Part 5

We sailed to the point called now Kastro Roumelias, the ancient Antirrhion, and mounted our wheels at half-past one. Three-quarters of an hour brought us to Naupaktos. This city was flourishing in the seventh and sixth centuries before Christ; but its plain was not large enough, and the places in the interior to which it was a key were not important enough to give it permanent prosperity. In the fifth century it was taken by the Athenians, and given to the exiled Messenians, who made it a stanch ally of Athens in the sphere of Corinthian influence. Besides being most picturesquely situated, it has looked down on important events. Under its walls and in its harbor Phormio, the Athenian admiral, twice annihilated a Peloponnesian fleet of more than double the size of his own. The greatest naval battle that ever took place between Christendom and Islam, though fought in the open sea twenty miles to the west, was named after it, because the Turkish armada set out from it to meet Don John of Austria. One hardly recognizes the name in the Venetian form, Lepanto. The Greek name of to-day, Epaktos, is nearer to the ancient form.

We stopped only a few minutes here, as our intention was to reach Kephalovrysi (Thermon) that night, and, if we failed in that, it seemed child's-play to reach at least Makrinou on the lake. Even when bicycling ceased and we settled down to steady climbing, we felt no misgivings; and when at four o'clock we began to descend we thought our work for the day about finished. But our confidence was rudely shaken when we saw before us the broad, pebbly bed of the Evenos, which flows down through these mountains, taking a sharp turn to the west and passing under the walls of Calydon. We had forgotten to reckon with this. We now paid dearly for our descent by another climb, which seemed unending, and before we reached our greatest altitude far from Kephalovrysi, and, for aught we knew, far from Makrinou also, it became dark.

This road seems an excellent example of the way in which the little kingdom of Greece ought not to make internal improvements. The fine carriage-road, built at great expense, winds with gentlest grade along every projection and indentation of the mountains; and yet we met on our whole journey to the top only a single cart, and in many places the road was so overgrown with grass that no ruts appeared. When it was growing dark we saw another reason why the road might not be popular. In some places it had slipped downhill; and in other places the hills had slipped down into it, which was almost as bad. There is no call for a fine highway from Naupaktos to the lake. The great interior basin of Ætolia is provided with a good course for its traffic _via_ Messolonghi; and no power on earth can force it to come this way. It is useless for some silly people in Naupaktos to complain that favoritism was shown in not laying out the Northwestern Railroad with their town as a starting-point. For a town doomed to decline, a steamer stopping two or three times a week, supplemented by sail-boats to and from the more lively and more important southern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, may well suffice. The Northwestern Railroad will soon be prolonged to Arta, giving to him that hath, according to the habit of railroads; and even this finely built carriage-road will continue to be avoided by every self-respecting traveller, as it is now, until only pieces of this monumental folly shall remain. The demarch of Kephalovrysi told me that the primary object of this road was to enable the Government to move troops by land in case of the blockade of the coast by stronger Powers. But even with that explanation the road seems useless without good roads farther east to connect with it, to say nothing of the futility of Greece attempting to resist the stronger naval Powers.

When darkness was fairly upon us, and just as we were beginning to descend, we found a wretched village of four or five houses. At one of these with a wine-shop below and living-rooms above, we were well fed, but in a rather primitive style, I eating my rice from the same bowl with the host, as we all sat cross-legged in front of the fire. Since it was very cold, we were glad to lie down for the night on rugs, with other rugs over us, with our feet to the fire, making one end of a semicircle, at the other end of which was the host with his wife and five small children, while below, in the business part of the establishment, were five larger children.

When we got off at sunrise the next morning, the view to the west was something over which one may well grow enthusiastic. Low down at our feet, but stretching far away to the west, was the lake which we had sought, and beyond its farther end another smaller one. At that farther end, too, was the fertile plain of Agrinion, where grows the best tobacco in Greece. Beyond that and across the Acheloos rose the snowy mountains of Acarnania and Leukas, just touched by the rising sun. On our right, rising up from the north shore of the lake and stretching far to the north, were the gigantic mountains which make the larger and wilder part of Ætolia. On our left were the lower peaks of Mount Arakynthos bordering the lake on the south. This is the heart of Ætolia. It has a wonderfully drawing power to one who has once seen it. The lake, enclosed by mountains on its eastern end, and on its western end by a plain, is wonderfully beautiful. It is striking that its surface is hardly stirred by either row-boats or sail-boats. The only time I ever saw a sail upon it was on this particular morning.

It was matter for sad reflection that this great plain did not all belong to Ætolia, but that the part beyond the Acheloos was Acarnania. Rivers cannot divide peoples; and these two peoples through all their history dyed this unnatural boundary with their blood. The Ætolians, as the stronger if not the better people, generally succeeded in keeping a foothold on the other bank, holding even Stratos, the capital of Acarnania, and Œniadæ, its strongest city, for periods of centuries. But the Acarnanians were tough antagonists, and never said die till all was merged in the supremacy of Rome.

It was a matter of a few minutes to spin down to Makrinou, which now had for us no importance. Kephalovrysi was our goal. The visit was for me tinged with some melancholy reflections. Less than a year before I had been there with my friend, Charles Peabody, of Cambridge, and we had been much excited at the thought that here lay Thermon, the head of the Ætolian League, and so near the surface that a little excavation would prove it. On my return to Athens I asked the Ephor General of Antiquities to reserve the spot for us, which he said he would do. But a few months later, when the Greek Archæological Society sent Georgios Soteiriades into Ætolia to explore sites, this one was not excepted; and he attacked it with great success. While I had to rejoice that archæology had gained a triumph, I was sorry that an enthusiastic American had not been the instrument. After a few miles of level road along the east end of the lake, we toiled four or five miles up along the face of the mountain enclosing it on the north side, and then turning sharply away from the lake at Petrochori, a village perched on the top of a ridge commanding as good a view as the one already described, in a few minutes we had reached our goal.

Kephalovrysi has about a thousand inhabitants. It was not more than ten minutes after we had settled ourselves in an eating-house when all the boys of the place and most of the men, with a small representation of the girls, gathered around and thronged in at the door, in spite of the kicks and cuffs of the proprietor. Before we had fairly begun to eat, the demarch appeared with his inseparable companion, the young schoolmaster, the two who had last year escorted us to the ruins, at the head of the whole school, which had been given a half-holiday in honor of our arrival. This time it was a holiday without special dispensation; but the boys were so absorbed in our bicycles, which were the first ever seen in the place, that we had the demarch and the schoolmaster almost to ourselves on the walk out to the ruins.

The excavation of these ruins called Palæo-Bazaar closes a chapter in the topographical study of Ætolia, which began with Colonel Leake. Pouqueville, indeed, prompted by the natural desire to give names to the impressive ruins that met him on every hand, gave names, as he himself confessed, "by a sort of lucky inspiration." A passage in Polybius forms the basis for the topography of this central region of Ætolia. It is the passage in which he describes how Philip V., the young King of Macedon, in 218 B.C., by a forced march from the Acheloos, near Stratos, reached and destroyed Thermon in revenge for the destruction of Dodona in the preceding year by the Ætolians, under Dorymachos. In this narrative he mentions several towns to the right and left of the line of march.

Leake, who never travelled around the east end of the lake, made up his mind that Thermon must be found at Vlocho, the most impressive ruin and strongest fortified place in Ætolia, not far east of Agrinion. Starting with this as a fact, he laid out the rest of the topography accordingly. Two great difficulties, however, confronted Leake. Polybius speaks of the lake as covering the left of the army during a considerable part of the march, while Leake, placing Thermon at Vlocho, cannot keep them from leaving it well to their right all the way. The great topographer, who had successfully located Calydon by transposing two passages in Strabo and inserting a negative, thought it not venturesome to "restore" right for left in this passage of Polybius, on the ground that there are many occurrences of such slips in ancient writers. A second difficulty troubled him less. A march from the Acheloos to Thermon, which is spoken of as a forced march, a record march if you will, from the dawn of a summer day till late in the afternoon, by hardy troops, cannot, if Vlocho is Thermon, be spun out to more than fifteen miles, and that mostly over good ground. Leake talks loosely of arrival at two o'clock in the afternoon, which hardly does justice to the πολλῆς ὥρας of the text.

The prestige of Leake, his almost established record of never going astray, led topographers generally to follow him, at least in the location of Thermon. Bazin, indeed, having a conscience about changing left to right, makes Philip march clear round the lake and reach Vlocho in season to destroy that great citadel on the same day, a distance of forty-five miles over some very bad ground, and that, too, on top of a forced march the day before. A military man like Leake could not have made this error, though he led Bazin into it by falsely locating Thermon.

In spite of a growing belief, starting with Bursian and at last finding exact expression in Lolling's selection of Palæo-Bazaar, that Thermon was somewhere near the east end of the lake, Vlocho, the mighty hill fortress, made such an impression that many regarded the discussion as one in which it was still worth while to sum up the _pros_ and _cons_, adding: "If Vlocho is not Thermon, give us some adequate name for it." But the spade, which has again substantiated its claims to be the best archæologist, has relegated all this discussion to the limbo of old notions. Whatever Vlocho was, it was _not_ Thermon. A score or more of inscriptions found by Soteiriades at Palæo-Bazaar, speaking of the affairs of the Ætolian League, show that he has found the capital. What makes the identification absolutely certain is the inscription containing the treaty between the Ætolians and Philip of Macedon, in which it is provided that of two copies one shall be set up at Thermon, and the other at Delphi, which was at the time the ecclesiastical capital of the league. The French have found one copy at Delphi; Soteiriades found the other, an exact duplicate, at Kephalovrysi. After that, one surely need not go elsewhere to seek for Thermon. A suggestive trifle was found here before the excavations, viz., a life-size bronze thumb of good work, showing the dint of a hammer on the knuckle. This probably belonged to one of the two thousand statues destroyed by Philip.

Leaving Kephalovrysi at two o'clock, instead of taking the shortest road to Agrinion along the north shore of the lake, at my suggestion, which again sprung from the desire of seeing something new, we circled the lake, following the line of Philip's retreat along the south side, and identifying among other places the site of Trichonion, which gave its name to the lake. Passing between this lake and its neighbor to the west, we reached Agrinion just before dark, and found there a new, clean hotel. The railroad is beginning to work its wonders even in Agrinion.

This flourishing town of about ten thousand inhabitants, the centre of the most important tobacco-growing region in Greece, and the capital of Ætolia, has stolen its name from ancient Agrinion, which lay about seven miles away on the Acheloos. Its real name is Vrachori, which is still used by many who do not fancy the revamping of classical names, especially when they are foisted on to towns that are not entitled to them, and have an honorable history of their own which has been gained under the name which it is proposed to set aside. Vrachori is such a case.

Not till after dinner did we present ourselves at the house of the doctor who had bountifully entertained my friend and me last year for two nights. Both he and his wife seemed hurt that we had not all four of us come unannounced straight to them, and extorted from us the promise that on our return from Arta we would spend a night with them. "But these things lay on the knees of the gods." After starting off hopefully in the morning, when almost in sight of Stratos my bicycle met with a collapse, which we tried in vain to remedy; and the afternoon train bore me in great tribulation through the front door of Ætolia back to Patras and Athens.

The next year, and pretty nearly every succeeding year, brought me again to this most romantic part of Greece, so little known by modern travellers, and so little famed in ancient history, but full of walls and acropolises which cry out for a name. On the last of these visits we climbed Vlocho on a rather hot day. To judge from the exhaustion which even the strongest felt, as well as from the appearance of the mountain, for Vlocho is really a mountain, we have here the highest acropolis in Greece. It looks down upon Trichonis to the south and back into the rugged peaks of Ætolia to the north, overtopping all the foot-hills of those mountains. Its walls also match the commanding position. It is no wonder that Leake took it for the great central citadel of the Ætolians, none other than Thermon. But not only has Thermon been positively identified, as has been already mentioned, but Vlocho has been shown by an inscription found by Soteiriades to be the acropolis of the Thestiæi, a merely tribal gathering place. This solution is a surprise, a sort of anticlimax. It is an equally great surprise that Thermon had no acropolis at all, but was a gathering-place in a plain. Its situation, however, high up above the mountainous north shore of Lake Trichonis near its eastern end, made it difficult for an enemy to attack; and when Philip V. broke into the nest of the robber brood, destroyed it, and got safely back to his connections, it was the master stroke of that enterprising and rash boy king. The Ætolians got a sweet revenge more than twenty years later, when, at Kynoskephalæ, they contributed materially to Philip's crushing defeat by Flamininus.

The usual approach to Thermon is from Agrinion over a level road along the north shore until the middle of that shore-line is reached. Then comes a steady climb until one gains an altitude of perhaps two thousand feet, directly over the surface of the lake, and then another more gentle climb away from the lake, and the goal is reached. There is a fine carriage-road all the way.

The one thing that Ætolia, as well as Acarnania, lacks to make it famous is the bard, or, failing him, the historian. No Homer or Sophocles or Pindar has made the beautiful Lake Trichonis into a more than earthly lake. The great historians have found elsewhere more attractive themes than the wars of the men who inhabited these mighty fortresses. The modern traveller likes to follow the footsteps of the poets and historians; and so Attica, Argos, Bœotia, and Thessaly are visited and enjoyed, while the stream passes by Ætolia and Acarnania "on the other side." But there are some who will be drawn by that beautiful Lake Trichonis, by the bountiful Acheloos, by the Gulf of Ambrakia, and by the Gorge of Klissoura, which runs through Mount Arakynthos, and only lacks a stream to make it surpass Tempe. This number may increase so that in ten years more, demand creating supply, even Arta may provide an inn where the weary traveller may lie down to pleasant dreams.

THERMOPYLÆ

We twelve members of the American School had spent three rather cold and rainy November days at Delphi, managing to see between the showers, perhaps better called tempests, that kept sweeping up the valley of the Pleistos, most of the important objects both in the museum and in the excavation area. After so much tantalizing promise, followed by disappointment, it began to seem very doubtful whether the six bicyclists of the party could carry out their intention of prolonging the trip into Thessaly. The morning of the fourth day looked about like the three preceding mornings, except that the storm centre, on and around Mount Korax to the west of Parnassus and Delphi, had at last broken up. Just this little encouragement led five of us to move on, and we slipped quickly down the long winding road to the foot of the high slope on the top of which Delphi stands.

After we had toiled through mud to Amphissa, we began to reap the benefits of a clearing and bracing north wind. We had an exhilarating climb of three hours up the Amblema Pass, which leads over the ridge connecting Parnassus with the still higher mountains to the west. Before we got to the top, which is the backbone between the Corinthian Gulf and the Gulf of Malis, a cold cloud, which we may as well call a winter storm, came rushing out of the gap to meet us like an army debouching from a covert. We began to fear that Doris, into which we were going to pass, was another storm centre, and our feeling of pity for the one man who had been prudent enough to take his bicycle back to Athens began to change to envy. But after dropping a thousand feet or more into Doris we got below the storm, and the roads became somewhat drier. When we were at the level of that upland plain they were quite good. Doris had been a storm centre in the morning, but at noon was almost clear. What luck!

Confronting us on the north side of the plain was another mountain barrier which shut out Thermopylæ from our view. Rain-clouds were playing around this mountain. After luncheon at Gravia, it was a matter of from two to three hours to get across the plain and partly climb and partly circumvent this second barrier. And then came a most exhilarating experience. Here was the sight of a lifetime. The Gulf of Malis far below us, the road visible in all its extent winding like an enormous serpent down the side of the mountain to the plain from two to three thousand feet below us, and then running straight as an arrow to Lamia, Mount Othrys in the background, Thermopylæ to the right, and, soon after, Tymphrestos to the left, with the Spercheios winding down from it. Historic associations apart--as if they ever could be apart!--this is a landscape not easily surpassed. It is one of those views which seem to gain in power with repetition. It was the fifth time that I had seen and felt it; and I firmly believe that I had a keener relish in the view than my companions who saw it for the first time.

Bicycling down the face of a mountain like that, over curves that take you half a mile or a mile in one direction, and then as far in the other direction, is about the nearest approach to flying that has yet been given to man. One seems to be floating in the ether, and dropping at will down to the earth like a bird on the wing.

In this winding down the mountain-side we crossed probably more than once the path by which the Greek traitor led Hydarnes and his Ten Thousand Immortals around in the rear of the Greeks and cut off their retreat. But it was getting too late now to see and study Thermopylæ by the light of that day. Lamia was our goal, a city where one finds comfortable quarters and good eating. We had heard far back on the road that the bridge over the Spercheios had been carried away two years before, and had not yet been replaced. Some said that we should find a boat to ferry us over, while others said that there was neither bridge nor ferry, which seemed incredible, since we were on the great highway from the Corinthian Gulf to northern Greece. But when we reached the Spercheios at twenty minutes before five o'clock the worst that had been told us came true. No ferry-man was there. One sorrowful-looking Greek who was, figuratively speaking, in the same boat with us, suggested that we go back to a village called Moschochori, which we had passed about two miles back, the road leaving it about a quarter of a mile to the east. He thought that we should there find the ferry-man, who had abandoned his post a little too early, and had left his boat in plain sight bound to a tree with chain and padlock. This suggestion had the advantage that, in case we failed to find the boatman and to induce him to return, we might at least find shelter in the village, poor as it was, which would in the cold weather be better than passing the night in the open air.

I had on two former occasions failed to reach Lamia at nightfall and been obliged to pass the night in this region; once in 1890, very near where we were then standing, in a barn filled with corn-husks, and again, ten years later, under the hospitable roof of the chief of police at Molo, to the east of Thermopylæ. But this time it seemed as if, with a sufficient outlay of energy, we ought to pass over Jordan into a land of milk and honey. The first step was to go back. Just where we were turning from the high-road to go into the village there met us a man on horseback, who proved to be the village doctor going to visit a sick woman. The husband of the patient was trotting along behind him. No sooner did the doctor hear our story than he turned to the man following him, and said: "Go into the village and tell the ferry-man that if he doesn't get back to the ferry as fast as his legs can carry him I will split his head for him. Tell him there are strangers waiting to get over to Lamia." The word "stranger" has great power in Greece. If the stranger is not, as in Homer, under the special protection of Zeus, he is under the protection of all good men, which is perhaps quite as efficient.