Rambles and Studies in Greece Part 10

In the Olympic games the running, which had originally been the only compet.i.tion, always came first. The distance was once up the course, and seems to have been about 200 yards. After the year 720 B. C. (?) races of double the course, and long races of about 3000 yards were added;(126) races in armor were a later addition, and came at the end of the sports.

It is remarkable that among all these varieties hurdle races were unknown, though the long jump was a.s.signed a special place, and thought very important. We have several extraordinary anecdotes of endurance in running long journeys cited throughout Greek history, and even now the modern inhabitants are remarkable for this quality. I have seen a young man keep up with a horse ridden at a good pace across rough country for many miles, and have been told that the Greek postmen are quite wonderful for their speed and lasting. But this is compatible with very poor performances at prize meetings.

There were short races for boys at Olympia of half the course. Eighteen years was beyond the limit of age for competing, as a story in Pausanias implies, and a boy who won at the age of twelve was thought wonderfully young. The same authority tells us of a man who won the sprint race at four successive meetings, thus keeping up his pace for sixteen years-a remarkable case. There seems to have been no second prize in any of the historical games, a natural consequence of the abolition of material rewards.(127) There was, naturally, a good deal of chance in the course of the contest, and Pausanias evidently knew cases where the winner was not the best man. For example, the races were run in heats of four, and if there was an odd man over, the owner of the last lot drawn could sit down till the winners of the heats were declared, and then run against them without any previous fatigue. The limitation of each heat to four compet.i.tors arose, I fancy, from their not wearing colors (or even clothes), and so not being easily distinguishable. They were accordingly walked into the arena through an underground pa.s.sage in the raised side of the stadium, and the name and country of each proclaimed in order by a herald. This practice is accurately copied in the present Olympic games held at Athens every four years.

The next event was the wrestling match, which is out of fas.h.i.+on at our prize meetings, though still a favorite sport in many country districts.

There is a very ample terminology for the various tricks and devices in this contest, and they have been explained with much absurdity by scholiasts, both ancient and modern. It seems that it was not always enough to throw your adversary,(128) but that an important part of the sport was the getting uppermost on the ground; and in no case was a man declared beaten till he was thrown three times, and was actually laid on his back. It is not worth while enumerating the various technical terms, but it may be observed that a good deal of what we should call foul play was tolerated. There was no kicking, such as there used to be in wrestling matches in Ireland, because there were no boots, but Pausanias mentions (vi. 4, 3) a man who did not know how to wrestle, but defeated his opponents by breaking their fingers. We shall return to this point when speaking of the _pankration_.

When the wrestling was over there followed the throwing of the discus and the dart, and the long leap, but in what order is uncertain; for I cannot accept as evidence the pentameter line of Simonides, which enumerates the games of the pentathlon, seeing that it would be impossible to vary them from the order he gives without great metrical difficulties. Our only safe guide is, I think, the date of the origin of each kind of compet.i.tion, as it was plainly the habit of the Greeks to place the new event next after those already established. The sole exception to this is in the establis.h.i.+ng of contests for boys, which seem always to have come immediately before the corresponding compet.i.tion for men. But we are only told that both wrestling and the contest of five events (pentathlon) dated from the 18th Ol. (710 B. C.), and are not informed in what order each was appointed.(129)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Entrance to the Stadium, Olympia]

The discus-throwing was mainly to test distance, but the dart-throwing to strike a mark. The discus was either of stone or of metal, and was very heavy. I infer from the att.i.tude of Myron's discobolus, as seen in our copies, that it was thrown without a preliminary run, and rather hurled standing. This contest is to be compared with our hammer-throwing, or putting of weights. We are, however, without any accurate information either as to the average weight of the discus, or the average distance which a good man could throw it. There is, indeed, one ancient specimen extant, which was found at aegina, and is now preserved among the bronze antiquities at Munich. It is about eight inches in diameter, and something under four pounds in weight. But there seem to have been three sizes of discus, according as they were intended for boys, for grown youths (_????e???_), or for men, and it is not certain to which cla.s.s this discus belongs. Philostratos mentions one hundred cubits as a fine throw, but in such a way as to make it doubtful whether he is not talking at random and in round numbers. Similarly, we have no details concerning the javelin contest. But I suspect that here, if anywhere, the Greeks could do what we cannot; for the savages of to-day, who use spears, can throw them with a force and accuracy which is to us quite surprising. It is reported by trustworthy travellers that a Kaffir who comes suddenly on game will put a spear right into an antelope at ten or twelve yards' distance by an underhand chuck, without taking time to raise his arm. This is beyond the ability of any English athlete, however trained.

The question of the long jump is more interesting, as it still forms a part of our contests. It is not certain whether the old Greeks practised the running jump, or the high jump, for we never hear of a preliminary start, or of any difficulty about "breaking trig," as people now call it.

Furthermore, an extant epigram on a celebrated athlete, Phayllus of Kroton, a.s.serts that he jumped clean over the prepared ground (which was broken with a spade) on to the hard ground beyond-a distance of forty-nine feet. We cannot, of course, though some German professors believe it, credit this feat, if it were a single long jump, yet we can find no trace of anything like a hop, step, and jump, so that it seems wonderful how such an absurdity should be gravely repeated in an epigram. But the exploit became proverbial, and to leap _?p?? t? s??ata_ (beyond the digging) was a constantly repeated phrase.

The length of Phayllus's leap would be even more incredible if the compet.i.tion was in a standing jump, and yet the figures of athletes on vases which I have seen strongly favor this supposition. They are represented not as running, but as standing and swinging the dumb-bells or _??t??e?_ (jumpers), which were always used by the older Greeks, as a.s.sisting them materially in increasing their distance. I can imagine this being the case in a standing jump where a man rose with the forward swing of the weights, but in a running jump the carrying of the weights must surely impede rather than a.s.sist him. I know that Irish peasants, who take off very heavy boots to jump, often carry one in each hand, and throw them backward violently as they rise from the ground; but this principle is not admitted so far as I know, by any scientific authority, as of the slightest a.s.sistance.

We hear of no vaulting or jumping with a pole, so that in fact the leap seems an isolated contest, and of little interest except as determining one of the events of the pentathlon, in which a man must win three in order to be declared victor. This pentathlon, as comprising gentlemanly exercise without much brutality, was especially patronized by the Spartans. It was attempted for boys, but immediately abandoned, the strain being thought excessive for growing const.i.tutions.

There remain the two severest and most objectionable sports-boxing and the pankration. The former came first (Ol. 23), the other test of strength not being admitted till Ol. 33 (650 B. C.). But one special occasion is mentioned when a champion, who was competing in both, persuaded the judges to change the order, that he might not have to contend against a specially famous antagonist when already wounded and bruised. For boxing was, even from Homeric times, a very dangerous and b.l.o.o.d.y amus.e.m.e.nt, in which the vanquished were always severely punished. The Greeks were not content with naked fists, but always used a special apparatus, called _???te?_, which consisted at first of a weight carried in the hand, and fastened by thongs of hide round the hand and wrist. But this ancient cestus came to be called the gentle kind (_e????a?_) when a later and more brutal invention introduced "sharp thongs on the wrist," and probably increased the weight of the instrument. The successful boxer in the Iliad (Epeius) confesses that he is a bad warrior, though he is the acknowledged champion in his own line; but evidently this sport was not highly esteemed in epic days.

In historical times it seems to have been more favored. There was no doubt a great deal of skill required for it, but I think the body of the evidence goes to prove that the Greeks did not box on sound principles, and that any prominent member of the P. R. with his naked fists would have easily settled any armed champion of Olympian fame. Here are my reasons:

The principle of increasing the weight of the fist as much as possible is only to be explained by the habit of dealing swinging or downward strokes, and is incompatible with the true method of striking straight home quickly, and giving weight to the stroke by sending the whole body with it. In Vergil's description a boxer is even described getting up on tip-toe to strike his adversary on the top of the head-a ridiculous manuvre, which must make his instant ruin certain, if his opponent knew the first elements of the art. That this downward stroke was used appears also from the anecdote in Pausanias, where a father seeing his son, who was ploughing, drive in the share which had fallen out with strokes of his fist, without a hammer, immediately entered him for the boys' boxing match at Olympia. The lad got roughly handled from want of skill, and seemed likely to lose, when the father called out: "Boy, give him the plough stroke!" and so encouraged him that he forthwith knocked his adversary out of time.

It is almost conclusive as to the swinging stroke that throughout antiquity a boxer was not known as a man with his nose broken, but as a man _with his ears crushed_. Vergil even speaks of their receiving blows on the back. Against all this there are only two pieces of evidence-one of them incredible-in favor of the straight home stroke. In the fight between Pollux and Amykos, described by Theocritus (_Idyll_ 22), Pollux strikes his man on the left temple, _?a? ?p?pese? ??_, which may mean, "and follows up the stroke from the shoulder." But this is doubtful. The other is the story of Pausanias (viii. 40, 3), that when Kreugas and Damoxenos boxed till evening, and neither could hit the other, they at last agreed to receive stroke about, and after Kreugas had dealt Damoxenos one on the head, the latter told him to hold up his hand,(130) and then drove his fingers right into Kreugas, beneath the ribs, and pulled out his entrails.

Kreugas of course died on the spot, but was crowned as victor, on the ground that Damoxenos had broken his agreement of striking _one_ blow in turn, by striking him with five separate fingers! But this curious decision was only one of many in which a boxing compet.i.tor was disqualified for having fought with the intention of maiming his antagonist.

Little need be added about the pankration, which combined boxing and wrestling, and permitted every sort of physical violence except biting. In this contest a mere fall did not end the affair, as might happen in wrestling, but the conflict was always continued on the ground, and often ended in one of the combatants being actually choked, or having his fingers and toes broken. One man, Arrachion, at the last gasp, broke his adversary's toe, and made him give in, at the moment he was himself dying of strangulation. Such contests were not to the credit either of the humanity or of the good taste of the Greeks, and would not be tolerated even in the lowest of our prize rings.

I will conclude this sketch by giving some account of the general management of the prize meetings.

There was no want of excitement and of circ.u.mstance about them. In the case of the four great meetings there was even a public truce proclaimed, and the compet.i.tors and visitors were guaranteed a safe journey to visit them and to return to their homes. The umpires at the Olympic games were chosen ten months before at Elis, and seem to have numbered one for each clan, varying through Greek history from two to twelve, but finally fixed at ten. They were called both here and at the other great games _???a??d??a?_, judges of the h.e.l.lenes, in recognition of their national character. Three superintended the pentathlon, three the horse races, and the rest the other games. They had to reside together in a public building, and undergo strict training in all the details of their business, in which they were a.s.sisted by heralds, trumpeters, stewards, etc. Their office was looked upon as of much dignity and importance.

When the great day came, they sat in purple robes in the semicircular end of the racecourse-a piece of splendor which the modern Greeks imitate by dressing the judges of the new Olympic games in full evening dress and white kid gloves. The effect even now with neatly-clothed candidates is striking enough; what must it have been when a row of judges in purple looked on solemnly at a pair of men dressed in oil and dust-_i. e._, in mud-wrestling or rolling upon the ground? The crowd cheered and shouted as it now does. Pausanias mentions a number of cases where compet.i.tors were disqualified for unfairness, and in most of them the man's city took up the quarrel, which became quite a public matter; but at the games the decision was final, nor do we hear of a case where it was afterward reversed.(131) They were also obliged to exact beforehand from each candidate an oath that he was of pure h.e.l.lenic parentage, that he had not taken, or would not take, any unfair advantage, and that he had spent ten months in strict training. This last rule I do not believe. It is absurd in itself, and is contradicted by such anecdotes as that of the st.u.r.dy plough-boy quoted above, and still more directly by the remark of Philostratos (_G??._ 38), who ridicules any inquiry into the morals or training of an athlete by the judges. Its only meaning could have been to exclude random candidates, if the number was excessive, and in later times some such regulation may have subsisted, but I do not accept it for the good cla.s.sical days. There is the case of a boy being rejected for looking too young and weak, and winning in the next Olympiad among the men, But in another instance the compet.i.tor disqualified (for unfairness) went mad with disappointment. Aristotle notes that it was the rarest possible occurrence for a boy champion to turn out successful among the full-grown athletes, but Pausanias seems to contradict him, a fair number of cases being cited among the selection which he makes.

There is yet one unpleasant feature to be noted, which has disappeared from our sports. Several allusions make it plain that the vanquished, even vanquished boys, were regarded as fit subjects for jibe and ridicule, and that they sneaked home by lanes and backways. When the most ideal account which we have of the games gives us this information, we cannot hesitate to accept it as probably a prominent feature, which is, moreover, thoroughly consistent with the character of the old Greeks as I conceive it.(132)

The general conclusion to which all these details lead us is this, that with all the care and with all the pomp expended on Greek athletic meetings, despite the exaggerated fame attained by victors, and the solid rewards both of money and of privileges accorded them by their grateful country, the results attained physically seem to have been inferior to those of English athletes. There was, moreover, an element of brutality in them, which is very shocking to modern notions: and not all the ideal splendor of Pindar's praises, or of Pythagoras's art, can raise the Greek pankratiast as an athlete much above the level of a modern prize-fighter.

But, nevertheless, by the aid of their monumental statues, their splendid lyric poetry, and the many literary and musical contests which were combined with the gymnastic, the Greeks contrived, as usual, to raise very common things to a great national manifestation of culture which we cannot hope to equal.

For common they were, and very human, in the strictest sense. Dry-as-dust scholars would have us believe that the odes of Pindar give a complete picture of these games; as if all the booths about the course had not been filled with idlers, pleasure-mongers, and the sc.u.m of Greek society!

Tumbling, thimble-rigging, and fortune-telling, along with love-making and trading, made Olympia a scene not unlike the Derby. When the drinking parties of young men began in the evening, there may even have been a _soupcon_ of Donnybrook Fair about it, but that the committee of management were probably strict in their discipline. From the Isthmian games the successful athletes, with their training over, retired, as most athletes do, to the relaxation afforded by city amus.e.m.e.nts. One can imagine how amply Corinth provided for the outburst of liberty after the long and arduous subjection of physical training.

But all these things are perhaps justly forgotten, and it is ungrateful to revive them from oblivion. The dust and dross of human conflict, the blood and the gall, the pain and the revenge-all this was laid aside like the athlete's dress, and could not hide the glory of his naked strength and his iron endurance. The idleness and vanity of human admiration have vanished with the motley crowd, and have left us free to study the deeper beauty of human vigor with the sculptor, and the spiritual secrets of its hereditary origin with the poet. Thus Greek gymnastic, with all its defects-perhaps even with its absurdities-has done what has never been even the dream of its modern sister; it stimulated the greatest artists and the highest intellects in society, and through them enn.o.bled and purified public taste and public morals.

When we left Olympia, and began to ascend the course of the Alpheus, the valley narrowed to the broad bed of the stream. The way leads now along the shady slopes high over the river, now down in the sandy flats left bare in the summer season. There are curious zones of vegetation distinctly marked along the course of the valley. On the river bank, and in the little islands formed by the stream, are laurels, myrtles, and great plane-trees. On the steep and rocky slopes are thick coverts of mastich, arbutus, dwarf-holly, and other evergreens which love to clasp the rocks with their roots; and they are all knit together by great creeping plants, the wild vine, the convolvulus, and many that are new and nameless to the northern stranger. On the heights, rearing their great tops against the sky, are huge pine-trees, isolated and still tattered with the winter storms.

"Ces adieux a l'Elide," adds M. Beule, "laissent une pure et vive impression. Rarement la nature se trouve en si parfaite harmonie avec les souvenirs. On dirait un theatre eternel, toujours pret pour les joies pacifiques, toujours pare pour les fetes, et qui, depuis dix-huit siecles, attend ses acteurs qui ont disparu."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Valley of the Alpheus]

Travellers going from Olympia northward either go round by carriage through Elis to Patras-a drive of two days-or by Kalavryta to Megaspilion, and thence to Vost.i.tza, thus avoiding the great Alps of Olonos (as Erymanthus is now called) and Chelmos, which are among the highest and most picturesque in Greece. After my last visit to Olympia (1884) I was so tantalized by the perpetual view of the snowy crest of Olonos, that I determined to attempt a new route, not known to any of the guide-books,(133) and cross over the mountain, as directly as I could, from Olympia to Patras. It was easy for me to carry out this plan, being accompanied by a young Greek antiquarian, M. Castromenos, and by Dr.

Purgold from Olympia, who had travelled through most of Greece, but was as anxious as I was to try this new route.

So we started on a beautiful spring morning, up the valley of the Kladeos, with all the trees bursting into leaf and blossom, and the birds singing their hymns of delight. The way was wooded, and led up through narrow and steep, but not difficult glens, until, on a far higher level, we came in three or four hours to the village of Lala, once an important Turkish fort. Here was a higher plain, from which we began to see the plan of that vast complex of mountains which form the boundaries of the Old Elis, Achaia, and Arcadia, and which have so often been the scenes of difficult campaigns. From Lala, where we breakfasted, we crossed a sudden deep valley, and found ourselves, on regaining the higher level, in a vast oak forest, unlike anything I had yet seen in Greece. The trees had been undisturbed for centuries, and the forest was even avoided in summer by the natives, on account of the many poisonous snakes which hid in the deep layers of dead leaves. In that high country the oaks were just turning pink with their new buds, and not a green leaf was to be seen, so we could trust to the winter sleep of the snakes, while we turned aside again and again from our path, to the great perplexity of the muleteers, to dig up wood anemones of all colors, pale blue, pink, deep crimson, scarlet, snowy-white, which showed brilliantly on the brown oak-leaf carpet.

We spent at least two hours in riding through this forest, and then we rose higher and higher, pa.s.sing along the upper edge of deep glens, with rus.h.i.+ng streams far beneath us. The most beautiful point was one from which we looked down a vast straight glen of some fifteen miles, almost as deep as a canon, with the silvery Erymanthus river pursuing its furious course so directly as to be clearly visible all the way. But though ascending the river from this point, where its course comes suddenly round a corner, the upper country was no longer wooded, but bleak, like most of the Alpine Arcadia, a country of dire winters and great hards.h.i.+p to the population, who till an unwilling soil on the steep slopes of giant precipices.

We were much tempted to turn up another tortuous glen to the hidden nest of Divri, where the Greeks found refuge from Turkish prosecution in the great war-a place so concealed, and so difficult of access, that an armed force has never penetrated there. But the uncertainties of our route were too many to admit of these episodes, so we hurried on to reach the Kahn of Tripotamo in the evening-a resting-place which suggested to us strongly the inn where St. John is reported to have slept in the apocryphal _Acts_ of his life. Being very tired with preaching and travelling, he found it so impossible to share the room with the bugs, that he besought them in touching language to allow him to sleep; practically in virtue of his apostolic authority, he ordered them out of the house. They all obeyed, but when in the morning the apostle and his companions found them waiting patiently outside the door, he was so moved by their consideration for him, that he permitted them to return and infest the house.

Nor were the bugs perhaps the worst. Being awakened by a crunching noise in the night, I perceived that a party of cats had come in to finish our supper for us, and when startled by a flying boot, they made our beds and bodies the stepping stones for a leap to the rafters, and out through a large hole in the roof. By and by I was aroused by the splas.h.i.+ng of cold water in my face, and found that a heavy shower had come on, and was pouring through the cats' pa.s.sage. So I put up my umbrella in bed till the shower was over-the only time I felt rain during the whole of that voyage.

I notice that Miss Agnes Smith, who travelled through these parts in May, 1883, and had very similar experiences at Tripotamo, was wet through almost every day. We did not see more than two showers, and were moreover so fortunate as to have perfectly calm days whenever we were crossing high pa.s.ses, though in general the breeze was so strong as to be almost stormy in the valleys.

Next morning we followed the river up to the neighboring site of Psophis, so picturesquely described by Polybius in his account of Philip V., and his campaigns in Elis and Triphylia.(134) This town, regarded as the frontier-town of Elis, Arcadia, and Achaia, would well repay an enterprising excavator. The description of Polybius can be verified without difficulty, and ruins are still visible. We found out from a solitary traveller that our way turned to the north, up one of the affluents of the Erymanthus, and so we ascended in company with this worthy man to a village (Lechouri) under the highest precipices of Olonos.

He was full of the curiosity of a Greek peasant-Who were we, where did we come from, were we married, had we children, how many, what was our income, was it from land, was it paid by the State, could we be dismissed by the Government, were we going to write about Greece, what would we say, etc., etc.? Such was the conversation to which we submitted for the sake of his guidance. But at last it seemed as if our way was actually at an end, and we had come into an impa.s.sable _cul-de-sac_. Perpendicular walls of rock surrounded us on all sides except where we had entered by constantly fording the stream, or skirting along its edge. Was it possible that the curiosity of our fellow-traveller had betrayed him into leading us up this valley to the village whither he himself was bound? We sought anxiously for the answer, when he showed us a narrow strip of dark pine-trees coming down from above, in form like a little torrent, and so reaching with a narrow thread of green to the head of the valley. This was our pa.s.s, the pine-trees with their roots and stems made a zigzag path up the almost perpendicular wall possible, and so we wended our way up with infinite turnings, walking or rather climbing for safety's sake, and to rest the laboring mules. Often as I had before attempted steep ascents with horses in Greece, I never saw anything so astonis.h.i.+ng as this.

When we had reached the top we found ourselves on a narrow saddle, with snowy heights close to us on both sides, the highest ridge of Olonos facing us a few miles away, and a great pine forest reaching down on the northern side, whither our descent was to lead us. About us were still great patches of snow, and in them were blowing the crocus and the cyclamen, with deep blue scilla. Far away to the south reached, in a great panorama, the mountains of Arcadia, and even beyond them the highest tops of Messene and Laconia were plainly visible. The air was clear, the day was perfectly fine and calm. To the north the chain of Erymanthus still hid from us the far distance. For a long time, while our muleteers slept and the mules and ponies rested, we sat wondering at the great view. The barometer indicated that we were at a height of about 5500 feet. The freshness and purity of the atmosphere was such that no thought of hunger and fatigue could mar our perfect enjoyment. In the evening, descending through gloomy pines and dazzling snow, we reached the village of Hagios Vlasos, where the song of countless nightingales beguiled the hours of the night, for here too sleep was not easily obtained.

The journey from this point to Patras, which we accomplished in twelve hours, is not so interesting, and the traveller who tries it now had better telegraph for a carriage to meet him as far as possible on the way.

By this time a good road is finished for many miles, and the tedium and heat of the plain, as you approach Patras, are very trying. But with this help, I think no journey in all Greece so well worth attempting, and of course it can be accomplished in either direction.

Patras is indeed an excellent place for a starting-point. Apart from the route just described, you can go by boat to Vost.i.tza, and thence to Megaspilion. There are, moreover, splendid alpine ascents to be made for those who like such work, to the summits of Chelmos and Olonos (Erymanthus), and this is best done from Patras. Moreover, Patras is itself a most lovely place, commanding a n.o.ble view of the coast and mountains of aetolia across the narrow fiord, as well as of the Ionian islands to the N. W. Right opposite is the ever-interesting site of Missolonghi. Last, and perhaps not least, there is at Patras a most respectable inn, indeed I should call it a hotel,(135) where the traveller who has spent ten days of rough outing in Peloponnesus will find a haven of rest and comfort. From here steamers will carry him to Athens round the coast, or home to Italy.

CHAPTER XII.

ARCADIA-ANDRITZENA-Ba.s.sae-MEGALOPOLIS-TRIPOLITZA.

There is no name in Greece which raises in the mind of the ordinary reader more pleasing and more definite ideas than the name Arcadia. It has become indissolubly connected with the charms of pastoral ease and rural simplicity. The sound of the shepherd's pipe and the maiden's laughter, the rustling of shady trees, the murmuring of gentle fountains, the bleating of lambs and the lowing of oxen-these are the images of peace and plenty which the poets have gathered about that ideal retreat. There are none more historically false, more unfounded in the real nature and aspect of the country, and more opposed to the sentiment of the ancients. Rugged mountains and gloomy defiles, a harsh and wintry climate, a poor and barren soil, tilled with infinite patience; a home that exiled its children to seek bread at the risk of their blood, a climate more opposed to intelligence and to culture than even Botian fogs, a safe retreat of bears and wolves-this is the Arcadia of old Greek history. Politically it has no weight whatever till the days of Epaminondas, and the foundation of Megalopolis. Intellectually, its rise is even later, and it takes no national part in the great march of literature from Homer to Menander.(136) It was only famed for the marketable valor of its hardy mountaineers, of whom the Tegeans had held their own even against the power of Sparta, and obtained an honorable place in her army. It was also noted for rude and primitive cults, of which later men praised the simplicity and homely piety-at times also, the stern gloominess, which did not turn from the offering of human blood.

I must remind the reader that rural beauty among the ancients, as well as among the Renaissance visions of an imaginary Arcadia as a rustic paradise, by no means included the wild picturesqueness which we admire in beetling cliffs and raging torrents. These were inhospitable and savage to the Greeks. It was the gentle slope, the rich pasture, the placid river framed in deep foliage-it was, in fact, landscape-scenery like the valleys of the Thames, or about the gray abbeys of Yorks.h.i.+re, which satisfied their notion of perfect landscape; and in this the men of the Renaissance were perfectly agreed with them.

How, then, did the false notion of our Arcadia spring up in modern Europe?

How is it that even our daily papers a.s.sume this sense, and know it to be intelligible to the most vulgar public? The history of the change from the historical to the poetical conception is very curious, and worth the trouble of explaining, especially as we find it a.s.sumed in many books, but accounted for in none.

It appears that from the oldest days the wors.h.i.+p of Pan had its home in Arcadia, particularly about Mount Maenalus, and that it was already ancient when it was brought to Athens at the time of the Persian Wars. The extant Hymn to Pan, among the Homeric Hymns, which may have been composed shortly after that date, is very remarkable for its idyllic and picturesque tone, and shows that with this wors.h.i.+p of Pan were early a.s.sociated those trains of nymphs and rustic G.o.ds, with their piping and dance, which inspired Praxiteles's inimitable Faun. These images are even transferred by Euripides to the Acropolis, where he describes the daughters of Aglauros dancing on the sward, while Pan is playing his pipe in the grotto underneath (_Ion_, vv. 492, _sqq._). Such facts seem to show a gentle and poetical element in the stern and gloomy mountaineers, who lived, like the Swiss of our day, in a perpetual struggle with nature, and were all their lives hara.s.sed with toil and saddened with thankless fatigue. This conclusion is sustained by the evidence of a far later witness, Polybius, who in his fourth book mentions the strictness with which the Arcadians insisted upon an education in music, as necessary to soften the harshness and wildness of their life. He even maintains that the savagery of one town (Kynaetha) was caused by a neglect of this salutary precaution. So it happens that, although Theocritus lays his pastoral scenes in the uplands of Sicily, and the later pastoral romances, such as the exquisite _Daphnis and Chloe_, are particularly a.s.sociated with the voluptuous Lesbos, Vergil, in several of his _Eclogues_, makes allusion to the musical talent of Arcadian shepherds, and in his tenth brings the unhappy Gallus into direct relation to Arcadia in connection with the wors.h.i.+p of Pan on Maenalus. But this prominent feature in Vergil-borrowed, I suppose, from some Greek poet, though I know not from whom-bore no immediate fruit. His Roman imitators, Calpurnius and Nemesia.n.u.s, make no mention of Arcadia, and if they had, their works were not unearthed till the year 1534, when the poetical Arcadia had been already, as I shall show, created. There seems no hint of the idea in early Italian poetry;(137) for according to the histories of mediaeval literature, the pastoral romance did not originate until the very end of the fourteenth century, with the Portuguese Ribeyro, and he lays all the scenes of his idylls not in a foreign country, but in Portugal, his own home. Thus we reach the year 1500 without any trace of a poetical Arcadia. But at that very time it was being created by the single work of a single man. The celebrated Jacopo Sannazaro, known by the t.i.tle of Actius Sincerus in the affected society of literary Naples, exiled himself from that city in consequence of a deep and unrequited pa.s.sion. He lay concealed for a long time, it is said, in the wilds of France, possibly in Egypt, but certainly not in Greece, and immortalized his grief in a pastoral medley of prose description and idyllic complaint called _Arcadia_,(138) and suggested, I believe, by the Gallus of Vergil. Though the learned and cla.s.sical author despised this work in comparison with his heroic poem on the Conception of the Virgin Mary, the public of the day thought differently. Appearing in 1502, the _Arcadia_ of Sannazaro went through sixty editions during the century, and so this single book created that imaginary home of innocence and grace which has ever since been attached to the name. Its occurrence henceforward is so frequent as to require no further ill.u.s.tration in this place.

But let us turn from this poetical and imaginary country to the real land-from Arcadia to Arcadia, as it is called by the real inhabitants. As everybody knows, this Arcadia is the alpine centre of the Morea, bristling with mountain chains, which reach their highest points in the great bar of Erymanthus, to the N. W., in the lonely peak of "Cyllene h.o.a.r," to the N. E., in the less conspicuous, but far more sacred Lykaeon, to the S. W., and finally, in the serrated Taygetus to the S. E. These four are the angles, as it were, of a quadrilateral enclosing Arcadia. Yet these are but the greatest among chains of great mountains, which seem to traverse the country in all directions, and are not easily distinguished, or separated into any connected system.(139) They are nevertheless interrupted, as we found, by two fine oval plains-both stretching north and south, both surrounded with a beautiful panorama of mountains, and both, of course, the seats of the old culture, such as it was in Arcadia.

That which is southerly and westerly, and from which the rivers still flow into the Alpheus and the western sea,(140) is guarded at its south end by Megalopolis. That which is more east, which is higher in level, and separated from the former by the bleak bar of Maenalus, is the plain of Mantinea and Tegea, now represented by the important town of Tripolitza.

These two parallel plains give some plan and system to the confusion of mountains which cover the ordinary maps of Arcadia.