Part 12

I have never had more full and exhilarating days than those four days in Syracuse, days full of revelation, recollection, reverie, or, to put it more prosaically, days devoted to study in history and topography. The ruins of Syracuse are not to the casual observer very imposing. One might almost say of them, "_periere etiamque ruinæ_." But even these ruins have great interest for the archæologist. There is, for example, an old temple near the northern end of Ortygia, for the most part embedded in the buildings of the modern city, yet with its east end cleared and showing several entire columns with a part of the architrave upon them. And what a surprise here awaits one who thinks of a Doric temple as built on a stereotyped plan! Instead of the thirteen columns on the long sides which one is apt to look for as going with a six-column front, here are eighteen or nineteen, it is not yet quite certain which. The columns stand less than their diameter apart, and the abaci are so broad that they nearly touch. So small is the intercolumnar space that archæologists incline to the belief that in this one Doric temple there were triglyphs only over the columns, and not also between them as in all other known cases. Everything about this temple stamps it as the oldest in Sicily. An inscription on the top step, in very archaic letters, much worn and difficult to read, contains the name of Apollo in the ancient form, Ἀπέλονι. The inscription may, of course, be later than the temple; but it is in itself old enough to warrant the supposition that the temple was erected soon after the first Corinthian colonists established themselves in the island. While the inscription makes it reasonably certain that the temple belonged to Apollo, the god under whose guiding hand all these Dorians went out into these western seas, tradition, with strange perversity, has given it the name of "Temple of Diana." But it is all in the family. Whether tradition has also erred in naming the temple on the highest part of the island, into which the cathedral has been so immured that the old temple columns protrude on each side of the church, the "Temple of Minerva," is a question to which archæologists have not yet returned a unanimous answer. Indications point rather to Zeus. This temple owes its preservation, such as it is, to this immuring of the cathedral in it. In fact, the temple is nearly all present, although one might almost pass it by in the daytime without seeing it. Another temple ruin on the edge of the plateau, which begins about two miles south of the city, across the Anapos, one might also easily overlook in a casual survey, because it consists only of two columns without capitals, and a broad extent of the foundations from which the accumulated earth has been only partially removed. This was the famous temple of Olympian Zeus, built probably in the days of Hiero I., soon after the Persian war, but on the site of a temple still more venerable. One seeks a reason for the location of this holy place at such a distance from the city. Holm, the German historian of Sicily, argues with some plausibility that this was no mere suburb of Syracuse, but the original Syracuse itself. In the first place, the list of the citizens of Syracuse was kept here down at least to the time of the Athenian invasion. In the second place, tradition, which, when rightly consulted, tells so much, says that Archias, the founder of Syracuse, had two daughters, Ortygia and Syracusa, which may point to two co-ordinate settlements, Ortygia and Syracuse; the latter, which was on this temple plateau, being subsequently merged in the former, but, as sometimes happens in such cases, giving its name to the combined result.

Besides these temple ruins there are many more foundations that tell a more or less interesting story. Then there are remains of the ancient city that can never be ruined: for instance, the great stone quarries, pits over a hundred feet deep and acres broad, in some of which the Athenian prisoners were penned up to waste away under the gaze of the pitiless captors; the Greek theatre, cut out of the solid rock; the great altar of Hiero II., six hundred feet long and about half as broad, also of solid rock. Then there is the mighty Hexapylon, which closed the fortifications of Dionysius at the northwest at the point where they challenged attack from the land side. With its sally-ports and rock-hewn passages, some capacious enough to quarter regiments of cavalary, showing holes cut in the projecting corners of rock, through which the hitch-reins of the horses were wont to be passed, and its great magazines, it stands a lasting memorial to the energy of a tyrant. But while this fortress is practically indestructible, an impregnable fortress is a dream incapable of realization. Marcellus and his stout Romans came in through these fortifications, not entirely, it is true, by their own might, but by the aid of traitors, against whom no walls are proof.

One of the stone quarries, the Latomia del Paradiso, has an added interest from its association with the tyrant who made himself hated as well as feared, while Gelon was only feared without being hated. An inner recess of the quarry is called the "Ear of Dionysius," and tradition says that at the inner end of this recess either he or his creatures sat and listened to the murmurs that the people uttered against him, and that these murmurs were requited with swift and fatal punishment. Certain it is that a whisper in this cave produces a wonderful resonance, and a pistol-shot is like the roar of a cannon; but that people who had anything to say against the butcher should come up within ear-shot of him to utter it is not very likely. Historians are not quite sure that the connection of Dionysius with this recess is altogether mythical, but that he shaped it with the fell purpose above mentioned is not to be thought of, as the whole quarry is older than his time, and was probably, with the Latomia dei Cappuccini, a prison for the Athenians.

No object is more frequently mentioned in connection with Syracuse than Arethusa, the nymph changed into a fountain when pursued across the sea by the river Alpheius. The water of this fountain, much praised in antiquity, has in recent times become brackish by the letting in of salt water through earthquakes. But what it has lost in real excellence it has gained in stylish appearance. For the sake of its ancient renown, washerwomen have recently been excluded from it, a fine wall put about it, and papyrus plants added to make it look picturesque. Enveloped in a more natural beauty lies the rival fountain, Kyane, the source of the southern branch of the Anapos some distance south of the Olympieum. The nymph Kyane was turned into a fountain by Pluto because she told Demeter of the rape of Persephone. We gave half a day to Kyane, and had ourselves pushed up a stream lined with reeds and papyrus, the latter a reminder of Saracen occupation, to this spring, from which the stream comes forth with a rush. It is difficult to decide which is more beautiful, the clear, deep, broad spring or the stream through which one approaches it. The whole journey is like an excursion into fairy-land, the outside world being shut out by the reeds and papyrus.

But if the monuments of Syracuse are on the whole comparatively unimpressive, what a history is crowded into the less than three centuries between Gelon, the second founder of the city, in that he made it great, and Marcellus. This history is far from being a mere record of slaughter, and sieges, and sack of cities. The time of Hiero I. is memorable for the appearance at Syracuse, in familiar if not always friendly converse, of Pindar, Simonides, Bacchylides, Æschylus, Epicharmos and Xenophanes. One must not think of the poetry of this Hieronian circle as exotic because most of the poets were transplanted: to the Greek poets any place in the Greek world where they were appreciated and cared for was home. Anacreon sang as well and as naturally at Samos and Athens as at his native Teos; Simonides's muse was apparently equally happy in Athens, Thessaly, and Sicily; and even the Theban eagle suffered no relaxation of his wings at the Syracusan court; nay, he appears to have made his loftiest flights there. Over one-third of his epinicion odes are for Sicilian victors. Of the Titan Æschylus alone of that company one may suspect that, although he did not always get on well at home, yet the sojourn so far from Eleusis and Marathon found him homesick and heartsick. It is only rarely in the world's history that such a lot of stars gather around a court. It is a good deal that Syracuse was again visited by the muses in the time of Hiero II., when Theocritus took up his abode there.

The afternoon before we left Syracuse we got a reminder that its greatness did not all pass away with the Roman occupation. The enormous catacombs from Christian times speak of new and better days. But what stirs one more is one particular spot in the crypt of St. Marcian, a church partly made out of a temple of Bacchus. Here, in front of an old altar, a block of stone is pointed out as the stone on which St. Paul stood when he preached at Syracuse. One gets impatiently sceptical about traces of the saints in Italy; but why not accept the report that in his three days' stay at Syracuse, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul preached here? What is more fitting than that, by the very altar of the god of revelry, the great apostle should speak as he spoke at Athens? At any rate, I add this spot to Appii Forum and Tres Tabernæ as a place where I trod in the footsteps of a man beside whom Gelon, Pyrrhus, and Hannibal were pygmies.

II

On the journey from Syracuse to Girgenti by rail through the heart of Sicily the most interesting point is Castrogiovanni, the ancient Enna, called the navel of Sicily, a height from which one sees mountains diverging in every direction, a real _Knotenpunkt_. The railroad affords a view of Enna only from some distance as it plunges into a long tunnel under the ridge joining this height to another almost as high, on which stands Calascibetta. The surroundings of the old Sikel town, Enna, which, being early colonized by Syracuse, became a lasting monument of Greek domination over the Sikel, were probably much more beautiful in ancient times. On these rather bare heights there was once such luxuriant growth of woods and flowers that hunting-dogs lost the scent of the game. In this flower-garden the Sicilian legend placed the rape of Persephone.

As the train approached Girgenti it passed through the great sulphur region of the world. Here thousands of boys, many of them under ten years of age, carry the sulphur up to the surface. These boys are bound over by their parents to the overseers of the mines for the sum of two hundred francs, more or less, which they are expected to work off. But it takes years to do it, and many die before they succeed. The parents spend the purchase money and the children live on in despair. Our informant, a German-American, who had come over to study the sulphur industry, and who was not a sentimentalist, said that the sight of these boys going up and down the ladders with tears rolling down their cheeks had made him join in their sighs and carry a heavy heart all the way to Palermo.

The case of Girgenti is that of Syracuse reversed. Its history is not so very important, but its ruins are impressive. Even at Himera, where Theron and Akragas stood by Gelon and Syracuse, it was in a second rôle. On that occasion, when the larger part of the Carthaginian prisoners fell to Akragas, apparently because they strayed into Akragantine territory after the battle, some of the citizens are said to have got five hundred slaves apiece. From this time Akragas gave itself up to the amassing of wealth. As a consequence it became the least martial and most luxurious of Greek cities, showing, like Corinth, that a Dorian city, when once given over to pleasure, could outdo the Ionians in that direction. While Syracuse battled with Athens, Akragas remained neutral. About the only form of strenuous activity to which it arose was athletics; and even then a victory was made an occasion for a display of wealth. When Exænetos won in the stadion at Olympia, three hundred span of milk-white horses accompanied him into the city.

The luxury of Akragas took on a peculiarly showy and almost gross type. The men loaded themselves with gold ornaments. They erected tombs to horses which had won Olympic victories and to other favorite animals. A typical Akragantine was Gellias, who used to have slaves stand at his door and invite every passing stranger to come in; and once, when five hundred knights from Gela made a visit to Akragas in the winter, he took them all in, entertained them, and gave each of them a new chiton and himation. That the means of entertainment did not fail him is shown by the statement that he had three hundred rock-hewn wine-barrels, holding each a hundred amphoræ, and a big vat holding a thousand amphoræ, out of which these were filled; and this was _private_ hospitality.

One could hardly expect moderation when such bountiful provision for carousal was at hand. Athenæus tells a story showing how well the young men lived up to their privileges. Some of these, drinking themselves dizzy at a banquet, declared that the house rocked like a ship, and, as if to avert impending shipwreck, began to lighten ship by pitching the furniture out of the windows, to the danger, and then to the hilarious delight, of the passers-by. But as a crowd and some disorder resulted, the generals went to the house to investigate the matter. The young bloods were equal to the emergency. They accosted the graybeards as Tritons, thanked them for deliverance from the storm, and vowed to sacrifice to them so soon as they had got over their sea-sickness and fright. The old men, being carried away with the humor of the thing, entered into the spirit of the joke, and that house was ever after known as "the ship."

Such a joke might have been played in a good many other towns, but the following bit of gossip, if not true, is _ben trovato_, and has a peculiarly Akragantine flavor. It is related that at the fatal siege of the city by the Carthaginians, when all was at stake, a law was passed restricting the guards when at their posts to one under-mattress and one over-mattress, one blanket, and two pillows. If these things were done in a green tree, what was done in a dry? Empedocles, the most eminent citizen of Akragas, said of his fellow-citizens that they indulged in high living as if they were going to die to-morrow, but built as if they were going to live forever. The first half of this statement we have to judge by gossip, which, as it is very bulky and all to the same point, may well make us believe that when there is so much smoke there must be some fire. For the corroboration of the latter half, go to Girgenti and _circumspice_.

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What a moment was that when, toward the end of the afternoon, after toiling up from the station on the north side of Girgenti to the city itself, which occupied the site of the acropolis of Akragas, we looked down on the plateau sloping southward toward the sea, and dotted with the famous ruins long known to us by photographs. About a mile below us, in the direction of the ruins, was the Hôtel des Temples, which we had been told in Syracuse was to close for the summer the day before. But as "the Greeks got into Troy by trying," we thought we would try to get into this hotel, and be near our goal. At the door a boy declared that the house was closed; but at our request he said he would call the padrone. In ten minutes there appeared in riding clothes, and leading a horse, the most charming landlord of Sicily, with a bewitching smile and the manners of a gentleman. He said that, although his house was closed and his cook gone, he had not the heart to send us back up into the city. We could have, he said, eight or nine beds apiece, and, as he had a hunting comrade with him for the night, he could give us some soup and meat.

More than satisfied to have established a base of operations, without a delay of five minutes we were at the Concordia Temple, the most perfectly preserved Greek temple, unless we except perhaps the Theseum. Having an hour and a half of daylight, we used it in getting a first view of nearly everything on the plateau, and then returned to what we supposed was to be a frugal meal. But the dinner was an Akragantine feast, the best of the whole journey, with the possible exception of the next one at the same table. We wondered what sort of a dinner the regular cook would have produced if this was done by a novice; and when the padrone made apologies for his dinner, we searched his smiling face for traces of sarcasm.

The next day we enjoyed in detail what we had already enjoyed in the lump, that row of temples lined up along the southern edge of the plateau which here ends in a rocky precipice. These temples when new, with the city of half a million inhabitants behind it, and the acropolis above it with still more temples, must have been a very effective sight to one coming up from the sea five miles away.

Although the material of the temples is a friable yellow sandstone, quarried near by, we must not in reconstructing our picture think of them as yellow temples. They doubtless had stucco and paint enough to hide this core. The stone is so porous that it is not surprising to find the columns on the south side--_i.e._, the side most exposed to the sirocco--badly eaten away. The whole line dates from the fifth century, and was doubtless planned and begun by Theron, who had armies of slaves from Himera.

What Greek name the Concordia Temple had is unknown. Holm suspects that it is the temple of Demeter, although the substructure under a church farther up the hill has generally been assigned to her. It owes its excellent preservation to the fact that in the Middle Ages it was turned into a church of St. Gregory of the turnips, whoever he was, when the cella walls were perforated with a series of arches on each side, to let in the light.

The next best preserved is the temple of Hera Lacinia, in the most commanding situation of all, having the precipice, which is here higher and more abrupt, on its east front, as well as on its south side. It is also considerably the highest of the line. Its present name is surely wrong. It is quite likely to have been a temple of Poseidon, a divinity held in honor at Akragas, a horse-rearing as well as a maritime city. The temple of Herakles is more interesting than either of these, although only one column stands upright; the rest lie as they were thrown down by an earthquake, in such good order that it would be easy to set them up again; and the result would be much more important than Cavalari's so-called temple of Castor and Pollux, which, being a corner of a temple put together out of two different temples, should be properly called "Cavalari's folly." The temple of Herakles is rightly named. It was identified as being at the sacred gate and near the agora. It is much larger than the two temples already described, and shows, like them, traces of a great conflagration which reddened the yellow stone in places. Its ground plan is very clear but peculiar, and so extremely interesting. Sicily is the place of all others to study the construction of the Greek temple.

But the object of greatest interest is the Zeus Temple, still farther west in the line. This justifies the saying of Empedocles above quoted, being so large that the Parthenon could be lost in one corner of it, as the wooden ladle was lost in Lady Wouter Van Twiller's pocket. It is the most massive of Greek temples, in the sense in which the temple of Zeus at Olympia is more massive than the Parthenon--_i.e._, its columns and all its members are larger. So enormous were its dimensions that the architect readily saw that he must deviate from the ordinary rules of construction. Columns of friable stone fifty-five feet high, supporting an unusually heavy entablature, needed support themselves. Accordingly they were embedded in a continuous wall. What one here saw was not a line of graceful columns between which and the cella one could walk about, but only a great wall with half columns protruding from it. These half columns were not really independent members. The small blocks composing them run over into the wall to the right and left. They simply serve to break up a monotonous wall, and to present the appearance of columns. This contour, which is a little over a semi-circumference, averages about twenty feet, being, of course, greater at the bottom. A man's back, as was remarked by Diodorus Siculus, easily fits into the flutings. The clearest idea, however, of the large proportions of the temple I got by noting that the grooves in a triglyph lying on the ground measured fifteen feet in length. It would also be no exaggeration to say that a company could dance on the top of one of the capitals lying about.

The inside of this temple must have been as peculiar as the outside. The great question here is where to place the gigantic figures called Atlantes or Telamones, male figures corresponding to the female figures on the Erechtheum, but, unlike them, showing exertion, like Atlas in the Olympia metope. Probably they stood on the lateral walls of the cella, and, with their twenty-five feet, they would reach up to the roof, like the second row of columns at Pæstum. The cella probably ran clear through from one end of the temple to the other, and, while the two divisions of the temple to the right and left of it, which were as much closed as the cella itself, had entrances from the east, the cella was probably entered from the west. One has to say "probably" very often in speaking of the interior, because the temple has been nearly all carried away to make the pier at Porto Empedocle, the harbor of the modern city. As late as 1401 three columns were still standing and carrying a piece of the architrave. But the temple entered very early on the stage of dilapidation, for the reason that the roof was never put upon it. For more than half a century, even from the time of Theron, Akragas had wrought upon this monster building, and had not finished it when the Carthaginian fury broke upon her. Although the city rose again, and even prospered, it never saw a day for taking up again such a gigantic enterprise.

Besides this temple of Olympian Zeus there was an older temple of Zeus Polieus on the acropolis, to which an unusual interest attaches, because it was built by Phalaris, of execrable memory, who, having attached to himself a band of laborers for the construction of the temple, by their help seized the sovereign power and subverted the democracy. Down in the crypt of the Church of Santa Maria dei Greci we were shown a regular stylobate of three steps, and on the top step eight columns, the upper parts of which run up into the church, which shows also columns of the other long side of the temple. Tradition claims this as the identical temple built by Phalaris. But as the forms of the columns forbid putting them back into the sixth century we do better to identify them with the temple of Athena on the acropolis. The temple built by Phalaris is to be sought, then, on the ground occupied by the modern cathedral. Jove gave place to Jesus, and the virgin goddess, as at Athens, to the Virgin Mother.