress was quite of the same character as that of the 
 modern, though in design the dress of our day has 
 completely changed. We must, therefore, ima- 
 gine the old Greek crowd before their temples, or 
 in their market-places, a very white crowd, with 
 patches of scarlet, and various blue ; perhaps alto- 
 gether white in processions, if we except scarlet 
 shoe-straps and other such slight relief. One cannot 
 but feel that a richly coloured temple — that pillars 
 of blue and red — that friezes of gilding, and other 
 ornament, upon a white marble ground, and in 
 white marble framing, must have been a splendid 
 and appropriate background, a genial feature, in 
 such a sky and with such costume. We must get 
 accustomed to such combinations — we must dwell 
 upon them in imagination, or ask our good painters 
 
il] A Til ENS AND A TTICA . 3 7 
 
 to restore them for us, and let us look upon 
 them constantly and calmly. To me they ap- 
 pear far finer and richer than our attempts at 
 ornament. 
 
 But I will not seek to persuade ; I only desire 
 to state the case fairly, and put the reader in a posi- 
 tion to judge for himself. So much for the painted 
 architecture. I will but add, the most remarkable 
 specimen of a richly painted front to which we can 
 now appeal is also really one of the most beautiful 
 in Europe — I mean the front of S. Mark's at Venice. 
 The rich frescoes and profuse gilding on this splen- 
 did front, of which photographs give a very false 
 idea, should be studied by all who desire to judge 
 fairly of this side of Greek taste. 
 
 But I must say a word, before passing on, con- 
 cerning the statues. No doubt, the painting of 
 statues, and the use of gold and ivory upon them, 
 were derived from a rude age, when no images 
 existed but rude wooden work — at first a mere 
 block, then roughly altered and reduced to shape, 
 but probably requiring some colouring to pro- 
 duce any effect whatever. To a public accus- 
 tomed from childhood to such painted, and often 
 richly -dressed, images, a pure white marble statue 
 must appear utterly cold and lifeless. So it does 
 to us, when we have become accustomed to the 
 mellow tints of old and even weather-stained Greek 
 statues; and it should here be noticed that this 
 mellow skin-surface on antique statues is not 
 
38 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 the mere result of age, but of an artificial process, 
 whereby they burnt into the surface a composition 
 of wax and oil, which gave a yellowish tone to the 
 marble, as well as also that peculiar surface which so 
 accurately represents the texture of the human skin. 
 But if we imagine all the marble surfaces and 
 reliefs in the temple coloured for architectural 
 richness'* sake, we can feel even more strongly how 
 cold and out-of-place would be a perfectly colour- 
 less statue in the centre of all this pattern. 
 
 I will go farther and say that I have seen, and can 
 point out cases, where colouring greatly heightens 
 the effect and beauty of sculpture. The first is 
 from the bronzes found at Herculaneum, now in 
 the museum of Naples. Though they are not 
 marble, they are suitable for my purpose, being 
 naturally of a single dark-brown hue, which is 
 indeed even more unfavourable (we should think) 
 for such treatment. In some of the finest of these 
 bronzes — especially in the two young men starting 
 for a race — the eyeballs are inserted in white, 
 with iris and pupil coloured. Nothing can be 
 conceived more striking and life-like than the 
 effect produced. 
 
 I will add one remarkable modern example — the 
 monument at Florence to a young Indian prince, 
 who visited England and this country five years 
 ago, and died of fever during his homeward voyage. 
 They have set up to him a richly coloured and 
 gilded baldachin, in the open air, and in a 
 
II.] A THENS AND A TTICA . 39 
 
 \v09ded, quiet park. Under this covering is a 
 life-sized bust of the prince, in his richest state 
 dress. The whole bust — the turban, the face, the 
 drapery — all is coloured to the life, and the dress, 
 of course, of the most gorgeous variety. The tur- 
 ban is chiefly white, striped with gold, in strong 
 contrast to the mahogany complexion and raven 
 hair of the actual head ; then the robe is gold and 
 green, and covered with ornament. The general 
 effect is, from the very first moment, striking and 
 beautiful. The longer it is studied, the better it 
 appears, and I do not think there is a single rea- 
 sonable spectator who will not confess that were 
 we to replace the present bust with a copy of it 
 in white marble, the beauty and harmony of the 
 monument would be utterly marred. To those 
 who have the opportunity of visiting Italy, I 
 strongly commend these specimens of coloured 
 buildings and sculpture. When they have seen 
 them, they will hesitate to condemn what we 
 have heard called the wretched bad taste of the 
 old Greeks in their use of colour in the plastic 
 arts. 
 
 But these archaeological discussions are truly 
 £KJ3oXat Aoyou, digressions — in themselves neces- 
 sary, yet only tolerable if they are not too long. I 
 revert to the general state of the antiquities at 
 Athens, always reserving the Acropolis for a spe- 
 cial discussion. As I said, the isolated pillars of 
 Hadrian'sTemple to Zeus, and the so-called Temple 
 
4 o RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 of Theseus, are the only very striking objects. 1 There 
 are, of course, many other buildings, or remains of 
 buildings. There is the monument of Lysicrates — 
 a small and very graceful round chamber, adorned 
 with Corinthian engaged pillars, and intended to 
 carry on its summit the tripod he had gained in 
 a musical and dramatic contest at Athens. There 
 is the Temple of the Winds, as it is called — a sort 
 of public clock, with sundials on its outward 
 surfaces, and arrangements for a water-clock 
 within. There are two portals, or gateways, one 
 leading into the old agora, or market-place, the 
 other leading from old Athens into the Athens of 
 Hadrian. 
 
 But all these buildings are either miserably de- 
 faced, or of such late date and decayed taste as to 
 make them unworthy specimens of pure Greek art. 
 A single century ago there was much to be seen 
 and admired which has since disappeared; and 
 even to-day the majority of the population are 
 
 1 By the way, the appellation Temple of Theseus is more than 
 doubtful. The building fronts towards the east. This is proved 
 by the greater size, and more elaborate decoration of the eastern por- 
 tal. It is almost certain, according to an old scholion on Pindar, that 
 the temples of heroes like Theseus faced west, while those of the 
 Olympian Gods only faced the rising sun. The temple, therefore, was 
 the temple, not of a hero, but of a God. Probably the Temple of 
 Herakles, worshipped as a God at Athens, which is mentioned in 
 the scholia of Aristophanes as situated in this part of Athens, is to 
 be identified with the building in question. But I suppose for years to 
 come we must be content to abide by the old name of Theseion, which 
 is now too long in general use to be easily disturbed. 
 
ii.] A THENS AND A TTICA . 4 1 
 
 reckless as to the treatment of ancient monuments, 
 and mischievous in wantonly defacing them. Thus, 
 I saw the marble tombs of Otfried Miiller and 
 Charles Lenormant — tombs which, though modern, 
 were yet erected at the cost of the nation to men 
 who were eminent lovers and students of Greek 
 art — I saw these tombs used as common targets 
 by the neighbourhood, and all peppered with marks 
 of shot and of bullets. I saw them, too, all but blown 
 up by workmen blasting for building stones close 
 beside them. I saw, also, from the Acropolis a 
 young gentleman practising with a pistol at a 
 piece of old carved marble work in the Theatre 
 of Dionysus. His object seemed to be to chip off 
 a piece from the edge at every shot. Happily, on 
 this occasion, our vantage ground enabled us to 
 take the law into our own hands, and after in vain 
 appealing to a custodian to interfere, we adopted 
 the tactics of Apollo at Delphi, and by detach- 
 ing stones from the top of our precipice, we 
 put to flight the wretched barbarian who had 
 come to ravage the treasures of that most sacred 
 place. 
 
 These instances will show what the state and 
 security of Athenian monuments are at Athens. 
 Even the Acropolis — which is guarded by old 
 pensioners, who escort strangers during their stay, 
 but who, as I have just said, will not interfere with 
 their countrymen — even the Acropolis is only safe 
 in times of peace, and is pretty sure to be bom- 
 
42 RAMBLES IN GREECE. |_ CH - 
 
 barded in any serious revolution. This was done — 
 and done in the presence of men whom I myself 
 spoke with — some ten years after Lord Elgin had 
 luckily carried off a good portion of its incom- 
 parable friezes to England. And yet now the 
 Greeks are in the habit of calling him a fatal 
 amateur, and of discussing the expediency of ask- 
 ing them back ; they even hint at the bad taste of 
 the English nation in not voluntarily sending them 
 back. In other words, we are asked, or are going 
 to be asked, or are expected without asking, to 
 send back these priceless treasures to a people 
 who have restored hardly anything up to the 
 present day — who have not cared to put together 
 the pieces of the broken lion of Chseronea, or to 
 set up the fallen columns of the Parthenon, lying 
 each in its place, and with their pieces in the 
 natural order, since the year 1687. They are now 
 learning to talk and fret about art and archaeology ; 
 they have as yet done practically nothing to pre- 
 serve or encourage them. I hope the day is far dis- 
 tant when an outbreak of chivalrous sentiment,, 
 such as that created by Lord Byron, will induce us 
 to sacrifice what has been saved from certain des- 
 truction. 1 
 
 1 The usual apology or defence made by intelligent Greeks, when 
 we press these things upon them, is their recent escape from Turkish 
 rule. We received our country desolate, depopulated, impoverished, 
 they say ; everything must be begun afresh ; there has been so much 
 to be done, that we are not to blame. Give us time, and we will re- 
 store and make good all things. This defence, very complete at one time, 
 
II.] A THENS AND A TTICA . 43 
 
 If the Greeks had money, or the English 
 nation a real love of art, a nice question of 
 national ownership connected with the Elgin 
 marbles might possibly arise. As is well known, 
 two of the ships which were bringing home Lord 
 Elgin's marbles from Athens foundered as they 
 were rounding Cape Malea, which thus in our own 
 century (the year 1815) reasserted its classical 
 reputation for dangerous storms. These precious 
 relics have been lying at a depth of 90 feet ever 
 since, and are now said by the Greeks to have been 
 discovered — or rather their ships are said to have 
 been discovered — by fishermen off the coast. If 
 this be true, all the world ought to insist upon 
 their recovery ; for it is universally admitted that 
 the sculptures of the Parthenon are the most 
 perfect results of the most perfect age of the most 
 perfect artists the world has yet seen. But sup- 
 posing them recovered, to whom do they belong ? 
 Lord Elgin obtained them by a firman from the 
 Sultan, who was then sovereign of Greece, and 
 their acknowledged owner. But is the Greek go- 
 vernment bound by the obligations of a sovereign 
 
 is becoming every day weaker. Now that some forty years of Greek 
 liberty have elapsed, we may expect them to be up and doing. I will 
 add this suggestion. If the Greeks would but abandon the perpetual 
 fever of politics ; if they would but resign themselves to any stable 
 government for a few years ; if the opposition would but support the 
 government loyally in promoting national objects, the progress of the 
 Greeks would be very different. It is, indeed, hard for any minister 
 to attend to archaeology, when his cabinet are always contending for 
 bare existence against coalitions of opponents. 
 
44 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 whom the nation has repudiated ? Or even admit- 
 ting that it is, does not the fact of their being left 
 in Greek waters for sixty years give a lawful 
 claim to the Greeks for retaining them ? On the 
 other hand, the accident of a shipwreck ought not 
 to deprive Lord Elgin or his representatives (the 
 British Museum ?) of what was acknowledged their 
 rightful property. 
 
 Unfortunately, this uncertainty will prevent any 
 honest search from being made. The Greeks 
 talk a great deal about it, and pretend great 
 anxiety, but will do nothing ; the English will 
 probably not wish to spend money in recovering 
 property which will at once be claimed by the 
 Greeks, who will say that they were themselves on 
 the point of taking possession of it. So the 
 marbles must lie in the Mediterranean, I suppose, 
 till some rich amateur quietly takes them up at his 
 own expense, and probably without the knowledge 
 of either government. I say all this on the suppo- 
 sition that they are really recoverable ; but I need 
 hardly add that this is very doubtful, indeed. 
 
 The melancholy fate of Parthenon sculptures, 
 now doomed to perpetual separation — part of them 
 still upon their rock ; part of them among the dol- 
 phins about Cape Malea ; part of them in the safe 
 gloom of the British Museum ; and yet a part of 
 them, and that the greatest, destroyed not only by 
 enemies, but by would-be patriots and conquerors 
 — this melancholy fate naturally suggests to the 
 
il] A THENS AND A TT1CA . 45 
 
 traveller in Greece the kindred one of the proper 
 distribution of all antiquities, when found, in the 
 best way to promote the love and knowledge of 
 art. 
 
 On this point it seems to me that we have gone 
 to one extreme, and the Greeks to the other, and 
 that neither of us have done what is right and best 
 to make known what we acknowledge ought to 
 be known as widely as possible. The tendency, at 
 least of later years, has been in England to swal- 
 low up all lesser and all private collections in the 
 great national Museum in London, which has 
 accordingly become so enormous and so bewilder- 
 ing that no one, I may boldly say, can profit by it 
 except the trained specialist, who goes in with his 
 eyes shut, and will not open them till he has 
 arrived at the special class of objects he intends to 
 examine. But to the ordinary public, and even 
 the generally enlightened public (if such an ex- 
 pression be not a contradiction in terms), there is 
 nothing so utterly bewildering, and therefore so 
 unprofitable, as a visit to the myriad treasures 
 of this great world of curiosities. 
 
 In the last century many private persons — many 
 noblemen of wealth and culture — possessed remark- 
 able collections of antiquities. These have almost 
 all been swallowed up by what is called 'the 
 nation/ 
 
 In Greece the very opposite course is being 
 now pursued. By a special law it is forbidden 
 
46 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 to sell out of the country, or even to remove 
 from a district, any antiquities whatever; and 
 for this purpose little museums have been estab- 
 lished in every village in Greece — nay, sometimes, 
 even in places where there is no village, in order 
 that every district may possess its own riches, and 
 become worth a visit from the traveller and the 
 antiquarian. I have seen such museums at Eleusis, 
 some fifteen miles from Athens, at Thebes, now an 
 equally insignificant village, at Livadia, at Chsero- 
 nea, at Argos, and even in the wild plains of 
 Orchomenus, in a little chapel, without a town 
 within miles of it. If I add to this that most of 
 these museums were mere dark out-houses, only 
 lighted through the door, the reader will have 
 some notion of the task it would be to visit and 
 criticise the ever-increasing remnants of classical 
 Greece. 
 
 Here we have the opposite principle to that 
 adopted in England, and we can hardly call it 
 better. In Greece it is certainly worse. For though 
 it is intended to give the country people an interest 
 in their district antiquities, and also to induce 
 learned travellers to traverse the country in quest 
 of them, the Greek government has omitted to 
 provide for the people any decent, well-lighted 
 museums, any catalogues or descriptions of what 
 is found, any proper reward for chance discoveries 
 made by poor people. It has also omitted to 
 provide for learned travellers — I will not say rail- 
 
II.] A THENS AND A TTICA . 47 
 
 roads, but even ordinary roads, inns, beds, food, 
 or, indeed, any kind of accommodation that could 
 be named. You must ride on mules or ponies over 
 a very rough country, often down the beds of 
 streams^, and up the sides of precipices ; you must 
 not expect to sleep in most beds for one moment 
 after the darkness has invited the insect bandits — 
 a far worse scourge than their human colleagues 
 — to attack you. The traveller must depend alto- 
 gether on private hospitality, which is, indeed, 
 generally, and, so far as I know, generously prof- 
 fered ; but upon which independent people do not 
 willingly count, and of which one can never be 
 actually certain. However, then, the Greek plan 
 might be adopted in such a country as England, 
 provided our people were decently educated, in 
 Greek desert plains and highlands it did not seem 
 to me to answer its purpose, and remains an almost 
 insuperable bar to any thorough study of the anti- 
 quities. 
 
 In such a town as Athens, on the contrary, it 
 seems to me that the true solution of the problem 
 has been attained, though it will probably be 
 shortly abandoned for a central museum. There 
 are at Athens at least four separate museums of 
 antiquities — one at the University, one called the 
 Vavarkion, one in the Theseion, and one on the 
 Acropolis — devoted to its special treasures. If these 
 several storehouses were thoroughly kept — if some 
 obvious restorations of tips of noses and other ex- 
 
48 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 tremities were made — I can conceive no better 
 arrangement for studying separately and in detail 
 the various monuments, which must always be- 
 wilder and fatigue when crowded together in one 
 vast exhibition. If the British Museum were in 
 this way severed into many branches, and the 
 different classes of objects it contains were placed 
 in separate buildings, and in different parts of 
 London, I believe it would tend to a far greater 
 knowledge of what it contains, and hence to a 
 greater usefulness in educating the nation. To 
 visit any one of the Athenian museums was a com- 
 paratively short and easy task, where a man can 
 see the end of his labour before him, and hence will 
 not hesitate to delay long over such things as are 
 worth a careful study. 
 
 It may be said that all this digression about the 
 mere placing of monuments is delaying the reader 
 too long from what he desires to know — something 
 about the monuments themselves. But this little 
 book, to copy an expression of Herodotus, par- 
 ticularly affects digressions. I desire to wander 
 through the subject exactly in the way which 
 naturally suggests itself to me. After all, the 
 reflections on a journey ought to be more valuable 
 than its mere description. 
 
 Before passing into Attica, and leaving Athens, 
 something more must, of course, be said of the 
 museums, then of the newer diggings, and espe- 
 cially of the splendid tombs found in the Cera- 
 
II.] A THENS AND A TTICA . 49 
 
 meicus. "We will then mount the Acropolis, and 
 wander about leisurely in its marvellous ruins. 
 From it we can look out upon the general shape 
 and disposition of Attica, and plan our shorter ex- 
 cursions. 
 
 E 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 ATHENS — THE MUSEUMS — THE TOMBS. 
 
 Nothing is more melancholy and more disappoint- 
 ing than the first view of the Athenian museums. 
 Almost every traveller sees them after passing 
 through Italy, where everything — where even too 
 much — has been done to make the relics of anti- 
 quity perfect and complete. Missing noses, and 
 arms, and feet have been restored; probable or 
 possible names have been assigned to every statue; 
 they are set up, generally, in handsome galleries, 
 with suitable decoration ; the visitor is provided 
 with full descriptive catalogues. Nothing of all this 
 however is found in Greece. The fragments are not 
 sorted or arranged : many of the mutilated statues 
 are lying prostrate, and of course in no way re- 
 stored. Everything, I was told (June, 1875), was 
 in process of being arranged. But there is room to 
 apprehend that in fifty years things will still be 
 found changing their places, and still in process 
 of being arranged. 1 It is hard to believe in the 
 
 1 There is an attempted Catalogue of the museums as they were in 
 1874, by Heydemann, in German. I tried this Catalogue in 1875, and 
 
in.] ATHENS, THE MUSEUMS. 51 
 
 earnestness about art of any nation which has left 
 the fallen pillars of the Parthenon upon the ground, 
 not only since the explosion of 1687, but, what is 
 more to the point, during nearly half a century of 
 liberty, and of clear knowledge as to the value of 
 these remains. So, then, except some foreign in- 
 fluences be brought to bear — except the French and 
 German antiquaries act unselfishly at their own 
 expense — I fear that all of us who visit Athens will 
 be doomed to that first feeling of bitter disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 But I am bound to add, that every patient 
 observer who sets to work in spite of his disap- 
 pointment, and examines with honest care these 
 * disjecta membra 5 of Attic art — anyone who will 
 replace in imagination the tips of noses — anyone 
 who will stoop over lying statues, and guess at the 
 context of broken limbs — any such observer will 
 find his vexation gradually changing into wonder, 
 and will, at last, come to see that all the splendidly- 
 restored Greek work in Italian museums is not 
 worth a tithe of the shattered fragments in the real 
 home and citadel of pure art. This is especially 
 true of the museum on the Acropolis. It is, how- 
 ever, also true of the other museums, and more 
 
 found it quite useless. In very many cases he was obliged, just like 
 the able editor of Murray's Handbook, to describe the fragments by 
 their position in the building where they were placed. When I was 
 there, both the buildings had been partly changed and the position of 
 the antiquities altered. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [cel 
 
 obviously true of the reliefs upon the tombs. The 
 assistance of an experienced Athenian antiquarian 
 is also required, who knows his way among the 
 fragments, and who can tell the history of the 
 discovery, and the theories of the purport of 
 each. There are a good many men of ability 
 and learning connected with the University of 
 Athens, who describe each object in the antiquarian 
 papers according as it is discovered. But when I 
 asked whether I could buy or subscribe to any re- 
 cognised organ for such information, I was told (as 
 I might have expected,) that no single paper or 
 periodical was so recognised. Clashing interests 
 and personal friendships determine where each dis- 
 covery is to be announced; so that often the pro- 
 fessedly archaeological journals contain no mention 
 of such things, while the common daily papers 
 secure the information. 
 
 Here, again, we feel the want of some stronger 
 government — some despotic assertion of a law of 
 gravitation to a common centre — to counteract the 
 strong, centrifugal forces acting all through Greek 
 society. The old autonomy of the Greeks — that old as- 
 sertion of local independence which was at once their 
 greatness and their ruin — this strong instinct has 
 lasted undiminished to the present day. They seem 
 even now to hate pulling together, as we say. They 
 seem always ready to assert their individual rights 
 and claims against those of the community or the 
 public. The old Greeks had as a safeguard their 
 
iil] ATHENS, THE MUSEUMS. 53 
 
 divisions into little cities and territories ; so that 
 their passion for autonomy could be expended on 
 their city interests, in which the individual could 
 forget himself. But as the old Greeks were often 
 too selfish for this, and asserted their personal 
 autonomy against their own city, so the modern 
 Greek, who has not this safety-valve, finds it 
 difficult to rise to the height of acting in the in- 
 terests of the nation at large ; and though he con- 
 verses much and brilliantly about Hellenic unity, 
 generally allows personal interests to outweigh 
 this splendid general conception. 
 
 So, then, the Greeks will not even agree to tell us 
 where we may find a complete list of newly-discovered 
 antiquities. Nor, indeed, does the Athenian public 
 care very much, beyond a certain vague pride in 
 them, for such things, if we except one peculiar 
 kind, which has taken among them somewhat the 
 place of old china among us. There have been found 
 in many Greek cemeteries — in Megara, in Cyrene, 
 and of late in great abundance and excellence 
 at Tanagra, in Bceotia — little figures of terra cotta, 
 often delicately modelled and richly coloured both 
 in dress and limbs. These figurines are ordinarily 
 from eight to twelve inches high, and represent 
 ladies both sitting and standing in graceful atti- 
 tudes, young men in pastoral life, and other such 
 subjects. I was informed that some had been 
 found in various places through Greece, but the 
 main source of them — and a very rich source — is the 
 
54 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 Necropolis at Tanagra. I saw several collections 
 of these figures on cupboards, and in cabinets in 
 private houses at Athens, and was greatly struck 
 with the marvellous modernness of their appear- 
 ance. The graceful drapery of the ladies especially 
 was very like modern dress, and they had often on 
 their heads flat round hats, quite similar in design to 
 the gypsy hats much worn among us of late years. 
 But above all, the hair was drawn back from the 
 forehead, not at all in what is considered Greek 
 style, but rather a V Eugenie, as we used to say 
 when we were young. Many hold in their hands 
 large fans, like those which we make of peacocks' 
 feathers. No reasonable theory has yet been started, 
 so far as I know, concerning the object or intention 
 of these figures. So many of them are female 
 figures, that it seems unlikely they were portraits 
 of the deceased; and the frequent occurrence of 
 two figures together, especially one woman being 
 carried by another, seems also to dissuade us 
 from such a theory. They seem to be the figures 
 called Kopat by many old Greeks, which were 
 used as toys by children, and, perhaps, as orna- 
 ments. The large class of tradesmen who made 
 them were called Kopo7r\a0oi y and were held in con- 
 tempt by real sculptors. Many of them are, indeed, 
 badly modelled, and evidently the work of ignorant 
 tradesmen. If it could be shown that they were 
 only found in the graves of children, it would 
 be a touching sign of that world-wide feeling 
 
III.] ATHENS, THE MUSEUMS. 55 
 
 among the human race, to bury with the dead 
 friend whatever he loved and enjoyed in his life on 
 earth, that he might not feel lonely in his gaunt and 
 gloomy grave. But I do not fancy that this will 
 ever be established. 
 
 There is an equal difficulty as to their age. 
 The Greeks say that the tombs in which they 
 are found are not later than the second century 
 B.C., and it is, indeed, hard to conceive at what 
 later period there was enough wealth and art 
 in Tanagra to produce such elegant, and often 
 costly, results. It and Thespiae were, indeed, in 
 Strabo's day (lib. ix. 2) the only remaining cities 
 of Bceotia; the rest, he says, were but ruins and 
 names. But we may be certain that in universal 
 decay the remaining towns must have been as poor 
 and insignificant as they now are. So, then, we 
 seem necessarily thrown back into classical days 
 for the origin of these figures, which in their bright 
 colouring — pink and blue in the dresses, often 
 gilded fringes ; the hair always fair, so far as I 
 could see — are, indeed, like what we know of old 
 Greek statuary, but in other respects are, as I have 
 just now said, surprisingly modern. If their anti- 
 quity can be strictly demonstrated, it will but show 
 another case of the versatility of the Greeks in all 
 things relating to art : how, with the simplest ma- 
 terial, and at a long distance from the great art cen- 
 tres, they produced a type of excesding grace and 
 refinement totally foreign to their great old models, 
 
5 6 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 varying in dress, attitude — every point of style — 
 from ordinary Greek sculpture, and anticipating 
 much of the modern ideals of beauty and elegance. 
 But it is necessary to suspend our judgment, 
 and wait for farther and closer investigation. The 
 workmen at Tanagra are now forbidden to sell 
 these objects to private fanciers ; and in conse- 
 quence, their price has risen so enormously, that 
 those in the market can never be obtained for less 
 than from ^40 to £80. At this price they can still 
 be bought in Athens. The only other method of 
 procuring them, and of procuring them more 
 cheaply, is to undertake a personal voyage to 
 Tanagra — a place now very out-of-the-way and 
 difficult to reach — and there obtain from the work- 
 men what they have concealed for the purpose of 
 arranging private sales. This, I have no doubt, is 
 the practical way to obtain them, whatever may be 
 said of its morality. But antiquarian collectors 
 have never been celebrated for extreme nicety of 
 conscience. It is, therefore, worth while to notice 
 the matter without venturing to offer any advice. 
 
 It is convenient to dispose of this peculiar and 
 distinct kind of Greek antiquities, because it 
 seems foreign to the rest, and cannot be brought 
 under any general head. Doubtless, these figurines 
 are now finding their way into most European 
 museums. 1 
 
 1 There is now quite a large collection of them in the British Mu- 
 seum. See Vase Room I., case 35, where there are ten of these figures 
 
III.] ATHENS, THE MUSEUMS. 57 
 
 I pass to the public collections at Athens, in 
 which we find hardly any of these figures, and 
 which rather contain the usual products of Greek 
 plastic art — statues, reliefs, pottery, and inscrip- 
 tions. As I have said, the statues are in the most 
 lamentable condition, shattered into fragments, 
 without any attempt at restoring even such losses 
 as can be supplied with certainty. Thus, to take 
 first those statues which belong to the highest and 
 most perfect epoch, there are not, I suppose, more 
 than eight or ten which look as if they could be re- 
 stored into that perfection in which we see the 
 Apoxyomenos or the Mars of the Vatican. What 
 might be done by such wholesale restoration as 
 was practised in Italy some fifty years ago it is 
 hard to say. But even the ordinary observer can 
 see that, without taking any liberties, some dozen 
 figures — each of which is worth a thousand inferior 
 works — could be rescued from oblivion. 
 
 There is, indeed, one — a naked athlete, with his 
 cloak hanging over the left shoulder, and coiled 
 round the left forearm — which seems as good as any 
 strong male figure which we now possess. While it 
 has almost exactly the same treatment of the cloak 
 on the left arm which we see in the celebrated Hermes 
 of the Vatican j 1 the proportions of the figure are 
 
 from Tanagra. In Room II. there is a whole case of them, chiefly 
 from Cyrene, and from Cnidus. 
 
 1 No. 53, Mus. Pio Clem., in a small room beside the Apollo Bel- 
 videre and Laocoon. 
 
5 8 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 nearer the celebrated Discobolus (numbered 126, 
 Braccio Nuovo). There are two other copies at 
 Florence, and one at Naples. These repetitions, 
 point to some very celebrated original, which the 
 critics consider to be of the older school of Poly- 
 cletus, and even imagine may possibly be a copy of 
 his Doryphorus, which was called the Canon statue, 
 or model of the perfect manly form. The Hermes 
 has too strong a likeness to Lysippus' Apoxyomenos 
 not to be recognised as of the same school. What 
 we have, then, in this splendid Attic statue is an in- 
 termediate stage between the earlier and stronger 
 school of Polycletus and the elegant treatment of 
 hair and cloak of the later school of Lysippus in 
 Alexander's day. 
 
 There can, however, be no doubt that it does not 
 date from the older and severer age of sculpture, 
 of which Phidias w r as the highest representative. 
 Anyone w T ho studies Greek art, even cursorily, 
 perceives how remarkably not only the style of 
 dress and ornament, but even the proportions of 
 the figure change, as we come down from genera- 
 tion to generation in the long line of Greek sculp- 
 tors. The friezes of Selinus (now at Palermo), and 
 those of ^Egina (now in Munich), which are our 
 earliest certain specimens, are remarkable for short, 
 thick-set forms. The men are men five feet seven, 
 or, at most, eight inches high, and their figures are 
 squat even for that height. In the specimens we 
 have of the days of Phidias and Polycletus these 
 
ill.] ATHENS, THE MUSEUMS. 59 
 
 proportions are altered. The head of the Dory- 
 ft/wrus, if we can depend upon our supposed copies, 
 is still heavy, and the figure bulky, though taller 
 in proportion. He looks a man of five feet ten 
 inches at least. The statue we are just considering 
 is even taller, and is like the copies we have of 
 Lysippus' work, the figure apparently of a man of 
 six feet high; but his head is not so small, nor is 
 he so slender and light as this type is usually 
 found. 
 
 It is not very easy to give a full account of this 
 change. There is, of course, one general reason 
 well known — the art of the Greeks, like almost all 
 such developments, went through stiffness and 
 clumsiness into solemn dignity and strength, to 
 which it presently added that grace which raises 
 strength into majesty. But in time the seeking 
 after grace becomes too prominent, and so gra- 
 dually strength, and with it, of course, the majesty 
 which requires strength as well as grace, begins to 
 fade away. So we arrive at a period when the 
 forms are merely elegant or voluptuous, without 
 any assertion of power. 
 
 This can only be made plain by a series of illus- 
 trations. Of course, the difficulty of obtaining 
 really archaic statues is very great. They were 
 mostly sacred images of the Gods, esteemed vene- 
 rable and interesting by the Greeks, but seldom 
 copied. Happily, the Romans, when they set them- 
 selves to admire and procure Greek statues, had fits 
 
60 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 of what we now call pre-Raphaelitism — fits of admi- 
 ration for the archaic and simple, even if ungraceful, 
 in preference to the more perfect forms of later art. 
 Hence, we find in Italy a number of statues which, 
 if not really archaic, are at least archaistic, as the 
 critics call it — imitations or copies of archaic statues. 
 With these we must in general be content. I will 
 speak of a similar development among female 
 figures in connection with another subject, which 
 will naturally suggest it. But we may pause a 
 moment on the question of archaic Greek art, 
 because, apart from the imitations of the time of 
 Augustus and Hadrian, we have some really 
 genuine fragments in the little museum in the 
 Acropolis — fragments saved, not from the present 
 Parthenon, but rather from about the ruins of the 
 older Parthenon. This temple was destroyed by 
 the Persians, and the materials were built into the 
 surrounding wall of the Acropolis by the Athe- 
 nians, when they began to strengthen and beautify 
 it at the opening of their career of dominion and 
 wealth. The stains of fire are said to be still 
 visible on these drums of pillars now built into the 
 fortification, and there can be no doubt as to the 
 fact of their belonging to the old temple, as it is 
 well attested. But I do not agree with the Germans 
 that these older materials were so used, in order to 
 nurse a perpetual hatred against the Persians in 
 the minds of the people who saw daily before them 
 the evidence of the ancient wrong done to their 
 
IIL MAKATIIONIAN THESEl'S, 
 
 V 6 1 
 
III.] ATHENS, THE MUSEUMS. 61 
 
 temples. 1 I believe this sentimental twaddle to be 
 quite foreign to all Greek feeling. The materials 
 were used in the wall because they were unsuitable 
 for the newer temples, and because they must 
 otherwise be greatly in the way on the limited 
 surface of the Acropolis. 
 
 The principal of the old sculptures as yet found 
 is a very stiff, and, to us, comical figure, which has 
 lost its legs, but is otherwise fairly preserved, and 
 which depicts a male figure with curious conven- 
 tional hair, and still more conventional beard, hold- 
 ing by its four legs a bull, which he is carrying on 
 his shoulders. The eyes are now hollow, and were 
 evidently once filled with something different from 
 the marble of which the statue is made. The whole 
 pose and style of the work is stiff and expression- 
 less, and it is one of the few certain remains of the 
 older Attic art still in existence. 
 
 To me there is little doubt what the statue means. 
 It is the votive offering of the Marathonians, which 
 Pausanias saw in the Acropolis, and which com- 
 memorated the legend of Theseus having driven 
 the wild bull sent them by Minos from Marathon 
 to the Acropolis, wmere he sacrificed it. Pausanias 
 does not say how Theseus was represented with the 
 
 1 It is asserted somewhere by a Greek author that the temples 
 burned by the Persians were left in ruins to remind the people of the 
 wrongs of the hated barbarians. But we have distinct evidence, in 
 some cases, that this assertion is not true, and besides, using the ma- 
 terials for other purposes is not the same thing. 
 
62 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 bull ; but it was certainly not a group — such a 
 thing is clearly beyond the narrow and timid con- 
 ceptions of the artists of that day. It being im- 
 possible to represent man and bull together except 
 by representing the man carrying the bull, the 
 artist has made the animal full-grown in type, but 
 as small as a calf, and has, of course, not attempted 
 any expression of hostility between the two. This 
 peaceful look, which merely arises from the 
 inability of the artist to render expression, has 
 led some good art critics to call it, not a Theseus 
 but a Hermes. This identification rests on purely 
 theoretical grounds. Such being the history of 
 the statue, there remains but to look at it, if we 
 wish to note its characteristics. We see the con- 
 ventional treatment of the hair, the curious trans- 
 parent garments lying close to the skin, and the 
 very heavy muscular forms of the arms and body. 
 The whole figure is stiff and expressionless, 
 and strictly in what is called the hieratic or old 
 religious style, as opposed to an ideal or artistic 
 form. 
 
 There are two full -length reliefs — one preserved in 
 a little church near Orchomenus, of which I could 
 not obtain a photograph, but which will be described 
 hereafter, and another at Athens in the Theseion — 
 which are plainly of the same epoch and style of 
 art. The Athenian one is inscribed as the work of 
 Aristion, doubtless an artist known as contem- 
 porary with those who fought at the battle of Ma- 
 
SllXL VY AK1ST10N. 
 
 P. o 3 
 
in.] ATHENS, THE MUSEUMS. 63 
 
 rathon. Thus we obtain a very good clue to the 
 date at which this art nourished. Any impartial 
 observer will see in these figures strong traces of 
 the influence of Assyrian style. In fact, if this 
 figure of Aristion, or the other near Orchomenus, 
 were found among professedly Assyrian reliefs, 
 they would excite no surprise. This influence 
 seems as certain, and almost as much disputed, as 
 the Egyptian influences on the Doric style of archi- 
 tecture. To my mind these influences speak so 
 plainly, that, in the absence of strict demonstration 
 to the contrary, I feel bound to admit them — the 
 more so, as we know that the Greeks, like all other 
 people of genius, were ever ready and anxious to 
 borrow from others. It should be often repeated, 
 because it is usually ignored, that it is a most 
 original gift to know how to borrow ; and that 
 those only who feel wanting in originality are 
 anxious to assert it. Thus the Romans, who 
 borrowed without assimilating, are always assert- 
 ing their originality; the Greeks, who borrowed 
 more and better, because they made what they 
 borrowed their own, never care to do so. The 
 hackneyed parallel of Shakespeare will occur 
 to all. 
 
 Unfortunately, the museums of Athens show us 
 hardly any examples of the transition state of art 
 between this and the perfect work of Phidias' 
 school. The ^Eginetan marbles are less developed 
 than Phidias' work; but from the relief of Aristion, 
 
64 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 and the Theseus of the Acropolis, to these, is a wide 
 gulf in artistic feeling. There is also the well- 
 known Apollo of Thera, and a small sitting Athene 
 in the Acropolis, which, though very archaic, begin 
 to approach the grace of artistic sculpture. But Italy- 
 is sufficiently rich in imitations of this very period. 
 There are four very remarkable statues in a small 
 room of the Villa Albani near Rome, which are 
 not photographed, because the public would, doubt- 
 less, think them bad art, but which, could I pro- 
 cure them and reproduce them, would illustrate 
 clearly what I desire. We have also among the 
 bronzes found at Pompeii two statues precisely of 
 this style, evidently copies from old Greek ori- 
 ginals, and made to satisfy the pre-Raphaelitism 
 (as I have already called it) of Italian amateurs. 
 These are the Apollo and Artemis. The Artemis 
 is the more archaistic of the two, and I, therefore, 
 take this specimen first. It maintains in the face 
 the very features which we think so comical when 
 looking at the relief of Aristion, or any of the older 
 vases. They are, no doubt, softened and less ex- 
 aggerated, but still they are there. The so-called 
 Greek profile is not yet attained. The general 
 features of the old Greek face in monuments were 
 a retreating forehead, peaked nose, slightly turned 
 up at the end, the mouth drawn in and the corners 
 turned up, flat elongated eyes (especially full eyes 
 in the profiles of reliefs), a prominent angular chin, 
 lank cheeks, and high ears. These lovely features 
 
ARCHAISTIC ARTEMIS (NAPLES). 
 
 p. f> 4 . 
 
ARCHAISTIC BRONZE APOLLO (AT NAFI.I S). V. 65. 
 
in.] ATHENS, THE MUSEUMS. 65 
 
 can be found on hundreds of vases, because vase- 
 making being rather a trade than an art, men kept 
 close to the old models long after great sculptors 
 and painters had, like Polygnotus, began to depart 
 from the antique stiffness of the countenance. 1 The 
 Artemis before us has, however, these very fea- 
 tures, which are very clear when we can see her in 
 profile. But the head-dress and draping are ela- 
 borate, and though formal and somewhat stiff, not 
 wanting in grace. The pose of the arms is stiff, 
 and the attitude that of a woman stepping forward, 
 which is very usual in archaic figures — I suppose 
 because it enlarged the base of the statue, and 
 made it stand more firmly in its place. The absence 
 of any girdle, or delaying fold in the garments is 
 one of the most marked contrasts with the later 
 draping of such figures. 
 
 Passing on to the Apollo, we notice a much 
 greater development of freedom as to the treatment 
 of the face, which, without being very handsome and 
 well formed, is certainly not ugly. But the heavy 
 hair and long curls are distinctly in the antique 
 style, and the proportions of the figure are much 
 shorter and stouter than later Greeks or than we 
 should consider graceful. The style of this statue, 
 however, though differing in many special propor- 
 tions, reminds us strongly of the ^Eginetan marbles 
 in Munich, and so leads us from archaic stiffness 
 into the true period of beauty and of perfection. 
 
 1 ' Vultum ab antiquo rigore variare.' — Plin. xxxv. 35. 
 F 
 
66 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 This greater age is represented in the museums of 
 Athens chiefly through the reliefs of the Parthenon, 
 which I mean to consider separately, through the 
 statue of the athlete already noted, and through 
 many beautiful fragments, so mutilated that they 
 can hardly be used as illustrations. 
 
 We shall, therefore, do well to go out of the 
 museums to the street of tombs, where we can find 
 such material as the world can hardly equal, and 
 in such condition as to be easily intelligible. What 
 I have said of the museums is, doubtless, disap- 
 pointing, as, indeed, it should be, if the feeling of 
 the visitor is to be faithfully reproduced. But I 
 must not fail to add, before turning to other places, 
 that, in inscriptions, these museums are very rich, 
 as well as also in Attic vases, and lamps, and other 
 articles of great importance in our estimate of old 
 Greek life. The professors of the University have 
 been particularly diligent in deciphering and ex- 
 plaining the inscriptions, and with the aid of the 
 Germans, who have collected, and are still collect- 
 ing, these scattered documents in a complete publi- 
 cation, we are daily having new light thrown upon 
 Greek history. Thus Kohler has been able from 
 the recovered Attic tribute-lists to construct a map 
 of the Athenian maritime empire with its depen- 
 dencies, which tells the student more in five 
 minutes than hours' laborious reading. The study 
 of vases and lamps is beyond my present scope ; 
 and the former so wide and important a subject, 
 
in.] A THENS, THE MUSE UMS. 67 
 
 that it cannot be mastered without vast study and 
 trouble. 
 
 I pass, therefore, from the museums to the street 
 of tombs, which Thucydides tells us to find in the 
 fairest suburb of the city, as we go out westward 
 towards the graves of Academe, and before we 
 turn slightly to the south on our way to the 
 Peiraeus. Thucydides has described with some 
 care the funeral ceremonies held in this famous 
 place, and has composed for us a very noble 
 funeral oration, which he has put in the mouth of 
 Pericles. 1 It is with this oration, probably the 
 finest passage in Thucydides' great history, in our 
 minds, that we approach the avenue where the 
 Athenians laid their dead. We have to pass 
 through the most mean and miserable portion of 
 modern Athens, through wretched bazaars and 
 dirty markets, which abut upon the main street, 
 through which we walk. Amid all this squalor and 
 poverty, all this complete denial of art and leisure, 
 there are still features which faintly echo old Greek 
 life. There is the bright colour of the dresses — the pre- 
 dominance of white, and red, and blue, of which the 
 
 1 These panegyrics, \6yoi iiriTatploi they were called, were a favourite 
 exercise of Greek literary men. There are four still extant — that men- 
 tioned, that in the Menexenus of Plato, and the iiriraQloi of Lysias, 
 and of Hypereides. That of Hypereides, very mutilated as it is, seems 
 to me the finest next to that of Thucydides. But they are all built 
 upon the same lines, showing even here that strict conservatism in 
 every branch of Greek art which never varied, for variety's sake, from. 
 ^ type once recognised as really good. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 old Athenians were so fond ; and there is among 
 the lowest classes a great deal of that striking beauty 
 which recals to us the old statues. More especially 
 in the form of the head, and in the expression, of the 
 children, we see types not to be found elsewhere 
 in Europe, and which, if not derived from classical 
 Greece, are at all events very beautiful. 
 
 We then come on to the railway station, which is, 
 indeed, in this place, as elsewhere, very offensive. 
 With its grimy smoke, its shrill sounds, and all 
 its other hard unloveliness, it is not a meet neigh- 
 bour for the tombs of the old Greeks, situate close 
 to it on all sides. 
 
 They lie — as almost all old ruins do — far below 
 the present level of the ground, and have, there- 
 fore, to be exhumed by careful digging. When this 
 has been done, they are covered with a rude door, to 
 protect their sculptured face ; and when I saw them, 
 were standing about, without any order or regularity, 
 close to the spots where they had been found. 
 
 A proper estimate of these tombs cannot be at- 
 tained without knowing clearly the feelings with 
 which the survivors set them up. And upon this 
 point we have not only the general attitude of 
 Greek literature on the all-important question of 
 the state of man after death, but we have also 
 thousands of inscriptions upon tombs, both with 
 and without sculptured reliefs, from which we can 
 form a very sure opinion about the feelings of the 
 bereaved in these bygone days. 
 
OM1! IN THE CERAMEICUS (ATHENS). V. 69. 
 
III.] ATHENS— THE TOMBS. 69 
 
 We know from Honfer and from Mimnermus that 
 in the earlier periods, though the Greeks were un- 
 able to shake off a belief in life after death, yet 
 they could not conceive that state as anything but 
 a shadowy and wretched echo of the real life upon 
 earth. It was a gloomy and dark existence, bur- 
 dened with the memory of lost happiness and the 
 longing for lost enjoyment. To the Homeric 
 Greeks their death was a dark, unavoidable fate, 
 without hope and without reward. It is, indeed, 
 true that we find in Pindar thoughts and aspira- 
 tions of a very different kind. We have in the 
 fragments of his poetry which remain to us more 
 than one passage asserting the reward of the just, 
 and the splendours of a future life far happier than 
 that which we now enjoy. But, notwithstanding 
 these splendid visions, such high expectation laid 
 no hold upon the imagination of the Greek world. 
 The poems of Pindar, we are told, soon ceased to 
 be popular, and his utterances are but a streak of 
 light amid general gloom. The kingdom of the 
 dead in ^Eschylus is evidently, as in Homer, but a 
 weary echo of this life, where honour can only be 
 attained by the pious memory of attached relations, 
 whose duty paid to the dead affects him in his 
 gloomier state, and raises him in the esteem of his 
 less-remembered fellows. Sophocles says nothing 
 to clear away the night ; nay, rather his last and 
 maturest contemplation regards death as the worst 
 of ills to the happy man — a sorry refuge to the 
 
70 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 miserable. Euripides longs -that there may be no 
 future state, and Plato only secures the immortality 
 of the soul by severing it from the person — the 
 man, and all his interests. 
 
 It is plain, from these evidences, that the Greeks 
 must have looked upon the death of those they 
 loved with unmixed sorrow. It was the final part- 
 ing, when all the good and pleasant things are 
 remembered. Men seek, as it were, to increase 
 the pang, by clothing the dead in all his sweetest 
 and dearest presence. But this was not done by 
 pompous inscriptions, nor by a vain enumeration 
 of all the deceased had performed — inscriptions 
 which, among us, tell more of the vanity than of the 
 grief of the survivors. The commonest epitaph 
 was a simple x a ' 0f > or farewell ; and it is this 
 simple word, so full and deep in its meaning to 
 those who love, which is pictured in the reliefs of 
 which I am now speaking. They are simple part- 
 ing scenes, expressing the grief of the survivors,, 
 and the true, simple grief of the sufferer, who is 
 going to his long home. But what strikes us most 
 forcibly in these remarkable monuments, is the 
 chastened, modest expression of grief which they 
 express. There is no violence, no despair, no exag- 
 geration — all is simple and noble ; thus combining 
 purity of art with a far deeper pathos — a far nobler 
 grief — than the exaggerated paintings and sculp- 
 tures which seek to express mourning in later and 
 less cultivated ages. We may defy any art to- 
 
in.] ATHENS— THE TOMBS. 71 
 
 produce truer or more poignant pictures of real 
 sorrow — a sorrow, as I have explained, far deeper 
 and more hopeless, than any Christian sorrow ; 
 and yet there is no wringing of hands, no swoon- 
 ing, no defacing with sack-cloth and ashes. Some- 
 times, indeed, as in the celebrated tomb of Dexileos, 
 a mere portrait of the dead in active life was put 
 upon his tomb, and private grief would not assert 
 itself in presence of the record of his public services. 
 
 I know not that any remnants of Greek art bring 
 home to us more plainly one of its eternal and divine 
 features — or shall I rather say, one of its eternal 
 and human features ? — the greatest, if not the main 
 feature, which has made it the ever new and 
 everlasting lawgiver to men in their struggles to 
 represent the ideal. 
 
 If I am to permit myself any digression whatever, 
 surely we cannot do better than to conclude this 
 chapter with some reflections on so important a 
 subject, and we may, therefore, turn, by suggestion 
 of the Athenian tombs, to a few general reflections 
 on the reserve of Greek art : I mean the reserve in 
 displaying emotion, in staying the fierce outburst of 
 joy or grief; and again, the reserve more generally 
 in exhibiting peculiar or personal features, passing 
 interests, or momentary emotions. 
 
 In a philosophy now well nigh extinct, but which 
 once commanded no small attention, Adam Smith 
 was led to analyse the indirect effects of sympathy, 
 from which, as a single principle, he desired to 
 
72 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 deduce all the rules of ethics. While straining 
 many points unduly, he must be confessed to have 
 explained with great justice the origin of good 
 taste or tact in ordinary life, which he saw to be the 
 careful watching of the interest of others in our 
 own affairs, and the feeling that we must not force 
 upon them what interests ourselves, except we are 
 sure to carry with us their active sympathy. Good 
 breeding, he says, consists in a delicate perception 
 how far this will go, and in suppressing those of our 
 feelings which, though they affect us strongly, cannot 
 be expected to affect our neighbour in like manner. 
 His sympathy should be the measure and limit of 
 our out-spokenness. There can be no doubt that 
 whatever other elements come in, this analysis is 
 true, so far as it goes, and recommends itself at 
 once to the convictions of any educated man. The 
 very same principle applies still more strongly and 
 universally in art. Just as tragedy is bound to 
 treat ideal griefs and joys, of so large and broad a 
 kind, that every spectator may merge in it his 
 petty woes, so ideal sculpture and painting is only 
 ideal, if it represent such large and eternal fea- 
 tures in human nature as must always command 
 the sympathy of every pure human heart. 
 
 Let us dispose at once of an apparent excep- 
 tion — the mediaeval pictures of the Passion of Christ, 
 and the sorrows of the Virgin Mary. Here the 
 artist allowed himself the most extreme treatment, 
 because the objects were necessarily the centre of 
 
in.] ATHENS— THE TOMBS. 73 
 
 the very highest sympathy. No expression of the 
 grief of Christ could be thought exaggerated in 
 the Middle Ages, because in this very exaggera- 
 tion lay the centre point of men's religion. But 
 when no such object of universal and all-absorb- 
 ing sympathy can be found (and there was none 
 such in pagan life), then the Greek artist must 
 attain by his treatment of the object what the 
 Christian artist obtained by the object itself. As- 
 suming, then, a mastery over his material, and suffi- 
 cient power of execution, the next feature to be 
 looked for in Greek art, and especially in Greek 
 sculpture, is a certain modesty and reserve in ex- 
 pression, which will not portray slight defects in 
 picturing a man, but represent eternal and ideal 
 character in him, which remains in the memory of 
 men when he is gone. Such, for example, is our 
 famous portrait of Sophocles. 
 
 Such are also all that great series of ideal figures 
 which meet us in the galleries of ancient art. They 
 seldom show us any violent emotion ; they are 
 seldom even in so special an attitude, that critics 
 cannot interpret it in several different ways, or as 
 suitable to several myths. It is not passing states 
 of feeling, but the eternal and ideal beauty of 
 human nature, which Greek sculpture seeks to 
 represent ; and it is for this reason that it has 
 held its sway over all the centuries which have 
 since passed away. This was the calm art of Phidias, 
 and Polycletus, and Polygnotus, in sentiment not 
 
74 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 differing from the rigid awkwardness of their pre- 
 decessors, but in mastery of proportions, and of 
 difficulties attaining the grace in which the others 
 had failed. To this general law there are, no doubt, 
 exceptions, and perhaps very brilliant ones ; but 
 they are exceptions, and even in them, if w T e con- 
 sider them attentively, we can see the universal 
 features, and the points of sympathy for all man- 
 kind. But if, indeed, the appeal for sympathy is 
 overstrained, then, however successful in its own 
 society, and its own social atmosphere, the work 
 of art loses power in another generation. Thus the 
 tragic poet Euripides, though justly considered in 
 his own society the most tragic of poets, has for 
 this very reason ceased to appeal to us as^Eschylus 
 has always done. He kept within the proper bounds 
 dictated by the reserve of art ; Euripides often did 
 not, and his work, though great and full of genius, 
 suffered accordingly. 
 
 It seems to me that the tombs before us are 
 remarkable in observing, with the tact of genius, 
 this true and perfect reserve. They are simple 
 pictures of the grief of parting — of the recollection 
 of pleasant days of love and friendship — of the 
 gloom of the unknown future. But there is no 
 exaggeration, nor speciality, no individuality, I had 
 almost said, in the picture. I feel no curiosity to 
 inquire who these people are — what were their 
 names — even what was the relationship of the 
 deceased. For I am perfectly satisfied with an 
 
in.] ATHENS— THE TOMBS. 75 
 
 ideal portrait of the grief of parting — a grief that 
 comes to us all, and lays bitter hold of us at some 
 season of life ; and it is this universal sorrow — this 
 great common flaw in all our lives — which the 
 Greek artist has brought before us, and which calls 
 forth our deepest sympathy. There will be future 
 occasion to come back upon this all-important 
 feature in art in connexion with the action in 
 Greek sculpture, and even with the draping of 
 their statues — in all of which the calm and chaste 
 reserve of the better Greek art contrasts strangely 
 with the Michael Angelos, and Berninis, and Ca- 
 novas of other days ; nay, even with the Greek 
 sculpture of a no less brilliant, but less refined age. 
 But, in concluding this chapter, I will call atten- 
 tion to a modern parallel in the portraiture of grief, 
 and of grief at final parting. This parallel is not a 
 piece of sculpture, but a poem, perhaps the most 
 remarkable poem of our generation — the In Me- 
 moriam of Tennyson. Though written apparently 
 from personal feeling, and to commemorate a spe- 
 cial person — Arthur Hallam — whom some of us 
 even knew, this poem has justly laid hold of the 
 imagination of men strongly and lastingly ; and 
 why ? Is it owing to the poet's special loss ? Cer- 
 tainly not. I do not even think that this great dirge — 
 this magnificent funeral poem — has excited in us 
 the least interest in Arthur Hallam. I will con- 
 fess that to me he appeared nothing more after 
 I knew the poem than he was before. In fact, any 
 
7 6 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 other friend of the poet's would have suited the 
 general reader equally well, as the exciting cause 
 of a poem, which we delight in, because it puts 
 into great poetry those ever-recurring permanent 
 features in such grief; those dark longings about 
 the future — those suggestions of despair ; of discon- 
 tent in the providence of the world ; of wild specula- 
 tion about its laws ; and the struggle to reconcile 
 our own loss, and that of the human race, with some 
 larger law of wisdom and of benevolence. To the 
 poet, of course, his own particular friend was the 
 great centre point of the poem. But to us, in read- 
 ing it, there is a wide distinction between the per- 
 sonal passages — I mean those which give family 
 details, and special circumstances in Hallam's life, 
 and his intimacy with the poet — and the truly 
 poetical or artistic passages, which soar away into 
 a region far above all special detail, and sing of 
 the great gloom which hangs over the future, and 
 of the vehement beating of the human soul against 
 the bars of its prison home, where one is taken, and 
 another left, not merely at apparent random, but 
 with apparent injustice and damage to mankind. 
 Hence, every man in grief for a lost friend will read 
 the poem to his great comfort, and will then only 
 see clearly what it means ; and he will find it speak 
 to him specially and particularly, not in its personal 
 passages, but in its general features ; in its hard me- 
 taphysics ; in its mystical theology ; in its angry and 
 uncertain ethics. For even the commonest mind is 
 
in.] ATHENS— THE TOMBS. 77 
 
 forced by grief out of its commonness, and attacks 
 the world-problems, which at other times it has no 
 power or taste to approach. 
 
 By this illustration, then, the distinction between 
 the universal and the personal features of grief can 
 be clearly seen; and the reader will admit that, 
 though it would be most unreasonable to dictate to 
 the poet, or to imagine that he should have omitted 
 the stanzas which refer specially to his friend, and 
 which were to him of vital importance, yet to us 
 it is no loss to forget that name and those circum- 
 stances, and hold fast to the really eternal, and 
 because eternal, really artistic features in that very 
 noble symphony, shall I say of half-resolved dis- 
 cords, or of suspended harmonies, which faith may 
 reconcile, but which reason can hardly analyse or 
 understand ? 
 
 Within a few minutes 5 walk of these splendid re- 
 cords of the illustrious dead the traveller who leaves 
 the Piraeus road, and returns to the town across the 
 Observatory Hill, will find a very different cemetery. 
 For here he suddenly comes up to a long cleft in 
 the rock, running parallel with the road below, and 
 therefore quite invisible from it. The rising'ground 
 towards the city hides it equally from the Acropolis, 
 and accordingly from all Athens. This gorge, some 
 100. yards long, 25 wide, and about 30 feet deep, is 
 the notorious Barathrum, the place of execution in 
 old days ; the place where criminals were cast out, 
 and where the public executioner resided. It has 
 been falsely inferred by the old scholiasts that the 
 
78 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 Athenians cast men alive into the pit. It is not 
 nearly deep enough now to cause death in this 
 way, and there seems no reason that its original 
 depth should have been diminished by any accu- 
 mulation of rubbish, such as is common on in- 
 habited sites. 'Casting into the Barathrum/ 
 referred rather to the refusing the rites of burial 
 to executed criminals — an additional disgrace, and 
 to the Greeks a grave additional penalty. The 
 honour among the dead was held to follow in exact 
 proportion to the continued honours paid by sur- 
 viving friends. 
 
 Here, then, out of view of all the temples and 
 hallowed sites of the city dwelt the public slave, 
 with his instruments of death, perhaps in a cave or 
 grotto, still to be seen in the higher wall of the 
 gorge, and situated close to the point where an old 
 path leads over the hill towards the city. Plato 
 speaks of young men turning aside, as they came 
 from Piraeus, to see the dead lying in charge 
 of this official ; and there must have been times in 
 the older history of Athens when this cleft in the 
 rock was a place of carnage and of horror. The 
 gentler law of later days seems to have felt this 
 outrage on human feeling, and instead of casting 
 the dead into the Barathrum, it was merely added 
 to the sentence that the body should not be buried 
 within the boundaries of Attica. 1 Yet, though the 
 
 1 This reasonable inference, which I had not made when writing my 
 Social Greece (p. 267), was since pointed out to me by Mr. Hermann 
 Hager, of Manchester, to whom I return my thanks. 
 
in.] ATHENS— THE TOMBS. 79 
 
 Barathrum may have been no longer used, the 
 accursed gate (Upa irvXr}) still led to it from the city, 
 and the old associations clung about its gloomy 
 seclusion. Even in the last century, the Turks, 
 whether acting from instinct, or led by old tradi- 
 tion, still used it as a place of execution. 
 
 In the present day, all traces of this hideous 
 history have long passed away, and I found a little 
 field of corn waving upon the level ground beneath, 
 which had once been the Aceldama of Athens. 
 But even now there seemed a certain loneliness 
 and weirdness about the place — silent and deserted 
 in the midst of thoroughfares, hidden from the 
 haunts of men, and hiding them from view by its 
 massive walls. Nay, as if to bring back the dark 
 memories of the past, hawks and ravens were still 
 circling about as their ancestors did in the days of 
 blood ; attached, I suppose, by hereditary instinct 
 to this fatal place, ' for where the carcase is, there 
 shall the eagles be gathered together/ 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS. 
 
 I SUPPOSE there can be no doubt whatever that 
 the ruins on the Acropolis of Athens are the most 
 remarkable in the world. There are ruins far 
 larger, such as the Pyramids, and the remains of 
 Karnak. There are ruins far more perfectly pre- 
 served, such as the great Temple at Paestum. 
 There are ruins more picturesque, such as the ivy- 
 clad walls of mediaeval abbeys beside the rivers in 
 the rich valleys of England. But there is no ruin 
 all the world over which combines so much strik- 
 ing beauty, so distinct a type, so vast a volume of 
 history, so great a pageant of immortal memories. 
 There is, in fact, no building on earth which can 
 sustain the burden of such greatness, and so the 
 first visit to the Acropolis is and must be disap- 
 pointing. When the traveller reflects how all the Old 
 World's culture culminated in Greece — all Greece 
 in Athens — all Athens in its Acropolis — all the Acro- 
 polis in the Parthenon — so much crowds upon the 
 mind confusedly that we look for some enduring 
 monument whereupon we can fasten our minds, 
 
iv.] ATHENS— THE ACROPOLIS. 81 
 
 and from which we can pass as from a visible 
 starting-point into all this history and all this great- 
 ness. And at first we look in vain. The shattered 
 pillars and the torn pediments will not bear so 
 great a strain : and the traveller feels forced to 
 admit a sense of disappointment, sore against his 
 will. He has come a long journey into the remoter 
 parts of Europe; he has reached at last what his 
 soul had longed for many years in vain : and as is 
 wont to be the case with all great human long- 
 ings, the truth does not answer to his desire. The 
 pang of disappointment is all the greater when he 
 sees that the tooth of time and the shock of earth- 
 quake had done but little harm. It is the hand of 
 man — of reckless foe and ruthless lover — which has 
 robbed him of his hope. This is the feeling, I am 
 sure, of more than have confessed it, when they 
 first wound their way through the fields of great 
 blue aloes, and passed up through the Propylaea 
 into the presence of the Parthenon. 1 But to those 
 who have not given way to these feelings — who 
 have gone again and again and sat upon the rock, 
 and watched the ruins in every hour of the day, 
 and in the brightness of a moonlight night — to 
 those who have dwelt among them, and meditated 
 upon them with love and awe — there first come 
 back the remembered glories of Athens' greatness, 
 
 1 I am bound to add, that very competent observers, among others 
 Professor Sayce, have not felt this disappointment. 
 
 G 
 
82 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 when Olympian Pericles stood upon this rock with 
 care-worn Phidias, and reckless Alcibiades with 
 pious Nicias, and fervent Demosthenes with caustic 
 Phocion — when these and one hundred others 
 peopled those temples in their worship, and all the 
 fluted pillars and sculptured friezes were bright 
 with scarlet, and blue, and gold. And then the 
 glory of remembered history casts its hue over the 
 war-stained remnants. Every touch of human 
 hand, every fluting, and drop, and triglyph, and 
 cornice, recals the master minds who produced this 
 splendour ; and so at last we tear ourselves from 
 it as from a thing of beauty, which even now we 
 can never know, and love, and meditate upon to our 
 earts 5 content. 
 
 Nothing is more vexatious than the reflection, 
 how lately these splendid remains have been re- 
 duced to their present state. The Parthenon, being 
 used as a Greek church, remained untouched and 
 perfect all through the Middle Ages. Then it be- 
 came a mosque, and the Erechtheum a seraglio, and 
 in this way survived without damage till 1687, 
 when in the bombardment by the Venetians under 
 Morosini a shell dropped into the Parthenon, where 
 the Turks had their powder stored, and blew out 
 the whole centre of the building. Eight or nine 
 pillars at each side have been thrown down, and 
 have left a large gap, which so severs the front and 
 rear of the temple, that from the city below they 
 look like the remains of two different buildings. 
 
v.] ATHENS— THE ACROPOLIS. 83 
 
 rhe great drums of these pillars are yet lying there, 
 n their order, just as they fell, and a little money 
 md care could set them all up again in their 
 Dlaces ; yet there is not in Greece the patriotism or 
 3ven the common sense to enrich the country by 
 ;his restoration, matchless in its certainty, as well 
 is in its splendour. 
 
 But the Venetians were not content with their 
 exploit. They were, about this time, when they 
 leld possession of most of Greece, emulating the 
 Pisan taste for Greek sculptures, and the four 
 ine lions standing at the gate of the arsenal 
 n Venice still testify to their zeal in carry- 
 ng home Greek trophies to adorn their capital. 
 Morosini wished to take down the sculptures of 
 Phidias from one of the pediments, but his work- 
 men attempted it so clumsily, that the figures fell 
 Tom their place, and were dashed to pieces on the 
 ground. The Italians left their final mark on the 
 place by building a high square tower of wretched 
 patched masonry at the right side of the entrance 
 ^•ate, which has of late years become such an eyesore 
 to the better educated public, that when I was at 
 Athens there was a subscription on foot to have it 
 :aken down — a good deed, which will not only 
 remove a most offensive reminiscence of the in- 
 truders, but which ought to bring to light some 
 pillars of the Propylaea built into it, as well as 
 many inscribed stones, broken off and carried away 
 
 G 2 
 
84 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 from their places as building material. 1 The 
 Turks, according" to Dodwell, who is a most trust- 
 worthy witness, never destroyed the old buildings 
 except they wanted them for masonry. He tells us 
 not to believe that the figures of the remaining 
 pediment were used as targets by the Turkish 
 soldiers — a statement often made in his day. 
 However that may be, I have little doubt, from 
 what I saw myself, that Greek soldiers in 
 the present day might do so. But the Turks 
 did take down some pillars of the Propylaea 
 while Dodwell was there, for building purposes, 
 an occurrence which gave that excellent ob- 
 server the opportunity of noting the old Greek 
 way of fitting the drums of the pillars together. 
 He even got into his possession one of the pieces 
 of cypress wood used as plugs between the stone 
 masses. 
 
 But the same traveller was also present when 
 a far more determined and systematic attack was 
 made upon the remaining ruins of the Parthe- 
 non. While he was travelling in the interior, Lord 
 Elgin had obtained his famous firman from the 
 Sultan, to take down and remove any antiquities or 
 
 1 This expectation has not been verified by the results. I hear from 
 Athens that the tower has been taken down by the liberality of 
 M. Schliemann, and that as yet there have been hardly any inscriptions 
 or sculptures discovered. But probably the ruins have not yet been 
 thoroughly searched, and still more probably the workmen have 
 secreted what they found, so as to sell it privately. 
 
J 
 
 ATHENS— THE ACROPOLIS. 85 
 
 sculptured stones he might require, and the infu- 
 riated Dodwell saw a set of ignorant workmen, 
 under equally ignorant overseers, let loose upon 
 the splendid ruins of the age of Pericles. He 
 speaks with much good sense and feeling of this 
 proceeding. He is fully aware that the world 
 would derive inestimable benefit from the trans- 
 planting of these splendid fragments to an accessi- 
 ble place, but he cannot find language strong 
 enough to express his disgust at the way in which 
 the thing was done. Incredible as it may appear, 
 Lord Elgin himself seems not to have superin- 
 tended the work, but to have left it to paid con- 
 tractors, who undertook the job for a fixed sum. 
 Little as either Turks or Greeks cared for the ruins, 
 he says that a pang of grief was felt through all 
 Athens at the desecration, and that the contractors 
 were obliged to bribe workmen with additional 
 wages to undertake the ungrateful task. Dodwell 
 will not even mention Lord Elgin by name, but 
 speaks of him with disgust as ' the person' who 
 defaced the Parthenon. He believes that had this 
 person been at Athens himself, his underlings 
 •could hardly have behaved in the reckless way 
 they did, pulling down more than they wanted, and 
 taking no care to prop up and save the work from 
 which they had taken the supports. 
 
 He especially notices their scandalous proceeding 
 upon taking up one of the great white marble blocks 
 which form the floor or stylobate of the temple. 
 
86 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 They wanted to see what was underneath, and 
 Dodwell, who was there, saw the foundation — a 
 substructure of Pirasic sandstone. But when they 
 had finished their inspection they actually left the 
 block they had removed, without putting it back 
 into its place. So this beautiful pavement, made 
 merely of closely-fitting blocks, without any artifi- 
 cial or foreign joinings, was ripped up, and the 
 work of its destruction begun. I am happy to add 
 that, though a considerable rent was then made, 
 most of it is still intact, and the traveller of to-day 
 may still walk on the very stones which bore the 
 tread of every great Athenian. 
 
 The question has often been discussed, whether 
 Lord Elgin was justified in carrying off this pedi- 
 ment, the metopes, and the friezes, from their place, 
 and the Greeks of to-day hope confidently that the 
 day will come when England will restore these trea- 
 sures to their place. This is, of course, absurd, and it 
 may fairly be argued that people who would bom- 
 bard their antiquities in a revolution are not fit cus- 
 todians of them in the intervals of domestic quiet. 
 This was my reply to an old Greek General who 
 assailed the memory of Lord Elgin with reproaches. 
 I told him that I was credibly informed the Greeks 
 had themselves bombarded the Turks in the Acro- 
 polis during the war of liberation, as several great 
 pieces knocked out and starred on the western front 
 testify. He confessed, to my amusement, that he 
 had himself been one of the assailants, and excused 
 
iv.] ATHENS— THE ACROPOLIS. 87 
 
 the act by the necessities of war. I replied that, as 
 the country seemed always on the verge of a revo- 
 lution, the sculptures might at least remain in the 
 British Museum until a secure government was 
 established. And this is the general verdict of 
 learned men on the matter. They are agreed that 
 it was on the whole a gain to science, and a justi- 
 fiable act, to remove the figures, but all stigmatise 
 as barbarous and shameful the reckless way in 
 which the work was carried out. 
 
 I confess I agreed with this judgment until I 
 came home from Greece, and went to see the 
 spoil in its place in our great Museum. Though 
 there treated with every care — though shown 
 to the best advantage, and explained by excel- 
 lent models of the whole building, and clear 
 descriptions of their place on it — notwithstand- 
 ing all this I found that these wonderful fragments 
 lost so terribly by being separated from their 
 place — they looked so unmeaning in an English 
 room, away from their temple, their country, and 
 their lovely atmosphere — that I earnestly wished 
 they had never been taken from their place, even 
 at the risk of being made a target by the Greeks or 
 the Turks. I am convinced, too, that the few who 
 would have seen them, as intelligent travellers, on 
 their famous rock, would have gained in quality the 
 advantage now diffused among many, but weakened 
 and almost destroyed by the wrench in associations, 
 when the ornament is severed from its surface, and 
 
88 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 the decoration of a temple exhibited apart from the 
 temple itself. I think, then, that it had been 
 better if Lord Elgin had never taken away these 
 marbles. I repeat that it would be absurd to send 
 them bqpk. There are now a large number of pil- 
 lars of the Parthenon lying on the ground, which 
 were thrown down by the explosion of 1687. The 
 great drums, as I before said, are all lying in their 
 places, just as they fell ; and all that is required to 
 set them up again, and so unite the fore and aft 
 parts of the temple, now severed by a huge gap, is 
 a little money and a little labour. The Greek na- 
 tion have never attempted even this. But were 
 the Elgin marbles sent back to the Greeks, they 
 would merely put them by in one of their gaunt, ill- 
 arranged, uncatalogued museums. I need hardly 
 say that the British Museum is a far nobler and 
 more worthy resting-place for them than such an 
 exile. 
 
 There are, indeed, preserved in the little museum 
 on the Acropolis the broken remains of the figures 
 of the eastern pediment, which Morosini and his 
 Venetians endeavoured to take down, as I have 
 already told. But they are little more than pieces 
 of drapery, of some use in reconstructing the com- 
 position, but of none in judging the effect of that 
 famous group. 
 
 But we must not yet enter into this little museum, 
 which is most properly put out of sight, at the lowest 
 or east corner of the rock, and which we do not 
 
iv.] ATHENS— THE ACROPOLIS. 89 
 
 reach till we have passed through all the ruins. 
 As the traveller stands at the inner gate of the 
 Propylaea, he notices at once all the perfect features 
 of the ruins. Over his head are the enormous archi- 
 traves of the Propylaea — blocks of white marble over 
 22 feet long, which spanned the gateway from 
 pillar to pillar. Opposite, above him, and a little 
 to the right, is the mighty Parthenon, not identical 
 in orientation, as the architects have observed, 
 with the gateway, but so varying from it slightly 
 that sun and shade would play upon it at moments 
 differing from the rest, and thus produce a perpe- 
 tual variety of lights. This principle is observed in 
 the setting of the Erechtheum also. To the left, 
 and directly over the town, stands that beautifully- 
 decorated little Ionic temple, or combination of 
 temples, with the stately Caryatids looking inwards 
 and towards the Parthenon. These two buildings 
 are the most perfect examples we have of their 
 respective styles. We see the objects of the artists 
 who built them at first sight. The one is the em- 
 bodiment of majesty, the other of grace. The very 
 ornaments of the Parthenon are large and massive ; 
 those of the Erechtheum for the most part intricate 
 and delicate. Thus the Parthenon is in the Doric 
 style, or rather in the Doric style so refined and 
 adorned as to be properly called the Attic style. 
 
 For the more we study the old Athenian art — nay, 
 even old Athenian character generally — the more 
 -are we convinced that its greatness consists in 
 
9 o RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 the combination of Doric sternness and Ionic grace. 
 It is hardly a mediation between them ; it is the 
 adoption of the finer elements of both, and the 
 union of them into a higher harmony. The most 
 obvious illustration of this is the drama, where the 
 Ionic element of recitation and the Doric choral 
 Itymn w T ere combined — and let me observe that the 
 Ionic element was more modified than the Doric. 
 In the same way Attic architecture used the strength 
 and majesty of the older style which w r e see at 
 Corinth and Psestum; but relieved it partly by lighter 
 proportions, partly by rich decorations, which gave 
 the nearer observer an additional and different 
 delight, while from afar the large features were of 
 the old Doric majesty. Even in the separate deco- 
 rations, such as the metopes and friezes, the graceful 
 women and the long-flowing draperies of the Ionic 
 school were combined with the muscular nakedness 
 of the Doric athlete, as represented by Doric mas- 
 ters. Individual Attic masters worked out these 
 contrasted types completely, as w r e may see by the 
 Discobolus of Myron, a contemporary of Phidias,, 
 and the Apollo Musagetes of Scopas, who lived 
 somewhat later. 
 
 In fact, all Athenian character, in its best days, 
 combined the versatility, and luxury, and fondness 
 of pleasure, which marked the Ionian, w T ith the 
 energy, the public spirit, and the simplicity w T hich 
 was said to mark the better Doric states. The 
 Parthenon and Erechtheum express all this in visi- 
 
iv.] A THENS—THE A CROPOLIS. 9 1 
 
 ble clearness. The Athenians felt that the Ionic 
 elegance and luxury of style was best suited to 
 a small building ; and so they lavished ornament 
 and colour upon this beautiful little building, but 
 made the Doric temple the main object of all the 
 sacred height. 
 
 It is worth while to consult the professional 
 architects, like Revett, 1 who have examined these 
 buildings with a critical eye. Not only were the 
 old Athenian architects perfect masters of their 
 materials, of accurate measurement, of precise 
 correspondences, of all calculations as to strain 
 and pressure — they even for artistic, as well as 
 for practical, purposes, deviated systematically 
 from accuracy, in order that the harmony of the 
 building might profit by this imperceptible dis- 
 cord. • They gave and took, like a tuner temper- 
 ing the strings of a musical instrument. The 
 stylobate is not exactly level, but raised four 
 inches in the centre : the pillars are not set per- 
 pendicularly, but with a slight incline inwards : 
 the separation of the pillars is less at the corners, 
 and gradually increases as you approach the centre 
 of the building. It is not my province to go into 
 minute details on such points, which can only 
 be adequately discussed by architects. What I have 
 here to note is, that the old Greek builders had 
 
 1 The splendid work of Michaelis is probably the most complete and 
 critical account both of the plan and the details, which have often 
 been published, especially and with great accuracy by Penrose. 
 
iv.] ATHENS— THE ACROPOLIS. 93 
 
 Poseidon for the patronage of Athens. Some of the 
 figures from one of these are the great draped, head- 
 less women in the centre of the Parthenon room of 
 the British Museum : other fragments of those 
 broken by the Venetians are preserved at Athens. 
 There are, secondly, the metopes, or plaques of stone 
 inserted into the frieze between the triglyphs, 
 and carved in relief with a single small group 
 on each. The height of these surfaces does not 
 exceed four feet. There was, thirdly, a band of 
 reliefs running all round the external wall of the 
 cella, inside the surrounding pillars, and oppo- 
 site to them, and this is known as the frieze of the 
 cella. It consists of a great Panathenaic procession, 
 starting from the western front, and proceeding in 
 two divisions along the parallel north and south 
 walls, till they meet on the eastern front, which 
 was the proper front of the temple. Among the 
 Elgin marbles there are a good many of the met- 
 opes, and also of the pieces of the cella frieze, 
 preserved. Several other pieces of the frieze are 
 preserved at Athens, and altogether we can recon- 
 struct fully three-fourths of this magnificent com- 
 position. 
 
 There seems to me the greatest possible dif- 
 ference in merit between the metopes and the 
 other two parts of the ornament. The majority 
 of the metopes which I have seen represent either 
 a Greek and an Amazon, or a Centaur and Lapith 
 in violent conflict. It appeared plainly to me 
 
94 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 that the main object of these contorted groups 
 was to break in upon the squareness and straight- 
 ness of all the other members of the Doric frieze 
 and architrave. This is admirably done, as there 
 is no conceivable design which more completely 
 breaks the stiff rectangles of -the entablature than 
 the various and violent curves of wrestling figures. 
 But, otherwise, these groups do not appear to me 
 very interesting, except so far as everything in 
 such a place, and the work of such hands, must 
 be interesting. 
 
 It is very different with the others. Of these the 
 pediment sculptures, which were, of course, the 
 most important, and which were probably the 
 finest groups ever designed, are so much destroyed 
 or mutilated, that the effect of the composition is 
 entirely lost, and we can only admire the match- 
 less power and grace of the torsos which remain. 
 The grouping of the figures was limited, and in- 
 dicated by the triangular shape of the surface 
 to be decorated — standing figures occupying the 
 centre, while recumbent or stooping figures occu- 
 pied the ends. But, as in poetry, where the shackles 
 of rhyme and metre, which encumber the thoughts 
 of ordinary writers, are the very source which pro- 
 duces in the true poet the highest and most precious 
 beauties of expression ; so in sculpture and paint- 
 ing, fixed conditions seem not to injure, but to 
 enhance and perfect, the beauty and symmetry 
 attainable in the highest art. We have apparently 
 
iv.] ATHENS— THE ACROPOLIS. 95 
 
 in the famous Niobe group, preserved in Florence, 
 the elements of a similar composition, perhaps in- 
 tended to fill the triangular tympanum of a temple; 
 and even in these weak Roman copies of a Greek 
 masterpiece we can see how beautifully the limited 
 space given to the. sculptor determined the beauty 
 and variety of the figures, and their attitudes. It 
 was in this genius of grouping that I fancy Phidias 
 chiefly excelled all his contemporaries : single 
 statues of Polycleitus are said to have . been pre- 
 ferred in competitions. To us the art of the Disco- 
 bolus of Myron seems fully as great as that of any of 
 the figures of the Parthenon ; but no other artist 
 seems to have possessed the architectonic power of 
 adapting large subjects and processions of figures 
 to their places like Phidias. How far he was helped 
 or advised by Ictinus, or even by Pericles, it is 
 not easy to say. But I do not fancy that Greek 
 statesmen in those days studied everything else in 
 the world besides statecraft, and were known as an- 
 tiquarians, and linguists, and connoisseurs of china 
 and paintings, and theologians, and novelists — 
 in fact, everything under the sun. This many- 
 sidedness, as they now call it, which the Greeks 
 called woXvirpayfioavvr}, and thought to be meddle- 
 someness, was not likely to infect Pericles. He was 
 very intimate with Phidias, and is said to have 
 constantly watched his work, hardly I fancy, as an 
 adviser, but rather as an humble and enthusiastic 
 admirer of an art which did realise its ideal, while 
 
o6 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 he himself was striving in vain with rebel forces 
 to attain his object in politics. 
 
 The extraordinary power of grouping in the 
 designs of Phidias is, however, very completely 
 shown us in the better preserved band of the cella 
 frieze, along which the splendid Panathenaic pro- 
 cession winds its triumphal way. Over the eastern 
 doorway were twelve noble sitting figures on either 
 side of the officiating priest, presenting the state 
 robe, or peplos, for the vestment of Athene. These 
 figures are explained as gods by the critics; but 
 they do not, in either beauty or dignity, excel 
 those of many of the Athenians forming the pro- 
 cession. A very fine slab, containing three of 
 these figures, is now to be seen in the little 
 museum in the Acropolis. This group over the 
 main entrance is the end and summary of all 
 the procession, and corresponds with the yearly 
 ceremony in this way, that, as the state en- 
 trance, or Propylaea, led into the Acropolis at 
 the west end, or rear of the Parthenon, the 
 procession in all probability separated into two, 
 which went along both sides of the colonnade, 
 and met again at the eastern door. Accordingly, 
 over the western end, or rear, the first prepa- 
 rations of the procession are being made, which 
 then starts along the north and south walls, 
 the southern being chiefly occupied with the ca- 
 valcade of the Athenian knights, the northern 
 with the carrying of sacred vessels, and leading of 
 victims for the sacrifice. 
 
iv.] ATHENS— THE ACROPOLIS. 97 
 
 The greater number of the pieces carried away 
 by Lord Elgin seems taken from the equestrian 
 portion in which groups of cantering and cur- 
 veting horses, men in the act of mounting, and 
 striving to curb restive steeds, are brought to- 
 gether with extraordinary effect. We can see 
 plainly how important a part of Athenian splen- 
 dour depended upon their knights, and how true 
 the hints of Aristophanes are about their social 
 standing, and aristocratic tone. The reins and 
 armour, or at least portions of it, were laid on in 
 metal, and have accordingly been long since plun- 
 dered, nor has any obvious trace remained of the rich 
 colours with which the whole was painted. There 
 appears no systematic uniform, some of the riders 
 being dressed in helmets and cuirasses, some in felt 
 wide-awakes, and short-flying cloaks. It must re- 
 main uncertain whether the artist did not seek to 
 obtain variety by this deviation from a fixed dress. 
 There can be no doubt that Greek art was very bold 
 and free in such matters. On the other hand, the type 
 of the faces does not exhibit much variety. At the 
 elevation above the spectator which this frieze occu- 
 pied, individual expression would have been thrown 
 away on figures of three feet in height : the ge- 
 neral dress, and the attitudes, were, on the con- 
 trary, plainly and easily discernible. 
 
 But I confess that this equestrian procession 
 does not appear to me so beautiful as the rows of 
 figures on foot, carrying pitchers and other imple- 
 
 H 
 
9 8 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 ments, leading victims, and playing pipes, which 
 seem to come from the north wall, and of which the 
 most beautiful slabs are preserved at Athens. Here 
 we can see best of all that peculiar stamp which 
 shows the age of Phidias to have been the most 
 perfect in the whole of Greek sculpture. This 
 statement will not be accepted readily by the 
 general public. The Apollo Belvedere, the Capito- 
 line Venus, the Dying Gladiator — these are what we 
 have been always taught to regard as the greatest 
 wonders of Greek glyptic art ; and those who have 
 accustomed themselves to this rich and sensuous 
 beauty will not easily see the greatness and the 
 perfection of the solemn and chaste art of Phidias. 
 Nevertheless, it will always be held by men 
 who have thought long enough on the subject, 
 that the epoch when Myron and Phidias, Poly- 
 cleitus and Polygnotus, broke loose from archaic 
 stiffness into flowing grace was, indeed, the climax 
 of the arts. There seems a sort of natural law — of 
 slow and painful origin — of growing development — 
 of sudden bloom into perfection — of luxury and 
 effeminacy — of gradual debasement and decay — 
 which affects almost all the arts as well as most of 
 the growths of nature. In Greek art particularly 
 this phenomenon perpetually reappears. There 
 can be little doubt that the Iliad of Homer was the 
 first and earliest long creation in poetry, the first 
 attempt, possibly with the aid of writing, to rise 
 from short disconnected lays to the greatness of a 
 
iv.] ATHENS— THE ACROPOLIS. 99 
 
 formal epic. And despite all its defects of plan, 
 its want of firm consistency, and its obvious incon- 
 gruities, this greatest of all poems has held its place 
 against the more finished and interesting Odyssey, 
 the more elaborated Cyclic poems, the more learned 
 Alexandrian epics — in fact, the first full bloom of 
 the art was by far the most perfect. It is the 
 same thing with Greek tragedy. No sooner had 
 the art escaped from the rude waggon, or whatever 
 it was, of Thespis, than we find ^Eschylus, with im- 
 perfect appliances, with want of experience, with 
 many crudenesses and defects, a tragic poet never 
 equalled again in Greek history. Of course the 
 modern critics of his own country preferred, first 
 Sophocles, and then Euripides — great poets, as 
 Praxiteles and Lysippus were great sculptors, and 
 like them, perhaps, greater masters of human pas- 
 sion and of soul-stirring pathos. But for all that, 
 ^Eschylus is the tragic poet of the Greeks — the poet 
 who has reached beyond his age and nation, and 
 fascinated the greatest men even of our century, 
 who seek not to turn back upon his great but not 
 equal rivals. Shelley and Swinburne have both 
 made ^Eschylus their master, and to his inspiration 
 owe the most splendid of their works. 
 
 I will not prosecute these considerations further, 
 though there are many other examples to be found 
 in the history of art. But I will say this much con- 
 cerning the psychological reasons of so strange a 
 phenomenon. It may, of course, be assumed that 
 
 H 2 
 
ioo RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 the man who breaks through the old stiff conven- 
 tional style which has bound his predecessors with 
 its shackles, is necessarily a man of strong and ori- 
 ginal genius. Thus, when we are distinctly told of 
 Polygnotus that he first began to vary the features of 
 the human face from their archaic stiffness, we have 
 before us a man of bold originality, who quarreled 
 with the tradition of centuries, and probably set 
 against him all the prejudices and the consciences 
 of the graver public. But to us, far different features 
 seem prominent. For in spite of all his boldness, 
 when we compare him with his forerunners, we are 
 struck with his modesty and devoutness, as com- 
 pared with his successors. For there is in him, first,, 
 a devoutness towards his work, an old-fashioned 
 piety, which they had not ; and as art in this shape 
 is almost always a handmaid of religion, this de- 
 voutness is a prominent feature. Next, there is a 
 certain reticence and modesty in such a man, which 
 arises partly from the former feeling, but still more 
 from a conservative fear of violent change, and a 
 healthy desire to make his work not merely a con- 
 trast to, but a development of, the older traditions. 
 Then the old draped goddess of religious days, such 
 as the Venus Ge7titrix in Florence, made way for 
 the splendid but yet more human handling, which 
 we may see in the Venus of Melos, now in the 
 Louvre. This half-draped but yet thoroughly 
 new and chaste conception leads naturally to the 
 type said to have been first dared by Praxiteles, 
 
iv.] ATHENS— THE ACROPOLIS. 101 
 
 who did not disguise the use of very unworthy 
 human models to produce his famous, or perhaps 
 infamous ideal, which is best known in the Venus 
 de Medici^ but more perfectly represented in the 
 Venus of the Capitol. There is, too, in the earlier 
 artist that limited mastery over materials, which, 
 like the laws of the poet's language, only condenses 
 and intensifies the beauty of his work. 
 
 Such reserve, as compared with the later phases 
 of the art, is nowhere so strongly shown as in 
 the matter of expression. This is, indeed, the 
 rock on which most arts have ultimately ship- 
 wrecked. When the power over materials and 
 effects becomes complete, so that the artist can 
 as it were perform feats of conquest over them ; 
 when at the same time the feeling has died out 
 that he is treading upon holy ground, we have 
 splendid achievements in the way of exceeding ex- 
 pression, whether physical or mental, of force, of 
 momentary transition, of grief or joy, which are 
 good and great, but which lead imitators into a 
 false track, and so ruin the art which they thought 
 to perfect. Thus overreaching itself, art becomes 
 an anxious striving after display, and, like an affected 
 and meretricious woman, repels the sounder natures, 
 which had else been attracted by her beauty. In 
 Greek art especially, as I have already noticed 
 in discussing the Attic tomb reliefs, this excess of 
 ■expression was long and well avoided, and there is 
 no stronger and more marked feature in its good 
 
io2 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 epochs than the reserve of which I have spoken. It 
 is the chief quality which makes the work of Phidias 
 matchless. There is beauty in it of form, there is 
 a good deal of action, there is in the frieze an 
 almost endless variety; but withal there is the 
 strictest symmetry, the closest adherence to fixed 
 types, the absence of all attempt at expressing" 
 passing emotion. There is still the flavour of the 
 old stiff simplicity about the faces, about the folds 
 of the robes, about the type of the horses ; but the 
 feeling of the artist shines through the archaic 
 simplicity with much clearer light than it does in 
 the more ambitious attempts of the later school. 
 The greatest works of Phidias — his statue of Zeus at 
 Elis, and his Athene in the Parthenon — are lost to 
 us ; but the ancients are unanimous that for simple 
 and sustained majesty no succeeding sculptor, how- 
 ever brilliant, had approached his ideal. 
 
 We may say almost the same of the great temple 
 which he adorned with his genius. It is just that 
 perfection of the Doric temple which has escaped 
 from the somewhat ponderous massiveness and 
 simplicity of the older architecture, while it sacri- 
 ficed no element of majesty to that grace and deli- 
 cacy which marks later and more developed Greek 
 architecture. On this Acropolis the Athenians 
 determined to show what architecture could reach 
 in majesty, and what in delicacy. So they set up 
 the Parthenon in that absolute perfection whose 
 strength and solidity come out clearly shown, but 
 
iv.] ATHENS— THE ACROPOLIS. 103 
 
 in no way overlaid, with ornament. They also 
 built the Erechtheum, where they adopted the 
 Ionic Order, and covered their entablature with 
 bands of small and delicate tracing-, which, with its 
 gilding and colouring, was a thing to be studied 
 minutely, and from the nearest distance. It seems 
 to me as if the Ionic Order was in their opinion not 
 well suited for large, stately exteriors. Though the 
 inner columns of the Propylaea were Ionic (and 
 they were very large), it appears that large temples 
 in that order were not known in Attica. But for 
 small and graceful buildings it was commonly 
 used, and of these the Erechtheum was the most 
 perfect. 
 
 In its great day, and even as Pausanias saw it, 
 the Acropolis was covered with statues, as well as 
 with shrines. It was not merely an Holy of Holies 
 in religion ; it was also a palace and museum of 
 art. At every step and turn the traveller met new- 
 objects of interest. There were archaic specimens, 
 chiefly interesting to the antiquarian and the 
 devotee ; there were the great master-pieces which 
 were the joint admiration of the artist and the 
 vulgar. Even all the sides and slopes of the great 
 rock were honeycombed into sacred grottos, with 
 their altars and their gods, or studded with votive 
 monuments. All these lesser things are fallen 
 away and gone; the sacred caves are filled with 
 rubbish, and desecrated with worse than neglect. 
 The grotto of Pan and Apollo is difficult of access, 
 
io 4 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 and when reached, the object of disgust rather 
 than of interest. There are left but the remnants 
 of the surrounding wall and the ruins of the three 
 principal buildings, which were the envy and 
 wonder of all the civilised world. 
 
 I will venture to conclude this chapter with a 
 curious comparison. It was my good fortune, a few 
 months after I had seen the Acropolis, to visit 
 a ruin in Ireland, which, to my great surprise, bore 
 many curious resemblances to it — I mean the Rock 
 of Cashel. Both were strongholds of religion — 
 honoured and hallowed above all other places in 
 their respective countries — both were covered with 
 buildings of various dates, each representing their 
 peculiar ages and styles in art. And as the Greeks, 
 I suppose for effect's sake, have varied the posture 
 of their temples, so that the sun illumines them at 
 different moments, the old Irish have varied the 
 orientation of their churches, that the sun might 
 rise directly over against the east window on the 
 anniversary of the patron saint. There is at Cashel 
 the great Cathedral — in loftiness and grandeur the 
 Parthenon of the place ; there is the smaller and 
 more beautiful Cormac's Chapel, the holiest of all, 
 like the Erechtheum of Athens. Again, the great 
 sanctuary upon the Rock of Cashel was sur- 
 rounded by a cluster of other abbeys about its 
 base, which were founded there by pious men on 
 account of the greatness and holiness of the archie- 
 piscopal seat. Of these one remains, like the 
 
iv.] ATHENS— THE ACROPOLIS. 105 
 
 Theseum at Athens, eclipsed by the splendour of 
 the Acropolis. 
 
 The prospect from the Irish sanctuary has, indeed, 
 endless contrasts to that from the Pagan strong- 
 hold, but they are suggestive contrasts, and such 
 as are not without a certain harmony. The plains 
 around both are framed by mountains, of which the 
 Irish are probably the more picturesque ; and if the 
 light upon the Greek hills is the fairest, the native 
 colour of the Irish is infinitely more rich. So, again, 
 the soil of Attica is light and sandy, whereas the 
 Golden Vale of Tipperary is among the richest in 
 the world. But who would not choose the historic 
 treasures of the former in preference to the bucolic 
 value of the latter ? Still, both places were the 
 noblest homes, each in their own country, of reli- 
 gions which civilised, humanised, and exalted the 
 human race; and if the Irish Acropolis is left in 
 dim obscurity by the historical splendour of the 
 Parthenon, on the other hand, the gods of the 
 Athenian stronghold have faded out before the 
 moral greatness of the faith preached upon the 
 Rock of Cashel. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 EXCURSIONS IN ATTICA — PHALERUM — LAURIUM. 
 
 When you stand on the Acropolis and look round 
 upon Attica, a great part of its history becomes 
 immediately clear and unravelled. You see at 
 once that you are situate in the principal plain of 
 the country, surrounded with chains of mountains 
 in such a way that it is easy to understand the old 
 stories of wars with Eleusis, or with Marathon, or 
 with any of the outlying valleys. Looking inland 
 on the north side, as you stand beside the Erech- 
 theum, you see straight before you, at a distance of 
 some ten miles, Mount Pentelicus, from which all 
 the splendid marble was once carried to the rock 
 around you. This Pentelicus is a sort of inter- 
 mediate cross-chain between two main lines which 
 diverge from either side of it, and gradually widen 
 so as to form the plain of Athens. The left or 
 north-western chain is Mount Parnes ; the right 
 or eastern is Mount Hymettus. This latter, how- 
 ever, is only the outer margin of a large moun- 
 tainous tract, wmich spreads all over the rest of 
 South Attica down to the Cape of Sunium. There 
 
ch. v.] EXCURSIONS IN A TTICA. 107 
 
 are, of course, little valleys, and two or three 
 villages, one of them the old deme Brauron, which 
 they now pronounce Vravron. There is the town of 
 Thorikos, near the mines of Laurium ; there are 
 two modern villages called Marcopoulos ; but on 
 the whole, both in ancient and modern times, this 
 south-eastern part of Attica, south of Hymettus, 
 was, with the exception of Laurium, of little 
 moment. There is a gap between Pentelicus and 
 Hymettus, nearly due north, through which the 
 way leads out to Marathon ; and you can see the 
 spot where the bandits surprised in 1870 the unfor- 
 tunate gentlemen who fell victims to the vacillation 
 and incompetence of people in power at that time. 
 On the left side of Pentelicus you see the 
 chain of Parnes, which almost closes with it at a 
 far distance, and which stretches down all the 
 west side of Attica, till it runs into the sea as 
 Mount Corydallus, opposite to the island of 
 Salamis. In this long chain of Parnes (which can 
 only be avoided by going up to the northern coast 
 at Oropus, and passing into Bceotia close by the 
 sea), there are three passes or lower points, one far 
 to the north — that by Dekeleia, where the present 
 king has his country palace, but where of old 
 Alcibiades planted the Spartan garrison which tor- 
 mented and ruined the farmers of Attica. This 
 pass leads you out to Tanagra in Bceotia. Next to 
 the south, some miles nearer, is the even more 
 famous pass of Phylae, from which Thrasybulus 
 
io8 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 and his brave fellows recovered Athens and its 
 liberty. This pass, when you reach its summit, 
 looks into the northern point of the Thriasian 
 plain, and also into the wilder regions of Cithseron, 
 which border Bceotia. The third pass, and the 
 lowest — but a few miles beyond the groves of 
 Academe — is the pass of Daphne, which was the 
 high road to Eleusis, along which the sacred pro- 
 cessions passed in the times of the mysteries ; and 
 in this pass we still see the numerous niches in 
 which native tablets had been set in by the wor- 
 shippers at a famous temple to Aphrodite. 
 
 On this side of Attica also, with the exception of 
 the Thriasian plain and of Eleusis, there extends 
 outside Mount Parnes a wild mountainous district, 
 quite Alpine in character, which severs Attica from 
 Bceotia, not by a single row of mountains, or by a 
 single pass, but by a succession of glens and defiles, 
 which at once explain to the classical student, when 
 he sees them, how necessary and fundamental w T ere 
 the divisions of Greece into its separate districts, 
 and how completely different in character the in- 
 habitants of each were sure to be. The way from 
 Attica into Bceotia was no ordinary high road, nor 
 even a pass over one mountain, but a series of 
 glens and valleys and defiles, at any of which a 
 hostile army could be stopped, and each of which 
 severed the country on either side by a difficult 
 obstacle. This truly Alpine nature of Greece is 
 only felt when we see it, and yet must ever be 
 
v.] EXCURSIONS IN A TTICA . 1 09 
 
 kept before the mind in estimating the character 
 and energy of the race. But let us return to our 
 view from the Acropolis. 
 
 If we turn and look southward, we see a broken 
 country, with several low hills between us and the 
 sea — hills tolerably well cultivated, and when I saw 
 them in May, all coloured with golden stubbles, for 
 the corn had just been reaped. But all the plain 
 in every direction seems dry and dusty ; arid, too, 
 and not rich alluvial soil, like the plains of Bceotia. 
 Then Thucydides' words come back to us, when he 
 says Attica was 'undisturbed on account of the 
 lightness of its soil' [aaraaiaaTOQ ovcra $ia to \t7TToytwv) 
 as early invaders rather looked out for richer pas- 
 tures. This reflection, too, of Thucydides applies 
 equally to the mountains of Attica round Athens, 
 which are not covered with rich grass and dense 
 shrubs, like Helicon, like Parnassus, like the hills 
 of Arcadia, but seem so bare, that we wonder where 
 the bees ofHymettus can find food for their famous 
 honey. It is only when the traveller ascends 
 the rocky slopes of the mountain that he finds its 
 rugged surface carpeted with quantities of little 
 wild flowers, too insignificant to give the slightest 
 colour to the mountain, but sufficient for the bees 
 which are still making their honey as of old. This 
 honey of Hymettus, which was our daily food at 
 Athens, is now not very remarkable either for 
 colour or flavour. It is very dark, and not by any 
 means so good as the honey produced in other 
 
1 10 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 parts of Greece — not to say on the heather hills of 
 Scotland and Ireland. I tasted honey at Thebes 
 and at Corinth which was much better, especially 
 that of Corinth made in the hills towards Cleonae, 
 where the whole country is scented with thyme, 
 and where thousands of bees are buzzing eagerly 
 through the summer air. But when the old Athen- 
 ians are found talking so much about honey, we 
 must not forget that sugar was almost unknown to 
 them, and that all their sweetmeats depended upon 
 honey exclusively. Hence the culture and use of 
 it assumed an importance not easily understood 
 among moderns, who are in possession of the 
 sugar-cane. 
 
 But amid all the dusty and bare features of the 
 view, the eye fastens with delight on one great 
 broad band of dark green, which, starting from the 
 left side of Pentelicus, close to Mount Parnes in the 
 north, sweeps straight down the valley, passing 
 about two miles to the west of Athens, and reach- 
 ing to the Peiraeus. This is the plain of the 
 Cephissus, and these are the famous olive woods 
 which contain within them the deme Colonus, so 
 celebrated by Sophocles, and the groves of Aca- 
 deme, at their nearest point to the city. The dust 
 of Athens, and the bareness of the plain, make 
 no walks about the town agreeable, save either the 
 ascent of Lycabettus, or a ramble into these olive 
 woods. The river Cephissus, which waters them, 
 is a respectable, though narrow river, even in 
 
v.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . m 
 
 summer discharging a good deal of water, and 
 often dividing itself into trenches and arms which 
 are very convenient for irrigation. So there is a 
 strip of country, fully ten miles long, and perhaps 
 two wide on the average, which affords delicious 
 shade and greenness and the song of birds, instead 
 of hot sunlight and dust and the shrill clamour of 
 the tettix without. 
 
 I wandered a whole day in these delightful 
 woods, listening to the nightingales, which in the 
 deep shade and solitude sing all day, as if it were 
 but a prolonged twilight, and hearing the plane 
 tree whispering to the elm, as Aristophanes has it, 
 and seeing the white poplar show its silvery leaves 
 in the breeze, and wondering whether the huge old 
 olive stems, so like the old pollared stumps in 
 Windsor Forest, could be the actual sacred trees, 
 the fiopiai, under which the youth of Athens ran 
 their races. The banks of the Cephissus, too, are 
 lined with great reeds, and other marsh plants, 
 which stoop over into its sandy shallows, and wave 
 idly in the current of its stream. The ouzel and 
 the kingfisher start from under one's feet, and 
 bright fish move out lazily from their sunny bay 
 into the deeper pool. The wood is intersected by 
 a few roads, and by many paths, along which it is 
 easy and pleasant to walk. Now and then through 
 a vista the Acropolis shows itself in a frame work 
 of green foliage, nor do I know any more enchant- 
 ing view of that great ruin. 
 
1 1 2 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 All the ground under the dense olive trees was 
 covered with standing corn, for here, as in Southern 
 Italy, the shade of trees seems no hindrance to the 
 ripening of the ear. But there was here thicker wood 
 than in Italian corn-fields ; on the other hand there 
 was not that rich festooning of vines which spread 
 from tree to tree, and which " give a Neapolitan 
 summer landscape so peculiar a charm. A few 
 homesteads there were along the roads, and even at 
 one of the bridges a children's school, full of those 
 beautiful fair children, whose heads remind one so 
 strongly of the old Greek statues. But all the 
 houses were walled in, and many of them seemed 
 solitary and deserted. The fear of rapine and 
 violence is still there. I was told, indeed, by a 
 famous Athenian professor, that no country in 
 Europe was so secure, and I confess I found it so 
 myself in my wanderings ; but when he added as 
 his decisive reason, that for two J hill years no bandit 
 had been seen or heard of through the country, I 
 could not help feeling that the desert state of the 
 land, and the general feeling of insecurity, how- 
 ever irrational and absurd in his eyes, was not sur- 
 prising. 
 
 For even apart from bandits, the old spirit of 
 autonomy, or independence, seems to assert itself by 
 men doing what seems right in their own eyes, with- 
 out interference on the part of police or government. 
 Thus on the very day of which I am speaking, 
 we went and sat on the hillock of Colonus, looking- 
 
v.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . 1 1 3 
 
 with wonder at the noble view of Athens which the 
 very slight elevation affords, and desirous to see 
 not only the spot which Sophocles so loved, but 
 now also the resting-place of two eminent men, 
 who sacrificed their lives to their enthusiasm for 
 Greek art and archaeology. As we read the pomp- 
 ous inscriptions which the Greek nation has set 
 up to Otfried Muller and Charles Lenormant, we 
 saw with surprise that all the marble was spotted 
 with marks of shot and of bullets. Many edges 
 were, of course, chipped off, and altogether the 
 monuments looked as if they had been subject to a 
 recent bombardment. They were merely conven- 
 ient targets for the neighbouring peasants, all of 
 whom carry arms, and feel obliged to practise 
 the use of them. Still worse, we were suddenly 
 called to by a number of labourers with pickaxes, 
 whom we had hardly noticed, but who could now 
 be seen running with all their might away from the 
 slope of the hill close to us. Imitating their ex- 
 ample without knowing why, we presently saw a 
 blast explode within ten yards of the tombs. Earth 
 and stones were thrown high into the air, and fell 
 all over them. The workmen were blasting away 
 the rock for building stones, and had already come 
 to the very verge of the summit. Such are the 
 modern custodians of all the precious art of their 
 great ancestors ! No doubt, as has often happened 
 in older days, not only the rock beneath, but the 
 marble slabs and their inscriptions, will soon be 
 
 I 
 
1 14 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 built into some vulgar wall, and their modern 
 Greek may yet some day, when rediscovered, give 
 rise to bad reflections and worse theories among 
 whatever people are the most learned pedants of 
 that future age. 
 
 There is no other excursion in the immediate 
 vicinity of Athens of any like beauty or interest. 
 The older buildings in the Peiraeus are completely 
 gone. No trace of the docks or the deigma remains ; 
 and the splendid walls, built as Thucydides tells us 
 with cutstone, without mortar or mud, and fastened 
 with clamps of iron fixed with lead — this splendid 
 structure has been almost completely destroyed. 
 We can find, indeed, elsewhere in Attica — at 
 Phylae — still better at Eleutherae — specimens of this 
 sort of building, but at the Peiraeus there are only 
 foundations remaining. 
 
 A drive to the open roadstead of Phalerum is 
 more repaying. It is interesting here to observe 
 how the Athenians passed by the nearest sea, and 
 even an open and clear roadstead, in order to join 
 their city to the better harbour, and more defensi- 
 ble headland of Peiraeus. Phalerum, as they now 
 call it, though they spell it with an 77, is the favourite 
 bathing-place of modern Athens, and is about 
 a mile and a-half nearer the city than Peiraeus. 
 The water is shallow, and the beach of fine sand, 
 so that for ancient ships, which I suppose drew little 
 water, it was a convenient landing-place, especially 
 for the disembarking of troops, who could choose 
 
v.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . 115 
 
 their place anywhere around a large crescent, and 
 actually for land fighting, if necessary. But the 
 walls of Athens, the long walls to Peirseus, and its 
 lofty fortifications, made this roadstead of no use to 
 the enemy, so long as Athens held the command of 
 the sea, and could send out ships from the secure 
 little harbours of Zea and Munychia, which almost 
 face Phalerum on the east side of the headland of 
 Peiraeus. There was originally a third wall, too, to 
 the east side of the Phaleric bay, but this seems to 
 have been early abandoned when the second long 
 wall, or middle wall as it was originally called, was 
 completed. 
 
 At the opening of the Peloponnesian war, it ap- 
 pears that the Athenians defended against the 
 Lacedaemonians, not the two long walls which run 
 close together and parallel to Peiraeus, but the 
 northern of these, and the far distant Phaleric wall. 
 It cannot but strike any observer as extraordinary 
 how the Athenians should undertake such an enor- 
 mous task. Had the enemy attacked anywhere 
 suddenly and with vigour, it seems hard to under- 
 stand how they could have kept him out. Accord- 
 ing to Thucydides' accurate detail 1 the wall to 
 Phalerum was nearly 4 miles, that to Peiraeus 4 J. 
 There were in addition 5 miles of city wall, and 
 nearly 3 of Peiraeus wall. That is to say, there were 
 about 1 7 miles of wall to be protected. This is not 
 
 1 H-, 13- 
 I 2 
 
1 1 6 RA MBLES IN GREECE. [ch.. 
 
 all. This circuit was not closed, but separated by 
 about 2 miles of beach between Peirseus and Phal- 
 erum, so that the defenders of the two extremities 
 could in no way promptly assist each other. Thucy- 
 dides tells us that a garrison of 16,000 inferior sol- 
 diers, old men, boys and mctics, sufficed to do this 
 work. We are forced to conclude that not only 
 were the means of attacking walls curiously incom- 
 plete, but even the dash and enterprise of modern 
 warfare cannot have been understood by the Greeks. 
 For we never hear of even a bold attempt on this 
 absurdly straggling fortification, far less of any 
 successful attempt to force it. 1 
 
 But it is time that we should leave the environs 
 of Athens, and wander out beyond the borders of 
 the Athenian plain into the wilder outlying parts of 
 the land. Attica is after all a large country, if one 
 does not apply railway measures to it. We think 
 30 miles by rail very little, but 30 miles by road is a 
 long distance, and implies land enough to support 
 a large population, and to maintain many flourish- 
 ing towns. We can wander 30 miles from Athens 
 through Attica in several directions — to Eleutherae, 
 on the western Boeotian frontier ; to Oropus, on the 
 north; and Sunium, on the south. Thus it is only 
 when one endeavours to know Attica minutely 
 
 1 The reader who desires to see the best poetical picture of mo- 
 dern Athens should consult the tenth chapter in Mr. Symonds' Sketches 
 in Italy and Greece — one of the most beautiful productions of that 
 charming poet in prose. 
 
v.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . i j 7 
 
 that one finds how much there is to be seen, and 
 how long a time is required to see it. And fortu- 
 nately enough, there is one expedition, and that 
 not the least important, where we can avoid the 
 rough paths, and rougher saddles, of the country, 
 and coast in a steamer along a district at all 
 times obscure in history, and seldom known for 
 anything except for being the road to Sunium. 
 Strabo gives a list of the demes along this 
 seaboard 1 , and seems only able to write one 
 fact about them — a line from an old oracle in the 
 days of the Persian war, which prophesied that 
 'the women of Colias will roast their corn with 
 oars/ 2 alluding to the wrecks driven on shore here 
 by the north-west wind from Salamis. Even the 
 numerous little islands along this coast were in his 
 day, as they now are, perfectly barren. Yet with 
 all its desolation it is exceedingly picturesque and 
 varied in outline. 
 
 We took ship in the little steamer belonging to 
 the Sunium Mining Company, who have built a 
 village called Ergasteria, between Thorikos and the 
 promontory, and who were obliging enough to allow 
 us to sail in the boat intended for their private 
 traffic. We left the Peirseus on one of those pecu- 
 liarly Greek mornings, with a blue sky and very 
 bright sun, but with an east wind so strong and 
 clear, so Xa^TrpoQ, as the old Greeks would say, that 
 
 1 ix., § i, p.' 244 (Tauchn.) 
 
 2 He reads, however, <ppi£ovcn instead of Herodotus' <ppvtovan. 
 
1 1 8 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 the sea was driven into long white crests, and the 
 fishing-boats were heeling over under their sails. 
 These fresh and strong winds, which are constantly 
 blowing in Greece, save the people very much from 
 the bad effects of a very hot southern climate. 
 Even when the temperature is high, the weather is 
 seldom sultry; and upon the sea, which intrudes 
 everywhere, one can always find a cool and refresh- 
 ing atmosphere. The Greeks seem not the least to 
 fear these high winds, which are perfectly steady, 
 and seldom turn to squalls. The smallest boats 
 are to be seen scudding along on great journeys 
 from one island to another — often with a single 
 occupant, who sits holding the helm with one hand, 
 and the stern sheet with the other. All the boats 
 in the Peiraeus are managed in this way, and 
 you may see their great -sails, like seagulls' wings, 
 leaning over in the gale, and the spray dashing 
 from the vessel's prow. We met a few larger 
 vessels coming up from Syra, but on the whole the 
 sea was well nigh as desert as the coast, so much 
 so that the faithful dog, which was on board each 
 of those boats, thought it his serious duty to stand 
 up on the taffrail and bark at us as a strange and 
 doubtful company. 
 
 So, after passing many natural harbours, and 
 spacious bays, many rocky headlands and bluff 
 islands — but all desert and abandoned by track of 
 man, we approached the famous cape, from which 
 the white pillars of the lofty old temple gleamed 
 
v.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . 1 1 9 
 
 brilliantly in the sun. They were the first and 
 only white marble pillars which I saw in Greece. 
 Elsewhere, dust and age, if not the hand of man, 
 have coloured that splendid material with a dull 
 golden hue ; but here the sea breeze, while eating 
 away much of the surface, has not soiled them with 
 its fresh brine, and so they still remain of the 
 colour which they had when they were set up. We 
 should fain conjecture that here, at all events, the 
 Greeks had not applied the usual blue and red to 
 decorate this marvellous temple ; that — for the de- 
 light and benefit of the sailors, who hailed it from 
 afar, as the first sign of Attica — its brilliant white 
 colour was left to it, to render it a brighter beacon 
 and a clearer object in twilight and in mist. I will 
 not yet describe it, for we paid it a special visit, and 
 must speak of it in greater detail ; but even now, 
 when we coasted round the headland, and looked 
 up to its noble pillars, standing far aloft into the 
 sky, it struck us with the most intense interest. It 
 was easy, indeed, to see how Byron's poetic mind 
 was here inspired with some of his noblest lines. 
 
 "When we turned from it seaward, we saw 
 stretched out in echelon that chain of Cyclades, 
 which are but a prolongation of the headland — 
 Keos, Kyphnos, Seriphos, Siphnos, and, in the far 
 distance, Melos — Melos, the scene of Athens' vio- 
 lence and cruelty, when she filled up, in the mind 
 of the' old historian, the full measure of her iniquity. 
 And as we turned northward, the long island, or 
 
20 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 islet, of Helene, which stretches along the point, 
 like Hydra off that of Argolis, could not hide from 
 us the mountain ranges of Eubcea, still touched here 
 and there with snow. A short run against the wind 
 brought us to the port of Ergasteria, marked very 
 strangely in the landscape by the smoke of its 
 chimneys — the port where the present produce of 
 the mines of Laurium is prepared and shipped for 
 Scotland. 
 
 Here, at last, we found ourselves again among 
 men ; 3000 operatives, many of them with families, 
 make quite a busy town of Ergasteria. And I could 
 not but contrast their bold and independent looks, 
 rough and savage as they seemed, with what must 
 have been the appearance of the droves of slaves 
 which worked the mines in old days. We were 
 rowed ashore from our steamer by two persons 
 called Aristides and Epaminondas, but I cannot 
 say that their looks betokened either the justice 
 of the one or the culture of the other. 
 
 We found ourselves when we landed in an awk- 
 ward predicament. The last English engineer re- 
 maining in the Mining Company, at whose invita- 
 tion we had ventured into this wild district, had 
 suddenly left that morning for Athens. His house 
 was shut up, and we were left friendless and alone 
 among 3000 of these Aristides 5 and Epaminondas', 
 whose appearance was, as I have said, anything but 
 reassuring. We did what was best to meet the diffi- 
 culty, and what was not only the best thing to do, 
 
-v.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . 121 
 
 but the only thing, and which turned out very well 
 indeed. We went to the director of the mines, M. 
 Markopoulos, a very polished gentleman, with a 
 charming wife, both of whom spoke French excel- 
 lently. We stated our case, and demanded hospi- 
 tality for the night. Nothing could be more friendly 
 than our reception. This benevolent man and his 
 wife took us into their own house, prepared rooms 
 for us, and promised to let us see all the curiosities 
 of the country. Thus our misfortune became, in 
 fact, a very good fortune. The night, however, it 
 must be confessed, was spent in a very unequal con- 
 flict with mosquitoes and other disturbers of human 
 rest — an inconvenience which our good hostess in 
 vain endeavoured to obviate by burning a strong- 
 smelling powder in our room, and shutting all the 
 windows. But had the remedy been even successful 
 it is very doubtful whether it was not worse than 
 the disease. 
 
 We started in the morning by a special train — 
 for the company have a private line from the coast 
 up to the mines — to ascend the wooded and hilly 
 country into the region so celebrated of old as one 
 of the main sources of Athenian wealth. As the 
 train wound its way round the somewhat steep 
 ascent, our prospect over the sea and its islands be- 
 came larger and more varied. The wild rocks and 
 forests of southern Eubcea — one of the few districts 
 in Greece which seems to have been as savage and 
 deserted in old days as it is now — detached them- 
 
122 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 selves from the intervening island of Helena. We 
 were told that wild boars were still to be found 
 there. In the hills about Laurium the hares, which 
 Xenophon so loved to hunt, and turtle doves, seemed 
 the only game attainable. All the hills were co- 
 vered with stunted underwood. 
 
 The mines of Laurium appear very suddenly in 
 Attic history, but from that time onward are a pro- 
 minent fact in the wealth of the Athenians." We 
 know that in Solon's day there was great scarcity of 
 money, and that he was obliged to depreciate the 
 value of the coinage — a very solitary and unprece- 
 dented measure, never repeated; for, all through 
 later history, Attic silver was so good that it circu- 
 lated at a premium in foreign parts, just as English 
 money now does. Accordingly, in Solon's time we 
 hear no mention of this great, and almost inexhaus- 
 tible, source of national wealth. So all through the 
 reign of the Peisistratids there is a like silence. Sud- 
 denly, after the liberation of Athens, we hear ofThe- 
 mistocles persuading the people to apply the very 
 large revenue from these mines to the building of a 
 fleet for the purpose of the war with ^Egina. This 
 sudden appearance in history of the mines must evi- 
 dently be due to the scantiness of our information. 
 The so-called Xenophon On the Attic Revenues — a 
 tract which is almost altogether about these mines — 
 knew quite well that they had been worked from 
 remote antiquity ; and there can be, in my mind, no 
 doubt whatever, that here, as elsewhere in Greece,, 
 
v.] EXCURSIONS IN A TTICA . 123 
 
 the Phoenicians had been the forerunners of the 
 natives in the art of mining. Here, as in Thasos, 
 I believe the Phoenicians had their settlements ; and 
 possibly a closer survey of the great underground 
 passages, which are still there, may give us some 
 proof by inscriptions or otherwise. 
 
 But what happened after the Semitic traders had 
 been expelled from Greek waters ? — for expelled 
 they were, though, perhaps, far later from some 
 remote and unexplored points than we usually ima- 
 gine. I suppose that when this took place, Athens 
 was by no means in a condition to think about pro- 
 secuting trade at Sunium. Salamis, which was far 
 closer, and a more obvious possession, was only 
 conquered, in Solon's day, after a long and tedious 
 struggle, and I am perfectly certain that the Athen- 
 ians could have had no power to hold an outly- 
 ing dependency, separated by thirty miles of the 
 roughest mountain country, when they had not sub- 
 dued an island, scarcely a mile from the Thriasian 
 Plain, and not ten miles from Athens. I take it, 
 then, that the so-called avvoiKKTfxog, or unifying of 
 Athens, in pre-historic times, by Theseus, or whoever 
 did it, was not a cementing of all Attica, includ- 
 ing these remote corners, but only of the settle- 
 ments about the plains of Attica, Marathon, and 
 Eleusis; and that the southern end of the peninsula 
 was not included in the Athens of early days. It 
 was, in fact, only accessible by a carefully con- 
 structed artificial road, such as we hear of after- 
 
i2 4 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 wards, or by sea. The Athenians had not either of 
 these means at so early a period. And it is not a 
 little remarkable that the first mention of their 
 ownership of the silver mines is associated with the 
 building of a fleet to contend with iEgina. I 
 have no doubt that Themistocles' advice has been 
 preserved without his reasons for it. He persuaded 
 the Athenians to surrender their surplus revenue 
 from Laurium, to build ships against the ^Egine- 
 tans, simply because they found that without ships 
 the ^Eginetans would be practically sole possessors 
 of the mines. They were far closer to Laurium by 
 sea than Athens was by land — closer, indeed, in 
 every way — and I am led to suspect that in the 
 days before Solon the mines had been worked by 
 ^Egina, and not by Athens. I cannot here enter 
 into my full reasons, but I fancy that Peisistratus 
 and his sons — not by conquest, but by some agree- 
 ment — got practical possession of the mines, and 
 were, perhaps, the first to make all Attica really 
 subject to the power of Athens. 1 But no sooner 
 are they expelled, than the ^Eginetans renew their 
 attacks or claims on Laurium ; and it is only the 
 Athenian fleet which secures to Athens its posses- 
 sion. We hear of proceedings of Hippias about 
 coinage, 2 which are stated by Aristotle as speci- 
 
 1 It is possible that in the days of Eretria's greatness, when she ruled 
 over a number of the Cyclades, Eretrians may have worked the mines. 
 These occupants probably preceded the iEginetans. 
 
 2 Arist. CEcon., II. 4. 
 
v.] EXCURSIONS IN A TTICA . 1 2< 
 
 mens of injustice, or sharp practice, and which may 
 have something to do with the acquisition of the 
 silver mines by his dynasty. But I must cut short 
 this serious dissertation. 
 
 Our special train brought us up slowly round 
 wooded heights, and through rich green brakes, into 
 a lonely country, from which glimpses of the sea 
 could, however, still be seen, and glimpses of blue 
 islands between the hills. And so we came to the 
 settlements of the modern miners. The great com- 
 pany, whose guests we were, had been started some 
 years ago, by French and Italian speculators, and 
 Professor Ansted had been there as geologist for 
 some years. But the jealousy of the Greeks, when 
 they found out that profit was rewarding foreign 
 enterprise, caused unjust legislation against the 
 company, and, to avoid being plundered, they 
 gladly sold their interest to a native company. At 
 present this company is still thriving; and I saw 
 in the harbour a large vessel from Glasgow, which 
 had come to carry the lead, when prepared in blocks, 
 to Scotland — all the produce being still bought 
 by a single English firm. But I have no doubt 
 that the dog-in-the-manger spirit of the modern 
 Greeks will spoil this trade also. They cannot bear 
 other people to profit by their country, though they 
 are as yet unable to profit by it themselves. 
 
 When the Greeks discuss these negotiations about 
 the mines, they put quite a different colour on the 
 affair. They say that the French and Italians 
 
i26 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 desired to evade fair payment for the ground-rent of 
 the mines, trusting to the strength of their respec- 
 tive governments, and the weakness of Greece. The 
 company's policy is described in Greece as an over- 
 reaching, unscrupulous attempt to make great pro- 
 fits by sharp bargains with the natives, who did not 
 know the value of their property. A great number 
 of obscure details are adduced in favour of their 
 arguments, and it seemed to me that the Greeks are 
 really convinced of their truth. In such a matter 
 it would be unfair to decide without stating both 
 sides ; and I am quite prepared to change my pre- 
 sent conviction that the Greeks were most to blame, 
 if proper reasons can be adduced. But the legisla- 
 tive acts passed in their Parliament look very ugly 
 indeed at first sight. 
 
 The present Laurium Company never enter the 
 mines at all, but gather the great mass of scoriae, 
 which the old Athenians threw out after smelting, 
 with more imperfect furnaces, and less heat than 
 ours. These scoriae, which look like stone cinders, 
 have been so long there that some vegetation has at 
 last grown over them, and the traveller does not sus- 
 pect that all the soil around was raised and altered 
 by the hand of man. Owing to the power of steam, 
 and their railway, the present miners carry down 
 the scoriae in trucks to the sea-coast, to Ergasteria, 
 and there smelt them. The old Athenians had their 
 furnaces in the middle of the mountains, where 
 many of them are still to be seen. They sought 
 
v.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . 127 
 
 chiefly for silver, whereas the modern company are 
 chiefly in pursuit of lead, and obtain but little 
 silver from the scoriae. 
 
 In many places you come upon the openings 
 of the old pits, which went far into the bowels 
 of the mountains, through miles of underground 
 galleries and passages. Our engine-driver — an 
 intelligent Frenchman — stopped the train to show 
 us one of these entrances, which went down almost 
 straight, with good steps still remaining, into the 
 earth. He assured us that the other extremity, 
 which was known, all the passage being open, was 
 some two or three miles distant, at a spot which he 
 showed us from a hill. Hearing that inscriptions 
 were found in these pits, and especially that the 
 name of Nicias had been found there, we were very 
 anxious to descend and inspect them. This was 
 promised to us, for the actual pits are in the hands 
 of another Greek company, who are searching for 
 new veins of silver. But when we arrived at the 
 spot, the officers of the company were unwilling to 
 let us into the pits. The proper overseer was 
 away — intentionally, of course. There were no 
 proper candles ; there was no means of obtaining 
 admission : so we were baulked in our inquiry. 
 But we went far enough into the mouth of one of 
 them to see that these pits were on a colossal scale, 
 well arched up, and, I suppose, had we gone far 
 enough, we should have found the old supports, of 
 which the Athenian law was so careful. 
 
i28 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 The quantity of scoriae thrown out, which seems 
 now perfectly inexhaustible, is in itself sufficient 
 evidence of the enormous scale on which the old 
 mining was carried on. Thus, we do not in the 
 least wonder at hearing that Nicias had iooo slaves 
 working in the mines, and that the profits accruing 
 to the state from the fines and head-rents of the 
 mines were very large — on a moderate estimate, 
 /8000 a-year of our money, which meant in those 
 days a great deal more. The author of the tract 
 on ' Athenian Revenue ' says that the riches of the 
 mines were perfectly inexhaustible ; that only a 
 small part of the silver district had been worked 
 out, though the digging had gone on from time 
 immemorial ; and that after innumerable labourers 
 had been employed, the mines always appeared 
 equally rich, so that no limit need be put on the 
 employment of capital. Still he speaks of opening 
 a new shaft as a most risky speculation. His general 
 estimate appears, however, somewhat exaggerated. 
 The writer confesses that the number of labourers 
 was in his day diminishing, and the majority of 
 the proprietors were then beginners ; so that there 
 must have been great interruption of work during 
 the Peloponnesian War. In the age of Philip there 
 were loud complaints that the speculations in 
 mining were unsuccessful; and for obtaining silver, 
 at all events, no reasonable prospect seems to have 
 been left. In the first century of our era, Strabo 1 
 
 1 ix., p. 275. 
 
v.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . 12g 
 
 says that these once celebrated mines were ex- 
 hausted, that new mining did not pay, and thus 
 people were smelting the poorer ore, and the 
 scoriae, from which the ancients had imperfectly 
 separated the metal. This is exactly the case now- 
 a-days, unless we are to credit the sudden rumour 
 in the papers (in 1875), that the company now 
 working the pits had come upon a rich treasure of 
 ore and of tools, left behind at some sudden crisis 
 in ancient days. This I consider as not at all un- 
 likely, though, of course, requiring some better 
 evidence than newspapers to be believed. 
 
 Our last mention of the place in olden times is 
 that of Pausanias (at the end of the second century, 
 A. D.), who speaks of Laurium, with the addition, 
 that it had once been the seat of the Athenian 
 silver mines ! 
 
 There is but one more point suggested by these 
 mines, which it is not well to pass over, when we 
 are considering the working of them in ancient 
 times. Nothing is more poisonous than the smoke 
 from lead mines, and for this reason, the people at 
 Ergasteria have built a chimney more than a mile 
 long to the top of a neighbouring hill, where the 
 smoke escapes. Even so, when the wind blows 
 back the smoke, all the vegetation about the vil- 
 lage is at once blighted, and there is no greater 
 difficulty than to keep a garden within two or 
 three miles of this chimney. As the Athenians 
 did not take this precaution, we are not surprised 
 
 K 
 
i 3 o RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 to hear from them frequent notices of the unhealthi- 
 ness of the district. For, when there were many 
 furnaces, and the smoke was not drawn away by 
 high chimneys, we can hardly conceive life to have 
 been tolerable. What then must have been the 
 condition of the gangs of slaves which Nicias and 
 other respectable and pious Athenians kept in these 
 mines ? Two or three allusions give us a hideous 
 insight into this great social sore, which has not 
 been laid bare, because the wild district of Lau- 
 rium, and the deep mines under its surface, have 
 concealed the facts from the ordinary observer. 
 Nicias, we are told, let out iooo slaves to Sosias the 
 Thracian, at an obol a day each — the lessee being 
 bound to restore them to him the same in number. 
 
 The meaning of this frightful contract is only 
 too plain. The yearly rent paid for each slave was 
 about half the full price paid for him in the market. 
 It follows, that if the slave lived for three years, 
 Nicias made a profit of 50 per cent, on his outlay. 
 No doubt, some part of this extraordinary bargain 
 must be explained by the great profits which an 
 experienced miner could make — a fact supported by 
 the tract on the Revenues, which cannot date more 
 than a generation later than the bargain of Nicias. 
 The lessee, too, was under the additional risk from 
 the slaves escaping in time of war, when a hostile 
 army might make a special invasion into the 
 mountain district for the purpose of inflicting 
 a blow on this important part of Athenian reve- 
 
v.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . 131 
 
 nue. In such cases, it may be presumed, that 
 desperate attempts were made by the slaves to 
 escape ; for, although the Athenian slaves gene- 
 rally were the best treated in Greece, and had 
 many holidays, it was very different with the 
 gangs employed by the Thracian taskmaster. We 
 are told that they had 360 working days in the 
 year. This, together with the poison of the atmo- 
 sphere, tells its tale plainly enough. 
 
 And yet Nicias, the capitalist who worked this 
 hideous trade, was the most pious and God-fearing 
 man at Athens. So high was his reputation for 
 integrity and religion, that the people insisted on 
 appointing him again and again to commands for 
 which he was wholly unfit ; and when at last he 
 ruined the great Athenian army before Syracuse, 
 and lost his own life, by his extreme devoutness, 
 and his faith in the threats and warnings of the 
 gods — even then the great sceptical historian, who 
 cared for none of these things, condones all his 
 blunders for the sake of his piety and his re- 
 spectability. 
 
 K 2 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 EXCURSIONS IN ATTICA — SUNIUM — MARATHON — 
 ELEUSIS. 
 
 Of course, however, an excursion to Laurium, inte- 
 resting as it might be, were absurd without visiting 
 the far more famous Sunium — the promontory 
 which had already struck us so much on our sea 
 voyage round the point — the temple which Byron 
 has again hallowed with his immortal verse, and 
 Turner, with his hardly less immortal pencil. So 
 we hired horses on our return from the mines, and 
 set out on a very fine afternoon to ride down some 
 seven or eight miles from Ergasteria to the famous 
 promontory. Our route led over rolling hills, co- 
 vered with arbutus and stunted firs ; along valleys 
 choked with deep, matted grass ; by the side of the 
 sea, upon the narrow ledge of broken rocks. No- 
 where was there a road, or a vestige of a human 
 habitation, save where the telegraph wire dipped 
 into the sea, pointing the way to the distant Syra. 
 It was late in the day, and the sun was getting 
 low, so we urged our horses to a canter wherever 
 the ground would permit it. But neither the heat 
 
ch. vi. J EXCURSIONS IN A TTICA . i 
 
 nor the pace could conquer the indefatigable 
 esquire who attended us on foot to show us the 
 way, and hold the horses when we stopped. His 
 speed and endurance made me think of old Phidip- 
 pides and his run to Sparta; nor, indeed, do any 
 of the feats recorded of the old Greeks, either in 
 swimming or running, appear incredible when we 
 witness the feats that are being performed almost 
 every day by modern muscle and endurance. At 
 last, after a delightful two hours' roaming through 
 the' homely solitude, we found ourselves at the foot 
 of the last hill, and over us, standing against the 
 sky, the shining pillars of the ruined temple. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the temple of Neptune 
 on Mount Taenarum must have been quite its rival 
 as to position, but the earthquakes of Laconia have 
 made havoc of its treasures, while at Sunium — 
 though some of the drums in the shafts of the 
 pillars have been actually displaced several inches 
 from their fellows above and below, so that the 
 perfect fitting of the old Athenians has come to 
 look like the tottering work of a giant child with 
 marble bricks — in spite of this, thirteen pillars re- 
 main, 1 a piece of architrave, and a giant platform of 
 solid blocks ; above all, a site not desecrated by mo- 
 dern habitations, where we can sit and think of the 
 great old days, and of the men who set up this great 
 monument at the remotest corner of their land. 
 
 1 Byron, who loved this spot above all others, I think, in Greece, 
 speaks of sixteen as still standing in his day. 
 
134 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 The Greeks told us that this temple, that at 
 ^Egina, and the Parthenon, are placed exactly at 
 the angles of a great equilateral triangle, with each 
 side about twenty-five or thirty miles long. Our 
 maps will not verify this belief. The distance 
 from Athens to Sunium appears much longer than 
 either of the other lines, nor do we find in antiquity 
 any hint that such a principle was attended to, or 
 that any peculiar virtue was attached to it. 
 
 We found the platform nearly complete, built 
 Avith great square blocks of porous stone, and in 
 some places very high, though in others scarcely 
 raised at all, according to the requirements of the 
 ground. Over it the temple was built, not with 
 the huge blocks which we see at Corinth and in the 
 Parthenon, but still of perfectly white marble, and 
 with that beautifully close fitting, without mortar, 
 rubble, or cement, which characterizes the best and 
 most perfect epoch of Greek architecture. The 
 stone, too, is the finest white marble, and being 
 exposed to no dust on its lonely site, has alone of 
 all temples kept its original colour — if, indeed, it 
 was originally white, and not enriched with divers 
 colours. The earthquake, which has displaced the 
 stones in the middle of the pillars, has tumbled 
 down many large pieces, which can be seen from 
 above scattered all down the slope where they 
 have rolled. But enough still remains to see the 
 plan, and imagine the effect of the whole structure. 
 It is in the usual simple, grand, Doric style, but 
 
VI.] EXCURSIONS IN A TTICA . 135 
 
 lighter in proportions than the older Attic temples ; 
 and, being meant for distant effect, was probably 
 not much decorated. Its very site gives it all 
 the ornament any building could possibly require. 
 
 It was our good fortune to see it in a splendid 
 sunset, with all the sea a sheet of molten gold, and 
 all the headlands and islands coloured with hazy 
 purple. The mountains of Eubcea, with their pro- 
 montory of Gersestus, closed the view upon the 
 north-east, but far down into the .zEgean reached 
 island after island, as it were striving to prolong a 
 highway to the holy Delos. The ancient Andros, 
 Tenos, Myconos were there, but the eye sought in 
 vain for the home of Apollo's shrine — the smallest, 
 and yet the greatest of the group. The parallel chain, 
 reaching down from Sunium itself, were hidden 
 behind one another, Keos, Kythnus, Seriphos, and 
 Siphnos, but left open to view the distant Melos. 
 Then came a short space of open sea, due south, 
 which alone prevented us from imagining our- 
 selves on some fair and quiet inland lake ; and 
 then to the south-west we saw the point of Hydria, 
 the only spot in all Hellas whose recent fame 
 exceeds the report of ancient days. The moun- 
 tains of Argolis lay behind ^Egina, and formed, 
 with their Arcadian neighbours, a solid background, 
 till the eye wandered round to the Acropolis of 
 Corinth, hardly visible in the burning brightness 
 of the sun's decline. And all this splendid expanse 
 of sea and mountain, and bay and cliff, seemed as 
 
i 3 6 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 utterly deserted as the wildest western coast of 
 Scotland or Ireland. One or two little white sails, 
 speeding in his boat some lonely fisherman, made 
 the solitude, if possible, more speaking and more 
 intense. There are finer views, more extensive, 
 and perhaps even more varied, but none more 
 exquisitely interesting and more melancholy to the 
 student of Ancient Greece. 
 
 This great loneliness is a feature that follows the 
 traveller almost everywhere through the country. 
 Many centuries of insecurity, and indeed of vio- 
 lence, have made country life almost impossible, 
 and now that better times have come, the love and 
 knowledge of it are gone. The city Athenian no 
 longer grumbles, as he did in Aristophanes' day, 
 that an invasion has driven him in from the rude 
 plenty and simple luxuries of his farming life, where 
 with his figs and his olives, his raisins and his heady 
 wine, he made holiday before his gods, and roasted 
 his thrush and his chestnuts with his neighbour over 
 the fire. All this is gone. There remains, indeed, 
 the old political lounger, the loafer of the market- 
 place, ever seeking to obtain some shabby main- 
 tenance by sycophancy or by bullying. This type 
 is not hard to find in modern Athens, but the old 
 sturdy Acharnian, as well as the rich horse-breed- 
 ing Alcmseonid, are things of the past. No part of 
 the country of Attica can be considered even mode- 
 rately cultivated, except a part of the Thriasian 
 plain, and the valley of the Cephissus, reaching 
 
vi.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . 137 
 
 from near Dekeleia to the sea. This latter plain, 
 with its fine olive-woods reaching down across 
 Academus to the region of the old long walls, is 
 fairly covered with corn and grazing cattle, with 
 plane trees and with poplars. But even here 
 many of the homesteads are deserted, and the 
 country seats of the /Athenians are often left empty 
 for years, whenever a band of brigands appears in 
 the neighbouring mountains, and threatens the out- 
 lying houses with blackmail, if not with bloodier 
 violence. 
 
 All these remarks are even more strongly exem- 
 plified by the beautiful country which lies between 
 Pentelicus and Hymettus, and which is now covered 
 with forest and brushwood. We passed through 
 this vale one beautiful sunny morning, on our way 
 to visit Marathon. There is, indeed, a road for 
 some miles — the road to the quarries of Pentelicus — 
 but a very different road from what the Athenians 
 must have had. It is now a mere broad track, cut 
 by wheels and hoofs in the sward, and wherever 
 the ruts become too deep, the driver turns aside, 
 and makes a parallel track for his own con- 
 venience. In summer days the dust produced by 
 this sort of road is something beyond description, 
 and the soil being very red clay, we have an 
 atmosphere which accounts to some extent for the 
 remarkable colour of the old buildings of Athens. 
 Our way, after turning round the steep Lycabettus, 
 which, like Arthur's seat at Edinburgh, commands 
 
138 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [chl 
 
 the town close by, passes up the right side of the 
 undulating plain of Attica, with the stony but 
 variegated slopes of Hymettus upon the right, and 
 Pentelicus almost straight ahead. As soon as the 
 suburbs are passed we meet but one or two country 
 seats, surrounded with dark cypress and pepper 
 trees ; but outside the dark green is a tall, dazzling,, 
 white wall, which gives a peculiarly Oriental cha- 
 racter to the landscape. There is cultivation visible 
 when you look to the westward, where the village 
 of Cephissia lies, among the groves which accom- 
 pany the Cephissus on its course; but up towards 
 Pentelicus, along the track which must once have 
 been crowded with carts, and heavy teams, and 
 shouting drivers, when all the blocks of the Par- 
 thenon were being hurried from their quarry to 
 adorn the Acropolis — along this famous track there 
 is hardly a sign of culture. Occasionally, a rough 
 stubble field showed that a little corn had been 
 cut — an occasional station, with a couple of soldiers, 
 shows why more has not been sown. The fear of 
 brigands has paralysed industry, and even driven 
 out the scanty rural population. 
 
 It strikes me, when speaking of this road, that 
 the Greek roads cannot have been at all so w r ell 
 constructed as the Roman, many of which are still 
 to be seen in England. Though I went upon the 
 track of many of them, I did not see a single 
 vestige of an old Greek road. There are here and 
 there wretched remains of Turkish roads — rough,. 
 
vi.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . 1 39 
 
 angular stones laid down across the hills, in a close 
 irregular pavement; but of the great builders of the 
 Parthenon, and of Phylae, of Eleutherae, and of 
 Eleusis, hardly a patch of road-work has, so far 
 as I know, remained. 
 
 The country becomes gradually covered with 
 shrubs, and then with stunted trees — generally old 
 fir-trees, all carved and wounded for the sake of 
 their resin, which is so painfully obtrusive in Greek 
 wine. But in one place there is, by way of change, 
 a picturesque bridge over a rapid rocky-bedded 
 river, which is completely hidden with rich flower- 
 ing oleanders, and in which we found sundry Attic 
 women, of the baser sort, washing their clothes. 
 The woods in this place were wonderfully rich and 
 scented, and the sound of the turtle doves was heard 
 in the . land. Presently we came upon a thickly- 
 w^ooded corner, which was pointed out to us as the 
 spot where our unfortunate countrymen were cap- 
 tured in 1870, and carried up the slopes of Penteli- 
 cus, to be sacrificed to the blundering of the English 
 Minister or the Greek Ministry — I could not decide 
 which — and more certainly to their own chivalry, for 
 while all the captured Greeks escaped during the 
 pursuit, our English gentlemen would not break 
 their parole. These men are now held by the better 
 Greeks to be martyrs for the good of Greece ; for 
 the outrage first forced the Government to take 
 really vigorous measures for the safety of the coun- 
 try. The whole band were gradually captured and 
 
i4o RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 executed, till at last Takos, their chief, was caught 
 in Peloponnesus, three or four years ago, and hanged 
 at Athens. So it came that we found the country 
 apparently as safe as Ireland, and required neither 
 escort nor arms, nor, indeed, any precautions what- 
 ever. 
 
 We had, indeed, a missive from the Greek 
 Prime Minister, which we presented to the Chief 
 Police Officer of each town — a gentleman in the 
 usual scarlet cap and white petticoats, but carry- 
 ing a great dog-whip as the sign of his office. 
 This custom, strange to say, dates from the days 
 of Aristophanes. But the Prime Minister warned 
 us that, though things were now safe, there was 
 no permanent security. Any revolution in the 
 neighbourhood (such, for example, as that in Her- 
 zegovina, which was at that time not yet declared) 
 was sure, he said, to send over the Turkish frontier 
 a number of outlaws or other fugitives, who would 
 support themselves by levying blackmail on the 
 peasantry, and then on travellers. I venture, there- 
 fore, to suspect that at the present moment Rou- 
 melia may any day become unsafe. We were 
 informed that the Morea, which does not afford an 
 easy escape into Turkey, has been for years per- 
 fectly secure, and I have no reason to doubt my in- 
 formants. So, then, any traveller desirous of seeing 
 the Peloponnesus only — Sparta, Olympia, Manti- 
 nea, Argos, Corinth — may count on doing so with 
 safety. Not so the visitor to Thermopylae, Delphi, 
 
VI.] EXCURSIONS IN A TTICA . 1 4 i 
 
 Thebes, Marathon. The Professors of the Univer- 
 sity with whom I talked were, indeed, of a more 
 sanguine opinion. They did not anticipate any 
 recurrence of the danger : they considered Greece 
 one of the safest and quietest of countries. Yet 
 their argument (above, p. 112) was more amusing 
 than conclusive to me. But in one point they all 
 seemed agreed. It was perfectly certain that the 
 presence of bandits would be at once known at 
 Athens. "Why this was so I was not informed, nor 
 whether travellers would be at once informed also. 
 In no case should I therefore advise any friend to 
 go without proper introductions to our amiable and 
 discreet Minister, on whose advice, and on whose 
 advice alone, one should implicitly rely. 
 
 So much for the safety of travelling in Greece, 
 which is naturally suggested by the melancholy 
 fate of Mr. Vyner and his friends. But one point 
 more. It is both idle and foolish to imagine that 
 revolvers and daggers are the best protection 
 against Greek bandits, should they re-appear. 
 They never attack wmere they are visible. The 
 first notice given to the traveller is the sight of 
 twenty or thirty muzzles pointed at him from the 
 covert, with a summons to surrender. Except, 
 therefore, the party be too numerous to be so sur- 
 rounded and visiy so that some could fight, even 
 were others shot — except in such a case, arms are 
 only an additional prize, and a tempting one, for 
 the clephts. It is, indeed, very seldom that the 
 
1 42 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 carrying of arms is to be recommended to any 
 traveller in any country. 
 
 As we ascended the long saddle of country which 
 lies between Pentelicus and Hymettus, we came 
 upon a fine olive-wood, with the same enormous 
 stems which we had already wondered at in the 
 groves of Academe. Indeed, some of the stems in 
 this wood were the largest we had seen, and made 
 us think that they may have been there since the 
 days when the olive oil of Attica was one of its 
 most famous products, and its export was even for- 
 bidden. Even then there were ancient stumps — 
 juopiat, as they were called — which were sacred, 
 and which no man who rented or bought the land 
 might remove — a restriction which seems hard to 
 us, but was not so in Greece, where corn grows 
 freely in the shade of trees, and is even habitually 
 planted in orchards. But at all events, these old 
 gnarled, hollowed stumps, with their tufts of 
 branches starting from the pollared trunk, are a 
 really classical feature in the country, and deserve, 
 therefore, a passing notice. 
 
 When we had got well between the mountains, a 
 new scene unfolded itself. We began to see the 
 famous old Euripus, with the mountains of Eubcea 
 over against us, and, down to the south, behind Hy- 
 mettus, stretched a long tract of mountainous and 
 barren country, which never played a prominent 
 part in history, till we reach the extremity of Su- 
 nium, but where a conical hill was pointed out to 
 
vi.] EXCURSIONS IN A TTICA . 1 43 
 
 us as the site of the old deme Brauron, which we 
 hardly recognised under its modern pronunciation 
 of Vravron. It is, indeed, surprising how little of 
 Attica was ever celebrated. Close by the most 
 famous city of the world are reaches of country 
 which are as obscure to us as the wilds of Arca- 
 dia; and we may suspect that the shepherds who 
 inhabited the <£eAA£a, or rocky pastures in the Attic 
 hills, were not much superior to ' those whom we 
 now meet herding their goats in the same region. 
 
 The plain of Marathon, as everybody knows, is 
 a long crescent-shaped strip of land by the shore, 
 surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills, which may 
 be crossed conveniently in three places, but most 
 -easily towards the south-west, along the road which 
 we travelled, and which leads directly to Athens. 
 When the Athenians marched through this broad 
 and easy passage, they found that the Persians had 
 landed at the northern extremity of the plain— I 
 suppose, because the water was there sufficiently 
 deep to let them land conveniently. Most of the 
 shore, as you proceed southward, is lined on the 
 seaboard by swamps. The Greek army must have 
 marched northwards, along the spurs of Pentelicus, 
 and taken up their position near the north of the 
 plain. There was evidently much danger that the 
 Persians should force a passage through the vil- 
 lage of Marathon, towards the north-west. Had 
 they done this, they might have rounded Penteli- 
 cus, and descended the main plain of Attica, from 
 
i 4 4 RAMBLES IN GREECE. • [ch. 
 
 the valley below Dekeleia. Perhaps, however, this 
 pass was then defended by an outlying fort, or by 
 some defences at Marathon itself. The site of the 
 battle is absolutely fixed by the great mound,, 
 upon which was placed a lion, which has been 
 carried off, no one knows when or whither. This 
 mound is exactly an English mile from the steep 
 slope of one of the hills, and about half a mile 
 from the sea at present; nor was there, when I saw 
 it, any difficulty in walking right to the shore,, 
 though a river flows out there, which shows, by its 
 sedgy banks and lofty reeds, a tendency to create a 
 marshy tract in rainy weather. . But the mound is 
 so placed that, if it marks the centre of the battle, 
 the Athenians must have faced nearly north, and r 
 if they faced the sea eastward, as is commonly 
 stated, this mound must mark the conflict on their 
 left wing. The mound is very large — I suppose 
 thirty feet high, altogether of clay, so far as we 
 could see, and bears traces of having been fre- 
 quently ransacked in search of antiquities. 
 
 Like almost every view in Greece, the prospect 
 from this mound is full of beauty and variety — 
 everywhere broken outlines, everywhere patches of 
 blue sea, everywhere silence and solitude. Byron 
 is so much out of fashion now, and so much more 
 talked about than read — though even that notice of 
 him is fast disappearing — that I will venture to 
 remind the reader of the splendid things he has 
 said of Greece, and especially of this very plain of 
 
vi.] EXCURSIONS IN A TTICA . 1 45 
 
 Marathon. He was carried away by his en- 
 thusiasm to fancy a great future possible for the 
 country, and to believe that its desolation and the 
 low condition of the inhabitants were simply the 
 result of Turkish tyranny, and not of many natural 
 causes, conspiring for twenty centuries. He paints 
 the Greek brigand or pirate as many others have 
 painted the * noble savage/ with the omission of all 
 his meaner vices. But, in spite of all these faults, 
 who is there who has felt as he the affecting aspects 
 of this beautiful land — the tomb of ancient glory — 
 the home of ancient wisdom — the mother of science, 
 of art, of philosophy, of politics — the champion of 
 liberty — the envy of the Persian and the Roman — 
 the teacher, even still, of modern Europe ? It 
 is surely a great loss to our generation, and 
 a bad sign of its culture, that the love of more 
 modern poets has weaned them from the study 
 of one not less great in most respects, but far 
 greater in one at least — in that burning enthu- 
 siasm for a national cause, in that red-hot passion 
 for liberty, which, even when misapplied, or wasted 
 upon unworthy objects, is ever one of the noblest 
 and most stirring instincts of higher man. 
 
 But Byron may well be excused for raving about 
 the liberty of the Greeks, for truly their old conflict 
 at Marathon, where a few thousand ill-disciplined 
 men repulsed a larger number of still worse dis- 
 ciplined Orientals, without any recondite tactics — 
 perhaps even without any very extraordinary hero- 
 ic 
 
146 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 ism — how is it that this conflict has maintained a 
 celebrity which has not been equalled by all the 
 great battles of the world, from that day down to 
 our own ? The courage of the Greeks, as I have 
 elsewhere shown, 1 was not of the first order. 
 Herodotus praises the Athenians in this very 
 battle for being the first Greeks that dared to 
 look the Persians in the face. Their generals all 
 through history seem never to feel sure of victory, 
 and always endeavour to harangue their soldiers 
 into a fury. Instead of advising coolness, they 
 specially incite to rage — opyy 7rpoa(M^wjuev y says 
 one of them in Thucydides — as if any man not in 
 this state would be sure to estimate the danger 
 fully, and run away. It is, indeed, true that the 
 ancient battles were hand to hand, and therefore 
 parallel to our charges of bayonets, which are said 
 to be very seldom carried out by two opposing lines, 
 as one of them almost always gives way before the 
 actual collision takes place. This must often have 
 taken place in Greek battles, for, at Amphipolis, 
 Brasidas in a battle lost seven men ; at a battle at 
 Corinth, mentioned by Xenophon — an important 
 battle, too — the slain amounted to eight ; 2 and these 
 
 1 Social Life in Greece, p. 23. 
 
 2 Xen. Hell., iv., 3, § 1. To cite a parallel in modern history : a 
 writer in the Pall Mall Gazette (July 12, 1876) says: ' I witnessed a 
 battle during the War of Greek Independence. It lasted three days ; 
 the quantity of ammunition expended was enormous, and the result was 
 one man wounded !' 
 
vi.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . 147 
 
 battles were fought before the days when whole 
 armies were composed of mercenaries, who spared 
 one another, as Ordericus Vitalis says, 'for the love 
 of God, and out of good feeling for the fraternity of 
 arms.' So, then, the loss of 192 Athenians, includ- 
 ing some distinguished men, was rather a severe 
 one. As to the loss of the Persians, I so totally 
 disbelieve the Greek accounts of such things, that 
 it is better to pass it by in silence. 
 
 Perhaps most readers will be astonished to hear 
 of the Athenian army as undisciplined, and of the 
 science of war as undeveloped, in those times. 
 Yet I firmly believe this was so. The accounts of 
 battles by almost all the historians are so utterly 
 vague, and so childishly conventional, that it is 
 evident these gentlemen were not only quite igno- 
 rant of the science of war, but could not easily 
 find anyone to explain it to them. We know that 
 the Spartans — the most admired of all Greek war- 
 riors, were chiefly so admired because they devised 
 the system of subordinating officers to one another 
 within the same detachment, like our gradation 
 from colonel to corporal. So orders were passed 
 down from officer to officer, instead of being bawled 
 out by a herald to a whole army. But this super- 
 iority of the Spartans, who were really disciplined, 
 and went into battle coolly, like brave men, cer- 
 tainly did not extend to strategy, but was merely 
 a question of better drill. As soon as any real 
 strategist met them, they were helpless. Thus 
 
 L2 
 
1 48 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 Iphicrates, when he devised Wellington's plan of 
 meeting their attacking column in line, and using 
 missiles, succeeded against them, even without 
 firearms. Thus Epaminondas, when he devised 
 Napoleon's plan of massing troops on a single 
 point, while keeping his enemy's line occupied, 
 defeated them without any considerable struggle. 
 As for that general's great battle of Mantinea, 
 which seems really to have been introduced by 
 some complicated strategical movements, it is a 
 mere hopeless jumble in our historians. But these 
 men were in the distant future when the battle of 
 Marathon was being fought. 
 
 Yet what signifies all this criticism ? In spite of 
 all scepticism, in spite of all contempt, the battle 
 of Marathon, whether badly or well fought,, and 
 the troops at Marathon, whether well or ill-trained, 
 will ever be more famous than any other battle or 
 army, however important or gigantic its dimen- 
 sions. Even in this very war, the battles of Sala- 
 mis and Plataea were vastly more important and 
 more hotly contested. The losses were greater, 
 the results were more enduring, yet thousands have 
 heard of Marathon to whom the other names are 
 unknown. So much for literary ability — so much 
 for the power of talking well about one's deeds. 
 Marathon was fought by Athenians; the Athenians 
 eclipsed the other Greeks as far as the other Greeks 
 eclipsed the rest of the world, in literary power. 
 This battle became the literary property of the city, 
 
vi.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . 1 4 9 
 
 hymned by poet, cited by orator, told by aged 
 nurse, lisped by stammering infant; and so it has 
 taken its position, above all criticism, as one of the 
 great decisive battles which assured the liberty of 
 the West against Oriental despotism. 
 
 The plain in the present day is quite bare of 
 trees, and, as Colonel Leake observed, appears to 
 have been so at the time of the battle, from the 
 vague account of its evolutions. There is a little 
 corn, and a few other crops about the great tumu- 
 lus ; and along the seashore, whither we went to 
 bathe, there was a large herd of cows and oxen^ 
 a sight not very usual in Greece. "When we rushed 
 into the shallow blue water, striving to reach swim- 
 ming depth, we could not but think of the scene 
 when Cynsegeirus and his companions rushed in 
 armed to stop the embarkation of the Persians. 
 On the shore then teeming with ships of war, with 
 transports, with fighting and flying men, there was 
 now no sign of life, but we in the water, and the 
 lazy cattle and their silent herdsman looking upon 
 us in wonder ; for it was only May, though very 
 hot, and the modern Greek never thinks it safe to 
 bathe till the end of June at least — in this like his 
 Italian neighbour. There was not a single ship or 
 boat in the straits ; there was no sign of life or of 
 population on the coast of Eubcea. There was 
 everywhere that solitude which so much struck 
 Byron, as it strikes every intelligent traveller in 
 Modern Greece. There was not even the child or 
 
i 5 o RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch.. 
 
 beggar, with coins and pieces of pottery, who is so 
 troublesome about Italian ruins, and who has even 
 lately appeared at the Parthenon, the theatre of 
 Argos, and a few other places in Greece. We 
 asked the herdsman for remnants of arms or pieces 
 of money : he had seen such things picked up, but 
 knew nothing of their value. Lord Byron tells us 
 he was offered the purchase of the whole plain 
 (six miles by two) for about ^900. It would have 
 been a fine speculation for an antiquarian : but I 
 am surprised, as he was, rather at the greatness 
 than at the smallness of the price. The Greek 
 government would probably now give the fee- 
 simple to anyone who would pay the ordinary 
 taxes on property, which were not, I was told, very 
 heavy. But still the jealousy of the nation would 
 not tolerate a foreign speculator. 
 
 I have already spoken (p. 108) of the position of 
 the pass of Daphne, and how it leads the traveller 
 over the ridge which separates the plain of the 
 Cephissus from the Thriasian plain. I have also 
 spoken at length of the country about the Ce- 
 phissus, with its olive woods and its nightingales. 
 When we go through the pass of Daphne — a gentle 
 and easy ascent on both sides — a perfectly new 
 view opens before us. We see under us the Thria- 
 sian plain, well covered with ripening corn and 
 other crops ; we see at the far side of the crescent- 
 shaped bay the remains of Eleusis. Behind it, and 
 
vi.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTIC, I. 151 
 
 all round to the right up to where we stand, is an 
 amphitheatre of hills — the spurs of Mount Parnes, 
 which from Phylse reach due south down to where 
 we stand, and due west on the inland of the Thria- 
 sian plain, till they meet, and are confounded with, 
 the slopes of Cithaeron, which reach for miles away 
 behind Eleusis. On the sea-side, to our left, lies 
 the island of Salamis, so near the coast that the 
 sea seems a calm inland lake, lying tortuously be- 
 tween the hills. 
 
 Many points of Greek history become plain to 
 us by this view. We see how true was the epithet 
 ' rocky Salamis,' for the island, though it looks 
 very insignificant on our maps, contains lofty 
 mountains, with very bare and rocky sides. We 
 begin to see how the island was equally convenient 
 (as the Irish say) to both Megara and Attica, if 
 we consider that Eleusis was strictly a part of 
 Attica. The harbour of the Peiraeus, for example, 
 would be quite useless if an enemy were watching 
 it from Salamis. But we also come to see the 
 sense of the old legend, that Eleusis had originally 
 a separate king or government from Athens, and 
 that the two cities once carried on war against 
 each other. The towns are but a few miles apart ; 
 but their respective plains are so distinctly and 
 completely separated by the pass of Daphne, that 
 not one acre of the territory of Eleusis can be seen 
 from Athens, nor of Athens from Eleusis. So also, 
 lastly, we come to feel how natural is the remark 
 
1 5 2 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 of Thucydides, that the population of Athens, when 
 the Lacedaemonians invaded Attica, and came no 
 farther than the Thriasian plain, did not feel the 
 terrors of a hostile invasion, as the enemy was not 
 in sight ; but when he crossed the pass, and began 
 to ravage Acharnae, and the vale of the Cephissus, 
 then indeed, though Eleusis was just as near, and 
 just as much their own, they first felt the horrors 
 of the invasion, and were for the first time deeply 
 dejected. This is a good example of that com- 
 bined farness and nearness which is so charac- 
 teristic about most neighbouring cities in Greece. 
 
 The wretched modern village of Eleusis is pic- 
 turesquely situated near the sea, on the old site, 
 and there are still to be seen the ruins, not only of 
 the famous temple of Demeter, but also of the 
 Propyleea, built apparently in imitation of those of 
 Mnesicles on the Acropolis at Athens, though the 
 site of both temple and Propylaea are at Eleusis 
 low, and in no way striking. 
 
 These celebrated ruins are wretchedly defaced. 
 Not a column or a wall is now standing, and we 
 can see nothing but vast fragments of pillars and 
 capitals, and a great pavement, all of white marble, 
 along which the ancient wheel-tracks are distinctly 
 visible. There are also under-ground vaults of 
 small dimensions, which, the people tell you, were 
 intended for the Mysteries. We that know what 
 vast crowds attended there will not give credence 
 to this ignorant guess ; and indeed we learn from 
 
vl] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . 153 
 
 distinct evidence that the great ceremony took 
 place in a large building specially constructed for 
 the purpose. The necessary darkness was obtained 
 by performing the more solemn rites at night ; not 
 by going down beneath the surface of the earth. 
 
 It is, of course, the celebrated Mysteries — the 
 Greater Eleiisinia, as they were called — which give 
 to the now wretched village of Eleusis, with its 
 hopeless ruins, so deep an interest. This Avonder- 
 ful feast, handed down from the remotest antiquity, 
 maintained its august splendour all through the 
 greater ages of Greek history, down to the times 
 of decay and trifling — when everything else in the 
 country had become mean and contemptible. Even 
 Cicero, who was of the initiated himself, and a man 
 of wide culture, and of a sceptical turn of mind — 
 even Cicero speaks of it as the great product of the 
 culture of Athens. ' Much that is excellent and 
 divine/ says he, 1 i does Athens seem to me to 
 have produced and added to our life, but nothing 
 better than those Mysteries, by which we are formed 
 and moulded from a rude and savage life to human- 
 ity ; and indeed in the Mysteries we perceive the 
 real principles of life, and learn not only to live 
 happily, but to die with a fairer hope/ These are 
 the words of a man writing, as I have said, in the 
 days of the ruin and prostration of Greece. Can 
 we then wonder at the enthusiastic language of the 
 Homeric Hymn, 2 of Pindar, 3 of Sophocles, 4 of Aris- 
 
 1 DeLegg., II. 14, § 36. 2 in Cer. v. 480. 3 Thren. 4 O. C. 1042. 
 
i54 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [chl 
 
 tophanes, 1 of Plato, 2 of Isocrates, 3 of Chrysippus ? 
 Every manner of writer — religious poet, worldly 
 poet, sceptical philosopher, orator — all are of one 
 mind about this, far the greatest of all the reli- 
 gious festivals of Greece. 
 
 To what did it owe this transcendent character ? 
 It was not because it worshipped exceptional gods,, 
 for the worship of Demeter and Cora was an old 
 and widely diffused cult all over Greece ; and there 
 were other Eleusinia in various places. It was not 
 because the ceremony consisted of mysteries, of 
 hidden acts and words, which it was impious to 
 reveal, and which the initiated alone might know. 
 For the habit of secret worship was practised in 
 every state, where special clans were charged with 
 the care of special secret services, which no man else 
 might know. Nay, even within the ordinary homes 
 of the Greeks there were these Mysteries. Neither 
 was it because of the splendour of the temple and its 
 appointments, which never equalled the Panathe- 
 na^a at the Parthenon, or the splendours of Delphi, 
 or Olympia. There is only one reasonable cause, and 
 it is that which all our serious authorities agree 
 upon — the doctrine taught in the Mysteries was a 
 faith which revealed to them hopeful things about 
 the world to come, and which not so much as a 
 condition, but as a consequence, of this clearer light, 
 this higher faith, made them better citizens and 
 
 1 Ran. 455. 2 Phced. CC. 29, 30. 3 Paneg. § 6. 
 
VI.] EXC URSIONS IN A TTICA . 155 
 
 better men. This faith was taught them in the 
 Mysteries through symbols, 1 through prayer and 
 fasting, through wild rejoicings ; but, as Aristotle 
 expressly tells us, it was reached not by intellectual 
 persuasion, but by a change into a new moral 
 state — in fact, by being spiritually revived. 
 
 Here, then, we have the strangest and most 
 striking analogy to our religion in the Greek 
 mythology, for here we have a higher faith publicly 
 taught — any man might present himself to be ini- 
 tiated — and taught, not in opposition to the popular 
 creed, but merely by deepening it, and showing to 
 the ordinary worldling its spiritual power. The 
 belief in the Goddess Demeter and her daughter, 
 the queen of the nether world, was, as I have said, 
 common all over Greece ; but even as now-a-days 
 we are told that there may be two kinds of belief 
 of the same truths — one of the head and another 
 of the heart — just as the most excellent man of the 
 world, who believes all the creeds of the Church, is 
 called an unbeliever, in the higher sense, by our 
 Evangelical Christians : so the ordinary Greek, 
 though he prayed and offered at the Temple of De- 
 meter, was held by the initiated at the Mysteries 
 to be wallowing in the mire of ignorance, and stum- 
 
 1 There seems no doubt that some of these symbols, derived from old 
 nature-worship, were very gross, and quite inconsistent with modern 
 notions of religion. But even these were features hallowed and ennobled 
 by the spirit of the celebrants, whose reverence blinded their eyes,, 
 while lifting up their hearts. 
 
i 5 6 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. vi. 
 
 bling in the night of gloom — he was held to live 
 without real light, and to die without hope, and in 
 despair. 
 
 The very fact that it was not lawful to divulge 
 the mystery has prevented the many writers who 
 knew it from giving us any description from which 
 we might gain a clear idea of this wonderful rite. 
 We have hints of various sacred vessels, of vari- 
 ous priests known by special technical names; of 
 dramatic representations of the rape of Cora, and 
 of the grief of her mother ; of her complaints before 
 Zeus, and the final reconciliation. We hear of 
 scenes of darkness and fear, in which the hopeless 
 state of the unbelievers was portrayed; of light and 
 glory, to which the convert attained, when at last 
 his eyes were opened to the knowledge of good and 
 evil. 
 
 But all these things are fragmentary glimpses, 
 as are also the doctrines hinted of the Unity of 
 God, and of atonement by sacrifice. There remains 
 nothing clear and certain, but the unanimous 
 verdict as to the greatness, the majesty, and 
 the awe of the services, and as to the great spiri- 
 tual knowledge and comfort which they conveyed. 
 The consciousness of guilt was not, indeed, first 
 taught by them, but was felt generally, and felt 
 very keenly by the Greek mind. These Mysteries 
 were its Gospel of reconciliation with the offended 
 gods. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FROM ATHENS TO THEBES — THE PASSES OF MOUNT 
 CITH^ERON, ELEUTHER^E, PLAT^EA. 
 
 Xo ordinary student, looking" at the map of Attica 
 and Bceotia, can realize the profound and complete 
 separation between these two countries. Except at 
 the very north extremity, where the fortified town 
 of Oropus guarded an easy boundary, all the fron- 
 tier consists, not merely of steep mountains, but of 
 parallel and intersecting ridges and gorges, which 
 contain indeed a few Alpine valleys, such as that 
 of OEnoe, but which are, as a rule, wild and barren, 
 easily defensible by a few against many, and totally 
 unfit for the site of any considerable town, or any 
 advanced culture. As I before stated, the traveller 
 can pass through by Dekeleia, or he can pass most 
 directly by Phylae, the fort which Thrasybulus 
 seized, when he desired to reconquer Athens with 
 his democratic exiles. The historians usually tell us 
 'that he seized and fortified Phylce/ a statement 
 which the present remains seem to render very 
 doubtful, indeed. It is quite impossible that the 
 great hill-fort of the very finest Attic building, which 
 
RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 is now shown, and admired by all, could have been 
 * knocked up' by Thrasybulus and his exiles. The 
 careful construction and the enormous extent of the 
 building compel us to suppose it the work of a rich 
 state, and of a deliberate plan of fortification. It 
 seems very unlikely, for these reasons, that it was 
 built after the days of Thrasybulus, or that so im- 
 portant a point of attack should have been left 
 unguarded in the greater days of Athens. I am 
 therefore convinced that the fort, being built long 
 before, and being, in fact, one of the well-known 
 fortified demes through Attica, had been to some 
 extent dismantled, or allowed to fall into decay, at 
 the end of the Peloponnesian War, but that its 
 solid structure made it a matter of very little labour 
 for the exiles to render it very strong and easily 
 defensible. 
 
 This is one of the numerous instances in which 
 a single glance at the locality sets right an 
 historical statement that has eluded suspicion for 
 ages. The fort ofPhylae, like that of Eleutherse, 
 of which I shall speak, and like those of Messene 
 and of Orchomenus, is built of square blocks of 
 stone, carefully cut, and laid together without a 
 particle of rubble or cement, but so well fitted as 
 to be able to resist the wear of ages better than 
 almost any other building. I was informed by 
 M. Emile Burnouf, that in the case of a fort at 
 Megara, which I did not see, there are even poly- 
 gonal blocks, of which the irregular and varying 
 
•vn.] FROM ATHENS TO THEBES. 159 
 
 angles are fitted with such precision that it is 
 difficult, as in the case of the Parthenon, to 
 detect the joinings of the stones. The blocks are 
 by no means so colossal in these buildings as in 
 the great ruins about Mycenae; but the fitting is 
 closer, and the sites on which we find them very 
 lofty, and with precipitous ascents. This style of 
 building is specially mentioned by Thucydides 
 (I. 93) as being employed in the building of the 
 walls of the Peiraeus in the days of Themistocles, 
 apparently in contrast to the rude and hurried con- 
 struction of the city walls. But he speaks of the 
 great stones being not only cut square, but fastened 
 with clamps of iron soldered with lead. I am not 
 aware that any traces of this are found in the re- 
 maining hill-forts. The walls of the Peiraeus have, 
 unfortunately, long since almost totally disappeared. 
 We did not pass intoBceotia by the way ofPhylae, 
 preferring to take the longer route through Eleusis. 
 But no sooner had we left Eleusis than we began 
 to ascend into the rough country, which is the 
 preface to the wild mountain passes of Cithaeron. 
 It is, indeed, very difficult to find where one 
 range of mountains begins and another ends any- 
 where throughout Greece. There is generally one 
 high peak, which marks a whole chain or system 
 of mountains, and after which the system is called ; 
 but all closer specification seems lost, on account 
 of the immense number of ridges and points which 
 crowd upon the view in all directions. Thus the 
 
1 60 RA MBLES IN GREE CE. [ch. 
 
 chain of Parnes, after throwing out a spur towards 
 the south, which divides the Athenian and the 
 Thriasian plains, sweeps round the latter in a sort 
 of amphitheatre, and joins the system of Cithseron, 
 which extends almost parallel with Parnes. A 
 simple look on a map tells these things better than 
 any description. The only thing which must be spe- 
 cially enforced is, that all the region where a plain 
 is not expressly named is made up of broken 
 mountain ridges and rocky defiles, so that it may 
 fairly be called an Alpine country. A fellow- 
 traveller, who had just been in Norway, was 
 perpetually struck with its resemblance to the 
 Norwegian highlands. These things bring home 
 to us the separation of the old Greek territories in 
 a way which is hardly enforced in our histories. 
 
 I will only mention one other fact which points in 
 the same direction. We have a river Cephissus in 
 the plain of Athens. As soon as we cross the pass 
 of Daphne we have another Cephissus in the Thria- 
 sian plain. Within a day's journey, or nearly so,, 
 we have another Cephissus, losing itself in the 
 lake Copais, not far from Orchomenus. This repe- 
 tition of the same name shows how little inter- 
 course people have in the country, how little they 
 travel, and how there is no danger of confusing 
 these identical names. This fact, trifling as it is, 
 illustrates very powerfully the isolation which the 
 Greek mountains produce. 
 
 There is a good road from Athens to Thebes — a 
 
vii.] FROM ATHENS TO THEBES. 161 
 
 very unusual tiding in Greece, and we were able 
 to drive with four horses, after a fashion which 
 would have seemed very splendid in old days. 
 But, strange to say, the old Greek fashion of 
 driving four horses abreast, two being yoked to 
 the pole, and two outriggers, or irapaaupoi, as they 
 were called, has disappeared from Greece, whereas 
 it still survives in southern Italy. On the other 
 hand, the Greeks are more daring drivers than the 
 Italians, being indeed braver in all respects, and 
 when a road is to be had, a very fast pace is gene- 
 rally kept up. 
 
 As usual, the country was covered with brush- 
 wood, and with numbers of old gnarled fir-trees, 
 which bore everywhere upon their stems the great 
 wounds of the hatchet, made to extract the resin for 
 the flavouring of wine. Rare flocks of goats, with 
 their peculiar, dull, tinkling bells — bells which have 
 the same make and tone all through Calabria, 
 through Sicily, and through Greece — were the only 
 sign of human occupation or of population. But 
 when you look for houses, there is nothing in the 
 shape of wall or roof, save an occasional station, 
 where, but a few years since, soldiers were living to 
 keep the road safe from bandits. At last we came 
 upon the camp of some shepherds — a thing remind- 
 ing one far more of a gipsy camp than anything 
 else — a few dark-brown skins falling over two up- 
 right poles, so as to form a roof-shaped tent, of which 
 the entrance looked so absolutely black as to form 
 
 M 
 
1 62 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 quite a patch in the landscape. The,re is mere room 
 for lying in these tents by night, and, I suppose, in 
 the summer weather most of the shepherds will not 
 condescend even to this shelter. 
 
 After some hours' drive, we reached a grassy 
 dell, shaded by large plane-trees, where a lonely 
 little public-house — if I may so call it — of this 
 construction invited us to stop for watering the 
 horses, and inspecting more closely the owner. 
 There was the usual supply of such places — 
 red and white wine in small casks, excellent fresh 
 water, and lucumia, or Turkish delight. Not only 
 had the owner his belt full of knives and pistols, 
 but there was hanging up, in a sort of rack, a most 
 picturesque collection of swords and guns — all made 
 in Turkish fashion, with ornamented handles and 
 stocks, and looking as if they might be more dan- 
 gerous for the sportsman than for his game. While 
 we were being served by this wild-looking man, in 
 this suspicious place — in fact, it looked like the 
 daily resort of bandits — his wife, a comely young 
 woman, dressed in the usual dull blue, red, and 
 white, disappeared through the back way, and hid 
 herself among the trees. This fear of being seen by 
 strangers — no doubt caused by jealousy among men, 
 and, possibly, by a low moral tone in the country — 
 is a striking feature through most parts of Greece. 
 It is said to be a remnant of the Turkish influence, 
 but seems to me to lie deeper, and to be even an 
 echo of the old Greek days. The same feeling 
 
vii.] FROM ATHENS TO THEBES. 163 
 
 seems prevalent in most parts of Sicily. In the 
 towns there you seldom see ladies in the streets ; 
 and in the evenings, except when the play-going- 
 public is returning from the theatre, there are only 
 men to be seen. 
 
 After leaving this resting-place, about eleven in 
 the morning, we did not meet a single house or 
 village till we had crossed Cithseron, after six in the 
 evening, and descried the modern hamlet of Plataea 
 on the slopes to our left. But once or twice through 
 the day a string of four or five mules, with bright 
 richly striped rugs over their wooden saddles, and 
 still brighter dressed men, sitting lady-fashion on 
 them, were seen treading their w T ay along the wind- 
 ing road. The tinkling of the mules' bells, and the 
 wild Turkish chaunts of the men, were a welcome 
 break in the uniform stillness of the road. The way 
 becomes gradually wilder and steeper, though often 
 descending to cross a shady valley, which opens to 
 the right and left, in a long, narrow vista, and shows 
 blue far-off hills of other mountain chains. One of 
 these valleys was pointed out to us as CEnoe, an out- 
 lying deme of Attica, fortified in Periclean days, 
 and which the Peloponnesian army attacked, as 
 Thucydides tells us, and failed to take, on their in- 
 vasion of Attica at the opening of the war. There 
 are two or three strong square towns in the valley, 
 close to the road, but not the least like an old Greek 
 fort, and quite incapable of holding any garrison. 
 The site is utterly unsuitable for an ancient fort, 
 
 M 2 
 
1 64 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 and there seemed no remains of any walled 
 town. 
 
 These facts led me to reflect upon the narration of 
 Thucydides, who evidently speaks of CEnoe as 
 the border fort of Attica, and yet says not a word 
 about Eleutherae, which is really the border, the 
 great fort, and the key to the passes of Cithse- 
 ron. The first solution which suggests itself is, 
 that the modern Greeks have given the wrong 
 names to these places, and that by CEnoe, Thucy- 
 dides really means the place now known as Eleu- 
 therae. 1 Most decidedly, if the fort which is now 
 there existed at the opening of the Peloponnesian 
 War, he cannot possibly have overlooked it in his 
 military history of the campaign. And yet it seems 
 almost certain that we must place the building of 
 this fort at the epoch of Athens' greatness, when 
 Attic influence was paramount in Bceotia, and when 
 the Athenians could, at their leisure, and without 
 hindrance, construct this fort, which commands the 
 passes into Attica, before they diverge into various 
 valleys, about the region of the so-called CEnoe. 
 
 For, starting from Thebes, the slope of Cithaeron is 
 a single, unbroken ascent up to the ridge, through 
 which there is a cut, nearly over the village of Plataea, 
 which naturally indicates the pass. But when the 
 traveller has ascended from Thebes to this point, he 
 finds a steep descent into a mountainous and broken 
 
 1 Colonel Leake already felt these difficulties, and moves Eleutherae 
 a few miles to the south-west. 
 
VII.] FROM ATHENS TO THEBES. 165 
 
 region, where he must presently choose between a 
 gorge to the right or to the left, and must wander 
 about zig-zag among mountains, so as to find his 
 way towards Athens. And although I did not exa- 
 mine all the passes accurately, it was perfectly 
 obvious that, as soon as the first defile was passed, 
 an invader could find various ways of eluding the 
 defenders of Attica, and making his way into the 
 Thriasian plain, or by Phylae, into that of Athens. 
 Accordingly, the Athenians chose a position of 
 remarkable strength, just inside the last crowning 
 ascent, where all the ways converge to pass the 
 crest of the mountain into Plataea. Here a huge 
 rock strives, as it were, to bar the descending path, 
 by interposing between the mountains on either 
 side, so that the path divides like a torrent bed, and 
 passes on either side, close under the walls of the 
 fort which covers the top of the rock. From this 
 point the summit of the pass is about two or three 
 miles distant, and easily visible, so that an outpost 
 there, commanding a view of the whole Theban 
 plain, could signal any approach to the fort with 
 ample notice. 
 
 Looking backward into Attica, the whole moun- 
 tainous tract of CEnoe is visible, and, though we 
 cannot now tell the points actually selected, there 
 can be no difficulty in finding several which 
 could pass the signal from Eleutherae to Phyla? or 
 Daphne, and thence to Athens. We know that 
 fire sigmalswere commonly used among the Greeks, 
 and we can here see an instance where news could 
 
1 66 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 be telegraphed some thirty miles over a very diffi- 
 cult country in a few moments. Meanwhile, as 
 succours might be some time arriving, the fort was 
 of such a size and strength as to hold a large gar- 
 rison, and stop any army which could not afford to 
 mask it, by leaving there a considerable force. 1 
 The site was, of course, an old one, and the name 
 Eleutherae, if correctly applied to this fort, points 
 to a time when some mountain tribe maintained 
 its independence here against the governments on 
 either side in the plain, and hence the place was 
 called the 'Free' place. There is further evidence 
 of this in a small, irregular fort which occupies a 
 place almost in the centre of the larger and later 
 enclosure. This older fort is of polygonal masonry,, 
 very inferior to the other, and has fallen into ruins, 
 while the later walls and towers are in many places 
 perfect. The outer wall follows the nature of the 
 position, the principle being to find everywhere a 
 precipitous descent from the fortification, so that an 
 assault must be very difficult. On the north side, 
 where the rock is precipitous, the wall runs along 
 in a right line; whereas on the south side, over the 
 modern road, it dips down the hill, and makes a 
 semicircular sweep, so as to crown the steepest 
 part of a gentler ascent. Thus the whole en- 
 closure is of a half-moon shape. But, while the 
 straight wall is almost perfect, the curved side has 
 in many places fallen to pieces. The building is 
 
 1 This the Peloponnesians did at CEnoe, according to Thucydides ;, 
 perhaps therefore at this very place. 
 
vii.] FROM ATHENS TO THEBES. 167 
 
 the most perfect I have ever seen of the kind, made 
 of square hewn stones, evidently quarried on the 
 rock itself. The preserved wall is about 200 yards 
 long, and 6 \ feet wide, apparently not more than 
 10 or 12 feet high; but, at intervals of 25 or 30 
 yards, there are seven towers twice as deep as the 
 wall, and the path along the battlement goes right 
 through them. Each tower has a doorway on the 
 outside of it, and close beside this there is also a 
 doorway in the wall, somewhat larger. These 
 doorways are for the most part absolutely perfect, 
 made by a huge lintel, about 7 J feet long, laid over 
 an aperture in the building, with its edges very 
 smoothly and carefully cut. As I could see no 
 sign of door-posts or bolts — a feature still notice- 
 able in all the temple gates — it is evident that 
 wooden doors and door-posts were fitted into these 
 doorways — a dangerous thing to do, were not the 
 entrances strongly protected by the towers close 
 beside them and over them. There were staircases, 
 leading from the top of the wall outwards, beside 
 some of the towers. The whole fort is of such a 
 size as to hold not merely a garrison, but also the 
 flocks and herds of the neighbouring shepherds, in 
 case of a sudden and dangerous invasion, and this, 
 no doubt, was the primary intention of all the 
 older forts in Greece and elsewhere. 1 
 
 1 There was no photograph of this splendid building existing when 
 I was in Greece. The only drawing of it I have seen is in the plates of 
 Dodwell's Archceological Tour in Greece— -a splendid book. 
 
1 68 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 The day was, as usual, very hot and fine, and the 
 hills were of that beautiful purple blue which Mr. 
 Leighton so well understands in the backgrounds of 
 his Greek pictures ; but a soft breeze brought occa- 
 sional clouds across the sun, and varied the land- 
 scape with deeper hues. Above us on each side 
 were the noble crags of Cithaeron, with their grey 
 rocks and their gnarled fir-trees. Far below, a bright 
 mountain stream was rushing beside the pass into 
 Attica ; around us were the great walls of the old 
 Greeks, laid together with that symmetry, that 
 beauty, and that strength which marks all their 
 work. The massive towers are now defending a 
 barren rock ; the enclosure which had seen so 
 many days of war and rapine was lying open and 
 deserted ; the whole population was gone long 
 centuries ago. There is still liberty there, and 
 there is peace — but the liberty and the peace of 
 solitude. 
 
 A short drive from Eleutherse brought us to 
 the top of the pass, 1 and we suddenly came upon 
 one of those views in Greece which, when we think 
 of them, leave us in doubt whether the instruc- 
 tion they give us, or the delight, is the greater. 
 The whole plain of Thebes, and, beyond the inter- 
 vening ridge, the plain of Orchomenus, with its 
 
 1 This pass (seized by the Persian cavalry before the battle of Platoea, 
 in order to stop the Greek provision trains) was called rpe?s KecpaXai by 
 the Thebans, but dpvbsKecp. by the Athenians (Herod. IX. 39) — evidently 
 the same old name diversely interpreted by diverse Volksetymologien. 
 
VII.] FROM ATHENS TO THEBES. 169 
 
 shining lake, were spread out before us. The sites 
 of all the famous towns were easily recognisable. 
 Plataea only was straight beneath us, on the slopes 
 of the mountain, and as yet hidden by them. The 
 plan of all Bceotia unfolded itself with great dis- 
 tinctness — two great plains, separated by a low 
 ridge, and surrounded on all sides by chains of 
 mountains. On the north there are the rocky hills 
 which hem in Lake Copais from the Eubcean strait, 
 and which nature had pierced before the days of 
 history, aided by Minyan engineers, whose icara- 
 fiodpa, as they were called, were tunnelled drains, 
 which drew water from thousands of acres of the 
 richest land. On the west, where we stood, was 
 the gloomy Citha^ron — the home of awful mythical 
 crimes, and of wild Bacchanalian orgies, the 
 theme of many a ^splendid poem and many a 
 striking tragedy. To the south lay the pointed 
 peaks of Helicon — a mountain (or mountain chain) 
 full of sweetness and light, with many silver 
 streams coursing down its sides to water the Boeo- 
 tian plains, and with its dells the home of the 
 Muses, as long since as the bard of Ascra — the 
 home, too, of Eros, who was honoured in Thespise, 
 long after the reality of the faith had decayed, by 
 the crowd of visitors who went up to see the 
 famous statue of the god by Praxiteles. This Heli- 
 con separates Bceotia from the southern sea, but 
 does not close up completely with Cithaeron, leav- 
 ing way for an army coming from the isthmus, 
 
1 7 o RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 where Leuctra stood to guard the entrance. Over 
 against us, on the west, lay, piled one over another, 
 the dark, wild mountains of Phocis, with the giant 
 Parnassus raising its snow-clad shoulders above 
 the rest. But, in the far distance, snowy points in 
 ^Etolia stood out in rivalry, and show us that Par- 
 nassus is but the advanced guard of the wild Alpine 
 country, which even in Greece proved too rugged 
 a nurse for culture. 
 
 We made our descent at full gallop down the 
 windings of the road — a most risky drive; but the 
 coachman was daring and impatient, and we felt, in 
 spite of the danger, that peculiar delight which ac- 
 companies the excitement of going at headlong 
 pace. Above our heads were wheeling great vultures 
 — huge birds, almost black, with lean, featherless 
 heads — which added to the wildness of the scene. 
 After this rapid descent, we came upon the site of 
 Plateea, marked by a modern village of the name, 
 on our left, and below r us we saw T the winding Asopus, 
 and the great site of one of the most famous of all 
 Greek battles — the battle of Platsea. This little 
 town is situated much higher up the mountain than 
 I had thought, and a glance showed us its invaluable 
 position as an outpost of Athenian power towards 
 Bceotia. With the top of the pass within an hour's 
 walk, the Platseans could, from their streets, see 
 every movement over the Theban plain : they could 
 see an invasion from the south coming up by Leuc- 
 tra ; they could see troops marching northward 
 
VII.] FROM ATHENS TO THEBES. 171 
 
 towards Tanagra and CEnophyta. They could 
 even see into the Theban Cadmeia, which lay far 
 below them, and then telegraph from the top of 
 the pass to Eleutherae, and from thence to Athens. 
 We can, therefore, understand at once Plataea's im- 
 portance to Athens, and why the Athenians built 
 a strong fortified post on their very frontier, within 
 easy reach of it. 
 
 All the sites of the great battle are well marked 
 and well known, the fountain Gargaphia, the so- 
 called island, and the Asopus, flowing lazily in a 
 deep-cut, sedgy channel, in most places far too 
 deep to ford. Over our heads were still circling 
 the great black vultures ; but, as w T e neared the 
 plain, we met in addition a great black-and-white 
 eagle, which we had not seen in Attica. There 
 is some cultivation from Plataea to Thebes, but 
 strangely alternated with wilderness. We were 
 told that the people have plenty of spare land, 
 and, not caring to labour for its artificial improve- 
 ment, till a piece of ground once, and then let it 
 lie fallow for a season or two. The natural rich- 
 ness of the Boeotian soil thus supplies them with 
 ample crops. But it is strange to think how im- 
 possible it is, even in these rich and favoured 
 plains, to induce a fuller population. 
 
 The question of the depopulation of Greece is no 
 new one — it is not due to the Slave inroads — it is not 
 due to Turkish misrule. As soon as the political 
 liberties of Greece vanished, so that the national 
 
172 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 talent found no scope in local government — as soon 
 as the riches of Asia were opened to Greek enter- 
 prise — the population diminished with wonderful 
 rapidity. All the later Greek travellers are agreed 
 about the fact. ' The whole of Greece could not put 
 in the field/ says one, 'as many soldiers as came of 
 old from a single city.' 'Of all the famous cities of 
 Bceotia,' says another, 'but two — Thespiae and Ta- 
 nagra — now remain/ The cest are mostly described 
 as ruins (ipEima). No doubt, every young, enter- 
 prising fellow went off to Asia as a soldier or a 
 merchant ; and this taste of emigrating has re- 
 mained strong in the race till the present day, 
 when most of the business of Constantinople, of 
 Smyrna, and of Alexandria, is in the hands of 
 Greeks. But, in addition to this, the race itself 
 seems at a certain period to have become less pro- 
 lific, and this, too, is a remarkable feature lasting 
 to our own time. In the many hospitable houses 
 in which I was entertained through the country I 
 sought in vain for children. The young married 
 ladies had their mothers to keep them company, 
 and this was a common habit ; the daughter does 
 not willingly separate from her mother. But, 
 whether by curious coincidence or not, the absence 
 of children in these seven or eight houses was very 
 remarkable. 
 
 The evening saw us entering into Thebes — the 
 town of all others which retains the smallest ves- 
 tiges of antiquity. Even the site of the Cadmeia is 
 
Vii.] FROM ATHENS TO THEBES. 173 
 
 not easily disting'uishable. Two or three hillocks in 
 and about the town are all equally insignificant, and 
 all equally suitable, one should think, for a fortress 
 The discovery of the old foundations of the walls 
 has, however, determined the matter, and settled 
 the site to be that of the highest part of the present 
 town. Its strength, which was celebrated, must 
 then have been due almost altogether to artificial 
 fortification, for though the old city was in a 
 deeper valley to the north-west, yet from the other 
 side there can never have been any ascent steep 
 enough to be a natural rampart. The old city 
 was, no doubt, always more celebrated for eating 
 and drinking than for art or architecture, and its 
 momentary supremacy under Epaminondas was 
 too busy and short a season to be employed in 
 such pursuits. But, besides all this, and besides 
 all the ruin of Alexander's fury, the place has 
 been visited several times with the most destruc- 
 tive earthquakes, from the last of which (in 1852) it 
 has not even now recovered. There are still through 
 the streets houses torn open, and walls shaken 
 down ; there are gaps made by ruins, and half- 
 restored shops. Thus the antiquities of Thebes 
 consist of a few inscribed slabs and fragments, 
 which are as usual collected in a dark out-house, 
 where it is not easy to make them out. I was not 
 at the trouble of reading these inscriptions, for in 
 this department the antiquarians of the University 
 of Athens are really very zealous and competent, 
 
i 7 4 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 ■and I doubt whether any inscription now dis- 
 covered fails to come into the Greek papers within 
 a few months. From these they of course pass into 
 the Corpus Inscriptionum Grcecarum, a collection 
 daily increasing, and often re-edited. I may 
 observe that, not only for manners and customs, 
 but even for history, these undeniable and seldom 
 suspicious sources are rapidly becoming our surest 
 and even fullest source. 
 
 In the opinion of the inhabitants, by far the most 
 important thing about the town is the tomb of the 
 Evangelist S. Luke, which is situated in a chapel 
 close by. The stone is polished and worn with the 
 feet and lips of pilgrims, and all such homes of long 
 devotion are in themselves interesting; but it seems 
 odd that the Evangelist should have his tomb esta- 
 blished in a place so absolutely decayed and depo- 
 pulated as was the region of Thebes, even in his 
 day. The tombs of the early preachers and mis- 
 sionaries are more likely to be in the thickest of 
 thoroughfares, amid the noise and strife of men. 
 
 Thebes is remarkable for its excellent supply of 
 water. Apart from the fountain Dirce, several 
 other great springs rise in the higher ground close 
 to it, and are led by old Greek conduits of marble 
 to the town. One of these springs was large 
 enough to allow us to bathe — a most refreshing 
 change after the long and hot carriage drive, espe- 
 cially in the ice-cold water, as it came from its 
 deep hiding place. We returned at eight in the 
 
Til.] FROM ATHENS TO THEBES. 
 
 evening to dine with our excellent host — a host 
 provided for us by telegraph from Athens— where 
 we had ample opportunity of noticing some of the 
 peculiarities of modern Greek life. 
 
 The general elections were just pending. M. 
 Boulgaris had just echone, as the French say ; and 
 the King, after a crisis in which a rupture of the 
 Constitution had been expected, decided to try 
 a constitutional experiment, and called to office 
 M. Trikoupes, an advanced Radical, who had been 
 prosecuted but a year ago for writing strong 
 articles against His Majesty in the Athenian daily 
 press. M. Trikoupes, withal, in spite of his pen, 
 is a highly educated and reasonable man, well 
 acquainted with England and English politics, 
 and apparently anxious to govern by strictly con- 
 stitutional means. Our new friend at Thebes was 
 the Radical candidate, and was at the very time of 
 our arrival canvassing his constituency. Every 
 idle and low fellow in the town seemed to think it 
 his duty to come up into his drawing-room, in which 
 we were resting, and sit down to encourage him 
 and advise him. No hint that he was engaged in 
 entertaining strangers had the smallest effect ; 
 and so garlic and dirt were inflicted upon us till 
 the welcome announcement of dinner, to which, for 
 a wonder, his constituents did not follow him. He 
 told me that though all the country were strongly 
 in favour of M. Trikoupes, yet he could hardly 
 count upon a majority with certainty, for he had 
 
i 7 6 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 determined to let the elections follow their own 
 course, and not control them with soldiers. For 
 in this most constitutional country, with their 
 freedom, as usual, closely imitated from England, 
 soldiers stood, up to the summer of 1875, round the 
 booths, and hustled out anyone who did not come 
 to vote for the Ministerial candidate. M. Trikoupes 
 refused to take this reasonable precaution, and, as 
 the result showed, lost his sure majority. 
 
 But when I was there, and before the actual 
 elections had taken place, the Radical party 
 were very confident. They were not only to 
 come in triumphant, but their first act was to be 
 the prosecution of the late Prime Minister, M. 
 Boulgaris, for violating the Constitution, and 
 his condemnation to hard labour, with confiscation 
 of his property. I used to plead the poor man's 
 case earnestly with these hot-headed politicians, 
 by way of amusement, and was highly edified by 
 their arguments. The ladies, as usual, were by far 
 the fiercest, and were ready, like their goddess of 
 old, to eat raw the flesh of their enemies. I used 
 to ask them whether it would not be quite out of 
 taste if Mr. Disraeli, now in power, were to prose- 
 cute Mr. Gladstone for violating the Constitution 
 in his Irish Church Act, and have him condemned 
 to hard labour. The cases, they replied, were quite 
 different. No Englishman could ever attain, or 
 even understand, the rascality of the late Greek 
 Minister. Feeling that there might be some force in 
 
vii.] FROM ATHENS TO THEBES. 177 
 
 this argument, I changed ground, and asked them 
 were they not afraid that if he were persecuted in 
 so violent a way, he might, instead of occupying 
 the Opposition benches, betake himself to occupy 
 the mountain passes, and by robbing a few English 
 travellers, so discredit the new government as to 
 be worse and more dangerous in opposition than 
 in power. No, they said, he will not do that ; he is 
 too rich. But, said I, if you confiscate his property, 
 he will be poor. True, they replied ; but still he will 
 not be able to do it : he is too old. It seemed as if the 
 idea that he might be too respectable never crossed 
 their minds. 1 What was my surprise to hear within 
 six months that this dreadful culprit had come into 
 power again at the head of a considerable majority ! 
 We were afterwards informed that many of the 
 Greek politicians are paupers, who will not dig, 
 and to beg they are ashamed ; and so they sit 
 about the cafes of Athens on the look-out for one of 
 the 10,000 places which have been devised for the 
 patronage of the Ministry. But, as there are some 
 30,000 expectants, it follows that the 20,000 dis- 
 appointed are always at work seeking to turn out 
 the 10,000. Hence a crisis every three months ; 
 
 1 1 trust none will imagine that I intend the least disrespect to M. 
 Boulgaris, who is, according to far better authority than that quoted in 
 the text, an honourable and estimable man. But some of his Ministers 
 have been since convicted of malpractices concerning certain archbishop- 
 ricks, which were bought for money. The trial is now a matter of 
 history, to which an allusion is sufficient. 
 
 N 
 
178 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 hence a Greek ambassador can hardly reach his 
 destination before he is recalled ; hence, too, the 
 exodus of all thrifty and hard-working men to 
 Smyrna, to Alexandria, or to Manchester, where 
 their energies are not wasted in perpetual political 
 squabbling. The greatest misconduct with which a 
 man in office can be charged is the holding of it 
 for any length of time ; the whole public then join 
 against him, and cry out that it is high time for 
 him, after so long an innings, to make way for 
 some one else. 
 
 How long, how long, is Europe to persist in the 
 ridiculous blunder of offering the British Constitu- 
 tion to scarce emancipated slaves ! When will we 
 learn from the old Greeks, what the new Greeks so 
 clearly illustrate, that most nations are by nature 
 children, and are best and happiest when governed 
 despotically by civilised men ! For in our day, too, 
 there are politically childish races, though possess- 
 ing other high and noble qualities ; but all their vir- 
 tue, all their usefulness is destroyed if we allow them 
 the opportunity of conducting their own affairs. 
 This wise despotism of King Otho concealed from 
 Europe for a generation the absurdity she had 
 committed in setting up Greece suddenly as a free 
 kingdom. Since his exile it has become plain 
 enough. 1 
 
 1 It seems hardly possible that these remarks should not give offence, 
 for the people to whom they apply are ex hypothesi no judges of the 
 larger question of national liberty, and all feel an inborn right to per- 
 
vil] FROM ATHENS TO THEBES. 
 
 We left Thebes very glad that we had seen it, but 
 not very curious to see it again. Its site makes it ob- 
 viously the natural capital of the rich plain around 
 it ; and we can also see at once how the larger and 
 richer plain of Orchomenus is separated from it by a 
 distinct saddle of rising ground, and was naturally, 
 in old times, the seat of a separate power. But the 
 separation between the two districts, which is not 
 even so steep or well marked as the easy pass of 
 Daphne between Athens and Eleusis, makes it also 
 clear that the owners of either plain would certainly 
 cast the eye of desire upon the possessions of their 
 neighbours, and so at an early epoch Orchomenus 
 was subdued. For many reasons this may have 
 been a disaster for Greece. The Minyae of Orcho- 
 menus, as people called the old nobles who settled 
 there in pre-historic days, were a great and rich 
 society, building forts and treasure-houses, and 
 celebrated, even in Homer's day, for wealth and 
 splendour. 
 
 But, perhaps owing to this very luxury, they were 
 subdued by the unartistic, vulgar, upstart Thebans, 
 who, during centuries of power and importance, 
 never rise to greatness save through the transcen- 
 dent genius of Pindar and of Epaminondas. No real 
 greatness ever attached to their town. When peo- 
 
 sonal liberty. I can only say to the Greeks that I hold my own 
 nation — the Irish — to be equally unfit for an advanced constitution. 
 Indeed, for centuries to come, most of the world were far happier and 
 -safer under an enlightened despotism. 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 pie came from a distance to see art in Bceotia, they 
 came to little Thespise, in the southern hills, where 
 the Eros of Praxiteles was the pride of the citizens. 
 Tanagra, too, in the terra cottas of which I have 
 spoken (above, p. 53), shows taste and refinement ; 
 and we still look with sympathy upon the strangely 
 modern fashions of these graceful and elegant 
 figures. At Thebes, so far as I know, no trace of 
 fine arts has yet been discovered. The great sub- 
 structure of the Cadmea, the solid marble water- 
 pipes of their conduits, a few inscriptions — that is 
 all. It corroborates what we find in the middle and 
 new comedy of the Greeks, that Thebes was a place 
 for eating and drinking, a place for other coarse 
 material comforts — but no place for real culture or 
 for art. Even their great poet, Pindar, a poet 
 in whom most critics find all the highest qualities of 
 genius — loftiness, daring, originality — even this 
 great man — possibly from the accidents of his age — • 
 worked by the job, and bargained for the payment 
 of his noblest odes. 
 
 Thus, even in Pindar, there is something to remind 
 us of his Theban vulgarity ; and it is, therefore, all 
 the more wonderful, and all the more freely to be 
 confessed, that in Epaminondas we find not a 
 single flaw or failing, and that he stands out as far 
 the noblest of all the great men whom Greece ever 
 produced. It were possible to maintain that he was 
 also the greatest, but this is a matter of opinion and 
 of argument. Certain it is that his influence made 
 
vii.] FROM ATHENS TO THEBES. 18 
 
 Thebes, for the moment, not only the leader in 
 Greek politics, but the leader in Greek society. 
 Those of his friends whom we know seem not only 
 patriots, but gentlemen — they cultivated with him 
 music and eloquence, nor did they despise philoso- 
 phy. So true is it, that in this wonderful peninsula 
 genius seemed possible everywhere, and that from 
 the least cultivated and most vulgar town might 
 arise a man to make all the world about him 
 admire and tremble. 
 
 I will make but one more remark about this 
 plain of Bceotia. There is no part of Greece so 
 sadly famed for all the battles with which its soil is 
 stained. The ancients called it Mars' Orchestra, 
 or exercising ground ; and even now, when all the 
 old life is gone, and when not a hovel remains to 
 mark the site of once well-built towns, we may well 
 ask why were these towns celebrated ? Simply be- 
 cause in old Greek history their names served to 
 specify a scene of slaughter, where a campaign, or 
 it may be an empire, was lost or won. Plataea, 
 Leuctra, Haliartus, Coronea, Chseronea, Delium, 
 CEnophyta, Tanagra — these are in history the land- 
 marks of battles, and, with one exception, land- 
 marks of nothing else. Thebes is mainly the nurse 
 of the warriors who fought in these battles, and but 
 little else. So, then, we cannot compare Bceotia to 
 the rich plains of Lombardy — they, too, in their day, 
 aye, and in our own day, Mars' Orchestra — for there 
 literature and art have given fame to cities, while 
 
1 82 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 the battles fought around their walls have been for- 
 gotten by the world. 
 
 I confess we saw nothing of the foggy atmos- 
 phere so often brought up against the climate of 
 Bceotia. And yet it is, of course, more foggy than it 
 ■was of old, for then the lake Copais was drained, 
 Avhereas now the old tunnels, cut, or rather en- 
 larged, by the Minyae, are choked, and thousands of 
 acres of the richest land are covered with marsh and 
 lake. M. Trikoupes, the then Prime Minister, told 
 me that apian had been proposed which would drain 
 the lake more completely than the old Catabothra r 
 and, at the cost of less than one million sterling, 
 bring into permanent cultivation some thousands 
 of acres — in fact, the largest and richest plain in 
 all Greece. I asked him where he meant to find 
 a population to till it, seeing that the present land 
 was about ten times more than sufficient for the 
 inhabitants. He told me that some Greek colo- 
 nists, who had settled in the north, under the 
 Turks or Servians (I forget which), were desirous 
 of returning to enjoy the sweets of Hellenic liberty. 
 It was proposed to give them the reclaimed tract. 
 If these good people will reason from analogy, 
 they will be slow to trust their fortunes to their old 
 fellow-countrymen. So long as they are indigent 
 they may be unmolested — cantabit vacuus coram 
 latrone viator — but as soon as they prosper, or 
 are supposed to prosper, we might have the affair 
 of Laurium repeated. The natives would be up in 
 
vil] FROM ATHENS TO THEBES. 183 
 
 arms against the strangers who had come to 
 plunder the land of the wealth intended by nature 
 for others. The Greek Parliament would not fail 
 to make retrospective laws and restrictions, and so 
 all the more active and impatient spirits would 
 leave a country where prosperity implied persecu- 
 tion, and where people only awake to the value of 
 their possessions after they have sold them to 
 others. 
 
 I think this Greek jealousy no ordinary feature, 
 but one specially engrained in the texture of their 
 nature from the earliest times. Nothing can be a 
 more striking or cogent proof of this than the way 
 in which Herodotus sets down jealousy as one of 
 the attributes of the Deity. For, the Deities of all 
 nations being conceptions formed after the ana- 
 logy of human nature around them, there can be no 
 doubt that the honest historian put it down as a 
 necessary factor in the course and constitution of 
 nature. We can only understand Greek history by 
 keeping these things perpetually in mind, and even 
 now it explains the apparent anomaly, how a nation 
 so essentially democratic — who recognise no nobi- 
 lity and no distinctions of rank — can be satisfied 
 wfith a king of foreign race. They told me them- 
 selves, over and over again, that the simple reason 
 was this : no Greek could tolerate another set over 
 him, so that even such an office as President of a 
 Greek Republic would be intolerable, if held by 
 one of themselves. And this same feeling in old 
 
1 84 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 times is the real reason of the deadly hate mani- 
 fested against the most moderate and humane des- 
 pots. However able, however kindly, however 
 great such a despot might be; however the state 
 might prosper under him, one thing in him was in- 
 tolerable — he had no natural right to be superior to 
 his fellows, and yet he was superior. I will not 
 deny the existence of political enthusiasm, and of 
 real patriotism among Greek tyrannicides, but I am 
 quite sure that the universal sympathy of the nation 
 with them was partly based upon this deep-seated 
 feeling. 
 
 It is said that, in another curious respect, the old 
 and modern Greeks are very similar — I mean the 
 form which bribery takes in their political struggles. 
 It has been already observed and discussed by Mr. 
 Freeman, how, among the old Greeks, it was the 
 politician who was bribed, and not the constituents; 
 whereas among us in England, the leading politi- 
 cians are above suspicion, while the constituents are 
 often corruptible enough. OurTheban friend told me 
 that in Modern Greece the ancient form of bribery 
 was still in fashion ; and that, except in Hydria and 
 one other place — probably, if I remember rightly, 
 Athens — the bribing of constituents was unknown ; 
 while the taking of bribes by Ministers seems not 
 to be very uncommon. Since my return, no less a 
 person than the Minister of cult (religion), and one 
 of his colleagues, have been openly brought into 
 court, and indicted for the sale of three archbishop- 
 
Vii.] FROM ATHENS TO THEBES. 185 
 
 ricks, those of Patras and Corinth among the num- 
 ber. The result of the trial justified the open alle- 
 gation in court, that these high offices were sold to 
 the highest bidder. As the actual appointment lies, 
 I believe, in the hands of the Synod of Patriarchs, I 
 suppose they are understood to accept the Minister's 
 recommendation. But there is no doubt that this 
 public charge points to a sort of bribery likely to 
 take place in any real democracy, when the men at 
 the head of affairs are not men of great wealth and 
 noble birth, but often ordinary, or even needy per- 
 sons, selected by ballot, or popular vote, to fill for 
 a very short time a very responsible office. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE PLAIN OF ORCHOMENUS, LEBADEA, 
 CH^RONEA. 
 
 The road from Thebes to Lebadea (Livadia) leads 
 along the foot of Helicon all the way — Helicon ,. 
 which, like almost all celebrated Greek mountains, 
 is not a summit, but a system of summits, or even a 
 chain. Looking from the plain, the contrast of the 
 dark Cithaeron and the gentle sunny Helicon strikes 
 the traveller again and again. After the ridge, or 
 saddle, is passed which separates the plain of Thebes 
 from that of Orchomenus, the richness of the soil 
 increases, but the land becomes very swampy and 
 low, for at every half-mile comes a clear silver river 
 tumbling from the slopes of Helicon on our left, 
 crossing the road, and flowing to swell the waters. 
 ofLakeCopais — a vast sheet with undefined edges, 
 half marsh, half lake — which has now no outlet to 
 the sea, and which is only kept from covering all 
 the plain by evaporation in the heats of summer. 
 Great fields of sedge and rushes, giant reeds, and 
 marsh plants unknown in colder countries, mark 
 each river-course as it nears the lake ; and, as might 
 
ch. viii.] PLAIN OF ORCHOMENUS. 1 87 
 
 be expected in this lonely fen country, all manner 
 of insect life, and all manner of amphibia haunt the 
 sites of ancient culture. Innumerable dragon-flies, 
 of the most brilliant colours, were flying about the 
 reeds, and lighting on the rich blades of grass 
 which lay on the water s surface; and now and then 
 a daring frog would charge boldly at so great a 
 prize, but retire again in fear when the fierce insect 
 dashed against him in its impetuous start. Large 
 land tortoises, with their high-arched shells, yellow 
 and brown, and patterned like the section of a 
 great honeycomb, went lazily along the moist 
 banks, and close by the water which they could not 
 bear to touch. Their cousins of the water, on the 
 other hand, were not solitary in habit, but lay in 
 lines along the sun-baked mud, and at the first 
 approach of danger dropped into the water one 
 after the other with successive flops, looking for all 
 the world like a long row of smooth black pebbles, 
 which, had suddenly come to life, like old Deuca- 
 lion's stones, that they might people this solitude. 
 The sleepy and expressionless faces of these tor- 
 toises were a great contrast to the heads of the 
 water-snakes, which were very like them in form, 
 but wonderfully keen and lively in expression. 
 They, too, would glide into the water, when so 
 strange a thing as man came near, but would 
 presently raise their heads above the surface, and 
 eye with wonder and suspicion, and in perfect 
 stillness, the approach of their natural enemy. The 
 
1 88 kAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 Copaic eels, so celebrated in the Attic comedy as 
 the greatest of all dainties, are also still to be 
 caught ; but the bright sun and cloudless sky made 
 vain all my attempts to lure this famous darling of 
 Greek epicures. We noticed that while the shrill 
 cicada, which frequents dry places, was not common 
 here, great emerald-green grasshoppers were flying 
 about spasmodically, with a sound and weight like 
 that of a small bird. 
 
 As we passed along, we were shown the sites of 
 Haliartus and Coronea — Haliartus, where the cruel 
 Lysander met his death in a skirmish, and so gave 
 a place in history to an obscure village — Coronea, 
 where the Spartans first learned to taste the tem- 
 per of the Theban grenadiers, and where King 
 Agesilaus well-nigh followed his great rival to the 
 funeral pyre. As I said before, all these towns are 
 only known by battles. Thespiae has an indepen- 
 dent interest, and so has Ascra. The latter was 
 the birthplace of the earliest known Greek poet of 
 whose personality we can be sure ; Thespiae, with 
 its highly aristocratic society, which would not let 
 a shopkeeper walk their place of assembly for ten 
 years after he had retired from business, was the 
 site of fair temples and statues, and held its place 
 and fame long after all the rest of the surrounding 
 cities had sunk into decay. . There are indistinct 
 remains of surrounding walls about both Haliartus 
 and Coronea, but surely nothing that would repay 
 the labour of excavations. All these Boeotian 
 
viil] LIVADIA. 189 
 
 towns were, of course, fortified, and all of them lay 
 close to the hills, for the swampy plain was un- 
 healthy, and in older days the rising lake was said 
 to have swallowed up towns which had been 
 daringly built close upon its margin. But the 
 supremacy of Orchomenus in older, and Thebes in 
 later days, never allowed these subject towns to 
 attain any importance or any political significance. 
 After some hours' riding, we suddenly came upon 
 a deep vista in the mountains on our left — such 
 another vista as there is behind Coronea, but nar- 
 rower, and enclosed on both sides with great and 
 steep mountains. And here we found the cause of 
 the cultivation of the upper plain — here was the 
 town of Lebadea (Livadia), famed of old for the 
 august oracle of Trophonius — in later days the 
 Turkish capital of the province of Roumelia. To 
 this the roads of all the neighbourhood converge, 
 and from this a small force can easily command the 
 deep gorges and high mountain passes which lead 
 through Delphi to the port of Cirrha. Even now 
 there is more life in Livadia than in most Greek 
 towns. All the wool of the country is brought in 
 and sold there, and, with the aid of their great 
 water power, they have a considerable factory, 
 where the wool is spun and woven into stuff. A 
 large and beautifully clear river comes down the 
 gorge above the town — or rather the gorge in which 
 the town lies — and tumbles in great falls between 
 the streets and under the houses, which have 
 
i go RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 wooden balconies, like Swiss chalets, built over the 
 stream. The whole aspect of the town was not 
 unlike a Swiss town ; indeed, all the features of 
 the upland country are ever reminding the traveller 
 of his Swiss experience. 
 
 But the people are widely different. It was a 
 great saint's day, and all the streets were crowded 
 with people from many miles round. The women, 
 as is usual in all Greek towns, except Arachova, 
 were not to be seen in any numbers. As among 
 the ancients, they do not walk about the streets 
 except for some special ceremony or amusement. 
 But no women's costume is required to lend 
 brightness to the colouring of the scene ; for 
 here every man had his petticoat or kilt of daz- 
 zling white, his grey or black embroidered waist- 
 coat, his great white sleeves, and his scarlet fez, 
 with its blue tassel. Nothing can be imagined 
 brighter than a dense crowd in this dress. They 
 were all much excited at the arrival of strangers, 
 and crowded about us without the least idea 
 or care about being thought obtrusive. Every 
 Greek thinks it his right to make what remarks 
 he likes, and what observations he chooses, upon 
 any stranger, and has not the smallest idea of the 
 politeness of reticence on such occasions. 
 
 We were received most hospitably by the medi- 
 cal officer of the district, who, as usual, had an 
 amiable young wife, who spoke Greek only, and 
 a lively old mother-in-law, living permanently 
 
viii.] LIVADIA. i 9 i 
 
 in the house, to prevent the young lady from being- 
 lonely. Like all the richer Greeks in country 
 parts, they eat nothing till twelve, when they had 
 a sort of early dinner called breakfast, and then 
 dined at half-past eight in the evening. This 
 arrangement gave us more than enough time to 
 look about the towns when our day's ride was over; 
 so we went, first of all, to see the site of Tropho- 
 nius' oracle. As the gorge becomes narrower, 
 there is, on the right side, a small cave, from which 
 a sacred stream flows to join the larger river. 
 Here numerous square panels, cut into the rock 
 to hold votive tablets, now gone, indicate a 
 sacred place, to which pilgrims came to offer pray- 
 ers for aid, and thanksgiving for success. The 
 actual seat of the oracle is not certain, and is sup- 
 posed to be some cave or aperture now covered by 
 the Turkish fort on the rock immediately above; 
 but the whole glen, with its beetling sides, its 
 rushing river, and its cavernous vaulting, seems 
 the very home and preserve of superstition. We 
 followed the windings of the defile, jumping from 
 rock to rock up the river bed, and were soon be- 
 yond the observation of all the crowding boys, 
 who, like the boys of any other town, could not 
 satisfy their curiosity at strangeness of face and 
 costume. As we went on for some miles, the 
 country began to open, and to show us a bleak 
 and sohtary mountain region, where the chains of 
 Helicon and Parnassus join, and shut out the sea 
 
i g 2 RA MBLES IN GREE CE. [ch. 
 
 of Corinth from Bceotia by a great bar some thirty 
 miles wide. Not a sound could be heard in this 
 wild loneliness, save the metallic pipe of a water 
 ouzel by the river, and the scream of hawks about 
 their nests, far up on the face of the cliffs. 
 
 As the evening" was closing in, we began to 
 retrace our steps, when we saw in two or three 
 places scarlet caps over the rocks, and swarthy 
 faces peering down upon us with signs and shouts. 
 Though nothing could have been more suspicious 
 in such a country, I cannot say that we felt the 
 least uneasiness, as we continued our way without 
 regarding them. They kept watching us from the 
 heights, and when at last we descended nearer to 
 the town, they came and made signs, and spoke 
 very bad Greek, to the effect that they had been 
 out scouring the country for us, and that they had 
 been very uneasy about our safety. This was, in- 
 deed, the case ; our excellent Greek companion, who 
 felt responsible to the Greek Government for our 
 safety, and who had stayed behind in Livadia to 
 make arrangements, had become so uneasy, that he 
 had sent out the police to scour the country. So we 
 were brought in with triumph by a large escort of 
 idlers and officials, and presently sat down to 
 dinner at the fashionable hour, though in anything 
 but fashionable dress. The entertainment would 
 have been as excellent as even the intentions of 
 our host, had not our attention been foolishly dis- 
 tracted by bugs walking up the table-cloth. It is,. 
 
viil] LIVADIA. I93 
 
 indeed, but a small and ignoble insect, yet it pro- 
 duces a wonderful effect upon the mind ; for it 
 inspires the most ordinary man with the gift of 
 prophecy: it carries him away even from the 
 pleasures of a fair repast into the hours of night 
 and mystery, when all his wisdom and all his 
 might will not save him from the organized skir- 
 mishing of his desultory foe. 
 
 It may be here worth giving a word of en- 
 couragement to the sensitive student, whom these 
 hints are apt to deter from venturing into the 
 wilds of Greece. In spite of frequent starvation, 
 both for want of food, and for want of eatable food ; 
 in spite of frequent sleeplessness and even severe 
 exercise at night, owing to the excess of insect 
 population; such is the lightness and clearness of 
 the air, such the exhilarating effect of great natural 
 beauty, and of solitary wandering, free and un- 
 shackled, across the wild tracts of valley, wood, 
 and mountain, that fatigue is an almost impossible 
 feeling. Eight or ten hours' riding every day, which 
 in other country and other air would have been 
 almost unendurable, was here but the natural exer- 
 cise which any ordinary man may conveniently 
 take. It cannot be denied that the discomforts of 
 Greek traveling are very great, but with good 
 temper and patience they can all be borne ; and 
 when they are over, they form a pleasant feature in 
 the recollections of a glorious time. Besides, these 
 discomforts are only the really classical mode of 
 
 o 
 
i 9 4 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 traveling. Dionysus, in Aristophanes' Frogs, asks, 
 especially about the inns, the very questions which 
 we often put to our guide ; and if his slave carried 
 for him not only ordinary baggage, but also his 
 bed and bedding, so now-a-days there are many 
 places where the traveller dare not lie down — I 
 was going to say to rest, except in his own rugs. 
 
 The next day was occupied in a tour across the 
 plain to Orchomenus, then to Chaeronea, and back 
 to Livadia in the evening, so as to start from thence 
 for the passes to Delphi. Our ride was, as it were, 
 round an isosceles triangle, beginning with the right 
 base angle, going to Orchomenus north-east as the 
 vertex, then to Chaeronea at the left base angle, 
 and home again over the high spurs of mountain 
 which protrude into the plain between the two base 
 angles of our triangle. For about a mile as we rode 
 out of Livadia, a wretched road of little rough pav- 
 ing-stones tormented us — the remains of Turkish en- 
 gineering, when Livadia was their capital. Patches 
 of this work are still to be found in curious isola- 
 tion over the mountains, to the great distress of 
 both mules and riders ; for the stones are very 
 small and pointed, and, where they have been worn 
 smooth, exceedingly slippery. But we soon got 
 away into deep, rich meadows upon the low level 
 of the country adjoining the lake, where we found 
 again the same infinitely various insect life which 
 I have already described. A bright, merry Greek 
 boy, in full dress (for it was again a holiday), fol- 
 
viii.] ORCHOMENUS. i 95 
 
 lowed in attendance on each mule or pony, and 
 nothing could be more picturesque than the caval- 
 cade, going in Indian file through the long grass, 
 among the gay -wild flowers, especially when some 
 creek or rivulet made our course to wind about, 
 and so brought the long line of figures into more 
 varied grouping. As for the weather, it was so 
 uniformly splendid that we almost forgot to notice 
 it. Indeed, strangers justly remark what large 
 conversation it affords us in Ireland, for there it is 
 a matter of constant uncertainty, and requires fore- 
 thought and conjecture. "While we were in Greece, 
 from the middle of May to near the end of June, 
 there is nothing to be said, except that we saw one 
 heavy shower at Athens, and that the temperature, 
 whenever clouds and breeze both left us, seemed 
 excessively hot. 
 
 In tw T o or three hours we arrived at the site of 
 old Orchomenus, of late called Scripou, but now 
 reverting, like all Greek towns, to its original name. 
 There is a mere hamlet, some dozen houses, at the 
 place, which is close to the stone bridge built over 
 the Cephissus — the Boeotian Cephissus — at this 
 place. This river appears to be the main feeder of 
 the Copaic lake, coming down, as we saw it, muddy 
 and cold with snow-water from the heights of Par- 
 nassus. It runs very rapidly, like the Iser at Mu- 
 nich, and is about double the size of that river, at 
 Orchomenus. Of the so-called treasure-house of 
 the Minyae, nothing remains but the stone door- 
 
 O 2 
 
1 96 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 posts and the huge block lying across them ; 
 and even these are almost imbedded in earth. It 
 was the most disappointing ruin I had seen in 
 Greece, for it is always quoted with the treasure- 
 house of Atreus at Mycenae as one of the great 
 specimens of pre-historic building. It is not so in- 
 teresting in any sense as the corresponding raths 
 in Ireland. Indeed, but for Pausanias' description, 
 it would, I think, have excited but little atten- 
 tion. 
 
 On the hill above are the well-preserved remains 
 of the Acropolis, of which the stones are so regular, 
 and so carefully cut, that it looks at first sight 
 modern, then too good for modern work, but 
 in no case polygonal, or of an age parallel to 
 the so-called treasury. There is a remarkable 
 tower built on the highest point of the hill, with a 
 very perfect staircase up to it. The whole of the 
 work is very like the work of Eleutherae, and 
 seems to be of the best period of Greek wall- 
 building. Nothing surprises the traveller more in 
 Greece than the number of these splendid hill-forts, 
 or town fortresses, which are never noticed by the 
 historians as anything remarkable — in fact, the 
 art and the habit of fortifying must have been so 
 universal, that it excited no comment. This strikes 
 us all the more when so reticent a writer as Thucy- 
 dides, who seldom gives us anything but politics, 
 goes out of his way to describe the wall-building 
 of the Peirseus. He evidently contrasts it with the 
 
viii.] ORCHOMENUS. 197 
 
 hurried and irregular construction of the city walls, 
 into which even tombstones were built ; but if we 
 did not study the remains still common in Greece, 
 we might imagine that the use of square hewn 
 stones, the absence of mortar and rubble, and the 
 clamping with lead and iron were exceptional, 
 whereas that sort of building is the most usual 
 sort in Greece. The walls of the Peirasus cannot 
 even have been the earliest specimen, for the great 
 portal at Mycenae, though somewhat rougher and 
 more huge in execution, is on the same principle. 
 The only peculiarity of these walls may have been 
 their height and width, and upon that point it is 
 not easy to get any monumental evidence now. 
 The walls of the Peiraeus have disappeared com- 
 pletely, though the foundations are still traceable ; 
 others have stood, but perhaps on account of their 
 lesser height. 
 
 In a large and hospitable monastery we found 
 the well which Pausanias describes as close beside 
 the shrine of the Graces, and here we partook 
 of breakfast, attended by our muleteers, who 
 always accompany their employer into the recep- 
 tion-room of his host, and sit by at meat, ready 
 to attend, always joining if possible in the con- 
 versation at table. Some excellent specimens 
 of old Greek pottery were shown us in the monas- 
 tery, apparently, though not ostensively, for sale, 
 there being a law prohibiting the sale of anti- 
 quities to foreigners, or for exportation. In their 
 
1 98 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [cm 
 
 chapel the monks showed us some fragments of 
 marble pillars, and one or two inscriptions — 
 nothing of note or importance. 
 
 It was on our way up the valley to Chseronea, 
 along the rapid stream of the Cephissus, that we 
 came, in a little deserted church, upon one of 
 the most remarkable extant specimens of a pe- 
 culiar epoch in Greek art. As usual, it was set 
 up in the dark, and we were repeatedly obliged 
 to entreat the natives to clear the door, through 
 which alone we could obtain any light to see the 
 work. It is a funeral stele, closely similar to the 
 celebrated stele and its relief at Athens, which 
 is inscribed as the work of Aristion, and dating 
 from the time of the Persian wars. The work before 
 us is inscribed as the w r ork of Anxenor the Naxian 
 — an artist otherwise unknown to us ; but the style 
 and finish is very remarkable, and more perfect 
 than the stele of Aristion. It is a relief carved 
 on an upright slab of grey Boeotian marble — I 
 should say about four feet in height, and represent- 
 ing a bearded man wrapped in a cloak, resting 
 on a long stick propped under his arm, 1 and offer- 
 ing a large grasshopper to a dog sitting before 
 him. The hair and beard are conventionally 
 curled, the whole effect being very like an Assyrian 
 relief ; but this is the case with all the older Greek 
 sculpture, which evidently started in Ionia by an 
 
 1 Cf. Polygnotus' picture of Agamemnon (Paus. x. 30, 3), (tk^-kt^ 
 T€ virb tt?j/ apiarepav fiacrxaArjv £pei86fjt.evos. 
 
viil] PLAIN OF ORCHOMENUS. 199 
 
 impulse from the far east. The occurrence of the 
 dog, a feature which strikes us frequently in the 
 later .Attic tombs, proves what I had long since 
 inferred from stray hints in Greek literature, that 
 dogs among the old Greeks, like the modern, were 
 held in the highest esteem as the friends and com- 
 panions of man. It is the greatest pity that this 
 splendid and well-preserved monument of early 
 Greek art should lie hidden in so obscure and out- 
 of-the-way a corner of Greece ; isolated, too, and 
 with little of antiquarian interest in its immediate 
 neighbourhood. When we were there, it had never 
 yet been photographed, but there were some hopes 
 of its being soon taken by an enterprising young 
 artist, whom we met at work afterwards in the 
 theatre of Argos. The Aristion relief at Athens 
 can be studied in accurate copies. 
 
 The great value of these reliefs consists (apart from 
 their artistic value) in their undoubted genuineness. 
 For we know that in later days, both in Greece and 
 Italy, a sort of pre-Raphaelite taste sprung up 
 among amateurs, who admired and preferred the 
 stiff old awkward groping at nature to the perfect 
 symmetry and grace of perfect art. Pausanias, for 
 example, speaks with enthusiasm of these antique 
 statues and carvings, and generally mentions them 
 first, as of most importance. Thus, after describing 
 various archaic works on the Acropolis of Athens, 
 he adds, 'But whoever places works made with 
 artistic skill before those which come under the 
 
200 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 designation of archaic, may, if he likes, admire the 
 following.' * As a natural result, a fashion came in 
 of imitating them, and we have, especially in Italy, 
 many statues in this style which seem certainly to 
 be modern imitations, and not even Greek copies 
 of old Greek originals. But these imitations are 
 so well done, and so equalized by lapse of centuries 
 to the real antiques, that though there are Germans 
 who profess to distinguish the archaistic, as they 
 call it, from the archaic, it is always a very diffi- 
 cult task, and about most of them there is doubt 
 and debate. 
 
 But here about Orchomenus, a country which was 
 so decayed as to lose almost all its population two 
 centuries before Christ, where no amateurs of art 
 would stay, and where Plutarch was, as it were, the 
 last remains in his town of literature and respecta- 
 bility — here there is no danger whatever of this 
 spurious work, and thus here, as indeed all through 
 Greece, archaic work is thoroughly trustworthy. 
 But the unfortunate law of the land, which insists 
 upon all these relics, however isolated, being kept 
 in their place of finding, is the mightiest obstacle to 
 the study of this interesting phase of culture, and 
 we must only await the publication of some com- 
 plete set of photographs, from which we can make 
 reliable observations. The Greeks will tell you 
 that the preservation of antiquities in their original 
 
 1 offTis 5e to Twrexvj] ireiroirifj.ei'a, iirlirpoffQe riQerai tQv is apy^idr-qra 
 7}k6vtwi>, Kal rctSe iffriu ol Oedcra(Tdai. I. 24, 3. 
 
Viii.] CHJERONEA. 201 
 
 place, in the first place, gives the inhabitants an 
 interest in them, which may be true, but that there 
 are generally no inhabitants : and next, that it en- 
 courages traveling in the country. This also is 
 true ; but surely the making of decent roads, and 
 the establishing of decent inns, and some com- 
 munications, would do infinitely more, and are 
 indeed necessary, before the second stimulus can 
 have its effect. 
 
 Not far from this little church and its famous relief, 
 we came in sight of the Acropolis (called Petrarchus) 
 of Chseronea, and soon arrived at the town, so cele- 
 brated through all antiquity, in spite of its moderate 
 size. The fort on the rock is, indeed, very large, per- 
 haps the largest we saw in Greece, with the excep- 
 tion of that at Corinth, and, as usual in these build- 
 ings, follows the steepest escarpments, raising the 
 natural precipice by a coping of beautifully hewn and 
 fitted square stones. The artificial wall is now not 
 more than four or five feet high, but even so, there 
 are only two or three places where it is at all easy 
 to enter the enclosure, which is fully a mile of strag- 
 gling outline on the rock. The view from this fort 
 is very interesting. Commanding all the plain of 
 the lake Copais, it also gives a view of the sides of 
 Parnassus, and of the passes into Phocis, which 
 cannot be seen till the traveller reaches this point. 
 Above all, it looks out upon the gap of Elatea, about 
 ten miles north-west, through which the eye catches 
 glimpses of secluded valleys in northern Phocis. 
 
202 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [cm 
 
 This gap is, indeed, the true key of this side 
 of Boeotia, and is no mere mountain pass, but 
 a narrow plain, perhaps a mile wide, which must 
 have afforded an easy transit for an army. But 
 the mountains on both sides are tolerably steep,, 
 and so it was necessary to have a fortified town,, 
 as Elatea was, to keep the command of the place.. 
 As we gazed through the narrow plain, the fa- 
 mous passage of Demosthenes came home to us,, 
 which begins : ' It was evening, and the news 
 came in that Philip had seized, and was fortifying 
 Elatea/ The nearest point of observation or of 
 control was the rock of Chaeronea, and we may say 
 with safety, that it was from here the first breath- 
 less messenger set out with the terrible news 
 for Thebes and Athens. This, too, was evidently 
 the pass through which Agesilaus came on his 
 return from Asia, and on his way to Coronea, whero 
 his great battle was fought, close by the older 
 trophy of the Theban victory over Tolmides. 1 
 
 Having surveyed the view, and fatigued ourselves 
 greatly by our climb in the summer-heat, we de- 
 scended to the old theatre, cut into the rock where 
 it ascends from the villag-e — the smallest and 
 steepest Greek theatre I had ever seen. Open-air 
 buildings always look small for their size, but most 
 of those built by the Greeks and Romans were so 
 large that nothing could dwarf them. Even the 
 theatre of such a town as Taormina in Sicily — 
 
 1 Cf. Plut. Agesilaus, cap. xvii. 
 
viii.] CIIJER ONE A . 203 
 
 which can never have been populous — is, in addition 
 to its enchanting site, a very majestic structure. I 
 will not speak of the immense theatres of Argos 
 and of Syracuse. But this little place at Chaeronea, 
 so steep that the spectators sat almost immediately 
 over one another, looked almost amusing when cut 
 in the solid rock, after the manner of its enormous 
 brethren. The guide-book says it is one of the 
 most ancient theatres in Greece, why, I know- 
 not. It seems to me rather to have been made 
 when the population was diminishing; and any 
 rudeness which it shows arises rather from economy 
 than want of knowledge. 
 
 But, small as it is, there are few more interest- 
 ing places than the only spot in Chaeronea where 
 we can say with certainty that here Plutarch sat — 
 a man who, living in an age of decadence, and 
 in a country village of no importance, has, never- 
 theless, made his genius felt over all the world 
 as much as any of his countrymen. Apart from 
 the great stores of history brought together in 
 his Lives, which, indeed, even now are our only 
 source for the inner life and spirit of the greatest 
 Greeks of the greatest epochs — the moral effect 
 of these splendid biographies, both on poets and 
 politicians through Europe, can hardly be over- 
 rated. From Shakespeare and Alfieri to the wild 
 savages of the French Revolution, all kinds of 
 patriots and eager spirits have been excited and 
 delighted by these wonderful portraits. Alfieri 
 
2o 4 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 even speaks of them as the great discovery of his 
 life, which he read with tears and with rage. There 
 is no writer of the Silver Age who gives us any- 
 thing like so much valuable information about 
 ■earlier authors, and their general character. More 
 especially the inner history of Athens in her best 
 days, the personal features of Pericles, Cimon, 
 Alcibiades, Nicias, as well as of Themistocles and 
 of Aristides, would be completely, or almost com- 
 pletely, lost, if this often despised but invaluable 
 man had not written for our learning. And he is 
 still more essentially a good man — a man better 
 and purer than most Greeks — another Herodotus 
 in fairness and in honesty. A. poor man who lived 
 at Howth, and was himself reputed by his neigh- 
 bours ' a terrible historian,' remarked to a friend of 
 mine, who used to lend him Scott's novels, ' that 
 Scott was a great historian,' and being asked his 
 reason, replied, ' He makes you to love your kind.' 
 There is a deep sense in this vague utterance, and 
 in this sense it may be eminently applied to our 
 dear old Plutarch. * Here in Chaeronea,' says 
 Pausanias, ' they prepare unguents from the 
 flowers of the lily, and the rose, and the narcis- 
 sus, and iris. These are balm for the pains of 
 men. But that which is made of roses, if even old 
 images made of wood are anointed with it, saves 
 them, too, from decay.' He little knew how eter- 
 nally true his words would be, for though the rose 
 and the iris grow wild and neglected, and yield not 
 
viii.] CHJERONEA. 205 
 
 now their perfume to soothe the ills of men, yet 
 from Chaeronea comes the eternal balm of Plutarch's 
 wisdom, to sustain the oppressed, to strengthen 
 the patriot, to purify with nobler pity and terror 
 the dross of human meanness. Nay, even the 
 crumbling images of his gods arrest their decay by 
 the virtue of his morals, and revive their beauty in 
 the sweetness of his simple faith. 
 
 There is a rich supply of water, bursting from 
 a beautiful old Greek fountain, near the theatre 
 — indeed, the water supply all over this country is 
 excellent. There is also an old marble throne in 
 the church, about which they have many legends, 
 but no history. The costume of the girls, whom we 
 saw working in small irrigated plots near the 
 houses, was beautiful beyond that in other Greek 
 towns. They wore splendid necklaces of gold and 
 silver coins, which lay like corslets of chain mail on 
 the neck and breast; and the dull but rich em- 
 broidery of wool ontheir aprons and bodices was 
 quite beyond what we could describe, but not 
 beyond our highest appreciation. 
 
 As the day was waning, we were obliged to leave 
 this most interesting place, and set off again on 
 our ride home to Lebadea. We had not gone n 
 mile from the town when we came upon the most 
 pathetic and striking of all the remains in that 
 country — the famous lion of Chseronea, which the 
 Thebans set up to their countrymen who had fallen 
 in the great battle against Philip of Macedon, in 
 
2o6 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 3$8 B. C. We had been looking out for this monu- 
 ment, and on our way up to Chseronea, seeing a 
 lofty mound in the plain, rode up to it eagerly, 
 hoping to find the lion. But we were disappointed, 
 and were told that the history of this larger mound 
 was completely unknown. It evidently commemo- 
 rates some battle, and is a mound over the dead, 
 but whether those slain by Sylla, or those with Tol- 
 mides, or those of some other conflict, no man can 
 say. It seems, however, perfectly undisturbed, and 
 grown about with deep weeds and brushwood, so 
 that a hardy excavator might find it worth open- 
 ing, and, perhaps, coins might tell us of its age. 
 
 The mound where we found the lion was much 
 humbler and smaller, in fact hardly a mound at all, 
 but a rising knoll, with its centre hollowed out, and 
 in the hollow the broken pieces of the famous lion. 
 It had sunk, we are told, into its mound of earth, 
 originally intended to raise it above the road 
 beside, and lay there in perfect safety till the pre- 
 sent century, when four English travellers claim to 
 have discovered it (June 3, 181 8). They tried to 
 get it removed, and failing in their efforts, covered 
 up the pieces carefully? Since that time they seem 
 
 1 An account of the discovery, by the only surviving member of the 
 party, Mr. G. L. Taylor, has been published by Mr. W. S. Vaux in the 
 Trans, of the Royal Soc. of Lit., 2nd series, vol. viii., pp. I, sgq. The 
 latter gentleman called attention to his paper when the subject was 
 being discussed in the Academy last year. A very different story was 
 told to Colonel Mure, and has passed from his Travels into Murray's 
 Guide. The current belief among the Greeks seems still to be that a 
 
viil] CHjERONEA. 207 
 
 to have lain undisturbed, and are still in such a 
 state that a few days' labour, and a few pounds 
 of expense, would restore the work. It is of 
 blueish-grey stone 1 — they call it Boeotian marble 
 or limestone — and is a work of the highest and 
 purest merit. The lion is of that Asiatic type 
 which has little or no mane, and seemed to us 
 ■couchant or sitting in attitude, with the head not 
 lowered to the fore paws, but thrown up. 2 The 
 expression of the face is ideally perfect — rage, 
 grief, and shame are expressed in it, together 
 with that noble calmness and moderation which 
 characterize all good Greek art. The object of the 
 monument is quite plain without reading the affect- 
 ing, though simple, notice of Pausanias : ' On the 
 approach to the city,' says he, ' is the tomb of the 
 Boeotians who fell in the battle with Philip. It 
 
 Greek patriot called Odysseus, perceiving the stone protruding from the 
 clay, and, on striking it, hearing its hollow ring, dug it out and broke 
 it in pieces, imagining it to be a record of Philip's victory over Hel- 
 lenic liberty. Some ill-natured people added that he hoped to find 
 treasure within it. 
 
 1 Not white marble, as Mr. Cresy implies, op. cit. p. 4. He gives 
 the measurements of some of the pieces, which are enormous, the head 
 alone weighing about three tons. 
 
 2 Mr. Taylor and his friends thought it must have stood in the atti- 
 tude of the now abolished lion on Northumberland House. This did 
 not appear so to us ; but it is difficult to decide. The restoration by 
 Siegel in the Mon, of the Soc. Arch, of Rome, for 1856, of which Mr. 
 A. S. Murray most kindly sent me a drawing, makes the posture a 
 sitting one, like that of the sitting lion in front of the Arsenal at Venice. 
 The Greeks are now fully alive to the value of this monument, and 
 anxious for its restoration. 
 
2o8 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch.. 
 
 has no inscription; but the image of a lion is 
 placed upon it as an emblem of the spirit of these 
 men. The inscription has been omitted — I suppose, 
 because the gods had willed that their fortune 
 should not be equal to their valour/ So, then, we 
 have here, in what may fairly be called a dated 
 record, one of the finest specimens of the sepul- 
 chral monuments of the best age of Greece. It is 
 very much to be regretted that this splendid figure 
 is not put together and photographed. Nothing 
 would be more instructive than a comparison 
 with the finest of modern monuments — Thorwald- 
 sen's Lion at Lucerne — the work, too, of the only 
 modern sculptor who can for one moment be 
 spoken of in comparison with the old Greeks. But 
 the lion of Chaeronea now owes its existence and 
 safety to the accident that no neighbouring pea- 
 sant has in old time lacked stones for a wall, or for 
 a ditch ; and when Europe awoke to a sense of the 
 preciousness of these things, it might have been 
 gone, or dashed into useless fragments. 
 
 As we saw it, on a splendid afternoon in June r 
 it lay in perfect repose and oblivion, the frag- 
 ments large enough to let us see the contour 
 and outline; and in the mouth of the upturned 
 head wild bees were busy at their work, and the 
 honeycomb was there between its teeth. The old 
 Hebrew story came fresh upon us, and we longed 
 for the strength which tore the lion of old, to gather 
 the limbs and heal the rents of his marble fellow. 
 
viil] CH^RONEA. 209 
 
 The lion of Samson was a riddle to the Philistines 
 which they could not solve ; and so I suppose this 
 lion of Chseronea was a riddle, too — a deeper riddle 
 to better men — why the patriot should fall before the 
 despot, and the culture of Greece before the Caesar- 
 ism of Macedonia. Even within Greece, there is 
 no loss for remarkable parallels. This, the last 
 effulgence of the setting sun of Greek liberty, was 
 commemorated by a lion and a mound, as the 
 opening struggle at Marathon was also marked 
 by a lion and a mound. At Marathon the mound 
 is there and the lion gone — at Chaeronea, the lion 
 is there and the mound gone. But, doubtless, the 
 earlier lion was far inferior in expression and in 
 beauty, and was a small object on so large a tomb. 
 Later men made the sepulchre itself of less im- 
 portance, and the poetic element more prominent ; 
 and perhaps this very fact tells the secret of their 
 failure, and why the refined sculptor of the lion 
 was no equal in politics and war to the rude carver 
 of the relief of the Marathonian warrior. 
 
 These and such like thoughts throng the mind 
 of him who sits beside this solitary tomb ; and 
 it may be said in favour of its remoteness and 
 difficulty of access, that the traveller who does 
 reach it will not rush away to catch a train, or 
 mount a coach, startled by a horn or whistle from 
 his meditations. In solitude there is at least peace 
 and leisure, and the scattered objects of interest are 
 scanned with affection and with care. 
 
 P 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ARACHOVA — DELPHI — THE BAY OF CIRRHA. 
 
 The pilgrim who went of old from Athens to the 
 shrine of Delphi, to consult the great oracle on 
 some great difficulty in his own life, or some great 
 danger to his country, saw before him the giant 
 Parnassus as his goal, as soon as he reached the 
 passes of Cithseron. For two or three days he went 
 across Bceotia with this great landmark before him ; 
 but it was not till he reached Lebadea that he 
 found himself leaving level roads, and entering 
 defiles, where great cliffs and narrow glens gave to 
 his mind a tone of superstition and of awe which 
 ever dwelt around that wild and dangerous country. 
 Starting from Lebadea, or, by another road, from 
 Chaeronea, he must go about halfway round Par- 
 nassus, from its east to its south-west aspect ; and 
 this can only be done by threading his way along 
 torrents and precipices, mounting steep ascents, 
 and descending into wild glens. This journey 
 among the Alps of Phocis is perhaps the most 
 beautiful in all Greece. 
 
 The old priests of Delphi, who were the first 
 
ch. ix.] ARA CHO VA. 2 1 r 
 
 systematic road-builders among the Greeks, had 
 made a careful way from Thebes into Phocis, 
 for the use of the thronging pilgrims to their 
 shrine. It appears that, by way of saving the 
 expense of paving it all, they laid down or maca- 
 damised in some way a double wheel-track or 
 fixed track, upon which chariots could run with 
 safety ; but we hear from the oldest times of the 
 unpleasantness of two vehicles meeting on this 
 road, and of the disputes that took place as to 
 which of them should turn aside into the deep mud. 
 We may infer from this that the lot of pedestrians 
 cannot have been very pleasant. Now, all these diffi- 
 culties have vanished with the road itself. There 
 are nothing but faintly-marked bridle paths, often 
 indicated only by the solitary telegraph wires, which 
 reach over the mountains, apparently for no pur- 
 pose whatever ; and all travellers must ride or walk 
 in single file, if they will not force their way through 
 covert and forest. 
 
 These wild mountains do not strike the mind 
 with the painful feeling of desolation which is 
 produced by the abandoned plains. At no time 
 can they have supported a large population, and 
 we may suppose that they never contained more 
 than scattered hamlets of shepherds, living, as 
 they now do, in deep-brown hairy tents of hides 
 at night, and wandering along the glens by day, 
 in charge of great herds of quaint-looking goats 
 with long beards and spiral horns. The dull tink- 
 
 P 2 
 
212 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch, 
 
 ling of their bells, and the eagle's yelp, are the 
 only sounds which give variety to the rushing of 
 the wind through the dark pines, and the falling of 
 the torrent from the rocks. It is a country in 
 which the feeling grows not of solitude, but of 
 smallness — a land of huge form and feature, meet 
 dwelling for mysterious god and gloomy giant, but 
 far too huge for mortal man. I trust I may not 
 be tedious in speaking so much of the landscape 
 in Greece ; but if these pages are to be an honest 
 mirror of what may be seen and enjoyed there, 
 it were idle to deny -or to avoid the splendid same- 
 ness and the splendid solitude of Greek scenery. 
 
 Our way lay, not directly for Delphi, but for the 
 curious town of Arachova, which is perched on the 
 summit of precipices, some 4000 feet or more above 
 the level of the sea. We rode from eight in the 
 .morning till the evening twilight to reach this 
 place, and all the day through scenes which gave 
 us each moment some new delight and some new 
 astonishment, but which could only be described 
 by a painter, not by any pages of writing, however 
 poetical or picturesque. It is the misfortune of such 
 descriptions on paper, that the writer alone has 
 the remembered image clear before him; no reader 
 can grasp the detail, and frame for himself a parallel 
 picture. 
 
 We felt that we were approaching Arachova, 
 when we saw the steep slopes above and below our 
 path planted with vineyards, and here and there 
 
ix.] ARACHOVA. 213 
 
 a woman in her gay dress working on the steep 
 incline, where a stumble would have sent her 
 rolling many hundreds of feet into some torrent 
 bed. At one particular spot, where the way turned 
 round a projecting shoulder, we were struck by 
 seeing at the same time, to the north, the blue sea 
 under Eubcea, and, at the south, the Gulf of Corinth 
 where it nears Delphi — both mere patches among 
 the mountains, like the little lakes which one sees 
 among the Irish moors, but both great, historic 
 waters — old highroads of commerce and of culture. 
 From any of the higher summits, such a view from 
 sea to sea would not be the least remarkable ; but 
 it was interesting and unusual to see it from 
 a mule's back on one of the highroads of the 
 country. A moment later, the 'houses of Arachova 
 itself seized all our attention, lying over against us, 
 and quite near, but with a great gulf between us 
 and them, which we were fortunately able to ride 
 round. The town has a curious, scattered appear- 
 ance, with interrupted streets and uncertain plan, 
 owing not only to the extraordinary nature of the 
 site, but to the fact that huge boulders, I might say 
 rocks, have been shaken loose by earthquakes from 
 above, and have come tumbling into the middle of 
 the town. They crush a house or two, and stand 
 there in the middle of a street. Presently some 
 one comes and builds a house up against the side 
 of this rock; others venture in their turn, and so 
 the town recovers itself, till another earthquake 
 
2i 4 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 makes another rent. Since 1870 these earthquakes 
 have been very frequent. At first they were very 
 severe, and ruined almost all the town ; but now 
 they ar.e very slight, and so frequent that we were 
 assured that they happened at some hour every day. 
 I believe this is practically true, though we, who 
 arrived in the evening, and left early next day x 
 Avere not so fortunate as to feel the shock ourselves. 
 But the whole region of Parnassus shows great 
 scars and wounds from this awful natural scourge. 
 
 Arachova is remarkable as being one of the very 
 few towns in Greece of any note which is not built 
 upon a celebrated ancient site. Everywhere the 
 modern Greek town is a mere survival of the old. 
 I know but three exceptions — Arachova, Hydria, 
 and Tripolitza, and of these the latter two arose 
 from special and known circumstances. The pros- 
 perity of Arachova is not so easily explicable. In 
 spite of the wonderful and curious site, the trade of 
 the place is, for a Greek town, very considerable. 
 The wines which they make are of the highest re- 
 pute, though to us the free use of resin makes them 
 all equally worthless. Besides this, they work 
 beautifully patterned rugs of divers-coloured wool — 
 rugs which are sold at high prices all over the 
 Greek waters. They are used in boats, on saddles, 
 on beds — in fact for every possible rough use. The 
 patterns are sown on with wool, and the widths 
 sown together in the same way, with effective 
 rudeness. 
 
ix.] ARACHOVA. 
 
 215 
 
 We had an excellent opportunity of seeing- all 
 this sort of work, as we found the town in some 
 excitement at an approaching marriage; and we 
 went to see the bride, whom we found in a 
 large room with low wooden rafters, in the com- 
 pany of a large party of her companions, and sur- 
 rounded on all sides by her dowry, which consisted, 
 in eastern fashion, almost altogether of ' changes 
 of raiment/ All round the room these rich woollen 
 rugs lay in perfect piles, and from the low ceiling 
 hung in great numbers her future husband's white 
 petticoats ; for in that country, as everywhere in 
 Greece, the men wear the petticoats. The com- 
 pany were all dressed in full costume — white 
 sleeves, embroidered woollen aprons, gold and 
 silver coins about the neck, and a bright red loose 
 belt worn low round the figure. To complete 
 the picture, each girl had in her left hand a dis- 
 taff, swathed about with rich, soft, white wool, 
 from which her right hand and spindle were deftly 
 spinning thread, as she walked about the room 
 admiring the trousseau^ and joking with us and 
 w T ith her companions. The beauty of the Aracho- 
 vite women is only equalled by the strength and 
 longevity of the men, nor do I know any moun- 
 taineers equal to them, except those of some of the 
 valleys of the Tyrol. But there, as is well known, 
 beauty is chiefly confined to the men ; at Arachova 
 it seemed fairly distributed. We did not see any 
 one girl of singular beauty. The average was 
 
2 1 6 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 remarkably high ; and, as might be expected, they 
 were not only very fair, but of that peculiarly 
 clear complexion, and vigorous frame, which seem 
 almost always to be found when a good climate 
 and clear air are combined with a very high level 
 above the sea. 
 
 We saw, moreover, what they called a Pyrrhic 
 dance, and which consisted of a string of people, 
 hand-in-hand, standing in the form of a spiral, and 
 moving rhythmically, while the outside member of 
 the train performed curious and violent gymnastics. 
 The music consisted in the squealing of a horrible 
 clarionette, accompanied by the beating of a large 
 drum. The clarionette-player had a leathern band- 
 age about his mouth, like that which we see in 
 the ancient reliefs and pictures of double flute 
 players. According as each principal dancer was 
 fatigued, he passed off from the end of the spiral 
 line, and stuck a silver coin between the cap and 
 forehead of the player. The whole motion was 
 extremely slow throughout the party — the centre of 
 the coil, which is often occupied by little children, 
 hardly moving at all, and paying little attention 
 to the dance. 
 
 In general, the Greek music which I heard — 
 dance music, and occasional shepherd's songs — 
 was nothing but a wild and monotonous chant, 
 with two or three shakes and ornaments on a high 
 note, running down to a long drone note at the end. 
 They repeat these phrases, which are not more 
 
ix.] ARACHOVA. 217 
 
 than three bars long, over and over again, with 
 some slight variations of appogiatura. I was told 
 by competent people at Athens, that all this music 
 was not properly Greek, but Turkish, and that the 
 long slavery of the Greeks has completely destroyed 
 the traditions of their ancient music. Though this 
 seemed certainly true of the music which I heard, 
 I very much doubt that any ancient feature so 
 general as music can have completely disappeared. 
 When there are national songs of a distinctly Greek 
 character transmitted all through the Slavish and 
 Turkish periods, it seems odd that they should be 
 sung altogether to foreign music. Without more 
 careful investigation, I should be slow to decide 
 upon such a question. Unfortunately, our speci- 
 mens of old Greek music are very few, and probably 
 very insignificant, all the extant works on music 
 by the ancients being devoted to theoretical ques- 
 tions, which are very difficult and not very profit- 
 able. To this subject I must devote a special 
 discussion, with what illustration it is now possible 
 to obtain. 
 
 The inhabitants wished us to stay with them 
 some days, which would have given us an oppor- 
 tunity of witnessing the wedding ceremony, and 
 also of making excursions to the snowy tops of 
 Mount Parnassus. But we had had enough of that 
 sort of amusement in a climb up Mount y^Etna a 
 short time before, and the five hours' toiling on the 
 snow in a thick fog was too fresh in our memory. 
 
2 1 8 RA MBLES IN GREE CE. [chl 
 
 Besides, we were bound to catch the weekly steamer 
 at Itea, as the port of Delphi is now called; and 
 eight additional days, or rather nights, in this coun- 
 try might have been too much for the wildest en- 
 thusiast. For the wooden houses of Arachova are 
 beyond all other structures infested with life, and 
 not even the balconies in the frosty night air were 
 safe from insect invasions. 
 
 We, therefore, started early in the morning, and 
 kept along the sides of precipices on our way to the 
 oracle of Delphi. It is not wonderful that the Ara- 
 chovites should be famous for superstitions and 
 legends, and that the enquirers into the remnants 
 of old Greek beliefs in the present day have found 
 their richest harvest in this mountain fastness,, 
 where there seems no reason why any belief should 
 ever die out. More especially the faith in the terri- 
 ble god of the dead, Charos, who represents not only 
 the old Charon, but Pluto also, is here very deep- 
 seated, and many Arachovite songs and ballads 
 speak of his awful and relentless visits. Longevity 
 is so usual, and old age is so hale and green in 
 these Alps, that the death of the young comes home 
 with far greater force and pathos here than in un- 
 healthy or immoral societies, and thus the inroads 
 of Charos are not borne in sullen silence, but 
 lamented with impatient complaints. 
 
 At eleven o'clock, we came, in the fierce summer 
 sun, to the ascent into the ' rocky Pytho, 5 where the 
 terraced city of old had once harboured pilgrims 
 
ix.] DELPHI. 219 
 
 from every corner of the civilized world. The ordi- 
 nary histories which we read give us but little idea 
 of the mighty influence of this place in the age of 
 its faith. We hear of its being consulted by Croe- 
 sus, or by the Romans, and we appreciate its re- 
 nown for sanctity; but until of very late years, there 
 was small account taken of its political and com- 
 mercial omnipotence. The date of its first rise is 
 hidden in remote antiquity. As the story goes, a 
 shepherd who fed his flocks here observed the 
 goats, when they approached the vaporous cavern, 
 springing" about madly, as if under some strange 
 influence. He came up to see the place himself, 
 and was immediately seized with the prophetic 
 frenzy. So the reputation of the place spread, 
 first around the neighbouring pastoral tribes, and 
 then to a wider sphere. 
 
 This very possible origin, however, does not dis- 
 tinctly assert what may certainly be inferred — I 
 mean the existence of some older and ruder worship, 
 before the worship of Apollo was here established. 
 Two arguments make this clear. In the first place, 
 old legends consistently speak of the arrival of 
 Apollo here; of his conflict with the powers of Earth, 
 under the form of the dragon Python; of his having 
 undergone purification for its murder, and having 
 been formally ceded possession by its older owners. 
 This distinct allusion to a previous cult, and one 
 even hostile to Apollo, but ultimately reconciled 
 with him, is sustained by the fact that Pausanias. 
 
220 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 describes in the Temple of Apollo itself two old 
 stones — one apparently an aerolith — which were 
 treated with great respect, anointed daily with oil, 
 and adorned with garlands of flowers. One of 
 these was to the Greeks the centre of the earth 
 (o/ncpaXog), and beside it were two eagles in gold, to 
 remind one of the legend that Zeus had started 
 two eagles from the ends of the earth, and that 
 they met at this exact spot midway. These old 
 and shapeless stones, which occur elsewhere in 
 Greek temples,' point to the older stage of fetish 
 worship, before the Greeks had risen to the art of 
 carving a statue, or of worshipping the unseen 
 deity without a gross material symbol. 
 
 Homer speaks in the Iliad of the great wealth of 
 the shrine ; and the Hymn to the Pythian Apollo 
 supposes its whole antecedents completed. But 
 seeing that the god Apollo, though originally an 
 Ionian god, as at Delos, was here worshipped dis- 
 tinctively by the Dorians, we shall not err if we 
 consider the rise of the oracle to greatness coinci- 
 dent with the rise and spreading of the Dorians over 
 Greece — an event to which we can assign no date, 
 but which, in legend, comes next after the Trojan 
 War, and seems on the threshold of real history. 
 The absolute submission of the Spartans, when they 
 rose to power, confirmed the authority of the shrine, 
 and so it gradually came to be the Metropolitan 
 See, so to speak, in the Greek religious world. It 
 seems that the influence of this oracle was, in old 
 
IX.] DELPHI. 221 
 
 days, used uniformly in the direction of good morals 
 and of enlightenment. When neighbouring states 
 were likely to quarrel, the oracle was often a peace- 
 maker, and even acted as arbitrator — a course often 
 adopted in earlier Greek history, and in which they 
 again anticipated the best results of our nineteenth- 
 century culture. So again, when excessive popu- 
 lation demanded an outlet, the oracle was consulted 
 as to the proper place, and the proper leader to be 
 selected ; and so, all the splendid commercial deve- 
 lopment of the sixth century B. C, if not produced, 
 was at least guided and promoted by the Delphic 
 Oracle. Again, in determining the worship of 
 other gods, and the founding of new services to 
 great public benefactors, the oracle seems to have 
 been the acknowledged authority — thus taking the 
 place of the Vatican in Catholic Europe, as the 
 source and origin of new dogmas, and of new 
 faiths and formularies. 
 
 At the same time the treasurehouse of the 
 shrine was the largest and safest of banks, where 
 both individuals and states might deposit trea- 
 sure — nay, even the states seem to have had sepa- 
 rate chambers — and from which they could also 
 borrow money, at fair interest, in times of war and 
 public distress. The rock of Delphi was held to be 
 the navel or centre of the earth's surface, and cer- 
 tainly, in a social and religious sense, this was the 
 case for all the Greek world. Thus the priests were 
 informed, by perpetual visitors from all sides, of all 
 
222 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 the last news — of the general aspect of politics — of 
 the new developments of trade — of the latest dis- 
 coveries in outlying and barbarous lands — and were 
 accordingly able, without any supernatural inspira- 
 tion, to form their judgments on wider experience 
 and better knowledge than anybody else could 
 command. This advice, which was really sound 
 and well-considered, was given to people who took 
 it to be divine, and acted upon it with implicit 
 faith and zeal. Of course the result was in general 
 satisfactory, and so even individuals came to use it 
 as a sort of high confessional, to which they came 
 as pilgrims at some important crisis of their life ; 
 and finding by the response that the god seemed to 
 know all about the affairs of every city, went away 
 fully satisfied with the divine authority of the 
 oracle. 
 
 This great and deserved general reputation was 
 not affected by occasional rumours of bribed re- 
 sponses or of dishonest priestesses. Such things 
 must happen everywhere : but, as Lord Bacon 
 long ago observed, human nature is more affected 
 by affirmatives than negatives — that is to say, 
 a few cases of brilliantly accurate prophecy will 
 outweigh a great number of doubtful advices or 
 even cases of acknowledged corruption. So the 
 power of the Popes has lasted in some respects 
 undiminished to the present day, and they are still 
 regarded by many as infallible, even though his- 
 torians have published many dreadful lives of some 
 
ix.] DELPHI. 223 
 
 of them, and branded them as men of worse than 
 average morals. 
 
 The greatness — nay, the almost omnipotence — 
 of the Delphic Oracle lasted from the invasion 
 of the Dorians down to the Persian War, cer- 
 tainly more than three centuries; when the part 
 which it took in the latter struggle gave it a 
 blow from which it seems never to have recovered. 
 When the invasion of Xerxes was approaching, 
 the Delphic priests, informed accurately of the im- 
 mense power of the Persians, made up their minds 
 that all resistance was useless, and counselled 
 absolute submission or flight. According to all 
 human probabilities they were right, for nothing 
 except a series of blunders could possibly have 
 checked the Persians. But surely the god ought 
 to have inspired them to utter patriotic responses, 
 and thus to save themselves in case of such a 
 miracle as actually happened. I cannot but sus- 
 pect that they hoped to gain the favour of Xerxes, 
 and remain under him what they had hitherto 
 been, a wealthy and protected corporation. Per- 
 haps they even saw too far, and perceived that the 
 success of the Greeks would bring the Ionic states 
 into prominence; but we must not credit them 
 with too much. The result, however, told greatly 
 against them. The Greeks won, and the Athenians 
 got the lead — the Athenians, who very soon de- 
 veloped a secular and worldly spirit, and who were 
 by no means awed by responses which had threat- 
 
224 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 ened them and weakened their hands, when their 
 own courage and skill had brought them deliver- 
 ance — just as in the case of modern Europe, the 
 theological spirit made way for greater enlighten- 
 ment. And we can imagine even Themistocles, not 
 to speak of Pericles and Antiphon, looking upon 
 the oracles as little more than a convenient way of 
 persuading the mob to follow a policy which it 
 was not able to understand. 
 
 But I must not turn these sketches into an his- 
 torical treatise. It is far better, however, to say 
 something definite and easily understood, than to 
 collect in a foot-note a series of references, and say: 
 'for the influence of the Delphic Oracle and its his- 
 tory, cf. Bekker's Anecdota, or Creuzer's Symbolik* 
 or a host of other books which nobody has beside 
 him, and which in any case nobody cares to consult. 
 I think scholars are to blame in putting forth what 
 they know in such a form as to repel and disgust 
 the average reader. The days are come when Greek 
 history and literature will not maintain their place 
 in our education if we keep them all to ourselves. 
 We must teach everyone what is their greatness, 
 and what are their peculiar merits, which cannot 
 be replaced by any other study. So, then, I do not 
 hesitate to put into this popular book many things 
 which cannot be learned without special and often 
 tedious research. 
 
 It is with some sadness that we turn from the 
 splendid past of Delphi to its miserable present. 
 
ix.] DELPHI. 225 
 
 The sacred cleft in the earth, from which rose the 
 cold vapour which intoxicated the priestess, is 
 blocked up and lost. As it lay within the shrine 
 of the temple, it may have been filled by the falling- 
 ruins, or may have been still more completely de- 
 stroyed by an earthquake. But, apart from these 
 natural possibilities, we are told that the Christians, 
 after the oracle was closed by Theodosius, filled up 
 and effaced the traces of what they held a special 
 entrance to hell, where communications had been 
 held with the Evil One. 
 
 The three great fountains or springs of the 
 town are still in existence. The first and most 
 striking bursts out from between the Phaedrides, 
 or two shining peaks, which stand up 1000 feet 
 over Delphi, so close together as to leave a dark 
 and mysterious gorge or fissure, not twenty feet 
 wide, between them. The aspect of these twin 
 peaks, so celebrated by the Greek poets, with 
 their splendid stream, the Castalian fount, bursting 
 from between them, is indeed grand and startling. 
 A great square bath is cut in the rock, just at the 
 mouth of the gorge, but the earthquake of 1870, 
 which made such havoc of Arachova, has been 
 busy here also, and has tumbled a huge block into 
 this bath, so covering the old work, as well as 
 several votive niches cut into the rocky wall. This 
 was the place where arriving pilgrims purified 
 themselves with hallowed water. 
 
 In the great old days the oracle only gave re- 
 Q 
 
226 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 sponses on the seventh of each month, and even 
 then only when the sacrifices were favourable. 
 If the victims were not perfectly without blemish, 
 they could not be offered; if they did not tremble 
 all over when brought to the altar in the temple, 
 the day was thought unpropitious. The inquirers 
 entered the great temple in festal dress, with 
 olive garlands and stemmata, or fillets of wool, 
 led by the oanot, or sacred guardians of the temple, 
 who were five of the noblest citizens of Delphi. 
 The priestesses, on the contrary — there were three 
 at the same time who officiated in turn — though 
 Delphians also, were not considered of noble 
 family. When the priestess was placed on the 
 sacred tripod by the chief interpreter, or Trpo^/jrr/e, 
 over the exhalations, she was seized with frenzy, 
 often so violent that the oaioi were known to 
 have fled in terror, and the priestess to have 
 become insensible, and to have died. Her ravings 
 in this state were carefully noted down, and then 
 reduced to sense, and of old always to verses, by 
 the attendant priests, who of course interpreted 
 disconnected words with a special reference to 
 the politics or other circumstances of the in- 
 quirers. 
 
 This was done in early days in perfect good 
 faith. With the decay of religion there were of 
 course many cases of corruption and of partiality, 
 and, indeed, the whole style and dignity of the 
 oracle gradually decayed with the decay of Greece 
 
ix.] DELPHI. 227 
 
 itself. Presently, when crowds came, and states 
 were extremely jealous of the right of precedence 
 in inquiring of the god, it was found expedient 
 to give responses every day, and this was done 
 to private individuals, and even for trivial reasons. 
 So also the priests no longer took the trouble to 
 shape the responses into verse ; and when the 
 Phocians in the sacred war (b. C. 355-46) seized 
 the treasures, and applied to war purposes some 
 10,000 talents, the shrine suffered a blow from 
 which it never recovered. Still, the quantity of 
 splendid votive offerings which were not con- 
 vertible into ready money made it the most inte- 
 resting place in Greece, next to Athens, for lovers 
 of the arts ; and the statues, tripods, and other 
 curiosities described there by Pausanias, give a 
 wonderful picture of the great oracle even in its 
 decay. The greatest sculptors, painters, and archi- 
 tects had lavished labour and design upon the 
 buildings. Though Nero had carried off 500 bronze 
 statues, the traveller estimated the remaining works 
 of art at 3000, and yet these seem to have been 
 almost all statues, and not to have included tripods, 
 pictures, and other gifts. The Emperor Constan- 
 tine (A. D. 330) carried away a great number of 
 these to adorn his capital — more especially the 
 bronze tripod, formed of three intertwined serpents, 
 with their heads supporting a golden vessel, which 
 Pausanias, the Spartan King, had dedicated as the 
 leader of Greece to commemorate the great victory 
 over Xerxes. This tripod was found standing in 
 
 o 2 
 
228 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 its place at Constantinople by our allied armies 
 in 1852, and contains the list of states according" 
 to the account of Herodotus, who describes its 
 dedication, and who saw it at Delphi. 
 
 When the Emperor Julian, the last great sup- 
 porter of Paganism, desired to consult the oracle 
 on his way to Persia, in 362 A. D., it replied : '* Tell 
 the king the fair-wrought dwelling has sunk into 
 the dust : Phcebus has no longer a shelter or a pro- 
 phetic laurel, neither has he a speaking fountain ; 
 the fair water is dried up.' Thus did the shrine con- 
 fess, even to the ardent and hopeful Julian, that its 
 power was gone, and, as it were by a last great 
 effort, declared to him the great truth which he 
 refused to see — that Paganism was gone for ever, 
 and a new faith had arisen for the nations of the 
 Roman Empire. 
 
 About the year 390, Theodosius took the god 
 at his word, and closed the oracle finally. The 
 temple — with its cella of 100 feet — with its Doric 
 and Ionic pillars — with its splendid sculptures 
 upon the pediments — sank into decay and ruin. 
 The gymnasia and porticos tumbled down the pre- 
 cipitous cliffs ; the prophetic chasm was filled up 
 by the Christians with fear and horror ; and, as it 
 to destroy any attempt to reconstruct from ruins 
 the site and plan, the modern Greeks built their 
 miserable hamlet of Castri upon the spot ; so that 
 it is only among the walls and foundations laid 
 bare by earthquakes, that we can now seek for 
 marble capitals and votive inscriptions. 
 
IX.] DELPHI. 22q 
 
 One or two features are still unchanged. The 
 three fine springs, to which Delphi doubtless owed 
 its first selection for human habitation, are still 
 there : Castalia, of which we have spoken ; Cassotis, 
 which was led artificially into the very shrine of the 
 god ; and Delphussa, which was, I suppose, the 
 water used for secular purposes by the inhabitants. 
 The stadium, too, a tiny racecourse high above the 
 town, in the only place where they could find a level 
 150 yards, is still there ; and we see at once what 
 the importance of games must have been at a holy 
 Greek town, when such a thing as a stadium should 
 be attempted here. 1 The earliest competitions had 
 been in music — that is, in playing the lyre, in 
 recitation, and probably in the composition of 
 original poems ; but presently the physical con- 
 tests of Olympia began to outdo the splendour of 
 Delphi. Moreover, the Spartans would not com- 
 pete in minstrelsy, which they liked and criticised, 
 but left to professional artists. Accordingly, the 
 priests of Delphi were too practical a corporation 
 not to widen the programme of their games, and 
 Pindar has celebrated the Pythian victors as 
 hardly second to those at the great festival of Elis. 
 
 There is yet one more element in the varied 
 greatness of Delphi. It was here that the re- 
 ligious federation of Greece — the Amphictyony of 
 which we hear so often — held its meetings alter- 
 
 1 The hippodrome for the chariot races was, however, in the plain be- 
 neath, as Pausanias tells us (x. 37, 4). 
 
RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 nately with the meetings at the springs of Thermo- 
 pylae. When I stood high up on the stadium at 
 Delphi, the great scene described by the orator 
 ^Eschines came fresh upon me, when he looked 
 upon the sacred plain of Crissa, and called all 
 the worshippers of the god to clear it of the sacri- 
 legious Amphissians, who had covered it with 
 cattle and growing crops. The plain, says he, is 
 easily surveyed from the place of meeting — a state- 
 ment which shows that it cannot have been in the 
 town of Delphi ; for a great shoulder of the moun- 
 tain effectually hides the whole plain from every 
 part of the town. 
 
 The Pylaea, or place of meeting, was, however,, 
 outside, and precisely at the other side of this huge 
 shoulder, so that what^Eschines says is true; but it 
 is not true, as every ordinary student imagines, that 
 he was standing in Delphi itself. He was, in fact, 
 completely out of sight of the town, though not a 
 mile from it. There is no more common error than 
 this among our English scholars — and I dare say 
 there are not many who realize the existence of 
 this suburban Pylaea, and its situation close to, 
 but invisible from, Delphi. It certainly never 
 came home to me till I began to look for the spot 
 from which ./Eschines might have delivered his 
 famous extempore address. 
 
 When we rode round to the real place, we 
 found his words amply verified. Far below us 
 stretched the plain from Amphissa to Cirrha, at 
 
ix.] DELPHI. 231 
 
 right angles with the gorge above which Delphi is 
 situate. The river-courses of the Delphic springs 
 form, in fact, a regular zig-zag. When they tumble 
 from their great elevation on the rocks into the 
 valley, they join the Pleistus, running at right 
 angles towards the west ; when this torrent has 
 reached the plain, it turns again due south, and 
 runs into the sea at the Gulf of Cirrha. Thus, look- 
 ing from Pylaea, you see the upper part of the plain, 
 and the gorge to the north-west of it, where Am- 
 phissa occupies its place in a position similar to 
 the mouth of the gorge of Delphi. The southern 
 rocks of the gorge over against Delphi shut out the 
 sea, and the actual bay ; but a large rich tract, 
 covered with olive-woods, and medlars, and olean- 
 ders, is stretched out beneath the eye — verily a 
 plain worth fighting for, and a possession still 
 more precious, as it commanded the approach of 
 pilgrims from the sea, so that the harbour duties 
 and tolls of Cirrha were once a great wealth, and 
 threatened the oracle with poverty. This levying 
 of tolls on the pilgrims of Delphi became quite a 
 national question in the days of Solon ; it resulted 
 in a great war, led by the Amphictyonic Council. 
 Cirrha was ruined, and its land dedicated to the 
 god, in order to protect the approach from future 
 difficulties. So this great plain was, I suppose, 
 devoted to pasture, and the priests probably levied 
 a rent from the people who chose to graze their 
 cattle on the sacred plain. The people of Amphissa, 
 
232 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 who lived, not at the sea-side, but at the mountain 
 side of the plain, were never accused of robbing or 
 taxing the pilgrims ; but having acquired for many 
 generations the right of pasture, they advanced to 
 the idea of tilling their pastures, and were undis- 
 turbed in this privilege, till the mischievous orator, 
 iEschines, for his own purposes, fired the Delphians 
 with rage, kindled a war, and so brought Philip 
 into Greece. These are the historical circumstances 
 which should be called to mind by the traveller, 
 who rides down the steep descent from Delphi to 
 the plain, and then turns through the olive-woods 
 to the high road to Itea, as the port of Delphi is 
 now called. 
 
 A few hours brought us to the neighbourhood 
 of the sea. The most curious feature of this valley, 
 as we saw it, was a long string of camels tied 
 together, and led by a small and shabby donkey. 
 Our mules and horses turned with astonishment 
 to examine these animals, which have survived here 
 alone of all the places into which they were intro- 
 duced long ago by the Turks. 
 
 The port of Itea is one of the stations at which 
 the Greek coasting steamers now call, and, accord- 
 ingly, the place is growing in importance. If a 
 day's delay were allowed to let tourists ride up to 
 the old seat of the oracle, and if the service were 
 better regulated, I suppose no traveller would 
 choose any other route on his way to Athens. For 
 he would see all the beautiful coasts of Acarnania 
 
ix.] DELPHI. m 
 
 and iEtolia on the one side, and of Achaia on the 
 •other; he could take Delphi in his way, and would 
 then arrive at Corinth. Here, again, a day, or part 
 ■of a day, should be allowed to see the splendid 
 Acro-Corinthus, of which more in the next chap- 
 ter. The traveller might thus arrive at Athens 
 w T ith an important part of Greece already visited, 
 and have more leisure to turn his attention to the 
 monuments and curiosities of Athens and Attica. 
 It is worth while to suggest these things, be- 
 cause most men who go to Greece find, as I did, 
 that, with some better previous information, they 
 ■could have economised both time and money. I 
 should almost advise that the steamer — which sails 
 from Brindisi — should be abandoned at Itea, from 
 which the traveller can easily get horses to Delphi 
 and Arachova, and from thence to Chaeronea, Le- 
 badea, and through Thebes to Athens. So he 
 would arrive at Athens on a land tour, which would 
 make him acquainted with all Bceotia. He might 
 next sail from Athens to Corinth, and then take 
 horse, and ride into the Peloponnese ; going first 
 to Mycenae and Argos, and thence taking another 
 steamer round to Sparta, and riding up through 
 Laconia and Arcadia, so as to come out at Pa- 
 tras, where the steamer homewards would pick 
 him up. Of course, special excursions through 
 Attica, and to the islands, are not included in this 
 sketch, as they can easily be made from Athens. 
 But surely, no voyage in Greece can be called com- 
 
234 RAMBLES IN GREECE, [ch. re- 
 
 plete which does not include a visit to the famous 
 shrine of Delphi, where the wildness and rugged- 
 ness of nature naturally suggests the powers of 
 earth and air, that sway our lives unseen — where 
 the quaking earth and the rent rocks speak a 
 power above the strength of mortal men — and 
 where a great religious system, based upon these 
 natural hopes and fears, gained a moral empire 
 over all the nation, and exercised it for centuries, 
 to the purifying and the ennobling of the Hel- 
 lenic race. The oracle is long silent, the priestess 
 forgotten, the temple not only ruined, but de- 
 stroyed; and yet the grand utterances of that 
 noble shrine are not forgotten, nor are they dead. 
 For they have contributed their part, and added 
 their element to the general advancement of the 
 world, and to the emancipation of man from 
 immorality and from superstition, into the true 
 liberty of a good and enlightened conscience. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 CORINTH, MYCENiE, TIRYNS. 
 
 The gulf of Corinth is a very beautiful and narrow 
 fiord, with chains of mountains on either side, 
 through the gaps of which you can see far into the 
 Morea on one side, and into Northern Greece, on 
 the other. But the bays or harbours on either coast 
 are few, and so there was no city able to wrest the 
 commerce of these waters from old Corinth, which 
 held the keys by land of the whole Peloponnesus, 
 and commanded the passage from sea to sea. It is, 
 indeed, wonderful how Corinth did not acquire and 
 maintain the first position in Greece. It may, per- 
 haps, have been so in the days of Periander, and we 
 hear at various times of inventions and discoveries 
 in Corinth, which show that, commercially and artis- 
 tically, it was among the leading cities of Greece. 
 But, whenever the relations of the various powers 
 become clear, as in the Persian or Peloponnesian 
 Wars, we find Corinth always at the head of the 
 second-rate states, and never among the first. This 
 is possibly to be accounted for by the predominance 
 of trade interests, which are the source of such ma- 
 terial prosperity, that men have too much to lose, 
 and will not devote time and labour to politics, 
 or stake their fortunes for the defence of princi- 
 
236 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 pie. Thus, it seems as if the Corinthians had been 
 the shopkeepers of Greece. 
 
 But as soon as the greater powers of Greece de- 
 cayed and fell away, we find Corinth immediately 
 taking the highest position in wealth, and even in 
 importance. The capture of Corinth, in 146 B.C., 
 marks the Roman conquest of all Greece, and the 
 art-treasures carried to Rome seem to have been as 
 great and various as those which even Athens could 
 have produced. No sooner had Julius Caesar re- 
 stored and rebuilt the ruined city, than it sprang at 
 once again into importance, and among the societies 
 addressed in the Epistles of St. Paul, none seem 
 to have lived in greater wealth or luxury. It was, 
 in fact, well nigh impossible that Corinth should 
 die. Nature had marked out her site as one of the 
 great thoroughfares of the world ; and it was not 
 till after centuries of blighting misrule by the 
 wretched Turks that she sank into the hopeless 
 decay from which not even another Julius Caesar 
 could rescue her. 1 
 
 These were our reflections as we passed up the 
 gulf on a splendid summer evening, the mountains 
 of Arcadia showing their snowy tops a deep rose 
 colour in the setting sun. And passing by ^Egion 
 and Sicyon, we came to anchor at the harbour of 
 Lechaeum. There is now a public conveyance 
 
 1 On the foundation of the new Greek kingdom, it was seriously 
 debated whether Corinth should not be the capital ; but the constant 
 prevalence of fever in the district determined the selection of Athens in 
 preference. 
 
x.J CORINTH. 237 
 
 which takes the traveller across the isthmus to 
 Cenchreae, where a boat is in readiness to bring him 
 to Athens. But, with the usual absurdity of this 
 service, no time is allowed for visiting Corinth and 
 its Acropolis. We, however, stayed for the night 
 in the boat, and started in the morning for our 
 ride into the Peloponnesus. This arrangement is 
 almost necessary, as the port of Lechaeum cannot 
 even afford the traveller a chance of a decent meal. 
 The Greek steamers are, besides, of considerable 
 interest to any observant person. They seem 
 always full of passengers and dogs, and as the 
 various classes mix indiscriminately on deck, all 
 sorts of manners and culture can be easily com- 
 pared. 
 
 The fondness of the Greeks for driving a bargain 
 is often to be noticed. Thus, a Greek gentleman 
 on this boat, perceiving that we were strangers 
 in pursuit of art and antiquities, produced two 
 very fine gold coins of Philip and Alexander, 
 which he offered for ^5. That of Philip was par- 
 ticularly beautiful — a very perfect Greek head in 
 profile, crowned with laurel, and on the reverse 
 a chariot and four, with the legend, <PiXi7r-og. 
 Not being a very expert judge of coins, and sup- 
 posing that he had asked more than the value, 
 I offered him £2 10s. for this one, which was con- 
 siderably the larger ; but he would not take any 
 abatement. He evidently was not anxious to sell 
 them, but merely took chance of getting a good 
 price, and investing it again at better interest. 
 
38 
 
 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 Seeing that the coin seemed a little heavier than 
 our sovereign, and is not uncommon in collections, 
 I fancy the price he asked was excessive. The 
 Athenian shops, which are notorious for their prices 
 to strangers, had similar coins, for which about ^4 
 was asked. On this, and a thousand other points, 
 the traveller should be instructed by some compe- 
 tent person before he sets out. Genuine anti- 
 quities seem to me so common in Greece, that 
 imitations are hardly worth manufacturing. Even 
 with a much greater market, the country can sup- 
 ply for generations an endless store of real re- 
 mains of ancient Greece. But, nevertheless, the 
 prices of these things are already very high. The 
 ordinary tourist does not reach these shores, so 
 that the only seekers after them are enthusiasts, 
 who will not hesitate to give even fancy prices for 
 what they like. 
 
 The form of the country, as you ascend from Le- 
 chseum to Corinth, is very marked and peculiar. 
 At some distance from the flat shore the road 
 leads up through a steep pass of little height, 
 which is cut through a long ridge of rock, almost 
 like a wall, and over which lies a higher plateau 
 of land. The same feature is again repeated a 
 mile inland, as the traveller approaches the site 
 of ancient Corinth. These plateaus, though not 
 lofty, are well marked, and perfectly distinct, the 
 passes from one to the other being quite sufficient 
 to form a strong place of defence against an attack- 
 ing force. How far these rocky parapets reach I 
 

x.] CORINTH. 
 
 did not examine. Behind the highest plateau rises 
 the great cliff on which the citadel was built. 
 But even from the site of the old city it is easy to 
 obtain a commanding view of the isthmus, of the 
 two seas, and of the Achaean coast up to Sicyon. 
 
 The traveller who expects to find any sufficient 
 traces of the city of Periander and of Timoleon, 
 and, I may say, of St. Paul, will be grievously 
 disappointed. In the middle of the wretched, 
 straggling modern village there stand up seven 
 enormous rough stone pillars of the Doric Order, 
 evidently of the oldest and heaviest type ; and these 
 are the only visible relic of the ancient city, look- 
 ing altogether out of place, and almost as if they 
 had come there by mistake. These pillars, though 
 insufficient to let us reconstruct the temple, are 
 in themselves profoundly interesting. The whole 
 shaft up to the capital is of one block, about 
 twenty-one feet high and six feet in diameter. It 
 is to be observed, that over these gigantic mono- 
 liths, the architrave, in which other Greek temples 
 show the largest blocks, is not in one piece, 
 but two, and made of beams laid together longi- 
 tudinally. 1 The length of the shafts (up to the neck 
 
 1 M. Viollet-le-duc, in his Entretiens sur V Architecture, vol. I. p. 45, 
 explains the reason of this. Apart from the greater facility of raising 
 smaller blocks, most limestones are subject to flaws, which only are 
 disclosed by pressure. Hence, in using the inferior kinds, it was much 
 safer to support the entablature on two separate beams, one of which 
 might sustain, at least temporarily, the building, in case the other 
 should crack. 
 
2 4 o RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch.. 
 
 of the capital) measures about four times their dia- 
 meter, on the photograph which I possess ; I do 
 not suppose that any other Doric pillar known to 
 us is so stout and short. The material is said 
 almost universally to be limestone, but if my eyes 
 served me aright, it was a very porous and now 
 rough sandstone, not the least like the bluish 
 limestone in which the lions of the gate of Mycenae 
 are carved. The pillars are said to have been 
 covered with stucco, and were of course painted. 
 Perhaps even the figures of the pediment were 
 modelled in clay, as we are told was the case in the 
 oldest Corinthian temples, when first the fashion 
 came in of thus ornamenting an otherwise flat and 
 unsightly surface. The great temple, of Psestum,. 
 which is, perhaps, the next oldest, and certainly 
 the finest extant specimen of the original Doric 
 style, has no figures in the pediment, and seems 
 never to have had them, except, indeed, they were 
 painted in fresco on the stucco, with which it was 
 probably covered. Those who have seen the temple 
 at Paestum are, perhaps, the only visitors who will 
 be able to frame to themselves an image of the 
 very similar structure at Corinth, which Turks and 
 earthquakes have reduced to seven columns. There 
 must have been in it the same simplicity, the same 
 almost Egyptian massiveness, and yet the same 
 unity of plan and purpose which excludes all idea 
 of clumsiness or disproportion. 
 
 The longer one studies the Greek orders of archi- 
 tecture, the more the conviction grows that the 
 
x.] CORINTH. 241 
 
 Doric is of all the noblest and the most natural. 
 When lightened and perfected by the Athenians of 
 Pericles' time, it becomes simply unapproachable, 
 but even in older and ruder forms, it seems to 
 me vastly superior to either of the more ornate 
 orders. All the massive temples of Roman times 
 were built in the very ornate Corinthian, which 
 may almost be called the Graeco-Roman, style; 
 but, notwithstanding the majesty and beauty of 
 these, they are not to be compared with the 
 severer and more religious tone of the Doric re- 
 mains. I may add that the titles by which the 
 orders are distinguished seem ill-chosen and with- 
 out meaning, except, perhaps, that the Ionic was 
 most commonly used, and probably invented, in 
 Asia Minor. The earliest specimen of the Corin- 
 thian Order is at Athens ; the most perfect of the 
 Doric is at Athens also, while Ionic temples are 
 found everywhere. But it is idle now to attempt 
 to change such definite and well-sanctioned names. 
 Straight over the site of the town is the great 
 rock known as the Acro-Corinthus. A winding 
 path leads up on the south-west side to the Turkish 
 drawbridge and gate, which are now deserted 
 and open, nor is there a single guard or soldier to 
 watch a spot once the coveted prize of contending 
 empires. In the days of the Achaean League it 
 was called one of the fetters of Greece, and indeed 
 it requires no military experience to see the extra- 
 ordinary importance of the place. Strabo speaks 
 
 R 
 
* 
 
 242 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 of the Peloponnesus as the Acropolis of Greece — 
 Corinth may fairly be called the Acropolis of the 
 Peloponnesus. It runs out boldly from the surg- 
 ing mountain-chains of the peninsula, like an 
 outpost or sentry, guarding all approach from the 
 north. In days when news was transmitted by fire 
 signals, we can imagine how all the southern 
 country must have depended on the watch upon 
 the rock of Corinth. It is separated by a wide 
 plain of land, ending in the isthmus, from the 
 Geranean Mountains which come from the north, 
 and belong to a different mountain system. 
 
 Next to the view from the heights of Parnassus, I 
 suppose the view from this citadel is held the finest 
 in Greece. 1 I speak here of the large and diverse 
 views to be obtained from mountain heights. To 
 me, personally, such a view as that from the pro- 
 montory of Sunium, or, above all, from the harbour 
 of Nauplia, exceeds in beauty and interest any 
 bird's-eye prospect. Anyone who looks at the map 
 of Greece will see how the Acro-Corinthus com- 
 mands coasts, islands, and bays. The day was too 
 hazy when we stood there to let us measure the 
 real limits of the view, and I cannot say how near 
 to Mount Olympus the eye may reach in a suitable 
 atmosphere. But a host of islands, the southern 
 coasts of Attica and Bceotia, the Acropolis of 
 Athens, Salamis and iEgina, Helicon and Par- 
 
 i Strabo, who had apparently travelled but little through Greece, 
 speaks with admiration of this view, which he had evidently seen. 
 
x.] CORINTH. 243 
 
 nassus, and endless ^Etolian peaks were visible 
 in one direction, while, as we turned round, all 
 the waving reaches of Arcadia and Argolis, down 
 to the approaches towards Tegea and Sparta, were 
 laid out before us. The plain of Argos, and the 
 sea at that side, are hidden by the mountains. 
 But without going into details, this much may- 
 be said, that if a man wants to realize the features 
 of these coasts, which he has long studied on maps, 
 half an hour's walk about the top of this rock will 
 give him a geographical insight which no years 
 of study could attain. 
 
 The surface is very large, at least half a mile each 
 way, and is covered inside the bounding wall with 
 the remains of a large Turkish town, now in ruins 
 and totally deserted, but evidently of no small 
 importance in the days of the "War of Liberation. 
 The building of this town was a great misfortune 
 to antiquarians, for every fragment of old Greek 
 work was used as material for the modern houses. 
 Everywhere through the walls may be seen white 
 marble fragments of pillars and architraves, and 
 I have no doubt that a careful dilapidation of 
 the modern abandoned houses would amply repay 
 the outlay. There are several pits for saving 
 rain-water, and some shallow underground passa- 
 ges of which we could not make out the purpose. 
 The pits or tanks must have been merely intended 
 to save trouble, for about the middle of the plateau, 
 which sinks considerably towards the south, we 
 
 R 2 
 
244 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 were brought to a passage into the ground, which 
 led by a rapid descent to the famous well of Pirene, 
 the water of which was so perfectly clear that we 
 walked into it on going down the steps, as there 
 was actually no water-line visible. It was twelve 
 or fourteen feet deep, and perhaps twenty-five feet 
 long, so far as we could make it out in the twilight 
 underground. The structure of marble over the 
 fountain is the only piece of old Greek work we 
 could find on the rock. It consists of three sup- 
 ports, like pillars, made of several pieces, and over 
 them a sort of architrave. Then there is a gap in 
 the building, and from the large number of pieces 
 of marble lying at the bottom of the well we con- 
 cluded that the frieze and cornice had fallen out. 
 The pediment, or rather its upper outline, is still 
 in its place, clear of the architrave, and built into 
 the rock so as to remain without its supporting 
 cornice. 
 
 There are numerous inscriptions over the walls, 
 which I did not copy, because I was informed they 
 had already been published, though I have not 
 since been able to find them. They appeared to 
 me at the time to be either very illegible, or 
 suspiciously clear. But they are, of course, to be 
 found in some of the Greek archaeological news- 
 papers. This great well, springing up near the 
 top of a great barren rock, is very curious, espe- 
 cially as we could see no outlet. The water was 
 deep under the surface, and there was no sign of 
 
x.] CORINTH. 245 
 
 welling up, or of outflow anywhere. But to make 
 sure of this would have required a long and care- 
 ful ride round the whole ridge. Our guide-book 
 spoke of rushing streams and waterfalls tumbling 
 down the rock, which we searched for in vain, and 
 which may have been caused by a winter rainfall 
 without any connection with the fountain. But we 
 had already delayed too long upon this rock, where 
 we would have willingly spent a day or two at 
 greater leisure. Our guide urged us to start on 
 our long ride, which was not to terminate till we 
 reached the town of Argos, some thirty miles over 
 the mountains. 
 
 The country into which we passed was very 
 different from any we had yet seen, and still it was 
 intensely Greek. All the hills and valleys showed 
 a very white, chalky soil, which actually glittered 
 like snow where it was not covered with verdure or 
 trees. Road, as usual, there was none ; but all 
 these hills and ravines, chequered with snowy 
 white, were clothed with shining arbutus trees, and 
 shrubs resembling dwarf holly. Here and there 
 was a plain or valley with great fields of thyme 
 about the arbutus, and there were herds of goats 
 wandering through the shrubs, and innumerable 
 bees gathering honey from the thyme. The scene 
 was precisely such as Theocritus describes in the 
 uplands of Sicily; but in all our rides through that 
 delightful island, we had never found the thyme 
 and arbutus, the goats and bees, in such truly 
 
; 4 6 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch... 
 
 Theocritean perfection. We listened in vain for 
 the shepherd's pipe, and sought in vain for some 
 Thyrsis beguiling his time with the oaten reed. It 
 was almost noon time — noon, the hour of awe and 
 mystery to the olden shepherd, when Pan slept 
 his. mid-day sleep, and the wanton satyr was 
 abroad, prowling for adventure through the silent 
 woods — so that, even in pagan days, we might have 
 longed in vain for the companionship of melody .. 
 But now the silence was not from dread of Pan's dis- 
 pleasure, but that the sun's fiercer heat had warned 
 the shepherds to depart to the snowy heights of 
 Cyllene, where they dwell all the summer in Alpine 
 huts, and feed their flocks on the upland pastures, 
 which are covered with snow till late in the spring. 
 They had left behind them a single comrade, 
 with his wife and little children, to care the weak 
 and the lame till their return. We found this family 
 settled in their winter quarters, which consisted of 
 a square enclosure of thorns (OptyKog axtp^ov), built 
 up with stones, round a very old spreading olive- 
 tree. At the foot of the tree were the pots and pans,, 
 and other household goods, with some skins and rude 
 rugs lying on the ground. There was no attempt 
 •at a roof or hut of any kind, though, of course, it 
 might be set up in a moment, as we had seen in 
 the defiles of Parnassus, with skins hung over 
 three sticks — two uprights, and the third joining 
 their tops, so as to form a ridge. 
 
 To make the scene Homeric, instead of Theocri- 
 
x.] CORINTH. 247 
 
 tean, two large and very savage dogs rushed out 
 upon us at our approach, but the shepherd hurried 
 out after them, and drove them off by pelting them 
 with all his might with stones. * Surely,' he said, 
 turning to us breathlessly from his exertions, 'you 
 had met, O strangers ! with some mischief, if I had 
 not been here. 5 These dogs disappeared, in deep 
 anger, into the thicket, and, though we stayed at the 
 place for some time, never reappeared to threaten or 
 to pursue us on our departure. We talked as best 
 we could to the gentle shepherdess, one of whose 
 children had a fearfully scalded hand, for which we 
 suggested remedies, to her occult and wonderful, 
 though here so trite as to be despised by the wise. 
 She gave us in return great bowls of heated milk, 
 which was being made into cheese, and into 
 various kinds of curds, which are the very best 
 produce of the country. They would take no 
 money for their hospitality, but did not object to 
 our giving the children coins to play with — to 
 them, I am sure, a great curiosity. 
 
 Most of our journey was not, however, through 
 pastures and plains, but up and down steep ravines, 
 where riding was so difficult and dangerous that we 
 were often obliged to dismount and lead our horses. 
 Every hour or two brought us to a fountain spring- 
 ing from a rock, and over it generally a great 
 spreading fig-tree, with the water framed in on 
 both sides with a perfect turf of maiden-hair fern. 
 The only considerable valley which we passed was 
 
248 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 that of Cleonae, which we left some miles on our 
 left, and about which there was a great deal of 
 growing corn, and many shady plane trees. In- 
 deed, the corn was so plenty, that we saw asses 
 grazing in it quite contentedly, without any in- 
 terference from thrifty farmers. We had seen a very 
 similar sight in Sicily, where the enormous deep- 
 brown Sicilian oxen, with their forward-pointing 
 horns, were stretching their huge forms in fields of 
 half-ripe wheat, which covered all the plain, with- 
 out fence or division. There, too, it seemed as if 
 this was the cheapest grazing, and as if it were 
 not worth while to drive the cattle to some untilled 
 pasture. As for the treading-out of this corn, I 
 saw it done at Argos by a string of seven horses 
 abreast, with two young foals at the outside, 
 galloping round a small circular threshing-floor 
 in the open field, upon which the ripe sheaves had 
 been laid in fan-shaped pattern. I have no doubt 
 that a special observer of farming operations would 
 find many interesting survivals both in Greece and 
 the two Sicilies. 
 
 Towards evening, after many hours of travel, we 
 turned aside on our way down the plain of Argos, 
 to see the famous ruins of Mycenae. The situation 
 of this place struck me as very peculiar. Close to 
 a chain of high mountains which bound the lower 
 country on the north, but separated from them by 
 a deep ravine, there is a long hillock or saddle 
 rising out of the plain somewhat the shape of a 
 
x.] MYCENJE. 249 
 
 reversed note of interrogation. The whole upper 
 extremity up to the north point is occupied by 
 the ruins of the walls of Mycenae. The treasure- 
 house of Atreus is on the swell of the lower part, 
 over against the city, but separated from it by a 
 narrow, deep valley. The other two similar build- 
 ings, which are only opened at the top, and one of 
 them welling out with water, are on the line of the 
 hill, halfway between the lion gate and the house of 
 Atreus. 
 
 These celebrated structures have been so often 
 and so carefully described, that I need not attempt 
 any detailed account, but will rather presuppose a 
 general knowledge of them, and make such obser- 
 vations as struck me most in wandering about 
 among them. Let us take the treasure-house, as it 
 is called, first. It is in no sense a rude building, 
 or one of a barbarous or helpless age, but, on the 
 contrary, the product of enormous appliances and 
 a perfect knowledge of all the mechanical require- 
 ments of any building, if we except the application 
 of the arch. The stones are hewn square, and laid 
 together with admirable fitting. Over the im- 
 mense lintel-stone, which is 27 feet long, and 
 which is bevelled all along its edge over the door- 
 way, there is now a triangular window or aperture, 
 which was almost certainly filled with ornamental 
 work, like the triangle over the lintel of the gate of 
 Mycenae. Shortly after Lord Elgin had cleared the 
 entrance, at the beginning of this century — a work 
 
2 5 o RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch_ 
 
 for which he certainly deserves our deepest grati- 
 tude — Dodwell saw lying in front of the doorway a 
 broken piece of red porphyry or marble, and a 
 patterned stone, ornamented in a style exceedingly 
 like the old Irish interlacing. This pattern is repro- 
 duced in one of his plates. Some of these pieces 
 of old ornament are now said to be built into the wall 
 of a house at Nauplia, and some are in the British 
 Museum. As the actual doorway is certainly in its 
 original state, and there can have been nothing in 
 front of the great stones which are there, it is impos- 
 sible to find any other place for this ornament (which, 
 by the way, used variety of colour in the stone) than 
 the aperture over the lintel. The analogy of the 
 gate of Mycenae confirms this ; and there is, besides,. 
 a good architectural reason for leaving this gap in 
 the more massive building, where the pressure on 
 the doorway might force down even the giant 
 masses which now support their burden easily. 
 
 A spreading fig-tree starts from over the lintel,, 
 and throws a pleasant shade over the huge- 
 entrance, which is black within — black as night, 
 in spite of the light admitted from over the 
 doorway. 
 
 We went in by the light of torches, and found 
 ourselves in the great cone-shaped chamber, which, 
 strange to say, reminded me more of the Pantheon 
 at Rome than any other building I know, and is 
 nevertheless built on a very different principle. 
 The stones are not pushed forward one above 
 
x.] MYCENAE. 
 
 251 
 
 the other, as in ruder stone roofs through Ireland ; 
 but each stone, which is on the other surfaces cut 
 perfectly square, has its inner face curved so that 
 the upper end comes out several inches above the 
 lower. So each stone carries on the conical plan, 
 having its lower line fitting closely to the upper 
 line of the one beneath, and the whole dome ends 
 with a great flat stone laid on the top. 1 
 
 Dodwell still found copper nails of some inches 
 long, which he supposed to have been used to 
 fasten on thin plates of shining metal ; but I was 
 unable to find even the holes in the roof, which 
 other travellers have asserted to be the points 
 where the nails were inserted. 2 However, without 
 being provided with magnesium wire, it is not pos- 
 sible to light the chamber sufficiently for a positive 
 decision on this point. A small side chamber seems 
 hollowed out in the rock and earth, without any 
 stone casing or ornament whatever, but has a 
 similar triangular aperture over its doorway. 
 
 There has been much controversy about the 
 use to which this building was applied, and we 
 cannot now attempt to change the name, even if 
 we could prove its absurdity. Pausanias, who 
 saw it in the second century A. D., found it in 
 much the same state as we do, and was no better 
 informed than we, though he states the popular 
 
 1 According to Pausanias, the treasury of Minyas was differently built ; 
 for the top stone of its flat dome was the keystone (apjuovia) of the whole. 
 
 2 Professor Sayce tells me he looked for these traces, as I did, but 
 also in vain. 
 
252 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 belief that it was a treasure-house like that ot 
 the Minyae at Orchomenus, which was very much 
 greater, and was, in his opinion, one of the most 
 wonderful things in all Greece. But it does not 
 seem to me that his opinion, which, indeed, is not 
 very clear, need in the least shackle our judg- 
 ments. Most scholars are strongly inclined to 
 the theory that it is a tomb. In the first place, 
 there are two other similar buildings quite close 
 to it, which Pausanias mentions as the treasure- 
 houses of the sons of Atreus, but which make 
 it most unlikely that any of them could be for 
 treasure. Surely such a house could only be 
 owned by the reigning king, and there is no 
 reason why his successor should make himself 
 a new vault for this purpose. In the next place, 
 these buildings were all underground and dark, 
 and exactly such as would be selected for tombs. 
 Thirdly, they are not situated within the enclosure 
 of the wall of Mycenae, but are outside it, and 
 probably outside the old town altogether — a thing 
 quite inconceivable if they were meant for treasure, 
 but most reasonable, and according to all analogy, 
 if they were used as tombs. This, too, would of 
 course explain the number of them — three separate 
 kings having built .them, just like the pyramids ot 
 Chufu, Safra, and Menkerah, on the plain of Mem- 
 phis in Egypt. It is even quite easy and natural 
 to explain on this hypothesis how they came to 
 be thought treasure-houses. It is known that the 
 sepulchral tumuli of similar construction in other 
 
x.] MYCENAE. 253 
 
 places, and possibly built by kindred people, con- 
 tained much treasure, left there by way of honour 
 to the deceased. Herodotus describes this in Scy- 
 thian tombs, some of which have been opened of 
 late, and have verified his assertions. The lavish 
 expense at Patroclus' funeral in the Iliad shows the 
 prevalence of similar notions among the Homeric 
 Greeks, who held, down to ^Eschylus' day, that the 
 importance of a man among the dead was in pro- 
 portion to the circumstance with which his tomb 
 was treated by the living. It may, therefore, be 
 assumed as certain that these strongholds of the 
 dead, if they were such, were filled with many 
 precious things in gold and other metals, intended 
 as parting gifts in honour of the king who was laid 
 to rest within. Long after the devastation of 
 Mycenae, I suppose that these tombs were opened 
 in search of treasure, and not in vain ; and so 
 nothing was said about the skeleton within, while 
 rumours went abroad of the rich treasure-trove 
 within the giant portal. Thus, then, the tradition 
 would spring up and grow that the building was 
 the treasure-house of some old legendary king. 
 
 These antiquarian considerations have led us away 
 from the actual survey of the old vault, for ruin it 
 cannot be called. The simplicity and massiveness 
 of its structure have defied age and violence, and 
 except for the shattered ornaments, not a stone 
 appears ever to have been moved from its place. 
 Standing at the entrance, you look out upon the 
 
254 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 scattered masonry of the walls of Mycenae, on the 
 hillock over against you. Close behind this is a dark 
 and solemn chain of mountains. The view is narrow 
 and confined, and looks to the north, so that, for 
 most of the day, the gate is dark and in shadow. 
 We can conceive no fitter place for the burial of a 
 king, within sight of his city, in the heart of a deep 
 natural hillock, with a great solemn portal symbol- 
 ising the resistless strength of the barrier which he 
 had passed into an unknown land. But one more 
 remark seems necessary. This treasure-house is by 
 no means a Greek building in its features. It has 
 the same perfection of wall-building, which can 
 be seen at Eleutherse, or any other Greek fort, but 
 still the really analogous buildings are to be seen 
 in far distant lands — in the raths of Ireland, and 
 the barrows of the Crimea. 
 
 I had the opportunity since of comparing the 
 structure and effect of the great sepulchral monu- 
 ments in the County of Meath, in Ireland. Two of 
 these, Dowth and New Grange, are opened, and 
 can be entered almost as easily as the treasury of 
 Atreus. They lie close to the rich valley of the 
 Boyne, in that part of the country which was pointed 
 out by nature as the earliest seat of wealth and cul- 
 ture. Dowth is the ruder and less ornamented, and, 
 therefore, not improbably the older, but is less 
 suited for the present comparison than the greater 
 and more ornate New Grange. 
 
 This splendid tomb is not a whit less remarkable, 
 
X.] MYCENAE. 
 
 ■zb 
 
 or less colossal in its construction, than the tomb at 
 Mycenae, but differs in many details. It was not 
 followed out in a hill-side, but was built of great 
 upright stones, with flat slabs laid over them, and 
 then covered with a mountain of earth and of loose 
 stones. Instead of passing through a short en- 
 trance into a great vaulted chamber, there is a long, 
 narrow corridor, which leads to a much smaller, 
 but still very lofty chamber, nearly twenty feet high. 
 Three recesses in the walls of this chamber contain 
 each a large, round saucer, so to speak, made of a 
 single stone, in which the remains of the dead seem 
 to have been laid. This saucer is very shallow, and 
 not more than four feet in diameter. The great 
 stones with which the chamber and passage are 
 constructed are not hewn or shaped, and so far the 
 building is rather comparable with that of Tiryns 
 than of Mycenae. But all over the faces of the 
 stones are endless spiral and zig-zag ornaments, 
 even covering surfaces built in, and thus invi- 
 sible, so that the ornament must have been laid on 
 prior to the building. On the outside stones, both 
 under and over the entry, there is well-executed 
 carving of similar geometrical designs. 
 
 Putting aside smaller details, it may be said that 
 while both monuments show an equal display of 
 human strength, and an equal contempt for human 
 toil, which the)/ lavished without stint, the Greek 
 building shows far greater finish of design and 
 neatness of execution, together with greater simpli- 
 
256 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [cm 
 
 city. The stones are all carefully hewn and fitted, 
 but not carved or decorated. The triangular carved 
 stone over the lintel, and the supposed metal plates 
 on the interior, were both foreign to the original 
 structure. On the contrary, the Irish tomb is a far 
 greater feature in the landscape — a great land- 
 mark in the district. But the great stones within 
 are not fitted together, nor hewn into shape, and yet 
 they are covered with patterns and designs strangely 
 similar to the ornament found by Dodwell at the 
 Argive tomb. Thus the Irish builders, with far 
 greater rudeness, show a greater taste for orna- 
 ment. They care less for design and symmetry — 
 more for beauty of detail. The Greek essay natu- 
 rally culminates in the severe symmetry of the Doric 
 Temple — the Irish in the glorious intricacy of the 
 illuminations of the Book of K ells. 
 
 A great deal of what was said about the tomb of 
 Agamemnon, as the common people, with truer in- 
 stinct, call the supposed treasure-house, may be 
 repeated about the fortifications of Mycenae. It is 
 the work of builders who know perfectly how to 
 deal with their materials — who can hew and fit 
 great blocks of stone with perfect ease, nay, who 
 prefer, for the sake of massive effect, to treat their 
 doorway with such enormous blocks as even mo- 
 dern science would find it difficult to handle. The 
 ornament over the gate, fortunately, remains almost 
 entire. Two lions, standing up at a small pillar, 
 were looking out fiercely at the stranger. The 
 
x.] MYCENjE. 
 
 257 
 
 heads are gone. The rest of the sculpture is entire. 
 It is a piece of blueish limestone, quite different 
 from the rough conglomerate of the rest of the gate. 
 The lintel-stone is not nearly so vast as that of the 
 treasure-house: it is only fifteen feet long, but is 
 somewhat thicker, and also much deeper, going back 
 the full depth of the gateway. Still, it must weigh 
 a good many tons ; and it puzzles us to think how 
 it can have been put into its place, with the appli- 
 ances then in use. The joint use of square and 
 polygonal masonry is very curious. Standing 
 inside the gate, one side is of square hewn stones, 
 the other of irregular, though well-fitted, blocks. 
 On the left side, looking at the gate, there is a gap 
 of one block in the wall, which looks very like a 
 window, as it is not likely that a single stone was 
 taken, or fell out of its place afterwards, without 
 disturbing the rest. What makes it, perhaps, more 
 possible that this window is intentional, is the posi- 
 tion of the gate, which is not in the middle of the 
 walled causeway, as you go in, but to the right side. 
 The fortifications of the town can still be traced 
 round the summit of a moderately sized hill, much 
 larger than Tiryns, but quite in the same way a 
 hill-fort. The tombs outside speak, however, of a 
 far greater wealth and importance. So also the 
 wheel-tracks, going in through the gate, and the 
 holes in the stone door-posts made for hinges and 
 bars, give it quite a modern air compared to the 
 rude and decayed entrances to the fort of Tiryns. 
 
 s 
 
258 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 Mycenae, which was to Homer the wealthiest 
 and most brilliant capital in Greece, probably 
 attained its greatness at the expense of Tiryns, if, 
 indeed, this latter was ever anything more than an 
 unusually large and massive fort for the protection 
 of cattle from invading pirates. The remains of 
 Mycenae quite corroborate Homer's views, and 
 show that here as elsewhere his poems were based 
 upon geographical and historical knowledge. Even 
 in his day, Argos is spoken of as a sort of second 
 capital ; Agamemnon is constantly spoken of as 
 King of Argos and Mycenae. One might be almost 
 tempted to think that the sea reached closer into 
 Argos than it now does, and that Argos was the 
 port of Mycenae. But, however that may be, it is 
 certain that the importance of Argos rose, espe- 
 cially with the Dorian invasion, for the new comers 
 made it their capital, and carried on war from 
 thence on the older population of the neighbour- 
 hood. Still, Mycenae long outlived its old renown, 
 and it was not till after the Persian wars that the 
 Argives, after a long siege of the great fort, suc- 
 ceeded in starving-out the town and expelling the 
 inhabitants. 1 
 
 From that day to this the lion gate and the 
 
 1 I think this enforced (Xwoikkt/xSs, or fusion, of the other towns in 
 the plain of Argos by the Argives has not been sufficiently noticed by 
 our historians. The evidence of Pausanias is express that it did not 
 take place till after the Persian wars, and therefore not in the period of 
 the supposed greatness of Argos, before the rise of Sparta. The My- 
 
x.] TIRYNS. 259 
 
 fortifications have remained in the same state ; 
 at least when Pausanias saw them, in the second 
 century A. D., they were not very different from 
 what they now are. They stand a remarkable 
 witness to the truth of the legends of the Greeks, 
 which place their oldest culture and their oldest 
 empire at the head of this famous plain, and which 
 particularly speak of foreign emigrants bringing 
 arts and civilization from the south and the east to 
 the rude inhabitants of Greece. They point back, 
 too, as I have already noticed, to a period when 
 the architecture and art of the Greeks had not yet 
 assumed its peculiar complexion and its unparal- 
 leled beauty, and was still similar to the remains 
 left us by many other branches of the Aryan race, 
 or, perhaps, even of older races all over the con- 
 tinent of Europe. "Whether, indeed, all these 
 buildings do not point to older races, and whether 
 the Achaean chiefs did not occupy fortresses left 
 to them by a bygone and forgotten dynasty of 
 primeval kings, is a question fit for archaeological 
 discussion. Our evidence does not allow us histori- 
 cal inferences of so vast a reach. 
 
 The fortress of Tiryns, which I have already 
 mentioned repeatedly, and which we visited next 
 
 cenaeans would not brook submission, and migrated thence to Keryneia, 
 or even to Macedonia. The rest seem to have submitted, according to 
 a remarkable and little-known passage of Pausanias (vin. 27, 1). The 
 connexion between Mycenae and Macedonia is curious. 
 
 S 2 
 
2 6o RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 day, may fitly be commented on in connexion with 
 the younger, or at least more artistically finished 
 Mycenae. It stands several miles nearer to the 
 sea, in the centre of the great plain of Argos, and 
 upon the only natural hillock which there affords 
 any natural scope for fortification. Instead of the 
 square, hewn, and well-fitted blocks of Mycenae, we 
 have here the far older style of rude masses piled 
 together as best they would fit, and the interstices 
 filled up with smaller fragments. This is essentially 
 Cyclopean building. 1 There is a smaller fort, of 
 parallelogram shape, on the southern and highest 
 part of the oblong hillock, the whole of which is 
 surrounded by a lower wall, which takes in both 
 this and the northern longer part of the ridge. It 
 looks, in fact, like a hill-fort, with a large enclosure 
 for cattle connected with it. 
 
 Just below the north-east angle of the inner fort,, 
 and when the lower circuit is about to leave it, 
 there is an entrance, with a massive wall of huge 
 stones, looking like a square tower, on its right 
 side, so as to defend it from attack. The most 
 remarkable feature in • the walls are the covered 
 galleries, constructed within them at the south-east 
 
 ' Pausanias speaks of Mycenae and Tiryns as of like structure, which 
 is not true. He often refers with wonder to these walls, and reflects 
 upon the care with which Greek historians had described foreign curio- 
 sities like the Pyramids, while equally wonderful things in Greece were 
 left unnoticed. Thus, he says that no pair of mules could stir from 
 its place the smallest of the blocks in the walls of Tiryns. Cf. II. 25, 8;. 
 and ix. 36, 5. 
 
x.] TIRYNS. 261 
 
 angle. The whole thickness of the wall is often 
 
 over twenty feet, and in the centre a rude arched 
 
 way is made, merely by piling together the great 
 
 stones so as to leave an opening, which narrows at 
 
 the top in the form of a Gothic arch. Within 
 
 the passage, there are five niches in the outer 
 
 side, made of rude arches in the same way as 
 
 the main passage. The length of the passage I 
 
 measured, and found it twenty-five yards, at the 
 
 end of which it is regularly walled-up, so that 
 
 it evidently did not run all the way round. The 
 
 niches are now no longer open, but seem to have 
 
 been once windows, or at least to have had some 
 
 look-out points into the hill country. 
 
 It is remarkable that, although the walls are 
 built of perfectly rude stones, the builders have 
 managed to use so many smooth surfaces looking 
 outward, that the face of the wall looks quite clean 
 and well built. 1 At the south-east corner of the 
 higher and inner fort, we found a large block of red 
 granite, quite different from the rough grey stone 
 of the building, with its surface square and smooth, 
 and all the four sides neatly bevelled, like the portal 
 stones at the treasury of Atreus. I found two other 
 red granite stones close by, which were likewise 
 cut smooth on the surface. The intention of these 
 stones we could not guess, but they show that some 
 
 1 The same effect is observable in Staigue Fort, in the county of Kern', 
 and has led some people to imagine that its stones were rudely quarried. 
 Cf. the splendid photographs of this Irish Tiryns in Lord Dunraven's 
 Notes on Irish Architecture. 
 
262 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. x.. 
 
 ornament, and some more finished work, must have 
 once existed in the inner fort. Though both the main 
 entrances have massive towers of stone raised on 
 their right, there is a small postern at the opposite 
 or west side, not more than four feet wide, which has 
 no defences whatever, and is a mere hole in the walL 
 
 I enter into these details because they vary a 
 good deal from the descriptions of other very trust- 
 worthy travellers. I do not mean to impute to 
 them carelessness or inaccuracy, 1 but rather desire 
 to insist that the truth can only be certainly known 
 by every honest observer putting down strictly what 
 he sees and observes. 
 
 The whole ruin is now covered with thistles,. 
 such as English people can hardly imagine. The 
 needles at the points of the leaves are fully an inch 
 long, extremely fine and strong, and sharper than 
 any two-edged sword. No clothes except a leather 
 dress can resist them. They pierce everywhere 
 with the most stinging pain, and make antiquarian 
 research in this famous spot a veritable martyrdom,. 
 Avhich can only be supported by a very burning 
 thirst for knowledge, or the hope of future fame. The 
 rough masses of stone are such that footing is in- 
 secure, and when the traveller loses his balance, 
 and falls among the thistles, he will wish that he 
 had gone to Jericho, or even fallen among thieves 
 on the way. 
 
 I I must say that most pictures of Tiryns in books on Greek antiquities 
 are quite false. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ARGOS, NAUPLIA, AND COAST OF ARGOLIS. 
 
 "We rode down from Mycenae to Argos late in the 
 evening, along the broad and limpid stream 
 of the river Inachus, which made us wonder at 
 the old Homeric epithet, very thirsty, given to 
 this celebrated plain. 1 Though the night was 
 getting dark, we could see and smell great wild 
 fields of rose-red oleander, blooming along the river 
 bed, very like the rhododendrons of our demesnes. 
 And, though not a bird was to be heard, the tettix, 
 so dear to the old Greek, and so often the theme 
 of their poets, was making the land echo with 
 its myriad chirping. Aristophanes speaks of it 
 as crying out with mad love of the noon-day sun. 2 
 
 1 -KoKvltyiov. A fragment of Hesiod (quoted by Eustathius in II. , p. 
 350) notes this epithet, in order to account for its being no longer true, 
 "Apyos Zuvdpou eou Aauabs iroit]<Tev euvdpou. Strabo (VIII. p. 256) explains 
 it by confining the epithet to the town of Argos, which Homer certainly 
 did not, and by admitting that the country was well watered. Pausanias 
 (II. 15, 5) says that all the rivers ran dry, except in rainy weather, which 
 is not true now. 
 
 2 &AA' avdy\pwv Xeifxwvwv, cpvWuv t' eV k6Xttois vaiw, 
 t)v'ik Uv 6 Oecnrecrios o£u /x4\os dx^T^s 
 
 ddkireai fj.ecTT]/xl3pLvo?s T)\iofxav7]S fioa. (Aves, IO92-0). 
 
264 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 "We found it no less eager and busy in late twi- 
 light, and far into the night. I can quite under- 
 stand how the old Greek, who hated silence, and 
 hated solitude still more, loved this little creature, 
 which kept him company even in the time of sleep, 
 and gave him all the feelings of cheerfulness and 
 homeliness which we, northerns, in our wretched 
 climate, must seek from the cricket at the fire-side. 
 At ten o'clock we rode into the curious, dark streets 
 of Argos, and, after some difficulty, were shown 
 to the house of a gentleman who volunteered to be 
 our host — a medical man of education and ability, 
 who, in spite of a very recent family bereave- 
 ment, opened his house to the stranger, and enter- 
 tained us with what may well be called in that 
 country real splendour. I may notice that he alone, 
 of all the country residents whom we met, gave us 
 wine not drenched with resin — a very choice and 
 remarkable red wine, for which the plain of Argos 
 is justly celebrated. In this comfortable house we 
 slept, I may say, in solitary grandeur, and awoke 
 in high spirits, without loss or damage, to visit the 
 wonders of this old centre of legend and of history. 
 
 The little known lines in the Shield of Hercules are also worth quoting 
 (393, sqq.) :- 
 
 %/j.os 8e x^-otpV KvauSirrtpos ^x 6Ta reml;, 
 fife i(p€^6/xevos, 64pos avOpdmoiaiv aeiSeiv 
 &pX*Tai, $ Te irSffis Kal fipcSffis OrjAvs iepcrr), 
 Kal T€ iravrj/xepiSs re Kal iy$os %eei avSr]V 
 fl>€t iv alvoTarcp, 6v6t* %P^ a 2etptos &C et * 
 
xi.] ARGOS. 265 
 
 It is very easy to see why all the Greek legends 
 have placed the earliest empires, the earliest arts, 
 and the earliest conquests, in the plain of Argolis. 
 They speak, too, of this particular plain having 
 the benefit of foreign settlers and of foreign skill. 
 If we imagine, as we must do, the older knowledge 
 of the East coming up by way of Cyprus and Crete 
 into Greek waters, there can be no doubt that the 
 first exploring mariners, reaching the barren island 
 of Cerigo, and the rocky shore of Laconia, would 
 feel their way up this rugged and inhospitable 
 coast, till they suddenly came in sight of the deep 
 bay of Argolis, reaching far into the land, with a 
 broad plain, and alluvial soil beyond its deepest 
 recess. Here, first, they would find a suitable land- 
 ing-place, and a country fit for tillage ; and here, 
 accordingly, we should expect to find, as we actu- 
 ally do, the oldest relics of habitation, beyond the 
 huts of wandering shepherds or of savages. So the 
 legend tells us that Cyclopes came from Lycia to 
 King Prcetus of Argos, or rather of the Argive 
 plain, and built him the giant fort of Tiryns. 1 
 
 This was evidently the oldest great settlement. 
 Then, by some change of fortune, it seems that My- 
 cenae grew in importance, not impossibly because of 
 the unhealthy site of Tiryns, of which the surround- 
 ings are now low and marshy, and were, probably, 
 
 1 These Cyclopes, cunning builders, and even workers in metal, are to 
 he carefully distinguished from the rude and savage Cyclopes repre- 
 sented in Homer's Odyssey as infesting Thrinacria, in the western seas 
 
266 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 even more so in those days. But the day of My- 
 cenae's greatness also passed away in historical 
 times ; and the third city in this plain came for- 
 ward as its ruler — Argos, built under the huge 
 Larissa, or hill fort, which springs up from the sur- 
 rounding mountains, and stands like an outpost 
 over the city. 1 Even now it is perhaps the most 
 important place, next to Athens, which we. saw in 
 Eastern Greece, and maintains, in the midst of its 
 smiling and well-cultivated plain, a certain air of 
 brightness and prosperity which is hardly to be 
 seen elsewhere through the country. 
 
 We went first to see the old theatre, certainly 
 the most beautifully situated, and I think the 
 largest I had ever seen. It is far finer than even 
 that of Syracuse, and whoever has seen this latter 
 will know what such a statement implies. If 
 the Greek theatre at Syracuse has a view of the 
 great harbour and the coast around, this view can, 
 
 1 In the days of the composition of the Iliad we see the power and 
 greatness of Mycenae distinctly expressed by the power of Agamemnon,, 
 who appears to rule over all the district and many islands. Yet the 
 great hero, Diomedes, is made the sovereign of Argos and Tiryns in his 
 immediate neighbourhood. This difficulty has made some critics sup- 
 pose that all the acts of Diomedes were foisted in by some of the Argive 
 reciters of the Iliad. Without adopting this theory, which seems to* 
 me extravagant, I would suggest that, in the poet's day, Argos was. 
 rapidly growing into first-rate importance, while all the older legends, 
 attested the greatness of Mycenae. Thus the poet, who was obliged to. 
 put together the materials given him by divers older and shorter poems,, 
 was under the difficulty of harmonizing the fresher legends about Argos,, 
 with the older about Mycenae. 
 
xi.] ARGOS. 267 
 
 only have been made interesting by crowded ship- 
 ping and flitting sails, for the whole incline of the 
 country is very gradual, and not even the fort of 
 Ortygia presents any bold or striking outline. 
 From the higher seats of the theatre of Argos, 
 which lie much steeper than those of Syracuse, 
 there is a most enchanting prospect to the right, 
 over a splendid, rich plain, covered, when we saw 
 it, with the brilliant emerald-green of young vines 
 and tobacco fields, varied with the darker hue of 
 plane-trees and cypresses. After the wilderness 
 through which we had passed, this prospect was 
 intensely delightful. Straight before us, and to the 
 left, was the deep blue bay of Argolis, with the 
 white fortifications of Nauplia crowning its pic- 
 turesque Acropolis. All around us, in every other 
 direction, was a perfect amphitheatre of lofty moun- 
 tains. I have no hesitation in saying that this bay 
 is far the most beautiful I ever saw, and this opin- 
 ion, which we then formed, was strengthened by 
 a sunset view of it from the other side — from Nau- 
 plia — which was, if possible, even finer, and com- 
 bined all the elements which are conceivable in a 
 perfect landscape. 
 
 The theatre was built to hold an enormous au- 
 dience. We counted sixty-six tiers of seats, in four 
 divisions — so differing from the description of Colo- 
 nel Leake, which we had before us at the time. As 
 he observes, there may be more seats still covered 
 with rubbish at the bottom— indeed this, like all 
 
268 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 the rest of Argos, ought to yield a rich harvest to 
 the antiquarian, being as yet almost virgin soil, and 
 never yet ransacked with any care. All the chil- 
 dren about brought us coins, of all possible dates 
 and descriptions, but were themselves more inte- 
 resting than their coins. For here, in Southern 
 Greece, in a very hot climate, in a level plain, 
 every second child is fair, with blue eyes, and 
 looks like a transplanted northern, and not like the 
 offspring of a southern race. After the deep-brown 
 Italian children, which strike the traveller by their 
 southernness all the way from Venice to Reggio, 
 nothing is more curious than these fairer children, 
 under a sunnier and hotter sky; and it reminds the 
 student at once how, even in Homer, yellow hair 
 and a fair complexion is noted as belonging to the 
 King of Sparta. This type seems to me to prevail, 
 wherever there has not arisen a mixed popula- 
 tion, such as that of Athens or Syra, and where the 
 inhabitants appear to live as they have done for 
 centuries. Many people think that the old Greek 
 race is completely gone, and that the present peo- 
 ple are a mere mixture of Turks, Albanians, and 
 Slaves. To this many answers suggest themselves, 
 to me, above all things, the strange and accurate 
 resemblances in character between old and modern 
 Greeks — resemblances so strong that, when people 
 at Athens came to read my studies on social life 
 in old Greece, they at once said that these sketches 
 were drawn from the modern Greeks. And yet 
 
xl] ARGOS. 269 
 
 at the time I knew nothing whatever of the country 
 as it now is, and took my materials exclusively 
 from classical literature. 
 
 But this is a kind of evidence not easily stated 
 in a brief form, and consists after all of a large 
 number of minute details. The really strong argu- 
 ment seems to me to be from language. 1 There is 
 really very little change between the language of 
 Plato and that of the present Greeks. There is, of 
 course, development and decay, there are differences 
 of idiom and corruptions of form, but the language 
 is essentially the same. The present Greek will 
 read the old classics far better at first sight than 
 our peasants could read Chaucer. It is, in fact, 
 most remarkable, assuming that they are the same 
 people, how their language has not changed more. 
 This appears to me an argument of great force. 
 Had the invaders during the middle ages really 
 become the main body of the population, how is it 
 that they abandoned their own tongue, and adopted 
 that of the Greeks ? Surely there must be at least 
 a fusion of different tongues, if the population were 
 considerably leavened. There are still Albanian 
 
 1 A great authority, whose opinion I deeply respect — Prof. Sayce— 
 goes so far as to say that language is by itself no proof of race, but only 
 of social contact. I will not venture to deny that there are instances 
 where this is so, and where invading strangers have adopted the 
 language of the vanquished, though quite foreign to them. But surely 
 this is the exception, and not the rule, and there is a prima facie 
 probability in favour of a well preserved language indicating a well 
 preserved race. 
 
2 7 o RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 districts in Greece. They are to be found even in 
 Attica, and not many miles from Athens. But 
 these populations are now perfectly distinct from 
 the Greeks, and their language is quite different, and 
 not intelligible to Greeks who have not learned it. 
 
 Again, the Greek language is not one which 
 spread itself easily among foreigners, and did not 
 give rise to a number of daughter languages like the 
 Latin. In many Greek colonies, barbarians learned 
 to speak Greek with the Greeks, and to adopt their 
 language at the time ; but in all these cases, when 
 the Greek influence vanished, the language decayed, 
 and finally gave place to the old language which 
 it had temporarily displaced. Thus the evidence 
 of history seems to suggest that no foreigners were 
 ever really able to make that subtle tongue their 
 own, and even now we can feel the force of what 
 Aristotle says, that however well a stranger might 
 speak it, you could recognise him at once by his 
 use of the particles. 
 
 These considerations seem to me conclusive 
 that whatever admixtures may have taken place, 
 the main body of the people are what their language 
 declares them to be, essentially Greeks. Any care- 
 ful observer will not fail to see through the wilder 
 parts of the Morea types and forms which are equal 
 to those which inspired the old artists. There are 
 still among the shepherd boys splendid lads who 
 would adorn a Greek gymnasium, or excite the 
 praise of all Greece at the Olympian games. There 
 
xi.] ARGOS. 271 
 
 are still maidens fit to carry the sacred basket of 
 Athene. Above all, there are still many old men, 
 fit to be chosen for their stalwart beauty to act as 
 tlialloplwri in the Panathenaic procession. 
 
 These thoughts often struck us as we w r ent 
 through the narrow and crowded streets of Argos, 
 in search of the peculiar produce of the place — 
 uncoloured silks, rich-coloured carpets and rugs, 
 and ornamental shoes in dull red l morocco' leather. 
 
 We were brought to see the little museum of the 
 town, a very small museum with one inscription, 
 and three pieces of sculpture. But the inscription, 
 which is published, is exceedingly clear and legible, 
 and the fragments of sculpture are all both peculiar 
 and excellent. There is a female head of great 
 beauty, about half life size, and from the best, 
 or certainly a very good, period of Greek art, 
 which has the curious peculiarity of one eye be- 
 ing larger than the other. It is not merely the 
 eyeball, but the whole setting of the eye, which is 
 slightly enlarged, nor does it injure the general 
 effect. The gentlemen who showed it to me, and 
 who were all very enthusiastic about the head, 
 had indeed not noticed this feature, but recognised 
 it at once when pointed out to them. Beside this 
 trunkless head is a headless trunk of equal beauty — 
 a female figure without arms, and draped with 
 exquisite grace in a manner closely resembling 
 the famous Venus of Melos. The figure has one 
 foot slightly raised, and set upon a duck, as is 
 
2 7 z RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch.. 
 
 quite plain from the general form of the bird, 
 though the webbed feet are much worn away, and 
 the head gone. M. Emile Burnouf told me that 
 this attribute of a duck would determine it to be 
 either Athene or Artemis. If so, the general style 
 of the figure, which is very young and slight, 
 speaks in favour of its being an Artemis. I trust 
 photographs of this excellent statue may soon be 
 made, and that it may become known to art 
 students in Europe. 
 
 The third and last object is a relief larger than 
 life, on a square block of white marble, of the head 
 of Medusa. The face is calm and expressionless,, 
 exactly the reverse of Lionardo da Vinci's match- 
 less painting, but archaic in character, and of good 
 and clear workmanship. The headdress, which has 
 been finished only on the right side, is very pecu- 
 liar, and consists of large scales starting from the 
 forehead, and separating into two plaits, which 
 become serpents' bodies, and descend in curves as 
 low as the chin, then turning upward and out- 
 ward again, till they end in well-formed serpents' 
 heads. The left serpent is carved out perfectly in 
 relief, but not covered with scales. 
 
 I was unable to obtain any trustworthy account 
 of the finding of these marbles, but they were all 
 fresh discoveries, especially the Medusa head, which 
 had only been lately brought to the museum, when 
 we were at Argos 1 . There can be little doubt that 
 future visitors will find this valuable collection 
 
xi.] ARGOS. 273 
 
 much increased, and here, in this important town, 
 it is most advisable that there should be a local 
 museum. 
 
 I am tempted to digress here for a moment, and 
 to speak of the Argive school as a school of art, 
 inasmuch as it seems hardly to have received suffi- 
 cient attention from the dilettanti who study these 
 matters. If we look at Dorian art, as contrasted 
 with Ionian, there can be no doubt that the ear- 
 liest centre was Corinth in the Peloponnesus, to 
 which various discoveries in art are specially 
 ascribed. In architecture, there were many leading 
 ideas, such as the setting up of clay' figures in the 
 tympanum of their temples, and the use of panels 
 or soffits, as they were called, in ceilings, which 
 came first from Corinth. But when we descend to 
 better-known times, there are three other Dorian 
 states which quite eclipse Corinth, because, I sup- 
 pose, the trading instinct, as is sometimes the case, 
 crushed out or weakened her enthusiasm for art. 
 These states are iEgina, Sicyon, and Argos. Si- 
 cyon rose to greatness under the gentle and en- 
 lightened despotism of Orthagoras and his family, 
 of whom it was noticed that they retained their 
 sovereignty longer than any other dynasty of des- 
 pots in Greece. ^Egina seems to have disputed 
 the lead with Corinth as a commercial mart, from 
 the days of Pheidon, whose coinage of money 
 was always said to have been first practised at 
 
 T 
 
274 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 -^Egina. 1 The prominence of iEgina in Pindar's 
 Epinician Odes shows not only how eagerly men 
 practised athletics, and loved renown there, but how 
 well able they were to pay for expensive monuments 
 of their fame. Their position in the Persian war, 
 among the bravest of the Greeks, corroborates the 
 former part of my statement ; the request of an 
 Ionian Greek lady, captured in the train of Mar- 
 donius, to be transported to JEgina, adds evidence 
 for the second, as it shows that, to a person of this 
 description, iEgina was the field for a rich harvest, 
 and we wonder how its reputation can have been 
 greater in this respect than that of Corinth. 2 But, 
 a short time after, the rise of the Athenian naval 
 power crushed the greatness of iEgina, and it 
 sank, first, to insignificance, and then to absorp- 
 tion into the Attic power. 
 
 Thus Sicyon and Argos remained, and it was 
 precisely these two towns which produced a special 
 school of art, of which Polycletus was the most dis- 
 tinguished representative. Dorian sculpture had 
 originally started with figures of athletes, which 
 were dedicated at the temples, and were a sort of 
 collateral monument to the odes of poets, more 
 durable, no doubt, in the minds of the offerers, but, 
 as time has shown, perishable and gone, while the 
 winged words of the poet have not lost even the 
 
 1 This fact strengthens my conviction that at an early period JEgina, 
 worked the silver mines of Laurium. 
 
 * Cf. Pindar's Frag, for the Corinthian iraipai. 
 
xi.] ARGOS. 275 
 
 first bloom of their freshness. However, in con- 
 trast to the flowing robes and delicately-chiselled 
 features of the Ionic school, the Dorians repro- 
 duced the naked human figure with great accuracy, 
 while in the face they adhered to a stiff simplicity, 
 regardless of individual features, and still more 
 regardless of any expression save that of a vacant 
 smile. This type, found in its most perfect de- 
 velopment in the ^Eginetan marbles, was what 
 lay before Polycletus, when he rose to greatness. 
 He was the contemporary and rival of Phidias, and 
 is said to have defeated him in a competition for 
 the temple of Hera at Samos, where two or three 
 of the greatest sculptors modelled a wounded 
 Amazon, and Polycletus was adjudged the first 
 place. There is some probability that one of the 
 Amazons now in the Vatican is a copy of this 
 famous work, and, in spite of a clumsily-restored 
 head and arms, we can see in this figure the great 
 simplicity and power of the artist in treating no 
 very grateful subject — that of a very powerful and 
 muscular woman. 
 
 The Argive school, owing to its traditions, 
 affected single figures much more than groups, and 
 this, no doubt, was the main contrast between 
 Polycletus and Phidias — that, however superior 
 the Argive might be in a single figure, the genius 
 of the Athenian was beyond all comparison in 
 using sculpture for groups and processions as an 
 adjunct to architecture. But there was also in 
 
 T2 
 
276 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch.. 
 
 the sitting statue of Zeus, at Olympia, a certain 
 majesty which seems not to have been equalled by 
 any other known sculptor. The Attic artist who 
 seems to me to have been much nearer to Polycletus 
 in style was Myron, whose Discobolus has reached 
 us in some splendid copies, and who seems to have 
 had all the Dorian taste for representing single 
 athletic figures, with more life and more daring 
 action about them than was attempted by Poly- 
 cletus. 1 
 
 Herodotus notices somewhere that, at a certain 
 period, the Argives were the most renowned in 
 Greece for music. It is most unfortunate that our 
 knowledge of this branch of Greek art is so frag- 
 mentary that we are wholly unable to tell in what 
 the Argive proficiency consisted. We are never told 
 that the Doric scale was there invented ; but, very 
 possibly, they may have taken the lead among 
 their brethren in this direction also, for it is well 
 known that the Spartans, though excellent judges, 
 depended altogether upon foreigners to make music 
 for them, and thought it not gentlemanly to do 
 more than criticise. 
 
 The drive from Argos to Nauplia leads by Ti- 
 ryns, then by a great marsh, which is most luxuri- 
 ously covered with green and with various flowers* 
 
 1 The bronze cow of Myron seems also to have been a wonderfully- 
 admired work, to judge from the crowd of epigrams written upoifit,. 
 which still survive. 
 
xl] NAUPLIA, 277 
 
 and then along a good road all the way into the 
 important and stirring town of Nauplia. This 
 place, which was one of the oldest settlements, as 
 is proved by Pelasgic walls and tombs high upon 
 the overhanging cliffs, was always through history 
 known as the port of Argos, and is so still, though 
 it rose under the Turks to the dignity of capital of 
 the whole province of Greece. The citadel over 
 the town has at all times been considered almost 
 impregnable. The situation of the town is ex- 
 ceptionally beautiful, even for a Greek town, and 
 the sunset behind the Arcadian mountains, seen 
 from Nauplia, with the gulf in the foreground, is a 
 view which no man can ever forget. 
 
 A coasting steamer, which goes right round all 
 the Peloponnesus, took us up with a great com- 
 pany, who were hurrying to Athens for the elec- 
 tions, and brought us round the coast of Argolis, 
 stopping at the several ports on the way. This 
 method of seeing either Greece or Italy is highly 
 to be commended, and it is a great pity that so 
 many intelligent people adhere strictly to the 
 quickest and most obvious route, so missing many 
 of the really characteristic features in the country 
 which they desire to study. Thus the Italian coast- 
 ing steamers, which go up from Messina by Naples 
 to Genoa, touch at many not insignificant places, 
 such as Gaeta, which no ordinary tourist ever sees, 
 and which are nevertheless among the most beauti- 
 ful places in all the country. The same may be 
 
278 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 said of the sail from Nauplia to Athens, which 
 leads you to Hydra, or Idria, as they now call it r . 
 and to Poros, both very curious and interesting 
 places to visit. 
 
 The island of Hydra was, in old days, a mere 
 barren rock, scarcely inhabited, and would probably 
 never have changed its reputation but for a pirate 
 settlement in a very curious little harbour, with a 
 very narrow entrance, which faces the main shore 
 of Argolis. As you sail along the straight coast 
 line, there seems no break or indentation, when 
 suddenly, as if by magic, the rocky shore opens for 
 about twenty yards, at a spot marked by several 
 caves in the face of the cliff, and lets you see into 
 a circular harbour of very small dimensions, with 
 an amphitheatre of rich and well-built houses rising 
 up all round the water. Though the water is very 
 deep, there is actually no room for a large fleet, 
 and there seems not a yard of level ground, except 
 where terraces have been artificially made. High 
 rocks on both sides of the narrow entrance hide all- 
 prospect of the town, except from the point directly 
 opposite the entrance. 
 
 These people, who were rich merchants, and, I 
 suppose, successful pirates in the Turkish days,, 
 were never enslaved, but kept their liberty and 
 their wealth by paying a tribute to the Porte.. 
 They developed a trading power which reminds 
 one strongly of the old Greek cities ; and so faithful 
 were they to one another, that it was an ordinary 
 
XL] HYDRA. 279 
 
 habit for citizens to entrust all their savings to a 
 captain starting for a distant port, to be laid out 
 by him to the best advantage. It is said that they 
 were never defrauded of their profits. The Turks 
 may, perhaps, have thought that by gentle treat- 
 ment they would secure the fidelity of the Hy- 
 driotes, whose wealth and power depended much 
 on Turkish protection ; but they were greatly mis- 
 taken. There was, indeed, some hesitation among 
 the islanders, when the war of liberation broke 
 out, what part they should take ; but at last the 
 spirit of nationality actually outweighed private 
 interests, and the Hydriotes sacrificed everything 
 by the marvellously eager and brave way in which 
 they threw themselves into the national conflict. 
 By far the most brilliant feats in the war were 
 those performed by the Hydriote sailors, who re- 
 mind one very much of the Zealanders in the 
 wars of Holland against the Spanish power. 
 Whether their bravery has been exaggerated is 
 hard to say. This, at all events, is clear, that 
 they earned the respect and admiration of the 
 whole nation, nor is there any nobility so re- 
 cognized in Greek society as descent from the 
 Hydriote chiefs who fought for the liberation. 
 
 With the rise of the nation the wealth and im- 
 portance of Hydra has strangely decayed. Prob- 
 ably the Piraeus, with its vast advantages, has 
 naturally regained its old importance, now that 
 every part of the coast and every port is equally 
 
2 8o RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 free. Still, the general style and way of living 
 at Hydra reminds one of old times ; and if the 
 island itself be sterile, the rich slopes of the oppo- 
 site coast, covered with great groves of lemon- 
 trees, are owned by the wealthy descendants of 
 the old merchants. 
 
 A few hours brings the steamer past Poros and 
 through narrow passages among islands to y£gma, 
 as they now call it. We have here an island whose 
 history is precisely the reverse of that of Hydra. 
 The great days of iEgina (as I mentioned above) 
 were in very old times, from the age of Pheidon 
 of Argos, in the seventh century B. c, up to the 
 rise of Athens' democracy and navy, when this 
 great centre of literature, art, and commerce was 
 absorbed in the greater Athenian empire. 
 
 There is at present a considerable town on 
 the coast, and some cultivation on the hills ; 
 but the whole aspect of the island is very rocky 
 and barren, and as it can hardly ever have been 
 otherwise, we feel at once that the early great- 
 ness of JEgina was, like that of Hydra in the last 
 century, a purely commercial greatness. With 
 enterprise and diligence, a nation or a city may 
 readily become great in a small island or barren 
 coast, and no phenomenon in history proves this 
 more strongly than the great empire of the Phceni- 
 cians, who seem never to have owned more than 
 a few miles of barren coast about Tyre and Sidon. 
 They were, in fact, a great people without a country. 
 
xi.] yEGINA. 281 
 
 The Venetians similarly raised an empire on a salt 
 marsh, and at one time owned the whole Morea 
 and many other great possessions, without * any 
 visible means of subsistence,' as they say in the 
 police courts. In the same way, Pericles thought 
 nothing of the possession of Attica, provided the 
 Athenians could hold their city walls and their 
 harbours. He knew that with a maritime supre- 
 macy they must necessarily be lords of so vast a 
 stretch of coasts and islands, that the barren hills 
 of Attica might be completely left out of account. 
 Assuredly, if in early and savage conditions nature 
 rules man, at a more advanced period man seems 
 almost absolutely to control nature. 
 
 The way from ^Egina to Athens has already been 
 described at the commencement of these studies, 
 which I was unable to extend over the whole of the 
 country, owing to the lateness of the season and 
 the increasing heat of the weather. About the end 
 of June the climate becomes unwholesome, and the 
 traveller is liable to low fever. I will, therefore, 
 seek to compensate for the incompleteness of my 
 description of Modern Greece by an additional 
 chapter upon some developments of old Greek art, 
 which have been briefly alluded to in the foregoing 
 pages. What I am about to say will, I trust, be 
 useful to the general reader, and give him some 
 idea of the main results of modern research upon 
 these interesting but very difficult topics. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 GREEK MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 The attainments of the Greeks in architecture 
 and in sculpture are still sufficiently preserved to 
 enable us to form a clear judgment of their merits, 
 and to make them models for our imitation. So 
 also their writings, both in poetry and artistic 
 prose, have remained to us in sufficient quantity 
 to teach us both the principles and the practice 
 of Greek artists in literature. The remnants of all 
 these products of Greek genius are, indeed, but mi- 
 serable fragments of the boundless wealth of the 
 nation. They are defaced by time, corrupted in 
 transmission, deformed by restoration. But still the 
 difficulty of destroying them on the one hand, and 
 the ease of preserving and multiplying them on the 
 other, have prevented their total loss, and have 
 saved for us some knowledge of the greatest out- 
 come of human genius. 
 
 The case is very different with their music and 
 their painting. Not a single specimen of the great 
 compositions of the Greeks in colour and in sound 
 has survived. We have many enthusiastic descrip- 
 
CH. xii.] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 283, 
 
 tions of these works ; we are told a great deal of 
 their effects on those who enjoyed them ; they are 
 not in any way postponed by the critics to the 
 splendid sculpture and architecture with which 
 they were combined or compared. It is only by 
 obscure and doubtful inferences, and by the acci- 
 dental preservation of four or five tunes by inferior 
 composers, that we can attempt to extract from 
 the dry discussions on musical theory what sort 
 of thing practical Greek music really was. In 
 painting the case is a little better. We have in 
 the wall paintings of Pompeii, and in those excav- 
 ated on the Esquiline and Palatine at Rome, 
 specimens of what decorative painting had reached 
 by Roman imitation of Greek art. These paintings 
 are, no doubt, as inferior to their Greek models as 
 all other Roman imitations are, but still they help 
 us to guess what attainment the world had reached 
 in the technicalities of painting, even of a higher 
 kind, such as grouping of figures, and perspective 
 in landscape. 
 
 There is a very large number of German books 
 on both these lost arts of the Greeks — books full 
 of learning, and deeply interesting to the special 
 student. But their exceeding dryness and minute 
 detail make them quite unfit for general readers. 
 In England the subject of Greek painting has been 
 entirely neglected, and that- of Greek music has 
 not been really sifted till the recent work of 
 Mr. Chappell. But even this very learned and 
 
284 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 able writer, who has thrown a flood of light on 
 the musical theory of the Greeks, has not con- 
 descended to say much on the moral and social 
 aspects of his subject. I will endeavour to sketch 
 from this side the general impression produced as 
 to Greek music and painting by the extant tunes 
 and pictures, the allusions of classical writers, and 
 the varied discussions of theorists and art critics. 
 I will approach music first. 
 
 As culture was much more highly prized among 
 the Greeks than among us, and as they did not 
 spend their time in acquiring languages, it seems 
 certain that music was a more universal and a 
 more important feature in their education than in 
 ours. This conclusion, however, follows even more 
 directly and certainly from the great moral effects 
 which they attached to it. The great majority of 
 allusions to it assume as acknowledged, the fact 
 that some kinds of music stimulate to energy and 
 manliness, while others dispose the mind to effem- 
 inacy and luxury. Statesmen and philosophers 
 have this public aspect of music constantly before 
 them. The Spartans punish and prohibit a mu- 
 sician who makes immoral innovations in their 
 traditional music, by adding strings, and thus in- 
 creasing the semitones and even lesser transitions 
 from note to note. 1 Plato and Aristotle are most 
 
 1 Here is a mediaeval parallel, for no doubt Scott had good authority 
 on the point. In Ivanhoe, when the captive Prior of Jorvaulx winds a 
 blast for the outlaws to show his accomplishments, Robin Hood an- 
 
xii.] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 285 
 
 solicitous that only certain kinds of major and 
 minor scales shall be allowed in their ideal state, 
 because the others are relaxing or over-exciting to 
 the mind. The evidence on this point is endless, 
 and forms one of the strongest contrasts between 
 Greek and modern notions about music. 
 
 The first inference I will draw from this fact is 
 not an obvious one, but one of the greatest im- 
 portance. We may conclude from it that Greek 
 music was in an elementary state. For the analogy 
 of other nations, and the history of other arts, tell 
 us that the moral effects of music are everywhere 
 strongly felt, until it becomes developed and com- 
 plicated. Then the pursuit of perfection, and the 
 overcoming of technical difficulties, become an end 
 in themselves, and while people learn deeper and 
 more subtle sources of delight, they forget the 
 moral side of the art. Thus the Chinese, whose 
 music, though good and clear, has not reached a 
 high stage, have always held opinions about its 
 moral effects quite similar to the old Greeks. 1 In- 
 deed, more generally, according as the intellectual 
 strain increases, the .emotional effect diminishes, and 
 so we hear of our forefathers shedding tears at the 
 
 swers : ' Sir Prior, thou bio west a merry blast, but it may not ransom 
 thee. Moreover, I have found thee — thou art one of those who, with 
 new French graces and Tra-li-ras, disturb the ancient English bugle 
 notes. Prior, that last flourish on the recheat hath added fifty crowns 
 to thy ransom, for corrupting the true old manly blasts of venerie.' 
 
 1 Cf. Dr. Plath, in the Transact, of the Munich Academy, vol. x.,. 
 part 2, pp. 483, 515, &c. 
 
.2 86 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 singing of simple melodies, while no music would 
 probably touch in this way the followers of Schu- 
 mann and Wagner. The Greek music had, there- 
 fore, a greater national importance, because it was 
 far ruder and less developed than ours. 
 
 But I am not the least disposed to assert more 
 than a difference of degree between them ; and far 
 from believing that the Greeks exaggerated the 
 moral side, I hold that we moderns have unduly 
 lost sight of it. An experience of many years has 
 convinced me that the moral characters of our mu- 
 sicians are directly influenced by the music which 
 they cultivate. The pursuit of any kind of our 
 music, even the severest classical quartets, seems 
 to me inconsistent, in a real lover of them, with 
 other intellectual work of a high order ; and the 
 constant singing, or even hearing, of the passion- 
 ate love songs of the newer Italian operas may 
 be directly injurious to the character. The more 
 beautifully and perfectly the music corresponds to 
 the words of these productions, the more mischie- 
 vous they are likely to be. Thus the most perfect 
 of love duets, that in Gounod's Faust, expresses so 
 forcibly in its perpetual suspensions the hunger 
 and longing of passion, that the mind which feeds 
 upon it must inevitably, though perhaps uncon- 
 sciously, be stimulated in that direction. When, 
 therefore, we hear it commonly remarked that 
 musicians are jealous and. quarrelsome, or that a 
 young man with a good tenor voice is sure to go 
 
xii.] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 287 
 
 to ruin, there may be musical reasons for these 
 observations which did not escape the Greeks, 
 though they are completely ignored now-a-days. 
 
 It is no answer to this curious speculation to 
 say that the moral effect belongs to the words 
 employed, and was transferred by mistake to the 
 music. For among the ancients Plato is most 
 vehement on the immorality of instrumental music 
 apart from words, which indeed he condemns alto- 
 gether; and in modern times little attention is paid 
 to the words of an Italian love song, provided 
 the general sense is understood, which is usually 
 clear from the character of the music. It is not 
 even true that our purely instrumental music is 
 all of an intellectual type, as might, perhaps, be 
 asserted, for nothing can be more intensely pas- 
 sionate than violin playing, such as we hear it, 
 not, perhaps, from Joachim, but from Wilhelmj or 
 Auer. The same might have been said of Ernst, 
 whose well-known Elegy will illustrate clearly 
 what I intend. 
 
 The Greeks, then, were agreed about the power- 
 ful moral effects of music — bad, if practised accord- 
 ing to certain subtle and luxurious innovations; 
 good and humanizing, if practised according to the 
 old national traditions. It seems a plain inference 
 that they must have assumed everybody to have the 
 necessary taste and ear for the purpose, and this 
 they invariably do in their discussions. There is no- 
 where, so far as I know, a hint that such an one sang 
 
288 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 out of tune, or had no ear. Every young gentleman 
 was thought as capable of music as every young- 
 lady is now-a-days, nor do we hear this conventional 
 theory ridiculed then as it now is or ought to be. 
 Polybius 1 speaks of the culture of the Arcadians as 
 directly resulting from their diffused musical train- 
 ing; he even directly attributes the barbarous 
 character of a particular town to the neglect of this 
 necessary element in education. 
 
 The public festivals of the gods had always 
 something of a choral character, and the prepara- 
 tions for the performance of a tragedy at the feast 
 of Dionysus entailed a great deal of expense and 
 trouble. In such celebrations it was in early times 
 an honour to take part, but they were quite separate 
 from the singing and playing in private society, 
 which were cultivated a good deal at Athens, 
 though not at all at Sparta, where such perform- 
 ances were left to professional musicians. It was, 
 indeed, universally held among Greeks, that an in- 
 dependent gentleman should not spend his life in 
 practising, or in making a slave of himself, for any 
 special purpose. 
 
 Professional virtuosi, on the other hand, rose 
 gradually in importance and popularity, and in 
 the Macedonian days we even hear of whole or- 
 chestras and regular concerts. It appears that 
 music having begun, as it ought, by portraying 
 pure emotion, advanced to attempt the represen- 
 
 1 Lib. IV. sub. fin. 
 
xii.] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 289 
 
 tation of external facts — a great blunder in art, 
 to which our Battles of Prague, Battles of Viltoria, 
 and other such compositions in the last generation, 
 form an obvious parallel. We hear in the days of 
 the Ptolemies, about 250 B. c, of a regular sym- 
 phony performed at a Delphic feast, in which the 
 contest of Apollo and the Python was represented 
 in five movements with the aid of flutes (or rather 
 clarinettes, auAot), harps, and fifes, without singing 
 or libretto. The conflict itself was represented in 
 the third movement, in which the clarinettes had 
 the chief part, and in a peculiar passage called the 
 gnashing (o^ovnaiuLog) expressed the noise made by 
 the monster's teeth when struck by the arrows. 
 The next movement expressed the dying struggles 
 of the dragon by the hissing (avpiyyir), in which 
 the fifes came out. This elaborate instrumental 
 symphony was merely the development of the old 
 competitions in playing instruments, which had ex- 
 isted at Delphi from very early days. 
 
 Such being the general social importance of 
 music, I will say a word about the instruments 
 used by the Greeks, and their methods of tun- 
 ing them, and also give a specimen of the extant 
 tunes. 
 
 Our previous conclusion that the music of the 
 Greeks was undeveloped, as compared with ours, is 
 strengthened by a review of the instrumental aids 
 they had invented. We may put out of account 
 the trumpet, which was of purely military use, and 
 
 u 
 
go RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 in the playing of which there were indeed com- 
 petitions at Olympia, but only trials of loudness. 
 Castanets and cymbals are rather rhythmical noise 
 than music. We hear of a water-organ, and may 
 suppose a wind-organ to have anticipated it, but 
 both seem rather Roman-Greek than early Greek 
 inventions. The double flute, also, with its bandage 
 about the mouth, seems to have had only a single 
 note on one of the pipes, and to have represented 
 our bagpipes. 
 
 It thus appears that as the principle of bowing 
 on strings was unknown, and as wire strings were 
 equally so, Greek music was confined to twang- 
 ing the gut-strings of instruments made on the 
 principle of either the harp or the guitar, and to 
 blowing reeds or pipes, analogous to the principle 
 of our fife or flute, and our clarinette or hautboy. 
 These were at first used as accompaniments to the 
 voice, then separately, then conjointly and toge- 
 ther with singing. The descriptions of the instru- 
 ments are not very clear, but are greatly assisted 
 by the accurate pictures we have of the correspond- 
 \ng instruments among the Egyptians, whose music 
 appears to have been adopted by the Greeks. In- 
 deed all the musical terms for playing are very 
 much confused, so much so that one instrument, 
 the fiayaSig, is sometimes spoken of as a stringed, 
 sometimes as a wind instrument. 
 
 What sort of music did the Greeks make with 
 these instruments, and their voices ? This is, after 
 
xii.] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 291 
 
 ■all, the practical question which the reader desires 
 to see answered. Of course, there are two branches 
 of the question — that, of melody and that of har- 
 mony. As to melody, we have actually the remain- 
 ing tunes, which are not good, in spite of the 
 enthusiasm of the Germans about them. Only one 
 of them is alleged to be by a celebrated master; it 
 is the music of one of Pindar's odes, and, unfortu- 
 nately, rests upon the copy of the Jesuit Kircher, 
 two centuries ago, who alleged that he found it in 
 a MS., which has never since been traceable. The 
 composition, however, bears internal marks of 
 being genuine, though it may be inaccurately 
 copied, and this is the more likely, as the compari- 
 son of various MSS. on the other hymns shows 
 considerable variation. But these are by late com- 
 posers, and may, possibly, be bad specimens of 
 Greek tunes. Most unfortunately, no accompani- 
 ments have been preserved (except one of a few 
 bars, without its air), so that we are left to pure 
 conjecture as to how the Greeks assisted the voice 
 with instruments. It is also remarkable that the 
 chorus part of Pindar's ode is written in instru- 
 mental notes, which were quite a separate set of 
 signs from the vocal. 1 
 
 1 We are completely informed about both these notations, which 
 were based on the letters of the alphabet, and were applied to scales 
 before the intervals were properly understood. Thus, in the vocal no- 
 tation A and B both stand for quarter tones between our G and F. r is 
 F. Then A and E stand for minute intervals between our F and E. z is E. 
 
 U 2 
 
2 9 2 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 But it seems quite certain that vocal part music 
 was not used by the Greeks, and that any harmony 
 they knew was confined to instruments ; but, possi- 
 bly, men and boys may have sung together in oc- 
 taves, with a full accompaniment — a sort of music 
 with which I was greatly struck when I heard it in 
 the Jewish synagogue at Pesth. Another point, 
 urged by Westphal, indicates that ancient melody 
 was not meant to vary with varying expression in 
 the words, like our modern tunes. The antistrophe 
 in the Greek tragedies was certainly sung to the 
 same music — possibly an octave up or down — as 
 the strophe. Nevertheless, the tone of the words is 
 often quite different. 1 
 
 I now give, for the musical reader's benefit, the 
 notes of the best of the extant hymns. It dates 
 
 In this way 24 signs are used within an octave, and a second octave is 
 noted with a distorted alphabet on the same principle. The instru- 
 mental notation had sixteen letters, used in three positions, thus 
 E, W , a, for our C, C|, C± ; H, 1, -H, forD, Df, Di. These signs, with 
 certain additions above and below, of later origin, make sixty-four signs 
 in all. Cf. the elaborate discussions on these notations in Westphal's 
 Musik der Griechen, and in Fortlage's article in Ersch and Gruber, The 
 omission of them in Mr. Chappell's book is to be regretted. 
 
 1 On this I must remark that Euripides, who, with the greater deve- 
 lopment of music, probably felt the defect, does not generally change 
 the subject of his choral odes until the commencement of a new strophe. 
 The first pair of verses (so to speak) are often philosophical and gene- 
 ral ; the second approach the special subject of the act : cf. the choruses 
 in Alcest. 962, sqq.; Medea, 824, sqq. ; Hippol. 723, sqq., Iioo, sqq. ; 
 Ileraclid. 829, sqq.; and elsewhere. This tendency increased in after 
 years, and antistrophic odes went out of fashion. 
 
XII.] 
 
 MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 2 93 
 
 from the Roman-Greek epoch, but has good words, 
 and may have been thought a good composition, 
 though we have no evidence on the point. In fix- 
 ing the rhythm, I have been led absolutely by the 
 metre of the words, which is very plain and marked, 
 and this version differs accordingly from that of my 
 friend Mr. Chappell, 1 who, like Brill and other 
 German authorities, desires to maintain a fixed 
 tempo all through the melody. 
 
 HYMN TO APOLLO AND THE MUSE. 
 
 -m— 9- 
 
 -N— - 
 
 M tt 
 
 "A - el - 8e Mou- alt fxoi (j)i - Xr], Mo\ - 
 
 $ 
 
 9 *- 
 
 / _ 
 
 7rj/c <T e - fxr\q kclt - ap - X ov > a " ' P 1 ) ^ 
 
 '*■- 
 
 oiov U7r' uX - ai - b)i> e - fiixQ <ppi 
 
 1 
 
 N- F 
 
 I 
 
 W^± 
 
 ar <$ 
 
 - I'El 
 
 KaX - Xt - 6 - 
 
 1 History 0/ Music, p. 169. I have also followed WestphaPs reading 
 of the notes, which differs occasionally from Mr. Chappell's, and which 
 thus affords the English reader another version, and, I think, a better 
 
2Q4 
 
 RAMBLES IN GREECE, [ch. xti.. 
 
 is m i 
 
 
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 P 
 
 7rfi - a <ro - 0a, /zou - ow TrpoKCtO - a - ye- 7t 
 
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 repTT- vwv, kcu aoty - e fj.v(T - to - do - ra, 
 
 n ' 
 
 
 *■ N 
 
 /TN 
 
 
 m * 
 
 ,• H 
 
 
 / 1 m 
 
 m ■, 
 
 * * 
 
 # - * ■ h 
 
 
 i / > 
 
 
 
 .\.y I 
 
 
 t 
 
 i I 
 
 Aa - tovq yo - ve A// 
 
 7rat - ac, 
 
 i 
 
 t=== 
 
 £ 
 
 5* 
 
 li 
 
 ev - /ze - rftc; 7rap - £<r - re juot. 
 
 There is, of course, this objection to the present 
 reading, that in two or three places long syllables 
 come in the short note of the bar (I have indicated 
 them, with Westphal, by forzando marks). 1 But the 
 violence done to the metre by Mr. Chappell's ver- 
 sion is a far more serious difficulty. 
 
 Any modern theorist, to whom this tune was 
 brought as an exercise in melody, would point out 
 that the opening upward progression of a fifth 
 almost compels us to assume D minor as the key 
 with this bass — 
 
 but no sooner are we well 
 at home in this key, than 
 we are suddenly brought 
 
 w 
 
 m. 
 
 1 The MSS. mark these very notes with a CO, obviously for the same- 
 reason. 
 
XII.] 
 
 MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 295 
 
 £*=£i 
 
 =4 
 
 — «— 
 
 -•— 
 
 ~i s -- 
 
 ^ 
 
 W 
 
 
 —*- 
 
 -\— 
 
 - J— - 
 
 =t= 
 
 f&^^ 
 
 — i- 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 ^ip 
 
 — 0- 
 
 -• 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 ® 
 
 up by the C natural of the seventh bar, and forced 
 from a chord in G minor into the key of C, thus — 
 which is inadmis- 
 sible. 
 
 If we endeavour 
 to avoid it by this 
 progression in the bass — 
 
 ^^ we should continue it through 
 zgr^- D to C, and this D is in dis- 
 cord with the tune. As almost the same phrase 
 occurs in the next line but one, we are compelled 
 to reconsider our first decision, and declare the tune 
 to be meant from the beginning to move in the key 
 of F. But, then, the opening — 
 - a i v -i —* * r * s a l mos t unbearable, and would 
 -fe "—r -^— ^r- mark the composer as inele- 
 gant, or ignorant. 
 == The amount of modulation in 
 ~" the tune is also very small, and 
 it is altogether a very thankless subject for an in- 
 genious harmonist. 
 
 I have printed it in an easier key than Mr. Chap- 
 pell, because I do not think the question of pitch 
 determined, and we cannot tell certainly how much 
 the old Greek pitch differed from ours. Bellermann 
 shows good arguments (from allusions to the ranges 
 of voices) to prove that it was about a third higher. 
 There can be no doubt that it was gradually raised, 
 so that singing in the original keys became diffi- 
 cult, and there were some nomes in which transpo- 
 
 rt 
 
2 g6 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 sition was not allowed. So it came that Claudius 
 Ptolemy proposed to transpose all the scales a 
 fourth down, and his system seems to have found 
 favour. 
 
 The historians do not inform us concerning the 
 history of this change of pitch, but it seems very 
 probable that it arose from the same causes which 
 have sent our pitch up during the last century — a 
 desire in instrumentalists to make their playing 
 more brilliant, and in singers to show off on high 
 notes. 
 
 We are left quite in the dark as to the Greek ac- 
 companiment, except that it usually ranged higher 
 than the voice, and the curious reader may com- 
 pare Professor Macfarren's two versions (in Mr. 
 Chappell's book) with Westphal's [Elemente des 
 Musikalischen Rhythmus, p. xviii.) They are pro- 
 bably all equally wide of the historic truth. 
 
 But before passing on to the question of har- 
 mony, I will add what maybe inferred as to melody 
 from the extant scientific treatises. At a very early 
 period, it had been discovered that octaves were, in 
 some sense, the same sound, and that the progres- 
 sion downwards recommenced when the octave note 
 had been reached. Hence the division of tones and 
 semitones within the octave was analysed and de- 
 termined. Three distinct ways of accomplishing 
 this scale were in early use among the nations 
 after whom they are called — the Dorian, the Phry- 
 gian, and the Lydian. The early seven-stringed in- 
 
XII.] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 97 
 
 struments were tuned in one or other of these 
 ways, and the earliest accompaniment being either 
 the playing of strict unison with the voice, or in oc- 
 taves with it, it follows that all songs were composed 
 in these scales. 
 
 They differ merely 
 in the position occu- 
 pied by the semitone 
 intervals, which I 
 have noted thus v ; 
 but this distinctly af- 
 fects the character of 
 the scale. Thus the 
 Lydian is what we should call major, while the 
 other two are minor scales. It is possible, how- 
 ever, to place the two semitone intervals of a 
 diatonic scale in other positions than those above 
 specified, and thus several other scales, called 
 hypo-Dorian, hypo -Lydian, mixo- Lydian, &c, 
 came gradually into use, in all of which music 
 was composed, and each of which was held to 
 have as distinct a character as the various keys 
 which we now employ. But the reason was differ- 
 ent. Our major keys, for example, of A flat and of 
 D natural have the intervals between the notes in 
 the same order ; but, as the tuning of our instru- 
 ments is a system, not of strict intervals, but of ac- 
 commodation, these scales are not different in pitch 
 •only, but, to an appreciable extent, in character, 
 owing to slight differences in the intervals of the 
 
2g8 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 notes. Theoretically, we only allow two scales, the 
 major and minor, though the minor down scale va- 
 ries from the up scale. The Greeks had seven, each 
 of which varied in the actual progression of the 
 tones, which were separated by accurately deter- 
 mined intervals. Modulation during the course of 
 a melody was only occasional, and within strictly 
 defined limits. Accordingly the distinct effect pro- 
 duced upon Greek ears by each of these scales 
 seems to have been even stronger and more marked 
 than that of the different keys upon modern ears, 
 most of which cannot distinguish in what key the 
 music is, and can only tell major and minor dis- 
 tinctly. 
 
 But when instruments of two octave range came 
 into use, it was found that, by adhering to one 
 fixed tuning — that of the natural notes on our 
 piano-fortes — all the scales could be found by 
 varying the note on which each commenced. For 
 example, from C to C we have the Lydian or plain 
 major scale ; from E to E we have the Dorian ; from 
 A to A the hypo-Dorian. This fact has led to the 
 serious mistake of saying that the Greek scales were 
 mere differences of pitch — a statement very likely 
 to mislead the modern reader. It was only owingf 
 to a fixed system of tuning that the various scales, 
 became attached to fixed key-notes ; and, even 
 then, the scales differed not only in pitch, which 
 was un-essential, but in the arrangement or pro- 
 
xil] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 299 
 
 gression of the notes, which was the essential fea- 
 ture. 1 
 
 The Greeks w T ere not confined to these diatonic 
 scales ; they knew chromatic, and even enharmonic 
 scales, in which they used intervals of quarter tones 
 which are unknown in our notation, though often 
 played on strings, and sung by voices, in Icgata 
 transitions from one note to another. These sub- 
 tleties were, however, much studied by the Greeks, 
 whose melodies evidently attained an extraordinary 
 elaboration, and would be often quite unintelligible 
 to modern ears. 2 It is remarkable that these very 
 
 1 Sir Robert Stewart has pointed out to me a very interesting parallel 
 in the Irish harp music of the last century. These harps, which included 
 about four octaves, were always tuned to the scale of G, with no sharp 
 except the necessary F sharp. Nevertheless, with this fixed scale, the 
 harpers composed and played tunes in four distinct keys — in that of G 
 (such as the Coolin) of course, in that of E minor {Remember the Glories 
 of Brian), of D major, and of A minor. Specimens may be found in 
 Bunting's work, but later versions must not be consulted, as singers 
 often modified the tunes by introducing additional sharps suggested 
 by the ear. On the old harps this variety of key was attained by 
 dwelling on the key-note — perpetually returning to it, as Aristotle says, 
 the Greeks did, and also by avoiding the phrases which required the 
 additional sharps. The familiar flat seventh in Irish music arose natu- 
 rally from playing tunes in D major on instruments tuned in G. Thus 
 an ignorant harper might tell us that these old harp tunes only differed 
 in pitch, which distorts the facts of the case, for the pitch is only 
 changed in order to obtain a different key and character. 
 
 2 Fortlage thinks that Greek melody was somewhat analogous to mo- 
 dern harmony. We are not now improving in melody, or making any 
 advances in it, but have of late times been altogether bent on perfecting 
 harmony. The Greeks, in contrast, never thought of making new dis- 
 
,oo RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 small intervals, which can only have been used for 
 passing notes, were, nevertheless, played on stringed 
 instruments, without bowing, and therefore without 
 sliding from one to the other. Yet the effect of 
 rapid execution was such as to bring down storms 
 of applause from great audiences, when this sort of 
 playing was well done, without any accompani- 
 ment. 
 
 The joyous or sombre character of a scale ap- 
 peared in them in no way associated with the cha- 
 racter which we call major or minor. Thus, their 
 only purely major scale, the Lydian, is always re- 
 garded as soft, plaintive, and effeminate ; though 
 the hypo-Dorian, which nearly approaches a major 
 scale, was thought manly and vigorous. On the 
 contrary, the Dorian, which is distinctly minor, was 
 thought martial and inspiring ; whereas the Phry- 
 gian, also minor, was thought orgiastic and pas- 
 sionate. Bellermann has observed, that in the 
 extant fragments the Lydian greatly predominates, 
 and it seems very natural that it should be so ; but 
 this was evidently owing to practical musicians 
 being guided by ear, and not from a scientific ap- 
 preciation of major scales. 
 
 On the whole, it is likely that even were seve- 
 ral good Greek melodies accurately handed down 
 to us, we are not in a position to understand or 
 
 coveries in harmony, but were always devising novelties to improve their 
 melodies. This difference of attitude shows the difficulty of appreciating 
 what the Greeks have written on the subject. 
 
xil] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 .101 
 
 appreciate them, for several reasons : first, because 
 of the different tuning of their instruments, to 
 which I will presently revert. This difference is 
 not merely important in itself, but educated the ear 
 of the nation, and so made them enjoy and dislike 
 with a different taste from ours. I will not assert 
 that the laws of harmony are conventional — the 
 physiological reasons of consonance and disso- 
 nance are scientifically established, and must al- 
 ways have guided the human ear; but still, within 
 large limits, melody is a matter of taste, as Wag- 
 ner and Brahms have proved clearly enough, and 
 by training even one generation, men can come to 
 admire tunes which they once thought hideous. 
 How much more may this be the case with the na- 
 tional training of centuries ! While, therefore, I 
 confidently assert that such a phrase as this (from 
 the opening of the Hymn to the Muse) 
 
 1 
 
 ~$- 
 
 :3 
 
 P 
 
 is very disagreeable, I will not take upon myself 
 to say that Greek melody was positively bad : 
 I will only say that it differed so widely from the 
 music of modern Europe, that its beauties are 
 completely lost upon us. 
 
 This argument is greatly strengthened by an- 
 other reason — the great differences between the 
 Greek notions and ours, concerning harmony. This 
 is, to my thinking, the most difficult problem of 
 
io2 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 all those with which Greek music abounds for us. 
 For it seems as if one essential element in modern 
 harmony — an element without which it cannot 
 exist — the use of thirds — was absent from ancient 
 concerted music. The ancients tell us a great deal 
 of consonances and dissonances, and are unanimous 
 that octaves, fourths, and fifths are harmonious ; 
 but they seem equally agreed that thirds, both 
 major and minor, are discordant, and may not be 
 used. Mr. Chappell has even explained scientifi- 
 cally how this resulted from their tuning, which 
 found the next full tone to any note by going 
 down to the fourth below, and then going up a full 
 fifth. This process, when twice repeated, gives the 
 ditone of the Greeks — a greater third, so sharp as 
 to be unbearable. Accordingly, there is no trace 
 of any statement that Greek harmony consisted of 
 three simultaneous notes, nor are there any rules 
 given for it by any of the theorists. Hence, many 
 authors have been led to assert that there was no 
 harmony in Greek music save that of octaves, with 
 fourths and fifths, which, when used consecutively, 
 are very offensive to every good ear. If Greek 
 music was of this kind, it could only be fitly com- 
 pared to the present music of another very civi- 
 lised race — the Japanese, who seem to have no 
 concords but these. 1 This may have been the con- 
 dition of Greek harmony in early days. 
 
 1 Cf. the passage in Mr. Chappell's History of Music, I. p. 304. 
 
xil] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 303 
 
 Fortunately, however, we are in possession of 
 some hints which make us pause before we dismiss 
 the question. It is known that practical musicians 
 (apjuoviKof) did not bind themselves by scientific ca- 
 nons — that they followed their ear in preference, 
 and made many modifications not admitted by 
 the theorists (kcivovikoi). Thus, they flattened some 
 strings in the tuning; they objected to consecutive 
 fourths and fifths; they even spoke of thirds as 
 iraoafyuva, or something between concords and dis- 
 cords — nay, they speak of passing discords as per- 
 mitted in harmony. Plato, too, in a celebrated 
 passage, speaks of the accompaniment as an elabo- 
 rate and independent thing from the air, running 
 counter in motion, and using different intervals, as 
 we accompany our modern songs, in contrast with 
 the old hum-drum accompaniments of former ge- 
 nerations. 
 
 These, and other stray hints which Mr. Chap- 
 pell and Westphal have gathered with great care, 
 and quite independently, have persuaded them 
 that the Greeks and Romans did know and use 
 harmony in our sense. Every Hellenist will be 
 anxious to agree with them, and to vindicate 
 for the Greeks a high position in this art also. 
 I may add to their arguments that the enharmonic 
 and chromatic tetrachords of Didymus and Ptolemy 
 are based upon the intervals 4 : 5, and 5 : 6, which 
 are the greater and lesser third, and thus show an 
 attempt to recognise these as natural intervals in 
 
3 o4 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 music. It is likewise known 1 that in the Middle 
 Ages thirds, though used, were not admitted to be a 
 perfect consonance, and that it required the genius 
 of Descartes to break through this prejudice also,, 
 and first declare the truth in his * Treatise on 
 Music.' 
 
 On the other hand, it must be confessed that all 
 the authorities which Mr. Chappell has quoted are 
 comparatively modern — the pseudo-Aristotle, Gau- 
 dentius, and the Latins — and that the clearest evi- 
 dences are certainly those derived from Cicero and 
 Seneca. In fact, all the earlier hints, including^ 
 the very old Egyptian pictures, are reconcilable 
 with a concord of two notes only. The silence of 
 our authorities as to any rules on the subject is 
 equally striking and inexplicable ; nor do I think 
 the extant tunes are in any respect like the tunes 
 we might expect from a nation trained in real 
 harmony. The setting of them in their proper 
 scales, even with modern resources, is awkward 
 and clumsy, as may be seen from the version of 
 such a harmonist as Mr. Macfarren. 
 
 I feel therefore obliged to decide upon the evi- 
 dence before us, that in the great days of Terpan- 
 der, Alcaeus, Sappho, and Pindar, there was little 
 that we could call harmony, and that music was 
 practically in a rude state. It appears that in course 
 of time actual performers may have accommo- 
 
 1 Cf., on both points, Fortlage mErsch and Gruber 's Encyclop., art. 
 Greece, vol. II., pp. 198, 207. 
 
xii.] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 305 
 
 dated their instruments to real harmony, and com- 
 posed real accompaniments ; but the theory of 
 music, which had been so advanced in Pythagoras' 
 day, did not keep pace with these practical im- 
 provements, and so fell into great arrear, compared 
 with the art. While players and singers were de- 
 lighting vast audiences, and inventing various 
 combinations of scales and ■ of instruments, the 
 theorists wasted their time on useless subtleties, 
 and did not even amend their instrumental nota- 
 tion, which was framed before the distinction of a 
 full tone and a semitone was properly understood. 
 
 "We may, therefore, console ourselves for the loss 
 of the elaborate music with which Pindar, iEschy- 
 lus, Sophocles, and all the other poets, accom- 
 panied their splendid odes. I do not believe that it 
 would improve these poems in our ears. It would, no 
 doubt, explain to us many difficulties about rhythms 
 and metres — it would, above all, bring us one step 
 nearer to a full understanding of Greek life ; but it 
 would probably not add to our aesthetic pleasure, 
 though it might give us some new elements to work 
 into the music of the future. 
 
 With these remarks I leave a subject of which 
 the details are drier and more uninteresting than 
 those of any other phase of Greek art. 
 
 When we turn to the history of Painting, we find 
 many analogies to music. It arose among the 
 Greeks as the handmaid to architecture— as music 
 
 x 
 
3 o6 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 was to poetry — and found the same difficulty in 
 freeing itself, and rising to the condition of an inde- 
 pendent art. Painting, among the Greeks, has, 
 accordingly, the history of an auxiliary art, begin- 
 ning obscurely, developing late, and rising to dig- 
 nity and splendour when the greater arts have 
 decayed. The first application of colours, in the 
 painting of stone temples, of wooden statues, of 
 clay vases, was not entrusted to any special artist ; 
 indeed, at no period do we hear of great statues 
 being handed over to the painter, so that the colour- 
 ing must have been thoroughly conventional, and 
 easily applied. This strikes us as evident in the 
 archaic vases, which use but few colours, and 
 apply them without regard to nature. It is true 
 that vase-painting was afterwards looked on with 
 contempt by greater artists ; but there can be little 
 doubt that these humbler productions, which ulti- 
 mately sank into the position of mere tradesman's 
 work, were originally of equal standing and merit 
 with other painting. They have, in fact, preserved 
 to us the archaic features of the nascent art, and 
 from this point of view are of great historical value. 
 There is one class of them, the Attic \t}kv0ol or oil- 
 flasks, which have many-coloured figures on a white 
 ground, and which are thought by most competent 
 archaeologists to be of peculiar value for the solu- 
 tion of this question. 
 
 If we compare these indications of archaic paint- 
 ing with the older sculpture, we find that the Greeks 
 
XII.] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 307 
 
 did not by any means obtain from the use of colour 
 a nearer approach to realism. The eyes of profile 
 faces are always painted full, and in early vases are 
 even conventionally varied, to mark the distinc- 
 tion of sex; those of women being painted of oblong 
 form, white with red pupils, those of men scratched 
 on the vase — a circle, with two strokes attached to 
 it. The flesh of women is painted white, that of 
 men is black or red. But, on the other hand, the 
 early painters used their advantage in portraying 
 violent action, which sculpture could not dare to 
 attempt before the genius of Myron realised the 
 impossible. Thus the old vases often show us rush- 
 ing figures, and drapery tossed with the wind — 
 features which the poetic instinct of Keats seized 
 as of peculiar interest — 
 
 What men and gods are these? What maidens loath? 
 What mad pursuit ? What struggle to escape ? 
 What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 1 
 
 But of realism in the sense of anatomical drawing, 
 of perspective — in short, of anything like illusion — 
 old Greek painting was quite ignorant. And, Of 
 course, in the absence of perspective, any attempt 
 at landscape was not to be expected, nor did any 
 artist desire to essay it, till new and peculiar cir- 
 cumstances, as we shall presently see, forced it into 
 notice. 
 
 Thus Polygnotus, the first painter of really na- 
 
 1 From the Ode on a Grecian urn. 
 X 2 
 
308 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 tional importance, and all his immediate school, 
 were altogether figure painters, and used the least 
 possible accessories of landscape, if an occasional 
 rock or house can be called such. This great man, 
 a native of Thasos, but settled at Athens, and even 
 promoted to its citizenship, might be called the 
 Phidias of Cimon, on account of his intimate rela- 
 tions with that statesman. His frescoes on the 
 Acropolis were, unfortunately, so decayed, when 
 Pausanias saw them, that he was only able to de- 
 scribe a few figures — a thing much to be regretted, 
 as he has left us a very full and interesting account 
 of a wall painting by the same artist, in the Aco^r?, 
 or assembly-room of the Delphians, built as a votive 
 offering by the Cnidians. 
 
 The two main walls were covered with two great 
 subjects — the Fall of Troy, and the Visit of Ulysses 
 to the regions of the Dead. These were each 
 painted in two long panels, one over the other, and 
 I fancy, from the way in which Pausanias passes 
 from the lower to the upper panel, and then back 
 again, that they must have been broken by vertical 
 lines in the decoration of the wall. The figures 
 seem not so much grouped as put into a sort of 
 irregular series, with their names — as on the 
 vases — written over them. 
 
 Polygnotus and his immediate successors only 
 used or combined four colours — blue-black, yellow, 
 red, and white. He knew nothing of light and 
 shade, or of fore-shortening. Nevertheless Pau- 
 
xil] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 309 
 
 vsanias speaks of various striking effects in his 
 paintings. There were leopard and bear skins re- 
 presented in them — there was a strand with pebbles, 
 and the sea. There was the river Acheron, with 
 reeds, and sedge, and fishes in the water, which 
 looked like shadows ; there was the vampire Eury- 
 nomus, painted the colour of a blue-bottle fly, appa- 
 rently because he devoured human flesh; above all, 
 there were various mental states — grief, indiffer- 
 ence, anger — conveyed by these frescoes. But let 
 us always remember that a violent pre-Raphaelite, 
 like Pausanias, will discover pathos and expression 
 in such old work where there is really none. It is 
 said that Polygnotus was the first to depart from 
 the conventional way of painting the human face; 
 yet in his long description, Pausanias does not say 
 one word about the beauty or expression of the 
 faces, merely noting that some have beards, while 
 the majority have none. It seems that all the ex- 
 pression was to be inferred from the attitudes. 
 
 The glory of Polygnotus and the honour in 
 which he was held show that the public were tho- 
 roughly satisfied with his art; and had Cimon, who 
 was his patron, held sway at Athens, instead of 
 Pericles, it is more than probable that painting 
 would have been the chief ornament of the Parthe- 
 non, instead of the sculpture of Phidias and his 
 pupils. But, among other contrasts with Cimon, 
 Pericles was far-seeing enough to know that Greek 
 sculpture was ever to be the greatest of arts, and 
 
3io RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 the frieze of the cella proclaims his victory over the 
 picture-gallery of the Propylaea, which, even in 
 Pausanias' day, was fading out beyond recog- 
 nition. 
 
 The next step in Greek painting was made, not 
 by a great artist, but apparently by a practical 
 man, working hurriedly, and seeking to meet a 
 growing want — that of adequate stage scenery for 
 the now popular tragedy. This remarkable man, 
 Agatharchus, employed by Sophocles, and, in his 
 later days, by ./Eschylus, first attacked the question 
 of perspective, which he perceived to depend upon 
 the painting of light and shade. He wrote a tract 
 on the subject, which stimulated the philosophers 
 Anaxagoras and Democritus to study the matter 
 further, and so led the way for the adoption of his 
 principles by Apollodorus (b. C. 400), who is called 
 the first shade fainter by the Greeks. But it is very 
 significant that the term scene painter was used as 
 synonymous. Pliny's remark, that Apollodorus' 
 paintings are the earliest worth looking at, is pro- 
 bably based on a sound appreciation of the require- 
 ments of the art, and confirms our suspicion that 
 Polygnotus was (ethically perhaps, but) not aesthet- 
 ically to be admired. From the days of Apollo- 
 dorus, however, figure fainting made rapid pro- 
 gress. Wall decoration became subordinate to the 
 painting of pictures proper ; and a long series of 
 great artists, such as Zeuxis, Parrhasius, Pamphi- 
 lus, Timanthes, and many others, led up to Apelles,. 
 
xii.] MUSIC AND PA IN TING. 3 1 1 
 
 the contemporary of Alexander, who brought this 
 species of painting to an unapproachable perfec- 
 tion. 
 
 With the splendid works of the sculptors to 
 rival them, these figure painters had no easy task 
 in maintaining their position; and the fact that the 
 public, accustomed to the bronze and marble of 
 Phidias, Polycletus, Euphranor, and Lysippus, not 
 only tolerated, but delighted in their pictures, shows 
 that they must have had real merit. This is further 
 proved by the technical details preserved to us. 
 They studied light and shade, and perspective, in- 
 creased the number of their colours, and used var- 
 nish to soften and preserve their colouring. The 
 figure subjects preserved to us at Pompeii are in 
 accordance with these evidences. Though they are 
 only the wall decorations of a second-rate mongrel 
 Greek town, there are both grace and power in 
 many of the figures. The colouring is bright and 
 life-like, and the faces full of expression. It is, in 
 fact, a thoroughly realistic art, and bears compari- 
 son with the beautiful bronzes of the place, though 
 none of the pictures equals the Narcissus or the 
 fishing Hermes. 
 
 It thus appears that this side of painting attained 
 a splendour and an independence far superior to 
 that of music. It freed itself from all relation to 
 architecture, and great masters, such as Zeuxis and 
 Apelles, enjoyed a social position never accorded 
 to musicians who were mere performers, as dis- 
 
3 i2 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 tinguished from poets who composed airs for their 
 own odes. But anyone who chooses to follow up 
 subtle analogies might well occupy himself with the 
 advance from four colours, without light and shade, 
 to all the appliances of Apelles on the one hand; and 
 the similar advance from a three-stringed lyre, or 
 Pandean pipes, to the varied scales and subtle 
 shades of tone in the days of Aristoxenus. If, how- 
 ever, my estimate of the comparatively backward 
 condition of Greek music be just, it will be easy to 
 find in Greek painting a much closer parallel, as re- 
 gards social position, and general importance — I 
 mean the parallel of landscape painting. 
 
 I have already explained how figure painting 
 made a new start, as soon as Agatharchus was led 
 by scene painting to study the optical illusions 
 produced by drawing and colour. But surely, we 
 should have thought that these ideas would have 
 been infinitely more useful in the development of 
 landscape painting. It is true that the scenic re- 
 quirements of the extant plays are not very great. 
 In most cases an architectural background — some 
 royal palace, or temple — is the main feature, and 
 changes of the whole scene were not practicable, 
 as a fixed wooden (and canvass r) structure, of a 
 great height, so as to shut out the natural back- 
 ground, occupied the whole rear of the narrow 
 stage. Two triangular prisms (TrspiaicTai), with 
 varied sides, supplied the part of our shifting side- 
 scenes, and were turned on pivots when any modi- 
 
xil] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 313 
 
 fication was required. Still this kind of landscape 
 should have been accurately studied, not merely in 
 reproducing well-known scenes, such as the groves 
 of Colonus, the Acropolis, or the outlines of Mount 
 Parnes — which would be ridiculous if very unlike — 
 but fancy pictures also, foreign palaces, and cities 
 of strange men. And even beyond this, there are, 
 though rarely, really picturesque scenes presup- 
 posed — tented camps on the sea shore, lonely and 
 desert islands, rocky homes of ancient worship. All 
 these subjects should have been stimulated, and 
 their imitation developed, by the scene painting for 
 the great Athenian theatre ; and yet nothing is more 
 certain than that landscape painting, as such, did 
 not arise for generations to come. Among all the 
 roll of great painters down to Apelles, there is not 
 one celebrated for depicting scenery, nor is there 
 aught beyond the slightest allusion to the scenery 
 of their figure painting. In fact, the Greeks felt no 
 want of landscape painting, and did not perceive 
 this dark spot in the field of their artistic vision. 
 
 This apparent defect in Greek taste has much ex- 
 ercised the critics. It is called a want of feeling for 
 the picturesque; and it has even been inferred 
 that the pleasure in beautiful scenery is of modern 
 growth — a late compensation for the unceasing toil 
 and weariness of mankind. But the general sensi- 
 tiveness of the Greeks, together with the innumer- 
 able proofs in their poetry that they appreciated 
 the sounds of nature as we do, show that the matter 
 
3 i4 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 cannot be so easily settled. It was not from want 
 of perceiving the beauty of external nature, but 
 from a different way of perceiving it, that the 
 Greeks have not turned their genius to portray, 
 either in colour or in poetry, the outlines, the hues r 
 and contrasts of all the fair valleys, and bold cliffs, 
 and golden noons, and rosy dawns, which their 
 beautiful country affords in lavish abundance. 
 
 Primitive people never, so far as I know, enjoy 
 what is called the picturesque in nature. Wild 
 forests, beetling cliffs, reaches of Alpine snow, are 
 with them great hindrances to human intercourse, 
 and difficulties in the way of agriculture. They are 
 furthermore the homes of the enemies of mankind, 
 of the eagle, the wolf, or the tiger, and are most 
 dangerous in times of earthquake or tempest. 
 Hence the grand and striking features of nature are, 
 at first looked upon with fear and dislike, so that, 
 even now-a-days, simple peasants, who regard the 
 earth merely as a means of subsistence, feel much 
 wonder at the admiring tourist, and are only taught 
 to understand his taste for the picturesque by the 
 direct benefit it confers upon their pockets. 
 
 I do not suppose the early Greeks differed in this 
 respect from other people, except that the frequent 
 occurrence of mountains and forests made agricul- 
 ture peculiarly difficult, and intercourse scanty, 
 thus increasing their dislike for the apparently 
 reckless waste in nature. We have in Homer even 
 a similar feeling as regards the sea — the sea that 
 
xil] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 315 
 
 proved the source of all their wealth, and the con- 
 dition of most of their greatness. Before they had 
 learned all this, they called it * the unvintageable 
 brine,' and look upon its shore as merely so much 
 waste land. We can, therefore, easily understand 
 how, in the first beginning of Greek art, the repre- 
 sentation of wild landscape would find no place, 
 whereas fruitful fields did not suggest themselves 
 as more than the ordinary background. Art in 
 those days was struggling with material nature, to 
 which it felt a certain antagonism. 
 
 There was nothing in the social circumstances of 
 the Greeks to produce any revolution in this atti- 
 tude during their greatest days. The Greek repub- 
 lics were small cities, where the pressure and 
 fatigue of city life was not felt. The Greeks them- 
 selves were essentially townsmen, who never de- 
 sired to see more of the country than its olives and 
 its grapes, and would not accept the rude plenty of 
 a farming life, with its want of refinement and dis- 
 cussion. But, as soon as the days of the Greek 
 republics were over, and men began to congregate 
 for imperial purposes into Antioch, or Alexandria, 
 or, lastly, into Rome, then we see the effect of 
 noise, and dust, and smoke, and turmoil breaking 
 out into the natural longing for rural rest and 
 retirement, so that, from Alexander's day, and be- 
 ginning with the Alexandrian Theocritus, we find 
 not only bucolic poetry starting into new favour, 
 but all kinds of authors, epic poets, lyrists, novel- 
 
316 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 ists, and preachers, agreeing in the praise of nature, 
 its rich colours, and its varied sounds. Hence land- 
 scape painting, as such, did not become an inde- 
 pendent art till this period, and, even then, suffered 
 from the lateness of its origin, and the decay of 
 Greece in genius ; so that, with rare exceptions, ar- 
 chitectural subjects and figures predominate, even 
 in this desire to escape from them. We are justi- 
 fied in making this assertion from the many speci- 
 mens preserved on the walls of Pompeii, from the 
 more important pictures exhumed on the Palatine 
 and Esquiline at Rome, and from detailed notices, 
 such as the el kovbq of Philostratus, and the criticisms 
 of the elder Pliny. 
 
 These natural causes seem to have annulled or 
 counteracted the impulse given to landscape paint- 
 ing by the scene painting of Agatharchus, whose 
 discoveries concerning perspective, as well as his 
 portraiture of known views, ought to have stimu- 
 lated a school of imitators. We should have ex- 
 pected the many-sided Athenians to have taken up 
 this branch, and, as they had a school of rhopo- 
 graphers, or painters of homely life, like the Dutch, 
 they should have had a school of pure landscape 
 painters. The fact that they had not is certain, 
 and the natural causes I have assigned are hardly 
 sufficient to account for it. 
 
 Indeed, the knowledge of perspective attained by 
 Democritus and Anaxagoras was either in itself 
 defective, or little propagated, for the architectural 
 
xii.] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 317 
 
 landscapes of Pompeii, in spite of considerable 
 merits in other respects, display most absurd igno- 
 rance in their perspective. But this is not the real 
 want in ancient landscapes. It is rather the ab- 
 sence of a deep feeling for nature as such, for its 
 curious symmetry amid countless variety — for its 
 natural contrasts of texture and colour — for its 
 matchless response — now to the vehemence and 
 trouble, now to the peacefulness and repose, of the 
 human breast. How is it possible that the sensitive, 
 poetical Greeks should have missed this infalli- 
 ble comfort, and lived without this most unfailing 
 and perpetual delight ? It is an answer, but a very 
 partial one, to say that beauty of landscape is so 
 constant in Greece, that it might fairly be taken for 
 granted, without special allusion. The nations of 
 southern Europe, who live in the fairest clime and 
 the clearest atmosphere, have always left landscape 
 painting to northern artists, where fog, and mist, 
 and dulness of outline give a strange zest to ex- 
 ceptional beauty. How few of the Italian painters 
 have thought of landscape ! How few Italians and 
 Spaniards travel to see it ! Hence it may fairly be 
 said that we should not expect to find Attic, Ionic, 
 and Theban poets insisting upon things which 
 everybody saw and enjoyed every day. But yet 
 how keen is their enjoyment of the sounds of nature ! 
 How they loved the swallow and the nightingale, 
 the humming bee and the shrill cicada, the whis- 
 pering leaves and the murmuring water ! The rose, 
 
3 i8 RAMBLES IN GREECE. [ch. 
 
 too, and the violet, the white narcissus and the deep 
 clustering ivy were to them no less fair in colour, 
 or delicious in odour, than they are to modern men. 
 Surely such men could not but feel the beauty of 
 large grouping of mountain, and wood, and water. 
 
 They did indeed feel it, but as Greeks, and not 
 as moderns. They did not oppose themselves to 
 nature, and feel their own consciousness contrasted 
 with the spontaneous or instinctive life of nature. 
 To them mountains, and rivers, and forests, were 
 full of conscious life — the home, nay, the imperso- 
 nation of gods, who thought and felt like men. For 
 their religion, a sort of anthropomorphic panthe- 
 ism, taught them that all the life of trees and rivers 
 was not unconscious, but the manifestation of a 
 hidden god ; and that solitude, as we call it, was 
 peopled with oreads, hamadryads, fauns, and satyrs. 
 They held that in the wild mountains forest gods 
 held their court, and demanded awe and worship 
 from those who entered the bounds of their domain. 
 Thus the old Greek, who spoke of a river or a 
 mountain, named the god whose dwelling-place it 
 was, and remembered the myths and legends of the 
 poets, which, perhaps, made this god his ancestor, 
 or, at least, identified him with the history and for- 
 tunes of the country. 
 
 The enjoyment of mere landscape was thus ex- 
 cluded, and anticipated, by a deeper sympathy — 
 that humanizing instinct which saw conscious life, 
 and life of a human type, through all the kingdom 
 
xii.] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 3 i 9 
 
 of nature. And so it came that to the Greek the 
 most adequate representation of a landscape was a 
 representation of the gods who were identified with 
 its rivers and mountains. The sculptor accordingly 
 took the place, and performed the work, of the land- 
 scape painter. 
 
 In earlier days, the mere human figure was 
 thought sufficient likeness for a god, and no special 
 care was taken to suit his outward form to the pecu- 
 liar nature of his attributes, or his special kingdom. 
 Thus, in the famous pediments of the Parthenon, 
 so many personified features of Attica were intro- 
 duced, that a great art critic — Brunn — has even 
 declared these groups to have been simply plastic 
 landscapes, intended to symbolize all the natural 
 beauties of Attica. The llissus, the Cephissus, 
 Mount Parnes, Mount Pentelicus, the fountain Cal- 
 lirrhoe — all these were figured as divine men and 
 women in the coloured marble. 
 
 But the fragments which remain do not show any 
 desire to express by peculiar features each peculiar 
 character. The glory of solving this subtle problem 
 was left for those successors of Phidias who, as 
 they could not equal him in grave majesty, sought 
 to exceed him in expression. In the scanty frag- 
 ments and weak copies of their work, we can still 
 feel distinctly the peculiar genius of two of them 
 in portraying, or rather suggesting, landscape by 
 sculpture. To Scopas was due the fixing of the 
 general type for the great company of gods and 
 
32o RAMBLES IN GREECE, [ch. 
 
 nymphs which inhabited seas and rivers — matted 
 locks of dripping hair, and a longing melancholy of 
 expression, in which the restless moaning of the 
 troubled sea finds its plastic utterance. To Praxi- 
 teles was due the analogous type for the forest 
 gods — the fauns and satyrs, which, with their 
 gnarled and knotty joints, and roughness of skin, 
 image even more clearly the sylvan forms which 
 the superstitious traveller saw with terror in the 
 fantastic stems of aged trees. Nay, even in his 
 ideal Faun, a creature of perfect beauty — the listen- 
 ing attitude, the Pandean pipe, the indefinable sug- 
 gestion of wantonness, and of mystery — speak a 
 deeper feeling for the beauty of forest life than 
 could be conveyed by any ordinary landscape 
 painting. 
 
 So true is it, that the sculptors were the land- 
 scape artists of the Greeks. Accordingly, in later 
 days, when men had advanced to the notion of 
 painting mountains and rivers, as they appeared in 
 nature, the artist hardly ever omits to paint a 
 figure of the god sitting on his mountain, or by his 
 river, thus showing that the actual coloured sketch 
 of the place did not satisfy the spectator without 
 the figure of the being who gave it life, and instinct, 
 and poetry — nay, who alone gave it a distinctive 
 name. 
 
 The history of Greek painting is, therefore, in 
 every direction controlled and limited by that of 
 sculpture, which rivalled and outdid it in the ideal- 
 
xil] MUSIC AND PAINTING. 321 
 
 izing of figures, and which actually invaded its 
 peculiar province in the representation of land- 
 scape. 
 
 A comparative review of the arts in Greece 
 shows that the most independent and self-con- 
 tained — Architecture and Poetry — started with the 
 dawn of history, and reached their climax with the 
 political climax of the nation. After the year 400 
 B. C. there was little more than imitation or repeti- 
 tion attempted in either, till actual debasement 
 set in. Sculpture started later, reached its acme at 
 the same time, but sustained itself with a noble 
 and continuous development, till far into the decay 
 of the nation, as the Laocoon, the Apollo Belvedere, 
 and the Dying Gladiator, testify. Music and paint- 
 ing may have started with sculpture, but were far 
 longer in reaching perfection, so that the highest 
 outcome of both is to be sought in the days when 
 the other arts had passed their prime. They are, 
 in fact, the arts of private life, as contrasted with 
 the political arts of antiquity, and did not take the 
 lead till the society of Menander had said farewell 
 to public affairs, and turned to individual culture as 
 the chief end of life. 
 
 THE END. 
 
DUBLIN : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, BY PONSONBY AND MURPHY. 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY TOP 
 ENGLISH READERS. (Containing a full Com- 
 mentary on Kant's Kritik of the Pure Reason; with 
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 PROLEGOMENA TO ANCIENT HISTORY. 
 
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 III. 
 
 SOCIAL LIFE IN GREECE, FROM HOMER 
 TO MENANDER. Second Edition, revised and 
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 IV. 
 
 OLD GREEK LIFE.— (In Mr. J. R. Green's 
 
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