Vistas in Sicily Part 6

Marvelous architects, those old fifth century Greeks! To give their low and heavy buildings greater charm than was possible with mere straight lines, they made their columns gently swelling; smaller at the top than at the bottom. At the corners of the edifice they even sloped them slightly inward. They bent the foundation upward a little in the middle, and did the same thing with the long line of the entablature above. Yet it would seem that they were given to gilding the lily. They covered the rich golden travertine of which the edifices were built with a thin coat of white stucco or mortar, upon which were painted striking ornaments in many brilliant colors. It is hard to believe that the temples when painted could have been as magnificent as they are to-day; yet they must have been--who are we to impugn Greek taste!

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Temple of Concord "was used in the Middle Ages as the Church of St. Gregory of the Turnips."]

The Temple of Concord, because of its use in the Middle Ages as the church of Saint Gregory of the Turnips, is one of the best preserved pagan buildings in existence, all of its thirty-four giant columns still standing. It makes a picture of beautiful and serene old age that loses nothing by comparison with the eternal youth of its surroundings.

House of peace it has been called, and house of peace it still is, after the storms and wars of more than fourteen centuries have ebbed and flowed about its ma.s.sive base.

The _custode_, a garrulous old soldier, insists on your instantly taking the view from the architrave above the cella, which really is magnificent. But you are not ready for that just yet. Why must these caretakers always tease you to do something when you don't want to!

Glimpsing the fat little red book in your pocket, he smiles sardonically. "Ha! You wish to be let alone?" he exclaims. "Ha! You believe the book of a German, not the word of a Sicilian. But does the book tell you the Christians who turned this temple into a church were the first Sicilians to embrace the Faith? No, _signore_--but you believe your German book. Very good, believe it!" and he stalks away, secure in his precious tradition.

From the Temple of Concord the road ascends gently, parallel to the ancient wall, until it reaches the southeastern angle of the precipitous plateau, occupied by the so-called Temple of Juno. Below it on the east flows the San Biagio, zigzagging in a southwesterly direction to join the Drago torrent, with which it enters the Mediterranean at the old harbor of Emporio. Perched upon this lofty cliff, nearly four hundred feet above the sea, the temple commands a wonderful view.

This structure is in far less perfect condition than the Temple of Concord, only twenty-five whole columns standing, while everywhere the mellow golden stonework is marked with peculiar dull, b.l.o.o.d.y stains supposed to be traces of the fire set by the Carthaginians in 406 B. C., in their endeavor to burn the city. The tradition seems to have little foundation in fact, for on other ruins, parts of the old Greek wall, and even on some of the rocks of the vicinity, the same strange stains are frequently visible, and appear to be a natural property of the stone, possibly due to its exposure to the weather.

Here I sent Alfonso away on an errand, and another small boy guide hung about us until we entered the holy of holies. Springing upon a shattered block of marble which he said had been the altar where the huge statue of Juno had once stood, he took an absurdly constrained position, and cried: "Look, _signore_--Juno stood here--just like me!"

One of the most alluring ruins is the fragment, called for want of a better name presumably, the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Embayed in a grove of olive and almond, resting upon a veritable carpet of flowers among which climb tangled vines, rise four stately columns, silhouetted sharply against the dazzling sky, and supporting a honey-colored fragment of entablature. And though the archaeologists declare the columns to have been taken from two different edifices and arbitrarily joined, this detracts not a whit from the grace and beauty of the restoration and its surroundings.

Olympian Jupiter it was who had--as befitted the king of the G.o.ds--the largest temple. Indeed, after the vast temple of Diana at Ephesus, this was the largest Greek shrine ever built. Now all there is to be seen is a vast formless heap of cut stones in a living sea of brilliant yellow bloom. Unafraid, these star-eyed flowerets lovingly enfold shattered column and pediment, creep up into the sacred close of the cella or sanctuary, and kiss the huge p.r.o.ne figure of one of the thirty-eight t.i.tanic Atlantides or caryatides, about twenty-five feet in height, which are believed to have supported the entablature. The colossal edifice measured about three hundred and seventy-two feet long, at least one hundred and eight-two wide, and probably about one hundred twenty high.

And these are not all, by any means. There are more ruins of temples, within and without the walls, more interesting to explore than to read about; there are Christian catacombs and tombs; the megalithic wall, and the Porta Aurea, the Golden Gate that looks straight out over the golden southern sea. And there are also some very interesting antiquities on view in the Museum--but beware the specious vendors of relics who hang around the temples and the hotels. The Greeks of twenty centuries ago did not stamp their products, "Made in Germany!"

All along the way are vast numbers of peculiar white lumps on gra.s.s and leaves and walls, clinging like burrs to even the fruit and treetrunks.

"They are snails, Excellency," explained Alfonso, "and very good to eat.

After it rains they grow big and fat. Then they are very sweet."

Springing down from the box, the child tore a fat snail from the wall, and hopping up again, cracked it open skillfully with his teeth, drew out and ate the quivering mollusc. Waving his hand toward some more large specimens on the wall, he asked: "Excellency would like some too?"

"Excellency has just had his luncheon," opportunely interposed the driver. "Snails are not good for dessert."

Within the acropolis again, we dismissed the landau out of pity for the wretched horses, and rambled about on foot. Before reaching the Cathedral we pa.s.sed Alfonso's home, where he introduced us to his family with all the eclat of a n.o.ble presenting friends at court; and poor as these Sicilians were, we found among them all--father, mother, aunt, cousin, three sisters and a brother--no lack of that inborn courtesy which distinguishes the Latin peasant.

Collectively the family showed us the church of Santa Maria dei Greci, in which are supposed to be incorporated the scanty remains of the princ.i.p.al sanctuary of either Zeus Atabyrius or Minerva, while some urchin, locked out and so deprived of all opportunity for tips, playfully stoned the church door. The Cathedral is more interesting, though the apse is over richly stuccoed, covered with scrolls and cherubs in gold and white. One of its chief treasures is a madonna, painted by Guido Reni, though not comparable to his best work. In the sacristy is a really fine old white marble sarcophagus of the Roman period, bearing reliefs of the myth of Hippolytus and Phaedra.

But nothing within is comparable to the view from one of the windows at the sunset hour. It recalls the Biblical prophecies of Canaan with the chalky roads for the milk, and the gold of the daisies, mustard and marigolds for the honey of this Promised Land. The chief charm of the scene as the hills lie weltering under the fading glory of the sinking sun are these same milky roads, flowing through the verdant swards and vales. In the background the ugly, prosaic sulphur pits, dumps and chimneys make splashes of harsh modern color in this world-old landscape. It is a scene unforgettable. Slowly, gently, the soft rosy-bluish evening haze creeps up the hillside; bit by bit the purple shadows deepen, the soft harmonies of tender green melt into the blur of the background, and only the creamy highways stand out distinct.

Not so very many years ago this entire region was unsafe because of the brigands. Now one may go anywhere about Girgenti with perfect security.

Nevertheless, a pair of Carabinieri--they always travel in pairs, by the way--gorgeous in all their glory of black and scarlet, with c.o.c.kaded c.o.c.ked hats, were always somewhere within range when we were outside the city proper. They seemed to take as keen an interest in the ruins as we did, though temples must have been an old story to them.

Alfonso spoke to one of these kindly familiars whom we pa.s.sed, struggling to make his greeting as careless as the familiar "h.e.l.lo!" of the American streets. Good humoredly the Carabiniero answered him, and as we went on, the boy remarked with innocent egotism: "You saw him, _signore_? He is my friend. You are with me, and he would let nothing happen to you. It is good to know the police--as I do!"

VIII

THE ROAD TO SYRACUSE

To the northwest of Girgenti the country is honeycombed with sulphur pits and it is not very hard to credit the ancient myth that the gates of Hades opened here. After the train leaves the trunkline of the railway at Aragona-Caldare, tunnels and sulphur mines make up most of the scenery. This entire district has a smitten look, and on the bleak rolling plains and rugged hills are dreary towns whose chief charm, as they flit past in a continuous gray motion picture, lies in their historical suggestions. The most important and flouris.h.i.+ng city we pa.s.s is Caltanisetta, the center of the sulphur industry, which produces more than half a million tons annually. The mines are most of them primitive in the extreme, and machinery is practically unknown, while in many of them fuel is so scarce and costly that the operators burn the raw sulphur itself in their _calcaroni_ or smelters.

Shortly before reaching Santa Catarina Xirbi, the junction town where the tracks join the Palermo line, we have our first glimpse of Mt. aetna, its snowy cap hanging in the distance like a low white cloud. Small gorges and tunnels follow in rapid succession, and the train pants upward in tortuous curves through the barren valleys, until we look up at Castrogiovanni, the Enna of the ancients. It lies in an almost perfect horseshoe on a precipitous rock, and so surrounded by nearly perpendicular approaches, so walled in by Nature with beetling crags, that none of its innumerable ancient besiegers was ever able to storm it. Treachery--and once starvation--did for it what armed a.s.sault never could. Livy rightly called it "a city inexpugnable," and it probably is so yet, for it has recently been strongly fortified after the most approved modern style. The ascent is by a road which--well, try it for yourself. But the town, once reached, pays for the climb in its magnificent views. It is the navel (_umbilicus Siciliae_) of Sicily, and from the loftiest tower of the former citadel there sweeps away a mountain cyclorama such as not even Switzerland can excel--aetna, peaks without number, range on range and tier on tier, melting into the haze of heaven. Towns, thousands of feet in the air, cling desperately to the steep, unfriendly sides, or perch precariously on the tops of needle-pointed mountains. And on the South, beyond hills and plain, dimples the ultramarine of the African sea.

For centuries before the adventurous Greeks colonized the hill, Enna was the princ.i.p.al home of a Sicilian G.o.ddess, the patron of natural fertility and of the harvest, whom the Greeks identified with their own Demeter, and the later Romans with Ceres. Not a stone of her temple is left, and we can do little more than speculate upon its site, said to have been where the old citadel now stands. About two hours to the south by carriage is that once lovely little lake of Pergusa, where Pluto met and straight-way stole the lovely Proserpina to be the queen of his dark realm. It was then a district so fair that Diodorus said the hounds often lost the scent of their quarry, so rich was the fragrance of the flowers. But alas! the spot is blasted now. Gone are the splendid shade trees in whose branches the singing messengers of spring carolled; gone all the beauty of Pergusa, now but a dirty little pond, where peasants steep their flax. But at least we can think of it still in Ovid's words: "A spot at the bottom of a shady vale, watered by the plenteous spray of a stream that falls from wooded heights; where Nature decks herself in all her varied hues, where the ground is beauteous, carpeted with flowers of many tints."

aetna appears again soon after the entrance to the valley of the Dittaino is pa.s.sed, and beckons with such insistence that the train hesitates only a moment--at the station for Valguarnera a.s.soro--right before the railway restaurant. It is a tumbledown little shack with a big sign: _Ristorante G. Galliano_. If you are on good enough terms with the Signor Conductor, he may wait long enough for you to have a sip of the excellent country wine and a taste of the "beautiful goat" the redoubtable Galliano purveys to such as can pay his very modest price. A few miles farther on is the station for Agira, which occupies the site of one of the very oldest Sikelian cities, lying back from the railroad, up in the hills. Later it was the birthplace of the historian Diodorus, who gives a picturesque account of his native village.

Half an hour later the railway emerges from the hills upon the plain of Catania--so productive of grain that from the very beginnings of local history it has been known as the granary of Sicily--and leaving the main line at Bicocca, puts Catania and the great volcano behind, heading southward for Syracuse. Fine crops appear around the famous Lake Lentini, Sicily's largest inland body of water, varying from about nine to twelve miles in circ.u.mference, according to the season. It is a dreary tarn, looking so like a big mud puddle or a meadow overflowed by stagnant salt water that it is easy to credit the tales of the mephitic vapors and exhalations and fevers which have made it the scourge of the neighborhood.

Evidently the Sicilian railroads provide no drinking water for the employes in wayside stations, for as we stopped the combination telegraph operator, baggage smasher, ticket agent and general utility man ran out to the locomotive and tapped the bra.s.s faucet in the tender for a drink. There is a big water-wheel a few miles farther on, arranged exactly like an Egyptian _sakiyeh_, and no doubt a survival of the Moorish wheel installed in that very well centuries ago. The apparatus is very simple. A horizontal wheel is geared loosely into a vertical one by big, clumsy wooden teeth. Over it projects an arm to which some patient draft animal is. .h.i.tched. A long gra.s.s rope carrying an endless series of pottery jars or buckets completes the outfit by running over the vertical wheel, and all the water that does not splash back into the well flows into an irrigating pool and the ditches. The mule who worked this particular wheel acted as if he too were a Moorish survival, unaccustomed to modern inventions. Anyway, he tried to bolt when the engine shrieked. His plunging blindfold gallop sent the water flying in all directions, giving his peasant master a much-needed bath and earning the poor beast a beating, the blows of which could be distinctly heard as the train sped on. Around a curve Mt. aetna appears again in all its majesty, filling up the entire background, looming more than twice as large as familiar Vesuvius. Its lower slopes are green and the upper reaches snow covered, split like a sore lip, with dark curves, queer b.u.mps and sharp little corners of uplifted skin. Above them poises the soft black, slightly indented cone, canopied by a ridiculous tuft of cottony smoke no bigger than a handful at such a distance.

Agnone is a hedge of yellow daisies, a deep pasture full of reddish brown kine, a farmhouse of stone with thatched shelters for the animals in the midst of rich cultivated lands. A mile away gleams the sea, a dull turquoise green flecked with windy ripples and dotted here and yon with white--"Silver sails come out of the west." The tall timothy on both sides of the track, and other fields planted with oats and spiky cactus, seem mere picturesque settings for countless fiery poppies.

Sheep by the hundred bolt in terror from the wild shrieks of the locomotive, preferring to run straight ahead on the track as long as they can possibly keep out of the way of the engine. Bold headlands here and there lower their stubborn crests for a few yards to give the flying train instantaneous vistas of wet sand gleaming far below, like blades of golden sickles edged with silver filigree.

In rapid succession these rugged scenes slip behind, and we run along the sh.o.r.e past salt farms and their windmills; then a boldly jutting island, brave with forts and churches, rising out of the sea like Venice--Augusta the picturesque, modern survivor of Xiphonia, scene of many a fierce battle and b.l.o.o.d.y conquest.

Augusta was founded in a most picturesque way by Emperor Frederick II.

The town of Centuripe up in the hills, having roused the imperial ire by its sedition, was effectually razed. Then Frederick punished its people still further by driving them all into this spot and commanding them to stay there and be good. Perhaps its stormy birth in a measure accounts for Augusta's stormy history. The most spectacular affair it ever witnessed was the tremendous naval duel between the fleets of France and Holland in 1676, when Admiral Duquesne defeated the Dutch Admiral De Ruyter, who afterward died of his wounds in nearby Syracuse. Following the coast closely, we flit swiftly past the Hyblaean Hills, eager to stop for some of their historic honey, but relentlessly carried onward by the insensate iron horse, that knows not nor cares for the sweets that rival the product of Hymettus.

All the way from Augusta the track borders the sh.o.r.e of the Bay of Megara, where anch.o.r.ed Nicias, Alcibiades and Lamachus, the Athenian generals who came to attack Syracuse in 415 B. C. with a fleet so vast that men paled merely to see it whiten the horizon. But to-day, instead of the tents and sails of invading hosts, you see evaporating-tanks and windmills, and snowy piles of salt dotting the rugged sh.o.r.e in serried ranks. Rus.h.i.+ng across the neck of the promontory of Thapsus--now called Magnisi--we skirt Trogilus Bay, where the conquering fleet of Marcellus the Roman lay two centuries after the Athenian _debacle_, cross the old Dionysian wall, sweep around the bold headland, and stop at Syracuse.

Don't be disappointed in Syracuse by what you see of the dirty little provincial town that yawns sleepily at you between the railroad station and your hotel. Suspend judgment until you reach the Greek Theater, and from the top row of seats carven into the eternal rock, look out over the gracious panorama below. Beyond the spa.r.s.ely settled vineyards and groves covering what was once the Greater Syracuse, lies the city of to-day on Ortygia, an oyster-sh.e.l.l full-heaped with pearls, in a sapphire setting of twin harbors and glittering sands. The alchemy of golden suns.h.i.+ne trans.m.u.tes whitewashed tenements into Greek palaces, fis.h.i.+ng luggers into stately galleys of war, and prosaic modern peasants into the soldiers and citizens of a happier and more stirring day. And as you stand breathless with the wonder of it, history unfolds itself in memory, with something at every step to drive that history home, be it Sikel, Greek, Roman, Saracen or Norman. The ruins of the mighty fortress atop the inland hill breathe of the Age of Tyrants, and to follow the herculean walls of Dionysius around the deserted plateau fills one with awe and wonder anew, for the work seemingly has been performed by a race of giants. Below, yawning in the seacoast of Achradina, dim caverns invite the explorer's rowboat. There are the Street of Tombs to search for relics--though most likely you will find only a few scattered bones; the Castello Maniaces on the tip of Ortygia, full of Byzantine memories; charming walks to and through the quarries, the famous _Latomie_; the astonis.h.i.+ng catacombs and the Anapo trip. A score of other delightful excursions the visitor can take, providing he is not driven forward by the exigencies of a cut-and-dried itinerary, that wickedest and most specious of all excuses for not seeing enough of a country really to enjoy it!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "From the top row of seats in the Greek Theater look out over the gracious panorama below"--Syracuse.]

The mother colony was founded in 734 B. C. on the little island of Ortygia, named for the quail the Greeks found there in great coveys.

From its very beginning the benignant G.o.ds smiled upon Syracuse, and it prospered so rapidly that within seventy years it was founding colonies of its own. Under the tyrant Gelon, son-in-law of the great and good Theron of Akragas, and later practically co-ruler with him of all Greek Sicily, the era of h.e.l.lenic supremacy began, with Syracuse in the van of progress. Indeed, Syracuse was of such paramount importance that sometimes its history is mistaken for the history of Sicily. Tyrants good and bad rose and fell; democracy overthrew tyranny, and tyranny overthrew democracy. Demagogues--the word means literally "popular leaders"--rose to stir the people to action against the government or the tyrant--and sometimes threatened to become tyrants themselves.

Seeing how easy it was to sway the rabble with hot words, men of every cla.s.s began to practice public speaking; no young man's education was complete without it; and oratory first became an art in Sicily.

From the island of Ortygia the city spread up the hilly mainland in four new boroughs--Achradina, Tyche, Neapolis and Epipolai--making a mighty pentapolis; a community which was not only the foremost of all the Greek cities in the island, but much the greatest in physical extent of all the Greek cities in the world, and for a time the greatest city of Europe as well as of Greece. This naturally made Athens jealous, and in 415 B. C. the pent up force of Attic wrath loosed itself in a tremendous blast against Syracuse. But Athens' traditional enemy, Sparta, sent the island city help, and the Athenian arms went down in one of the most appalling defeats of all history. After this vivid chapter, governments and tyrants rose and fell again as before, deliverers came and conquered in the name of the people, and pa.s.sed, and at last the young giant Rome stepped in with brazen legionaries and put a period to the brilliant story.

To-day, as in the beginning, the city is on Ortygia, the houses crowding together behind the old walls like birds on a roost, and you wonder why, when there was such ample s.p.a.ce on the sh.o.r.e, the people huddled together so. The streets, moreover, are amazingly s.h.i.+fty. On foot you set out to explore the town and encircle it by keeping as close to the walls as possible--a matter of a mere hour and a half, with plenty of time to idle by the way. According to the maps this should be no great feat, but try as you may, it seems impossible to lay a true course, and becoming discouraged after slipping off one street four or five times, you abandon yourself to the vagaries of these astonis.h.i.+ng high and byways--they fade into one another without sign or signal, they vanish on front doorsteps, end after half a block in blind alleys, terminate in bastions which lead one to suppose that the sea must be below on the other side, only to turn up somewhere else in most mysterious fas.h.i.+on, and not always running in the same direction as their beginning.

There is little that is up-to-date about Syracuse. To a great extent it lives in medieval seclusion and its people are simple, genial folk so wholly out of touch with the world that whatever is essential for comfort or convenience is proper in public. On one street, for instance, I saw the economical wife of a small shopkeeper wash her baby's only frock--a slim little red calico--and b.u.t.ton it to dry over the bulgy part of a lamppost, which looked choked and uneasy as the tiny slip fluttered in the wind. Meantime the _piccola signorita_ disported herself amiably in the street--and all her frolicking in the dust could not hurt what she wore.

Near the center of the city stands the Cathedral, a queer combination of battlemented Moorish castle, ancient Greek temple and modern Christian structure. Nearly thirteen centuries ago Bishop Zosimus of Syracuse began the work of turning the ruined temple--built early in the sixth century B. C.--into a Christian church, filling in the peristyle with a solid wall in which some of the Doric columns are still visible. The Saracen invaders turned it into a mosque in the year 878, and for two centuries _muezzins_ chanted the names of Allah and Muhammad from its walls. With the Norman conquest in the eleventh century the building again became a Christian house of wors.h.i.+p, and though the earthquake of 1693 destroyed a part of it, the damage was soon repaired and it has ever since remained the diocesan church of Syracuse. Like many of the often restored cathedrals of Meridional Italy, its interior is barren and uninteresting, but its exterior, with Greek entablature and columns, Saracenic frieze and battlements, and hideous Renaissance facade and portico is unique among Christian churches.

There seems some doubt among the archaeologists as to the deity wors.h.i.+ped here in pagan days. It was formerly ascribed to Diana, but the authorities now generally believe it was the shrine of Minerva, though Cicero's glowing description of the Temple of Minerva (Athena) places that structure in a location apparently different from the site of the present Duomo. The orator says he saw a temple on whose apex was "...a great brazen s.h.i.+eld overlaid with gold, which served as a landmark to sailors on entering the port. The folding doors of ivory and gold were also adorned with a marvelous golden head of Medusa." Most of these magnificent treasures were stolen. The Roman praetor Gaius Verres, a gentleman with a highly cultivated taste in works of art, stripped Syracuse--and all Sicily, in fact--absolutely bare of everything the Roman armies had overlooked. And when at last he was brought to book for his crimes, he fled into voluntary exile with his plunder rather than face the scathing invective of Cicero.

The archaeologists' dubiety regarding the name of the temple has no room in the minds of the street arabs, however, who vociferously proclaim it the "_Tempio di Diana_," and will not suffer you to leave until you have paid for this volunteered information.

Diagonally across the Piazza Duomo is the externally unimposing Museum.

Its collection, however, is both interesting and intelligently arranged.

It covers the civilization of Sicily from the bone and flint implements of the extinct prehistoric Sikels, through the transitional Greek period of the metopes from Selinus, to the splendid coins and vases of the city's supremacy as an h.e.l.lenic center of culture and art. In fact, the profile of Arethusa, on coins signed by Evanetus and Kimon, is considered the most exquisite Greek head known to us. In those days coin-makers were artists of the foremost rank, accustomed to signing their work, like painters and sculptors, and these two, Evanetus and Kimon, have left us a n.o.ble set of coins in which the Greek conception of divinity appears at its best. The most beautiful marble is a Venus Anadyomene, discovered in 1804, and preserved almost intact save for the head and one arm.

Not very far away there are ruins of another and very remarkable Greek temple, formerly called for Diana, but now generally considered to have been dedicated to Apollo--the archaeologists seem to have a grudge against the virgin huntress! There is not much else that is Greek, but as you wander through the narrow streets, scattered bits of mediaeval architecture appear in the most unexpected places, like the splendid Sicilian-Gothic and Saracenic windows of the Montalto and Lanza palaces, all the richer and more wonderful because of the surroundings from which they look down upon the squalid streets and out-at-heel people. The later Palazzo Munic.i.p.ale, or City Hall, is a fine example of the architectural spirit of the seventeenth century, its type that of a private palace, a baronial mansion rather than a public building.

During this period great attention was paid to ornamental ironwork for decorative purposes upon the facades of buildings; and all about us are delicate and satisfying window balconies, some of which plainly testify to their Spanish origin.