Joseph Pennell

“ If at Eleusis we think of exalted religious emotion, Delphi puts every man in awe. Well was the spot chosen for the most famous oracle of antiquity: it needs no help of man to show the powrer of God. But here, as everywhere in Greece, the awe is not too great for humanity to bear: it is not the crushing sense of impotence in the face of natural forces that one feels in the Alps or the Himalayas, it is the awe that may be felt for a being both mighty and kindly. Human beings may live here and be happy ”

“ If the games show the physical side of the Greeks, the theatre above all shows the intellectual. While they invented, and perfected, nearly all kinds of literary art, it is the theatre that touched their life most closely, and most fully gave scope for their genius. This also grew out of religion, and was always a part of their religion. But the Greek gods were no puritans. ”

“ Thus the Indian philosopher soars in the highest regions of speculation, and sees great truths, but they intoxicate him: he does not bring them to the test of daily life, nor does he check them by reason. The Hebrew prophet has his vision of one God, and in rapt devotion prostrates himself below the dignity of manhood. The Roman deals with practical politics and material civilisation; he has a genius for organizing, and for combining the rule of the best with the freedom and direct influence of all: he, however, despises the spirit and the imagination. ”

“ COLUMNS OF THE TEMPLE OF JUNO, GIRGENTI AS the sun sinks into the silent sea, these battered, beaten columns take on a dignity which proves how impressive this temple was when their art was a living thing. Only from within comes a voice, in English or American, which proves that art is dead—Greek art.
XI
THE TEMPLES ON THE WALL, GIRGENTI THERE they stand on the outer walls, the long line of them—and there are more than I have drawn ”

“ And I began thus to ponder within myself: ‘Ah! shall we frail creatures resent the death of one of ourselves, seeing that our life must needs be full short, when in one place so many dead cities lie before us?’” Indeed the Greek cities are most aptly compared to humanity. There never was anything grandiose about them, nothing monstrous like the empire of China, no desire to thrust Greek manners or religions upon the rest of the world, no attempt to monopolize trade even by honest methods. They wished to live and let live, loved and hated fiercely, but like men ”

“ These adjustments have been measured and tabulated—or at least a great many of them, for there are doubtless many we do not notice, and the building is a ruin—but they show a delicacy of sense which is nothing short of miraculous. These builders, however, were not only artists with miraculous keenness of sense, but members of a true trade-guild, with its accumulated wisdom handed down from generation to generation, and themselves were men who worked with their own hands. Neither could they have built the Parthenon with books of logarithms in an office ”

“ When Athens fell, her conqueror spared her with a generosity not usual in those days; so it came about that her buildings remained for many hundreds of years, and the Parthenon even lasted through the devastating ruin of the Turks, until a Venetian shell dropped upon it and blew it up (1687) . There is no use in trying to record what the Acropolis of Athens calls to mind: it is the best of what educated men know.
Fair and goodly in life, the Athenians were also fair in death. Without the gate, on the sacred road to Eleusis, lies the place of tombs. Not bare slabs are these, nor broken columns ”

“ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE ILLUSTRATIONS START AT TAORMINA, PROCEED AROUND SICILY—THENCE TO ITALY, AND ARE CONTINUED IN GREECE.
INTRODUCTION. IT is a happy thing that the Greek race came into being, because they showed the world once at least what is meant by a man. The ideal Greek virtue σωφροσὑνη means, that all parts and faculties of the man are in proportion, each trained to perfection and all under control of the will: body, mind, and spirit, each has its due place. ”

“ It is seated upon the acropolis hill, whence a view can be taken at once of that corner of Sicily which was held by the mysterious Elymians, with their citadel and sanctuary of Eryx. Segesta was founded by a people who wanted protection, and feared the sea. But, like the rest of Sicily, it came under Greek influence; and its buildings, the two temples and the theatre, are Greek. This small town has played a part in history: it was the bone of contention which led Athens to interfere with Syracuse, and so on to her ruin. The columns of the temple are unfinished, the fluting has never been done. ”

“ Yet from this city sailed to Cos opposite the hot-blooded youth whom Simaitha loved, whose story is told in the poet’s words of passion. And these cities, once so full of life and happiness, are a desert now. Even the new Greece, which rose from the ashes of the old not a hundred years ago, which has sprung into new life and honour within the last few months, cannot console us for the Greece that is gone. The quick intelligence is still here, the courage, the idealism; but Greece can hardly escape the corruption of the modern world, with its grasping after wealth ”

“ The temple of Zeus at Olympia was built between 469 and 457, the Parthenon 454-438, Sunium and Eleusis about the same time, and two buildings at Pæstum. The theatres belong to a later date, and the Corinthian temple of Zeus Olympian at Athens, begun by Peisistratus, was not finished until the time of Hadrian.
Olympia is the epitome of the Greek race, as the forum is of the Roman dominion: the Roman ideal being law, order, and government; the Greek, all the powers of man at their best, used and enjoyed in the holy precinct of their great God. ”

“ Aegina, like all else in Greece, is small, only about forty square miles; yet Aegina has left her mark on history. Here, according to the tradition, Pheidon, tyrant of Argos, first struck coins in Greece. Whether it was so or not, Aegina was a centre of trade very early, and founded a famous city, Naucratis, in North Africa, Cydonia in Crete, and another in Umbria: the Aeginetan tortoise, the Athenian owl, and the Corinthian horse were the three types of coins best known to the Greek world, passing everywhere as good. Aegina was also famous for the arts, especially sculpture. ”

“ In the theatre, Aeschylus found room for his profound religious feeling, Euripides for his scepticism, Sophocles for a mirror of the mind of man, Aristophanes for his political and social satire and his merry fun. Every town and even hamlet must have its theatre. A suitable place could be found almost anywhere in the hill country—that is, in almost all parts of Greece proper—before any buildings needed to be put up. ”

“ Every common workman must have had his share of this traditional skill. Indeed, inscriptions lately discovered show that the building of the Parthenon went on after Pheidias was banished; so that the sculptures which are the wonder of the world must have been done in part at least without their designer. But even without such evidence, the perfection of every detail of building, the fitting of the joints, the strength and finish of each part, is enough to show what the Athenian workman was like. ”

“ No great man of letters ever came out of Corinth, no poet and no orator; but Corinthian bronze was famous, and the city was full of works of art. When Mummius sacked Corinth and left it desolate, he made his famous bargain with the contractors who removed the spoil: if they damaged any of the works of art, they were to replace them with others as good. ”

“ From this place led forth the Sacred Way, over the hills to Eleusis, where perhaps more than anywhere else in the Greek world those higher emotions were aroused which we associate with religion. In the ritual these were lacking; and philosophy was sceptical rather than religious, except with a rare soul now and then, a Socrates or a Plato, with whom feeling and intellect seem to be fused into one force. ”

“ In our own day, what is called science arrogates almost divine honours to the faculty for measuring and observing, and neglects both the religious instinct and the philosopher’s theoric; nor is this ideal less deadly than the Roman’s to imagination and the sense of beauty. In modern times also, each person strives to excel in some one specialty, mental or bodily; and if there is any feeling at all for proportion it is the proportion of a group, while the members of the group are περιττοἱ, excessive in one way and defective in the others. But the Greek aimed at perfect proportion for the man ”

“ The picture is taken from the small hill of Kronos: we look over the site of Hera’s temple to the great temple of Zeus. To the left, out of sight, is the entrance to the racecourse. Just beneath us, under the hill, is a row of small shrines called Treasuries, which mighty states and monarchs had built to contain their own chief offerings. In the distance is the river Alpheius. We cannot imagine how this plain looked when it was the encampment of thousands, covered with booths, and full of goodly men and horses ”

“ They have left behind them everywhere a poignant regret, such as one feels for a very dear friend gone for ever. Most strong is this feeling when our steps wander over some desolate spot, once a populous city, such as Pæstum or Myndos. ”

“ Such would be the life of the ordinary Greek; the greater intellects would look beyond the ritual to the essence; and we have ample evidence to show that their ideals were as high as any that have been known to other peoples. ”

“ Many, indeed, are quite simple, in shape of vases or the like; but others show delicate reliefs, with the dead in their habit as they lived—the woman at her toilet, the warrior on his horse, or one seated in a chair and clasping hands with his friends as they say, Fare you well! ”

“ The difference is shown at once, in that the Olympian assembly was enforced by no lawgiver, but the voluntary gathering of men of one blood, who for a set time laid aside all their quarrels, and remembered that they were marked off by a great gulf from all other men. ”

“ The first attempts gave too much convex curving, but this again was corrected until the architect found perfection: yet the differences measured in inches are small. Again, each column was inclined slightly inwards, because a column that stands quite straight looks as though it were inclined out-wards; and the stylobate, upon which the columns stand, is curved from each end upwards to the centre. Other adjustments were necessary in the abacus and capital, to make all harmonious ”