FOOTNOTES:
[1] When in meditation during the solitary night, I contemplate the waves, there arises in the bright moonlight the pretty water nymph from the Danube, from the beautiful blue Danube.
[2] He loved to wander over unknown places and to see unknown rivers, his curiosity lessening the fatigue.
[3] Le Rhin, Letter XIV.
[4] Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV, 294, 295.
[5] 01., III, 13–15.
[6] The Danube, p. 71 (by W. Beattie, London, 1843).
[7] Cf. A History of the Life of Richard, Coeur de Lion, King of England, Vol. II, p. 419 (by G. P. James, London, 1854).
[8] Adventure XXII.
[9] History of the House of Austria from the Foundation of the Monarchy by Rhodolph of Hapsburgh to the Death of Leopold the Second, Vol. IV, pp. 440, 441 (by W. Cox, London, 1820).
[10] Cf. Voltaire’s Précis du Siècle de Louis XV, Chap. VI (Paris, 1828). The application to Maria Theresa of the title Rex—King—instead of Regina—Queen—was in accordance with a peculiar custom in Hungary which required that her signature on all public documents should be Maria Theresa Rex.
[11] Fraser’s Magazine, Vol. XXII, p. 692. Another Englishman declares: “The Latin is so common in Hungary that during my travels I frequently heard the servants and the postillions converse and dispute with great fluency in that language.” Cox, op. cit., Vol. V, p. 440.
[12] Tour of Austria, p. 372 (London, 1844).
[13] Another saying frequently accompanies this, to wit: Nullum vinum, nisi Hungaricum—Hungarian is the only wine.
[14] Nevill Forbes, in The Balkans, A History of Bulgaria, Servia, Greece, Roumania, Turkey, p. 48 (Oxford, 1915).
[15] The Balkans, p. 6 (Oxford, 1915).
[16] It is curious to remember that Attila’s first attack upon the Roman Empire “was delivered at the very spot upon the Danube where the Germanic powers in August, 1914, began their offensive. Attila directed his armies upon the frontiers of modern Servia at the point where the Save joins the Danube, where the city of Singidunum rose then and where to-day Belgrade stands.” Cf. Attila and the Huns, p. 37 (by Edward Hutton, New York, 1915).
[17] See the Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti, pp. 411–419 (by C. W. Russell, London, 1858).
[18] Cf. Historical Geography of Europe, p. 70 (London, 1881).
[19] Ibid., p. 71.
[20] While I knew the honesty and truthfulness of McGahan too well ever to question his statements regarding the cruelties of the Turks which he so vividly described, I have never had any doubt that most of the atrocities that so shocked the world at the time were provoked by the people of the Balkans themselves. Serbs, Bulgars, and Greeks had organized a systematic propaganda for the dismemberment of Macedonia and “when those methods flagged a bomb would be thrown at, let us say, a Turkish official by an agent provocateur of one of the three players, inevitably resulting in the necessary massacre of innocent Turks, and an outcry in the European press.” Cf. Nevill Forbes, op. cit. p. 66.
“The Bulgarian Atrocities,” according to another well-informed writer, “were a clever and unscrupulous piece of diplomacy on the part of the Russian Foreign Office and of the Pan-Slavist Committees. In May, 1876, the Bulgarian Committees at Bukharest and Odessa organized an insurrection which broke out simultaneously in many of the large towns of Bulgaria, accompanied by abominable atrocities on Moslems, ‘designedly committed by the insurgents as being the means best calculated to bring on a general revolution in Bulgaria, by rendering the position of the Christians, however peaceably inclined, so intolerable under the indiscriminate retaliation which the governing race were sure to attempt, as to force them in self-defence to rise.’” W. E. D. Allen in The Turks in Europe, p. 166 (London, 1919).
[21] “Of all the men,” writes Forbes, “who have gained reputation as war correspondents I regard McGahan as the most brilliant.” “He used to be called ‘The Cossack correspondent’ because of the swiftness of his movements. Frank Millet names him ‘Will-o’-the-wisp of war writers.’ George Augustus Sala pronounced him one of the most cosmopolitan men he had ever met—‘a scholar, a linguist, a shrewd observer, a politician wholly free from party prejudice, a traveler as indefatigable as Schyler, as dashing as Barnaby, as dauntless as Stanley.’” “No man of his age in recent years,” avers his friend, Lieutenant Greene, “has done more to bring honor on the name of America throughout the length and breadth of Europe and far into Asia.—I suppose that he and Skobeleff stood at the head of their respective professions.
“Year after year the praises of this bold adventurer and vivid writer are chanted in rude verse by the peasants of the Balkans, and every year the anniversary of his premature death is commemorated by the singing of a requiem mass in the cathedral at Tirnovo, the ancient capital of Bulgaria. When he was riding among the Bulgarian villages in war time the peasants used to crowd about and kiss his hands, hailing him as their liberator, and there were many of the Bulgars who agitated for the choice of this wandering writer as the head of the principality whose creation his dispatches had done so much to establish.” Cf. Famous War Correspondents, Chap. IV (by F. L. Bullad, Boston, 1914).
[22] After Trajan had conquered the Dacians he established in the newly acquired territory a large body of Roman colonists. But they were by no means all of Latin blood, for they were drawn, according to Eutropius, from all parts of the Roman Empire—ex toto orbe romano. Numerous votive inscriptions found in the country show that among the colonists besides those from Italy, were representatives from Gaul, Germany, Dalmatia, Phrygia, Galatia, Africa, Egypt, and far-off Palmyra, But, notwithstanding this complexity of ethnical stock, it was always those of Latin blood and Latin speech that dominated.
[23] For an illuminating account, with a map, of this much discussed campaign of Darius against the Scythians, see The Geographical System of Herodotus, Vol. I, sec. 7, 8 (by J. Rennell, London, 1830). Cf. also The Five Great Monarchies, Vol. III, pp. 434, 435 (by G. Rawlinson, New York, 1881); The History of Herodotus, Melpomene, 87–143; E. H. Bunbury’s A History of Ancient Geography Among the Greeks and Romans from the earliest Ages till the Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I., pp. 202–206, 217 (London, 1883).
[24] Cf. Le Danube, Aperçu historique, économique et politique, Chap. II (by C. I. Baicoianu, Paris, 1917).
[25] See Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.).
[26] Cf. The Orient Question, Appendix C (by Prince Lazarovich-Hebelianovich, New York, 1913).
[27] Cf. Baicoianu, op. cit., p. 14. See also for an illuminating discussion of this same subject La Question du Danube, Histoire Politique du Bassin du Danube; Études des divers régimes applicables à la navigation du Danube (by G. Demorgny, Paris, 1911).
[28] A venerable legend has it that Achilles met here the shade of Helen of Troy whom he had loved in life, by hearsay, although he had never seen her.
[29] These alleged appearances of Achilles and the Dioscuri, referred to by Arrian, were evidently the lambent electrical discharges known as St. Elmo’s Fires. They are also called corposant, Helena, and, when in pairs, the Dioscuri—namely, Castor and Pollux.
[30] Tristia, Lib. III, Elegia, III.
[31] Tristia, Lib. II, Elegia, IX.
[32] For the various names of the Euxine or Black Sea, cf. The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. I, p. 3 (trans, by H. Yule, London, 1903); Cathay and The Way Thither, Vol. II, p. 98 (printed for the Hakluyt Society, London, 1913).
[33] So paramount from the twelfth to the fifteenth century was the commerce of Genoa and Venice that an Italian writer does not hesitate to declare that, “during four centuries, the Genoese and Venetians were the arbiters of the destinies of Europe; that they alone thronged the trade-routes of Asia and Africa; that they alone controlled the commerce of these continents; that they alone civilized their barbarous inhabitants and dispelled the darkness of the Middle Ages.” Nuova Istoria della Repubblica di Genova, del Suo Commercio e della Sua Letteratura dalle Origini all’ Anno 1797, Vol. I, p. 7 (by Michel-Giuseppe Canale, Florence, 1858).
In marked contrast to this division of the commerce of the world between Genoa and Venice, the Venetian author, Fabio Mutinelli, would claim a mercantile monopoly for his countrymen. “To them alone,” he writes, “are earth and sea equally open; they alone are the channel of all the riches and the furnishers of all the world which poured into their hands all the money which it possessed.” Del Commercio dei Veneziani, p. 126 (Venice, 1835).
For interesting accounts of the Euxine trade routes during the period in question the reader may consult with profit Histoire du Commerce de la Mer Noire (by Elie de la Primaudaie); Le Danube, Chap. II (by C. I. Baicoianu, Paris, 1917); Intercourse Between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome (by H. G. Rawlinson, Cambridge, England, 1916); Travels of Marco Polo, Vol. I, Bk. I, Chap. IX (by Henry Yule, London, 1903). This masterly work is specially valuable for its numerous maps indicating the routes of Marco Polo, as well as those of the elder Polos through Asia. See also Geschichte des Levantehandels im Mittelalter, Vol. II, pp. 76, 78, 158 ff. (by Wilhelm Heyd, Stuttgart, 1879).
[34] Canto V, strophe v. Compare Byron’s graphic description of a storm on the Euxine with that given by Ovid in which he vividly portrays the struggling winds as they furiously rush against one another from all points of the compass.
[35] The Sweet Waters of Asia and the Sweet Waters of Europe on the Upper reaches of the Golden Horn are so called in contradistinction to the salt waters of the Bosphorus.
[36] Constantinople, Vol. I, p. 136 (by E. A. Grosvenor, Boston, 1895).
[37] Among the Ottomans and other eastern peoples the capital of Turkey is usually known as Stamboul, or Istamboul, a corruption of Constantinople. It is also called Constantineh. Frequently it is referred to as Roma Nova—New Rome. In the official documents of the Greek Patriarch this name is still retained. The Slavs love to speak of it as Tsargrad—the Castle of Cæsar. To Mohammedan poets, who are prodigal in the epithets which they apply to it, it is the City of Islam, the Portal of Felicity, the Gate of Happiness, the Mother of the World.
The municipal government of Constantinople embraces all the cities and villages fringing the Bosphorus from the Euxine to the Sea of Marmora, including the Princes Islands. But, although the superficial extent of the municipality—counting the water expanse of the Strait, the Golden Horn and the northern part of the Marmora—is quite large, its actual land area is comparatively restricted.
[38] Voyage en Orient, Tom. III, p. 190 (Brussels, 1835).
[39] Through South America’s Southland, Chap. IV (New York, 1916).
[40] For an elaborate account of Justinian’s marvelous temple see The Church of Sancta Sophia Constantinople, Chaps. III, IV, XI (by Lethaby and Swainson, London, 1894).
[41] Annalium, Pars V, p. 498 (by M. Glycas, Bonn).
[42] History of Architecture, Vol. II, p. 321 (London, 1867).
[43] Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Canto II, Stanza 77.
[44] The name given by the Italians to the official residence of the Grand Signor in Constantinople. The Turks use the word Serai, which is derived from the Persian serai, signifying palace—a word which is applied to any residence of Sultan. In English seraglio is frequently, but erroneously, confused with harem.
[45] The Eastern Question, p. 139 et seq. (by J. A. R. Marriot, Oxford, 1917). Whatever may be said regarding the genuineness of the famous “Political Testament” of Peter the Great “there can be no question that it accurately represented the trend and tradition of Russian policy in the eighteenth century. Constantinople was clearly indicated as the goal of Russian ambition. The Turks were to be driven out of Europe by the help of Austria; a good understanding was to be maintained with England and every effort was to be made to accelerate the dissolution of Persia and to secure the Indian trade. Whether inherited or not these were the principles which for nearly forty years inspired the policy of Peter the Great’s most brilliant successor on the Russian throne, Catherine II.” Marriot, op. cit., p. 138.
[46] Cf. Napoleon et Alexandre Ier, Vol. I, p. 268 (by Albert Vadal, Paris, 1869). The famous Field Marshal von Moltke expressed a similar opinion when he wrote, in 1846, “Rom wurde eine Weltstadt durch seine Männer, Konstantinople durch seine Weltstellung”—Rome was a world-city because of her men, Constantinople because of her world location. Gesammelte Schriften und Denkwürdigkeiten des General-Feldmarschalls, Tom. I, p. 165 (by Grafen Helmuth von Moltke, Berlin, 1892). Mr. D. G. Hogarth, in his valuable work, The Nearer East, declares: “No other site in the world enjoys equal advantages, nor perhaps ever will enjoy them. For the Isthmus of Suez is beset by deserts, and that of Panama has a climate not to be compared. Constantinople not only has an open and most fertile environment and easy access to the interior of both Europe and Asia, but its position between two seas and exposure on the side of Russia gives it an almost northern climate. Add to this a dry, sloping site, a superb harbor, an admirable outer roadstead, easy local communication by way of the Bosphorus and an inexhaustible water supply, and it is easy to agree that those who founded Chalcedon but left Byzantium to others, were indeed blind.” Pp. 240, 241 (New York, 1902).
[47] Beaconsfield boasted on his return from Berlin to England that he had secured “peace with honor.” McGahan, the brilliant war correspondent, declared as soon as he read the treaty, that “it was not worth the paper on which it was written.” An English writer, forty years later, stigmatized it as a treaty that “was concluded in a spirit of shameless bargain, with a sublime disregard of elementary ethics and in open contempt of the right of civilized peoples to determine their own future. It was essentially a temporary arrangement concluded between rival imperialist states. And it sowed the seeds of the crop of ‘Nationalist’ wars in which the Balkan peoples were to be embroiled for the next half century.” The Turks in Europe, p. 179 (by W. E. D. Allen, London, 1919).
[48] Cent Projects de Partage de la Turquie, 1281–1913 (by T. J. Djuvara, Paris, 1913).
[49] The distinguished Russian scholar, Prince Eugène Nicolayevich Trubetskoy, expresses in a single sentence the dominant idea of his countrymen when he declares: “The possession of the Straits”—the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles—“may become indispensable for Russia in order to secure her daily bread; the possession of Tsargrad as the condition of her power and importance as a State.” See his lecture Saint Sophia, Russians’ Hope and Calling, p. 8 (London, 1916).
[50] “The eternal Eastern Question,” writes the historian Freeman, “will never be settled till the Greek nation once more has its own. We claim for that nation that whole extent of land in Europe and Asia where the Greek race and speech is the race and speech of the Christian population; and with that we claim for them their own ancient capital, the city of the Constantines, the Leos, and the Basils. We claim all this on the score of simple justice, on the score of that general philanthropy which, when Greeks are concerned, is not ashamed of the name of philhellenism.”
Again, he declares: “The fact that Constantinople has been and is and ever must be the head of South-eastern Europe is a practical fact which stares us in the face. And while this fact may, with those who look below the surface, awaken some fears which do not lie on the surface, allay some fears which do. Constantinople can never be the head of a province; it must be the head of an empire. But it does not follow that it can now be the head of an universal empire. Its annexation by a distant power would, in all moral certainty lead to the dismemberment of the power that annexed it.” Historical Essays, Third Series, pp. 376, 277 (London, 1879).
[51] Syria, the Desert and the Sown, p. X (by G. L. Bell, London, 1908).
[52] Constantinople, Vol. I, p. 403 (by E. A. Grosvenor, Boston, 1895).
[53] This tragic event is vividly pictured by the poet Shelley when in his lyrical drama, Hellas, he sings:
[54] According to the eminent Austrian historian, Von Hammer-Purgstall, the city sustained, from the time of its foundation until its capture by Mohammed II, no fewer than twenty-nine sieges. Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, Tom. II, pp. 428, 521–523 (Paris, 1835).
[55] Op. cit. p. 251.
According to Augier de Busbecq, the scholarly Flemish diplomat, who, in the middle of the sixteenth century, spent eight years at the Ottoman Court, Constantinople “is a city which nature herself has designed to be the mistress of the world. It stands in Europe, looks upon Asia, and is within reach by sea of Egypt and the Levant on the south and the Black Sea and its European and Asiatic shores on the north.” Letters, Vol. I, p. 123 (trans. by D. Forster, Paris, 1881).
[56] Frederic Harrison, The Fortnightly Review, June, 1919, pp. 840, 841.
[57] Became a Greek by ceding to the Pastor. Paradiso, XX, 57.
[58] Frederic Harrison, The Fortnightly Review, April, 1894, pp. 439, 440.
[59] Cf. the author’s Great Inspirers, p. 16 (New York, 1917).
[60] Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V, Chap. LIII.
[61] Op. cit., Vol. VI, Chap. LXVI. “Indeed,” declares a recent writer, “when we consider that this state—the Byzantine Empire—was for a thousand years the defence of Europe against Asiatic invaders, which beat back the Arabs and Seljouks, and checked for a century the advance of the Ottomans, when at the height of their power; that during this period it represented civilization in the midst of barbarism, and maintained a wide commerce by land and sea; that by its missionaries both the Russians and the South Slavonic peoples were evangelized, and the Cyrillic alphabet invented; that to its care in preserving and multiplying manuscripts the existence of a great part of our classical literature is due; and finally, that it was the birthplace of Italian painting, and that its architecture has exercised a greater power than any other style, reaching in its effects from Spain to India; we can hardly overestimate its influence on the world’s history.” History of Greece From Its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time, B.C. 146 to A.D. 1864, Vol. I, p. vii (by George Finlay, Oxford, 1877).
[62] Among the more distinguished Hellenists besides Lascaris and Chrysoloras, whose labors in Italy contributed enormously towards initiating and developing the work of the Renaissance, and who reflected undying honor on the Greek name, must be mentioned Theodore Gaza, Gemistus Plethon, John Argyropoulos, George of Trebizond, Demitrius Chalcondyles, and Cardinal Bessarion—who were all, as Hody, the noted Hellenist of Oxford, declared, “viri nullo ævo perituri.”
[63] Marriott, op. cit., Chap. II.
[64] Napoleon et Alexander I, L’Alliance Russe sous Le Premier Empire, Tom. I, p. 306 et seq. (by Albert Vandal, Paris, 1896).
[65] Note to “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Canto III, strophe XCI.
[66] How different is now the condition of the Trojan plain from what it was in ancient times! Then according to Schliemann it contained “eleven flourishing cities, all of which were probably autonomous and of which five coined their own money. If we consider further that the eleven cities, besides two villages, existed here simultaneously in classical antiquity and that one of these—the city of Ilium itself—had at least seventy thousand inhabitants, we are astounded and amazed how such large masses of people could have found the means of subsistence here, whilst the inhabitants of the present seven poor villages of the plain have the greatest difficulty in providing for their miserable existence. And not only had these ancient cities an abundance of food but they were also so populous and so rich that they could carry on wars and, as their ruins prove, they could erect temples and many other public buildings of white marble; Ilium especially must have been ornamented with a vast number of such sumptuous edifices.” Troja, Results of the Latest Researches and Discoveries on the Site of Homer’s Troy, pp. 345, 346 (New York, 1884).
[67] “The main contention was that the Iliad and the Odyssey were a collection of songs composed at different times and of very unequal values and that, like the Niebelungen Lied, they could be resolved into shorter lays, each celebrating the deeds of individual heroes. The more famous of these heroes, Achilles for example, like Siegfried, had, it was maintained, their ultimate origin in mythological personages, once worshiped as divine.” Schliemann’s Excavations, an Archæological and Historical Study, p. 17 (by C. Schuchhardt, London, 1891).
[69] Herodotus. Book VII, 43.
[70] Troy, or Ilium, as the excavations of Schliemann and Dörpfeld have shown, was destroyed and rebuilt no fewer than seven times. During the Roman period it was known as Ilium Novum and was honored as the city of Æneas and consequently, as the parent of Rome. It was because of this fabulous origin of the Romans that Constantine first planned to establish the seat of empire on the plain of Troy instead of locating it on the site occupied by Byzantium between the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn. Fortunately he gave his preference to the spot where has since stood the noble city which still bears his name.
Ilium Novum was for a long time the seat of a bishopric, but, since it was plundered by the Turks, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, it has lain in ruins.
For illuminating accounts of Schliemann’s epoch-making investigations see, besides the Troja above mentioned, his Troy and its Remains (New York, 1876); Ilios, the City and Country of the Trojans (New York, 1881); and Schuchhardt’s work already quoted.
Dr. Schliemann has justly been acclaimed the creator of prehistoric Greek archæology. “He has introduced,” writes Oxford’s distinguished Orientalist, “a new era into the study of classical antiquity, has revolutionized our conceptions of the past, has given the impulse to that ‘research of the spade’ which is producing such marvelous results throughout the Orient and nowhere more than in Greece itself. The light has broken over the peaks of Ida and the long-forgotten ages of prehistoric Hellas and Asia Minor are lying bathed in it before us. We now begin to know how Greece came to have the strength and will for that mission of culture to which we of this modern world are still indebted. We can penetrate into a past of which Greek tradition had forgotten the very existence. By the side of one of the jade axes which Dr. Schliemann has uncovered at Hissarlik, the Iliad itself is but a thing of yesterday. We are carried back to a time when the empires of the Assyrians and the Hittites did not as yet exist, when the Aryan forefathers of the Greeks had not as yet, perhaps, reached their new home in the south, but when the rude tribes of the neolithic age had already begun to traffic and barter, and travelling caravans conveyed the precious stone of the Kuen-lun from one extremity of Asia to another. Prehistoric archæology in general owes as much to Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries as the study of Greek history and Greek art.” Professor A. H. Sayce, in the introduction to Dr. Schliemann’s Troja, pp. viii, ix.
[71] According to Suetonius and Horace both Julius Cæsar and Augustus, like Constantine the Great, contemplated making Ilium—Troy—the capital of the Roman Empire.
Lucan not only makes Julius visit the Ilium of his day and “each story’d place survey”—
but also has him register a solemn vow to restore Priam’s city to its ancient state and honors—
So proud, indeed, were the Romans of Ilium and of their descent from Æneas that their countrymen, under the command of Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus, on getting their first view of the home of their forefathers from the Trojan shore, were so moved, Virgil informs us, that they exultingly exclaimed:
“The dignity and power of Ilium being thus prodigiously enhanced we must find it but natural,” observes Grote, “that the Ileans assumed to themselves exaggerated importance as the recognized parents of all conquering Rome.” History of Greece, Vol. I, p. 328.
[72] Purgatorio, XXII, 102.
[73] Troy, Its Legend, History and Literature, p. 122 (by S. G. Benjamin, New York, 1916).
[74] Highlands of Turkey, Vol. I, p. 22 (by H. F. Tozer, London, 1869). (2) Odyssey, Vi, 51 et seq.
[75] So impressed was Kinglake, after visiting the Trojan plain, with the accuracy of the poet’s description of the most salient features of the landscape that he declared: “Now I know that Homer had passed along here.” Eothen, Chap. IV.
[76] “He who would understand the poet must visit the poet’s country.” Regarding Homer’s birthplace an anonymous poet long ago wrote:
But in whichever of these place the immortal bard was born, if in any of them, it is quite evident to even the casual visitor to Troy that the poet was thoroughly familiar with its environment which he describes with such marvelous precision.
[77] Iliad, XI, 89, 90.
[78] Thus the distinguished geographer, Elisée Reclus, in speaking of the Mysian Olympus, says positively: “West of the Galatian Olympus, this is the first that has received the name of Olympus, and amongst the fifteen or twenty other peaks so named, this has been chosen by popular tradition as the chief abode of the gods.” The Earth and Its Inhabitants. Asia, Vol. IV, p. 261 (New York, 1885). “This,” declares another writer, “is ‘the Olympus crowned with snow’ up ‘whose lofty crags the everliving gods mounted, Jove first in ascension.’” The Sultan and his subjects, Vol. II, p. 226 (by R. Davey, New York, 1897). Cf. also Constantinople, Vol. I, p. 30 (by R. W. Walsh, London, 1836). Lady Mary Wortley Montague calls the Mysian Olympus:
The Parliament seat of heavenly powers.
[79] Ibid., XIV, 251–257.
[80] Ibid., XIV, 317.
[81] Mr. Gladstone, that enthusiastic student of Homer and of
in his preface to Dr. Schliemann’s notable work on Mycenæ does not hesitate to declare: “There is no preliminary bar to our entertaining the capital question whether the tombs now unearthed and the remains exposed to view are the tombs and remains of the great Agamemnon or his compeers who have enjoyed through the agency of Homer such a protracted longevity of renown.... The conjecture is that these may very well be the tombs of Agamemnon and his company.”
Dr. Schliemann, writing on the same subject, tells us: “I have never doubted that a King of Mycenæ, by name Agamemnon, his charioteer Eurymedon, a princess Cassandra and their followers were treacherously murdered either by Ægisthus at a banquet, ‘like an ox at the manger,’ as Homer says, or in the bath by Clytemnestra, as the later tragic poets represent; and I firmly believed that the murdered persons had been interred in the Acropolis” of Mycenæ.... “My firm faith in the traditions made me undertake my late excavations in the Acropolis and led to the discovery of the five tombs with their immense treasures.” Mycenæ; a Narrative of Researches and Discoveries at Mycenæ and Tyryns, pp. 334, 335 (London, 1878).
[82] Plinii Epistulae No. 97. “Nequi enim dubitabam, qualecumque esset quod faterentur, pertinaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem debere puniri.”
[83] The Koran: Commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed, p. I (Philadelphia, 1870).
[84] The reason why the Ottoman whose home is on the West of the Bosphorus desires to be buried in the cemetery of Scutaria is that “he considers himself a stranger and a sojourner in Europe and the Moslem of Constantinople turns his last lingering look to this Asiatic cemetery where his remains will not be disturbed when the Giaour regains possession of this European city, an event which he is firmly convinced will sometime come to pass. Thus the dying Turk feels a yearning for his native soil; like Joseph in the land of Egypt he exacts a promise from his people that ‘they would carry his bones hence’ and like Jacob, says ‘bury me in my grave which I have in the land of Canaan.’” Constantinople, p. 13 (by R. Walsh, London, 1836).
[85] Mohammed enjoined his followers to visit graveyards frequently. “Visit graves,” he says, for “of a verity they shall make you think of futurity.” Again, he declares: “Whoso visiteth the graves of his two parents every Friday, or one of the two, he shall be written a pious child, even though he might have been in the world, before that, disobedient to them.”
[86] The world has long admired the noble qualities of heart and mind of Florence Nightingale but admiration for her has been greatly enhanced by the recent publication of certain letters of hers, previously unknown, which she wrote to one of her associates in the care of the sick and wounded soldiers of the Crimean War. I reproduce a part of one of which she addressed to the Mother Superior of a band of Catholic sisters who were her collaborators in the great work of mercy to which she devoted herself with such sublime self-abnegation:
“Your going,” she writes, “is the greatest blow I have yet had. But God’s blessing and my love and gratitude go with you, as you well know. You know well, too, that I shall do everything I can for the Sisters whom you have left me. But it will not be like you. Your wishes will be our law. And I shall try to remain in the Crimea for their sakes as long as any of us are here. I do not presume to express praise or gratitude to you, Reverend Mother, because it would look as if I thought you had done the work not unto God but unto me. You were far above me in fitness for the General Superintendency, both in wordly talent of administration, and far more in the spiritual qualifications which God values in a superior. The being placed over you in our unenviable reign in the East was my misfortune and not my fault. Dearest Reverend Mother what you have done for the work no one can ever say. But God rewards you for it with Himself. If I thought that your valuable health would be restored by a return home, I should not regret it. My love and gratitude will be yours wherever you go. I do not presume to give you any tribute but my tears.” The letter concludes with the words, “The gratitude of the Army is yours.” Dublin Review, October, 1917.