Aegean Sea

“ Not alone is it beautiful in and of itself, but it commands from its platform a grand view of the Attic plain below, of the bay of Salamis gleaming in the sun beyond, of the long cape running down to Sunium, and of the distant mountains of the Argolid, rolling like billows in the southwest far across the gulf and beyond Ægina. To pause for a moment on gaining this threshold of the Acropolis and gaze upon this imposing panorama of plain, mountain, and sea, is an admirable introduction to Greece. ”

“ The long narrow island of Crete lies at what might be called the entrance to the Aegean Sea. This sea is dotted with islands which form stepping stones from the mainland of Europe to the coast of Asia Minor. Crete turns her face to these islands and her back to Egypt, and the Egyptians, who did not travel very much themselves, called the inhabitants the "Great Men of Keftiu," Keftiu meaning people at the back of. They were the men who dwelt beyond what was familiar to the Egyptians.
The Aegean world is a very beautiful one. ”

“ There is scarcely a single point "where, in clear weather, a mariner would feel himself left in a solitude between sky and water; the eye reaches from island to island, and easy voyages of a day lead from bay to bay." Greek towns, including very ancient places, were scattered along the western coast of Asia Minor, between the mountains and the shore. The Aegean was studded with Greek islands. These, together with the islands in the Ionian Sea, on the west, formed a part of Greek territory. ”

“ Hence its people were early tempted to a sea-faring life. The shores of the Mediterranean and the Euxine were dotted with Hellenic colonies. Intercourse with the old civilizations of Egypt and Phoenicia stirred the naturally quick and versatile Greek intellect to early and vigorous thought. The islands strewn with seeming carelessness through the AEgean Sea were "stepping-stones," which invited the earliest settlers of Greece to the delightful coast countries of Asia Minor, and thus blended the life and history of the opposite shores. ”

“ The ships were run ashore and pulled a few feet out of the water, and then they were pushed out to sea again whenever the sailors were ready.
Adventurous spirits have always turned towards the West, and it was westwards across the Mediterranean that the civilization we have inherited slowly advanced. The early Mediterranean civilization is sometimes given the general name of Aegean, because its great centres were in the Aegean Sea and on the adjoining mainland. ”

“ The Greek steamers, while numerous, are slow and small, and not to be recommended for cleanliness or convenience; while their stated routes include much that is of no especial interest to visitors, who are chiefly eager to view scenes made glorious by past celebrity, and are less concerned with the modern seaports devoted to a prosaic traffic in wine and fruits. To one fortunate enough to be able to number himself among those who go down to the sea in yachts, the Ægean furnishes a fruitful source of pleasure. ”

“ We are on the ship now, with anchor weighed, looking to the Farther East. Athens with its temples and its traditions drops below the horizon. Darkness and silence once more claim the birthplace of gods and heroes as we slip out of these quiet waters and head for the Ægean Sea. [Pg 146]
XVII INTO THE DARDANELLES
We saw but little of the Isles of Greece. It was night and we were tired after a hard day; most of us, I think, turned in early. ”

“ The island of Crete, lying like a long, narrow bar across the mouth of the Ægean Sea, presents a mountainous and rugged appearance to one approaching from any side. Possessing an extreme length of about one hundred and sixty miles, it is nowhere more than thirty-five miles in width, and in places much less than that. A lofty backbone of mountain runs through it from end to end. In all its coast-line few decent harbors are to be found, and that of the thriving city of Canea, near the northwestern end of the island, is no exception. ”

“ With a few trifling exceptions, all the islands of the AEgean, and all the Greek cities, which in that age fringed the coasts of Asia Minor, the Hellespont, and Thrace paid tribute to Athens, and implicitly obeyed her orders. The AEgean Sea was an Attic lake. Westward of Greece, her influence though strong, was not equally predominant. She had colonies and allies among the wealthy and populous Greek settlements in Sicily and South Italy, but she had no organized system of confederates in those regions; and her galleys brought her no tribute from the western seas. ”

“ Across the water, facing the tower, stood Abydos, with its palaces and houses nestling white at the foot of the low green hills. So narrow is the sea that runs between Sestos and Abydos, and so swiftly does the current flow, that the ancients used to think it was a great river running down from Propontis and the stormy Euxine, and emptying their overflowing waters into the wide Ægean main. So they called it the broad Hellespont, for the rivers of Greece were but narrow streams beside it. ”

“ After them the Greeks, a people living chiefly on the shores of the Hellespont and Ægean seas, with many islands in the Mediterranean, Adriatic, and Archipelagion Seas, besides their possessions in Asia Minor, and their commerce with the European Continent, obtained the next power by sea. We read indeed, that Minos, the famous Cretan sovereign and legislator, who lived two descents before the Trojan war, sent out shipping to free the Grecian seas of pirates ”

“ The confidence of the Athenians in their sea-power had a great deal to do with its outbreak. The immediate occasion of the hostilities, which in time involved so many states, was the opportunity offered by the conflict between Corinth and Corcyra of increasing the sea-power of Athens. Hitherto the Athenian naval predominance had been virtually confined to the Ægean Sea. ”

“ All arrival and departure is by sea; and even when Athens shall be finally connected by rail with Constantinople and the north, the bulk of communication between Greece and the western world will still be chiefly maritime, and still subject, as now, to the delays and inconveniences that must always beset an island kingdom. Daily steamers, an ideal not yet attained, will be the one effective way to shorten the distance between Hellas and Europe proper—not to mention America. ”

“ But with all that is attractive in those groups of islands, I can hardly believe anything to be equal to this Greek Archipelago. It seems to me that no waters can be so beautiful as those of the Ægean Sea, although there are waters of wonderful clearness in our Western Hemisphere, notably those round the Bahamas and the Bermudas. ”

“ Strabo said that the guiding thing in the geography of Greece was the sea, which presses in upon it at all parts with a thousand arms. From the Gulf of Arta on the one side to the Gulf of Volo on the other the coast is indented with a succession of natural bays and gulfs. The most important are the Gulfs of Aegina (Saronicus) and Lepanto (Corinthiacus) , which separate Coast. the Morea from the northern mainland of Greece,—the first an inlet of the Aegean, the second of the Ionian Sea,—and are now connected by a canal cut through the high land of the narrow Isthmus of Corinth (31/2 m. wide) . ”

“ Many of the Aegean islands, or chains of islands, are actually prolongations of promontories of the mainland. Two main chains extend right across the sea—-the one through Scyros and Psara (between which shallow banks intervene) to Chios and the hammer-shaped promontory east of it; and the other running from the southeastern promontory of Euboea and continuing the axis of that island, in a southward curve through Andros, Tenos, Myconos, Nikaria and Samos. ”

“ Greeks against the remnants of the Persian navy on the Asiatic coasts, raised the zeal of the Athenians for their sea service to the highest pitch. And when they had acquired the supremacy over the Greek islanders and cities of the coasts of the Ægean, they gained and sedulously employed fresh resources for augmenting the number of their galleys, and improving their own skill as mariners. For no nation was ever more thoroughly aware than the Athenians of the importance of assiduous training and perfect discipline in naval warfare. ”

“ The islands of the Ægean are very dangerous to ships, as their ragged reefs, running out to sea like roots, can scarcely be noticed save in calm weather, when the thin line of white breaking on the smooth surface of the water betrays the hidden teeth below. ”

“ Ægæan Sea.—We got under way this morning, and stood towards Athens, followed by the sloop-of-war, “John Adams,” which had come to anchor under our stern the evening of our arrival at Ægina. The day is like every day of the Grecian summer, heavenly. The stillness and beauty of a new world lie about us. The ships steal on with their clouds of canvass just filling in the light breeze of the Ægæan, and withdrawing the eye from the lofty temple crowning the mountain on our lee, whose shining columns shift slowly as we pass; we could believe ourselves asleep on the sea. ”

“ Leaving Crete behind, the steamer turns her prow northward into the Ægean toward Greece proper, and in the early morning, if all goes smoothly, will be found well inside the promontory of Sunium, approaching the Piræus. One ought most infallibly to be early on deck, for the rugged, rocky shores of the Peloponnesus are close at hand on the left, indented here and there by deep inlets or gulfs, and looking as most travelers seem to think “Greece ought to look.” ”

“ All Greece, to be sure, was favored by the natural beauty of its atmosphere, seas, and mountains, but Attica was perhaps the most favored portion of all, Around her coasts, rocky often and broken by pebbly beaches and little craggy peninsulas, surged the deep blue Ægean, the most glorious expanse of ocean in the world. ”

“ The Aegean itself is naturally divided by the island-chains and the ridges from which they rise into a series of basins or troughs, the deepest of which is that in the north, extending from the coast of Thessaly fo the Gulf of Saros, and demarcated southward by the Northern Sporades, Lemnos, Imbros and the peninsula of Gallipoli. ”

“ I used to think that Ulysses with his ten years’ voyage had taken his time in making Ithaca, but my experience in Greek navigation soon made me understand that he had had, in point of fact, a pretty good “average passage.”
Such are now the mariners of the Ægean: free, equal amongst themselves, navigating the seas of their forefathers with the same heroic, and yet child-like, spirit of venture, the same half-trustful reliance upon heavenly aid, they are the liveliest images of true old Greeks that time and the new religions have spared to us. ”

“ My people here are physically perfect; their morality is much above what is to be found in the islands of the Ægean. I have taught them to love work and loathe idleness. The island they dwell in contains all the beauties of nature in a small space. ‘Infinite riches in a little room,’ to quote Marlowe. They are starting fairly under my guidance, and they will develop, as their prototypes of Athens, into a keen, cultured, intellectual race, who may give this modern world as splendid gifts of genius as did their fathers of old. ”

“ Local institutions thus developed themselves freely, and even the smallest island of the Archipelago has its great representatives in history. But whilst there thus exists the greatest diversity, owing to the configuration of the ground and the multitude of islands, the sea acts as a binding element, washes every coast, and penetrates far inland. These gulfs and numerous harbours have made the maritime inhabitants of Greece a nation of sailors—amphibiæ, as Strabo called them. From the most remote times the passion for travel has always been strong amongst them. ”

“ Future journeys in Greece will but reënforce the conviction of the noble loveliness of the Attic plain. The atmosphere is singularly clear and vibrant, and within it colour and form are sharply defined. The Ægean at its shores adds movement and space. And here more than anywhere else Sir Richard Jebb’s description of the Greek hills seems inevitable. ”

“ A no less effective argument was the necessity of protecting their growing commerce. Athens looked upon the sea, and that sea at once divided and united the scattered Greek communities who lived on the coasts and islands of the Archipelago. It was the possession of the fleet thus acquired that enabled Themistocles and Athens to play a decisive part in the crisis of the struggle with Asia. ”

“ Previously the Athenians had used as their only harbour the open roadstead of PHALERUM on the eastern side of the Phaleric bay, where the sea-shore is nearest to Athens. But Themistocles transferred the naval station of the Athenians to the peninsula of Piraeus, which is distant about 4 1/2 miles from Athens, and contains three natural harbours,—a large one on the western side, called simply Piraeus or The Harbour, and two smaller ones an the eastern side, called respectively ZEA and MUNYCHIA, the latter being nearest to the city. ”

“ It was fortunate for Greece that the man who then counted for most in the politics of Athens was one who recognized the all-importance of sea-power, though it is likely that at the outset all he had in mind was that the possession of an efficient fleet would enable his city to exert its influence on the islands and among the coast cities to the exclusion of the military power of its rival Sparta. ”