IT is a happy thing that the Greek race came into being, because they
showed the world once at least what is meant by a man. The ideal Greek
virtue σωφροσὑνη means, that all parts and faculties
of the man are in proportion, each trained to perfection and all under
control of the will: body, mind, and spirit, each has its due place.
Elsewhere we see one of these in excess. Thus the Indian philosopher
soars in the highest regions of speculation, and sees great truths, but
they intoxicate him: he does not bring them to the test of daily life,
nor does he check them by reason. The Hebrew prophet has his vision of
one God, and in rapt devotion prostrates himself below the dignity of
manhood. The Roman deals with practical politics and material
civilisation; he has a genius for organizing, and for combining the rule
of the best with the freedom and direct influence of all: he, however,
despises the spirit and the imagination. In our own day, what is called
science arrogates almost divine honours to the faculty for measuring and
observing, and neglects both the religious instinct and the
philosopher’s theoric; nor is this ideal less deadly than the Roman’s to
imagination and the sense of beauty. In modern times also, each person
strives to excel in some one specialty, mental or bodily; and if there
is any feeling at all for proportion it is the proportion of a group,
while the members of the group are περιττοἱ,
excessive in one way and defective in the others. But the Greek aimed at
perfect proportion for the man; and his ideal was, that the man’s will
should use all the faculties to some worthy end. His body is to be
trained by music and gymnastic: the aim of the first being grace and
beauty; of the second, strength; of the whole, health and joy in all
bodily uses. His mind is to be trained by poetry, oratory, and
philosophy; his spirit by the worship of the gods, in which all that was
best in his life is concentrated into a noble ritual. Such would be the
life of the ordinary Greek; the greater intellects would look beyond the
ritual to the essence; and we have ample evidence to show that their
ideals were as high as any that have been known to other peoples.
Aeschylus dealt with the same problems that baffled the Hebrew prophets,
divine justice and mercy, and the immutable moral law; Plato’s
speculation took him into regions where logic and formal philosophy had
to be cast aside; Pheidias by his art added a new dignity to godhead.[1]
Nowhere is the Greek σωφροσὑνη, their sense of
restraint and proportion, shown better than in their architecture: and
this both in the method of growth and in the final results. The Doric
style has grown out of a wooden building. When and how the first steps
were taken, we do not know, nor whether the Doric be directly descended
from the Mycenæan style, as Perrot and Chipiez will have it. There is
this great difference: that the Mycenæan and Cretan columns are like a
Doric column reversed, the thick end upmost, and they show none of the
Greek refinements to which we shall come later. A simpler origin is
possible: for to-day the traveller may see, in the verandah of some
wayside cottage (Homer’s α’ἱθουσα
ἑρἱδουπος) a primitive Doric column, some bare tree-trunk with a chunk
of itself for capital, supporting a primitive architrave of the same
sort. In the Doric order, other traces of woodwork are left in the
stone, such as the triglyphs, or beam-ends, with round pegs beneath, or
the gouged flutings of the column itself. And we have direct evidence in
the history of the Olympian Heræum; where we are told that the columns
were once of wood, and that stone columns were put in place of these as
they decayed, one of the ancient oak columns being preserved down to the
time of Pausanias. The early architects would seem to have been nervous
as to how much weight stone would bear, so that their columns are very
thick and set close together; in fact, less than one diameter apart. By
degrees they learnt from experience, but the changes were slow and
careful. The plan of the temple always remained the same, and there is
little variation in the number of pillars at each end, or in any of the
general features. As in statuary, here also they kept to their tradition
as much as they could, and got their effects with the least possible
change. But what effects! Compare the heavy masses of Corinth or Pæstum
with the airy grace of the Parthenon, and measure the infinite delicacy
of the changes which produce this effect. The builders found out that
straight lines do not look straight, and that if the lines of a building
do not look straight, the building looks as if it is going to topple
over and fall. A column which decreases upwards in straight lines looks
to the eye concave; and this illusion they tried to correct by making
the columns bulge from the top about one third down, and then decreased
this curve towards the bottom. The first attempts gave too much convex
curving, but this again was corrected until the architect found
perfection: yet the differences measured in inches are small. Again,
each column was inclined slightly inwards, because a column that stands
quite straight looks as though it were inclined out-wards; and the
stylobate, upon which the columns stand, is curved from each end upwards
to the centre. Other adjustments were necessary in the abacus and
capital, to make all harmonious; and we may say that there was hardly a
straight line in the building. Sculpture and ornament were adjusted to
the eye in the same way; and it would seem that the effect of the whole
building also was judged not alone, but in connection with the lines of
the landscape—that background of hills, always noble but never
over-powering, which is found all over the Greek world. For instance, in
the Parthenon certain minute corrections were made because of the way in
which the sun’s rays fell on it. These adjustments have been measured
and tabulated—or at least a great many of them, for there are doubtless
many we do not notice, and the building is a ruin—but they show a
delicacy of sense which is nothing short of miraculous. These builders,
however, were not only artists with miraculous keenness of sense, but
members of a true trade-guild, with its accumulated wisdom handed down
from generation to generation, and themselves were men who worked with
their own hands. Neither could they have built the Parthenon with books
of logarithms in an office; nor can we ever have noble buildings again
so long as the architect and the builder are not one. Every common
workman must have had his share of this traditional skill. Indeed,
inscriptions lately discovered show that the building of the Parthenon
went on after Pheidias was banished; so that the sculptures which are
the wonder of the world must have been done in part at least without
their designer. But even without such evidence, the perfection of every
detail of building, the fitting of the joints, the strength and finish
of each part, is enough to show what the Athenian workman was like.
But we must remember also that the stones that remain are only ruins.
Even in these we may trace many of the perfections of the ancient
artist; but if we could see them as they were, we should see, not stones
bleached and weathered, but buildings resplendent with colour and gold.
Columns, capitals, architraves, all were a blaze of colour, decorated
with graceful patterns and painted to match the blue sea and the golden
sunlight. And now for us Sunium is a white ghost like the light of the
moon, the Parthenon a rose in decay.
We may not now feel the want of what is lost. The hills once covered
with forest trees are bare, the countryside is untilled and empty, and
these ruins are invested with a sentimental charm in the thought of what
has been lost. The traveller is in the mood of Sulpicius as he consoles
Cicero for his daughter’s death. “Returning from Asia, as my voyage took
me from Aegina towards Megara, I began to survey the regions round
about: behind me was Aegina, before me Megara, to the right Peiraeus, to
the left Corinth, all cities at one time prosperous and flourishing, but
now they lay prone and ruined before my eyes. And I began thus to ponder
within myself: ‘Ah! shall we frail creatures resent the death of one of
ourselves, seeing that our life must needs be full short, when in one
place so many dead cities lie before us?’” Indeed the Greek cities are
most aptly compared to humanity. There never was anything grandiose
about them, nothing monstrous like the empire of China, no desire to
thrust Greek manners or religions upon the rest of the world, no attempt
to monopolize trade even by honest methods. They wished to live and let
live, loved and hated fiercely, but like men; and if they must die they
did not whine about it—indeed, for their country’s sake they held it
glorious to die. And now they are gone, and their place knows them no
more, no one can feel that touch of triumph that Shelley felt over his
Ozymandias. They have left behind them everywhere a poignant regret,
such as one feels for a very dear friend gone for ever. Most strong is
this feeling when our steps wander over some desolate spot, once a
populous city, such as Pæstum or Myndos. I mention Myndos because there
the contrast is most vividly brought out by the second idyll of
Theocritus. There is the old harbour, there is the ring of the city
walls a mile across, and the whole space between is brushwood and
stones. Yet from this city sailed to Cos opposite the hot-blooded youth
whom Simaitha loved, whose story is told in the poet’s words of passion.
And these cities, once so full of life and happiness, are a desert now.
Even the new Greece, which rose from the ashes of the old not a hundred
years ago, which has sprung into new life and honour within the last few
months, cannot console us for the Greece that is gone. The quick
intelligence is still here, the courage, the idealism; but Greece can
hardly escape the corruption of the modern world, with its grasping
after wealth; and the sincerity of the ancient spirit exists chiefly
amongst peasants and fishermen. A false and pedantic way of thought is
spreading from the schools and the newspapers, which must spoil the
people unless the efforts of a few wise and longsighted men shall
prevail.
The pictures in this volume follow roughly the history of the Doric
style. In Olympia lies the floor of the Heræum, most ancient of all
existing Greek temples, built before 1000 B.C. Unhappily this view tells
us nothing of what it looked like: earthquake and flood, and the hand of
man, have done all they could to destroy. The temples in Sicily and
Magna Græcia, with Corinth, belong to the earliest stage known to us.
Corinth was built about 650; the temples of Athena at Syracuse, now the
cathedral, and of Zeus at Selinus (which are not represented here) are
as old or older. Segesta comes next, in the early sixth century; and in
the same century temples at Girgenti (Agrigentum), Aegina, and Pæstum.
The temple of Zeus at Olympia was built between 469 and 457, the
Parthenon 454-438, Sunium and Eleusis about the same time, and two
buildings at Pæstum. The theatres belong to a later date, and the
Corinthian temple of Zeus Olympian at Athens, begun by Peisistratus, was
not finished until the time of Hadrian.
Olympia is the epitome of the Greek race, as the forum is of the Roman
dominion: the Roman ideal being law, order, and government; the Greek,
all the powers of man at their best, used and enjoyed in the holy
precinct of their great God. The difference is shown at once, in that
the Olympian assembly was enforced by no lawgiver, but the voluntary
gathering of men of one blood, who for a set time laid aside all their
quarrels, and remembered that they were marked off by a great gulf from
all other men. They came for no material gain: their prize was not
dominion and power, nor wealth and trade, but the crown of wild olive
and glory incorruptible. Elis, a state small and insignificant
politically, had the honour of presiding over these games; no man might
compete save those of pure Hellenic blood, and no woman might approach
them. And here, every four years, from a time before the beginning of
history, the men of Greece met, kings and potentates competing with
private men, high and low, rich and poor, all acknowledging the one tie
greater than all others. The celebrations lasted all through the
glorious days of Greece, and until the glory of Greece had long
departed, and they were abolished for ever in 394 A.D. by Theodosius.
Art and literature formed no part of the contests, which were nearly all
athletic; but painters and other artists exhibited their works there,
and it was common for orators and philosophers to recite: Herodotus is
said to have read his history at the festival.
The picture is taken from the small hill of Kronos: we look over the
site of Hera’s temple to the great temple of Zeus. To the left, out of
sight, is the entrance to the racecourse. Just beneath us, under the
hill, is a row of small shrines called Treasuries, which mighty states
and monarchs had built to contain their own chief offerings. In the
distance is the river Alpheius. We cannot imagine how this plain looked
when it was the encampment of thousands, covered with booths, and full
of goodly men and horses; the crowds, the processions, the feastings,
litany and sacrifice; but every man must feel the same thrill as when he
stands in Westminster Hall, or St. Sophia at Constantinople: for here
have passed all the great men of the Greek race.
If the games show the physical side of the Greeks, the theatre above all
shows the intellectual. While they invented, and perfected, nearly all
kinds of literary art, it is the theatre that touched their life most
closely, and most fully gave scope for their genius. This also grew out
of religion, and was always a part of their religion. But the Greek gods
were no puritans. They exacted awe and worship, and they punished the
impious; but they were genial good fellows, who might be thought,
without blasphemy, to share in the happiness of their people—indeed,
took it in good part when they were the subject of rollicking jests. In
the theatre, Aeschylus found room for his profound religious feeling,
Euripides for his scepticism, Sophocles for a mirror of the mind of man,
Aristophanes for his political and social satire and his merry fun.
Every town and even hamlet must have its theatre. A suitable place could
be found almost anywhere in the hill country—that is, in almost all
parts of Greece proper—before any buildings needed to be put up. Then
the hillsides were cut into seats, as at Argos and Segesta, or seats
ranged around in a semicircle, and carried on when it was necessary by
means of retaining walls. Below them was a round space for dancing, and
beyond this the stage. There is a controversy whether the Greeks ever
used a raised stage before the Roman conquest; probably they did, but at
any rate all existing theatres had them. Vitruvius (who wrote about 20
A.D.) says that the Greek stage was higher and narrower than the Roman;
and the stage at Taormina has been built, or rebuilt, in the Roman way.
It is proper to say this, but the onlooker will think little now of the
stage, or indeed of the actors and the play, in view of one of those
scenes which can never be forgotten. The sight of Etna over the stage,
with his rolling steam, absorbs the whole force of imagination. Etna is
tremendous. Beneath Etna Hephaistos had one of his forges, as at Lipara,
Imbros, and Lemnos; and that smoke you see shows that his workmen are
forging the thunder-bolts of Zeus. The very name of Volcano is
Hephaistos himself. Or is it the giant Typhoeus, defeated by Zeus in the
battle of gods and giants, and buried beneath the mountain, who by his
struggles causes the earth thus to heave, and these fiery streams to
pour forth? What wonder that the pious made offerings of incense at the
top! Was it really true that Empedocles, that great philospher and
healer, whose intellectual pride seems almost to claim divine honours,
cast himself into the crater, that he might seem to have been swept away
by the gods? Probably it was not true: but the story shows how the
mountain worked on men’s imaginations.
If the theatre of Segesta has no Etna behind it, the surroundings to the
eye are in other ways grand. It is seated upon the acropolis hill,
whence a view can be taken at once of that corner of Sicily which was
held by the mysterious Elymians, with their citadel and sanctuary of
Eryx. Segesta was founded by a people who wanted protection, and feared
the sea. But, like the rest of Sicily, it came under Greek influence;
and its buildings, the two temples and the theatre, are Greek. This
small town has played a part in history: it was the bone of contention
which led Athens to interfere with Syracuse, and so on to her ruin. The
columns of the temple are unfinished, the fluting has never been done.
There is something that moves the sympathy in these unfinished places.
No doubt the city was overwhelmed in some catastrophe, which perhaps
left it quite desolate in the old cruel way. So the blocks of the
Pinacotheca on the Athenian acropolis still keep the knobs which were
used in mounting them; they were never cut off, for Athens fell. So,
most striking of all, there lies in the quarry near Baalbek an enormous
block of stone, seventy-seven feet long by fifteen and fourteen, squared
and ready, one end tilted for moving; but it was never moved: there it
has lain perhaps for three thousand years, and there it will lie till
the world ends.
Girgenti, Agrigentum, Akragas, called by Pindar καλλἱστα βροτεἁν πολἱων, fairest of mortal cities;
lofty Akragas, in Virgil’s words, spreading her walls so wide, mother of
high-spirited horses—
“Arduus inde Acragas ostentat maxima longe
Moenia, magnanimum quondam generator equorum”—
although late founded in Greek history (B.C. 582), is set on a hilltop
like some primaeval acropolis. Two rocky hills, with a space of level
land between, were enclosed within a wall six miles round; below this
the land slopes gently to the sea; the whole lies between two rivers.
The existing remains, and the modern town, lie on one of the two hills.
Akragas calls up only one name from the memory. Phalaris the Tyrant and
his brazen bull. But Empedocles was born here. The great temple of Zeus
Polieus, which Phalaris was said to have built, has perished, and those
that remain cannot be certainly identified. One is called after Concord,
but the Latin name cannot have properly belonged to it. The pictures
here show some of the wonderful effects, which vary from hour to hour
in this land of colour and sunlight. But the glory of Girgenti is the
grouping of its remains: wall, temples, and rocks. If we could see the
city as it was, it may well have been καλλἱστα βροτεἁν πολἱων. But in 406, the Carthaginians descended upon
it, and starved out the people. All who could go migrated to Gela; the
rest were massacred, and the city sacked. From this blow it never
recovered, although it was afterwards inhabited.
Pæstum, the Greek Poseidonia, is one of those cities that have no
history; at least, this city played no great part in ancient history and
gave the world no great men. But Pæstum was not happy. It had its day,
from the foundation in the seventh century for some two hundred years;
but it fell early into the hands of the barbaric Lucanians. After this
it existed, but it never became great. We know Pæstum for its roses,
biferi rosaria Pæsti, which flower twice a year in May and November;
and until lately, for its loneliness and desolation. Not a living soul
was there in the circuit of the city walls, nothing but a bare plain
with hundreds of flowering grasses, and the great temples in their
grandeur. All its charm is gone now: a factory stains the sky with its
smoke, and the modern world, whose god is its belly, has put its foul
mark upon the quietude of Pæstum. Those who saw Pæstum when it was one
of the most impressive sights in the world, will be careful not to go
thither again.
Corinth, on the other hand, takes us back to the heart of the ancient
world. From time immemorial Corinth was a great place. It lay on the
high-road of the seas, in the time when voyagers hugged the coasts.
Traders from Asia and Phœnicia would not ply to Italy and Spain along
the open sea when they could go from island to island and along the
sheltered waters of the two gulfs: all these must ship their goods
across the Isthmus, and the Isthmus was dominated by the impregnable
rock of Corinth. Thus the masters of Corinth could levy tolls on all
commerce: they grew rich, as in older days Troy did, and later
Constantinople, because they lay across a trade route. Here was built
the first Greek navy of war-ships: here were the rich and powerful
tyrants; here was worshipped Poseidon, with his famous Isthmian games,
and Phoenician Aphrodite. A few years ago, the precinct of Poseidon was
dug out, and there appeared a mass of votive tablets, on which we may
see the daily life of Corinth in the seventh century before Christ.
Pre-eminent amongst all the scenes are those of the potter’s trade: the
pottery is seen being made on the wheel, baked in the furnace, and
loaded into the ships for export to Italy and elsewhere. Corinth reminds
us of some of the best stories of Herodotus: Cypselus and his chest,
Arion and the dolphins, and that attractive scatterbrain Hippocleides,
who at Sicyon hard by danced away his marriage, and did not care one
jot. No great man of letters ever came out of Corinth, no poet and no
orator; but Corinthian bronze was famous, and the city was full of works
of art. When Mummius sacked Corinth and left it desolate, he made his
famous bargain with the contractors who removed the spoil: if they
damaged any of the works of art, they were to replace them with others
as good. Corinth was afterwards rebuilt; all will remember St. Paul’s
connection with the city, and the riot when Gallic was governor of
Achaia.
The Acrocorinthus is one of the most magnificent sights in the world: it
has the common quality of the Greek mountains, grandeur without
excessive size; but standing as it does isolated from other hills, and
visible everywhere, from Athens to Parnassus, its effect on the
imagination is never to be forgotten. Its height is not far short of
2000 feet, and it is crowned with a fortress as it has been all through
history. From the summit we see the whole centre of Greece; even the
Parthenon itself, the centre of Greek artistic achievement. Here too is
the sacred spring Peirene, struck out by the hoof of Pegasus.
The view here given towards the gulf shows Parnassus in the distance,
like a ghost.
Athens is the heart of Greece, and Greece is the soul of mankind. No man
who loves what is beautiful, or who admires what is noble, can fail to
feel at home in Athens. Here in this little plain, girt with purple
mountains, lived those men who discovered human reason, who showed how
to express man’s greatest ideas, who pitted courage and intellect
against brute force, who for a few short years lived the fullest life
possible for mankind: we have lived on their thoughts ever since.
The beauties of the place have been often sung: they are summed up in
one immortal phrase, “city of the violet crown.” The continued changes
of colour, especially towards evening, in that clear air, with sea and
cloud and mountain, make the scene a continual delight. In the midst of
this fertile plain rises the sharp peak of Lycabettus, and beside it the
buttressed Acropolis, from which the temples grow like flowers. And from
every side this is a landmark: whether from Aegina opposite, or from
some frontier fortress like Phyle, or even from Acrocorinth, this rock,
not high in itself, stands out to the view, and makes us remember
Athens. Here, more easily than anywhere, can we see how the Greek
architect saw each building as part of a whole. I have already spoken of
the refinements of the Parthenon, and how it is set with regard to the
sunlight: but the Parthenon is only one of a group of temples. There yet
remain a great part of the Erechtheum, the oldest shrine on the
Acropolis, and site of the King’s house before history began: and a
little shrine of Victory, built on a bastion of the rock. But there were
others; and the whole precinct was entered by the Propylaea, which also
remains in part, to which led a flight of steps. The idea of this
gateway was a stroke of genius. The visitor entering by it saw the whole
mass of buildings as it were framed by the marble pillars and
architrave; and if he turned, he looked out through the same frame upon
the plain and the sea, the strait of Salamis, with the island beyond it.
The rock falls steep under the gate, so there is nothing to bar this
view, which must have reminded the Athenian of the great past every time
he looked forth from it. To the right, as one looks out of this gateway,
lies the spur of the Areopagus, seat of that most ancient court and
council, upon which place St. Paul told the Athenians of the Unknown
God. To the left, but not visible, is the precinct of Dionysus, with the
theatre. Straight ahead, the ancient Athenian would see the long walls
joining his city to Peiraeus and the sea, where in fortified harbours
lay his mighty fleets. Over the market-place westward he could see the
Dipylon Gate with its place of tombs, and the sacred way leading to
Eleusis and the Mysteries. Eastward lies Hymettus with its honey-bees;
northwards Lycabettus, where the Persian host was first sighted pouring
over the hillside, and beyond it Pentelicon, that looks down on Marathon
plain; north-westwards are the hills of Acharnae, where the fires of the
invading Spartans were first seen in that war which ended the greatness
of Athens. And all round about are caves and clefts and shrines that
belonged to the immemorial religion of the place, each linked with
memories, many with immortal works of literature. We can no longer know
the magnificence of the past; but we can name many of the things that
were seen there, from the description of Pausanias which has come down
to us.
Up this slope, once in every four years, after the games, came the great
procession of the Panathensæ, which is portrayed for us on the frieze of
the Parthenon itself. Was there ever such a picture of beauty and
strength and life? There went the victors, crowned and rejoicing; the
flower of the Athenian cavalry, such men and such horses as the world
can show no finer (see them on the Parthenon frieze!), all the chief
soldiers and statesmen, elders bearing branches of olive, the fairest of
Athenian women with baskets upon their heads, and the sacred robe to be
offered to the most ancient and reverend image of Pallas, borne as the
sail of the Panathenaic ship. The whole scene is portrayed upon the
sculptured frieze of the Parthenon. One of the plates in this book
represents the modern idea of a religious festival, and the hundreds of
dotted figures give a far-away notion what this great day must have
looked like. But how faint! These dark-clad forms have not a hint of the
gorgeous colour of the ancient world. On the Acropolis, too, was held
the feast of Brauronian Artemis, when the little Athenian maidens
dressed up in bearskins for some mysterious ceremony. Here was the mark
of Poseidon’s trident, under the Erechtheum; here was Athena’s sacred
olive-tree, and her snakes. And the whole place crowded with statues and
offerings, and inscriptions carved on stone, treaties of peace, and
records of honour—the history of Athens open for all to read.
The story of the Athenian Acropolis is unique amongst its fellows, while
at the same time it sums up the history of the Greek states. It is
unique, because here alone, it seems, a state existed from the beginning
to the end without violent interference. Many Greek sites were occupied
in the Pelasgian age, when Crete was mistress of the Aegean, and later
when its place was taken by Mycenæ and the cities of the mainland: but
the country was swept later by the Achaeans, and after them by the
Dorians, who naturally chose the more fertile and wealthy places to stay
in. So the Acropolis was the site of a royal palace and a Pelasgian
settlement; but the ancient population was here never displaced, it was
only added to and changed gradually. Attica did not tempt the invader as
other plains did; nor did her rulers grow too rich and destroy each
other for greed; but her land was the refuge of strangers. Her ancient
civilisation and art remained untouched by the ravages of war, and her
people always prided themselves on being αὑτὁχθονες—born of the very soil. Perhaps this unbroken tradition
explains the prominence of Athens in the arts. Here too, the worship of
Athena joined the older worship of Poseidon, without rooting it up, and
both flourished side by side. Then came the great dynasty of the
tyrants, Peisistratus and his family, who made the city magnificent with
buildings and engineering works, and attracted to their court the finest
intellects of their day. The huge underground aqueduct which has lately
been dug out belongs to this time, the sixth century before Christ.
Peisistratus is followed by Solon and the reign of law: and when the
barbarian came, it was Athens who barred his path and drove him back at
Marathon and at Salamis. Xerxes burnt the city, but he did not destroy
Athens, for the people had left it for the time; and when they returned,
they built up their fortifications with the ruins of their temples and
monuments, as they may still be seen piled slab on drum by the visitor
of to-day. Xerxes burnt all he found, but he only cleared the ground for
a finer art, which at once filled the empty spaces with buildings and
monuments of a nobler kind, the remains of which we now see. Great names
now stand out in plenty, Miltiades, Themistocles and Aristeides,
Pericles and Pheidias and Ictinus; Plato over yonder in the olive groves
of Academeia, Aeschylus and Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes in the
theatre or the winepress; Socrates walking the streets, or conversing in
agora or gymnasium; Demosthenes moving men’s minds in the Pnyx. When
Athens fell, her conqueror spared her with a generosity not usual in
those days; so it came about that her buildings remained for many
hundreds of years, and the Parthenon even lasted through the devastating
ruin of the Turks, until a Venetian shell dropped upon it and blew it up
(1687). There is no use in trying to record what the Acropolis of Athens
calls to mind: it is the best of what educated men know.
Fair and goodly in life, the Athenians were also fair in death. Without
the gate, on the sacred road to Eleusis, lies the place of tombs. Not
bare slabs are these, nor broken columns; here are no wreaths of
artificial flowers, no ugliness and gloom, for the tombs are monuments
of grace. Many, indeed, are quite simple, in shape of vases or the like;
but others show delicate reliefs, with the dead in their habit as they
lived—the woman at her toilet, the warrior on his horse, or one seated
in a chair and clasping hands with his friends as they say, Fare you
well! The inscriptions are as simple as they can be: no sentiment and no
preaching, but a manly acceptance of fate, an honest regret for life, or
the bare name. The reader who wishes to learn how the Greek looked on
death, would do well to read the epitaphs in the Greek anthology. Here
in the place of tombs we cannot fail to remember that scene which
Thucydides describes: how in each year of the war the bodies of those
slain were buried with public honour, and Pericles or some notable man
pronounced their eulogy; and in that speech of Pericles we may read in
brief the ideal of the Athenian.
From this place led forth the Sacred Way, over the hills to Eleusis,
where perhaps more than anywhere else in the Greek world those higher
emotions were aroused which we associate with religion. In the ritual
these were lacking; and philosophy was sceptical rather than religious,
except with a rare soul now and then, a Socrates or a Plato, with whom
feeling and intellect seem to be fused into one force. But the
Eleusinian mysteries gave what both philosophy and ritual lacked. They
were mysteries in so far that no one might reveal them unlawfully; but
not in the sense of a riddle or a concealment, for all Greeks might
qualify for admission. The ancient mysteries recall more the Freemasons
than anything else we know. Their origin is lost in darkness, and they
lasted long after all else in Greece was dead, when Alaric the Goth in
396 did what Goths do in all ages—destroyed, but built not up. There
were rites of purification, and two stages of initiation; first, usually
as a child, and later into the higher grades as a man or woman. There
were two Mysteries: the Lesser, celebrated by the Ilissos bank and close
under the Acropolis, being usually a preliminary to the Greater at
Eleusis. What the mysteries were, we know not: the secret has been kept,
although Clement of Alexandria was initiated before he became a
Christian, and he tells us whatever he thinks will discredit them.
Undoubtedly, they included dramatic representations, which struck awe
and admiration into the observers; but the inner meaning of these was
known only to the Hierophant, who revealed it to those whom he thought
fit to receive it. And now the gorgeous ceremony is over, priests and
worshippers have for ever gone, and nothing remains but the pavement of
the temple, with a tiny church of the Virgin perched on a bluff above
it.
Aegina, like all else in Greece, is small, only about forty square
miles; yet Aegina has left her mark on history. Here, according to the
tradition, Pheidon, tyrant of Argos, first struck coins in Greece.
Whether it was so or not, Aegina was a centre of trade very early, and
founded a famous city, Naucratis, in North Africa, Cydonia in Crete, and
another in Umbria: the Aeginetan tortoise, the Athenian owl, and the
Corinthian horse were the three types of coins best known to the Greek
world, passing everywhere as good. Aegina was also famous for the arts,
especially sculpture. Before the Persian wars Aegina came into conflict
with Athens: Pericles called it the eyesore of the Peiraeus, before it
was conquered and colonised by Athenian settlers. The temple which still
remains, was not in the chief town, but in a lonely spot amidst the wild
woods. It was sacred to Aphaia, not to Zeus—so Furtwängler infers from
inscriptions found there—but we know nothing of its building. The
pediments, which appear to represent scenes from the Trojan wars, are
remarkable in the history of sculpture; they are now at Munich. Close by
the beach at which we land is a small rocky islet, upon which lives a
lonely hermit in a hut made with his own hands. If at Eleusis we think
of exalted religious emotion, Delphi puts every man in awe. Well was the
spot chosen for the most famous oracle of antiquity: it needs no help of
man to show the powrer of God. But here, as everywhere in Greece, the
awe is not too great for humanity to bear: it is not the crushing sense
of impotence in the face of natural forces that one feels in the Alps or
the Himalayas, it is the awe that may be felt for a being both mighty
and kindly. Human beings may live here and be happy; they may mount
above the cleft and the shining rocks, and still live and be
happy—indeed, those uplands were the scene of many a merry revel when
the Greeks worshipped their gods. But the great black rocks above
Delphi, themselves only the foot of the approach to Parnassus, are awful
enough to make them a fit habitation for a god. I shall never forget my
first visit to Delphi. It was winter: I rode from Lebadeia to Arachova
over the rocky and precipitous paths, and past the Cloven Way where
Œdipus slew Laius, through a blinding storm of rain and snow. Next
morning the sky was clear as in springtime, and a bright sun shining,
and a short ride brought us to the top of the valley, whence could be
seen a plain covered with olive trees which seemed from that height like
a flood rolling up the valley from the plain. But Delphi’s rock was grim
and gloomy as ever over this bright scene. In Delphi was an oracle from
time immemorial; the legends told of it show that the Greeks found one
already on the spot. According to the Homeric Hymn, which we may
rationalise if we like, Apollo found the place possessed by a huge
serpent, which he slew, and as the body rotted (πὑθειν) the place got the name of Pytho. Here was the Omphalos, or
navel-stone, marking the centre of the earth; and the sacred spring
Castalian rose between the cleft rocks. The Pythia, or priestess, would
seat herself on a tripod over a chasm within the temple, and her ravings
contained the god’s answer; but it must be interpreted by the prophet,
who stood by her side. Since the oracle was consulted by great and
small, the priests were able to exercise a strong influence on politics;
and their influence was generally for good, until the mind, of Greece
outgrew oracles. Recorded answers do not explain the repute of the
oracle, or its influence; and the tablets that have actually been found
here and at Dodona are mostly questions on personal or trivial subjects.
Perhaps that was the most far-reaching of its behests when Sparta was
commanded to free Athens from her tyrants; and its most noteworthy
revelation, that Socrates was the wisest of men. One of Herodotus’s best
stories tells how Crœsus consulted the oracle, and what came of it.
Twice Delphi was miraculously saved from pillage: once when the army of
Xerxes was driven back by falling rocks, and once when a storm beat off
the Gauls. Philip made it a pretext for interfering in the affairs of
Greece; but then he would have found a pretext somewhere in any case.
The Pythian Games were celebrated here every two years. Sulla plundered
the treasures, and so did Nero; Constantine carried off what he could
find to Constantinople, where one still stands: the base of the golden
tripod dedicated after the defeat of the Persians, three bronze snakes
intertwining, and engraved with the names of Greek tribes who took part.
The oracle lost its high standing about the time of the Peloponnesian
War, but it continued to be consulted, until it was silenced by
Theodosius.
Pausanias gives a description of the chief things to be seen in this
holy place. Before the excavations, a Greek village covered the site;
but now this has been removed, we can tread on the ancient pavement, and
see the places where many of the objects once stood. Here, as at
Olympia, the great states had their treasuries, one of which has been
built up out of its fragments.
High above Delphi, on a mountain that rises out of the uplands, not far
from the peaks of Parnassus, is the Corycian cave, famous in legend,
sacred to Pan and the Nymphs; here and hereabouts were celebrated the
revels of Dionysus, which readers of the Ion will remember.
The temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens was begun by Peisistratus, and
partly built, but it was never finished in its original Doric style.
Antiochus Epiphanes planned it afresh, and a Roman architect, Cossutius,
partly built it in the Corinthian style. Probably the columns that now
stand were put up by him; some of the remains of this earlier building
are used as foundations for these. When Antiochus died (B.C. 164), it
was left again unfinished, until Hadrian finished it. These columns are
regarded as the finest specimens of the Corinthian style. Rich as the
effect of this style is, it does not satisfy eye and mind as the Doric
does, or indeed the Ionic: of all things, leaves are least suitable to
the nature of stone.
Sunium, founded in the Peloponnesian War to protect the corn-ships, was
near the silver-mines; it was an important fortress, but its prosperity
did not last long. The temple was dedicated to Athena. Here the salt sea
winds have made the columns white, in contrast to the rose-pink of the
Parthenon.
