Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece Part 64

Now you know, my friend, that I cannot measure anything, and of the beautiful, I am simply such a measure as a white line is of chalk; for almost all young persons are alike beautiful in my eyes.

But at that moment, when I saw him coming in, I must admit that I was quite astonished at his beauty and stature; all the world seemed to be enamoured of him; amazement and confusion reigned when he entered; and a troop of lovers followed him. That grown-up men like ourselves should have been affected in this way was not surprising, but I observed that there was the same feeling among the boys; all of them, down to the very least child, turned and looked at him as if he had been a statue.

Chaerephon called me and said: 'What do you think of him, Socrates? Has he not a beautiful face?'

'That he has indeed,' I said.

'But you would think nothing of his face,' he replied, 'if you could see his naked form: he is absolutely perfect.'

[1] I quote from Professor Jowett's translation.

This Charmides is a true Greek of the perfect type. Not only is he the most beautiful of Athenian youths; he is also temperate, modest, and subject to the laws of moral health. His very beauty is a harmony of well-developed faculties in which the mind and body are at one. How a young Greek managed to preserve this balance in the midst of the admiring crowds described by Socrates is a marvel.

Modern conventions unfit our minds for realising the conditions under which he had to live. Yet it is indisputable that Plato has strained no point in the animated picture he presents of the palaestra. Aristophanes and Xenophon bear him out in all the details of the scene. We have to imagine a totally different system of social morality from ours, with virtues and vices, temptations and triumphs, unknown to our young men. The next scene from the 'Lysis'

introduces us to another wrestling-ground in the neighbourhood of Athens. Here Socrates meets with Hippothales, who is a devoted lover but a bad poet. Hippothales asks the philosopher's advice as to the best method of pleasing the boy Lysis:--

'Will you tell me by what words or actions I may become endeared to my love?'

'That is not easy to determine,' I said; 'but if you will bring your love to me, and will let me talk with him, I may perhaps be able to show you how to converse with him, instead of singing and reciting in the fas.h.i.+on of which you are accused.'

'There will be no difficulty in bringing him,' he replied; 'if you will only go into the house with Ctesippus, and sit down and talk, he will come of himself; for he is fond of listening, Socrates. And as this is the festival of the Hermaea, there is no separation of young men and boys, but they are all mixed up together. He will be sure to come. But if he does not come, Ctesippus, with whom he is familiar, and whose relation Menexenus is, his great friend, shall call him.'

'That will be the way,' I said. Thereupon I and Ctesippus went towards the Palaestra, and the rest followed.

Upon entering we found that the boys had just been sacrificing; and this part of the festival was nearly come to an end. They were all in white array, and games at dice were going on among them. Most of them were in the outer court amusing themselves; but some were in a corner of the Apodyterium playing at odd-and-even with a number of dice, which they took out of little wicker baskets. There was also a circle of lookers-on, one of whom was Lysis. He was standing among the other boys and youths, having a crown upon his head, like a fair vision, and not less worthy of praise for his goodness than for his beauty. We left them, and went over to the opposite side of the room, where we found a quiet place, and sat down; and then we began to talk. This attracted Lysis, who was constantly turning round to look at us--he was evidently wanting to come to us. For a time he hesitated and had not the courage to come alone; but first of all, his friend Menexenus came in out of the court in the interval of his play, and when he saw Ctesippus and myself, came and sat by us; and then Lysis, seeing him, followed and sat down with him; and the other boys joined. I should observe that Hippothales, when he saw the crowd, got behind them, where he thought that he would be out of sight of Lysis, lest he should anger him; and there he stood and listened.

Enough has been quoted to show that beneath the porches of a Greek palaestra, among the youths of Athens, who wrote no exercises in dead languages, and thought chiefly of attaining to perfect manhood by the harmonious exercise of mind and body in temperate leisure, divine philosophy must indeed have been charming both to teachers and to learners:--

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets Where no crude surfeit reigns.

There are no remains above ground of the buildings which made the Attic gymnasia splendid. Nor are there in Athens itself many statues of the n.o.ble human beings who paced their porches and reclined beneath their shade. The galleries of Italy and the verses of the poets can alone help us to repeople the Academy with its mixed mult.i.tude of athletes and of sages. The language of Simaetha, in Theocritus, brings the younger men before us: their cheeks are yellower than helichrysus with the down of youth, and their b.r.e.a.s.t.s s.h.i.+ne brighter far than the moon, as though they had but lately left the 'fair toils of the wrestling-ground.' Upon some of the monumental tablets exposed in the burying-ground of Cerameicus and in the Theseum may be seen portraits of Athenian citizens. A young man holding a bird, with a boy beside him who carries a lamp or strigil; a youth, naked, and sc.r.a.ping himself after the games; a boy taking leave with clasped hands of his mother, while a dog leaps up to fawn upon his knee; a wine-party; a soul in Charon's boat; a husband parting from his wife: such are the simple subjects of these monuments; and under each is written [Greek: CHReSTE CHAIRE]--Friend, farewell! The tombs of the women are equally plain in character: a nurse brings a baby to its mother, or a slave helps her mistress at the toilette table. There is nothing to suggest either the gloom of the grave or the hope of heaven in any of these sculptures. Their symbolism, if it at all exist, is of the least mysterious kind. Our attention is rather fixed upon the commonest affairs of life than on the secrets of death.

As we wander through the ruins of Athens, among temples which are all but perfect, and gardens which still keep their ancient greenery, we must perforce reflect how all true knowledge of Greek life has pa.s.sed away. To picture to ourselves its details, so as to become quite familiar with the way in which an Athenian thought and felt and occupied his time, is impossible. Such books as the 'Charicles' of Becker or Wieland's 'Agathon' only increase our sense of hopelessness, by showing that neither a scholar's learning nor a poet's fancy can pierce the mists of antiquity. We know that it was a strange and fascinating life, pa.s.sed for the most part beneath the public eye, at leisure, without the society of free women, without what we call a home, in constant exercise of body and mind, in the duties of the law-courts and the a.s.sembly, in the toils of the camp and the perils of the sea, in the amus.e.m.e.nts of the wrestling-ground and the theatre, in sportful study and strenuous play. We also know that the citizens of Athens, bred up under the peculiar conditions of this artificial life, became impa.s.sioned lovers of their city;[1]

that the greatest generals, statesmen, poets, orators, artists, historians, and philosophers that the world can boast, were produced in the short s.p.a.ce of a century and a half by a city numbering about 20,000 burghers. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say with the author of 'Hereditary Genius,' that the population of Athens, taken as a whole, was as superior to us as we are to the Australian savages. Long and earnest, therefore, should be our hesitation before we condemn as pernicious or unprofitable the instincts and the customs of such a race.

[1] [Greek: Ten tes poleos dunamin kath' hemeran ergo theomenous kai erastas gignomenous autes].--Thuc. ii. 43.

The permanence of strongly marked features in the landscape of Greece, and the small scale of the whole country, add a vivid charm to the scenery of its great events. In the harbour of Peiraeus we can scarcely fail to picture to ourselves the pomp which went forth to Sicily that solemn morning, when the whole host prayed together and made libations at the signal of the herald's trumpet. The nation of athletes and artists and philosophers were embarked on what seemed to some a holiday excursion, and for others bid fair to realise unbounded dreams of ambition or avarice. Only a few were heavy-hearted; but the heaviest of all was the general who had vainly dissuaded his countrymen from the endeavour, and fruitlessly refused the command thrust upon him. That was 'the morning of a mighty day, a day of crisis' for the destinies of Athens. Of all that mult.i.tude, how few would come again; of the empire which they made so manifest in its pride of men and arms, how little but a shadow would be left, when war and fever and the quarries of Syracuse had done their fore-appointed work! Yet no commotion of the elements, no eclipse or authentic oracle from heaven, was interposed between the arrogance of Athens and sure-coming Nemesis. The sun shone, and the waves laughed, smitten by the oars of galleys racing to aegina. Meanwhile Zeus from the watchtower of the world held up the scales of fate, and the balance of Athens was wavering to its fall.

A few strokes of the oar carry us away from Peiraeus to a scene fraught with far more thrilling memories. That little point of rock emergent from the water between Salamis and the mainland, bare, insignificant, and void of honour among islands to the natural eye, is Psyttaleia. A strange tightening at the heart a.s.sails us when we approach the centre-point of the most memorable battlefield of history. It was again 'the morning of a mighty day, a day of crisis'

for the destinies, not of Athens alone, but of humanity, when the Persian fleet, after rowing all night up and down the channel between Salamis and the sh.o.r.e, beheld the face of Phoebus flash from behind Pentelicus and flood the Acropolis of Athens with fire.

The Peiraeius recalls a crisis in the world's drama whereof the great actors were unconscious: fair winds and sunny waves bore light hearts to Sicily. But Psyttaleia brings before us the heroism of a handful of men, who knew that the supreme hour of ruin or of victory for their nation and themselves had come. Terrible therefore was the energy with which they prayed and joined their paean to the trumpet-blast of dawn that blazed upon them from the Attic hills.

And this time Zeus, when he heard their cry, saw the scale of h.e.l.las mount to the stars. Let aeschylus tell the tale; for he was there. A Persian is giving an account of the defeat of Salamis to Atossa:--

The whole disaster, O my queen, began With some fell fiend or devil,--I know not whence: For thus it was; from the Athenian host A man of h.e.l.las came to thy son, Xerxes, Saying that when black night shall fall in gloom, The h.e.l.lenes would no longer stay, but leap Each on the benches of his bark, and save Hither and thither by stolen flight their lives.

He, when he heard thereof, discerning not The h.e.l.lene's craft, no, nor the spite of heaven, To all his captains gives this edict forth: When as the sun doth cease to light the world, And darkness holds the precincts of the sky, They should dispose the fleet in three close ranks, To guard the outlets and the water-ways; Others should compa.s.s Ajax' isle around: Seeing that if the h.e.l.lenes 'scaped grim death By finding for their s.h.i.+ps some privy exit, It was ordained that all should lose their heads.

So spake he, led by a mad mind astray, Nor knew what should be by the will of heaven.

They, like well-ordered va.s.sals, with a.s.sent Straightway prepared their food, and every sailor Fitted his oar-blade to the steady rowlock.

But when the sunlight waned and night apace Descended, every man who swayed an oar Went to the boats with him who wielded armour.

Then through the s.h.i.+p's length rank cheered rank in concert, Sailing as each was set in order due: And all night long the tyrants of the s.h.i.+ps Kept the whole navy cruising to and fro.

Night pa.s.sed: yet never did the host of h.e.l.lene At any point attempt their stolen sally; Until at length, when day with her white steeds Forth s.h.i.+ning, held the whole world under sway.

First from the h.e.l.lenes with a loud clear cry Song-like, a shout made music, and therewith The echo of the rocky isle rang back Shrill triumph: but the vast barbarian host Shorn of their hope trembled; for not for flight The h.e.l.lenes hymned their solemn paean then-- Nay, rather as for battle with stout heart.

Then too the trumpet speaking fired our foes, And with a sudden rush of oars in time They smote the deep sea at that clarion cry; And in a moment you might see them all.

The right wing in due order well arrayed First took the lead; then came the serried squadron Swelling against us, and from many voices One cry arose: Ho! sons of h.e.l.lenes, up!

Now free your fatherland, now free your sons, Your wives, the fanes of your ancestral G.o.ds, Your fathers' tombs! Now fight you for your all.

Yea, and from our side brake an answering hum Of Persian voices. Then, no more delay, s.h.i.+p upon s.h.i.+p her beak of biting bra.s.s Struck stoutly. 'Twas a bark, I ween, of h.e.l.las First charged, das.h.i.+ng from a Tyrrhenian galleon Her prow-gear; then ran hull on hull pell-mell.

At first the torrent of the Persian navy Bore up: but when the mult.i.tude of s.h.i.+ps Were straitly jammed, and none could help another, Huddling with brazen-mouthed beaks they clashed And brake their serried banks of oars together; Nor were the h.e.l.lenes slow or slack to muster And pound them in a circle. Then s.h.i.+ps' hulks Floated keel upwards, and the sea was covered With s.h.i.+pwreck mult.i.tudinous and with slaughter.

The sh.o.r.es and jutting reefs were full of corpses.

In indiscriminate rout, with straining oar, The whole barbarian navy turned and fled.

Our foes, like men 'mid tunnies, draughts of fishes, With splintered oars and spokes of shattered spars Kept striking, grinding, smas.h.i.+ng us: shrill shrieks With groanings mingled held the hollow deep, Till night's dark eye set limit to the slaughter.

But for our ma.s.s of miseries, could I speak Straight on for ten days, I should never sum it: For know this well, never in one day died Of men so many mult.i.tudes before.

After a pause he resumes his narrative by describing Psyttaleia:--

There lies an island before Salamis, Small, with scant harbour, which dance-loving Pan Is wont to tread, haunting the salt sea-beaches.

There Xerxes placed his chiefs, that when the foes Chased from their s.h.i.+ps should seek the sheltering isle, They might with ease destroy the host of h.e.l.las, Saving their own friends from the briny straits.

Ill had he learned what was to hap; for when G.o.d gave the glory to the Greeks at sea, That same day, having fenced their flesh with bra.s.s, They leaped from out their s.h.i.+ps; and in a circle Enclosed the whole girth of the isle, that so None knew where he should turn; but many fell Crushed with sharp stones in conflict, and swift arrows Flew from the quivering bowstrings winged with murder.

At last in one fierce onset with one shout They strike, hack, hew the wretches' limbs asunder, Till every man alive had fallen beneath them.

Then Xerxes groaned, seeing the gulf unclose Of grief below him; for his throne was raised High in the sight of all by the sea-sh.o.r.e.

Rending his robes, and shrieking a shrill shriek, He hurriedly gave orders to his host; Then headlong rushed in rout and heedless ruin.

Atossa makes appropriate exclamations of despair and horror. Then the messenger proceeds:--

The captains of the s.h.i.+ps that were not shattered, Set speedy sail in flight as the winds blew.

The remnant of the host died miserably, Some in Boeotia round the glimmering springs Tired out with thirst; some of us scant of breath Escaped, with bare life to the Phocian bounds, And land of Doris, and the Melian Gulf, Where with kind draughts Spercheius soaks the soil.

Thence in our flight Achaia's ancient plain And Thessaly's stronghold received us worn For want of food. Most died in that fell place Of thirst and famine; for both deaths were there.

Yet to Magnesia came we and the coast Of Macedonia, to the ford of Axius, And Bolbe's canebrakes and the Pangaean range, Edonian borders. Then in that grim night G.o.d sent unseasonable frost, and froze The stream of holy Strymon. He who erst Recked nought of G.o.ds, now prayed with supplication, Bowing before the powers of earth and sky.

But when the hosts from lengthy orisons Surceased, it crossed the ice-incrusted ford.

And he among us who set forth before The sun-G.o.d's rays were scattered, now was saved.

For blazing with sharp beams the sun's bright circle Pierced the mid-stream, dissolving it with fire.

There were they huddled. Happy then was he Who soonest cut the breath of life asunder.

Such as survived and had the luck of living, Crossed Thrace with pain and peril manifold, 'Scaping mischance, a miserable remnant, Into the dear land of their homes. Wherefore Persia may wail, wanting in vain her darlings.

This is the truth. Much I omit to tell Of woes by G.o.d wrought on the Persian race.

Upon this triumphal note it were well, perhaps, to pause. Yet since the sojourner in Athens must needs depart by sea, let us advance a little way farther beyond Salamis. The low sh.o.r.e of the isthmus soon appears; and there is the hill of Corinth and the site of the city, as desolate now as when Antipater of Sidon made the sea-waves utter a threnos over her ruins. 'The deathless Nereids, daughters of Ocea.n.u.s,' still lament by the sh.o.r.e, and the Isthmian pines are as green as when their boughs were plucked to bind a victor's forehead.

Feathering the grey rock now as then, they bear witness to the wisdom and the moderation of the Greeks, who gave to the conquerors in sacred games no wreath of gold, or t.i.tle of n.o.bility, or land, or jewels, but the honour of an ill.u.s.trious name, the guerdon of a mighty deed, and branches taken from the wild pine of Corinth, or the olive of Olympia, or the bay that flourished like a weed at Delphi. What was indigenous and characteristic of his native soil, not rare and costly things from foreign lands, was precious to the Greek. This piety, after the lapse of centuries and the pa.s.sing away of mighty cities, still bears fruit. Oblivion cannot wholly efface the memory of those great games while the fir-trees rustle to the sea-wind as of old. Down the gulf we pa.s.s, between mountain range and mountain. On one hand, two peaked Parna.s.sus rears his cope of snow aloft over Delphi; on the other, Erymanthus and Hermes' home, Cyllene, bar the pastoral glades of Arcady. Greece is the land of mountains, not of rivers or of plains. The t.i.tles of the hills of h.e.l.las smite our ears with echoes of ancient music--Olympus and Cithaeron, Taygetus, Othrys, Helicon, and Ida. The headlands of the mainland are mountains, and the islands are mountain summits of a submerged continent. Austerely beautiful, not wild with an Italian luxuriance, nor mournful with Sicilian monotony of outline, nor yet again overwhelming with the sublimity of Alps, they seem the proper home of a race which sought its ideal of beauty in distinction of shape and not in multiplicity of detail, in light and not in richness of colouring, in form and not in size.

At length the open sea is reached. Past Zante and Cephalonia we glide 'under a roof of blue Ionian weather;' or, if the sky has been troubled with storm, we watch the moulding of long glittering cloud-lines, processions and pomps of silvery vapour, fretwork and frieze of alabaster piled above the islands, pearled promontories and domes of rounded snow. Soon Santa Maura comes in sight:--

Leucatae nimbosa cac.u.mina montis, Et formidatus nautis aperitur Apollo.

Here Sappho leapt into the waves to cure love-longing, according to the ancient story; and he who sees the white cliffs chafed with breakers and burning with fierce light, as it was once my luck to see them, may well with Childe Harold 'feel or deem he feels no common glow.' All through the afternoon it had been raining, and the sea was running high beneath a petulant west wind. But just before evening, while yet there remained a hand's-breadth between the sea and the sinking sun, the clouds were rent and blown in ma.s.ses about the sky. Rain still fell fretfully in scuds and fleeces; but where for hours there had been nothing but a monotone of greyness, suddenly fire broke and radiance and storm-clouds in commotion.

Then, as if built up by music, a rainbow rose and grew above Leucadia, planting one foot on Actium and the other on Ithaca, and spanning with a horseshoe arch that touched the zenith, the long line of roseate cliffs. The clouds upon which this bow was woven were steel-blue beneath and crimson above; and the bow itself was bathed in fire--its violets and greens and yellows visibly ignited by the liquid flame on which it rested. The sea beneath, stormily dancing, flashed back from all its crest the same red glow, s.h.i.+ning like a ridged lava-torrent in its first combustion. Then as the sun sank, the crags burned deeper with scarlet blushes as of blood, and with pa.s.sionate bloom as of pomegranate or oleander flowers. Could Turner rise from the grave to paint a picture that should bear the name of 'Sappho's Leap,' he might strive to paint it thus: and the world would complain that he had dreamed the poetry of his picture.

But who could _dream_ anything so wild and yet so definite? Only the pa.s.sion of orchestras, the fire-flight of the last movement of the C minor symphony, can in the realms of art give utterance to the spirit of scenes like this.