chapter v, p. 104, and p. 105; also see chapter xi, p. 246.
Homer lets Hera, wrangling with Zeus, in regard to Troy, exclaim: “Verily three are the dearest to me among cities: wide-wayed Mycenæ and Sparta and Argos.” The Heræum, the ancient sanctuary of the goddess, once belonged to Mycenæ, and traces of the Cyclopean road that connected them are still visible. Here the “kings” took the oath of allegiance before sailing to Troy with Agamemnon and Menelaus. Here on their return the Argives dedicated the Trojan spoils to Hera. The herald in the “Agamemnon” says:—
“While speeding over land and sea, to yonder light, The sun’s light, it is fitting that we make this vaunt: ‘Once, sacking Troy, an Argive host to gods of Greece Nailed up these spoils, a glorious heirloom in their halls.’”
Among the spoils was the shield of the Trojan hero Euphorbus, slain by Menelaus. In the sixth century, Pythagoras, to prove that in a previous round of existence he had been Euphorbus, entered the Heræum and instantly identified the shield as his own.
From Argos to the Heræum it was a distance of more than five miles. Herodotus relates how a woman of Argos, wishing to be present at Hera’s festival, was unable to start because the oxen were not forthcoming in season to draw her car. Her two athlete sons put on the yoke and drew the heavy car quickly across the plain and up the hill. When the Argive women congratulated her on being mother of such sons, she, “exultant over their deed and fame, stood before the statue of Hera and prayed that to her sons, Cleobis and Biton, who had honoured her greatly, the goddess would give whatever gift is best for man to have. And the youths, after sacrifice and banquet, lay down to sleep in the sacred precinct itself and rose up no more.” This answer of the goddess so impressed the Argives that they set up the statues of the young men at Delphi. It pleases the imagination to identify with these the two archaic statues there excavated by the French; and a beautiful Parian marble head of Hera, found by the American excavators of the Heræum, has preserved to us the gracious presentation of the goddess by some great sculptor of the fifth century.
The _dramatis personæ_ of the “Suppliants” of Æschylus vaguely suggest a chapter in the early history of Argolis. Danaus with his fifty daughters comes from the south, fleeing over the sea from his brother Ægyptus and his fifty sons. The early Pelasgian inhabitants of Argos are represented by the king, Pelasgus, who receives the suppliant fugitives into the safe refuge of his Cyclopean walls, which we may identify with the prehistoric Larisa citadel above Argos: “Go get ye to my city fenced with goodly walls, fast locked within the lofty ramparts, subtly wrought.” Henceforward, as in Homer, the Argives and Danai are convertible names. All objection to the newcomers as foreigners is neutralized by realizing that they have only returned to their original home. Inachus, the river god, was the father of Io, who, half transformed into a heifer by the jealousy of Hera, had been made to wander frenzied over land and water until in Egypt she brought forth a son, the great-grandfather of this same Danaus.
In the sequel to the “Suppliants” Æschylus gave his interpretation of the story of the Danaides and their trial for the forty-nine murders of that Saint Bartholomew wedding night. Only fragments of this play remain, and the romance of Hypermnestra is familiar to the modern world chiefly from Horace’s incomparable ode. In the “Prometheus,” however, Æschylus both tells the Io story at length and briefly sketches the story of Hypermnestra, which, with the “lovely tale” of Danaë and the infant Perseus, sheds around the Perseid dynasty of Argos a fragrant aroma of romance in striking contrast to the gruesome annals of the Pelopid family, which waft now and again to our nostrils the scent of human blood and the breath of the charnel vault. Prometheus prophesies to Io that, in the fifth generation from her Egyptian-born son, fifty maidens, daughters of Danaus,—
“Shall come, not willing it, to Argos back again. Wedlock with kinsmen cousins they are fain to shun, But these with hearts a-flutter, falcons after doves, Not distanced far, shall come to hunt their quarry down, Seeking a wedlock that should not be sought. But God Shall grudge their mating. In her soil Pelasgia Shall give them lodging, slain, laid low by women’s hands, Ares-emboldened, waking sentinels of night. For wife each husband of his life shall rob, and dye Her two-edged sword in murder. May God grant, with love Like this, that Cypris come upon my enemies! One maiden only shall love soften and forbid To slay her love-mate. Nay, her purpose she shall blunt And of twain choices offered she shall rather choose To bear the name of coward than of murderess. From her in Argos shall be bred a royal line.”
Lynceus is saved, under cover of night, by Hypermnestra, and escaping, as Pausanias tells us, by the Diras gate, he signals back to her his safety by means of a beacon light on Mount Lyrcea, and she replies by another from Larisa. On this Larisa mountain, rising above the plain, there is lavished as a setting for the picturesque ancient and mediæval ruins a colour scheme of green, rich reds and brown that delights the artist’s eye.
Argos itself, continuously inhabited through the centuries, offers few reminders of antiquity except the steep seats of the theatre. The beautiful wolf head on the extant Argive drachmas reminds us of the Wolf Agora of Sophocles and of the Wolf Apollo dedicated by Danaus when he had ungratefully snapped away the kingdom from his Pelasgian host. We are glad to leave to Pausanias the description of the sights of historic Argos and to follow Amymone, one of the Danaids, as she goes down the plain of “thirsty Argos,” water-jar on head, to fetch water at Lerna. She went to the fountain once too often, if we may trust the legend. Lucian describes how Poseidon, inflamed by Triton’s account of her beauty, too impetuous to wait for his royal team, had thrown himself hastily on the fastest dolphin available and had come riding up the bay. Amymone, as she is carried off, cries out: “Fellow, where are you carrying me off to? You’re a kidnapper sent after us, I suppose, by uncle Ægyptus. I’ll call my father!” (Triton) “Hush, Amymone, it’s Poseidon.” (Amymone) “What Poseidon are you talking of? Fellow, why do you drag me and force me into the sea? I’ll choke, poor me, as I go down!” Poseidon comforts her by telling her that she shall escape, as his bride, not only her daily five-mile walk as a water-carrier in Argos but her sisters’ futile task in Hades of carrying water in a sieve. He promises her also a fountain, called by her name. This promise was kept; by leaving the railroad at Myli, the second station below Argos, we can still see the fountain. Here Heracles, her sister’s descendant, slew the Lernæan hydra.
If we coast down the west side of the bay we come to Cynuria, whose autochthonous inhabitants would seem to have belonged, like their Arcadian neighbours, to the pre-Dorian “Pelasgic” stock. Herodotus gives a dramatic account of one of the contests for the possession of this territory between Spartans and Argives, in the sixth century, which might serve as a pendant for the Roman story of the Horatii and the Curiatii. Three hundred Spartans and three hundred Argives, chosen as champions, engaged while the main armies withdrew. Two Argives only survived, and they, thinking the Spartans all dead, ran off home to announce the victory. One half-dead Spartan, however, Othryades, was able to write with his blood his name upon a trophy which he erected of Argive armour. Each side claimed the victory, with the result that the full armies engaged and the Spartans conquered. Othryades, however, ashamed to survive his comrades, killed himself on the field.
Nauplia, across the bay from Lerna, is full of suggestion for the prehistoric settlement of Argolis, and of associations with modern history. It has fewer direct points of contact with classic literature. Nauplius, the founder, according to tradition, was the son of Amymone and of Poseidon, who was here able to assert himself against the predominance of Hera further inland. Hera, indeed, had the Achæan Zeus to curb on the north and may have been glad to compromise with Poseidon for a safe-conduct permitting her to make her necessary annual visit to the baths of Kanathos, east of Nauplia. By way of Nauplia, as we have seen, the alphabet may have entered Greece, and here the less valuable but costly cargoes of Trojan spoils were landed, bringing one and another hint and pattern of trans-Ægean art. Here Menelaus, detained by storm long after his brother, finally landed:—
“Back to the land has Menelaus come from Troy, At Nauplia in harbour moored, while near the beach The oar-blades fall, returned from his long wandering.”
No more beautiful mooring-place for home-coming warriors could be found than the water-front of Nauplia, lying beneath the majestic rock of Palamidi, guard of the sea-entrance to the Argolid.
On the low acropolis of Tiryns recent excavations have uncovered the “Lower Castle” to the north of the Middle and Upper fortresses already known. Pausanias attributed the founding of Tiryns to members of the Danaus family, Acrisius remaining in Argos and Prœtus taking as his share the Heræum, Midea, Tiryns, and the coast of Argolis. Acrisius, to forestall an oracle, according to which he was to be slain by a grandson, shut up Danaë, his daughter, in a tower of bronze. Zeus descended to her in a shower of gold, and when Perseus was born Acrisius committed to the sea mother and child in a chest. The translation by John Addington Symonds of a fragment from Simonides describing this event fully preserves the pathos for which Simonides was famous:—
“When in the carven chest, The winds that blew and waves in wild unrest Smote her with fear, she, not with cheeks unwet, Her arms of love round Perseus set, And said: ‘O child, what grief is mine! But thou dost slumber, and thy baby breast Is sunk in rest, Here in the cheerless brass-bound bark, Tossed amid starless night and pitchy dark. Nor dost thou heed the scudding brine Of waves that wash above thy curls so deep, Nor the shrill winds that sweep,— Lapped in thy purple robe’s embrace, Fair little face! But if this dread were dreadful too to thee, Then wouldst thou lend thy listening ear to me; Therefore I cry,—Sleep babe, and sea be still, And slumber our unmeasured ill!’”
The Nereids, charmed with the beauty of the child, guided the chest safely into the net of the fishermen of the little island of Seriphos. Perseus, on his return to Argos, went up to Larisa, to which Acrisius had retired, and while displaying his skill with the quoit accidentally killed his grandfather. Thus was fulfilled the doom to avoid which Acrisius had shut up Danaë in the bronze tower at Argos. Perseus, ashamed at this homicide, and perhaps disliking Argos by reason of his mother’s ill-treatment, persuaded the son of Prœtus to change kingdoms with him, and so he came to live at Tiryns, and from there went up the plain and founded Mycenæ where a mushroom (_mykes_) that he pulled up when thirsty gave him a draught of water. The greater antiquity of Tiryns implied in this legend is not inconsistent with archæological evidence, and the fable that Prœtus, the first king of Tiryns, imported from Lycia seven Cyclopes as builders is a vague record of the foreign contribution made to this ancient centre. The Cyclopean walls in Argolis, often alluded to in the fifth century, were at least as conspicuous at Tiryns as elsewhere, and this acropolis near the sea would fit the situation in the “Trojan Women” of Euripides where the captive, lamenting her dead husband deprived of burial rites, anticipates with dread the landing at Nauplia:—
“Belovèd, O my husband dear, Thou’rt wandering, a spectral fear, Unburied and unlaved. But me the hull that cleaves the sea Shall bear with spread wings far from thee To Argos, nurse of steeds, Where Cyclopēan walls rear high Their giant stones to flaunt the sky.”
To-day, in the spring, the hill of Tiryns is covered with slender stalks of asphodel, while amidst flowers delicate and shadowy as these, along the pathways of the “asphodel meadows” below, steal the ghosts of the ancient masters of these Cyclopean walls and galleries.
Mycenæ and Tiryns, linked in tradition with the name of Perseus, both sent men to Platæa to fight against the Persians. In a little more than a decade thereafter they were both captured and destroyed by Argos, jealous of their proximity and of their place on the national roll of honour from which she had excluded herself. At the end of another decade Æschylus chose to flatter the Argives, just then the allies of Athens, by transferring from Mycenæ to their town the scene of the “Agamemnon.”
In addition to the plain of Argolis the “Akte,” or peninsula proper, has its own history and associations. Leaving Tiryns and Nauplia behind, the road to the inland Epidaurus sanctuary is overlooked from the north by the naked ridge of Mount Arachneum, from which flashed to the palace roof at Argos the last relay of flame in the chain of beacons. The Epidaurian Asclepieum claimed the honour of the birth of the god of healing, the foundling son of Apollo, who was suckled by a goat. From this parent sanatorium others were established throughout Greece. The Athenians even called “Epidauria” one of the days used for the worship of Asclepius. In a fragmentary hymn to the god, found at Athens, reference is made to the oracle quoted by Pausanias as beginning: “Great joy for mortals all thy birth, Asclepius! Thou, love-child of Koronis and my own, wast born in rugged Epidaurus!” In the precinct of this famous health-resort was found a tablet inscribed with a hymn by Isyllus, an Epidaurian poet, containing the genealogy of the god’s mother and telling how Apollo named the child and called him “Destroyer of disease, Health-giver, mighty Gift to men.” Homer’s epithet for Epidaurus is “abounding in vines,” and in later days Dionysus was not neglected. The auditorium, with the circle of the orchestra still completely marked by a sunken rim of stone, is the most beautiful and the best preserved of the theatres in Greece, and one may here better than at Athens imagine the _mise-en-scène_ of the great dramas for which the Argolid furnished so largely the subject matter. The opening scene of the “Ion” of Plato brings before us the star rhapsodist of his day, relating how he is just back from the Asclepius festival at Epidaurus where the Epidaurians held a contest, not only in his own specialty of reciting Homer but in lyric poetry besides. In Epidaurus were celebrated the usual games, as the well-preserved Stadium testifies and as we know from more than one passage of Pindar. In the Abaton, now more fully excavated, have been found some of the tablets dedicated by grateful patients who had been cured by sleeping in the precinct. Cures of blindness, palsy, ulcers, dropsy, internal maladies and external wounds are recorded in this medical literature, which Strabo tells us was here displayed in great abundance, as in the great Sanatorium of Hippocrates on the island of Cos.
Troezen, far down the eastern side of the peninsula, both geographically and by its associations, historical and mythological, turns our thoughts away from Dorian Argos and across the Saronic Gulf to Athens. It was here that some of the Athenian women and children found a place of refuge during the Persian invasion. In a colonnade of the market-place Pausanias saw portrait statues of those refugees whose rank and wealth permitted this expression of their gratitude. Here in the harbour the Greek fleet assembled before sailing to take its position in the Straits of Salamis. The ruined remains of the acropolis are insignificant, but our vision, like that of the refugees, may range over the wonderful landscape—Parnassus beyond the Isthmus and gulf, mountains and headlands, and the Ægean set with island jewels—back to the fertile plain below, which in modern times has welcomed the beauty of the orange and the lemon to replace the vanished glory of the kings and heroes of antiquity.
Plutarch, in his “Life of Theseus,” relates the well-known story that the young prince in the dawning vigour of manhood is taken by his mother to test his strength on the great rock beneath which lie concealed the tokens left by his father to guarantee his royal birth. He lifts the rock and takes the sword and the sandals. Emulous of the fame of Heracles, he rejects the suggestion of the easy voyage across the Saronic Gulf, and by the dangerous land route, where wild beasts and giants must be met and slain, he makes his way past the ill-famed Scironian rocks to Athens, and claims the paternity of Ægeus and becomes the national hero of his father’s land.
In the “Hippolytus” of Euripides we find Theseus, self-exiled from Athens for a year, again in Troezen, the realm of Pittheus, his maternal grandfather, who has had the rearing of his son, Hippolytus. The handsome youth has been seen at Eleusis by Phædra, his young stepmother, who then and there falls in love with him. He is, however, a somewhat intractable compound of a Jehu and a Joseph, wholly absorbed in colourless devotion to Artemis and inaccessible to the blandishments of Aphrodite, who uses the unlucky Phædra as a cat’s-paw to punish the intrusion of the divine huntress into the sphere of influence rightfully belonging to the goddess of love. Phædra, despairing and mortified at her rejection by Hippolytus, very properly hangs herself, but by way of securing her posthumous justification leaves a note for her husband, accusing the innocent Hippolytus. Theseus, in his rage, banishes his son and invokes a curse by Poseidon. Faring forth in his chariot Hippolytus, though an excellent whip, is unable to cope with the great bull sent up from the sea. This so terrifies the horses that their driver is thrown upon the rocks and dies, after Artemis, a somewhat tardy _dea ex machina_, has appeared to the now remorseful Theseus and has exonerated his son. This favourite drama, in addition to the admirable drawing of Phædra’s character, combines the grandeur of the sea as it roars up in a tidal wave, envisaging the terrible sea-bull, and the loveliness of the Troezenian meadows where Hippolytus, a replica of the young Ion in Apollo’s temple, presented the vision of human beauty, so dear to Greek eyes, in its appropriate setting of nature’s lonely charm.[37]
Footnote 37:
See chapter i, p. 26, for hymn to Artemis from the _Hippolytus_.
In addition to these more superficial attractions there was at Troezen one of the most popular entrances to the lower world. Here Heracles fetched up Cerberus, and by this route Dionysus brought back his mother Semele. It is also reasonable to suppose that Theseus, from a sense of local pride, must have passed down this way when he assisted his friend Pirithöus in carrying off Persephone.
Troezen, however, had a rival in this underground traffic. Hermione, the home of the poets Lasus and Kydias, on the south coast of the peninsula, claimed the rather dubious advantage of the closest proximity to Hades. Strabo, the geographer, records the boast of the people of Hermione that on their short line Charon’s obol is not exacted of the passengers, “and therefore,” he adds, “they do not here put in a fare for the corpse.” The cost of travel to Hermione would have overbalanced for people at a distance the Ferryman’s very moderate fee, or perhaps the route may have been open for local traffic only. At all events this exception was not known in Greece generally. We find in Lucian’s dialogues that the Cynic Menippus, with never an obol to his mouth, takes his chance as a stowaway or offers to Charon to work his passage, while the corpse of the poor cobbler Micyllus, also unprovided with the necessary fee, heedless, since he is dead already, of the risk of drowning, starts in to swim.
Close to the Troezen shore is the island of Calauria, the modern Poros, where “outrageous Fortune” shot home one of her most virulent arrows. On a high plateau near the middle of the island are the remains of the ancient precinct and temple of Poseidon. Here, where he could look over to Sunium, the “headland of Athens,” Demosthenes, a fugitive from the wrath of Macedon, waited for his pursuers. Plutarch relates that, discrediting the promises of safety made to lure him from sanctuary, he withdrew within the temple and, after taking the poison which he had secreted, tottered forth to die outside in order to avoid defiling the sacred precinct. The Athenians later set up his statue in bronze, and on it was inscribed:—
“Had but thy power, Demosthenes, Equalled thy will, Macedon ne’er had ruled Hellas, Free were she still.”
The great orator whose powerful will had first, as it was said, won control over his unruly tongue and weak voice amidst the roar of the sea, and who by his words had controlled the still more turbulent populace, died here with unbroken will under the gray shadow of Poseidon’s sanctuary. This was one of the oldest stone temples in Greece, probably contemporary with the sixth century temple of the sea-god at Posidonia, the modern Pæstum. Already dignified by time its columns looked down on the fleet that put forth for Salamis from the neighbouring Troezen, relying now for the sea-fight on the help of Poseidon rather than upon the goddess of the Heræum who had presided over the start for Troy, at the time of the preliminary clash, still unforgotten, of Asia with Greece.