CHAPTER XIV--ATHENS ANCIENT AND MODERN--SIGHTS AND SCENES IN THE GRECIAN CAPITAL.

_First Impressions of Athens--Opinion of the “Doubter”--“Not Worth Damming”--The Oldest Inhabitant of Athens--Celebrated Ruins--Reminiscences of Greek Grammar--A “Big Injun” on Greek--Drinking beer on sacred sol--A toper-graphical survey--The Acropolis-What is it?--The Temple of Jupiter Olympus--Seven Hundred years in Building--A young Englishman in a scrape--Sunset from the Acropolis--Byron’s glorious lines--The Parthenon and its surroundings--Foundations of the Ancient Citadel--Excavations of antiquarians--Greek Art--An important discovery--The line of beauty._

THE first view of Athens gives a stranger a favorable impression; the city stands in a plain, at the foot of Mount Lycabettus and the Acropolis, and is between the river Cephissus on one side and the Elissus on the other.

Considered as rivers these streams are of very little consequence and hardly worth mentioning, but regarded as brooks they are entitled to some respect. The Greeks call them rivers and I suppose they ought to know what they are about.

It is with some hesitation I venture to suggest that if the Elissus and Cephissus were united, it would take about sixteen mil, lion of these combined streams to equal the Mississippi. The “Doubter” said he didn’t believe that a man in search of a mill-site would consider either of these Athenian torrents worth damming.

The oldest inhabitant of Athens is dead, and his death occurred according to the historians, about thirty-four hundred years ago, or to be particular about dates, in 1643 before the Chris{198}tian Era. A gentleman named Cecrops came there from Egypt and founded a city which he called Cecropia.

I enquired about Cecrops and learned, much to my regret, that he is no longer alive. Had he been in Athens I would have paid him my respects.

I will not attempt to write the history of Athens, for a variety of reasons, any one of which would be sufficient, and as two or three at least will occur to every reader, I refrain from mentioning them.

At present the city has something less than fifty thousand inhabitants, and possesses very little of the grandeur for which it was once famous.

The most attractive features about it are its ruins, and every visitor is much more interested in the Acropolis and other remains of ancient Greece than in the modern city. But I must admit that Athens has considerable beauty and is well worth a visit, apart from the historic associations that cluster around it.

There is a pretty little palace where the royal family resides, and it is surrounded by gardens arranged with considerable taste, and forming very agreeable promenades. In the square in front of the palace a band plays twice a week on pleasant afternoons and on these occasions most of the fashionables, and many of the unfashionables, of Athens come out for an airing, and to see and be seen. The balconies of our rooms overlooked this square, so that we could see the people and hear the music without the necessity of walking.

The principal street in Athens is named Hermes, and you are reminded that you are in Greece when you attempt to spell out the names of the highways and by-ways. The characters are so nearly identical with the Ancient Greek that I found my school-day studies quite convenient. When in my adolescence I spent considerable time over Anthon’s Greek Grammar, and over the Iliad and Odyssey of a party by the name of Homer, I used to ask, and sometimes with a good deal of petulance:

“What is the use of wasting time over this stuff when I might be skating or playing leap-frog?”

And my good-natured old teacher would explain that it was the most useful employment for a young man that could be advised, and I would one day see the advantage of it, and rejoice that I {199}had made my head ache over Alpha and Omega.

I wanted to study French and German but he always told me that the modern languages were abominations, the works of a party of brimstony memory, and I should bring ruin and disgrace upon myself if I had anything to do with them. So I shunned those paths of wickedness until I reached the years of--misunderstandings, and devoted my young and happy days to Greek and Latin. {200}For a long time I have had little to do with those dead languages, and I couldn’t conjugate a Greek or Latin verb to-day, if my life depended on the result. But I see it all now, and my three or four years of Greek were of immense advantage to me when I was in Athens.

It never took me more than a minute to spell out the name of a street; the names were painted in Greek letters, and I remembered the shape of them.

When the Judge and I were hunting for a beer shop I was the Big Injun of the party. The Judge did not know any more about Greek, than a cow does about quadratic equations, and he was obliged to ask me to tell him the names of the streets. And the way I rattled off Hermes, Eolus, Minerva, Adrian, and the like, would have done credit to a deaf and dumb asylum. Didn’t I rejoice that I was familiar with Greek, and able to save the trouble of asking somebody to direct us to our destination?

The Judge appreciated the situation and said, “What a splendid thing it is to know something! If I should ever be a husband, and a father, and the results of my paternity should be boys, I would have them study Greek. They may come to Athens some time and find it convenient in going about the streets. A good map of the city would cost fifty cents, and they will be able to save all that expenditure.”

There were tears in his eyes as he spoke, for we were in front of the beer-shop and found it closed.

Happily there was another establishment for the sale of malt liquors, and as it was only two blocks away, I was able to get my friend where he could rest and be comfortable.

“Alas for the decline of Greece,” he muttered as he brought the glass to his lips, and drew a long breath with beer in it; “Once she had her Homer, her Demosthenes, her Lycurgus, her Epaminondas; on yonder hill St. Paul preached to the Athenians his famous discourse on the unknown God; here Socrates taught his philosophy; from Argos the mighty Agamemnon and his company of warriors sailed for the siege of Troy, and hung like a bull-dog to a coat-tail for ten long and weary years; here Sculpture became the study of a whole people, and Art {201}reached the highest point of development known to ancient times; here were fought those battles between Greeks and Persians, that will live and ring through all history, and on yonder bay that shines so placidly in the afternoon sun, the fleet of Xerxes was destroyed.

“And what have we to-day?

“The monuments of Ancient Greece are in ruins has dwindled so that it would hardly form a constituency for a custom-house collector; and the beer, just taste it; the beer is entirely unfit to drink.”

The beer was very bad, and it turned out that the bottle had been opened the day before for a customer, who concluded to take a cigar instead. We had another bottle with better success, but on the whole were not inclined to praise the Athenian beverage.

The Judge made a topographical survey of the entire city and visited every _brasserie_, but with no better success. Everywhere the drinks were atrocious, and he ascribed the decayed condition of the country to the bad quality of the national beverage.

“Somebody has said,” he remarked, when telling me of the result of his inspection, “somebody has said, ‘let me make the ballads of a nation and I care not who makes the laws.’

“Now I will back up the correctness of that man’s theory, {202}provided you substitute beer for ballads. What can you expect of a nation with such beer as this?”

The great object of attraction at Athens is the Acropolis, and as soon as we had lunched after our arrival at the hotels, we set out for that interesting hill.

From the square where the palace and principal hotels are situated, it is a walk of half a mile or more to the Acropolis.

A portion of the way is through the new quarter of the city and along a _boulevard_ of recent construction; as we approach the hill we find ourselves among some older buildings, and scattered in these are some of the tombs and monuments that have been fortunately preserved. We face the arch of Adrian, which is in a tolerable state of preservation, and halt at the temple of Jupiter Olympus, the most extensive of all the temples of ancient Athens. History tells us that it was begun five hundred and thirty years before the Christian era, and that various emperors and kings labored upon it. The work was not completed until nearly seven hundred years after the first stone of the foundation was laid. It was originally three hundred and thirty feet long, by about half as many wide, and contained one hundred and twenty marble columns, each nearly seven feet in diameter and sixty feet high!

Only sixteen of these columns remain; one of them lies where it was thrown by an earthquake in 1852, and enables a visitor to see with what excellence the Greek architects performed their work. On thirteen of the columns the architrave remains in position and one is puzzled to know how those immense masses of stone were hoisted into place.

The effect of these ruins is grand, partly on account of the vastness of the columns, and partly by reason of their isolated position, in a large open space, where there are no surroundings of other structures to detract from the general effect. A few soldiers are stationed there to prevent vandalism on the part, of strangers, and an enterprising Greek has established a miserable café, among the columns. To what base uses may we come at last!

Continuing our journey toward the Acropolis we passed the ruins of the Theatre of Bacchus; we reserved it for another day, {203}but I may as well dispose of it here. According to some authorities it could contain thirty thousand spectators, and for a long time it was the scene of the representations of the principal works of Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and other famous writers of Greek drama. The stage and auditorium were built of marble and limestone, and decorated in the highest style of magnificence known to that period. The width of the stage was about eighty feet, and the diameter of the theatre on the upper rows of seats was nearly five hundred feet. There were twenty-five tiers of seats, and there were twelve passage-ways leading through them, so that an audience could be quickly assembled or as quickly dispersed. Till within a few years the whole theatre was covered with rubbish; excavations have been carried on at the expense of the King of Prussia and other crowned heads, and latterly by the Archaeological Society of Athens, so that the most of this ancient temple of the drama has been exposed to view.

Statues and fragments lie around in great profusion. In the centre of the stage there is a small hut--the domicile of an old soldier who has charge of the ruins, and presents an open hand for whatever “backsheesh” the visitor chooses to give him. The seats in the foremost range were beautifully sculptured in marble, and were evidently very comfortable places to occupy during the performance. There are fifty of these seats, and the names engraved on them show that they belonged to the priests and other high dignitaries of Athens.

The priest of Bacchus had the post of honor in the centre; his seat is larger and more elaborately sculptured than the rest and is raised a few inches higher. Behind this row there are three rows which were occupied by the magistrates and similar dignitaries, and behind these were the seats of the general public.

Between the auditorium and the stage there is an open space which was occupied by the orchestra. Not a single musician was there at the time of our visit, and not an actor or _danseuse_ could be found anywhere about the place. All! all! were gone, and in their place a single Greek, _ancient_ but _modern_, soliciting something to keep him from starving. {204}The theatre was on the southeastern slope of the Acropolis; the stage was at the foot of the hill and the auditorium extended up the slope. From here a foot path extends along the base of the hill, and rises pretty steeply in places till it reaches a gate by the side of a modern dwelling occupied by the custodians of the ruins.

The gate is strong and high, and the lock is sufficiently powerful to defy the assaults of anybody who has not been educated either as a locksmith or burglar. We passed under the eye of a custodian as we entered, and he followed us at a respectful distance to see that we did no damage. The instructions to these custodians are the most sensible I have known anywhere in places of this kind. They do not keep with you and cause annoyance by telling you what to look at, and hurrying you through faster than you want to go. All that pleasing duty is left to the guide whom you have brought from the hotel. The government knows that he will be a sufficient nuisance for all practical purposes, and consequently the custodians keep always from five to fifty yards away from you; they let you wander where you please and do what you please, as long as you do not injure anything. They never speak to you unless you attempt to play the vandal; we didn’t learn by experience what they, would do in that case, but were told that an offender is likely to be severely treated.

A young Englishman, a few years ago, in sheer mischief, broke the nose from one of the finest statues in the collection at {205}the Acropolis. He was arrested on the spot, and had three months in a Greek prison, in which he made up his mind not to do so anymore. He hasn’t gone around smashing marble noses since his release. And, in addition to his imprisonment, he had to pay a heavy fine, which was applied to the fund for keeping the ruins in proper repair.

We spent the afternoon on the Acropolis, studying it in its general features and listening to the monotonous drawl of our guide, as he described the various temples and other structures whose remains covered the summit of the hill. From the wall at the southern extremity we had a fine view of Athens, and looked down on the city, lying like a map beneath our feet.

We lingered on the Acropolis till the lengthening shadows told us the day was coming to a close. We watched the sun go down, and as the disc of light touched the horizon, one of our party repeated the lines which Byron is said to have written on this historic spot:

“Slow sinks, more lovely, ere his race be run,

Along Morea’s hills, the setting sun;

Not, as in Northern climes, obscurely bright,

But one unclouded blaze of living light;

O’er the hushed deep his mellow beim he throws,

Gilds the green wave that trembles as it flows.

O’er old Egina’s rock and Hydra’s Ile,

The god of Gladness sheds his parting smile:

O’er his own regions lingering, loves to shine,

Though there his altars are no more divine.

Descending low, the shadows, lingering, kiss

Thy glorious gulf, unconquered Salamis!

Their azure arches through the long expanse,

More deeply purpled, meet his mellowing glance,

And tenderest tints along their summits driven,

Mark his gay course and own the hues of heaven,

Till, darkly shaded by the land and deep,

Behind his Delphian rock, he sinks to sleep.”

The Acropolis cannot be seen satisfactorily in a single visit; two or three visits at least are necessary, and an entire week can be spent there profitably. Our first day was intended only as an outline and preliminary inspection; next morning we went to work upon the matter in earnest.

{206}We told our guide we had no more use for him, until we had done with the Acropolis; we could be our own guides, philosophers, and friends.

We gathered all the books in our possession--English, French, and German--that had anything to say about the Acropolis, and we borrowed all that were accessible at the hotels. Equipped with these and a lunch basket well filled, we sallied forth, determined to “do” the ruins most thoroughly.

We began at the beginning, and at each ruin or part of a ruin that we visited, one of us read aloud while the others listened. It was slow work, and we took turns in the reading; we were three days at the Acropolis, and I do not believe any party of non-professional tourists ever “did” the place more thoroughly.

At this lapse of time and distance, the Acropolis and its temples and monuments stand clear and distinct before me, and there is no confusion in the picture. This is more than I can say of many other places that I have visited, where I was obliged to limit to hours and minutes what should have consumed entire and successive days.

The Acropolis is an elevated rock, scarped on all sides, and is of an irregular oval form, about nine hundred feet long and four {207}hundred feet across its greatest width. It is comparatively level on the summit, and its height above the sea is about five hundred feet.

The first walls erected there were for purposes of fortification, and are attributed to the Pelasgians; they are said to be more than three thousand years old, and were evidently built with great care. Portions of them have been revealed by the excavations of M. Beule, and are still visible; the stones are matched only on their exterior surface and that rather roughly; they consist of the rock of the Acropolis, and not like the stones in the Greek walls, of material brought from a distance.

Not much of the Pelasgian wall remains, as it was cut away in several places to make room for the Greek foundations of the Propylæ. Near this wall there was a Greek pavement in front of the Temple of Victory. In 1853 this pavement was removed, and revealed the rock of the Acropolis, bearing the traces of chariot wheels which rolled there more than thirty centuries ago. The ancient road is clearly defined, and at its edges one can see the marks of the rude implements that were employed in smoothing it.

Walls and fragments of walls, whose erection embraced periods hundreds of years apart, appear here and there. The noblest and grandest are those of the Greeks, and they are so numerous that the plainest description of them would be tedious.

The grand staircases which look toward the sea are sufficiently intact to show their extent, though they are much injured by modern walls erected for military purposes--some by the Venetians, some by the Turks, and some by the Greeks, who were besieged there in 1822, during the war for independence. A few only of the columns of the Propylæ remain; they have excited the admiration of visitors through all ages since their erection, twenty-three hundred years ago. They were preserved almost intact down to the 14th century, when portions of them were removed for the construction of a fortress.

The Turks converted the Propylæ into a powder magazine and a depot of arms, and one day the powder blew up and smashed things generally. But enough remains to show the ancient grandeur of this portico of the Parthenon. {208}The Acropolis contained several temples, and not, as many persons suppose, only that world-renowned structure, the Parthenon. But the Parthenon overtops them all, and that in a double sense, as it stands on the highest part of the rocky plateau. The Parthenon was the work of Phidias, or was constructed under his direction, and is generally considered the finest of the Greek temples. Though greatly ruined now, it remained almost intact until 1687, when it was occupied by the Turks, who established a powder magazine in its centre. The Venetians were besieging them, and a shell from a Venetian gun caused an explosion that blew down a large part of the building and left the walls and columns in very nearly the condition in which we find them.

Morosini, the Venetian conqueror, then entered the place; he did not undertake any more explosions, but he tore down and carried away many of the statues and decorations.

Subsequent conquerors and antiquarians carried away many other statues and reliefs, so that the most of the fine sculpture of the Parthenon existing to-day must be sought in the museums of England and France. The British Museum contains the British lion’s share.

The act of Lord Elgin in carrying away two ship loads of the treasures of the Parthenon has been severely criticised Our party had a lively discussion on the subject, and the question was argued with a great deal of vehemence.

At the time the sculptures were removed, Greece was in a very unsettled condition. The Parthenon had been greatly injured during the wars of the preceding two hundred years, and there was no guarantee of permanent peace. The Turks were quite likely to come again, and as for that matter there may be a Greco-Turkish war at anytime, that may lead to another Moslem occupation of Athens with its attendant results.

In the British Museum, the art-treasures of the Parthenon are far safer than they would be in Athens, and for purposes of art-study they are accessible to thousands of persons, when they wouldn’t be seen by dozens if in the Greek capital. For those artists who manage to visit Athens there is quite enough remaining on the Acropolis, and in and around the city, to occupy the {209}whole of a busy lifetime of study, even if it run beyond threescore and ten years; and I further conclude that the modern Greeks, down to the time of Lord Elgin’s’ _razzia_, had forfeited all claim to the Parthenon by their utter neglect of it. In the interest of art, any person who would undertake the preservation of the sculptures was to be regarded as a benefactor of the civilized world.

I have said my say, and feel better.

Lord Elgin has been called all manner of hard names by a great many writers from Byron downwards, but I think he did right. If his relatives and friends wish to send me any testimonial for coming to his defence, they can remit it, post and duty paid, and I will acknowledge by return mail.

I wish to say on behalf of the present government in Greece, that it manifests a great interest in preserving the works of art that remain. And it is constantly making researches to the extent of its financial ability, and every year new treasures are discovered, and fresh light is thrown upon the art development of Ancient Greece.

Some of the excavations have been made at the personal expense of the young King, and altogether no one can complain that art matters are neglected in Athens at the present time.

An excellent museum has been formed at Athens, and it is under efficient and careful management. Students are flocking to the city from all parts of Europe, and the numbers bid fair to increase from year to year.

Enough has been printed on Greek art to satisfy the most exacting; there is little left to say. The fact that I have never studied the subject does not at all disqualify me from writing about it, if I were to follow the standard set up by some who have gone before me. Long essays have appeared from the pens of men who could hardly tell the difference between a pediment, and a cornice, or explain why a segment is not an angle or an angle a segment. It may be that I am over-scrupulous, but I have always been reluctant to write on any topic about which I was not properly informed.

In our visit to the Parthenon and in our examination of books relating to it we found something which greatly interested us; {210}as it was in a French book, and as none of us had ever seen it in an English one I have thought well to say something about it.

For thousands of years the Greek temples have been admired for the beauty and harmony of their lines, and in modern times several attempts have been made to copy them. But the modern architects have invariably found that their productions had an appearance of rigidity and lacked the softness and beauty of the antique. What could be the reason?

The secret was not discovered until less than forty years ago.

It had been lost to the world through all the centuries that have elapsed since the temples of Greece began to crumble and decay.

In 1837 M. Pennethorne, on studying the Parthenon, made the first observation that led to the revelation of the secret; and it was afterward verified by several architects, among whom were Hofer, Schaubert, Paccard, and Penrose. The last-named gentleman has treated the subject in an excellent work (_Principes de l’architecture Athénienne_) published in 1851, and it has also been examined by M. Burnouf in an article in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. The theories of the investigators were at first received \ with derision, but repeated measurement not only of the Parthenon, but of other Greek temples, have settled the matter beyond a doubt.

It has been found that the Greek architects gave curves and inclinations to the principal lines which modern architects have been accustomed to make perfectly straight measurements of the Parthenon and other temples show that these curves were both horizontal and perpendicular, and in every investigation they have been found mathematically exact.

“To the eye as to science,” says M. Burnouf, “the stability of the body increases with the extent of the base. The interior walls of the _cella_ (or _sanctum_) of the Parthenon were slightly inclined towards each other; the columns of the peristyle were likewise inclined inward, and the same was the case with the columns at the angles. The whole structure thus received the form of a truncated pyramid which gave an appearance of great solidity.”

The inclinations thus mentioned were vertical. A slight curve was given horizontally to the floor or platform on which the tem{211}ple stands, and it is found to extend outward in all directions from the point which indicates the centre.

All parts of the temple are made to correspond to this curve which is very slight, only a few half inches in a distance of a hundred feet--but at the same time sufficient to give a most harmonious and pleasing effect.

The earliest Greek temples do not have these curves, but they are found in all the later ones, so that the time of their introduction can be determined with reasonable accuracy.

It is supposed that the Greek artists arrived at the use of these curves by a careful study of nature. The straight line is a geometric abstraction which is never found in nature. The horizon is curved in consequence of the spherical form of the earth; the sea, a mountain range, or a plain, assumes a curve when we look at it from a distance, and a long line of coast will appear arched like a bow when we approach it.

Undoubtedly the Greeks gave these horizontal curves to the bases and super-structures of their temples in an effort to imitate nature. Hogarth in the last century laid down the law that the curve was the line of beauty; he was not aware that the principle had been discovered ages and ages ago by the Greeks.

For fear that I have not made my explanation clear enough to everyone let me illustrate:

We all know the earth is round--I demonstrated that to my own satisfaction by travelling steadily west until I reached home--and so many persons have done likewise since the days of Sir Francis Drake, the first circumnavigator, that the rotundity of the earth is everywhere accepted and understood Now if the whole earth is round, it follows naturally that any part of it is curved in proportion to its extent.

Is there a pond in your neighborhood a mile in diameter?

“Yes.”

Next winter when it is frozen over, go to that pond and stretch a twine from side to side. If you _could_ stretch that line without any “sag” you would find that it would touch the ice in the centre and be four inches above it at each end.

Or go there some night in the summer and place a bright light at the water’s edge on one side of the pond. Then go to the {212}other side, get into the water till your eye is just above the surface and endeavor to see the light. You don’t see it--because the rotundity of the earth prevents.

Now if you are building a church or a large hall, apply this principle of the curvature of the earth. Instead of making your floor perfectly flat make it swell up a little in the centre and sweep from this centre outward, toward the corners and sides. Then make your roof, pillars, and everything else in the place, and also the broad steps on the outside, curve in the same way and you will be imitating the Greek artists of the time of Pericles and Phidias. They may be said to have had level heads, those Greeks, when they abandoned the level and adopted the curve.

Enough of this.

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