Amphipolis

“ Again, oligarchies change whenever any attempt is made to narrow them; for then those who desire equal rights are compelled to call in the people. Changes in the oligarchy also occur when the oligarchs waste their private property by extravagant living; for then they want to innovate, and either try to make themselves tyrants, or install some one else in the tyranny, as Hipparinus did Dionysius at Syracuse, and as at Amphipolis a man named Cleotimus introduced Chalcidian colonists, and when they arrived, stirred them up against the rich. ”

“ In this calmness and tranquillity it puts one in mind of the blue expanse of the interminable and unfathomable ocean; its immensity makes you feel it sublime; its depth tints it with that transparent green which the eye never wearies in contemplating,—but, when the wind is up, when the billows heave their masses, dash their spray to the heavens, and deafen the ends of the earth with their roar, the ocean becomes a fearful and a formidable thing; and, when the winds of oppression chafe it, so is a population so learned, and so linked together, as the labouring classes of the Athens. ”

“ Egypt was the magnificent, the golden bridge, ten thousand years long, glorious with temples and pyramids, illuminated and illustrated by the most complete and continuous records of human history, along which the civilization of Atlantis, in a great procession of kings and priests, philosophers and astronomers, artists and artisans, streamed forward to Greece, to Rome, to Europe, to America. ”

“ The Greeks, too young to have shared in the religion of Atlantis, but preserving some memory of that great country and its history, proceeded to convert its kings into gods, and to depict Atlantis itself as the heaven of the human race. Thus we find a great solar or nature worship in the elder nations, while Greece has nothing but an incongruous jumble of gods and goddesses, who are born and eat and drink and make love and ravish and steal and die; and who are worshipped as immortal in presence of the very monuments that testify to their death. ”

“ Rising straight out of the plain is a great oval-shaped rock, the famous Acropolis of Athens, once its citadel and fortress, but transformed by Pericles into a great shrine for Athena. From this rock the land sloped gently to the sea. The plain was watered by the Cephisus, the only stream in Attica which did not run dry in the summer, and along its banks were olive groves, adding their touch of dark grey-green to the landscape. In the centre of this plain, at the foot of the Acropolis, was Athens. ”

“ Can we, in the presence of such facts, doubt the statements of the Egyptian priests to Solon, as to the glory and greatness of Atlantis, its monuments, its sculpture, its laws, its religion, its civilization?
In Egypt we have the oldest of the Old World children of Atlantis; in her magnificence we have a testimony to the development attained by the parent country; by that country whose kings were the gods of succeeding nations, and whose kingdom extended to the uttermost ends of the earth. ”

“ In the moonlight the columns and sculptures of the great temple on the Acropolis stood out in minute tracery They could see all the caverns and jagged ledges on the massy Rock. The flat roofs of the sleeping city lay like a dark and peaceful ocean. The mountains spread around in shadow-wrapped hush. Far away the dark stretch of the sea sent back a silver shimmering in answer to the moon. A landscape only possible at Athens! ”

“ Memphis had succeeded Babylon, Athens had followed Memphis, Rome had cast Athens into oblivion, Paris had eclipsed Rome, and had vanished in its turn; hundreds of millions of brains had thought, hundreds of millions of hearts had beaten, eternal loves had been sworn, divine embraces had united loving souls, innocent children, charged by the light of day, had held out their arms for the kisses of their mothers, and life in all its forms had sparkled for millions of years in sheaves of light ever renewed like universal and inextinguishable fireworks. ”

“ Forcing my way out of the vestibule into the cool air, I hurried back through the alley of sphinxes to the shore, and flung myself into my boat.
There is, to the north of Memphis, a solitary lake (which, at this season of the year, mingles with the rest of the waters,) upon whose shores stands the Necropolis, or City of the Dead—a place of melancholy grandeur, covered over with shrines and pyramids, where many a kingly head, proud [pg 50] even in death, has for ages awaited the resurrection of its glories. ”

“ But the ancient Egyptians are known to have been in the habit of enclosing with embankments the areas on which they erected temples, statues, and obelisks, so as to exclude the waters of the Nile; and the point of time to be ascertained, in every case where we find a monument buried to a certain depth in mud, as at Memphis and Heliopolis, is the era when the city fell into such decay that the ancient embankments were neglected, and the river allowed to inundate the site of the temple, obelisk, or statue. ”

“ The most famous of them all was the overthrow of the island of Atlantis. This great island lay over against the Pillars of Heracles, in extent greater than Libya and Asia put together, and was the passage to other islands and to a great ocean of which the Mediterranean sea was only the harbour; and within the Pillars the empire of Atlantis reached in Europe to Tyrrhenia and in Libya to Egypt. This mighty power was arrayed against Egypt and Hellas and all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Then your city did bravely, and won renown over the whole earth. ”

“ The mythology of Greece is really a history of the kings of Atlantis. The Greek heaven was Atlantis. Hence the references to statues, swords, etc., that fell from heaven, and were preserved in the temples of the different states along the shores of the Mediterranean from a vast antiquity, and which were regarded as the most precious possessions of the people. They were relics of the lost race received in the early ages. ”

“ Other nations fasten their ropes and hooks to the outside of their sails, but the Egyptians to the inside. The Greeks write and read from left to right, but the Egyptians from right to left."
After sailing for some seven hundred miles up the river Nile from the coast, past Heliopolis, the once famous city of Ancient Egypt, past Memphis, the old capital, past Thebes, with its hundred gates, to Elephantine, the "ivory island," opposite to what is now Assuan, he is more than ever puzzled about its course and the reason of its periodical floods. ”

“ The Akropolis is too carefully cleared of all that is new; the modern city keeps too little that is old; here, in this quarter of Athens, old and new are mingled together in that way which gives to the inquirer the full interest of discovery. ”

“ Athens!—My favourite daughter! Until the Rock of the Acropolis shall fall,—thy classic beauties,—around which have gleamed the meridian splendour of the mind, will proclaim that Minerva, Plato, Pericles, and Phidias, were thy own!
Palmyra!—My third joy! Although the wild Arab sleeps within thy roofless dwelling, with the whirling sands for his nightly mantle—yet, while thy Porticoes, Arches, and Colonnades shall be seen, the City of the Desert will live in Memory ”

“ It seems pretty certain that there never was any such mighty and splendid island empire contending against Athens and later ruined by earthquakes and engulfed by the ocean. Atlantis may fairly be set down as a figment of dignified philosophic romance, owing its birth partly to various legendary hints and reports of seismic and volcanic action but much more to the glorious achievements of Athens in the Persian War and the apparent need of explaining a supposed shallow part of the Atlantic known to be obstructed and now named the Sargasso Sea. ”

“ The sea, varying from a light green to a deep Mediterranean blue, laps gently along the side of the highway toward the open ocean, while ahead, up the straight boulevard, appears the Acropolis of Athens, now seen for the first time in its proper light as one of the most magnificent ruins of the earth. The road thither is good but uncomfortably new. When its long lines of pepper trees, now in their infancy, shall have attained their growth, it will be a highway lined with shade and affording a prospect of much beauty. ”

“ As far back in the ages as the eye can penetrate, even where the perspective dwindles almost to a point, we can still see the swarming multitudes, possessed of all the arts of the highest civilization, pressing forward from out that other and greater empire of which even this wonder-working Nile-land is but a faint and imperfect copy.
Look at the record of Egyptian greatness as preserved in her works: The pyramids, still in their ruins, are the marvel of mankind. The river Nile was diverted from its course by monstrous embankments to make a place for the city of Memphis. ”

“ Nearly all the gods of Greece are connected with Atlantis. We have seen the twelve principal gods all dwelling on the mountain of Olympus, in the midst of an island in the ocean in the far west, which was subsequently destroyed by a deluge on account of the wickedness of its people. And when we turn to Plato's description of Atlantis (p. 13, ante) we find that Poseidon and Atlas dwelt upon a mountain in the midst of the island; and on this mountain were their magnificent temples and palaces, where they lived, separated by great walls from their subjects. ”

“ Athens has mountains and sea, but scanty plains. Rome, plains, but no water, and low-browed hills. Jerusalem, mountains, but no plains nor sea. Modern cities are without the least trace of scenic loveliness. London, Paris, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, New Orleans, and Berlin, how cheap their panorama! It is a map and not a picture that one draws when he paints these capitals. Boston and Baltimore make a slight approach to hill effects, but only a hundred feet high are their mountains, and no plains to set off even these. ”

“ The monotonous splendour of the days, the solemn radiance of the nights—all tended to cherish that ardent melancholy, the offspring of passion and of thought, which had so long been the inmate of my soul.
[pg 34] When I sailed from Alexandria, the inundation of the Nile was at its full. The whole valley of Egypt lay covered by its flood; and, as I saw around me, in the light of the setting sun, shrines, palaces, and monuments, encircled by the waters, I could almost fancy that I beheld the sinking island of Atalantis, on the last evening its temples were visible above the wave. ”

“ There are no new cities built of any magnitude; the new would only depopulate the old. From Memphis, reduced to a state of quarry, is built Alexandria; from Heliopolis we have Cairo. In passing the limestone cliffs we experience cold and wind; the mummied crocodile pits we pass, and stop at Aizril. Peddlers besiege the vessel, and the vociferating yell was kept up until long after 10:00 p. m., the hour when all lights in the cabin are shut off. ”

“ The river Alphe'us, which the poets have made the most celebrated of the rivers of Greece, flows westward through Elis to the Ionian Sea, and on its banks was Olympia, the renowned seat of the Olympian games. Here, also, was the sacred grove of olive and plane trees, within which were temples, monuments, and statues, erected in honor of gods, heroes, and conquerors. In the very midst stood the great temple of Jupiter, which contained the colossal gold and ivory statue of the god, the masterpiece of the sculptor Phidias. ”

“ The palace of the kings and a fortress built on the mountain, defended it on the west; the Nile on the east; and to the north were the lakes, beyond which were the plain of mummies, and the causeway which led from Busiris to the great pyramids. Thus situated, Memphis commanded the valley of Egypt, and communicated by canals with the lakes Mœris and Mareotis. Its citizens might traverse the kingdom in boats; and it therefore became the centre of wealth, commerce, and arts; where geometry, invented by the Egyptians, flourished. ”

“ To-day's excursion, offering a pleasant comradeship with those of his own race in a strange land, came almost opportunely, he fancied, to break an exalted mood. He had found himself roused to the uttermost by his first impressions of Athens. Put to flight by the seduction of river and desert, it was the influence of the landscape rather than of art and history to which he was here first made sensitive. Sea, mountains and plain were informed with a beauty which purged his memory of the evil loveliness of Egypt and restored gravity and dignity to his conception of human life. ”

“ I find Athens hot and dusty—a fine white dust, which makes everything look desolate. I get hold of a plan of Athens, showing me how to make the most of six days, but as I have not that time to spare, one’s first thoughts turn naturally to the Acropolis, a rocky plateau of crystallized limestone, rising to about 200 feet. ”

“ Then, crossing the easternmost extremity of the Mediterranean Sea, we shall strike the African coast at Alexandria—sighting the historic Bay of Aboukir—passing over Lake Mareotis, and plunging into the Libyan Desert. Then, if you please, we can turn off at this point and follow the course of the Nile, visiting the Pyramids, Memphis, Luxor, the ruins of ancient Thebes, and all the rest of the interesting places that are to be found on the borders of the grand old river. ”

“ There is, in fact, no building on earth which can sustain the burden of such greatness, and so the first visit to the Acropolis is and must be disappointing. When the traveller reflects how all the Old World’s culture culminated in Greece—all Greece in Athens—all Athens in its Acropolis—all the Acropolis in the Parthenon—so much crowds upon the mind confusedly that we look for some enduring monument whereupon we can fasten our thoughts, and from which we can pass as from a visible starting-point [pg 90] into all this history and all this greatness. And at first we look in vain. ”