Part 14

Now my work began anew; another mountain wall confronted me and the road, which as far as the border had been good, was freshly strewn with cracked stones, the bicyclist's terror. When at last I reached the top of this second range, a sight worth seeing unfolded itself before my eye. All Montenegro, a mass of gray stone rising here and there into peaks, lay spread out before me. In the far northeast one could see the important hill fortress of Niksic, but no land anywhere appeared. In fact, all the soil in Montenegro, except in the southern part around Lake Skutari, is found in larger or smaller clefts of the rocks; Cettinje itself being simply one of the largest of these. Now it was downhill, and I abused my wheel shamefully, running it hard over the stones as the only way of accomplishing the journey. At about ten o'clock, just after feasting my eyes on the grand chain of snow-covered Illyrian mountains in the background, I turned a large cliff and looked down into a bowl five or ten times as large as that of Njegus, and saw at its farther end Cettinje, looking like a large German country village with roofs of red tiles. This is without doubt the most primitive capital of Europe. Words almost fail to express its plainness. But it is a place worth seeing, and after a reasonable halt I made haste to traverse in the blazing sun the two or three miles which lay between the rim of the bowl where I stood and the town.

It was some years since I had felt myself so out of the world as I did up there among the mountains and men of Slavic speech. I betook myself to a modest inn, Kraljevic Al Marco, for lunch. After wrestling to my satisfaction with Italian, I noticed that the landlady turned to her little boy and said something to him in Greek. Quick as a flash the ice was broken and we were talking Greek like lightning. It was a family of Greeks, the brother of the landlady being the interpreter at the Greek Consulate.

After an hour or two of rest they showed me about the town for awhile, after which I cut loose to see things for myself. What a plain town it is! The palace of the present sovereign, called the New Palace, is one of the few two-story buildings in the place, but even this has hardly any ornament except four pairs of attached Corinthian columns on each of the stories at the front side, and two pairs on each of the other sides. The so-called "Old Palace" is plainer than most modern jails. The one building of interest is the monastery, in which lies buried the ancestor of the ruling family, on whose sarcophagus the Montenegrins lay their hands and swear when they go out to battle to be good and true soldiers. And they have kept their oaths well. These Montenegrins are simply Servians who never bowed the knee to the Turks. It has occurred more than once or twice that a Turkish army has entered this land of rocks eighty thousand strong, sweeping everything before it, only to return decimated, if perchance it escaped destruction. There is a round tower in the rear of the monastery, on which the heads of Turks used to be nailed up.

It was good luck for me that my visit fell on Sunday, for the men were in their best dress. Dress did not make the man; the man was there to begin with. There was hardly an adult who did not measure over six feet; and they looked every inch a man. If there were only enough of them they would soon settle the Eastern question. Alexander III. of Russia knew how to value his "only faithful ally." In contrast to the men, the women look like drudges. The male sex has really arrogated to itself all the beauty, a result that has come about from the fact that, while the men have for ages borne arms and ranged free, the women have been the tillers of the scanty soil as well as servants of all work. _Men_ are the one product of Montenegro. The only product of the _soil_ beyond the grain and potatoes, which afford scanty sustenance, is tobacco, which is good and cheap. There is a heavy duty on it in Austria, something like two hundred per cent.; everybody tries to smuggle it in, and the trick often succeeds.

The next day was the birthday of the Crown Prince, and when I made ready to depart my new friends said, "Of course you are going to stay to the great festival," apparently thinking that that was what I came for. I asked if the young man himself was to be present, and they replied, "Oh! no." "Then," said I, "I think I will not be present either." So I got off at half-past two in a fierce heat, and by easy stages, meeting as I went several of my stalwart third-class fellow-passengers, I reached the Galatea in season for a good dinner.

On the way from Cattaro to Spalato the chief object of interest is Ragusa, a strongly fortified city of about twelve thousand inhabitants, which, after maintaining itself as a free republic until 1805, often leaning upon Venice the while, went in the next decade through great vicissitudes, being in 1811 annexed by Napoleon to the new "Kingdom of Illyria," and in 1814 falling into the hands of Austria, so good at taking hold but so slow at letting go. But, after all that may be said of the land-greed of Austria, it has been no evil lot for Dalmatia to fall into her hands. Austria has inherited--let Professor Freeman turn over in his grave to hear it said--the rôle of Rome as road-builder, civilizer, and introducer of general prosperity along this coast. She is now pushing a network of railroads along the coast and up from the coast towns into the interior. Ragusa has a very Venetian look in its old part and a very nineteenth-century look in its new part. Its surroundings are almost as interesting as the city itself. On the lovely island Lacroma, hard by on the south, is a church founded by Richard Cœur de Lion. Somewhat farther off to the north, on the shore, lies Canosa, ever remembered by a spring of pure water shaded by two gigantic plane-trees forty feet in circumference, an enchanted spot. At or near Ragusa lay the Greek city Epidauros.

In this region might well be located the "Islands of the Blessed"; for here we begin to encounter islands by tens and dozens, large and small. The rest of the journey was dodging in and out among islands. We have lakes in America which boast their three hundred and sixty-five islands, one for each day in the year; but the Dalmatian islands are not to be counted by hundreds, but by thousands, if one were to count them at all. They are generally spoken of as innumerable. Geologists say that there has been here a subsidence of great strips of land, and that the sea has in some cases broken up the remaining strips into pieces of a size to suit itself, ranging from fifty rods to fifty miles in length. Here comes the infinite charm of sailing along the Dalmatian coast, this interlocking of sea and shore. No wonder that the Dalmatians are all sailors, wooers of the salt sea gale. I myself longed to get off the steamer and get into one of the numerous sailboats that were ploughing through the dashing waves.

Had the Galatea stopped as long at Spalato as it had at Cattaro, I should have been tempted to crowd my enjoyment of it into the same space; but she had now transformed herself into an express boat, bent on reaching Trieste in the shortest possible time. So, with some regret, I left my hospitable quarters on my floating home to trust myself to the welcome of an inn.

But little did I care for the inn. Within a quarter of an hour from the time when I left the steamer I was in the heart of one of the strangest cities of the world, threading my way through narrow winding streets, passing here and there a temple, generally embedded in some later building, running up against a continuous wall two or three stories high which I followed until I found a gate that would let me go through it; then I followed the outside of this wall until I found another gate that let me in again, when the maze again engulfed me. I was in the famous Palace of Diocletian.

The city Spalato was once all inside the palace (palatium), and got its name from that fact; but in later years the city has so grown that the palace is embedded and almost lost in the city. In order to get a good idea of the city and palace together one should climb the campanile, a fine Romanesque structure, incomparably finer than that the loss of which Venice now mourns. In 1882 it became necessary to take down all but the four lower stories and rebuild. Money has come in slowly, and the staging which practically hides the beautiful campanile may not come down for several years more. The door leading into this immense wooden structure bore the legend, _L'ingresso è vietato_. But following a maxim hewn from life, that a sightseer must always go on until he is stopped, I went and pushed my way through the workmen, boss and all, probably with a more assured air because a good citizen had a few minutes before told me, "You will see a sign saying 'No admittance,' but it doesn't mean anything."

At the foot of the campanile is an Egyptian sphinx whose head has been battered by a falling stone. The natives call it the "man-woman," and, curiously enough, they call the sun disk between its paws "pogazza" (a loaf of bread), a roundabout corroboration of what I used to hear in childhood: "The moon is made of green cheese; the sun's a loaf of bread." The view from the top is fine, whether you look landward or seaward; but the real reward of the climb is that here only the extent and plan of the palace and the adjustment of the buildings within it become perfectly clear.

The term "palace" is a misnomer. What we have is really an enormous enclosure, a sort of Roman camp. The area is trapezoidal; in other words, the sides vary in length. The north or landward side, which is the longest, has a length of 700 feet. The circuit is about half a mile, and it consumes the better part of half an hour to work your way around it. There could, of course, be no question of roofing over such a space. The whole area was divided into four approximately equal squares by two great passages, one thirty-six feet broad, leading from the water gate on the south side called the Silver Gate, through which the imperial barge used to sail into the palace, to the Golden Gate on the north side, the other running from the Iron Gate on the west to the Bronze Gate on the east. The first of these ways is interrupted near the south end by the imperial house itself. The enclosing wall was fifty feet high at its lowest part, and was seventy-five feet high near the sea where the ground fell off, so that all the buildings, sacred and profane, distributed within were hidden from view to outsiders. Not only did the imperial family, but courtiers and menials, making a population of some thirty thousand, have quarters here.

The builder and occupant of this palace was the greatest personality of the Cæsars after Marcus Aurelius, whom in military and administrative force he greatly surpassed. Entering the service as a simple legionary, he rose by slow degrees of service in all parts of the empire under various nonentities of emperors, until at Chalkedon, in 284 A.D., the soldiers proclaimed him emperor. There is a legend that a Druid priestess had prophesied to him when he was serving in Belgium under Aurelian that he would become emperor immediately after killing a boar. It is said that he saw the fulfilment of this prophecy when the Emperor Numerianus was assassinated at Chalkedon by a certain Aper (_i.e._, boar), whom he immediately struck down, exclaiming, "I have killed the boar." Of course there are those who think that the legend grew out of the name of the assassin. Diocletian's name will ever be associated with the last and most wide-reaching and systematic persecution of the Christians; but this policy was most likely forced upon him by the fanaticism of his colleague, Galerius. At this time the Roman Empire had become too bulky to be well administered by one man, however able and conscientious, and of his own accord he associated others with himself in the imperial power, confining himself entirely to the eastern part. Two years after he had issued at Nikomedia, in 303 A.D., his edict of persecution of the Christians, the cares of office weighing too heavily upon him, he laid aside the purple, retired to Salona, and began building this palace about four miles distant from it. When his withdrawal was so sorely felt that he was importuned to resume the imperial power, he declined, referring to the sweet peace which he enjoyed among his cabbages at Salona. There can be little doubt that the reason which influenced him to choose Salona as his place of retirement was that it was his birthplace, although the Montenegrins hold that they have the true birthplace in Doclea, not far from Cettinje.

But the old Emperor's musings in his great palace must have been sadder than Hadrian's conversings with his soul at Tivoli. Here he learned of the triumph of Christianity through Constantine, a meaner spirit than he. Then came the overturning of his statues at Rome and the banishment and subsequent butchery of his wife and daughter. Added to all this was a painful illness; and in the eighth year of his residence in that palace where he had promised himself so much comfort and sweet peace, to adopt the words of Marcus Aurelius, that noblest Roman of them all, he "found the house smoky and went out."

Beside the pathetic interest attaching to the great founder of the palace, another interest attaches to the immuring of it in the modern city. In the seventh century Anno Domini waves of barbarians swept down along the coast of Dalmatia. One of these was composed of Avars--a people often mixed up, whether rightly or wrongly, with the Huns. Even more than the Huns they were a "scourge of God." After leaving a desert in their trail, butchering men and yoking women to their carts, they came into this lovely region, destroyed the great city, and then decided to settle down here. There was a grand scattering of the degenerate Romans, who had been unable to hold their own, to the neighboring islands, but after awhile a remnant came back and occupied the palace, which was fairly well adapted to be used as a fort. Here they defied the Avars, and at last outstayed them. The result was the present city of Spalato.

One's first impression is that the palace, although tremendously impressive from the outside wherever that is visible, has yet suffered immensely from its partial burial in the modern city. The two temples within were much more buried than the great wall, and have been only partially brought to light again. But in another aspect of the case the modern city saved the palace. Had the latter stood by itself it would have been treated as a stone quarry, like so many ancient cities, Salona itself, for example. Now there is hope that by removing here and there a modern building--a process that was begun some time ago--the greater part of the palace may be restored to the light of day. In fact, the Porta Aurea has quite recently been freed from encumbrances and, even without being restored, makes a fine impression.

From all that one now sees it is clear that the architecture, though impressive as a whole, is shabby when examined in detail. The exquisite finish of the Greek is, of course, lacking. But even compared with some other Roman work it is seen to have been hastily done. Its nearest parallel is found in Palmyra, which was restored by Diocletian.

The enclosing wall has half columns of the Doric order in a lower story and Ionic half columns in a second. Of the buildings inside, the "peristyle" in front of the royal residence makes the best impression, because the space enclosed by it was thoroughly cleared out by the Emperor Francis I. of Austria, nearly a century ago, a benefaction duly recorded on a tablet inserted in an adjacent wall. Many of the columns of the peristyle itself, however, are still half embedded in the walls of buildings too important to be torn down. A building which is now generally identified with the mausoleum of Diocletian forms the present cathedral, the campanile of which caused the destruction of a portion of a peristyle enclosing the mausoleum. This mausoleum is a round building like the Pantheon, and like the latter has a perfectly preserved dome which, unlike that of the Pantheon, was not open at the top. About a quarter of a century ago the interior was restored under the auspices of the ill-matched and ill-fated Rudolf and Stephanie, who are mentioned on a conspicuous tablet, not as furnishing any cash for the enterprise, but as _presentibus et opus admirantibus_. The interior, forty-two feet in diameter, with eight large columns framing four niches and bearing eight smaller columns superimposed, makes a fine impression, although the space seems rather small for a cathedral. A sculptured frieze encircling the dome at the bottom, and containing, among other things, hunting scenes, must be catalogued as "shapeless sculpture."

After being _presens_ and _admirans_ for half a day, wherever I could enter and climb, I sought out Father Bulich, the director of the museum as well as supervisor of all the archæological interests and undertakings of Spalato and Salona, in order to get him to show me the things that were under lock and key. I found him at his house dickering with some visitors for antiquities, and the last I saw of him, two days later, he was engaged in the same occupation. Nothing could exceed his cordiality and his active help. As soon as he could get rid of his visitors he brought out all the best works on Spalato, some of them loaded with illustrations, and sent them around to my hotel. Unfortunately, I could not get half time, even by sitting up all night, to read any large part of them. Then he took me over three of his five or six small museums with which he has to put up instead of the large one for which he prays as well as labors. But though he has done much to bring order out of the chaos which he found, some luckier man than he will probably be the arranger of the museum of Spalato worthy of the name. Amid much that is common and uninteresting, and yet too good to throw away, are objects of great value and importance. Nearly everything is from Salona. He has catalogued and published nearly two thousand seven hundred inscriptions. Gems are strongly represented, as well as coins and other small objects. Sculpture, aside from some good fragments, is represented mostly by sarcophagi, very few of which rise above mediocrity. It is interesting to see here, as elsewhere, a sarcophagus with the representation of Phædra and Hippolytos spared by the Christians, who took Hippolytos as the "chaste Joseph." The oldest object in any of the museums is a sphinx shown by an inscription to belong to Amenophis III., the Memnon of the Greeks, of about 1500 B.C. In one museum is a cast of a really fine head of Herakles, found in the neighborhood but kept by the monks at Sinj.

Of objects which did _not_ come from Salona may be mentioned certain Greek inscriptions which show the presence of Greeks on these coasts and islands long before the great days of Rome. Of course it was unlikely that, having put a girdle of colonies around southern Italy, and pushed up along the eastern shore of the Adriatic as far as Epidauros (Ragusa), they should remain strangers to this region so crowded with islands, just their kind.

Father Bulich took me also into the one building inside the palace that is kept locked. Its chief attraction is a perfectly preserved barrel vault with coffers containing rosettes. This is supposed, partly from its position, to have been Diocletian's court chapel; but whether it was dedicated to Jupiter or to Æsculapius is a question which divides the authorities. Lanza, Bulich's predecessor, inferred from a laurel wreath bound by a ribbon which he took to be the imperial crown, sculptured in the rear gable, that _this_ was Diocletian's mausoleum. This rear end was said by the guide-books to be inaccessible, and so of course it was what I most wanted to see. I mentioned my regret, and, to my surprise, Bulich said, "Oh! it is perfectly accessible." Then he led the way through several by-ways and up three flights of stairs, almost tumbling over children in the dim light, until at last we got into a kitchen which was backed up against the gable. There was the laurel wreath, to be sure. Little did it interest the rosy-cheeked woman who had her sleeves rolled up above her elbows and was trying in some embarrassment to get them down again before a stranger. The wreath was out of her reach; but the horizontal cornice of the gable was only about four feet above the floor of her kitchen; and she had deployed upon it--a splendid shelf--her oils and essences, her butter and sugar, and all the appliances of a kitchen and a pantry. When Bulich, with all the authority of an archæologist and a father confessor combined, reproved her for quite a good-sized, fresh nick on the left ascending cornice, her cheeks and even her arms took on a redder hue, probably on account of my presence; for the priest was greeted on every staircase as a familiar friend.

The next day he showed me his excavations at Salona, which he has carried on under great difficulties. Since the Austrian empire has no law for the expropriation of private property for the purpose of archæological excavations, he has been obliged with his not all too generous funds to make his peace with the owners of the fields; and, since the whole area of Salona is covered by one continuous vineyard, it has been very slow business. But he has managed to get a foothold here and there. Here the greater part of a big amphitheatre has been uncovered, here a long line of sarcophagi; at present he is pushing a few yards farther the uncovering of a huge Christian basilica.

There had been no great surprises for me at Spalato; but Salona, which had been to me a mere name, now suddenly loomed large before my vision as the great city of the Occident next to Rome. Three things made Salona what it was. It had in the first place a fine harbor at the end of a deep bay. The silting up of the harbor in modern times has brought it a little farther from the water's edge; but that the water once lapped its walls is shown by its water gate. Secondly, just back of Salona there is a great gap in the long chain of mountains that follow the shore at a little interval as far as the eye can reach. Through this gap a great road led into the heart of the Balkan peninsula through what is now known as Bosnia and Servia to the Danube and beyond. Thirdly, the region back of the gap was vastly important to the Romans as a gold-bearing land. In the times of Augustus and Tiberius gold was commonly referred to by the poets as "Dalmatian ore." Salona was the place where all this gold was gathered for transmission to Rome.

The Romans' greed for gold was here seen in its sharpest phase. They dug miles into the heart of mountains, and carried water hundreds of miles in artificial channels for washing deposits of gold. Perhaps no one can ever convey or even conceive of the horror of the life of slaves in these works. In droves of tens of thousands, many of them made slaves instead of masters by the mere fortune of war, they were driven into the bowels of the earth with poor chance of seeing the light again. It is, at any rate, a fact that months passed without such re-emergence, a fact which lessened the likelihood of any re-emergence at all. In that great and cruel empire, slave life counted for little; the supply was abundant.