Part 1

Produced by Chuck Greif (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive)

IN THE

LAND OF TEMPLES

BY JOSEPH PENNELL

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

JOSEPH PENNELL’S PICTURES IN THE LAND OF TEMPLES

JOSEPH PENNELL’S

PICTURES OF THE PANAMA CANAL.

_FIFTH EDITION._

Reproductions of a series of Lithographs made by him on the Isthmus of Panama, together with Impressions and Notes by the Artist. Price 5s. net.

THE LIFE OF JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER

By E. R. and J. PENNELL.

Fifth and Revised Edition, with 96 pp. of Illustrations. Pott 4to. Price 12s. 6d. net.

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN.

Copies of the lithographs reproduced in this volume, limited to fifty proofs each, size 16 by 22 in., may be obtained through the Publisher, at £3 3 0 net each.

JOSEPH PENNELL’S PICTURES IN THE LAND OF TEMPLES

REPRODUCTIONS OF A SERIES OF LITHOGRAPHS MADE BY HIM IN THE LAND OF TEMPLES, MARCH-JUNE 1913, TOGETHER WITH IMPRESSIONS AND NOTES BY THE ARTIST

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT GO.

COPYRIGHT

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN. 1915.

TO R. M. DAWKINS

LATE DIRECTOR OF THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ATHENS WHO SHOWED ME WHERE I SHOULD FIND THE TEMPLES

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY B. CLAY AND SONS, LTD., BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

NOTES--ON MY LITHOGRAPHS IN THE LAND OF TEMPLES

I WENT to Greece for two reasons. First, because I wanted to see Greece and what remained of her glory--to see if the greatest work of the past impressed me as much as the greatest work of the present--and to try to find out which was the greater--the more inspiring. And second, I went because I was told by a Boston authority that I was nothing but a ragtime sketcher, couldn’t see Greek art and couldn’t draw it if I did.

I have been there--and did what I saw in my own way. To me Greece was wonderful and was beautiful, but anyone can see that--and can rave over it with appropriate quotations from appropriate authors. I know no Greek and have scarce read a translation. I say this regretfully--I wish I had--I should have seen more. I know, however, if I had not before seen the greatest art of the rest of Europe, I could not have been so moved as I was by what I saw in the Land of Temples, the land whence we have derived most of our ideas, ideals, and inspirations.

I drew the things that interested me--and it was, and is, a great delight to me to be told by those who have, some of them, spent their lives studying Greeks and Greece, that I have given the character of the country. What impressed me most was the great feeling of the Greeks for site in placing their temples and shrines in the landscape--so that they not only became a part of it, but it leads up to them. And though the same architectural forms were used, each temple was so placed that it told from afar by sea or land, a goal for pilgrims--a shrine for worshippers to draw near to--yet each had a character of its own--always the same, yet ever differing. I know, I am sorry to say, little of proportion, of scale, of heights, of lengths, but what I saw, with my own eyes, was the way these monuments were part of the country--never stuck about anyhow--always composed--always different--and they were built with grand ideas of composition, impressiveness, and arrangement. Has there been any change in the black forest before Aegina--the “wine dark sea” at Sunium--the “shining rocks” at Delphi--the grim cliffs of the Acropolis?--these prove in their various ways that the Greeks were great artists.

These were the things I saw. Had I known more I might have seen less--for it seems to me that most artists who have gone to Greece have been so impressed with what they have been told to see, that--there are, of course, great exceptions--they have looked at the land with a foot-rule, a translation, and a dictionary, and they have often been interfered with by these aids. I went ignorant of where to go--or what to see. When I got to Athens I fell among friends, who answered my only question that “I wanted to see temples that stood up.” They told me where they were--and there they were. And for this information, which resulted in my seeing these sites and making these lithographs, I want to thank many people, but above all Mr. R. M. Dawkins, late Director of the British School at Athens, who, now that he has seen the work, agrees with others that it has something of the character and romance of the country. If it has those qualities, they are what I went out to see--and having seen them--and I have tried to express them--I know I can see more, if I have the chance in the future in the Wonder of Work of my time, for in our great works to-day we are only carrying on the tradition of the great works of the past. I have seen both, and it is so.

JOSEPH PENNELL.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE ILLUSTRATIONS START AT TAORMINA, PROCEED AROUND SICILY--THENCE TO ITALY, AND ARE CONTINUED IN GREECE.

AETNA OVER TAORMINA I

THE THEATRE, SEGESTA II

THE TEMPLE OVER THE CAÑON, SEGESTA III

FROM TEMPLE TO TEMPLE, GIRGENTI IV

THE COLUMNS OF CASTOR AND POLLUX, GIRGENTI V

SUNRISE BEHIND THE TEMPLE OF CONCORD, GIRGENTI VI

THE TEMPLE BY THE SEA; TEMPLE OF CONCORD, GIRGENTI VII

THE TEMPLE OF CONCORD ON THE WALL FROM WITHIN, GIRGENTI VIII

THE TEMPLE OF CONCORD ON THE WALL FROM WITHOUT, GIRGENTI IX

COLUMNS OF THE TEMPLE OF JUNO, GIRGENTI X

THE TEMPLES ON THE WALL, GIRGENTI XI

THE TEMPLE OF JUNO FROM BELOW, GIRGENTI XII

PAESTUM. MORNING MIST XIII

PAESTUM. EVENING XIV

CORINTH TOWARDS THE GULF XV

ACRO-CORINTH FROM CORINTH XVI

OLYMPIA FROM THE HILLSIDE XVII

THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER. EVENING XVIII

THE ACROPOLIS FROM THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER, ATHENS XIX

THE WAY UP THE ACROPOLIS XX

DOWN FROM THE ACROPOLIS XXI

SUNRISE OVER THE ACROPOLIS XXII

STORM BEHIND THE ACROPOLIS XXIII

THE PROPYLAEA, ATHENS XXIV

THE PORTICO OF THE PARTHENON XXV

THE PARTHENON FROM THE GATEWAY XXVI

THE FAÇADE OF THE PARTHENON. SUNSET XXVII

THE FALLEN COLUMN, ATHENS XXVIII

THE LITTLE FÊTE, ATHENS XXIX

THE GREAT FÊTE, ATHENS XXX

THE TEMPLE OF NIKE, ATHENS XXXI

THE TEMPLE OF NIKE FROM MARS HILL, ATHENS XXXII

THE ODEON, ATHENS XXXIII

THE STREET OF THE TOMBS, ATHENS XXXIV

ELEUSIS. THE PAVEMENT OF THE TEMPLE XXXV

AEGINA XXXVI

AEGINA ON ITS MOUNTAIN TOP XXXVII

THE SHINING ROCKS, DELPHI XXXVIII

THE TREASURY OF ATHENS, DELPHI XXXIX

THE WINE DARK SEA. SUNIUM XL

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. Elsewhere we see one of these in excess. 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. 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; and his ideal was, that the man’s will should use all the faculties to some worthy end. His body is to be trained by music and gymnastic: the aim of the first being grace and beauty; of the second, strength; of the whole, health and joy in all bodily uses. His mind is to be trained by poetry, oratory, and philosophy; his spirit by the worship of the gods, in which all that was best in his life is concentrated into a noble ritual. 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. Aeschylus dealt with the same problems that baffled the Hebrew prophets, divine justice and mercy, and the immutable moral law; Plato’s speculation took him into regions where logic and formal philosophy had to be cast aside; Pheidias by his art added a new dignity to godhead.[1]

Nowhere is the Greek σωφροσὑνη, their sense of restraint and proportion, shown better than in their architecture: and this both in the method of growth and in the final results. The Doric style has grown out of a wooden building. When and how the first steps were taken, we do not know, nor whether the Doric be directly descended from the Mycenæan style, as Perrot and Chipiez will have it. There is this great difference: that the Mycenæan and Cretan columns are like a Doric column reversed, the thick end upmost, and they show none of the Greek refinements to which we shall come later. A simpler origin is possible: for to-day the traveller may see, in the verandah of some wayside cottage (Homer’s α’ἱθουσα ἑρἱδουπος) a primitive Doric column, some bare tree-trunk with a chunk of itself for capital, supporting a primitive architrave of the same sort. In the Doric order, other traces of woodwork are left in the stone, such as the triglyphs, or beam-ends, with round pegs beneath, or the gouged flutings of the column itself. And we have direct evidence in the history of the Olympian Heræum; where we are told that the columns were once of wood, and that stone columns were put in place of these as they decayed, one of the ancient oak columns being preserved down to the time of Pausanias. The early architects would seem to have been nervous as to how much weight stone would bear, so that their columns are very thick and set close together; in fact, less than one diameter apart. By degrees they learnt from experience, but the changes were slow and careful. The plan of the temple always remained the same, and there is little variation in the number of pillars at each end, or in any of the general features. As in statuary, here also they kept to their tradition as much as they could, and got their effects with the least possible change. But what effects! Compare the heavy masses of Corinth or Pæstum with the airy grace of the Parthenon, and measure the infinite delicacy of the changes which produce this effect. The builders found out that straight lines do not look straight, and that if the lines of a building do not look straight, the building looks as if it is going to topple over and fall. A column which decreases upwards in straight lines looks to the eye concave; and this illusion they tried to correct by making the columns bulge from the top about one third down, and then decreased this curve towards the bottom. 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; and we may say that there was hardly a straight line in the building. Sculpture and ornament were adjusted to the eye in the same way; and it would seem that the effect of the whole building also was judged not alone, but in connection with the lines of the landscape--that background of hills, always noble but never over-powering, which is found all over the Greek world. For instance, in the Parthenon certain minute corrections were made because of the way in which the sun’s rays fell on it. 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; nor can we ever have noble buildings again so long as the architect and the builder are not one. 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.

[1] Quintilian, Inst. Orat. xii., 10, 9. Olympium in Elide Jovem ... cuius pulchritudo adiecisse aliquid etiam receptæ relligioni videtur: adeo maiestas operis deum æquavit.

But we must remember also that the stones that remain are only ruins. Even in these we may trace many of the perfections of the ancient artist; but if we could see them as they were, we should see, not stones bleached and weathered, but buildings resplendent with colour and gold. Columns, capitals, architraves, all were a blaze of colour, decorated with graceful patterns and painted to match the blue sea and the golden sunlight. And now for us Sunium is a white ghost like the light of the moon, the Parthenon a rose in decay.

We may not now feel the want of what is lost. The hills once covered with forest trees are bare, the countryside is untilled and empty, and these ruins are invested with a sentimental charm in the thought of what has been lost. The traveller is in the mood of Sulpicius as he consoles Cicero for his daughter’s death. “Returning from Asia, as my voyage took me from Aegina towards Megara, I began to survey the regions round about: behind me was Aegina, before me Megara, to the right Peiraeus, to the left Corinth, all cities at one time prosperous and flourishing, but now they lay prone and ruined before my eyes. 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; and if they must die they did not whine about it--indeed, for their country’s sake they held it glorious to die. And now they are gone, and their place knows them no more, no one can feel that touch of triumph that Shelley felt over his Ozymandias. 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. I mention Myndos because there the contrast is most vividly brought out by the second idyll of Theocritus. There is the old harbour, there is the ring of the city walls a mile across, and the whole space between is brushwood and stones. 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; and the sincerity of the ancient spirit exists chiefly amongst peasants and fishermen. A false and pedantic way of thought is spreading from the schools and the newspapers, which must spoil the people unless the efforts of a few wise and longsighted men shall prevail.

The pictures in this volume follow roughly the history of the Doric style. In Olympia lies the floor of the Heræum, most ancient of all existing Greek temples, built before 1000 B.C. Unhappily this view tells us nothing of what it looked like: earthquake and flood, and the hand of man, have done all they could to destroy. The temples in Sicily and Magna Græcia, with Corinth, belong to the earliest stage known to us. Corinth was built about 650; the temples of Athena at Syracuse, now the cathedral, and of Zeus at Selinus (which are not represented here) are as old or older. Segesta comes next, in the early sixth century; and in the same century temples at Girgenti (Agrigentum), Aegina, and Pæstum. 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. 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. They came for no material gain: their prize was not dominion and power, nor wealth and trade, but the crown of wild olive and glory incorruptible. Elis, a state small and insignificant politically, had the honour of presiding over these games; no man might compete save those of pure Hellenic blood, and no woman might approach them. And here, every four years, from a time before the beginning of history, the men of Greece met, kings and potentates competing with private men, high and low, rich and poor, all acknowledging the one tie greater than all others. The celebrations lasted all through the glorious days of Greece, and until the glory of Greece had long departed, and they were abolished for ever in 394 A.D. by Theodosius. Art and literature formed no part of the contests, which were nearly all athletic; but painters and other artists exhibited their works there, and it was common for orators and philosophers to recite: Herodotus is said to have read his history at the festival.

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; the crowds, the processions, the feastings, litany and sacrifice; but every man must feel the same thrill as when he stands in Westminster Hall, or St. Sophia at Constantinople: for here have passed all the great men of the Greek race.

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. They exacted awe and worship, and they punished the impious; but they were genial good fellows, who might be thought, without blasphemy, to share in the happiness of their people--indeed, took it in good part when they were the subject of rollicking jests. 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. Then the hillsides were cut into seats, as at Argos and Segesta, or seats ranged around in a semicircle, and carried on when it was necessary by means of retaining walls. Below them was a round space for dancing, and beyond this the stage. There is a controversy whether the Greeks ever used a raised stage before the Roman conquest; probably they did, but at any rate all existing theatres had them. Vitruvius (who wrote about 20 A.D.) says that the Greek stage was higher and narrower than the Roman; and the stage at Taormina has been built, or rebuilt, in the Roman way.

It is proper to say this, but the onlooker will think little now of the stage, or indeed of the actors and the play, in view of one of those scenes which can never be forgotten. The sight of Etna over the stage, with his rolling steam, absorbs the whole force of imagination. Etna is tremendous. Beneath Etna Hephaistos had one of his forges, as at Lipara, Imbros, and Lemnos; and that smoke you see shows that his workmen are forging the thunder-bolts of Zeus. The very name of Volcano is Hephaistos himself. Or is it the giant Typhoeus, defeated by Zeus in the battle of gods and giants, and buried beneath the mountain, who by his struggles causes the earth thus to heave, and these fiery streams to pour forth? What wonder that the pious made offerings of incense at the top! Was it really true that Empedocles, that great philospher and healer, whose intellectual pride seems almost to claim divine honours, cast himself into the crater, that he might seem to have been swept away by the gods? Probably it was not true: but the story shows how the mountain worked on men’s imaginations.