James George Frazer

“ From the terrace you may clamber down, at the risk of your neck, to a cave opening on the foam of the great rollers which break here eternally. In the inmost corner of the cave is a heap of human bones. The sense of utter solitude and isolation from the world which the spot is fitted to evoke in the mind is broken by the sight of passing vessels. In fair weather steamers of all nations pass continually; and small Greek sailing-boats, with their reddish-brown or white lateen sails, skim along close under the cliffs. ”

“ Hymettus is still as of old remarkable for the wonderful purple glow which comes over it as seen from Athens by evening light. When the sun is setting, a rosy flush spreads over the whole mountain, which, as the daylight fades and the shadows creep up the slope, passes by insensible transitions through all intermediate shades of colour into the deepest violet. This purple tinge is peculiar to Hymettus; none of the other mountains which encircle the plain of Athens assumes it at any hour of the day. ”

“ Its length from east to west is about twelve miles, and its breadth from north to south about two. The plain is a dead flat, covered with fields of cotton and maize, and enclosed by bare, stony, barren hills both on the north and on the south. Seen on a bright summer day, with the mountains beyond the Copaic plain appearing blue in the distance and Parnassus towering grandly on the west, the scene is beautiful enough; but on a grey November morning, with the mists down on the distant mountains, it wears a cheerless aspect that well becomes a battlefield where a nation’s freedom was lost. ”

“ If he looks up at the mountains, it is not to mark the snowy peaks glistering in the sunlight against the 33blue, or the sombre pine-forests that fringe their crests and are mirrored in the dark lake below; it is to tell you that Zeus or Apollo or the Sun-god is worshipped on their tops, that the Thyiad women rave on them above the clouds, or that Pan has been heard piping in their lonely coombs. The gloomy caverns, where the sunbeams hardly penetrate, with their fantastic stalactites and dripping roofs, are to him the haunts of Pan and the nymphs. ”

“ New temples had sprung up; new images had been carved; new theatres and baths and aqueducts ministered to the amusement and luxury of the people. Among the new writers whose works the world will not willingly let die, it is enough to mention the great names of Plutarch and Lucian.
It was in this mellow autumn—perhaps rather the Indian summer—of the ancient world, when the last gleanings of the Greek genius were being gathered in, that Pausanias, a contemporary of Hadrian, of the Antonines, and of Lucian, wrote his description of Greece. ”

“ Stretches of pasture-land, however, and of vineyards alternate with the swamps; and eastward, toward the island of Calauria, the plain is well watered, cultivated like a garden, and verdant with vines, olives, lemon-groves, and fig-trees. Seen from the water of the beautiful almost landlocked bay the green of this rich vegetation, with the tall dark cypresses towering conspicuously over all, is refreshing to eyes accustomed to the arid plains and hills of Greece. At Damala groves of oranges and lemons yield the villagers a considerable return. ”

“ Farther on, the pass opening out, we see stretched below us, like a lake, the deep blue waters of the landlocked Gulf of Salamis, shut in on the south by the bare but beautifully outlined hills of Salamis, on the north by a graceful sweep of the Attic coast, and backed by the distant heights of Cithaeron and the mountains of Megara on the west. Through a dip between the hills of Salamis and the mainland may be seen in clear weather the far conspicuous peak of Cyllene in Arcadia with its crown of snow. ”

“ Right in the middle of the entrance, breaking the force of the waves when the wind blows from the east, a rocky islet in the shape of a sugar-loaf or pyramid rises abruptly from the sea to the height of about three hundred feet. Its sides, clothed with lentisk bushes and dwarf pines, are so steep that it can be scaled only on one side, the north. On its summit, looking seaward, sits a colossal but headless and armless statue of white marble on a high pedestal, the blocks of which were falling to ruin at the time of Dodwell’s visit but are now held together by iron clamps. ”

“ Persians in tall caps droning their strange litany in an unknown tongue; husbandmen sticking gold leaf on a bronze goat in a market-place to protect their vines from blight, or running with the bleeding pieces of a white cock round the vineyards while the black squall comes crawling up across the bay. We see the priest making rain by dipping an oak-branch in a spring on the holy mountain, or mumbling his weird spells by night over four pits to soothe the fury of the winds that blow from the four quarters of the world. ”

“ The steep slope of the mountain below is occupied by the terraced gardens of the monks, which with their rich vegetation, and the cypresses rising here and there above them, add greatly to the charm of the scene. A single zigzag path leads up this steep terraced slope to the monastery. The bare precipices above, crowned with forests, the deep wooded valley below, and the mountains rising steeply on the farther side, make up a landscape of varied delight and grandeur, on which a painter would love to dwell. ”

“ A fine grove of beautiful holly-oaks now shades part of the summit, growing on a grassy slope amid low plants and shrubs. It is pleasant in the heat of the day to rest in the shade of these trees, to smell the wild thyme which grows abundantly on the hill, and to enjoy the distant prospects. To the north, across the broad Chaeronean plain, we look straight into the defile through which the Cephisus flows from Phocis into Boeotia; at the northern end of the defile the low hill is visible on which are the scanty ruins of Parapotamii. ”

“ Towards the northern end of the valley the ground gradually rises; and where it terminates the scenery changes. Here, at the northern extremity of the valley, a narrow woody glen, about half a mile long, descends rapidly in a north-easterly direction to the sea-shore. At the head of the glen, commanding a magnificent view down its wooded depths and across the narrow channel of the Euripus to the lofty mountains of Euboea, rises a stately terrace supported by exquisitely constructed walls of white marble, which are embowered in a luxuriant growth of dark-green shrubbery and fir-trees. ”

“ For beyond the meeting of its waters with the Erymanthus, the valley of the Alpheus assumes a softer and gayer aspect. Moderate heights rise on the right bank, their gentle slopes thickly wooded with trees and shrubs of the most varied sorts. Pine-trees, maples, planes, and tall lentisk bushes succeed each other, varied here and there by fields and green pastures. Across the Alpheus lie the beautiful wooded hills of Triphylia, where many a picturesque village is seen nestling among pine-woods, and many a height, crowned by church or ruins, stands out abruptly and precipitously above the river. ”

“ I doubt whether there is anything in Greece, abounding as it is in enchanting scenery and interesting recollections, that can rival the Corinthiac Gulf. There is no lake scenery in Europe that can compete with it. Its coasts, broken into an infinite variety of outline by the ever-changing mixture of bold promontory, gentle slope, and cultivated level, are crowned on every side by lofty mountains of the most pleasing and majestic forms ”

“ The view of the beautiful valley of Sparta from the steep hill of Mistra, crowded with monuments of the Middle Ages, and dominated by the towering mass of Mount Taygetus, which rises like a wall behind it, combines almost every element of natural beauty and historical association. Immediately below the Frankish castle, which crowns the summit of the hill, are the ruins of a spacious Byzantine palace, once the residence of the governor of the Morea, who ranked next after the emperor. ”

“ Here on the north, between the village and the lake, is the only stretch of level ground that breaks the mountain ring, and the luxuriant green of its vineyards and maize-fields contrasts pleasingly with the sombre hue of the pine-forests all around. The first sight of this blue lake embosomed among forest-clad mountains takes the traveller by surprise, so unlike is it to anything else in Greece ”

“ The backbone of the peninsula is the great range of Taygetus, which runs south till it terminates in Taenarum, the modern Cape Matapan, the southern extremity of Greece. The scenery of the peninsula is wild and savage; the villages, hedged in by impenetrable thickets of cactus, cling like eagles’ eyries to the faces of apparently inaccessible cliffs, and are reached by stony and exceedingly toilsome footpaths—the only semblance of roads in these secluded highlands. Almost everywhere the surface is nothing but the naked rock. ”

“ From the ridge we now descend through the forest by a steep, winding, stony path, till we reach the bed of a stream flowing among romantic rocks and woods to join or rather to form, with other streams, the Crathis. In the bottom of the valley the richness of the vegetation even increases. We rode through thickets of planes, growing as great bushes or small trees, so dense that we had constantly to stoop to the horses’ necks to prevent our faces from being brushed by the branches. ”

“ LXV. Aliphera.—From the citadel, and indeed from the whole summit of the ridge, there is a glorious prospect over the valley of the Alpheus for miles and miles. All the mountains of northern Arcadia are spread out like a panorama; and through the broad valley that intervenes between them and the height on which we stand, the Alpheus is seen winding far away and far below. ”

“ Then again as to the people, what a contrast between the grave Pausanias, who hardly allows us to see them except at their devotions, and the sparkling writer who so often lifts the veil of the past and lets us catch a glimpse of the bustling motley crowd and hear the hum of their voices—the crowd that ceased to bustle and the voices that fell silent so long ago. We see the hungry populace at Athens forgetting their empty stomachs in the joys of the theatre and pageant ”

“ LXXVII. Hippocrene.—To reach the far-famed Hippocrene (‘the Horse’s Fount’) from the sanctuary of the Muses we ascend the steep eastern side of Helicon over moss-grown rocks, through a thick forest of tall firs. After a toilsome ascent of about two hours we emerge from the wood upon a tiny open glade of circular shape, covered with loose stones and overgrown with grass and ferns. All around rises the dark fir-wood. Here, in the glade, is Hippocrene, now called Kryopegadi, or ‘cold spring.’ It is a well with a triangular opening, enclosed by ancient masonry. ”

“ Nor are the natural beauties of the site less remarkable than its more material advantages. Behind it rise wooded mountains and in front of it, across the narrow plain, is stretched the wonderful panorama of the Corinthian Gulf, with Helicon, Cithaeron, and Parnassus towering beyond it to the north, and the mighty rock of Acro-Corinth barring the prospect on the east. At sunrise and sunset especially the scene is one of indescribable loveliness. The ancients themselves were not insensible to the charms of Sicyon. ”

“ Yet for the traveller, in spite of its decay, Mistra must remain in virtue of its situation one of the most enchanting spots which he can find in Greece or anywhere; and the prospect from the castle height, on the one side over the whole plain, on the other side up to the snowy peaks of Taygetus, across the fruitful levels and wooded slopes of the first step in the mountain staircase, needs only a view of the sea to be second to none.
“ The whole neighbourhood, too, is one of indescribable beauty. ”

“ The scenery on the way is extremely beautiful—a great contrast to the dull road from Nauplia to the sanctuary. The path leaves the open valley by a narrow glen at its northern end, and leads down deeper and deeper through luxuriantly wooded dells into the bottom of a wild romantic ravine. Here we follow the rocky bed of the stream for some distance between lofty precipitous banks. Farther on the path ascends the right bank of the stream, and we ride along it, with the deep ravine below us on the left and a high wall of rock on the right. ”

“ From these rocks, overgrown with moss and rank creepers, the clear water bubbles and trickles in copious rills, which nourish a rich vegetation in the open ground through which they flow. The grotto, which is always fresh and cool, commands an uninterrupted view over the Gulf to the mountains beyond. Here in the days of the Turkish dominion the bey of Corinth had his gardens, where he led a life of Asiatic luxury. ”

“ Those who have followed in his footsteps in Greece and have formed from personal experience some idea, necessarily slight, of the magnitude of the task he set himself and of the difficulties he had to overcome in accomplishing it, will probably be the readiest to make allowance for inevitable imperfections, will be most grateful to him for what he has done, and least disposed to censure him for what he has left undone. Without him the ruins of Greece would for the most part be a labyrinth without a clue, a riddle without an answer. ”

“ Thence to Tanagra is a hundred and thirty furlongs. The road runs through olive-groves and woodlands: fear of highwaymen there is none at all. The city stands on high and rugged ground. Its aspect is white and chalky; but the houses with their porches and encaustic paintings give it a very pretty appearance. The corn of the district is not very plentiful, but the wine is the best in Boeotia. The people are well-to-do, but simple in their way of life. All are farmers, not artisans. They practise justice, good faith, and hospitality. ”