Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII
V >> Various >> Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIIIIt is, however, of far less import to know on what spot of the Areopagus
Paul stood, than to understand clearly what he said, and how he sought
to conciliate as well as to refute the philosophers who, no doubt,
looked down upon him as an intellectual inferior. He starts naturally
enough from the extraordinary crowd of votive statues and offerings, for
which Athens was remarkable above all other cities of Greece. He says,
with a slight touch of irony, that he finds them very religious indeed,
so religious that he even found an altar to a God professedly unknown,
or perhaps unknowable....
Thus ended, to all appearance ignominiously, the first heralding of the
faith which was to supplant all the temples and altars and statues with
which Athens had earned renown as a beautiful city, which was to
overthrow the schools of the sneering philosophers, and even to remodel
all the society and the policy of the world. And yet, in spite of this
great and decisive triumph of Christianity, there was something
curiously prophetic in the contemptuous rejection of its apostle at
Athens. Was it not the first expression of the feeling which still
possesses the visitor who wanders through its ruins, and which still
dominates the educated world--the feeling that while other cities owe
to the triumph of Christianity all their beauty and their interest,
Athens has to this day resisted this influence; and that while the
Christian monuments of Athens would elsewhere excite no small attention,
here they are passed by as of no import compared with its heathen
splendor?
There are very old and very beautiful little churches in Athens,
"delicious little Byzantine churches," as Renan calls them. They are
very peculiar, and unlike what one generally sees in Europe. They strike
the observer with their quaintness and smallness, and he fancies he here
sees the tiny model of that unique and splendid building, the cathedral
of St. Mark at Venice. But yet it is surprizing how little we notice
them at Athens. I was even told--I sincerely hope it was false--that
public opinion at Athens was gravitating toward the total removal of
one, and that the most perfect, of these churches, which stands in the
middle of a main street, and so breaks the regularity of the modern
boulevard!
FROM ATHENS TO DELPHI ON HORSEBACK[51]
BY BAYARD TAYLOR
We left Athens on the 13th of April, for a journey to Parnassus and the
northern frontier of Greece. It was a teeming, dazzling day, with light
scarfs of cloud-crape in the sky, and a delicious breeze from the west
blowing through the pass of Daphne. The Gulf of Salamis was pure
ultramarine, covered with a velvety bloom, while the island and Mount
Kerata swam in transparent pink and violet tints. Crossing the sacred
plain of Eleusis, our road entered the mountains--lower offshoots of
Cithaeron, which divide the plain from that of Boeotia....
We climbed the main ridge of the mountains; and, in less than an hour,
reached the highest point--whence the great Boeotian plain suddenly
opened upon our view. In the distance gleamed Lake Capais, and the hills
beyond; in the west, the snowy top of Parnassus, lifted clear and bright
above the morning vapors; and, at last, as we turned a shoulder of the
mountain in descending, the streaky top of Helicon appeared on the left,
completing the classic features of the landscape....
As we entered the plain, taking a rough path toward Plataea, the fields
were dotted, far and near, with the white Easter shirts of the people
working among the vines. Another hour, and our horses' hoofs were upon
the sacred soil of Plataea. The walls of the city are still to be traced
for nearly their entire extent. They are precisely similar in
construction to those of OEnoe--like which, also, they were
strengthened by square towers. There are the substructions of various
edifices--some of which may have been temples--and on the side next the
modern village lie four large sarcophagi, now used as vats for treading
out the grapes in vintage-time. A more harmless blood than once curdled
on the stones of Plataea now stains the empty sepulchers of the heroes.
We rode over the plain, fixt the features of the scene in our memories,
and then kept on toward the field of Leuktra, where the brutal power of
Sparta received its first check. The two fields are so near, that a part
of the fighting may have been done upon the same ground....
I then turned my horse's head toward Thebes, which we reached in two
hours. It was a pleasant scene, tho so different from that of two
thousand years ago. The town is built partly on the hill of the
Cadmeion, and partly on the plain below. An aqueduct, on mossy arches,
supplies it with water, and keeps its gardens green. The plain to the
north is itself one broad garden to the foot of the hill of the Sphinx,
beyond which is the blue gleam of a lake, then a chain of barren hills,
and over all the snowy cone of Mount Delphi, in Euboea. The only
remains of the ancient city are stones; for the massive square tower,
now used as a prison, can not be ascribed to an earlier date than the
reign of the Latin princes....
The next morning we rode down from the Cadmeion, and took the highway to
Livadia, leading straight across the Boeotian plain. It is one of the
finest alluvial bottoms in the world, a deep, dark, vegetable
mold--which would produce almost without limit, were it properly
cultivated. Before us, blue and dark under a weight of clouds, lay
Parnassus; and far across the immense plain the blue peaks of Mount
Oeta. In three hours we reached the foot of Helicon, and looked up at
the streaks of snow which melt into the Fountain of the Muses....
As we left Arachova, proceeding toward Delphi, the deep gorge opened,
disclosing a blue glimpse of the Gulf of Corinth and the Achaian
mountains. Tremendous cliffs of blue-gray limestone towered upon our
right, high over the slope of Delphi, which ere long appeared before us.
Our approach to the sacred spot was marked by tombs cut in the rock. A
sharp angle of the mountain was passed; and then, all at once, the
enormous walls, buttressing the upper region of Parnassus, stood
sublimely against the sky, cleft right through the middle by a terrible
split, dividing the twin peaks which gave a name to the place. At the
bottom of this chasm issue forth the waters of Castaly, and fill a stone
trough by the road-side. On a long, sloping mountain-terrace, facing the
east, stood once the town and temples of Delphi, and now the modern
village of Kastri.
As you may imagine, our first walk was to the shrine of the Delphic
oracle, at the bottom of the cleft between the two peaks. The hewn face
of the rock, with a niche, supposed to be that where the Pythia sat upon
her tripod, and a secret passage under the floor of the sanctuary, are
all that remain. The Castalian fountain still gushes out at the bottom,
into a large square enclosure, called the Pythia's Bath, and now choked
up with mud, weeds, and stones. Among those weeds, I discerned one of
familiar aspect, plucked and tasted it. Watercress, of remarkable size
and flavor! We thought no more of Apollo and his shrine, but delving
wrist-deep into Castalian mud, gathered huge handfuls of the profane
herb, which we washed in the sacred front, and sent to Francois for a
salad....
As the sun sank, I sat on the marble blocks and sketched the immortal
landscape. High above me, on the left, soared the enormous twin peaks of
pale-blue rock, lying half in the shadow of the mountain slope upheaved
beneath, half bathed in the deep yellow luster of sunset. Before me
rolled wave after wave of the Parnassian chain, divided by deep lateral
valleys, while Helicon, in the distance, gloomed like a thunder-storm
under the weight of gathered clouds. Across this wild, vast view, the
breaking clouds threw broad belts of cold blue shadow, alternating with
zones of angry orange light, in which the mountains seemed to be heated
to a transparent glow. The furious wind hissed and howled over the piles
of ruin, and a few returning shepherds were the only persons to be seen.
And this spot, for a thousand years, was the shrine where spake the
awful oracle of Greece.
CORINTH[52]
BY J. P. MAHAFFY
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 harbors 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.
But as soon as the greater powers of Greece decayed 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 restored and rebuilt the ruined
city, than it sprang at once again into importance, and among the
societies addrest in the Epistles of St. Paul, none seems 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 old 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.
The traveler 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, looking altogether out of place, and
almost as if they had come there by mistake. These pillars, tho
insufficient to admit of our reconstructing the temple, are in
themselves profoundly interesting. Their 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 monoliths the architrave, in which
other Greek temples show the largest blocks, is not in one piece, but
two, and made of beams laid together longitudinally. The length of the
shafts (up to the neck of the capital) measures about four times their
diameter, on the photograph which I possess; I do not suppose that any
other Doric pillar known to us is so stout and short.
Straight over the site of the town is the great rock known as the
Acro-Corinthus. A winding path leads up on the southwest 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 extraordinary importance of the place.
Next to the view from the heights of Parnassus, I suppose the view from
this citadel is held the finest in Greece. 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 promontory of Sunium, or, above all, from
the harbor of Nauplia, exceeds in beauty and interest any bird's-eye
prospect. Any one who looks at the map of Greece will see how the
Acro-Corinthus commands 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
can not 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
Boeotia, the Acropolis of Athens, Salamis and AEgina, Helicon and
Parnassus, and endless AEtolian peaks were visible in one direction;
while, as we turned round, all the waving reaches of Arcadia and
Argolis, down to the approaches toward Mantinea and Karytena, lay
stretched out before us. The plain of Argos, and the sea at that side,
are hidden by the mountains. But without going into detail, 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.
OLYMPIA[53]
BY PHILIP S. MARDEN
Olympia, like Delphi, is a place of memories chiefly. The visible
remains are numerous, but so flat that some little technical knowledge
is needed to restore them in mind. There is no village at the modern
Olympia at all--nothing but five or six little inns and a railway
station--so that Delphi really has the advantage of Olympia in this
regard. As a site connected with ancient Greek history and Greek
religion, the two places are as similar in nature as they are in general
ruin. The field in which the ancient structures stand lies just across
the tiny tributary river Cladeus, spanned by a footbridge.
Even from the opposite bank, the ruins present a most interesting
picture, with its attractiveness greatly enhanced by the neighboring
pines, which scatter themselves through the precinct itself and cover
densely the little conical hill of Kronos close by, while the grasses of
the plain grow luxuriantly among the fallen stones of the former temples
and apartments of the athletes. The ruins are so numerous and so
prostrate that the non-technical visitor is seriously embarrassed to
describe them, as is the case with every site of the kind.
All the ruins, practically, have been identified and explained, and
naturally they all have to do with the housing or with the contests of
the visiting athletes of ancient times, or with the worship of tutelary
divinities. Almost the first extensive ruin that we found on passing the
encircling precinct wall was the Prytaneum--a sort of ancient training
table at which victorious contestants were maintained gratis--while
beyond lay other equally extensive remnants of exercising places, such
as the Palaestra for the wrestlers. But all these were dominated,
evidently, by the two great temples, an ancient one of comparatively
small size sacred to Hera, and a mammoth edifice dedicated to Zeus,
which still gives evidence of its enormous extent, while the fallen
column-drums reveal some idea of the other proportions. It was in its
day the chief glory of the enclosure, and the statue of the god was even
reckoned among the seven wonders of the world. Unfortunately this
statue, like that of Athena at Athens, has been irretrievably lost. But
there is enough of the great shrine standing in the midst of the ruins
to inspire one with an idea of its greatness; and, in the museum above,
the heroic figures from its two pediments have been restored and set up
in such wise as to reproduce the external adornment of the temple with
remarkable success.
Gathered around this central building, the remainder of the ancient
structures having to do with the peculiar uses of the spot present a
bewildering array of broken stones and marbles. An obtrusive remnant of
a Byzantine church is the one discordant feature. Aside from this the
precinct recalls only the distant time when the regular games called all
Greece to Olympia, while the "peace of God" prevailed throughout the
kingdom. Just at the foot of Kronos a long terrace and flight of steps
mark the position of a row of old treasuries, as at Delphi, while along
the eastern side of the precinct are to be seen the remains of a portico
once famous for its echoes, where sat the judges who distributed the
prizes. There is also a most graceful arch remaining to mark the
entrance to the ancient stadium, of which nothing else now remains.
Of the later structures on the site, the "house of Nero" is the most
interesting and extensive. The Olympic games were still celebrated, even
after the Roman domination, and Nero himself entered the lists in his
own reign. He caused a palace to be erected for him on that
occasion--and of course he won a victory, for any other outcome would
have been most impolite, not to say dangerous. Nero was more fortunately
lodged than were the other ancient contestants, it appears, for there
were no hostelries in old Olympia in which the visiting multitudes could
be housed, and the athletes and spectators who came from all over the
land were accustomed to bring their own tents and pitch them roundabout,
many of them on the farther side of the Alpheios.
THE TEMPLE OF ZEUS AT OLYMPIA AS IT WAS[54]
BY PAUSANIAS
Many various wonders may one see, or hear of, in Greece; but the
Eleusinian mysteries and Olympian games seem to exhibit more than
anything else the Divine purpose. And the sacred grove of Zeus they have
from old time called Altis, slightly changing the Greek word for grove;
it is, indeed, called Altis also by Pindar, in the ode he composed for a
victor at Olympia. And the temple and statue of Zeus were built out of
the spoils of Pisa, which the people of Elis razed to the ground, after
quelling the revolt of Pisa, and some of the neighboring towns that
revolted with Pisa. And that the statue of Zeus was the work of Phidias
is shown by the inscription written at the base of it: "Phidias the
Athenian, the son of Charmides, made me."
The temple is a Doric building, and outside it is a colonnade. And the
temple is built of stone of the district. Its height up to the gable is
sixty-eight feet, and its length 2,300 feet. And its architect was
Libon, a native of Ellis.
And the tiles on the roof are not of baked earth; but Pentelican marble,
to imitate tiles. They say such roofs are the invention of a man of
Naxos called Byzes, who made statues at Naxos with the inscription:
"Euergus of Naxos made me, the son of Byzes, and descended from Leto,
the first who made tiles of stone."
This Byzes was a contemporary of Alyattes the Lydian, and Astyages (the
son of Cyaxares), the king of Persia. And there is a golden vase at each
end of the roof, and a golden Victory in the middle of the gable. And
underneath the Victory is a golden shield hung up as a votive offering,
with the Gorgon Medusa worked on it. The inscription on the shield
states who hung it up, and the reason why they did so. For this is what
it says: "This temple's golden shield is a votive offering from the
Lacedaemonians at Tanagra and their allies, a gift from the Argives, the
Athenians, and the Ionians, a tithe offering for success in war."
The battle I mentioned in my account of Attica, when I described the
tombs at Athens. And in the same temple at Olympia, above the zone that
runs round the pillars on the outside, are twenty-one golden shields,
the offering of Mummius the Roman general, after he had beaten the
Achaeans and taken Corinth, and expelled the Dorians from Corinth. And on
the gables in bas-relief is the chariot race between Pelops and
OEnomaus; and both chariots in motion. And in the middle of the gable
is a statue of Zeus; and on the right hand of Zeus is OEnomaus with a
helmet on his head; and beside him his wife Sterope, one of the
daughters of Atlas. And Myrtilus, who was the charioteer of OEnomaus,
is seated behind the four horses. And next to him are two men whose
names are not recorded, but they are doubtless OEnomaus's grooms,
whose duty was to take care of the horses....
The carvings on the gables in front are by Paeonius of Mende in Thracia;
those behind by Alcamenes, a contemporary of Phidias and second only to
him as statuary. And on the gables is a representation of the fight
between the Lapithae and the Centaurs at the marriage of Pirithous.
Pirithous is in the center, and on one side of him is Eurytion trying to
carry off Pirithous's wife, and Caeneus coming to the rescue, and on the
other side Theseus laying about among the Centaurs with his battle-ax;
and one Centaur is carrying off a maiden, another a blooming boy.
Alcamenes has engraved this story, I imagine, because he learned from
the lines of Homer that Pirithous was the son of Zeus, and knew that
Theseus was fourth in descent from Pelops. There are also in bas-relief
at Olympia most of the Labors of Hercules. Above the doors of the temple
is the hunting of the Erymanthian boar, and Hercules taking the mares
of Diomede the Thracian, and robbing Geryon of his oxen in the island of
Erytheia, and supporting the load of Atlas, and clearing the land of
Elis of its dung....
The image of the god is in gold and ivory, seated on a throne. And a
crown is on his head imitating the foliage of the olive tree. In his
right hand he holds a Victory in ivory and gold, with a tiara and crown
on his head; and in his left hand a scepter adorned with all manner of
precious stones, and the bird seated on the scepter is an eagle. The
robes and sandals of the god are also of gold; and on his robes are
imitations of flowers, especially of lilies. And the throne is richly
adorned with gold and precious stones, and with ebony and ivory. And
there are imitations of animals painted on it, and models worked on it.
There are four Victories like dancers, one at each foot of the throne,
and two also at the instep of each foot; and at each of the front feet
are Theban boys carried off by Sphinxes, and below the Sphinxes, Apollo
and Artemis shooting down the children of Niobe. And between the feet of
the throne are four divisions formed by straight lines drawn from each
of the four feet.
In the division nearest the entrance there are seven models--the eighth
has vanished no one knows where or how. And they are imitations of
ancient contests, for in the days of Phidias the contests for boys were
not yet established. And the figure with its head muffled up in a scarf
is, they say, Pantarcas, who was a native of Elis and the darling of
Phidias. This Pantarces won the wrestling-prize for boys in the 86th
Olympiad. And in the remaining divisions is the band of Hercules
fighting against the Amazons. The number on each side is twenty-nine,
and Theseus is on the side of Hercules. And the throne is supported not
only by the four feet, but also by four pillars between the feet. But
one can not get under the throne, as one can at Amyclae, and pass inside;
for at Olympia there are panels like walls that keep one off.
At the top of the throne, Phidias has represented above the head of Zeus
the three Graces and three Seasons. For these too, as we learn from the
poets, were daughters of Zeus. Homer in the Iliad has represented the
Seasons as having the care of Heaven, as a kind of guards of a royal
palace. And the base under the feet of Zeus (what is called in Attic
"thranion") has golden lions engraved on it, and the battle between
Theseus and the Amazons--the first famous exploit of the Athenians
beyond their own borders. And on the platform that supports the throne
there are various ornaments round Zeus, and gilt carving--the Sun seated
in his chariot, and Zeus and Hera; and near is Grace. Hermes is close to
her, and Vesta close to Hermes. And next to Vesta is Eros receiving
Aphrodite, who is just rising from the sea and being crowned by
Persuasion. And Apollo and Artemis, Athene and Hercules, are standing
by, and at the end of the platform Amphitrite and Poseidon, and Selene
apparently urging on her horse. And some say it is a mule and not a
horse that the goddess is riding upon; and there is a silly tale about
this mule.
I know that the size of the Olympian Zeus both in height and breadth has
been stated; but I can not bestow praise on the measurers, for their
recorded measurement comes far short of what any one would infer from
looking at the statue. They make the god also to have testified to the
art of Phidias. For they say that when the statue was finished, Phidias
prayed him to signify if the work was to his mind; and immediately Zeus,
struck with lightning that part of the pavement where in our day is a
brazen urn with a lid.
And all the pavement in front of the statue is not of white but of black
stone. And a border of Parian marble runs round this black stone, as a
preservative against spilled oil. For oil is good for the statue at
Olympia, as it prevents the ivory being harmed by the dampness of the
grove. But in the Acropolis at Athens, in regard to the statue of Athene
called the Maiden, it is not oil but water that is advantageously
employed to the ivory; for as the citadel is dry by reason of its great
height, the statue being made of ivory needs to be sprinkled with water
freely. And when I was at Epidaurus, and inquired why they use neither
water nor oil to the statue of AEsculapius, the sacristans of the temple
informed me that the statue of the god and its throne are over a well.
THERMOPYLAE[55]
BY RUFUS B. RICHARDSON