Rambles and Studies in Greece Part 7

The antiquities of Thebes consist of a few inscribed slabs and fragments which are (as usual) collected in a dark outhouse, where it is not easy to make them out. I was not at the trouble of reading these inscriptions, for in this department the antiquarians of the University of Athens are really very zealous and competent, and I doubt whether any inscription now discovered fails to come into the Greek papers within a few months. From these they of course pa.s.s into the _Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum_, a collection daily increasing, and periodically reedited. I may observe that, not only for manners and customs, but even for history, these undeniable and seldom suspicious sources are rapidly becoming our surest and even fullest authority.

In the opinion of the inhabitants, by far the most important thing about the town is the tomb of their Evangelist S. Luke, which is situated in a chapel close by. The stone is polished and worn with the feet and lips of pilgrims, and all such homes of long devotion are in themselves interesting; but the visitor may well wonder that the Evangelist should have his tomb established in a place so absolutely decayed and depopulated as was the region of Thebes, even in his day. The tombs of the early preachers and missionaries are more likely to be in the thickest of thoroughfares, amid the noise and strife of men. The Evangelist was confused with a later local saint of the same name.(98)

Thebes is remarkable for its excellent supply of water. Apart from the fountain Dirke,(99) several other great springs rise in the higher ground close to it, and are led by old Greek conduits of marble to the town. One of these springs was large enough to allow us to bathe-a most refres.h.i.+ng change after the long and hot carriage drive, especially in the ice-cold water, as it came from its deep hiding-place. We returned at eight in the evening to dine with our excellent host-a host provided for us by telegraph from Athens-where we had ample opportunity of noticing some of the peculiarities of modern Greek life.

The general elections were at the moment pending. M. Boulgaris had just _echoue_, as the French say; and the King, after a crisis in which a rupture of the Const.i.tution had been expected, decided to try a const.i.tutional experiment, and called to office M. Trikoupi, an advanced Radical in those days, and strongly opposed to the Government. But M.

Trikoupi was a highly educated and reasonable man, well acquainted with England and English politics, and apparently anxious to govern by strictly const.i.tutional means. He has since proved himself, by his able and vigorous administration, one of the most remarkable statesmen in Europe, and the main cause of the progress of his country. His recent defeat (1890) is therefore to be regarded as a national misfortune. Our new friend at Thebes was then the Radical candidate, and was at the very time of our arrival canva.s.sing his const.i.tuency. Every idle fellow in the town seemed to think it his duty to come up into his drawing-room, in which we were resting, and sit down to encourage him and advise him. No hint that he was engaged in entertaining strangers had the smallest effect: noisy politics was inflicted upon us till the welcome announcement of dinner, to which, for a wonder, his const.i.tuents did not follow him. He told me that though all the country was strongly in favor of M. Trikoupi, yet he could hardly count upon a majority with certainty, for he had determined to let the elections follow their own course, and not control them with soldiers.

In this most const.i.tutional country, with its freedom, as usual, closely imitated from England, soldiers stood, at least up to the summer of 1875, round the booths, and hustled out any one who did not come to vote for the Ministerial candidate. M. Trikoupi refused to take this traditional precaution, and, as the result showed, lost his sure majority.

But when I was there, and before the actual elections had taken place, the Radical party were very confident. They were not only to come in triumphant, but their first act was to be the prosecution of the late Prime Minister, M. Boulgaris, for violating the Const.i.tution, and his condemnation to hard labor, with confiscation of his property. I used to plead the poor man's case earnestly with these hot-headed politicians, by way of amus.e.m.e.nt, and was highly edified by their arguments. The ladies, as usual, were by far the fiercest, and were ready, like their G.o.ddess of old, to eat the raw flesh of their enemies. I used to ask them whether it would not be quite out of taste if Mr. Disraeli, then in power, were to prosecute Mr. Gladstone for violating the Const.i.tution in his Irish Church Act, and have him condemned to hard labor. The cases, they replied, were quite different. No Englishman could ever attain, or even understand, the rascality of the late Greek Minister. Feeling that there might be some force in this argument, I changed ground, and asked them were they not afraid that if he were persecuted in so violent a way he might, instead of occupying the Opposition benches, betake himself to occupy the mountain pa.s.ses, and, by robbing a few English travellers, so discredit the new Government as to be worse and more dangerous in opposition than in power.

No, they said, he will not do that; he is _too rich_. But, said I, if you confiscate his property, he will be poor. True, they replied; but still he will not be able to do it: he is _too old_. It seemed as if the idea that he might be too respectable never crossed their minds.(100) What was my surprise to hear within six months that this dreadful culprit had come into power again at the head of a considerable majority!

We were afterward informed by a sarcastic observer that many of the Greek politicians are paupers, "who will not dig, and to beg they are ashamed;"

and so they sit about the _cafes_ of Athens on the look-out for one of the 10,000 places which have been devised for the patronage of the Ministry.

But, as there are some 30,000 expectants, it follows that the 20,000 disappointed are always at work seeking to turn out the 10,000. Hence a crisis every three months; hence a Greek amba.s.sador could hardly reach his destination before he was recalled; hence, too, the exodus of all thrifty and hard-working men to Smyrna, to Alexandria, or to Manchester, where their energies were not wasted in perpetual political squabbling. The greatest misconduct with which a man in office could be charged was the holding of it for any length of time; the whole public then join against him, and cry out that it is high time for him, after so long an innings, to make way for some one else. It was not till M. Trikoupi established his ascendency that this ridiculous condition of things ceased. Whether in office or in opposition, he has a policy, and retains the confidence of foreign powers. I had added, in the first edition of this book, some further observations on the apparent absurdity of introducing the British Const.i.tution, or some parody of it, into every new state which is rescued from barbarism or from despotism. I am not the least disposed to retract what I then said generally, but it is common justice to the Greeks to say that later events are showing them to be among the few nations where such an experiment may succeed. When the dangerous crisis of the Turco-Russian war supervened, instead of rus.h.i.+ng to arms, as they were advised by some fanatical English politicians, they set about to reform their Ministry; and, feeling the danger of perpetually changing the men at the helm, they insisted on the heads of the four princ.i.p.al parties forming a coalition, under the nominal leaders.h.i.+p of M. Canaris.(101) This great political move, one of the most remarkable of our day, was attempted, as far as I can make out, owing to the deliberate pressure of the country, and from a solid interest in its welfare. Even though temporary in the present case, it was an earnest that the Greeks are learning national politics, and that a liberal const.i.tution is not wasted upon them. There are many far more developed and important nations in Europe which would not be capable of such a sacrifice of party interests and party ambition.

We left Thebes, very glad that we had seen it, but not very curious to see it again. Its site makes it obviously the natural capital of the rich plain around it; and we can also see at once how the larger and richer plain of Orchomenus is separated from it by a distinct saddle of rising ground, and was naturally, in old times, the seat of a separate power. But the separation between the two districts, which is not even so steep or well marked as the easy pa.s.s of Daphne between Athens and Eleusis, makes it also clear that the owners of either plain would certainly cast the eye of desire upon the possessions of their neighbors, and so at an early epoch Orchomenus was subdued. For many reasons this may have been a disaster to Greece. The Minyae of Orchomenus, as people called the old n.o.bles who settled there in prehistoric days, were a great and rich society, building forts and treasure-houses, and celebrated, even in Homer's day, for wealth and splendor.

But, perhaps owing to this very luxury, they were subdued by the inartistic, vulgar Thebans, who, during centuries of power and importance, never rose to greatness save through the transcendent genius of Pindar and of Epaminondas. No real greatness ever attached to their town. When people came from a distance to see art in Botia, they came to little Thespiae, in the southern hills, where the Eros of Praxiteles was the pride of the citizens. Tanagra, too, in the terra cottas of which I have spoken (above, p. 59), shows taste and refinement; and we still look with sympathy upon the strangely modern fas.h.i.+ons of these graceful and elegant figures. At Thebes, so far as I know, no trace of fine arts has yet been discovered.

The great substructure of the Cadmea, the solid marble water-pipes of their conduits, a few inscriptions-that is all. It corroborates what we find in the middle and new comedy of the Greeks, that Thebes was a place for eating and drinking, a place for other coa.r.s.e material comforts-but no place for real culture or for art. Even their great poet, Pindar, a poet in whom most critics find all the highest qualities of genius-loftiness, daring, originality-even this great man-no doubt from the accidents of his age-worked by the job, and bargained for the payment of his n.o.blest odes.

Thus, even in Pindar, there is something to remind us of his Theban vulgarity; and it is, therefore, all the more wonderful, and all the more freely to be confessed, that in Epaminondas we find not a single flaw or failing, and that he stands out as far the n.o.blest of all the great men whom Greece ever produced. It were possible to maintain that he was also the greatest, but this is a matter of opinion and of argument. Certain it is that his influence made Thebes, for the moment, not only the leader in Greek politics, but the leader in Greek society. Those of his friends whom we know seem not only patriots, but gentlemen-they cultivated with him music and eloquence, nor did they despise philosophy. So true is it, that in this wonderful peninsula genius seemed possible everywhere, and that from the least cultivated and most vulgar town might arise a man to make all the world about him admire and tremble.

I will make but one more remark about this plain of Botia. There is no part of Greece so sadly famed for all the battles with which its soil was stained. The ancients called it Mars's _Orchestra_, or exercising ground; and even now, when all the old life is gone, and when not a hovel remains to mark the site of once well-built towns, we may indeed ask, why were these towns celebrated? Simply because in old Greek history their names served to specify a scene of slaughter, where a campaign, or it may be an empire, was lost or won, Plataea, Leuctra, Haliartus, Coronea, Chaeronea, Delium, nophyta, Tanagra-these are in history the landmarks of battles, and, with one exception, landmarks of nothing more. Thebes is mainly the nurse of the warriors who fought in these battles, and but little else.

So, then, we cannot compare Botia to the rich plains of Lombardy-they, too, in their clay, ay, and in our own day, Mars's Orchestra-for here literature and art have given fame to cities, while the battles fought around their walls have been forgotten by the world.

I confess we saw nothing of the foggy atmosphere so often brought up against the climate of Botia. And yet it was then, of course, more foggy than it had been of old, for then the lake Copais was drained, whereas in 1875 the old tunnels, cut, or rather enlarged, by the Minyae, were choked, and thousands of acres of the richest land covered with marsh and lake. It was M. Trikoupi who promoted the plan of a French Company to drain the lake more completely than even the old _Catabothra_ had done, and, at the cost of less than one million sterling, to bring into permanent cultivation some thousands of acres-in fact, the largest and richest plain in all Greece. I asked him where he meant to find a population to till it, seeing that the present land was about ten times more than sufficient for the inhabitants. He told me that some Greek colonists, who had settled in the north, under the Turks or Servians (I forget which), were desirous of returning to enjoy the sweets of h.e.l.lenic liberty. It was proposed to give them the reclaimed tract. If these good people will reason from a.n.a.logy, they will be slow to trust their fortunes to their old fellow-countrymen.

So long as they are indigent they will be unmolested-_cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator_-but as soon as they prosper, or are supposed to prosper, we might have the affair of Laurium repeated. The natives might be up in arms against the strangers who had come to plunder the land of the wealth intended by nature for others. The Greek Parliament might be persuaded to make retrospective laws and restrictions, and probably all the more active and impatient spirits would leave a country where prosperity implied persecution, and where people only awake to the value of their possessions after they have sold them to others.

What is now happening ill.u.s.trates the views which I long since proposed.

When the drainage works, completed in 1887, had uncovered rich tracts, the Government laid claim to every acre of it, and endeavored to fence off the old riparian proprietors. They on their side disputed the new boundaries, and claimed what the Government professed to have uncovered. Hence no sale to new owners is as yet possible. The dispute is still (1891) unsettled.

I think jealousy no accidental feature, but one specially engrained in the texture of Greek nature from the earliest times. Nothing can be a more striking or cogent proof of this than the way in which Herodotus sets down jealousy as one of the attributes of the Deity. For the Deities of all nations being conceptions formed after the a.n.a.logy of human nature around them, there can be no doubt that the honest historian put it down as a necessary factor in the course and const.i.tution of nature. We can only understand Greek history by keeping these things perpetually in mind, and even now it explains the apparent anomaly, how a nation so essentially democratic-who recognize no n.o.bility and no distinctions of rank-can be satisfied with a king of foreign race. They told me themselves, over and over again, that the simple reason was this: no Greek could tolerate another set over him, so that even such an office as President of a Greek Republic would be intolerable, if held by one of themselves. And this same feeling in old times is the real reason of the deadly hate manifested against the most moderate and humane despots. However able, however kindly, however great such a despot might be; however the state might prosper under him, one thing in him was intolerable-he had no natural right to be superior to his fellows, and yet he was superior. I will not deny the existence of political enthusiasm, and of real patriotism among Greek tyrannicides, but I am quite sure that the universal sympathy of the nation with them was partly based upon this deep-seated feeling.

It is said that, in another curious respect, the old and modern Greeks are very similar-I mean the form which bribery takes in their political struggles. It has been already observed and discussed by Mr. Freeman, how, among the old Greeks, it was the politician who was bribed, and not the const.i.tuents; whereas among us in England the leading politicians are above suspicion, while the const.i.tuents are often corruptible enough. Our Theban friend told me that in modern Greece the ancient form of bribery was still in fas.h.i.+on; and that, except in Hydra and one other place-probably, if I remember rightly, Athens-the bribing of const.i.tuents was unknown; while the taking of bribes by Ministers was alleged not to be very uncommon. A few years ago, men of sufficient importance to be Cabinet Ministers were openly brought into court, and indicted for the sale of three archbishoprics, those of Patras and Corinth among the number. There is no doubt that this public charge points to a sort of bribery likely to take place in any real democracy, when the men at the head of affairs are not men of great wealth and n.o.ble birth, but often ordinary, or even needy persons, selected by ballot, or popular vote, to fill for a very short time a very influential office.

CHAPTER IX.

THE PLAIN OF ORCHOMENUS, LIVaDIA, CHaeRONEA.

The road from Thebes to Lebadea (Livadia) 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 Cithaeron and the gentle sunny Helicon strikes the traveller again and again. After the ridge, or saddle, is pa.s.sed 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 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 gra.s.s 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 sh.e.l.ls, 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 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 gra.s.shoppers were flying about spasmodically, with a sound and weight like that of a small bird.

As we pa.s.sed 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. Thespiae 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; Thespiae, with its highly aristocratic society, which would not let a shopkeeper walk their place of a.s.sembly 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 Botian towns were, of course, fortified, and all of them lay close to the 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 (Livadia), 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 pa.s.ses which lead through Delphi to the port of Kirrha. Even now there is more life in Livadia 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 balconies, like Swiss chalets, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 ta.s.sel. 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, 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 rus.h.i.+ng river, and its cavernous vaulting, seems the very home and preserve of superst.i.tion. 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 Parna.s.sus join, and shut out the sea of Corinth from Botia 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 Livadia 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 fas.h.i.+onable hour, though in anything but fas.h.i.+onable 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, indeed, but a small and ign.o.ble 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 skirmis.h.i.+ng 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 discomforts 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 cla.s.sical 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 Chaeronea, and back to Livadia in the evening, so as to start from thence for the pa.s.ses 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 Chaeronea 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 Livadia, a wretched road of little rough paving-stones tormented us-the remains of Turkish engineering, when Livadia 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 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 gra.s.s, 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 place, which is close to the stone bridge built over the Kephissus-the Botian 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 Parna.s.sus. 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 Minyae, 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 Mycenae 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. 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 Eleutherae, 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 Peiraeus. 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 Peiraeus cannot even have been the earliest specimen, for the great portal at Mycenae, 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 Peiraeus have disappeared 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 Chaeronea, along the rapid stream of the Kephissus, that we 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 Botian 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 gra.s.shopper to a dog sitting before him. The hair and beard are conventionally curled, the whole effect being very like an a.s.syrian 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, 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 following."(105) As a natural result, a fas.h.i.+on 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 h.e.l.lenic Society's gallery of photographs, from which we can make reliable observations. The Greeks will tell you that the preservation 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 establis.h.i.+ng 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 Chaeronea, 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 Parna.s.sus, and of the pa.s.ses 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 the eye catches glimpses of secluded valleys in northern Phocis.

This gap is, indeed, the true key of this side of Botia, and is no mere mountain pa.s.s, 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 pa.s.sage 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 Chaeronea, 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 pa.s.s 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 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 Chaeronea, 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 diminis.h.i.+ng; 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 Chaeronea 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, 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 Chaeronea," 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 though the rose and the iris grow wild and neglected and yield not now their perfume to soothe the ills of men, yet from Chaeronea comes the eternal balm of Plutarch's wisdom, to sustain the oppressed, to strengthen the patriot, to purify with n.o.bler pity and terror the dross of human meanness. Nay, even the crumbling images of his G.o.ds 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 ap.r.o.ns 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 Chaeronea, which the Thebans set up 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 Chaeronea, 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.