The road from Thebes to Lebadea (Livádia) leads along the foot of Helicon all the way—Helicon, which, like all celebrated Greek mountains, is not a summit, but a system of summits, or even a chain. Looking in the morning from the plain, the contrast of the dark Cithæron and the gentle sunny Helicon strikes the traveller again and again. After the ridge, or saddle, is passed which separates the plain of Thebes from that of Orchomenus, the richness of the soil increases, but the land becomes very swampy and low, for at every half-mile comes a clear silver river, tumbling from the slopes of Helicon on our left, crossing the road, and flowing to swell the waters of Lake Copais—a vast sheet with undefined edges, half-marsh, half-lake—which for centuries had no outlet to the sea, and which was only kept from covering all the plain by evaporation in the heats of summer. Great fields of sedge and rushes, giant reeds, and marsh plants unknown in colder countries, mark each river course as it nears the lake; and, as might be expected in this lonely fen country, all manner of insect life and all manner of [pg 249]amphibia haunt the sites of ancient culture. Innumerable dragon-flies, of the most brilliant colors, were flitting about the reeds, and lighting on the rich blades of grass which lay on the water’s surface; and now and then a daring frog would charge boldly at so great a prize, but retire again in fear when the fierce insect dashed against him in its impetuous start. Large land tortoises, with their high-arched shells, yellow and brown, and patterned like the section of a great honeycomb, went lazily along the moist banks, and close by the water, which they could not bear to touch. Their aquatic cousins, on the other hand, were not solitary in habit, but lay in lines along the sun-baked mud, and at the first approach of danger dropped into the water one after the other with successive flops, looking for all the world a long row of smooth black pebbles which had suddenly come to life, like old Deucalion’s clods, that they might people this solitude. The sleepy and unmeaning faces of these tortoises were a great contrast to those of the water-snakes, which were very like them in form, but wonderfully keen and lively in expression. They, too, would glide into the water when so strange a thing as man came near, but would presently raise their heads above the surface, and eye with wonder and suspicion, and in perfect stillness, the approach of their natural enemy. The Copaic eels, so celebrated in the Attic comedy as the greatest of all [pg 250]dainties, are also still to be caught; but the bright sun and cloudless sky made vain all my attempts to lure this famous darling of Greek epicures. We noticed that while the shrill cicada, which frequents dry places, was not common here, great emerald-green grasshoppers were flying about spasmodically, with a sound and weight like that of a small bird.
As we passed along, we were shown the sites of Haliartus and Coronea—Haliartus, where the cruel Lysander met his death in a skirmish, and so gave a place in history to an obscure village—Coronea, where the Spartans first learned to taste the temper of the Theban infantry, and where King Agesilaus well-nigh preceded his great rival to the funeral pyre. As I said before, all these towns are only known by battles. Thespiæ has an independent interest, and so has Ascra. The latter was the residence of the earliest known Greek poet of whose personality we can be sure; Thespiæ, with its highly aristocratic society, which would not let a shopkeeper walk their place of assembly for ten years after he had retired from business, was the site of fair temples and statues, and held its place and fame long after all the rest of the surrounding cities had sunk into decay. There are indistinct remains of surrounding walls about both Haliartus and Coronea, but surely nothing that would repay the labor of excavations. All these Bœotian towns were, of course, fortified, and all of them lay close to the [pg 251]hills; for the swampy plain was unhealthy, and in older days the rising lake was said to have swallowed up towns which had been built close upon its margin. But the supremacy of Orchomenus in older, and Thebes in later days, never allowed these subject towns to attain any importance or any political significance.
After some hours’ riding, we suddenly came upon a deep vista in the mountains on our left—such another vista as there is behind Coronea, but narrower, and inclosed on both sides with great and steep mountains. And here we found the cause of the cultivation of the upper plain—here was the town of Lebadea (Livádia), famed of old for the august oracle of Trophonius—in later days the Turkish capital of the province surrounding. To this the roads of all the neighborhood converge, and from this a small force can easily command the deep gorges and high mountain passes which lead through Delphi to the port of Kirrha. Even now there is more life in Livádia than in most Greek towns. All the wool of the country is brought in and sold there, and, with the aid of their great water power, they have a considerable factory, where the wool is spun and woven into stuff. A large and beautifully clear river comes down the gorge above the town—or rather the gorge in which the town lies—and tumbles in great falls between the streets and under the houses, which have wooden [pg 252]balconies, like Swiss châlets, built over the stream. The whole aspect of the town was not unlike a Swiss town; indeed, all the features of the upland country are ever reminding the traveller of his Swiss experience.
But the people are widely different. It was a great saint’s day, and all the streets were crowded with people from many miles round. As we noted in all Greek towns, except Arachova, the women were not to be seen in any numbers. They do not walk about the streets except for some special ceremony or amusement. But no women’s costume is required to lend brightness to the coloring of the scene; for here every man had his fustanella or kilt of dazzling white, his gray or puce embroidered waistcoat, his great white sleeves, and his scarlet skull-cap, with its blue tassel. Nothing can be imagined brighter than a dense crowd in this dress. They were all much excited at the arrival of strangers, and crowded around us without the least idea or care about being thought obtrusive. The simple Greek peasant thinks it his right to make aloud what observations he chooses upon any stranger, and has not the smallest idea of the politeness of reticence on such occasions.
We were received most hospitably by the medical officer of the district, who had an amiable young wife, speaking Greek only, and a lively old mother-in-law, living, as usual, permanently in the house, [pg 253]to prevent the young lady from being lonely. Like all the richer Greeks in country parts, they ate nothing till twelve, when they had a sort of early dinner called breakfast, and then dined again at half-past eight in the evening. This arrangement gave us more than enough time to look about the town when our day’s ride was over; so we went, first of all, to see the site of Trophonius’s oracle.
As the gorge becomes narrower, there is, on the right side, a small cave, from which a sacred stream flows to join the larger river. Here numerous square panels cut into the rock to hold votive tablets, now gone, indicate a sacred place, to which pilgrims came to offer prayers for aid, and thanksgiving for success. The actual seat of the oracle is not certain, and is supposed to be some cave or aperture now covered by the Turkish fort on the rock immediately above; but the whole glen, with its beetling sides, its rushing river, and its cavernous vaulting, seems the very home and preserve of superstition. We followed the windings of the defile, jumping from rock to rock up the river bed, and were soon able to bathe beyond the observation of all the crowding boys, who, like the boys of any other town, could not satisfy their curiosity at strangeness of face and costume. As we went on for some miles, the country began to open, and to show us a bleak and solitary mountain region, where the chains of Helicon and Parnassus join, and shut out the sea of [pg 254]Corinth from Bœotia by a great bar some thirty miles wide. Not a sound could be heard in this wild loneliness, save the metallic pipe of a water ouzel by the river, and the scream of hawks about their nests, far up on the face of the cliffs.
As the evening was closing in we began to retrace our steps, when we saw in two or three places scarlet caps over the rocks, and swarthy faces peering down upon us with signs and shouts. Though nothing could have been more suspicious in such a country, I cannot say that we felt the least uneasiness, and we continued our way without regarding them. They kept watching us from the heights, and when at last we descended nearer to the town, they came and made signs, and spoke very new Greek, to the effect that they had been out scouring the country for us, and that they had been very uneasy about our safety. This was indeed the case; our excellent Greek companion, who felt responsible to the Greek Government for our safety, and who had stayed behind in Livádia to make arrangements, had become so uneasy that he had sent out the police to scour the country. So we were brought in with triumph by a large escort of idlers and officials, and presently sat down to dinner at the fashionable hour, though in anything but fashionable dress. The entertainment would have been as excellent as even the intentions of our host, had not our attention been foolishly distracted by bugs walking up the table-cloth. It is, [pg 255]indeed, but a small and ignoble insect, yet it produces a wonderful effect upon the mind; for it inspires the most ordinary man with the gift of prophecy: it carries him away even from the pleasures of a fair repast into the hours of night and mystery, when all his wisdom and all his might will not save him from the persistent skirmishing of his irreconcilable foe.
It may be here worth giving a word of encouragement to the sensitive student whom these hints are apt to deter from venturing into the wilds of Greece. In spite of frequent starvation, both for want of food and for want of eatable food; in spite of frequent sleeplessness and even severe exercise at night, owing to the excess of insect population;102 such is the lightness and clearness of the air, such the exhilarating effect of great natural beauty, and of solitary wandering, free and unshackled, across the wild tracts of valley, wood, and mountain, that fatigue is an almost impossible feeling. Eight or ten hours’ riding every day, which in other country and other air would have been almost unendurable, was here but the natural exercise which any ordinary man may conveniently take. It cannot be denied that the dis[pg 256]comforts of Greek travelling are very great, but with good temper and patience they can all be borne; and when they are over they form a pleasant feature in the recollections of a glorious time. Besides, these discomforts are only the really classical mode of travelling. Dionysus, in Aristophanes’s Frogs, asks, especially about the inns, the very questions which we often put to our guide; and if his slave carried for him not only ordinary baggage, but also his bed and bedding, so nowadays there are many khans (inns) where the traveller cannot lie down—I was going to say to rest—except on his own rugs.
The next day was occupied in a tour across the plain to Orchomenus, then to Chæronea, and back to Livádia in the evening, so as to start from thence for the passes to Delphi. Our ride was, as it were, round an isosceles triangle, beginning with the right base angle, going to Orchomenus north-east as the vertex, then to Chæronea at the left base angle, and home again over the high spurs of mountain which protrude into the plain between the two base angles of our triangle. For about a mile, as we rode out of Livádia, a wretched road of little rough paving-stones tormented us—the remains of Turkish engineering, when Livádia was their capital. Patches of this work are still to be found in curious isolation over the mountains, to the great distress of both mules and riders; for the stones are very small and [pg 257]pointed, or, where they have been worn smooth, exceedingly slippery. But we soon got away into deep rich meadows upon the low level of the country adjoining the lake, where we found again the same infinitely various insect life which I have already described. A bright merry Greek boy, in full dress (for it was again a holiday), followed in attendance on each mule or pony, and nothing could be more picturesque than the cavalcade, going in Indian file through the long grass, among the gay wild flowers, especially when some creek or rivulet made our course to wind about, and so brought the long line of figures into more varied grouping. As for the weather, it was so uniformly splendid that we almost forgot to notice it. Indeed, strangers justly remark what large conversation it affords us in Ireland, for there it is a matter of constant uncertainty, and requires forethought and conjecture. During my first journey in Greece, in the months of April, May, and June, there was nothing to be said, except that we saw one heavy shower at Athens, and two hours’ rain in Arcadia, and that the temperature was not excessively hot. I have had similar experiences in March and April during three other sojourns in the country.
In two or three hours we arrived at the site of old Orchomenus, of late called Scripou, but now reverting, like all Greek towns, to its original name. There is a mere hamlet, some dozen houses, at the [pg 258]place, which is close to the stone bridge built over the Kephissus—the Bœotian Kephissus—at this place. This river appears to be the main feeder of the Copaic lake, coming down, as we saw it, muddy and cold with snow-water from the heights of Parnassus. It runs very rapidly, like the Iser at Munich, and is at Orchomenus about double the size of that river. Of the so-called treasure-house of the Minyæ, nothing remains but the stone doorposts and the huge block lying across them; and even these are almost imbedded in earth. It was the most disappointing ruin I had seen in Greece, for it is always quoted with the treasure-house of Atreus at Mycenæ as one of the great specimens of prehistoric building. It is not so interesting in any sense as the corresponding raths in Ireland. Indeed, but for Pausanias’s description, it would, I think, have excited but little attention.
The subsequent excavation of it by Dr. Schliemann yielded but poor results. The building had fallen in but a few years ago. A handsome ceiling pattern, to which a curious parallel was afterward found at Tiryns, and some pottery, was all that rewarded the explorer.
On the hill above are the well-preserved remains of the small Acropolis, of which the stones are so carefully cut that it looks at first sight modern, then too good for modern work, but in no case polygonal, as are the walls of the hill city which it protected. [pg 259]There is a remarkable tower built on the highest point of the hill, with a very perfect staircase up to it. The whole of the work is very like the work of Eleutheræ, and seems to be of the best period of Greek wall-building. Nothing surprises the traveller in Greece more than the number of these splendid hill-forts, or town-fortresses, which are never noticed by the historians as anything remarkable—in fact, the art and the habit of fortifying must have been so universal that it excited no comment. This strikes us all the more when so reticent a writer as Thucydides, who seldom gives us anything but war or politics, goes out of his way to describe the wall-building of the Peiræus. He evidently contrasts it with the hurried and irregular construction of the city walls, into which even tombstones were built; but if we did not study the remains still common in Greece, we might imagine that the use of square hewn stones, the absence of mortar and rubble, and the clamping with lead and iron were exceptional, whereas that sort of building is the most usual sort in Greece. The walls of the Peiræus cannot even have been the earliest specimen, for the great portal at Mycenæ, though somewhat rougher and more huge in execution, is on the same principle. The only peculiarity of these walls may have been their height and width, and upon that point it is not easy to get any monumental evidence now. The walls of the Peiræus have disap[pg 260]peared completely, though the foundations are still traceable; others have stood, but perhaps on account of their lesser height.
In a large and hospitable monastery we found the well which Pausanias describes as close beside the shrine of the Graces, and here we partook of breakfast, attended by our muleteers, who always accompany their employer into the reception-room of his host, and look on at meat, ready to attend, and always joining if possible in the conversation at table. Some excellent specimens of old Greek pottery were shown us in the monastery, apparently, though not ostensibly, for sale, there being a law prohibiting the sale of antiquities to foreigners, or for exportation. In their chapel the monks pointed out to us some fragments of marble pillars, and one or two inscriptions—in which I was since informed that I might have found a real live digamma, if I had carefully examined them. The digamma is now common enough at Olympia and elsewhere. I saw it best, along with the koph, which is, I suppose, much rarer, in the splendid bronze plates containing Locrian inscriptions, which are in the possession of Mr. Taylor’s heirs at Corfu. These plates have been ably commented on, with facsimile drawings of the inscriptions, by a Greek writer, G. N. Ecnomides (Corfu, 1850, and Athens, 1869).
It was on our way up the valley to Chæronea, along the rapid stream of the Kephissus, that we [pg 261]came, in a little deserted church, upon one of the most remarkable extant specimens of a peculiar epoch in Greek art. As usual, it was set up in the dark, and we were repeatedly obliged to entreat the natives to clear the door, through which alone we could obtain any light to see the work. It is a funeral stele, not unlike the celebrated stele and its relief at Athens, which is inscribed as the stele of Aristion, and dates from the time of the Persian wars. The work before us was inscribed as the work of Anxenor the Naxian—an artist otherwise unknown to us; but the style and finish are very remarkable, and more perfect than the stele of Aristion. It is a relief carved on an upright slab of gray Bœotian marble—I should say about four feet in height—and representing a bearded man wrapped in a cloak, resting on a long stick propped under his arm,103 with his legs awkwardly crossed, and offering a large grasshopper to a dog sitting before him. The hair and beard are conventionally curled, the whole effect being very like an Assyrian relief; but this is the case with all the older Greek sculpture, which may have started in Ionia by an impulse from the far east. The occurrence of the dog, a feature which strikes us frequently in the later Attic tombs, supports what I had long since inferred from stray hints in Greek literature, that dogs among the old Greeks, [pg 262]as well as the modern, were held in the highest esteem as the friends and companions of man. This curious monument of early Greek art was lying hidden in an obscure and out-of-the-way corner of Greece; isolated, too, and with little of antiquarian interest in its immediate neighborhood.104 On my second visit (1884), I found a cast of it in the Ministry of Public Instruction at Athens. On my third I found the original removed to a prominent place in the National Museum at Athens, where the traveller may now study it at his ease.
The great value of these reliefs consists (apart from their artistic value) in their undoubted genuineness. For we know that in later days, both in Greece and Italy, a sort of pre-Raphaelite taste sprang up among amateurs, who admired and preferred the stiff awkward groping after nature to the symmetry and grace of perfect art. Pausanias, for example, speaks with enthusiasm of these antique statues and carvings, and generally mentions them first, as of most importance. Thus, after describing various archaic works on the Acropolis of Athens, he adds, “But whoever places works made with artistic skill before those which come under the designation of archaic, may, if he likes, admire the [pg 263]following.”105 As a natural result, a fashion came in of imitating them, and we have, especially in Italy, many statues in this style which seem certainly to be modern imitations, and not even Greek copies of old Greek originals. But these imitations are so well done, and so equalized by lapse of centuries with the real antiques, that though there are scholars who profess to distinguish infallibly the archaistic, as they call it, from the archaic, it is sometimes a very difficult task, and about many of them there is doubt and debate.
But here at Orchomenus—a country which was so decayed as to lose almost all its population two centuries before Christ, where no amateurs of art would stay, and where Plutarch was, as it were, the last remains in his town of literature and respectability—here there is no danger whatever of finding this spurious work; and thus here, as indeed all through Greece, archaic work is thoroughly trustworthy. But the unfortunate law of the land not often violated, as in this case—which insists upon all these relics, however isolated, being kept in their place of finding—is the mightiest obstacle to the study of this interesting phase of culture, and we must await the completion of the Hellenic Society’s gallery of photographs, from which we can make reliable observations. The Greeks will tell you that the pres[pg 264]ervation of antiquities in their original place, first of all, gives the inhabitants an interest in them, which might be true but that there are very often no inhabitants: and next, that it encourages travelling in the country. This also is true; but surely the making of decent roads, and the establishing of decent inns, and easy communications, would do infinitely more, and are indeed necessary, before the second stimulus can have its effect.
Not far from this little church and its famous relief, we came in sight of the Acropolis (called Petrachus) of Chæronea, and soon arrived at the town, so celebrated through all antiquity, in spite of its moderate size. The fort on the rock is, indeed, very large—perhaps the largest we saw in Greece, with the exception of that at Corinth; and, as usual in these buildings, follows the steepest escarpments, raising the natural precipice by a coping of beautifully hewn and fitted square stones. The artificial wall is now not more than four or five feet high; but even so, there are only two or three places where it is at all easy to enter the inclosure, which is fully a mile of straggling outline on the rock. The view from this fort is very interesting. Commanding all the plain of the lake Copais, it also gives a view of the sides of Parnassus, and of the passes into Phocis, which cannot be seen till the traveller reaches this point. Above all, it looks out upon the gap of Elatea, about ten miles north-west, through which [pg 265]the eye catches glimpses of secluded valleys in northern Phocis.
This gap is, indeed, the true key of this side of Bœotia, and is no mere mountain pass, but a narrow plain, perhaps a mile wide, which must have afforded an easy transit for an army. But the mountains on both sides are tolerably steep, and so it was necessary to have a fortified town, as Elatea was, to keep the command of the place. As we gazed through the narrow plain, the famous passage of Demosthenes came home to us, which begins: “It was evening, and the news came in that Philip had seized, and was fortifying Elatea.” The nearest point of observation or of control was the rock of Chæronea, and we may say with certainty that it was from here the first breathless messenger set out with the terrible news for Thebes and Athens. This, too, was evidently the pass through which Agesilaus came on his return from Asia, and on his way to Coronea, where his great battle was fought, close by the older trophy of the Theban victory over Tolmides.106
Having surveyed the view, and fatigued ourselves greatly by our climb in the summer heat, we descended to the old theatre, cut into the rock where it ascends from the village—the smallest and steepest Greek theatre I had ever seen. Open-air buildings always look small for their size, but most of those erected by the Greeks and Romans were so [pg 266]large that nothing could dwarf them. Even the theatre of such a town as Taormina in Sicily—which can never have been populous—is, in addition to its enchanting site, a very majestic structure; I will not speak of the immense theatres of Megalopolis and of Syracuse. But this little place at Chæronea, so steep that the spectators sat immediately over one another, looked almost amusing when cut in the solid rock, after the manner of its enormous brethren. The guide-book says it is one of the most ancient theatres in Greece—why, I know not. It seems to me rather to have been made when the population was diminishing; and any rudeness which it shows arises more from economy, than want of experience.
But, small as it is, there are few more interesting places than the only spot in Chæronea where we can say with certainty that here Plutarch sat—a man who, living in an age of decadence, and in a country village of no importance, has, nevertheless, as much as any of his countrymen, made his genius felt over all the world. Apart from the great stores of history brought together in his Lives, which, indeed, are frequently our only source for the inner life and spirit of the greatest Greeks of the greatest epochs—the moral effect of these splendid biographies, both on poets and politicians through Europe, can hardly be overrated. From Shakespeare and Alfieri to the wild savages of the French Revolution, [pg 267]all kinds of patriots and eager spirits have been fascinated and excited by these wonderful portraits. Alfieri even speaks of them as the great discovery of his life, which he read with tears and with rage. There is no writer of the Silver Age who gives us anything like so much valuable information about early authors, and their general character. More especially the inner history of Athens in her best days, the personal features of Pericles, Cimon, Alcibiades, Nicias, as well as of Themistocles and of Aristides, would be completely, or almost completely, lost, if this often despised but invaluable man had not written for our learning. And he is still more essentially a good man—a man better and purer than most Greeks—another Herodotus in fairness and in honesty. A poor man reputed by his neighbors “a terrible historian,” remarked to a friend of mine, who used to lend him Scott’s novels, “that Scott was a great historian,” and being asked his reason, replied, “He makes you to love your kind.” There is a deep significance in this vague utterance, in which it may be eminently applied to Plutarch. “Here in Chæronea,” says Pausanias, “they prepare unguents from the flowers of the lily and the rose, the narcissus and the iris. These are balm for the pains of men. Nay, that which is made of roses, if old wooden images are anointed with it, saves them, too, from decay.” He little knew how eternally true his words would be, for [pg 268]though the rose and the iris grow wild and neglected and yield not now their perfume to soothe the ills of men, yet from Chæronea comes the eternal balm of Plutarch’s wisdom, to sustain the oppressed, to strengthen the patriot, to purify with nobler pity and terror the dross of human meanness. Nay, even the crumbling images of his gods arrest their decay by the spirit of his morals, and revive their beauty in the sweetness of his simple faith.
There is a rich supply of water, bursting from a beautiful old Greek fountain, near the theatre—indeed, the water supply all over this country is excellent. There is also an old marble throne in the church, about which they have many legends, but no history. The costume of the girls, whom we saw working in small irrigated plots near the houses, was beautiful beyond that in other Greek towns. They wore splendid necklaces of gold and silver coins, which lay like corselets of chain mail on the neck and breast; and the dull but rich embroidery of wool on their aprons and bodices was quite beyond what we could describe, but not beyond our highest appreciation.
As the day was waning, we were obliged to leave this most interesting place, and set off again on our ride home to Lebadea. We had not gone a mile from the town when we came upon the most pathetic and striking of all the remains in that country—the famous lion of Chæronea, which the Thebans set up [pg 269]to their countrymen who had fallen in the great battle against Philip of Macedon, in the year 338 B. C. We had been looking out for this monument, and on our way to Chæronea, seeing a lofty mound in the plain, rode up to it eagerly, hoping to find the lion. But we were disappointed, and were told that the history of this larger mound was completely unknown. It evidently commemorates some battle, and is a mound over the dead, but whether those slain by Sylla, or those with Tolmides, or those of some far older conflict, no man can say. It seems, however, perfectly undisturbed, and grown about with deep weeds and brushwood, so that a hardy excavator might find it worth opening, and, perhaps, coins might tell us of its age.
The mound where we found the lion was much humbler and smaller; in fact, hardly a mound at all, but a rising knoll, with its centre hollowed out, and in the hollow the broken pieces of the famous lion. It had sunk, we are told, into its mound of earth, originally intended to raise it above the road beside, and lay there in perfect safety till the present century, when four English travellers claim to have discovered it (June 3, 1818). They tried to get it removed, and, failing in their efforts, covered up the pieces carefully.107 Since that time they seem to have [pg 270]lain undisturbed, and are still in such a state that a few days’ labor, and a few pounds of expense, would restore the work. It is of bluish-gray stone—they call it Bœotian marble or limestone—and is a work of the highest and purest merit. The lion is of that Asiatic type which has little or no mane, and seemed to us couchant or sitting in attitude, with the head not lowered to the forepaws, but thrown up.108 The expression of the face is ideally perfect—rage, grief, and shame are expressed in it, together with that [pg 271]noble calmness and moderation which characterize all good Greek art. The object of the monument is quite plain, without reading the affecting, though simple, notice of Pausanias: “On the approach to the city,” says he, “is the tomb of the Bœotians who fell in the battle with Philip. It has no inscription; but the image of a lion is placed upon it as an emblem of the spirit of these men. The inscription has been omitted—I suppose, because the gods had willed that their fortune should not be equal to their valor.” So, then, we have here, in what may fairly be called a dated record, one of the finest specimens of the sepulchral monuments of the best age of Greece. It is very much to be regretted that this splendid figure is not put together and photographed. Nothing would be more instructive than a comparison with the finest of modern monuments—Thorwaldsen’s Lion at Lucerne—the work, too, of the only modern sculptor who can for one moment be ranked beside the ancient Greeks. But the lion of Chæronea now owes its existence to the accident that no neighboring peasant has in old times lacked stones for a wall, or for a ditch; and when Greece awoke to a sense of the preciousness of these things, it might have been gone, or dashed into useless fragments.
As we saw it, on a splendid afternoon in June, it lay in perfect repose and oblivion, the fragments large enough to tell the contour and the style; in [pg 272]the mouth of the upturned head wild bees were busy at their work, and the honeycomb was there between its teeth. The Hebrew story came fresh upon us, and we longed for the strength which tore the lion of old, to gather the limbs and heal the rents of his marble fellow. The lion of Samson was a riddle to the Philistines which they could not solve; and so I suppose this lion of Chæronea was a riddle, too—a deeper riddle to better men—why the patriot should fall before the despot, and the culture of Greece before the Cæsarism of Macedonia. Even within Greece there is no want of remarkable parallels. This, the last effulgence of the setting sun of Greek liberty, was commemorated by a lion and a mound, as the opening struggle at Marathon was also marked by a lion and a mound. At Marathon the mound is there and the lion gone—at Chæronea, the lion is there and the mound gone.109 But doubtless the earlier lion was far inferior in expression and in beauty, and was a small object on so large a tomb. Later men made the sepulchre itself of less importance, and the poetic element more prominent; and perhaps this very fact tells the secret of their [pg 273]failure, and why the refined sculptor of the lion was no equal in politics and war to the rude carver of the relief of the Marathonian warrior.
These and such like thoughts throng the mind of him who sits beside the solitary tomb; and it may be said in favor of its remoteness and difficulty of access, that in solitude there is at least peace and leisure, and the scattered objects of interest are scanned with affection and with care.
The pilgrim who went of old from Athens to the shrine of Delphi, to consult the august oracle on some great difficulty in his own life, or some great danger to his country, saw before him the giant Parnassus as his goal, as soon as he reached the passes of Cithæron. For two or three days he went across Bœotia with this great landmark before him, but it was not till he reached Lebadea that he found himself leaving level roads, and entering defiles, where great cliffs and narrow glens gave to his mind a tone of superstition and of awe which ever dwelt around that wild and dangerous country. Starting from Lebadea, or, by another road, from Chæronea, he must go about half-way round Parnassus, from its east to its south-west aspect; and this can only be done by threading his way along torrents and precipices, mounting steep ascents, and descending into wild glens. This journey among the Alps of Phocis is perhaps the most beautiful in all Greece—certainly, with the exception of the journey from Olympia over Mount Erymanthus, [pg 275]the most beautiful of all the routes known to me through the highlands.
The old priests of Delphi, who were the first systematic road-builders among the Greeks, had made a careful way from Thebes into Phocis, for the use of the pilgrims thronging to their shrine. It appears that, by way of saving the expense of paving it all, they laid down or macadamized in some way a double wheel-track or fixed track, upon which chariots could run with safety; but we hear from the oldest times of the unpleasantness of two vehicles meeting on this road, and of the disputes that took place as to which of them should turn aside into the deep mud.110 We may infer from this that the lot of pedestrians cannot have been very pleasant. Now, all these difficulties have vanished with the road itself. There are nothing but faintly-marked bridle-paths, often indicated only by the solitary telegraph wires, which reach over the mountains, apparently for no purpose whatever; and all travellers must ride or walk in single file, if they will not force their way through covert and forest.
These wild mountains do not strike the mind with the painful feeling of desolation which is produced by the abandoned plains. At no time can they have supported a large population, and we may suppose [pg 276]that they never contained more than scattered hamlets of shepherds, living, as they now do, in deep brown hairy tents of hides at night, and wandering along the glens by day, in charge of great herds of quaint-looking goats with long beards and spiral horns. The dull tinkling of their bells, and the eagle’s yelp, are the only sounds which give variety to the rushing of the wind through the dark pines, and the falling of the torrent from the rocks. It is a country in which the consciousness grows not of solitude, but of smallness—a land of huge form and feature, meet dwelling for mysterious god and gloomy giant, but far too huge for mortal man.
Our way lay, not directly for Delphi, but for the curious town of Arachova, which is perched on the summit of precipices some 4000 feet or more above the level of the sea. We rode from eight in the morning till the evening twilight to reach this place, and all the day through scenes which gave us each moment some new delight and some new astonishment, but which could only be described by a painter, not by any pages of writing, however poetical or picturesque. It is the misfortune of such descriptions on paper, that the writer alone has the remembered image clear before him; no reader can grasp the detail and frame for himself a faithful picture.
We felt that we were approaching Arachova when we saw the steep slopes above and below our path planted with vineyards, and here and there [pg 277]a woman in her gay dress working on the steep incline, where a stumble would have sent her rolling many hundreds of feet into some torrent bed. At one particular spot, where the way turned round a projecting shoulder, we were struck by seeing at the same time, to the north, the blue sea under Eubœa, and, at the south, the Gulf of Corinth where it nears Delphi—both mere patches among the mountains, like the little tarns among the Irish moors, but both great historic waters—old high roads of commerce and of culture. From any of the summits such a view from sea to sea would not be the least remarkable; but it was interesting and unusual to see it from a mule’s back on one of the high roads of the country. A moment later, the houses of Arachova itself attracted all our attention, lying as they did over against us, and quite near, but with a great gulf between us and them, which we were fortunately able to ride round. The town has a curious, scattered appearance, with interrupted streets and uncertain plan, owing not only to the extraordinary nature of the site, but to the fact that huge boulders, I might say rocks, have been shaken loose by earthquakes from above, and have come tumbling into the middle of the town. They crush a house or two, and stand there in the street. Presently some one comes and builds a house up against the side of this rock; others venture in their turn, and so the town recovers itself, till another earth[pg 278]quake makes another rent. Since 1870 these earthquakes have been very frequent. At first they were very severe, and ruined almost all the town; but now they are very slight, and so frequent that we were assured that they happened at some hour every day. I believe this is practically true, though we, who arrived in the evening and left early next day, were not so fortunate as to feel the shock ourselves. But the whole region of Parnassus shows great scars and wounds from this awful natural scourge.
Arachova is remarkable as being one of the very few towns of Greece of any note which is not built upon a celebrated site. Everywhere the modern Greek town is a mere survival of the old. I remember but three exceptions—Arachova, Hydra, and Tripolitza,111 and of these the latter two arose from special and known circumstances. The prosperity of Arachova is not so easily explicable. In spite of its wonderful and curious site, the trade of the place is, for a Greek town, very considerable. The wines which they make are of the highest repute, though to us the free use of resin makes them all equally worthless. Besides, they work beautifully patterned rugs of divers-colored wool—rugs which are sold at high prices all over the Greek waters. They are used in boats, on saddles, on beds—in fact for every possible rough use. The patterns are stitched on [pg 279]with wool, and the widths sewn together in the same way, with effective rudeness.
We had an excellent opportunity of seeing all this sort of work, as we found the town in some excitement at an approaching marriage; and we went to see the bride, whom we found in a spacious room, with low wooden rafters, in the company of a large party of her companions, and surrounded on all sides by her dowry, which consisted, in eastern fashion, almost altogether of “changes of raiment.” All round the room these rich woollen rugs lay in perfect piles, and from the low ceiling hung in great numbers her future husband’s white petticoats; for in that country, as everywhere in Greece, the men wear the petticoats. The company were all dressed in full costume—white sleeves, embroidered woollen aprons, gold and silver coins about the neck, and a bright red loose belt worn low round the figure. To complete the picture, each girl had in her left hand a distaff, swathed about with rich, soft, white wool, from which her right hand and spindle were deftly spinning thread, as she walked about the room admiring the trousseau, and joking with us and with her companions. The beauty of the Arachovite women is as remarkable as the strength and longevity of the men, nor do I know any mountaineers equal to them, except those of some of the valleys in the Tyrol. But there, as is well known, beauty is chiefly confined to the men; at Arachova it seemed [pg 280]fairly distributed. We did not see any one girl of singular beauty. The average was remarkably high; and, as might be expected, they were not only very fair, but of that peculiarly clear complexion, and vigorous frame, which seem almost always to be found when a good climate and clear air are combined with a very high level above the sea.
We saw, moreover, what they called a Pyrrhic dance, which consisted of a string of people, hand-in-hand, standing in the form of a spiral, and moving rhythmically, while the outside member of the train performed curious and violent gymnastics. The music consisted in the squealing of a horrible clarionette, accompanied by the beating of a large drum. The clarionette-player had a leathern bandage about his mouth, like that which we see in the ancient reliefs and pictures of double-flute-players. According as each principal dancer was fatigued, he passed off from the end of the spiral line, and stuck a silver coin between the cap and forehead of the player. The whole motion was extremely slow throughout the party—the centre of the coil, which is often occupied by little children, hardly moving at all, and paying little attention to the dance.
In general, the Greek music which I heard—dance music, and occasional shepherds’ songs—was nothing but a wild and monotonous chant, with two or three shakes and ornaments on a high note, running down to a long drone note at the end. They repeat these [pg 281]phrases, which are not more than three bars long, over and over again, with some slight variations of appoggiatura. I was told by competent people at Athens, that all this was not properly Greek, but Turkish, and that the long slavery of the Greeks had completely destroyed the traditions of their ancient music. Though this seemed certainly true of the music which I heard, I very much doubt that any ancient feature so general can have completely disappeared. When there are national songs of a distinctly Greek character transmitted all through the Slavish and Turkish periods, it seems odd that they should be sung altogether to foreign music. Without more careful investigation I should be slow to decide upon such a question. Unfortunately, our specimens of old Greek music are very few, and probably very insignificant, all the extant works on music by the ancients being devoted to theoretical questions, which are very difficult and not very profitable. To this subject I have devoted a special discussion in my Social Life in Greece, with what illustration it is now possible to obtain.
The inhabitants wished us to stay with them some days, which would have given us an opportunity of witnessing the wedding ceremony, and also of making excursions to the snowy tops of Mount Parnassus. But we had had enough of that sort of amusement in a climb up Mount Ætna, a short time before, and the five hours’ toiling on the snow in a thick fog was [pg 282]too fresh in our memory. Beside, we were bound to catch the weekly steamer at Itea, as the port of Delphi is now called; and eight additional days, or rather nights, in this country might have been too much for the wildest enthusiast. For the wooden houses of Arachova are beyond all other structures infested with life, and not even the balconies in the frosty night air were safe from insect invasions.
We therefore started early in the morning, and kept along the sides of precipices on our way to the oracle of Delphi. It is not wonderful that the Arachovites should be famous for superstitions and legends, and that the inquirers into the remnants of old Greek beliefs in the present day have found their richest harvest in this mountain fastness, where there seems no reason why any belief should ever die out. More especially the faith in the terrible god of the dead, Charos, who represents not only the old Charon, but Pluto also, is here very deep-seated, and many Arachovite songs and ballads speak of his awful and relentless visits. Longevity is so usual, and old age is so hale and green in these Alps, that the death of the young comes home with far greater force and pathos here than in unhealthy or immoral societies, and thus the inroads of Charos are not borne in sullen silence, but lamented with impatient complaints.
At eleven o’clock we came, in the fierce summer sun, to the ascent into the “rocky Pytho,” where [pg 283]the terraced city of old had once harbored pilgrims from every corner of the civilized world. The ordinary histories which we read give us but little idea of the mighty influence of this place in the age of its faith. We hear of its being consulted by Crœsus, or by the Romans, and we appreciate its renown for sanctity; but until of very late years there was small account taken of its political and commercial importance. The date of its first rise is hidden in remote antiquity. As the story goes, a shepherd, who fed his flocks here, observed the goats, when they approached the vaporous cavern, springing about madly, as if under some strange influence. He came up to see the place himself, and was immediately seized with the prophetic frenzy. So the reputation of the place spread, first around the neighboring pastoral tribes, and then to a wider sphere.
This very possible origin, however, does not distinctly assert what may certainly be inferred—I mean the existence of some older and ruder worship, before the worship of Apollo was here established. Two arguments make this clear. In the first place, old legends consistently speak of the arrival of Apollo here; of his conflict with the powers of earth, under the form of the dragon Python; of his having undergone purification for its murder, and having been formally ceded possession by its older owners. This distinct allusion [pg 284]to a previous cult, and one even hostile to Apollo, but ultimately reconciled with him, is sustained by the fact that Pausanias describes in the Temple of Apollo itself two old stones—one apparently an aërolith—which were treated with great respect, anointed daily with oil, and adorned with garlands of flowers. One of these was to the Greeks the centre of the earth (ὀμφαλός), and beside it were two eagles in gold, to remind one of the legend that Zeus had started two eagles from the ends of the earth, and that they met at this exact spot midway. These old and shapeless stories, which occur elsewhere in Greek temples, point to the older stage of fetish worship, before the Greeks had risen to the art of carving a statue, or of worshipping the unseen deity without a gross material symbol.
The researches of M. A. Lebègue, at Delos, have given us another instance. He found that the old shrine of Apollo has been made in imitation of a cave, and that in the recess of the shrine, made with large slabs of stone forming a gable over a natural fissure in the rock, there was an ancient, rude, sacred stone, on which were remaining the feet of the statue, which had afterward been added to give dignity to the improved worship. M. Lebègue’s work at Delos has been completed and superseded by M. Homolle.
Homer speaks in the Iliad of the great wealth of the Pythian shrine; and the Hymn to the Pythian [pg 285]Apollo implies that its early transformations were completed. But seeing that the god Apollo, though originally an Ionian god, as at Delos, was here worshipped distinctively by the Dorians, we shall not err if we consider the rise of the oracle to greatness coincident with the rise and spreading of the Dorians over Greece—an event to which we can assign no date, but which, in legend, comes next after the Trojan War, and seems near the threshold of real history. The absolute submission of the Spartans, when they rose to power, confirmed the authority of the shrine, and so it gradually came to be the Metropolitan See, so to speak, in the Greek religious world. It seems that the influence of this oracle was, in old days, always used in the direction of good morals and of enlightenment. When neighboring states were likely to quarrel, the oracle was often a peacemaker, and even acted as arbitrator—a course usual in earlier Greek history, and in which they anticipated the best results of our nineteenth-century culture. So again, when excessive population demanded an outlet, the oracle was consulted as to the proper place, and the proper leader to be selected; and all the splendid commercial development of the sixth century B. C., though not produced, was at least sanctioned and promoted, by the Delphic Oracle. Again, in determining the worship of other gods and the founding of new services to great public benefactors, the oracle [pg 286]seems to have been the acknowledged authority—thus taking the place of the Vatican in Catholic Europe, as the source and origin of new dogmas, and of new worships and formularies.
At the same time the treasure-house of the shrine was the largest and safest of banks, where both individuals and states might deposit treasure—nay, even the states seem to have had separate chambers—and from which they could also borrow money, at fair interest, in times of war and public distress. The rock of Delphi was held to be the navel or centre of the earth’s surface, and certainly in a social and religious sense this was the case for all the Greek world. Thus the priests were informed, by perpetual visitors from all sides, of all the last news—of the general aspect of politics—of the new developments of trade—of the latest discoveries in outlying and barbarous lands—and were accordingly able, without any genius or supernatural inspiration, to form their judgments upon wider experience and better knowledge than anybody else could command. This advice, which was really sound and well-considered, was given to people who took it to be divine, and acted upon it with implicit faith and zeal. Of course, the result was in general satisfactory; and so even individuals made use of it as a sort of high confessional, to which they came as pilgrims at some important crisis of their life; and finding by the response that the god seemed to [pg 287]know all about the affairs of every city, went away fully satisfied with the divine authority of the oracle.
This great and deserved general reputation was not affected by occasional rumors of bribed responses or of dishonest priestesses. Such things must happen everywhere; but, as Lord Bacon long ago observed, human nature is more affected by affirmatives than negatives—that is to say, a few cases of brilliantly accurate prophecy will outweigh a great number of cases of doubtful advices or even of acknowledged corruption. So the power of the Popes has lasted in some respects undiminished to the present day, and they are still regarded by many as infallible, even though historians have published many dreadful lives of some of them, and branded them as men of worse than average morals.
The greatness and the national importance of the Delphic Oracle lasted from the invasion of the Dorians down to the Persian War, certainly more than three centuries; when the part which it took in the latter struggle gave it a blow from which it seems never to have recovered. When the invasion of Xerxes was approaching, the Delphic priests informed accurately of the immense power of the Persians, made up their minds that all resistance was useless, and counselled absolute submission or flight. According to all human probabilities they were right, for nothing but a series of blunders could pos[pg 288]sibly have checked the Persians. But surely the god ought to have inspired them to utter patriotic responses, and thus to save themselves in case of such a miracle as actually happened. I cannot but suspect that they hoped to gain the favor of Xerxes, and remain under him what they had hitherto been, a wealthy and protected corporation.112 Perhaps they even saw too far, and perceived that the success of the Greeks would bring the Ionic states into prominence; but we must not credit them with too much. The result, however, told greatly against them. The Greeks won, and the Athenians got the lead,—the Athenians, who very soon developed a secular and worldly spirit, and who were by no means awed by responses which had threatened them and weakened their hands, when their own courage and skill had brought them deliverance. And we can imagine even Themistocles, not to speak of Pericles and Antiphon, looking upon the oracles as little more than a convenient way of persuading the mob to follow a policy which it was not able to understand. The miraculous defeat of the Persians by the god, who repeated his wonders when the Gauls attacked his shrine, should be read in Herodotus and in Pausanias.
[pg 289]It is with some sadness that we turn from the splendid past of Delphi to its miserable present. The sacred cleft in the earth, from which rose the cold vapor that intoxicated the priestess, is blocked up and lost. As it lay within the shrine of the temple, it may have been filled by the falling ruins, or still more completely destroyed by an earthquake. But, apart from these natural possibilities, we are told that the Christians, after the oracle was closed by Theodosius, filled up and effaced the traces of what they thought a special entrance to hell, where communications had been held with the Evil One.
The three great fountains or springs of the town are still in existence. The first and most striking of these bursts out from between the Phædriades—two shining peaks, which stand up one thousand feet over Delphi, and so close together as to leave only a dark and mysterious gorge or fissure, not twenty feet wide, intervening. The aspect of these twin peaks, so celebrated by the Greek poets, with their splendid stream, the Castalian fount, bursting from between them, is indeed grand and startling. A great square bath is cut in the rock, just at the mouth of the gorge; but the earthquake of 1870, which made such havoc of Arachova, has been busy here also, and has tumbled a huge block into this bath, thus covering the old work, as well as several votive niches cut into the rocky wall. This was the [pg 290]place where arriving pilgrims purified themselves with hallowed water.
In the great old days the oracle gave responses on the seventh of each month, and even then only when the sacrifices were favorable. If the victims were not perfectly without blemish, they could not be offered; if they did not tremble all over when brought to the altar, the day was thought unpropitious. The inquirers entered the great temple in festal dress, with olive garlands and stemmata, or fillets of wool, led by the ὅσιοι, or sacred guardians of the temple, who were five of the noblest citizens of Delphi. The priestesses, on the contrary—there were three at the same time, who officiated in turn—though Delphians also, were not frequently of noble family. When the priestess was placed on the sacred tripod by the chief interpreter, or προφήτης, over the exhalations, she was seized with frenzy—often so violent that the ὅσιοι were known to have fled in terror, and she herself to have become insensible, and to have died. Her ravings in this state were carefully noted down, and then reduced to sense, and of old always to verses, by the attendant priests, who of course interpreted disconnected words with a special reference to the politics or other circumstances of the inquirers.
This was done in early days with perfect good faith. During the decline of religion there were of course many cases of corruption and of partiality, [pg 291]and, indeed, the whole style and dignity of the oracle gradually decayed with the decay of Greece itself. Presently, when crowds came, and states were extremely jealous of the right of precedence in inquiring of the god, it was found expedient to give responses every day, and this was done to private individuals, and even for trivial reasons. So also the priests no longer took the trouble to shape the responses into verse; and when the Phocians in the sacred war (355–46 B. C.) seized the treasures, and applied to military purposes some ten thousand talents, the shrine suffered a blow from which it never recovered. Still, the quantity of splendid votive offerings which were not convertible into ready money made it the most interesting place in Greece, next to Athens and Olympia, for lovers of the arts: and the statues, tripods, and other curiosities described there by Pausanias, give a wonderful picture of the mighty oracle even in its decay.113 The greatest sculptors, painters, and architects had lavished their labor upon the buildings. Though Nero had carried off five hundred bronze statues, the traveller estimated the remaining works of art at three thousand, and yet these seem to have been almost all statues, and not to have included tripods, pictures, and other gifts. The Emperor Constantine brought away (330 A. D.) a great number to adorn [pg 292]his capital—more especially the bronze tripod, formed of three intertwined serpents, with their heads supporting a golden vessel, which Pausanias, the Spartan King, had dedicated as the leader of Greece to commemorate the great victory over Xerxes. This tripod (which was found standing in its place at Constantinople by our soldiers in 1852) contains the list of states according to the account of Herodotus, who describes its dedication, and who saw it at Delphi.
When the Emperor Julian, the last great champion of paganism, desired to consult the oracle on his way to Persia, in 362 A. D., it replied: “Tell the king the fair-wrought dwelling has sunk into the dust: Phœbus has no longer a shelter or a prophetic laurel, neither has he a speaking fountain; the fair water is dried up.” Thus did the shrine confess, even to the ardent and hopeful Julian, that its power had passed away, and, as it were by a supreme effort, declared to him the great truth which he refused to see—that paganism was gone for ever, and a new faith had arisen for the nations of the Roman Empire.
About the year 390, Theodosius took the god at his word, and closed the oracle finally. The temple—with its cella of 100 feet—with its Doric and Ionic pillars—with its splendid sculptures upon the pediments—sank into decay and ruin. The walls and porticos tumbled down the precipitous cliffs; the [pg 293]prophetic chasm was filled up by the Christians with fear and horror; and, as if to foil any attempt to recover from ruins the site and plan, the modern Greeks built their miserable hamlet of Castri upon the spot; so that it is only among the walls and foundations laid bare by earthquakes that we can now seek for marble capitals and votive inscriptions.
One or two features are still unchanged. The three fine springs, to which Delphi doubtless owed its first selection for human habitation, are still there—Castalia, of which we have spoken; Cassotis, which was led artificially into the very shrine of the god; and Delphussa, which was, I suppose, the water used for secular purposes by the inhabitants. The stadium, too, a tiny racecourse high above the town, in the only place where they could find a level 150 yards, is still visible; and we see at once what the importance of games must have been at a sacred Greek town, when such a thing as a stadium should be attempted here.114 The earliest competitions had been in music—that is, in playing the lyre, in recitation, and probably in the composition of original poems; but presently the physical contests of Olympia began to outdo the splendor of Delphi. Moreover, the Spartans would not compete in minstrelsy, which they liked and criticised, but left to professional artists. Accordingly, the priests of [pg 294]Delphi were too practical a corporation not to widen the programme of their games, and Pindar has celebrated the Pythian victors as hardly second to those at the grand festival of Elis.
There is yet one more element in the varied greatness of Delphi. It was here that the religious federation of Greece—the Amphictyony of which we hear so often—held its meetings alternately with the meetings at the springs of Thermopylæ. When I stood high up on the stadium at Delphi, the great scene described by the orator Æschines came fresh upon me, when he looked upon the sacred plain of Krissa, and called all the worshippers of the god to clear it of the sacrilegious Amphissians, who had covered it with cattle and growing crops. The plain, he says, is easily surveyed from the place of meeting—a statement which shows that the latter cannot have been in the town of Delphi: for a great shoulder of the mountain effectually hides the whole plain from every part of the town.
The Pylæa, or place of assembly, was, however, outside, and precisely at the other side of this huge shoulder, so that what Æschines says is true; but it is not true, as any ordinary student imagines, that he was standing in Delphi itself. He was, in fact, completely out of sight of the town, though not a mile from it. There is no more common error than this among our mere book scholars—and I daresay there are not many who realize the existence of this [pg 295]suburban Pylæa, and its situation close to, but invisible from, Delphi. It certainly never came home to me till I began to look for the spot from which Æschines might have delivered his famous extempore address.
When we rode round to the real place we found his words amply verified. Far below us stretched the plain from Amphissa to Kirrha, at right angles with the gorge above which Delphi is situated. The river-courses of the Delphic springs form, in fact, a regular zigzag. When they tumble from their great elevation on the rocks into the valley, they join the Pleistus, running at right angles toward the west; when this torrent has reached the plain, it turns again due south, and flows into the sea at the Gulf of Kirrha. Thus, looking from Pylæa, you see the upper part of the plain, and the gorge to the north-west of it, where Amphissa occupies its place in a position similar to the mouth of the gorge of Delphi. The southern rocks of the gorge over against Delphi shut out the sea and the actual bay; but a large rich tract, covered with olive-woods, and medlars, and oleanders, stretches out beneath the eye—verily a plain worth fighting for, and a possession still more precious, when it commanded the approach of pilgrims from the sea; for the harbor duties and tolls of Kirrha were once a large revenue, and their loss threatened the oracle with poverty. This levying of tolls on the pilgrims to Delphi be[pg 296]came quite a national question in the days of Solon; it resulted in a great war, led by the Amphictyonic Council. Kirrha was ruined, and its land dedicated to the god, in order to protect the approach from future difficulties. So this great tract was, I suppose, devoted to pasture, and the priests probably levied a rent from the people who choose to graze their cattle on the sacred plain. The Amphissians, who lived, not at the seaside, but at the mountain side of the plain, were never accused of robbing or taxing the pilgrims; but having acquired for many generations the right of pasture, they advanced to the idea of tilling their pastures, and were undisturbed in this privilege till the mischievous orator, Æschines, for his own purposes, fired the Delphians with rage, kindled a war, and so brought Philip into Greece. These are the historical circumstances which should be called to mind by the traveller, who rides down the steep descent from Delphi to the plain, and then turns through the olive-woods to the high road to Itea, as the port of Delphi is now called.
A few hours brought us to the neighborhood of the sea. The most curious feature of this valley, as we saw it, was a long string of camels tied together, and led by a small and shabby donkey. Our mules and horses turned with astonishment to examine these animals, which have survived here only, though introduced by the Turks into many parts of Greece.
[pg 297]The port of Itea is one of the stations at which the Greek coasting steamers now call, and, accordingly, the place is growing in importance. If a day’s delay were allowed, to let tourists ride up to the old seat of the oracle, and if the service were better regulated so as to compete in convenience with the train journey from Patras to Athens, I suppose no traveller going to Greece would choose any other route. For he would see all the beautiful coasts of Acarnania and Ætolia on the one side, and of Achaia on the other; he could then take Delphi on his way, and would land again at Corinth. Here again, a day, or part of a day, should be allowed to see the splendid Acro-Corinthus, of which more in another chapter. The traveller might thus reach Athens with an important part of Greece already visited, and have more leisure to turn his attention to the monuments and curiosities of that city and of Attica. It is worth while to suggest these things, because most men who go to Greece find, as I did, that, with some better previous information, they could have economized both time and money. I can also advise that the coasting steamer should be abandoned at Itea, from which the traveller can easily get horses to Delphi and Arachova, and from thence to Chæronea, Lebadea, and through Thebes to Athens. So he would arrive there by a land tour, which would make him acquainted with all Bœotia. He might next go by train from Athens to Corinth [pg 298](stopping on the way at Megara), and then into the Peloponnese; going first to Mycenæ and Argos, and then taking another steamer round to Sparta, and riding up through Laconia, Arcadia, and Elis, so as to come out at Patras, or by boat to Zante, where the steamer homeward would pick him up. Of course, special excursions through Attica, and to the islands, are not included in this sketch, as they can easily be made from Athens.
But surely, no voyage in Greece can be called complete which does not include a visit to the famous shrine of Delphi, where the wildness and ruggedness of nature naturally suggest the powers of earth and air, that sway our lives unseen—where the quaking soil and the rent rocks speak a strength above the strength of mortal man—and where a great faith, based upon his deepest hopes and fears, gained a moral empire over all the nation, and exercised it for centuries, to the purifying and the ennobling of the Hellenic race. The oracle is long silent, the priestess forgotten, the temple not only ruined, but destroyed; and yet the grand responses of that noble shrine are not forgotten, nor are they dead. For they have contributed their part and added their element to the general advancement of the world, and to the emancipation of man from immorality and superstition into the true liberty of a good and enlightened conscience.