Chapter 33
It is an easy day’s excursion from Cotrone to Strongoli, which is supposed to lie on the site of that ancient, much-besieged town. It sits upon a hill-top, and the diligence which awaits the traveller at the little railway-station takes about two hours to reach the place, climbing up the olive-covered slopes in ample loops and windings.
Of Strongoli my memories, even at this short distance of time, are confused and blurred. The drive up under the glowing beams of morning, the great heat of the last few days, and two or three nights’ sleeplessness at Cotrone had considerably blunted my appetite for new things. I remember seeing some Roman marbles in the church, and being thence conducted into a castle.
Afterwards I reposed awhile in the upper regions, under an olive, and looked down towards the valley of the Neto, which flows not far from here into the Ionian. I thought upon Theocritus, trying to picture this vale of Neaithos as it appeared to him and his shepherds. The woodlands are gone, and the rains of winter, streaming down the earthen slopes, have remodelled the whole face of the country.
Yet, be nature what it may, men will always turn to one who sings so melodiously of eternal verities—of those human tasks and needs which no lapse of years can change. How modern he reads to us, who have been brought into contact with the true spirit by men like Johnson-Cory and Lefroy! And how unbelievably remote is that Bartolozzi-Hellenism which went before! What, for example—what of the renowned pseudo-Theocritus, Salamon Gessner, who sang of this same vale of Neto in his “Daphnis”? Alas, the good Salamon has gone the way of all derivative bores; he is dead—deader than King Psammeticus; he is now moralizing in some decorous Paradise amid flocks of Dresden-China sheep and sugar-watery youths and maidens. Who can read his much-translated masterpiece without unpleasant twinges? Dead as a doornail!
So far as I can recollect, there is an infinity of kissing in “Daphnis.” It was an age of sentimentality, and the Greek pastoral ideal, transfused into a Swiss environment of 1810, could not but end in slobber and _Gefühlsduselei._ True it is that shepherds have ample opportunities of sporting with Amaryllis in the shade; opportunities which, to my certain knowledge, they do not neglect. Theocritus knew it well enough. But, in a general way, he is niggardly with the precious commodity of kisses; he seems to have thought that in literature, if not in real life, one can have too much of a good thing. Also, being a southerner, he could not have trusted his young folks to remain eternally at the kissing-stage, after the pattern of our fish-like English lovers. Such behaviour would have struck him as improbable; possibly immoral. . . .
From where I sat one may trace a road that winds upwards into the Sila, past Pallagorio. Along its sides are certain mounded heaps and the smoke of refining works. These are mines of that dusky sulphur which I had observed being drawn in carts through the streets of Cotrone. There are some eight or ten of them, they tell me, discovered about thirty years ago—this is all wrong: they are mentioned in 1571—and employing several hundred workmen. It had been my intention to visit these excavations. But now, in the heat of day, I wavered; the distance, even to the nearest of them, seemed inordinately great; and just as I had decided to look for a carriage with a view of being driven there (that curse of conscientiousness!) an amiable citizen snatched me up as his guest for luncheon. He led me, weakly resisting, to a vaulted chamber where, amid a repast of rural delicacies and the converse of his spouse, all such fond projects were straightway forgotten. Instead of sulphur-statistics, I learnt a little piece of local history.
“You were speaking about the emptiness of our streets of Strongoli,” my host said. “And yet, up to a short time ago, there was no emigration from this place. Then a change came about: I’ll tell you how it was. There was a _guardia di finanze_ here—a miserable octroi official. To keep up the name of his family, he married an heiress; not for the sake of having progeny, but—well! He began buying up all the land round about—slowly, systematically, cautiously—till, by dint of threats and intrigues, he absorbed nearly all the surrounding country. Inch by inch, he ate it up; with his wife’s money. That was his idea of perpetuating his memory. All the small proprietors were driven from their domains and fled to America to escape starvation; immense tracts of well-cultivated land are now almost desert. Look at the country! But some day he will get his reward; under the ribs, you know.”
By this purposeful re-creation of those feudal conditions of olden, days, this man has become the best-hated person in the district.
Soon it was time to leave the friendly shelter and inspect in the glaring sunshine the remaining antiquities of Petelia. Never have I felt less inclined for such antiquarian exploits. How much better the hours would have passed in some cool tavern! I went forth, none the less; and was delighted to discover that there are practically no antiquities left—nothing save a few walls standing near a now ruined convent, which is largely built of Roman stone-blocks and bricks. Up to a few years ago, the municipality carried on excavations here and unearthed a few relics which were promptly dispersed. Perhaps some of these are what one sees in the Catanzaro Museum. The paternal government, hearing of this enterprise, claimed the site and sat down upon it; the exposed remains were once more covered up with soil.
A goat-boy, a sad little fellow, sprang out of the earth as I dutifully wandered about here. He volunteered to show me not only Strongoli, but all Calabria; in fact, his heart’s desire was soon manifest: to escape from home and find his way to America under my passport and protection. Here was his chance—a foreigner (American) returning sooner or later to his own country! He pressed the matter with naif forcefulness. Vainly I told him that there were other lands on earth; that I was not going to America. He shook his head and sagely remarked:
“I have understood. You think my journey would cost too much. But you, also, must understand. Once I get work there, I will repay you every farthing.”
As a consolation, I offered him some cigarettes. He accepted one; pensive, unresigned.
The goat-herds had no such cravings—in the days of Theocritus.
XL THE COLUMN
“Two hours—three hours—four hours: according!”
The boatmen are still eager for the voyage. It all depends, as before, upon the wind.
And day after day the Ionian lies before us—immaculate, immutable.
I determined to approach the column by land. A mule was discovered, and starting from the “Concordia” rather late in the morning, reached the temple-ruin in two hours to the minute. I might have been tempted to linger by the way but for the intense sunshine and for the fact that the muleteer was an exceptionally dull dog—a dusky youth of the taciturn and wooden-faced Spanish variety, whose anti-Hellenic profile irked me, in that landscape. The driving road ends at the cemetery. Thence onward a pathway skirts the sea at the foot of the clay-hills; passes the sunken wells; climbs up and down steepish gradients and so attains the plateau at whose extremity stands the lighthouse, the column, and a few white bungalows—summer-residences of Cotrone citizens.
A day of shimmering heat. . . .
The ground is parched. Altogether, it is a poor and thinly peopled stretch of land between Cotrone and Capo Rizzuto. No wonder the wolves are famished. Nine days ago one of them actually ventured upon the road near the cemetery, in daylight.
Yet there is some plant-life, and I was pleased to see, emerging from the bleak sand-dunes, the tufts of the well-known and conspicuous sea lily in full flower. Wishful to obtain a few blossoms, I asked the boy to descend from his mule, but he objected.
“Non si toccano questi fiori,” he said. These flowers are not to be touched.
Their odour displeased him. Like the Arab, the uncultivated Italian is insensitive to certain smells that revolt us; while he cannot endure, on the other hand, the scent of some flowers. I have seen a man professing to feel faint at the odour of crushed geranium leaves. They are _fiori di morti,_ he says: planted (sometimes) in graveyards.
The last remarkable antiquity found at this site, to my knowledge, is a stone vase, fished up some years ago out of the sea, into which it may have fallen while being carried off by pious marauders for the purpose of figuring as font in some church (unless, indeed, the land has sunk at this point, as there is some evidence to show). I saw it, shortly after its return to dry land, in a shed near the harbour of Cotrone; the Taranto museum has now claimed it. It is a basin of purple-veined pavonazzetto marble. Originally a monolith, it now consists of two fragments; the third and smallest is still missing. This noble relic stands about 85 centimetres in height and measures some 215 centimetres in circumference; it was never completed, as can be seen by the rim, which is still partially in the rough. A similar vessel is figured, I believe, in Tischbein.
The small villa-settlement on this promontory is deserted owing to lack of water, every drop of which has to be brought hither by sea from Cotrone. One wonders why they have not thought of building a cistern to catch the winter rains, if there are any; for a respectable stone crops up at this end of the peninsula.
One often wonders at things. . . .
The column has been underpinned and strengthened by a foundation of cement; rains of centuries had begun to threaten its base, and there was some risk of a catastrophe. Near at hand are a few ancient walls of reticulated masonry in strangely leaning attitudes, peopled by black goats; on the ground I picked up some chips of amphoræ and vases, as well as a fragment of the limb of a marble statue. The site of this pillar, fronting the waves, is impressively forlorn. And it was rather thoughtful, after all, of the despoiling Bishop Lucifero to leave two of the forty-eight columns standing upright on the spot, as a sample of the local Doric style. One has fallen to earth since his day. Nobody would have complained at the time, if he had stolen all of them, instead of only forty-six. I took a picture of the survivor; then wandered a little apart, in the direction of the shore, and soon found myself in a solitude of burning stones, a miniature Sahara.
The temple has vanished, together with the sacred grove that once embowered it; the island of Calypso, where Swinburne took his ease (if such it was), has sunk into the purple realms of Glaucus; the corals and sea-beasts that writhed among its crevices are engulphed under mounds of submarine sand. There was life, once, at this promontory. Argosies touched here, leaving priceless gifts; fountains flowed, and cornfields waved in the genial sunshine. Doubtless there will be life again; earth and sea are only waiting for the enchanter’s wand.
All now lies bare, swooning in summer stagnation.
Calabria is not a land to traverse alone. It is too wistful and stricken; too deficient in those externals that conduce to comfort. Its charms do not appeal to the eye of romance, and the man who would perambulate Magna Graecia as he does the Alps would soon regret his choice. One needs something of that “human element” which delighted the genteel photographer of Morano—comrades, in short; if only those sages, like old Nola Molisi, who have fallen under the spell of its ancient glories. The joys of Calabria are not to be bought, like those of Switzerland, for gold.
_Sir Giovan Battista di Nola Molisi, the last of bis family and name, having no sons and being come to old age without further hope of offspring, has desired in the place of children to leave of himself an eternal memory to mankind—_to wit, this Chronicle of the most Ancient, Magnificent, and Faithful City of Cotrone. A worthier effort at self-perpetuation than that of Strongoli. . . .
A sturgeon, he notes, was caught in 1593 by the Spanish Castellan of the town. This nobleman, puzzling whom he could best honour with so rare a dainty, despatched it by means of a man on horseback to the Duke of Nocera. The Duke was no less surprised than pleased; he thought mighty well of the sturgeon and of the respectful consideration which prompted the gift; and then, by another horseman, sent it to Nola Molisi’s own uncle, accompanied, we may conjecture, by some ceremonious compliment befitting the occasion.
A man of parts, therefore, our author’s uncle, to whom his Lordship of Nocera sends table-delicacies by mounted messenger; and himself a mellow comrade whom I am loath to leave; his pages are distinguished by a pleasing absence of those saintly paraphernalia which hang like a fog athwart the fair sky of the south.
Yet to him and to all of them I must bid good-bye, here and now. At this hour to-morrow I shall be far from Cotrone.
Farewell to Capialbi, inspired bookworm! And to Lenormant.
On a day like this, the scholar sailed at Bivona over a sea so unruffled that the barque seemed to be suspended in air. The water’s surface, he tells us, is “unie comme une glace.” He sees the vitreous depths invaded by piercing sunbeams that light up its mysterious forests of algae, its rock-headlands and silvery stretches of sand; he peers down into these “prairies pélagiennes” and beholds all their wondrous fauna—the urchins, the crabs, the floating fishes and translucent medusae “semblables a des clochettes d’opale.” Then, realizing how this “population pullulante des petits animaux marins” must have impressed the observing ancients, he goes on to touch—ever so lightly!—upon those old local arts of ornamentation whereby sea-beasts and molluscs and aquatic plants were reverently copied by master-hand, not from dead specimens, but “pris sur le vif et observés au milieu des eaux”; he explains how an entire school grew up, which drew its inspiration from the dainty ... apes and movements of these frail creatures. This is _du meilleur Lenormant._ His was a full-blooded yet discriminating zest of knowledge. One wonders what more was fermenting in that restlessly curious brain, when a miserable accident ended his short life, after 120 days of suffering.
So Italy proved fatal to him, as Greece to his father. But one of his happiest moments must have been spent on the sea at Bivona, on that clear summer day—a day such as this, when every nerve tingles with joy of life.
Meanwhile it is good to rest here, immovable but alert, in the breathless hush of noon. Showers of benevolent heat stream down upon this desolation; not the faintest wisp of vapour floats upon the horizon; not a sail, not a ripple, disquiets the waters. The silence can be felt. Slumber is brooding over the things of earth:
Asleep are the peaks of the hills, and the vales, The promontories, the clefts, And all the creatures that move upon the black earth. . . .
Such torrid splendour, drenching a land of austerest simplicity, decomposes the mind into corresponding states of primal contentment and resilience. There arises before our phantasy a new perspective of human affairs; a suggestion of well-being wherein the futile complexities and disharmonies of our age shall have no place. To discard these wrappings, to claim kinship with some elemental and robust archetype, lover of earth and sun——
How fair they are, these moments of golden equipoise!
Yes; it is good to be merged awhile into these harshly-vibrant surroundings, into the meridian glow of all things. This noontide is the “heavy” hour of the Greeks, when temples are untrodden by priest or worshipper. _Controra_ they now call it—the ominous hour. Man and beast are fettered in sleep, while spirits walk abroad, as at midnight. _Non timebis a timore noctuno: a sagitta_ _volante in die: a negotio perambulante in tenebris: ab incursu et demonio meridiano._ The midday demon—that southern Haunter of calm blue spaces. . . .
So may some enchantment of kindlier intent have crept over Phædrus and his friend, at converse in the noontide under the whispering plane-tree. And the genius dwelling about this old headland of the Column is candid and benign.
This corner of Magna Graecia is a severely parsimonious manifestation of nature. Rocks and waters! But these rocks and waters are actualities; the stuff whereof man is made. A landscape so luminous, so resolutely scornful of accessories, hints at brave and simple forms of expression; it brings us to the ground, where we belong; it medicines to the disease of introspection and stimulates a capacity which we are in danger of unlearning amid our morbid hyperborean gloom—the capacity for honest contempt: contempt of that scarecrow of a theory which would have us neglect what is earthly, tangible. What is life well lived but a blithe discarding of primordial husks, of those comfortable intangibilities that lurk about us, waiting for our weak moments?
The sage, that perfect savage, will be the last to withdraw himself from the influence of these radiant realities. He will strive to knit closer the bond, and to devise a more durable and affectionate relationship between himself and them. Let him open his eyes. For a reasonable adjustment lies at his feet. From these brown stones that seam the tranquil Ionian, from this gracious solitude, he can carve out, and bear away into the cheerful din of cities, the rudiments of something clean and veracious and wholly terrestrial—some tonic philosophy that shall foster sunny mischiefs and farewell regret.
INDEX
Abruzzi peasants, their lives, 27.
Abulfeda, historian, 135.
Abystron, 119. See _Castrovillari._
Aceti, T., 93.
Acheron, river. See _Mu.com._
Acherontia (? Acri), 195.
“Acherontia’s Nest” (Acerenza), 32.
Achilles, his notions of gratitude, 123.
Achiropita image. See _Madonna._
Acinapura, near Policoro, 98.
Acri, town, 193-196, 199.
_Ada Sanctorum,_ in.
_Adamo Caduto,_ a sacred tragedy, inspires “Paradise Lost,” 160 _seq._
Adler, H. M., 122.
Aelian, 197.
Afforestation, at Morano, 148; governmental schemes for, 218.
Africo, village, 271, 272.
Agropoli, Saracen stronghold, 137.
Akron, commentator, 45. Alaro (Sagra), river, 281-283.
Albanians, their colonies, 176, 189; confused with Byzantines, 176, 272; their liberalism, 177, 183; wedding ceremony, 182; compared with Irish, 186; their training college, 183; preposterous language, 173,187. See _Costumes_ and _Rada, G. de._
Alberada, her tomb, 38.
Alberti, L., 174.
Alburno, mount, 151.
Alexander of Molossus, his death, 197.
Alfonso the Magnificent, no.
Altamura, sack of, 64, 65.
Altipiano di Pollino, upland, 145.
Amendolea, river, 197, 272.
America. See _Emigration._
Amphitheatre of Venosa, 31, 38.
Ampollina, river, 217, 219, 220.
Amusa, river, 282.
Analphabetics, percentage of, 259.
Anastasius, saint, 111.
Anchoretism, its charms, 112.
Ancinale, river, 295.
Angels, injured by art-notions of Renaissance, 25; frescoes at Venosa, 38.
Animals, utilized as drugs, 57; cruelty to, 120.
Anne, saint, 250; wells dedicated to, 301.
Anopheles mosquito. See _Malaria._
Anthology, its dog-types, 120.
Apennines, their terminal peak, 145. Aphrodite, 25.
Apollo, 25, 27, 28, 209.
Appulus, King of Sipontum, 29.
Aprustum, 119. See _Castrovillari._
Aqueduct, the Apulian, 42.
Arabs, bigots because half-starved, 126. See _Corsairs_ and _Saracens._
Archytas, lav.-giver, 65, 92.
Aretino, P., 140.
Arfaxad, fabled king, 29.
Argo, highest literary dog-type, 120.
Aristotle, 100, 101, 312.
Arnold, Matthew, 120, 171.
Arpi, town, 29.
Arum lily _(A. aracunculus),_ 143.
Arvo, river, 217, 220.
Asceticism, introduction into south Italy, 251 _seq.;_ its pernicious effects, 260.
Aspromonte, 195, 240; reputation for crime, 245, 246; its contorted structure, 270; Byzantine settlements in, 272.
Athos, mount, 113.
Augustine, saint, 256.
Augustus, professes scorn of luxury, 92.
“Avanti,” a corrupt rag, 280.
Ayrola, P., bishop, 251.
Babylonia, Sultan of, 37.
Baedeker, 105.
Bagnara, town, 240, 242.
Bagpipes, 151, 155.
Balfour, A. J., 265.
Balzo, Pierro del, 37.
Bandusian Fount, 43-46.
Bantia (Banzi), 32.
Barbarano, a glen, 219.
Barbarossa. See _Frederick II._
Barbarossa, pirate-brothers, 140.
Barbers, their Hellenic loquacity, 81-82.
Bari, compared with Taranto, 89.
Barletta, town, II.
Baronius, cardinal, 258.
Barrius, his _philopatria,_ 142; on Calabrian rivers, 286.
Bartels, J. H., 123.
Earth, Dr. H., 306.
Bartholomaeus, saint, 108.
Basile, A., 69.
Basilean monks, their convents, in, 113; supplanted by Benedictines, 113; their ideals, 115; convent of St. Adrian, 185.
Basilicata, province, emigration from, 49; military road through, 123; old boundary of, 145; its bagpipes, 151, 155.
Batiffol, P., 113, 186, 272.
Bears in Calabria, 94, 146.
Beatrix, princess, 7, 8.
Beccaria, C. de, 276.
Beccarini family, 13.
Beeches at Pollino, 146; in old Latium, 285.
Bellerophon, a dragon-slayer, 102.
Belmonte, prince, 49.
Beltrano, O., 114.
Benedict XIII, no.
Benedict, saint, 252.
Benedictines, their architecture, 39; displace Basileans, 113,
Beneventana, 29.
Benincasa, Venerable Orsola, 255-256, 258.
Benincasa, brigand, 213.
Benjamin of Tudela, 81, 136.
Benoth (Venus), 33.
Bernard, saint, 250.
Bernardo da Rogliano, biography of, 144.
Bernhardi, Prof., 3.
Bertaux, E., 39, 78, in, 186.
_Biblioteca Calabra_ in Naples, 93.
Birds, how to diminish slaughter of, 52; eaten raw, 56.
Bisignano, town, 135, 194.
Bivona, town, 320.
Black colour, of Saracens, 52, 130; of water, 80.
Blaev, J., 67.
Blake, W., 190.
Blanc, Jos., 53.
Blood-letting, popular treatment of disease, 194.
Blue, deficient colour-sense for, 51, 52.
Boccaccio, 80, 260.
Boccara, V., 228.
Boemund, 38.
Boissier, G., 46.
Bollandists, in.
Bonghi, R., statesman, 4.
Bordeaux, royal duel at, 8.
Borgia, village, 293.
Borjès, J., 215.
Botta, C., _quoted,_ 122.
Botte Donato, mount, 122.
Bourbons, their treatment of prisoners, n; persecute Albanians, 177, 183; protectors of forests, 218; their ecclesiastics and saints, 212, 260; conditions of Calabria under, 97, 298. See _Brigandage._
Bourget, P., 296.
Bova, town, 241, 245, 272-273.
Bovio, G., statesman, 4.
Bradano, river, 286.
Breakfast in Italy, dislocates moral stability, 18, 125; responsible for homicides, 127.
Briar (bruyère), manufacture of pipes, 269.
Brigands, at Venosa, 34; Longobucco, 202; in the Sila, 211 _seq.;_ pensioned by Bourbons, 214; their crimes, 212, 215; their wealth, 215; interview with one, 245.
Brigandage, extent of evil, 144; fostered by the church, 144, 215; by Bourbons, 203, 212, 214, 215; by English, 212; its political character, 211, 214; repression of, 212-215.
“Bronze of Siris,” 197.
Bruno, Giordano, 269.
Bruno, physician of Longobucco, 202.
Bruttians, misrepresented, 197; their characteristics, 208; respect for women, 209; reputation for bloodthirstiness, 210.
Buchholtz, H., 190.
Buckle, H. T., 90.
Buffaloes at Policoro, 99.
Bugliari, bishop, 183.
Bugs, their medicinal properties, 105.
Burial, premature, 300.
Burnous, surviving in Italy, 20.
Byzantines, at Gargano, 17; a period of revival, in; their convents, 113, 186; survive in Aspramente, 272-274; confused with Albanians, 176, 272.
Caietanus, O., 111.
“Calabrere” fur, 222.