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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #61025 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61025)
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-Project Gutenberg's On the track of Ulysses, by William James Stillman
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: On the track of Ulysses
-       Together with an excursion in quest of the so-called Venus
-       of Melos: two studies in archaeology, made during a cruise
-       among the Greek islands
-
-Author: William James Stillman
-
-Release Date: December 26, 2019 [EBook #61025]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Turgut Dincer, Stephen Hutcheson, and the
-Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-(This file was produced from images generously made
-available by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                     [Illustration: (uncaptioned)]
-
-
-
-
-                            ON THE TRACK OF
-                                ULYSSES
-
-
-                             TOGETHER WITH
-
-         AN EXCURSION IN QUEST OF THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS
-
-
-_TWO STUDIES IN ARCHÆOLOGY, MADE DURING A CRUISE AMONG THE GREEK ISLANDS_
-
-                                   BY
-                             W. J. STILLMAN
-
-                     [Illustration: (uncaptioned)]
-
-                          BOSTON AND NEW YORK
-                     HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
-                    _The Riverside Press, Cambridge_
-                                  1888
-
-
-                            Copyright, 1887,
-                           By W. J. STILLMAN.
-
-                         _All rights reserved._
-
-
-                   _The Riverside Press, Cambridge_:
-            Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
-
-
-                                   To
-                       WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON.
-
-_In times when the feverish ambition of our people so generally climbs
-to distinction by ways offensive to the true intellectual and moral
-life, and when we find the old standards of human dignity so often
-forgotten; it renews one’s faith in the future of humanity to meet a man
-whom neither the “Olympian dust” nor that of California has been able to
-deflect from that line of perfect rectitude of life which, if existence
-is to be anything but an indecent scramble, we must recognize as
-entitling the man who holds it, to the highest respect of his
-fellow-men. When besides this claim to our respect he has been able to
-maintain undimmed the lustre of a name such as you bear, the distinction
-is still brighter. If therefore my insignificant tribute were only as
-the dust which, catching the sunshine, males it visible, let me offer
-this dedication in recognition of the true standard of nobility as I
-know it in your father’s son._
-
-                                                         W. J. STILLMAN.
-
-
-
-
-                                PREFACE.
-
-
-The series of papers herewith committed to the more or less permanent
-condition of book form were originally (less some development of their
-arguments) printed in the _Century_ magazine, being the results of an
-exploring visit to Greek lands taken as a commission for that
-periodical. I have sought in them to solve, in a popular form, certain
-problems in archæology which seemed to me to have that romantic interest
-which is necessary to general human interest; and while necessarily, in
-such a study, dealing much with conjecture, I have not ventured to
-assume anything which I am not satisfied is true. The problem of the
-so-called Venus of Melos is one of those which archæology has fretted
-over for two generations, and I cannot pretend to have offered a
-solution which will command assent from the severely scientific
-archæologist; but I have an interior conviction, stronger than any
-authority of ancient tradition to my own mind, that that solution is the
-true one. I do not wish it to be judged as a demonstration, but as an
-induction in which a kind of artistic instinct, not communicable or
-equally valuable to all people, has had the greatest part; and, for the
-rest, I am satisfied to let it be taken by the rule of “highest
-probability,” by which we solve to our satisfaction, more or less
-complete, problems of the gravest importance—a rule, indeed, which is
-for many such the only standard of truth. In archæology, as in some
-other inexact sciences, opinion has with most people greater weight than
-it always merits, but it should have weight in proportion to the
-knowledge its originator may have of his subject. As to this I have done
-all that any man can to penetrate to the material which exists for
-forming an opinion, and I rest in the sincere conviction, sustained
-through a study of many years, that the so-called Venus of Melos is
-really the Niké Apteros of the restored temple dedicated to that
-goddess.
-
-I must acknowledge the courtesy of the proprietors of the _Century_
-magazine in according me the use of the admirable illustrations
-accompanying my text, which were put on the blocks by Harry Fenn from my
-own sketches or photographs.
-
-                                                         W. J. STILLMAN.
-
-New York, _September, 1887_.
-
-
-
-
-                               CONTENTS.
-
-
-                                                                    PAGE
-
-ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES                                                1
-
-THE ODYSSEY, ITS EPOCH AND GEOGRAPHY                                  50
-
-THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS                                          75
-
-
-
-
-                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
-
-
-                                                                    PAGE
-  The Route of Ulysses                                                 1
-  Ithaca and adjoining Islands                                         3
-  West Coast of Scheria                                                8
-  Greek Boats and Rostrum of Roman Galley                             13
-  Corfu, from the King’s Garden                                       14
-  Port of Phorcys and Neriton, from the Mouth of Ulysses’ Cave        28
-  Raven’s Cliff and the Fountain of Arethusa                          34
-  The Site of Ithaca—Port Polis                                       36
-  Inscription found at Polis                                          39
-  The School of Homer                                                 43
-  View of Samé from the West,—with parts of Pelasgic and Hellenic Walls
-                                                                      58
-  Crané from the Sea Shore                                            60
-  Distant View of Palé from the Citadel of Crané                      63
-  Zante                                                               64
-  Citadel of Cerigo                                                   67
-  Landing-Place of the Cyprian Aphrodite or Astarte                   73
-  The so-called Venus of Melos                                        82
-  Street in Castro                                                    84
-  The Site of Old Melos, from the Port                                85
-  Medicean Venus                                                      88
-  Venus Urania                                                        88
-  Capitoline Venus                                                    88
-  Venus of the Vatican                                                89
-  Venus Anadyomene                                                    89
-  Venus Victrix of the Louvre                                         89
-  Venus of Capua                                                      90
-  Restoration of the Statue as proposed by Mr. Tarral                 90
-  Fragments found at Melos attributed to the Statue                   91
-  Victory of Brescia (Front)                                          92
-  Victory of Brescia (Side)                                           92
-  Victory raising an Offering (Temple of Niké Apteros, the Acropolis,
-          Athens)                                                     93
-  Victory untying her Sandal (Temple of Niké Apteros, the Acropolis,
-          Athens)                                                     96
-  Victories leading a Bull to Sacrifice (Temple of Niké Apteros, the
-          Acropolis, Athens)                                          97
-  The so-called Venus of Melos (Front)                                99
-  The “Venus” Restored (Front. Traced from a Photograph of a living
-          Model)                                                      99
-  The “Venus” Restored (Side. Traced from a Photograph of a living
-          Model)                                                     100
-  The so-called Venus of Melos (Side)                                100
-  Victory of Consani                                                 104
-  Temple of Niké Apteros                                             105
-  Greek Coin                                                         106
-
-
-
-
-                        ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES.
-
-
-                               CHAPTER I.
-
-                 [Illustration: THE ROUTE OF ULYSSES.]
-
-What remains for exploration to find on the surface of our little earth?
-The north and south poles, some outlying bits of Central Africa, some
-still smaller remnants of Central Asia,—all defended so completely by
-the elements, barbarism, disease, starvation, by nature and inhumanity,
-that the traveler of modest means and moderate constitution is as
-effectually debarred from their discovery as if they were the moon.
-
-What then? I said to myself, searching for adventure. Let us begin the
-tread-mill round again and rediscover. I took up the earliest book of
-travel which remains to us, and set to burnish up again the golden
-thread of the journey of the most illustrious of travelers, as told in
-the Odyssey, the book of the wanderings of Odysseus, whom we
-unaccountably call Ulysses, which we may consider not only the first
-history of travel, but the first geography, as it is doubtless a
-compendium of the knowledge of the earth’s surface at the day when it
-was composed, as the Iliad was the census of the known mankind of that
-epoch. Spread on this small loom, the fabric of the story, of the most
-subtle design,—art of the oldest and noblest,—is made up with warp of
-the will of the great gods, crossed by the woof of the futile struggles
-of the lesser, the demi-gods, the heroes, and tells the miserable labors
-of the most illustrious of wanderers, the type for all time of craft,
-duplicity, and daring, as well as of faith and patient endurance.
-
-             [Illustration: ITHACA AND ADJOINING ISLANDS.]
-
-But as Homer’s humanity mixes by fine degrees with his divinity, so his
-_terra cognita_ melts away into fairy-land, and we must look for a trace
-written on water before landing on identifiable shores. The story opens
-finding Ulysses the prisoner of Love and Calypso, in Ogygia, a fairy
-island of which the Greek of Homeric days had heard, perhaps, from some
-storm-driven mariner, or which may be a bit of brain-land. The details
-of the story make it very difficult even to conjecture where Ogygia was,
-if it was.[1] How Ulysses leaves the island alone on a raft is told by
-the poet in the fifth canto; how he got there the hero recounts in the
-narration to Alcinoüs in Phæacia. Leaving Troy, he stops at Ismarus, a
-town on the coast of Thrace, which he surprises and sacks; but, repulsed
-by the inhabitants of the lands near by, rallying to the defense, and
-visited by the wrath of the gods for his impiety, he is punished by a
-three days’ gale, and reaches Cape Malea, where, unable to stem the
-north wind which still persecutes him, he runs past Cerigo down to the
-African coast, which he reaches in nine days. Here we enter into
-semi-fable.[2] The Lotophagi seduce his men with their magic fruit which
-brings oblivion, and he is obliged to fly again. This time he goes
-north, and comes to an island which lies before the port of the Cyclops,
-a terrible race: giants with one eye, and cannibals, over whose land the
-smoke hangs like whirlwinds—evidently Sicily. This little island, where
-the Greeks debark, is not to be identified, but is probably one of those
-to the west of Sicily, called later the Ægades. Thence, after the famous
-adventure of the Cyclops’ cave, one of the poet’s most marvelous
-inventions (since every detail shows that there was no positive
-knowledge of the land or its people—only a fantastic tradition), they
-fly and arrive at the floating island of Æolus, still a creation of
-mythology, and thence to the shores of the Læstrygonians, another
-fabulous, man-eating race, in whose land the days are separated only by
-a brief pretense of night; escaping thence with his single ship and
-crew, Ulysses arrives at Æa, the island of Circe, from earliest
-classical times identified with Cape Circeo, between Naples and Cività
-Vecchia. Circe sends the hero to the land of the Cimmerians,[3] where
-time touches eternity, and the shades of the dead come to visit the
-unterrified living; and here Tiresias, the dead soothsayer, tells the
-future wanderings of the Ithacan chief. Again, returning to Æa, he is
-redirected toward home through the strait where Scylla and Charybdis
-menace his existence. This we recognize by later tradition as the
-Straits of Messina, but the fabulous so dominates the slight element of
-geography in it, that it is clear that Homer never passed that way, and
-gained his knowledge only from far remote report; while his second
-passage—after the sacrilege committed in the Island of the Sun—through
-the straits, is puzzling, and the recital makes it clear that till
-Phæacia was reached the poet was not in _terra cognita_.
-
-The indications are hardly reconcilable with the map. Leaving Circe to
-go home, he passes the straits, and stopping at the Island of the Sun,
-his comrades commit a sacrilege which leads to their destruction and his
-being driven back to Ogygia through the straits, a solitary survivor.
-But on his departure for Phæacia direct, he does not pass again through
-the straits, evidently returning to the south of Sicily.
-
-Released by Calypso, he goes on a raft with the sailing direction to
-keep the Great Bear, “which is also called the Wain,” on his left,—that
-is, he sails eastward, and for seventeen days splits the waves, and sees
-on the eighteenth the wooded mountain of the island of the Phæacians,
-the Scheria of the ancients. The continuity of tradition and the
-consistency of the narrative leave me no doubt that this was our Corfu,
-the uttermost of the lands positively known to the geography of that
-day. The actuality of Scheria has been disputed by certain German
-critics, who will have it that all the local allusions of the Odyssey
-are imaginary. But in the Æneid, when Æneas is going to Butrintum, which
-is now Butrinto, opposite Corfu on the Albanian coast, he says that no
-land was in sight except Scheria. This makes it certain that in Virgil’s
-time there was no question on the point.
-
-Already in sight of Scheria, Ulysses is overtaken again by the wrath of
-Poseidon, who unchains on him all his tempests; and, his raft wrecked in
-open sea, himself swept away from it into the mountainous waves, he
-regrets not having found a glorious death before Troy, seeing an
-inevitable and unhonored end before him, with no funeral rites to give
-his soul peace. Leucothea, the white goddess, throws into the black warp
-a silver thread, and brings the story into new light and color. She
-gives him an amulet which, by its magic, carries him through the last of
-his grave perils, and preserves him when, with a great and wrathful
-burst of wind, Poseidon disperses the timbers of his raft and leaves him
-floating in the yeasty sea. He seizes on one of the timbers and
-hopefully strikes out for the land. Athene comes once more to his aid.
-She chains all the winds except Boreas, which, wafting him for two days
-and nights to the southeast, gives place to a perfect calm. Ulysses,
-raised on the summit of a huge wave, looks out and sees the land. But it
-is a terrible, rock-bound coast. “He hears the roar of the waves that
-break on the rocks, because the shock of the great waves against the
-bare cliffs sounds fearfully, and the sea, far and wide, is covered with
-foam. But there is no peaceable roadstead, no port, safe refuge of
-ships; everywhere high, mountainous rocks and cliffs.” He appeals to the
-gods for pity, and just then, “while he turns these thoughts in his
-spirit and heart, an immense wave throws him on the bare shore. Then his
-flesh would have been torn and his bones broken if Athene had not
-inspired him. With both hands he clutches the rock and embraces it with
-groans until the wave had withdrawn. He in this way escapes death, but
-the return of the wave falls on him, strikes him, and withdraws him into
-the open sea. He, emerging from the depths, more prudently coasts along,
-swimming until he can find an opening in the rocks where he may enter,
-and finally perceives the mouth of a river. He offers a prayer to the
-river god, and is heard and peacefully received by the peaceable wave,
-which lands him on the sandy shore.” The whole of the finale of the
-fifth book is grand and imaginative, especially in the description of
-the stormy sea and the condition of Ulysses as he sinks on the
-hospitable sands exhausted, half dead from his long struggle and his two
-days’ and nights’ swim, sustained only by one of the logs of his
-raft;[4] but what to my present purpose is of most significance is the
-striking description of the west coast of Corfu and the unmistakable
-evidence of the mythologist giving way to the traveler. Here we strike
-the veritable track of Ulysses, and here begin our researches. To reach
-this point all the commerce of the Levant aids us—steamers from Trieste,
-Brindisi, Naples, Patras, Malta, etc.
-
-Here I found fit to my purpose a little yacht of twelve tons,
-cutter-rigged and Malta-built, the _Kestrel_, with whose master and
-owner I made my bargain, namely: he was to obey all my reasonable orders
-for any voyage within the two archipelagos, find his ship and crew of
-two sailors in all they needed for service and safety, do my cooking,
-and insure himself, for the sum of fifteen pounds sterling a month for
-three months; and while he was putting in stores, fitting new cables to
-his anchors, and burnishing up a bit, we began to inspect Scheria.
-
-                 [Illustration: WEST COAST OF SCHERIA.]
-
-The popular tradition of to-day fixes the landing of Ulysses near the
-actual city of Corfu, and an island is pointed out as the ship turned to
-a rock; while the spot where he landed, and the scene of that most
-charming of all the episodes of his wanderings, the meeting with
-Nausicáa, is put at the “one-gun battery,” just south of the harbor of
-Corfu. Nothing could comport less with the description of the Odyssey.
-The Channel of Corfu, dividing the island from Epirus, is a land-locked
-basin in which no such storm could arise as Ulysses encountered, and
-along which no such rocks exist as are described in the poem. The
-seventeen days’ drift from the westward before the tempest, and the next
-two days after it, wafted by Boreas, show that he was in the open
-Adriatic, and coasting along the rock-bound western coast of Scheria to
-find an inlet where he might enter. The illustration shows the character
-of this coast in entire concordance with the Odyssey; and there is near
-the spot from which my view of the west coast of Scheria is taken, a
-convent (which is visited by all the tourists who, having some days in
-Corfu, care for the most picturesque part of the island), and which by
-its name, Palæcastrizza, shows that it stands near the site of some
-ancient city or fortress, as the term “Palæcastron” is never applied by
-local tradition to any construction not belonging to the classical or
-archaic epochs. Even Byzantine ruins never receive the epithet “palæos.”
-No trace is now to be found of any prior structure near the convent,
-which, while it probably has some relation to an antique site, certainly
-is not on that of the city of Alcinoüs, which must have been farther
-south where the shore breaks down to a plain. There used to be in the
-island an old antiquity-hunter who brought from time to time to sell
-clandestinely in the city, objects of gold and terra-cotta, vases, etc.,
-dug up at a site which only he seems to have known, and of which he
-would never disclose the location. On inquiring for him on this my last
-visit to Corfu for these researches, he was not to be heard of. All that
-we had learned from him was that the ruins of which he knew and where he
-excavated in secret were somewhere on the western coast, which
-corresponds to my hypothesis that the capital of Alcinoüs was there.
-
-There is something so unpractical in the Greek laws on the subject of
-excavation and exportation of antique objects, that it is to be hoped
-that the shrewd common sense of the people will ere long see their
-impolicy. Excavation without permission from the Government, even on
-one’s own land, is forbidden, which is not unreasonable considering all
-things; but even when permission is accorded or when objects are found
-by chance, the Government practically confiscates the find when the
-finders are feeble, and levies a tax of half the value when they are
-not. Everything, therefore, is done in secret, and exportation by
-contraband is the only possible manner of profiting by one’s good
-fortune. The peasant who finds an antique site carefully conceals it;
-and the objects he finds, instead of enabling the archæologist to
-classify the antiquities by reference to their provenance, are sold to
-some one who removes them from the country, and so all clue is lost to
-their true archæological position. As I shall have to show in the course
-of these articles, grave loss to the science of archæology sometimes
-occurs in this way. In this particular instance the loss to me is the
-being unable to identify, with any probability, the place where or near
-to which Ulysses landed, and where the classic meeting with Nausicáa
-took place. When we get to Ithaca we shall find that the author of the
-Odyssey knew well every foot of land he describes; and the scene of
-Ulysses’ disaster, already translated, accords so well with the actual
-topography that it is difficult to suppose that a mere inspiration
-dictated it, and that the author was not well acquainted with the island
-of Scheria, whose capital was Phæacia.
-
-The claim of the city of Corfu to be the site of the ancient Phæacia
-rests on nothing but the fact that it is the only city in the island;
-but the ever-tranquil bay on which it lies, and the fact that Ulysses,
-instead of searching for a place where he could land, would rather have
-had to search for a place where he could not, shows conclusively that no
-part of the eastern coast is entitled to the honor. The “one-gun
-battery,” where local tradition places his landing, is perhaps the least
-likely point, as no running stream is to be found near there. The lake,
-which is now suggested as the tranquil water in which Ulysses came to
-land, must then have been much larger than at present, and now in nowise
-resembles a river: it is the half-filled arm of the sea into which a
-wide basin of marshy land has been for centuries draining, but into
-which no watercourse leads, and the view seen from above the “one-gun”
-needs scarcely a commentary to show its entire incompatibility with the
-Odyssey.
-
-The capital of Alcinoüs was, we are told by Homer, founded by his father
-Nausithoüs. His people were formerly inhabitants of Hyperia, “near the
-Cyclops,” and were by these latter so ravaged and overborne that they
-emigrated to Phæacia. The generally accepted location of the Cyclops in
-Sicily suggests that Hyperia was probably there or in Italy; and that
-the Phæacians may have been related to the Siculi; since the Pelasgi,
-who invaded Italy from the north, and, uniting with the Umbri, spread
-over the whole of southern Italy, expelling the aborigines, are
-continually confounded by the earliest traditions with the Cyclops. As,
-from all we know, the Tyrrhene Pelasgi were the earliest metal-workers
-in that part of Europe,[5] and as the Cyclops, the children of
-Hephaistos, the great metal-worker, are a mythological idealization of a
-race of smiths who had a habit of covering the eyes, for protection from
-sparks, with a screen in which a single hole was cut to see through,
-which was transmogrified into a single eye in the middle of the
-forehead, there is nothing unlikely in the inference that the Pelasgi
-and Cyclops were identical, and that the Phæacians were refugees from
-the conquest of southern Italy by that formidable people. That they were
-not Greeks we know by their absence from the catalogue of the “Iliad,”
-where all the Hellenic tribes were recorded in their places in the
-league.
-
-The Corfiotes of to-day boast of descent from the Phœnicians, and
-certainly they are not to be measured by the same standard as the Greek
-race in general. Their reputation for dishonesty has given rise to a
-Greek proverb, which relegates a person of more than usual craftiness
-and bad faith to the “Corfiotes.” “He behaves like a Corfiote” is the
-greatest reproach the continental Greek can bring against a man who is
-too clever in business matters. In character as well as history the
-Corfiote has little in common with Greece. As he had no place inside the
-line drawn around the Hellenic world at the great critical, even if
-mythical, epoch assigned to the siege of Troy, so in his latest history
-he has always maintained a position more or less apart. Diodorus Siculus
-makes the Homeric name of the city, Phæacia, to have been derived from
-Phæacus, son of Poseidon, and places his reign contemporary with the
-Argonauts, as Phæacus protected Jason against the king of Iolcus when,
-returning from Colchis with Medea, he took refuge at Scheria. Mythology
-begins with it in the combat of Zeus and Poseidon in their struggle for
-supremacy in the government of the universe, and finishes with Ulysses’
-visit. History commences with the arrival of a colony of Corinthians
-under Chersicrates, who built a city which he called Chrysopolis. This
-was probably Corfu, for, as the immigration of Nausithoüs, coming from
-Italian shores, first established itself on the coast looking toward
-their old home, so the Corinthians, coming by the islands and the
-Epirote shores, would find their first landing in the spacious and
-tranquil bay formed by the crescent-shaped island, which, at its
-extremes, approaches the mainland. The Hellene of Corinth brought all
-the seeds of the virtues and vices of his national temperament to the
-fertile soil of Corcyra, as it is henceforward called by the Hellenic
-chronicles, colonization and war with their neighbors filling all their
-early history. They founded, according to their tradition, Apollonia and
-other cities on the mainland; but, as among the ruins of those cities
-there are Pelasgic remains, it is not to be supposed that they were the
-first colonists, but that they merely colonized, as the Romans did in
-the later times, with a dominant population, cities in decline or too
-weak to maintain their independence. This is, in ancient Greek history,
-oftener the meaning of the word _colonize_ than the founding of a new
-city. To get a clear idea of the condition of this part of the world at
-the beginning of historical, or even heroic record, we must take into
-consideration that an epoch of civilization, perhaps of empire, had long
-preceded the awakening of the Hellenic national life; an epoch which
-ought, perhaps, to be measured by centuries, if we could measure it at
-all, and whose record is preserved in the stupendous ruins we call
-Pelasgic, a name applied by the Greeks to a people who preceded them,
-derived possibly from the Greek name of the stork, indicating a
-migrating or wandering people,—wandering, probably, because their empire
-had been broken up by some newer and stronger race, but which the
-various remaining traditions accord in asserting to have once held great
-rule in Italy, where they were known also as Tyrrhenians, in the
-Peloponnesus, and in Crete. We shall see presently some indications of
-the correctness of the assumption that they preceded by an infinite
-period the great assemblage of Greeks, which the expedition to Troy
-perhaps marks, perhaps symbolizes; but at present I have only to do with
-the history and mythology of Corfu, which is in no way that we can
-discover connected with the Pelasgi.
-
-        [Illustration: GREEK BOATS AND ROSTRUM OF ROMAN GALLEY.]
-
-The first wars of Corcyra were, as was to be expected of an enterprising
-people, with the mother country; but as in those days piracy was the
-chief business of every maritime people, _war_ was perhaps only a normal
-condition. The Persian invasion brought Corcyra into the Hellenic
-league, but, with the duplicity of which the race furnished so many
-instances in ancient times, the Corcyriote fleet only sailed, and took
-good care not to be in time for the battle, fearing the vengeance of the
-Persians. Their prudence brought on them, after the defeat of Xerxes at
-Salamis, a combined attack of the Peloponnesian States. As the union of
-these was always a challenge to Athens, she sided with the Corcyriotes,
-and the resulting war plunged Corcyra into intestine and social strife,
-in which the most horrible cruelties were perpetrated by the islanders;
-and the animosities and renewals of revolt and war, which the divisions
-of the classes of the population gave opportunity for, reduced the
-island to anarchy and helplessness. Their subsequent history is one of
-repeated subjugation and revolt. After losing even the relative
-independence of alliance with Athens, they were conquered by Agathocles
-of Syracuse, Pyrrhus, and finally by Rome.
-
-             [Illustration: CORFU, FROM THE KING’S GARDEN.]
-
-From this time Corcyra was the base of the Roman military movements
-against the Levantine enemies of the republic. The commanding position
-of the island has, from that day to this, made it an object of the
-covetousness of all the maritime powers of the Mediterranean by turns.
-In the civil wars of Rome, the island espoused the part of Pompey, later
-of Brutus and Cassius, and then, always unfortunate, of Antony. After
-the battle of Actium, fought almost within sight of its shores, Corcyra
-was besieged, taken, and rigorously punished by Augustus, and then
-relegated to an obscurity out of which only the great Ottoman invasion
-of Europe brought it. It was involved more or less in the Saracenic,
-Bulgarian, Norman, and Neapolitan wars and invasions, and finally threw
-itself into the arms of Venice to save itself from conquest by Genoa.
-From this time (1386) the history of Corcyra, become Corfu, until the
-overthrow of the republic by Napoleon, is identified with that of
-Venice, and all the remains or structures in the island date from the
-Venetian occupation.
-
-In 1537 the troops of the Sultan, under the orders of the renegade
-Barbarossa, made a descent on the island and laid siege to the city,
-which, taken by surprise, was ill-provisioned and with a small garrison.
-The Turkish fleet blockaded the port, and the troops beleaguered the
-city by land. The garrison was under the terrible alternative of being
-starved into surrender speedily or dismissing all the useless mouths.
-The latter was, on the whole, safer, for the surrender would have been
-disastrous even to the non-combatants, who were to Turkish barbarity no
-less obnoxious than the soldiers. The old men, women, and children were
-sent out of the city, perhaps the most horrible necessity which ever
-befell brave men. A successful defense of the city justified, in a
-military point of view, the terrible sacrifice; and, after a long and
-obstinate siege, Barbarossa, his army nearly destroyed by battle and
-pestilence, withdrew, defeated. The island was almost depopulated,
-ravaged, and so utterly impoverished that Venice was obliged to send the
-people seed-corn and beasts to till their fields. Nearly the whole of
-the nobility of the island had been killed in the defense.
-
-To be in readiness for a similar emergency, the Senate augmented the
-already strong fortifications. The New Fort, as it is still called, was
-constructed, and, with a paternal regard for the well-being of the
-islanders, which Venice did not always show for her Greek insular
-possessions, institutions were founded and regulations made which
-contributed greatly to the prosperity of the island.
-
-In 1716 a new and determined attack was made by the Turks, under the
-leadership of Achmet III. Their fleet drove off that of Venice, and an
-army of thirty thousand men was debarked and laid siege to the city,
-whose defense was directed by Count Schulembourg. The outlying heights
-were taken quickly, and the garrison, shut in the inner line of
-fortifications, received the desperate assault of the Turks on the main
-works with more desperate resistance. After twenty days of incessant
-attack, the Turks carried the outworks, penetrated to the Place d’Armes,
-which is under the walls of the New Fort, and attempted to scale the
-walls themselves.
-
-“The assault lasted more than six hours with an incredible fury. The
-women brought assistance to the defenders, and the priests, crucifix in
-hand, ran along the ramparts or threw themselves into the fight. Finally
-a vigorous sortie terminated this bloody day. Attacked on every side,
-the assaulting force beat a retreat and lost all the outposts it had
-taken. A tempest, which had burst on them in the night, completed the
-work of defeat, and, seized by panic, they embarked precipitately,
-leaving baggage and artillery behind them. In forty-two days they had
-lost fifteen thousand men.” (_Isles de la Grèce._)
-
-The victory was commemorated by a statue to Schulembourg, which no
-subsequent conquest has disturbed, and which stands on the parade-ground
-among monuments of greater or less good taste (generally the latter), to
-mark the history of the island in modern days.
-
-From that day to this, with the exception of an occasional _émeute_,
-nothing has come to disturb the peace of Corfu, and the once so splendid
-courage of the inhabitants has gone out like a fire without a draught.
-There is probably no province of the Hellenic kingdom so devoid of
-martial spirit or the virtues that grow out of it. It is now a most
-delightful winter resort, a Fortunate Isle left out of the current of
-political events and given over to invalids and sportsmen, who find on
-the opposite Albanian coast the best shooting on the Mediterranean. The
-old citadel, with its double peak, serves as a light-house to the lines
-of steamers which furrow the Adriatic, cross, and make Corfu their
-_entrepôt_ between Trieste, Venice, Brindisi, Alexandria,
-Constantinople, and Smyrna.
-
-The English occupation endowed the island with good roads, most of which
-are maintained in fair condition still; and a winter’s sojourn here
-lacks nothing which could be expected in the compass of ten by thirty
-miles, with two posts per week from Europe. The fruits are those of the
-northern Mediterranean in great perfection, the oranges being only
-second to those of Crete; the waters are still well supplied with fish,
-though the people do all they can to exterminate them by the use of
-dynamite in fishing; and the Bella Venezia is a hotel which, though
-still strange to the resources of our American caravansaries, is more
-appropriate to the ways of the East and of idle people than are ours.
-The kindly, honest old host, appropriately known as Dionysos, lacks but
-little of giving to the stranger the hospitality of Alcinoüs. And life
-is so cheap that one who has worn out the world and realized an income
-of a thousand dollars a year may find a Macarian peace in an upper room
-of the Bella Venezia, with windows looking out on the beautiful
-mountains of Epirus, snow-clad all winter, and the bright blue of the
-intervening sea, with the coming, going, and merely passing ships of all
-nations; and, when the sun is low, have a comfortable carriage to thread
-the labyrinths of the immense olive groves which form almost the only
-shade in the island. Here one meets men of all races—Turkish reliefs on
-their way from Stamboul to Durazzo, or Scutari of Albania; white-skirted
-palikars from Epirus; Eastern Jews, with their characteristic long
-robes; Persians, Montenegrins, Peloponnesians, etc., who, changing
-steamers here, or glad to breathe a land air during the stay in port of
-their steamers, stroll up and down the parade, with the easy-going
-townsmen and tourists of all nations, seeing the island in comfort or
-rushing over it in the custody of Cook or Gaze, to carry away a confused
-remembrance of Corfu and Syra, hardly recalling which was which.
-
-Ulysses was dismissed from Scheria loaded with presents. The modern
-voyager is not so fortunate. The souvenirs of Corfu which he will carry
-with him, whether antique or modern, will rarely recompense him for the
-outlay. The bric-à-brac shops abound in false antiques, arms from
-Epirus, Greek laces, and Eastern embroideries, which no wise buyer
-meddles with, dear beyond measure as they are. Be content with the
-moderate _pension_ of the Bella Venezia, and tempt not Mercury in his
-favored island; he was the god of thieves as well as merchants, and was
-never better worshiped in his capacity of joint protector than in the
-bric-à-brac shops of Corfu.
-
-Ulysses went to Ithaca in one night, in what must have been, for the
-time, the quickest passage on record, and a great credit to the rowers
-of King Alcinoüs. Nothing like it is to be expected to-day, though it is
-not impossible still, and the steamer which does the service makes a
-long, roundabout voyage. Our yacht, though small, was too big for
-rowing, and we had no special motive, as Ulysses had, to get quickly to
-Ithaca. As our route lay by Santa Maura, which has to do with the story
-of the Odyssey, if not with the wanderings from Troy, we turned aside
-from his course to visit it. Nericus, as it was called in Homeric
-nomenclature, probably formed part of the realm of the Ithacan kings,
-Laertes mentioning his conquest of it; but it is not mentioned in the
-catalogue, and we may conclude was not Greek. It is barely separated
-from the mainland by a narrow channel, cut by the Corinthians through a
-flat, which more anciently, however, must have been a shallow arm of the
-sea. The action of the elements is filling it up again, so that time may
-unite it to the Acarnanian shore, as in the Homeric days; for Laertes,
-in recalling to Ulysses some of his old exploits (Odyssey, book 24),
-says: “Ah, that it had pleased Zeus, Apollo, Athene, to have borne me to
-your palace, such as I was when, at the head of the Cephalonians, I
-took, _on the continent_, the proud city of Nericus!” In the catalogue
-of the Iliad we find that “Ulysses commands the magnanimous
-Cephalonians; the warriors of Ithaca; those of shady Neriton, of
-Crocyles, of the barren Ægilipos; those of Samos [Samé of Cephalonia,
-not the island Samos], of Zacynthus [Zante], and of the adjoining
-continent. Twelve ships whose sides were painted red followed him.” But
-Nericus occurs nowhere.
-
-Nothing illustrates so strikingly the change in the condition of
-civilization as the relations between the ancient and modern chief
-cities of the Greek islands. The substitute for the stately Nericus is a
-low, flat, uninteresting town, built on the plain which lies north of
-Nericus, and next the roadstead. To the east lie the rugged mountains of
-Acarnania and the Gulf of Arta; north, in full view, is the modern
-fortress of Prevesa; further, and to the east, Arta, the ancient
-Ambracia; and the long strip of low coast which stretches away from
-Prevesa northward is dotted with masses of ruin—those of the imperial
-Nicopolis, monument of the victory of Actium, won in those blue waters.
-The idle shepherds of those days, watching their sheep on these hills,
-saw the crash of prows, the flight of Egypt, and the shame of Antony.
-Perhaps, through this very channel, where the light-draft caïque now
-glides, to gain the shelter of the islands going southward, ran the
-fugitive ships of Cleopatra; for this was evidently the channel by which
-the craft of those days avoided the stormy capes of Cephalonia and the
-southern point of Nericus. Standing on the eastern brow of the hill on
-which the old city stood, and on which its ruins still mark a noble
-past, is the citadel. Along the plain, among the olives, the fragments
-of tombs lie spread like flocks of sleeping sheep. The port was on the
-bay now connected with the northern roadstead by the Corinthian Channel;
-and two or three underground passages, in part cut in solid rock, one
-being high enough for a man to walk in upright, and cut as cleanly and
-evenly as the walls of a chamber, connect it with the citadel which
-dominates the northern part of the island, where the fertile plains lie.
-The ruins are of various ages, embracing Pelasgic, but mainly later, and
-coming down to Roman times; and the great extent of the Pelasgic
-_enceinte_, which almost everywhere underlies the Hellenic and Roman
-work, shows the great early importance of the city. The citadel is bold
-and commanding, and looks out on the northern and western seas on one
-side, and the Corinthian Channel and the inland sea on the other, and
-down to Ithaca, which, indeed, is visible from some points.
-
-The post-Homeric name of Nericus was Leucadia. Æneas is represented as
-having debarked there, and Apollo had a temple on the heights which
-terminate the island to the south. From the cliffs which overlook the
-Adriatic on that side, Sappho is said to have leaped into the sea,
-overcome by the sorrows of her unhappy love. “Sappho’s Leap” is the name
-of the cliff to this day, and my Corfiote captain, as we glided by, told
-me how the place was celebrated because the Duchess of the island had
-jumped off into the sea from it, and that the people had put up a great
-inscription in memory of it. He had never seen it, and didn’t know
-exactly where the leap was made; but I think he was very excusable for
-his ignorance, as the action of the sea, driven as it is sometimes by
-the furious southwest wind into a very “hell of waters,” which consume
-the rock in their fury, must long ago have brought down all that
-classical times had seen of the rock, and changed the face of the cliff
-entirely. As it now is, I could find hardly a point where a new Sappho
-would have found a welcome so gentle as the embrace of the Adriatic;
-masses of fallen rock and stony beach would have given a harsher but
-more speedy end.
-
-Mythology says that when Adonis was killed, Aphrodite, seeking him
-through all the earth, finally found him lying dead in the temple of the
-Erythræan Apollo. The Sun-god, to cure her grief, counseled her to throw
-herself from the cliffs of Leucadia into the sea, where she would find
-oblivion. Here Zeus, who seems to have found obstacles in the way of his
-legitimate marriage, and to have wooed Hera at first with less success
-than attended his mortal loves, found by the same process a salutary
-indifference to the charms of his divine sister and afterwards spouse,
-to which temporary coolness on his part might, perhaps, be ascribed his
-ultimate success with the fickle fair.
-
-And here, in practical historical times, criminals condemned to death
-were thrown into the sea. The people (who even now preserve a certain
-sympathy with the criminal class) used to tie numbers of birds to the
-limbs of the condemned and cover them with feathers to break the force
-of their fall, and then send boats to pick them up. If they survived,
-they were pardoned.
-
-In modern times nothing has occurred to signalize Santa Maura, or
-“Levkadi,” as it is indifferently called. It was taken and retaken by
-Turks and Venetians, and finally passed with the rest of the Ionian
-Islands to the heirs of Venice. Its people are a mild, hospitable race,
-to whom the stranger is a guest almost in the antique sense.
-
-We loitered along with a feeble west wind, under the western shore, bold
-and desolate, of Levkadi, its high peaks above us breaking into ravines,
-and the ravines ending in cliffs, doubled “Sappho’s Leap,” and before us
-lay Ithaca, the ten-years-sought-for island. To the north was still
-visible a dim film which we knew to be Corfu; nearer, one less dim,
-which we recognized by its outline to be Paxos, an island without
-history and without interest, but which tradition asserts to have been
-once united to Corfu and separated by an earthquake. The breeze
-quickened at night-fall as we went round the point of the Leukadian
-cliffs, and before us lay the inland sea, which, separating Santa Maura,
-Ithaca, Cephalonia, and Zante from the mainland, is a sort of
-smooth-water channel for ships coming out of the Gulf of Patras, or of
-Corinth, as it is indifferently called, or running in there from Corfu
-and the upper Adriatic. The bolder portions of Ithaca are almost utterly
-denuded rock. One hollow, like a great theatre, opens northward between
-two bold rocky peninsulas, and this is the vale from which the Odyssean
-city drew its prosperity. Olive-trees and vineyards still cover its
-slopes, and suggestions of white villages flashed out from the silvery
-green sea of olive orchards as we flitted by, running under the eastern
-shore to catch the breeze that blew down from the mountain as the sun
-sank. We had all the wind our cutter could carry, and bowled along
-through the smooth water in the lee of the island like a steamer. Far
-ahead we saw, in the gathering night, a faint glimmer of light, which
-seemed too faint for a light-house, and too steady for a house-light,
-and which perplexed us exceedingly, as no light was indicated on the
-chart; but, creeping along shore, we found that it was a tiny chapel
-standing on a long and menacing peninsula of bare rock, in the window of
-which burned a lamp,—in all probability the fulfillment of a vow made by
-some devout Greek sailor who had escaped the teeth of this Scylla; or
-the perpetuation of an antique custom, when the little chapel of St.
-Nicholas, protector of sailors, was a temple of Neptune, whom the saint
-replaces in function and respect of the seafarer. Nothing is more
-interesting in this part of the world than the evidences of the unbroken
-continuity of religious tradition, and the gradual change of paganism
-into Christianity,—if, indeed, the change has taken place, which in
-certain districts I am scarcely disposed to admit. The little chapels
-which one finds planted by the seaside or solitary roadside in all the
-Greek islands, and even on the mainland, will generally be found to have
-some antique material in them, some evidence of the earlier shrine which
-honored one of the Greek gods. The Olympians have their homologues if
-not their homonyms. Zeus goes back to his awful antique dignity of the
-All-father, the original sole deity of the Pelasgian, worshiped in a
-temple not made by hands, under the speaking oak of Dodona, the one God,
-maker of heaven and earth, the Dyaus or Sky-father of our Aryan
-ancestors, and Zeus (Deus, Divus) of the western branch of the family;
-but his creatures and children fall into the lower rank of saints:
-Apollo becomes St. Elias (Helios); Athena, the Virgin Mary; Ares, St.
-George; Poseidon, St. Nicholas, etc., etc.
-
-We left St. Nicholas and his night-light behind us, and, rounding a cape
-into the Bay of Vathy, saw in the dim distance the light of the outer
-light-house, and met the wind coming out of the bay. It was late, and
-beating up the bay would be a long job; so we turned in and left the
-navigation to the sailors. The next morning we woke, as Ulysses did,
-under the shadow of Neriton, where the Phæacians had left him sleeping.
-
-“In one part of Ithaca is the port of Phorcys, the old man of the sea;
-the bold promontories forming the circuit protect it from the great
-waves and the sounding winds. The ships which have once entered it may
-lie without cables. At its extremity is a bushy olive-tree whose shadow
-hides a delicious grotto and shady retreat, sacred to the Nereids. In
-this asylum, refreshed by an inexhaustible fountain, are placed the
-vases and the jars of stone.... It has two entrances: one, looking
-toward the north, is for the use of men; the other, to the east, is more
-divine. Never man enters there: it is the path of the immortals.
-
-“The olive-tree and the grotto are known to the Phæacians. There they
-go. The ship runs half-way up the beach, so strong is the stroke of the
-rowers. Then these land, carrying Ulysses, still plunged in profound
-sleep, and lay him on the sand, wrapped in brilliant blankets and woven
-linen.”
-
-Waking, he is bewildered by the artifice of Athena, and does not
-recognize his native island; but finally, when he appeals to the Goddess
-to tell him the truth, if he be in Ithaca, she replies to him:—
-
-“Now I will show you the localities of Ithaca, that you may doubt no
-more. There is the port of Phorcys, old man of the sea; there, at the
-extremity of the port, the bushy olive-tree, and under its shade a
-delicious grotto, dark resting-place, and sacred to the nymphs. This is
-the vaulted grotto where often you sacrificed entire hecatombs to the
-nymphs. There is Mount Neriton, shadowed by forests.”
-
-The identification of this little bay or “port” is the one contested
-point of the topography, and, on account of its greater commodiousness,
-Port Vathy (at the left as we enter the roadstead) is maintained by some
-authorities to be the “port of Phorcys.” The geology of the two bays is
-conclusive evidence in favor of that which the Greeks now call Port
-Dexia (the right-hand port), as Port Vathy has not, and by its
-geological formation never could have had, a beach such as Homer
-describes, and which was indispensable to the ancient sailor, while that
-of Dexia is superb—a soft, unbroken stretch of sand. Other objections we
-shall meet further on.
-
-  [Note.—The puzzling question of the forms of classical names in these
-  articles has been carefully considered, and the difficulty of adapting
-  consistent classical orthography to popular archæology seems too great
-  to be overcome in this place.]
-
-
-                              CHAPTER II.
-
-The changes of the conditions of existence in what we call civilization
-resemble, a good deal more than we generally imagine, the progress of a
-horse in a tread-mill. Comparing the evidences of a higher prosperity
-which history affords with what we now find in Ithaca, we have ample
-ground to suppose that, while our part of the world has made certain
-advances, this has rather retrograded. A scanty population, the greater
-part of the island indeed uninhabited; ruins of great cities where now
-there is not a shepherd’s hut; a wretched, sordid life in which not even
-poetry, the offspring of sorrow, can find a foothold; utter
-insignificance in the world of men,—this is what the island of Ulysses,
-which fills so large a part of the Old World’s poetry, shows us to-day.
-
-We woke like Ulysses under the shadow of Neriton, but not like him under
-the olive’s shade. Our yacht was anchored in a tranquil and land-locked
-bay, Port Vathy (the deep), round the shores of which stretch and gleam,
-white in the sun, the houses of the modern capital of Ithaca, a dull,
-utterly uninteresting town, neither whose past nor present is worth a
-note.
-
-Devastated by Turks and corsairs by turns, conquered by Christian and
-Infidel, the tribute of death and pillage had at one time nearly left
-the island a desert, and Venetian chronicles report the repeopling of it
-by a Slavonic colony; but there is good evidence, as we shall see
-presently, that there was never quite an end of the original stock.
-Though one does see occasionally strongly Slavonic faces, the population
-is now in language and manners purely Greek, with some of the worst
-traits of the race strongly developed. By good chance I found an old
-acquaintance in Mr. Caravia, a deputy for Ithaca to the Greek Assembly,
-then in vacation, and I had a letter to Aristides Dendrinos, the
-principal personage of the island; and through their united attentions
-we were made as much at home in Ithaca as possible. But the Ithacans are
-shrewd folk, sharp dealers who look at foreigners as the Hebrews did on
-the Egyptians, as made to be spoiled; and we were unlucky enough to have
-arrived in the Greek Lent, which, as they observe it, is equal to
-starvation to outsiders. The excellent wine of Ithaca, one of the best
-of Greek wines, is quite worthy its ancient reputation; but flesh was
-unattainable, and fish so rare, owing to the people’s habit of killing
-them with dynamite, that we could not get enough for a breakfast. The
-fowls in Greek lands, living an outcast life, never fed, but expected to
-grow, as the partridges do, on the bounties of nature, hardly offer a
-compensation for the trouble of picking their bones. They combine all
-the misfortunes of the wild and domesticated conditions, with none of
-the advantages of either, and offer a scant resource to the caterer. We
-made haste to see what was to be seen in Ithaca, and study our great
-predecessor’s footprints, but we found the learning harder than the
-living. The island Greek is quick-witted, and, like the Irishman, never
-confesses himself at fault in anything you want to know, especially in
-things connected with ancient history or archæology. He solves the
-hardest and most obscure problem by a bold dash, and is even surer than
-Schliemann in his breezy inductions. It is amusing and cheering to see a
-man so cock-sure of what archæology has puzzled over so many years. On
-inquiring for a guide to shorten my researches (for, though Homer is
-guide-book enough for Ithaca, one may be a long time in tracing out the
-Odyssean movements by the poem), every one was ready to show me
-everything. Before leaving I found an intelligent guide, as such go, in
-one Angelo Persego, whose name I record for the benefit of such of my
-readers as may be tempted (out of the Greek Lent) to visit Ithaca. But
-here let me drop a word of advice for all voyagers in Greek lands. Take
-a guide for lodgings and living, but never place any confidence in his
-identifications or local traditions. He may be right, but the chances
-are nine to one he is not. He may even have been over the ground before,
-but his assurance to that effect is no evidence. I found the men I
-selected utterly ignorant, as usual, of almost all I wanted to learn;
-but I found a little book by G. F. Bowen, one time Fellow of Brasenose
-and President of the Ionian University, which, though dated in 1850,
-gives a sufficient clue to the topography to enable one to dispense with
-a guide, except to find the best roads.
-
-Vathy does not occur in the Odyssey under any name, nor is there any
-trace of antique structures about it. In the illustration the narrow
-entrance at the right is Vathy; the cove in the centre, with the island
-off it, is the port of Phorcys, where Ulysses was landed, and which, for
-the uses of ancient mariners, who beached their ships instead of
-anchoring them, was a better port than Vathy. It corresponds in the
-minutest detail to Homer’s account of it,—a smooth, sandy beach,
-complete shelter from all winds, and only varying in any particulars in
-its surroundings by a greater distance from the grotto where the
-Phæacians hide the presents Ulysses brings with him; but of this more is
-to be said.
-
-The Odyssey gives no intimation of any city near the landing-place. The
-port of Ulysses’ own capital was much nearer Phæacia, and the ship might
-have landed him at his own door. The reason of this excessive caution
-was that during so long a time he had had no news from home, and his
-Phæacian friends knew that he might find his city in the hands of an
-enemy.
-
- [Illustration: PORT OF PHORCYS AND NERITON, FROM THE MOUTH OF ULYSSES’
-                                 CAVE.]
-
-Awaking, then, from the sleep in which he had been so gently landed by
-the crew of the Phæacian ship, he finds himself in a strange land, as he
-supposed, and in complete solitude, and arms himself with his habitual
-cunning, distrusting everything. When Athena comes to him in the form of
-a shepherd, he asks where he is; and being told that he is at last in
-the long-sought Ithaca, he is transported with joy, but conceals his
-emotion and addresses the goddess with these hasty words, disguising the
-truth and telling his story falsely, always turning in his mind many
-artifices: “I, too, have heard, in the far-off, immense island of Crete,
-of the island of Ithaca. It is, then, in that country that I have
-arrived with my treasures. I have left an equal part to my children
-because I fly from my native land, where I killed the dear son of
-Idomeneus,” etc., etc., going on with a long history to account for his
-presence in Ithaca, a place unknown to him, which fable he only drops
-when Athena throws off her disguise; but he still is unconvinced that he
-is in Ithaca. She calls his attention to Neriton in front of him, and
-having convinced him, helps him hide his treasures in the grotto, when
-they sit down under the olive-tree over its entrance, and she tells him
-how matters stand at home, and contrives plans for getting rid of the
-pretendants, who would, no doubt, put an end to him if he fell into
-their hands. This seems to be his conviction, for he exclaims: “Great
-gods! if you had not enlightened me I should have perished in my palace,
-like Agamemnon. Come, let us plan a means by which I may revenge myself
-on them all.” This hint of the fate of Agamemnon, whose end he had
-learned, is the clue to his cautious deportment. They plan as follows:
-He will be disguised by Athena, so that not even his wife shall know
-him, and will then go to Eunæus, who keeps his swine by the Raven’s
-Cliff, near Arethusa’s fountain, and wait with him studying up the
-position, while she goes off to Lacedæmon to bring back Telemachus, whom
-she had sent there nominally to get news of his father, but really, as
-she informs Ulysses, to give him an opportunity, hitherto wanting, to
-see the world and acquire renown. Here they separate, and Ulysses takes
-the secret path.
-
-The position of the grotto makes the only difficulty in tracing all his
-movements; for it is not, as one would expect from the text, at the head
-of the port, strictly speaking, but at the head of the little ravine
-which ends in the port, a good quarter of an hour’s walk from the shore,
-even making allowance for all the recession of the water-line, which has
-evidently been considerable. The grotto itself corresponds exactly with
-the description, and can be entered by mortals only in the usual way, by
-the small opening which looks toward the port. “It has two entrances:
-one, turned toward the breath of Boreas, is for human use; the other,
-toward that of Notos, is more divine. Never man enters by that; it is
-the way of the immortals.” The human entrance is a low, almost invisible
-opening, or at least, easily passed without notice, at a short distance.
-Even now, when all vegetation has disappeared from around it, and the
-olive-trees come only half-way up the hill, it would easily be hidden by
-a large stone, as Minerva hides it. The entrance, low and precipitous,
-widens rapidly within, and we descend by what might once have been
-artificially prepared steps to a vault-like cave, sixteen to twenty feet
-in diameter, with a curious recess at the farther end, and at the top of
-the vault another opening, like the top window of the Pantheon of Rome,
-or any of the circular temples whose form was derived from the vaulted
-tomb or treasury of Pelasgic architecture. At first sight I thought this
-opening might have been artificial, but on close examination I saw that
-the formation of the rock led to it naturally, and that, hardly large
-enough to admit a human body readily, it could only, if enlarged, be
-entered by a person’s being let down with a cord. This is the
-“immortals’ entrance.” Under this opening lies a huge heap of stones,
-the accumulation of centuries, for the lower portions are cemented
-together by the stalagmitic deposit from the rock above; and the walls
-of the grotto, despite the breaking off of every attackable stalactite,
-are also formed of carbonate of lime so deposited. The difference
-between the actual distance from the water’s edge to the grotto and that
-which is indicated by the narrative of the Odyssey is not more than a
-fair poetic license would permit; or the memory of the narrator, having
-known the localities, might well in a few years of absence leave out
-this short distance.
-
-The Odyssean topography is greatly confused to the modern traveler by
-the fact that the Homeric city undoubtedly stood at the northern end of
-the island, and far remote from the modern city as well as from the
-landing-place of Ulysses and the pig-pens of Eumæus. The view from the
-grotto gives us, at the left, a bay of which Vathy and Phorcys are
-tributaries. This cuts the island nearly in two, a narrow ridge of rock
-only connecting its two great masses. On the north is the site of the
-Homeric city, as I shall presently show; but on the south are the
-Raven’s Cliff and the fountain of Arethusa, together with an ancient
-ruin known by the people as the “Castle of Ulysses.” These ruins are of
-the earliest form of Pelasgic, commonly named Cyclopean, though there is
-no justification for any distinction between the “Pelasgic” and the
-“Cyclopean,” or any proper distinction of styles, as they run into each
-other, from the form shown at “Ulysses’ Castle” to the most elaborate
-and carefully fitted polygonal which we shall find at Samé on the
-opposite shore of Cephalonia. The walls of Ulysses’ Castle are of great
-extent, and portions still remaining near the summit are well preserved,
-some fragments being nearly twenty feet high. It must have been the work
-of a powerful tribe and a great stronghold. Seen from the sea, it shows
-on a sharp conical rock precipitously trending down to the shore. The
-Odyssey in no manner makes allusion to this, either as city or as ruin.
-Ulysses passes very near it going south, leaving it on the right,
-apparently ignoring its existence. This makes it tolerably clear that it
-had been so long in ruin that it was in no way to be connected with the
-Odyssean dynasty or colonization even, or that it was constructed after
-the Homeric epoch. The latter hypothesis is untenable, because we find
-in many parts, especially in the Argolid, ruins clearly contemporary
-with this, which are in the Hellenic traditions regarded as the work of
-a vanished and semi-divine race of giants, the Cyclopes or the “divine
-Pelasgi;” while, of the Homeric epoch, as distinguished from the
-Pelasgic, which preceded it, and the Hellenic, which followed it, we
-have no recognizable remains, and the cities known to have existed, such
-as the Ithaca of Ulysses, have left no ruin durable enough to show in
-our time. This indicates a state of civilization in which the great
-necessity of strong walls as a defense had passed, or that, by the use
-of cement, walls were made so light in structure that they were
-efficient for the day, but perished utterly in the intervening time,
-which again is an untenable hypothesis, because we find cement used
-nowhere in Greece in work known to be earlier than the third century B.
-C. I leave the question of the identity of the Odyssean epoch with that
-of the composition of the poem at present untouched. I am dealing only
-with the poem which philologists suppose to have been composed about 850
-B. C. That the author knew Ithaca perfectly, I think we shall see, and
-that consequently the ruins of the Pelasgic epoch, when not continuously
-inhabited (as were Nericus and Samé, the former of which Laertes
-conquered, and the latter of which sent the largest deputation of
-“kings” as suitors for Penelope, the foundations of both being
-Pelasgic), were already so lost in the twilight of prehistory as to be
-without any meaning to the author of the Odyssey. The city whose ruins
-are now called the Castle of Ulysses was as unknown to the epoch of
-Homer as to ours. No one in the whole action of the Odyssey goes in or
-out of its gates, or turns aside from his path to speak of or visit it.
-“Kings” were as common as rascals in those days, but that two important
-cities should exist contemporaneously in the small island of Ithaca, and
-that the people of Ulysses should live in one, pasture their hogs on the
-territory of the other, and ignore its existence, is impossible. This
-does not prevent Schliemann from identifying the house walls, which
-remain to a small height, with the pig-pens of Eumæus, or a huge stump
-near the citadel, with the tree from which Ulysses had made his bed
-(_Ithaca, Peloponnesus and Troy_).
-
-That this part of the island was nearly or quite unpopulated is made
-more than probable by the facts that no mention is made of any city or
-people here; that the only features mentioned are the wildness, and
-forests abandoned to feeding of pigs; and that Ulysses selects this part
-for his concealment. The path Ulysses probably followed from the port of
-Phorcys to the Raven’s Cliff is by far too hard for dilettante
-following; it is not only impassable to beasts of burden, but, I should
-say, difficult for a pedestrian. There is a road carriageable for a few
-miles from Vathy along the ridge southward, and then a fair bridle-path
-to the cliff, which, had we known it, would have led us somewhere near
-the location of Eumæus’s sties; but the guide my friends had recommended
-me, on his personal assurance, did not know the road, and we went
-wandering across fields and over hills, abandoning our quadrupeds at the
-moment when they would have been our best guides; and, finally, the
-fellow had to go to a ploughman scratching the earth with a crooked
-stick behind a yoke of year-old heifers, and inquire his way. I
-exhausted my modern Greek in exasperated vituperation of his pretentious
-ignorance, and took the lead, as I generally have had to do on similar
-occasions.
-
-There was a pretty little valley on our way, the only arable or fruitful
-land in this part of the island; all else was bare and bleak. A few
-tough-lived shrubs, broom and gorse, arbutus, and some others I did not
-know, wring a scanty subsistence from the clefts between the rocks, and
-in a mass of almost unmitigated limestone was cloven a ravine. The
-roughness of Ithaca was proverbial even in Homeric days, since Athena,
-while disguised as a shepherd, replies to Ulysses, “If it [Ithaca] is
-rocky, if it breeds not horses in its moderate space, it is not quite
-barren,” etc. One might well select this scene as one of tranquil
-beauty, with the faint glimpses of the dreamy inner sea above its valley
-distance, and the golden grain-fields as I saw them, interspersed with
-vineyards and olive-orchards.
-
-      [Illustration: RAVEN’S CLIFF AND THE FOUNTAIN OF ARETHUSA.]
-
-The glen of the Raven’s Cliff becomes a wild gorge below the fountain of
-Arethusa, and descends abruptly to the sea. Above, a stripe of bare,
-pale-gray rock down the cliff shows that in winter it is the location of
-a cataract, though, when I visited the locality, dry as summer dust. The
-fountain of Arethusa is situated about half-way from the cliff to the
-sea, and bears the evidences of an immense antiquity. Remains of an
-architectural surrounding are still to be seen, which, with some
-foundations of walls of the Roman period, evidently of a temple to the
-nymph or local goddess, and “Ulysses’ Castle,” are the only traces of
-ruin discoverable in this lobe of the island. The recess of the fountain
-has once been much larger, but the slow process of depositing the
-calcareous incrustation which forms its walls has gone on so long that
-only a small deep basin remains, from which the people draw the water
-with a cord and bucket. Its niche is cushioned with moss and maidenhair
-ferns, and the soft porous rock is always moist with the filtering
-through of the water. A wooden trough is placed for the watering of the
-sheep and goats which take the place of the hogs of Eumæus, for this is
-the only perennial source of water in the region.
-
-An old woman, wrinkled and bowed, looking like one of the Fates, sat
-near the fountain, combing the wool she had washed at it; and on the
-opposite side the nymph of the fountain, in the shape of a young matron
-of some neighboring hamlet, was washing her clothes. The wash was
-boiling when we came up, over a fire of brambles and weeds; but the
-utensil which took the place of the bronze caldron of the antique
-house-mother was an American petroleum-can, with a wire bale fitted in
-rudely, and the stamp of the New York Refining Company was still visible
-on the tin. We talk of the omnipresence of gold, of the omnipotence of
-cotton; but in my wanderings on the earth I have found places where the
-people did not know the value of a piece of gold, and wore nothing but
-the homespun and woven wool of their flocks and flax of their fields,
-while I have never found one that did not know petroleum; and I have
-learned that the petroleum-can is a more universal concomitant of
-civilization than English cutlery or American drillings.
-
-The pens of Ulysses’ pig-herd were at the top of the cliff, where a
-plain of small extent and soil of scanty depth still maintains an
-olive-grove, sole representative of the forest of oaks whose acorns
-fattened the swine for the revels of the suitors of Penelope.
-
-Here Ulysses finds Eumæus, and here, in his anxiety to convince him of
-the truth of his prediction of the return of the wanderer, he says: “If
-he return not as I declare, let your servants seize me and throw me over
-the high rock, that vagabonds may learn in future to abstain from
-useless falsehoods.”
-
-                 [Illustration: FROM AN OLD GREEK VASE.
-                    THE SITE OF ITHACA—PORT POLIS.]
-
-To return to the city of Ithaca, Ulysses must retrace his steps past the
-port of Phorcys, and follow the ridge of rock which connects the
-divisions of the island past the mass of Neriton. His landing-place was
-on the east side of the island, the port of the ancient city Ithaca on
-the west; and there are now on the road between, several villages, the
-representatives, perhaps, of the ancient towns from which Ulysses drew
-his quota of men for the Trojan campaign, “Crocyles and the rocky
-Ægilipos.” It was in one of these villages that Schliemann, visiting the
-island for the first time, in his Homeric enthusiasm, as the villagers,
-in their habitual curiosity to see the stranger, came out to gaze and
-question, taking the assemblage as a demonstration in his honor, and
-determined to show them how well he estimated the dignity of an heir of
-the Odyssean glory, mounted on a table and translated from Homer the
-passages which record Laertes’ emotions on the return of his long-lost
-son. “They wept with emotion,” says the naïf Doctor; and he rewarded
-them by some hundred lines more. Remembering this incident, I inquired
-about the matter, and found that it had excited much merriment in the
-cultivated circles of Vathy, and, as I expected, the other side in the
-rencontre preserved a very different recollection of the Doctor’s
-achievement, and that the tears were of merriment rather than of pathos.
-No one in the assemblage could understand a word of the Greek in the
-Doctor’s pronunciation of it.
-
-In the nomenclature of the two principal higher villages of the northern
-section, I found a curious survival of archaic language, which, so far
-as I could learn, is as incomprehensible as Homer, in the original, to
-the inhabitants. The villages are Anoï and Exoï, which are clearly from
-the archaic and (except in the Cretan mountains) obsolete words _ano_
-and _exo_, used as _haw_ and _gee_ are by us in driving oxen, and of
-course meaning originally right and left, and these indicate site
-survivals of early towns or villages. But of Ithaca the _city_, the home
-of Ulysses, not a trace remains except the name _Polis_ (city, _the_
-city par excellence), which is applied to a locality where not even an
-ancient wall shows a claim to the appellation. The fragments of
-substructure shown on the hill above and near the village of Stavros are
-undoubtedly mediæval, and belong to the piratical city which was
-established here, and which was destroyed in the latter part of the
-sixteenth century. I searched in vain for anything to indicate the date
-of the ancient city, but here, doubtless, was the home of Ulysses. Its
-little port is of the nature demanded by ancient mariners,—a smooth
-beach in a cove, with the island of Cephalonia opposite and near enough
-to shut off any great violence of sea or wind. Homer relates that the
-suitors, when Telemachus had gone to Pylos to get news of his father,
-sent out a ship with some of their number to intercept and kill him on
-his return, and that this ship lay in watch at an island off the port
-where the return of Telemachus’s ship could be seen from afar and
-prevented. Opposite Port Polis is a rock, probably the remnant of that
-island; for, as the material of it is a conglomerate easily subdued by
-the elements and decomposing rapidly, it must have been once a
-considerable island, and it is now the only remnant of rock or island
-which occupies any such relative position.
-
-In searching around the neighborhood for traces of antiquity I was
-accosted by a peasant, who told me that there had been found a stone
-with some letters on it, and I made haste to hunt it out. They (for
-there were two fragments) were at the bottom of a heap of stone which
-had been exhumed from under a land-fall, and which were evidently part
-of a very ancient building. I hired the men who gathered round to remove
-the heap, and photographed the stones, which had been originally one.
-The inscription is in the early style of Greek epigraphy, boustrophedon,
-_i. e._, going alternately from left to right and right to left, as oxen
-go when ploughing. It is the oldest known inscription in the Ithacan
-alphabet.
-
-I placed a copy of the photograph in the hands of Professor Comparetti
-of Florence, amongst others, and received from him the following, read
-at a meeting of the Academy of the Lincei:—
-
-              [Illustration: INSCRIPTION FOUND AT POLIS.]
-
-“Since I have hitherto spoken of inscriptions very old or archaic, as we
-say, it will be permitted me to close this communication by presenting
-to the Academy a curious inscription of this kind recently discovered in
-Ithaca and communicated to me by a diligent and cultivated visitor to
-the Greek lands, the American, Mr. Stillman, who made in Ithaca a
-photograph of the inscription, and, having unsuccessfully asked an
-interpretation of several scholars, applied to me. He has permitted me
-to make communication to this Academy, putting at my disposition also
-the negative of his photograph, from which are printed the copies I
-present. The inscription is tolerably roughly cut in a friable stone,
-broken in two, worn by time and water. The photograph, which is never
-the best means of representing monuments of this kind even in
-experienced hands, presents some confusion and obscurity in parts; but
-this is the only difficulty in the epigraph.... I saw at once that this
-was an inscription of which there was already some notice in a book
-published by the Phœnix of discoverers of antiquities, Schliemann, in
-1868, ‘Ithaca, Peloponnesos, and Troy.’ Rich as he is in fancy,
-Schliemann is ready to believe any story, and at once convinced himself
-that he had discovered the inscription of a very old sarcophagus, and
-found an honest workman who helped him to complete the idea, showing him
-the bones found in it by him. And in his book, together with this and
-other news, he communicated the inscription such as he read it. Of the
-two fragments, however, he only saw that at the right, and this he read
-very badly, seeing letters where none are, and imagining incredible
-forms of letters. Kirchhoff in his ‘Studien zur Geschichte des
-Griechischen Alphabets’ sought to apply this monument to his purposes,
-but could make nothing of it, and it would have been impossible to get
-anything from it. Now, thanks to the intelligent care of Mr. Stillman,
-we have before us the monument as it is; he knew nothing of Schliemann;
-when he saw the inscription, he saw that it was incomplete, and seeking
-amongst the stones, found the other piece, and, divining justly its
-relation, united them and took the photograph which now permits us to
-utilize what we may call his discovery.
-
-“The epigraph is certainly very old, besides being boustrophedon. This
-is shown particularly by the forms of the _sigma_ and _iota_. It was cut
-roughly and by hands little used to such work, without any care for
-symmetry in the disposition of the letters or of the lines, nor for the
-uniformity of the letters. Some letters are lost in the fracture, others
-by the wearing of the stone, and the entire inscription is mutilated in
-the lower part.
-
-“The reading, with the filling up, is as follows:—
-
-                              τᾶς [Ἀ]θάνας
-                             τᾶς (Ρ)[έ](ας)
-                             χα[ὶ τ](ᾶ)ς Ἡρ
-                            ας τα (ἔ) [ν]τεα
-                              τῶ[ἱ]ερῶ οἱ
-                            ἱε[ρ]εε[ς] (Κες-
-                                   π
-
-“Translation: ‘Of Athena—of Rhea—and of Hera—the sacred utensils of the
-temple—the priests, Kes—placed.’
-
-“Probably the names of the three priests followed, the first commencing
-with the letters Kes,—perhaps Kesiphron,—and there ought to follow τάδ’
-ἒνεθεν or τάδε χάτεθεν, or similar expression. The inscription, then,
-has nothing to do with a sarcophagus, or with the dead. It treats, on
-the contrary, of a hidden treasure, that is to say, of the sacred
-utensils of a temple in which were worshiped the three divinities,
-Athena, Rhea, and Hera, each one having her peculiar priest. It is well
-known that there is nothing new in this case of three divinities
-worshiped in the same temple. We know that Athena was especially
-reverenced in Ithaca, and are not surprised to find her first in the
-list. Then to explain this inscription, it may be supposed that in some
-perilous time of war, revolution, or other danger, these priests decided
-to put in security the treasures of the temple and hid them in a safe
-and secret place, leaving there this inscription, so that in any case
-the nature and origin of the objects might be known. Probably they cut
-the inscription themselves that no one else might be in the secret, and
-this would explain the signs of haste and inexperience in the cutting,
-while on the other hand the language, like the orthography, is correct.”
-
-The attribution to a sarcophagus by Schliemann is difficult to explain
-as a mistake. If it had been, as he says, on a sarcophagus that he found
-the right half of the inscription, he must have found the whole; but the
-fact is that there was in the whole pile of stones no fragment of
-anything like a sarcophagus, an object unknown in Greece till centuries
-later. The inscription had evidently been a mural tablet and was about
-eighteen inches deep and of a shape and size which made it impossible to
-take it for a fragment of a sarcophagus; and underneath the mass of
-debris from which it was extracted the workmen found a pit, which was
-excavated, they told me, without finding anything; nor, they said, was
-any object of antiquity found with the stones, while Schliemann engraves
-a lance head and a coin of about 300 B. C. which he says were found in
-the sarcophagus. This proves nothing, for when anything is found the
-absurd rigor of the Greek laws makes the concealment of it the first
-object of the finder. If this pit, when discovered, had still contained
-the sacred objects, what a find if archæology could have profited by it!
-But as the Greek law in case of concealment would have punished the
-excavator by confiscation, or in the best case by taking the half of the
-objects found, the first precaution taken by the finder would have been
-to remove, if possible, to a foreign shore, and if not, to melt down, if
-of precious metal, the objects found. Until Greek legislation on
-archæological research is more intelligent, it will be gravely
-handicapped. The greater part of the value of an object is often to know
-where it came from, and this we never know of objects found in Greece by
-chance or private excavation. There was some years ago a report, which
-had certainly considerable confirmation, of the discovery of a great
-treasure in this very part of Ithaca; possibly it may have been this. If
-we could have found the vessels of the temple, they would have given us
-the art of the descendants of the Dorians in Ithaca at least six hundred
-years B. C.; for this inscription is Doric, and dates from about that
-time.
-
-In any case, we may be confident that our inscription marks the site as
-having been in the vicinity of a city of, or little later than, the
-Homeric epoch, as, supposing the Odyssey to have been composed in 850 B.
-C., only about two hundred and fifty years could have intervened between
-its composition and the placing of this inscription; and we know of no
-ethnic revolution which would have destroyed the Homeric city between
-the Dorian invasion and the wars of Corinth.
-
-                  [Illustration: THE SCHOOL OF HOMER.]
-
-But if there are no traces of the Homeric city, and none of earlier
-construction in the immediate neighborhood of the site, there is in the
-interior of the island, and in the northern lobe, which we see was
-probably the special domain of the Ithaca of Ulysses, a most interesting
-antiquity which is now known as the “school of Homer.” It is in all
-probability a sacred place of the Pelasgic epoch, as on the rock above
-it is a chapel whose substructions are clearly Pelasgic and most
-probably the remains of a Pelasgic temple, which alone would account for
-its preservation, and is probably also the reason of its conversion into
-a Christian church. It is on a scale in keeping with all the remains we
-have of the heroic epoch, about twelve by twenty feet, and though much
-repaired in the modern adaptation, still shows its ancient dimensions
-and style of building in the lower courses, too solid to have been
-rearranged, though some of the upper stones have evidently been replaced
-in later times. It stands on the brow of a low bluff, below the village
-of Exoï and not far from the “field of Laertes,” which tradition points
-out at a little hamlet below. Traces of other walls extend to the brink
-of the precipice that overhangs the “school,” and round by the side is
-an antique flight of steps, mostly preserved and cut in the solid rock,
-that served as passage between the temple and the “school,” which may
-have been the place of sacrifice or possibly an area for the holding of
-the council. It is mainly cut in the rock at the foot of the precipice
-on which the temple was built, with a double flight of steps, also cut
-in the rock, descending to the ground below. It is not above fifteen
-feet across at its widest, and the decomposition of the solid rock by
-time and weather leaves only the general shape and character, with some
-of the steps above and below it, still tolerably perfect. It was a
-lovely place, and if the shade now thrown by the olive-trees which
-surround it was anciently given by plane-trees, it would have been still
-more striking. You look off on the sea and the distant island of Levkadi
-with the mountains of Acarnania, and through the interstices of the
-olive-trees you catch glimpses of the cultivated valley beneath, where,
-if anywhere in this end of the island, old Laertes must have had his
-field, as here only is tillage possible. North is the sea, south the
-huge wall of Neriton, east the rugged mountain that looks out on the
-inner sea, and west that on which Exoï is raised to the clouds and from
-which one looks down on the Cephalonian channel at its foot. Like the
-plain or valley between the Raven’s Cliff and Vathy for the southern
-lobe, this is the only valley for the northern. The “school” is poised
-thus midway between the valley and the mountain peak; and whether, as
-the islanders pretend, it was the place where Homer read his poems, the
-council place of the ancient heroes and kings, or the hieron of Pelasgic
-priests whence the smoke of sacrifice went up to the great Zeus, the
-choice of locality was one which suited alike its uses. The young wheat
-was springing into head in all the interspaces of the close-standing
-olive-trees, and the rocks above were overhung and draped with wild sage
-and gemmed with wild flowers. The boy who guided us assured us that
-there was a secret passage to the top of the rock, filled up now; and a
-peasant passing by stopped to see what we might be saying or doing, and
-finding that our interest was fixed on _palaia pragmata_, offered to
-guide us to an ancient rock-cut well in the valley below. We found the
-door which opens to the passage, which led down a stone-cut staircase to
-the well, far in the ground; but as the well belonged to the priest, who
-had the key in his pocket, and was, no one knew where, we had to be
-content with the door, which was modern enough, though fitting an
-opening cut in the rock very evidently ancient.
-
-In this vicinity must, by the force of nature, have been the residence
-of all the agricultural part of the population of the ancient Ithaca.
-Says the poem:—
-
-“Ulysses and his companions withdrew from the city and soon arrived at
-the magnificent garden of Laertes, which the hero had formerly purchased
-with his wealth after the many ills he had suffered. There stands his
-dwelling, surrounded on all sides by a portico where the slaves who
-cultivate his estate sleep and eat. In the porter’s lodge is an old
-Sicilian,[6] who in this solitary place, far from the city, takes care
-of the noble old man.... At these words he gives his arms to the
-herdsmen who enter into the house of their master, while Ulysses, to
-find Laertes, enters into the garden. The hero goes down into the great
-vineyard and finds neither Dolias nor his sons, nor the other slaves.
-Dolias has led them far away to gather thorns to make hedges round the
-inclosure. Ulysses finds his father digging round the root of a tree in
-the garden. Laertes is dressed in a dirty patched tunic; around his legs
-he has bound, to preserve them, greaves of sewn leather; gloves protect
-his hands, and his head is covered by a cap of goat-skin, which
-completes his mournful appearance....
-
-“‘Ah,’ replied Laertes, ‘if you are Ulysses, if you are my son returned
-to this island, describe to me a sure sign that I cannot mistake.’
-
-“‘See first,’ replies Ulysses, ‘this wound, which long ago on Parnassus
-a wild boar gave me with his tusk, when I went to Autolycus to bring the
-presents which he here had promised me. Then listen, I will describe to
-you the trees of your beautiful garden which you gave me, and I asked of
-you in my childhood as I ran behind you. We passed through your
-inclosure; you told me the name of every tree, and you gave me thirteen
-pear-trees, ten apple-trees, forty fig-trees, and then you promised to
-give me fifty rows of vines in full bearing.’”
-
-The legends of the modern population of Ithaca must not be confounded
-with real local tradition, transmitted from ancient times. They are
-unquestionably the reflection of literary statement, the reiterated
-conclusions of students more or less well informed as to the true
-archæological bases of opinion. The attribution of the particular spot
-we visited as the garden of Laertes is doubtless due to reading of the
-Odyssey, and, like the location of the “Castle of Ulysses” on Aëtos,
-arose from a popular rendering of the story as handed down by literature
-and converted into legend, which is located wherever the crude
-antiquarianism of the people judges best. An instance of the real
-tradition which has a distinct value in archæological research is that
-of the preservation of the name Polis for the abandoned site where
-unquestionably the Homeric city stood; and this simple indication is
-sufficient to prove that Ithaca was never entirely depopulated and
-repeopled by Slavs, because in this case the continuity of tradition
-would have been lost, and there is no ruin to restore it in modern
-times, even if it were capable of surviving the interruption. If it had
-simply been handed down by a Slavonic colony, it would have been “Arad”
-instead of “Polis,” while, if the depopulation had once been complete,
-names which are not now understood by the present inhabitants could not
-have originated with them. If the name had sprung from the presence of
-ruins, the site on Aëtos would have received it instead of its present
-legendary appellation, so that in no way can we explain the survival of
-the name Polis for the site, or the names Anoï and Exoï, except by
-supposing them to have clung to the places from Homeric times through a
-continuous population of Hellenic stock, however thinned. Another
-curious incident illustrates the tenacity of this kind of survival. As
-we were passing through one of the villages, I heard one child calling
-to others to run to see the barbarians, οἱ βάρβαροι (_várvari_), just as
-the Greek children of ancient times would have called us,—_i. e._,
-foreigners, people who spoke a strange language, a babble,
-unintelligible sounds like those of children. I heard it twice and could
-not be mistaken, though a Greek friend to whom I related it would have
-it that they said βαυάροι (Bavarians), since in continental Greece,
-Bavarian (German) has been a term of contempt from the days of King
-Otho. But I am certain of the word; and besides, the children of Ithaca
-never had anything to do with the Bavarians, as they were under the
-Ionian Government till after the fall of Otho and the departure of the
-Bavarians.
-
-On the whole, I think that there is the strongest ground of probability
-for these conclusions: that, whatever may be the relation of the real
-Ulysses to Ithaca, the hero as conceived and represented in the Odyssey,
-the Ulysses of the Homeric poems, _if he was an actuality_, lived at the
-site known as Polis; and that this site, and all the others mentioned in
-the poem, were known by the author of it from personal inspection. The
-inscription found at Polis is in Doric Greek, which gives us a right to
-conclude that the city continued to be inhabited by the mixed
-population, result of the Dorian immigration; while the entire oversight
-of the Pelasgic site on Aëtos indicates the total interruption of race
-connection and the immense interval which must have come between its
-construction and the transfer of the seat of power to Polis, as, if
-still habitable when the new race took possession, it would, like
-Nericus, Samé, and Crané, which we shall examine in Cephalonia, have
-been made the basis of the newer city. That it was then utterly
-abandoned, we conclude, not only from the neglect of it by Ulysses in
-the passages we have noticed, but from the fact that while Samé, on the
-other island, sends suitors, and Ithaca itself (the city) adds its
-quota, no allusion is made to any from any other place in the island. In
-short, the total silence through the whole poem in regard to any place
-which can be by possibility connected with Aëtos, justifies my
-concluding that it was as much an abandoned ruin in the time of Homer as
-now.
-
-The episode of the voyage of Telemachus to Pylos and Sparta, which
-brings into the Odyssey the western shore of the Peloponnesus, is, with
-the exception of some unimportant allusions, the only interjection of
-continental Greece into the poem.
-
-We went over to look for some trace of the sage Nestor, but as usual
-found that while the people had enough of the after-growth of legend out
-of the Odyssey, they knew absolutely nothing of the antique site. I had
-no guide then to lead me to the Pylos where the ship of Telemachus found
-“the Pyleans scattered along the shore offering a sacrifice to Neptune,
-black bulls without a spot.”
-
-The bay of Navarino is a vast marine lake, known to us mainly by its
-being the locality of the decisive combat between the fleets of the
-great European powers and the Turkish and Egyptian, which decided the
-destiny of modern Greece. We ran in from the open Adriatic, whose waters
-were uncomfortably agitated by the south-west wind, glad of the safe and
-convenient anchorage. But a sleepier place than the modern substitute
-for the “sandy Pylos” I have never found in Greece. Nobody could give me
-a word of direction, and all our searching round the extended sheet of
-water for the antique site, only perhaps to be recognized by some
-half-hidden remnant of Pelasgian walls, was fruitless; we neither saw
-nor heard of any ruin. We paid a visit to the splendidly picturesque old
-Venetian fortress commanding the entrance of the bay, which perhaps has
-used up the stones of Nestor’s Pylos, and which has looked down on one
-of the most murderous combats of modern naval history. It is garrisoned
-by a little guard of Greek soldiers, and its keep is the prison of the
-district. The gate is a good sample of the fortifications by which the
-Venetian Republic held her Eastern possessions.
-
-
-
-
-                 THE ODYSSEY, ITS EPOCH AND GEOGRAPHY.
-
-
-The mythical world which had for its centre Ithaca, and for its chief
-people Penelope and Ulysses, was out of all proportion larger than the
-Europe of to-day; for it comprised the whole known world, from the
-shadows of Cimmeria to the clouds that gave birth to the Nile. Its
-geography, however, has a value to archæology and prehistory which has
-not been fully recognized. The date and place of origin of the Odyssey
-will never be determined with any high degree of certainty, but in
-dealing with epochs that comprise unmeasured centuries we need not fear
-a variation of two or three. And the collation of traditions from the
-same mythical world will help us to this approximation to the probable
-date of Homer’s life, if not that of Ulysses.
-
-Gladstone, in the “Juventus Mundi,” has made use of an argument which,
-even if not sound as to the Trojan war, I believe to be good for the
-Odyssey. The earliest authentic records in Greek history reveal Greece
-as under the control of two races, the Ionians and the Dorians, elements
-whose antagonisms have been the chief cause of the disasters and ruin of
-Greece.
-
-But neither Dorians nor Ionians were the dominant race when the Odyssey
-was written, as neither Ionians nor Dorians appear in the record. The
-Greeks of the Trojan war are always called Achaioi, and the Dorians were
-evidently, as a dominant race, unknown to the author of the Homeric
-poems. Now, as they came into Greece about 1000 B. C., and as our
-researches show the island of Ithaca, with which Homer was well
-acquainted, to have become Dorian with the rest of Greece, the substance
-of the Odyssey must have been earlier than we have supposed, and could
-hardly have been as late as 850 B. C., unless the Dorian so-called
-invasion was an immigration spreading very slowly from the main line of
-its movement, and its stock still a recognizably new people. Nor does
-any possible modification of the Homeric poems in the recitals,
-continued over centuries, affect this argument in the least, as, being
-common property of all the bards and all the tribes, they were liable to
-be modified in the various versions according to the localities and
-local knowledge of the singers; and, one “rhapsody” being preserved by
-one tribe and another by another, of this hardly homogeneous people, the
-traces of the modifications received in their migrations could not be by
-the philology of the date of their collation so effaced as to leave no
-marks of their incomplete restoration.
-
-It is impossible that any idea of archæological consistency had led to
-the exclusion of the Dorians from the Odyssey. If the Dorians had been
-ruling in Greece when it was composed, it seems to the last degree
-improbable that they could have been so completely ignored, if it were
-but for the deference to be paid the rulers of half the Greek world; and
-whether we look at the invariable practice of all early poets to adapt
-their work to their own times and surroundings, or to the entire
-consistency of the work in this respect,—too complete to be due to the
-study of utterly unscientific or illiterate later times,—I think it is
-to be admitted as probable that the Odyssey was composed before the
-great ethnical revolution in Greece was complete.
-
-The purely local evidence supports this hypothesis to a certain extent,
-and in this topography and geography I propose to wander as far as it is
-possible to do so with advantage to our knowledge of the Odyssean world.
-Corfu was inhabited by a race alien to the Greek, and which recognized
-its descent from the Siculi displaced by the Pelasgi from Sicily.
-Opposite Ithaca lies the more important island of Cephalonia, to which
-Ithaca is now completely subordinate, but which then was less important
-apparently than Ithaca, in all probability only because it was only
-partly Hellenic. Now, the earliest classical name of this Island,
-_Kephallenia_, was derived from Cephalus, a mythical hero who appears to
-have been contemporary with Minos. But this name is never applied to it
-in the Odyssey. Of the island nothing is said, but of the chief city,
-Samos (a colony from which gave its name to the Asiatic island now known
-under that appellation), Homer has much to say. It lies clearly in sight
-from Ithaca, from which it is separated only by a narrow strait, and is
-one of the prominent objects in the view from Ithaca. It was originally
-one of that line of prehistoric cities whose only record is in the
-stones of their walls, and from these we learn that it was a very
-ancient coast settlement, which, unlike the city on Aëtos, survived
-through successive civilizations until history got hold of it. In
-Ulysses’ day it must have been a rich place, for it furnished
-twenty-four pretendants to the hand of Penelope. “There are first
-fifty-two young men, the chosen of Dulichios—six servants accompany
-them; twenty-four have come from Samos; twenty from Zakynthos [Zante];
-and from Ithaca were twelve, the bravest.” But the author of the Odyssey
-seems to have had no personal knowledge of the topography of Cephalonia,
-and mentions no other locality in the island. Tradition tells us that
-the island was peopled by Telebœans, a people driven from the continent
-by Achilles,—before the siege of Troy, therefore, but subsequent to
-Cephalus; but this is one of the confusions of mythology, as Cephalus
-found the Telebœans in the island. The usual condensation of history
-into myth leaves very little clear in these early traditions. Races
-become personified in individuals, and the work of centuries is
-attributed to a life-time and an individual. Whether Cephalus was in
-reality a race or a man it is impossible to do more than conjecture, but
-though the poems mention the _Kephallenes_, the entire ignoring of its
-topography and traditions, even of the visit of the Argonauts to it,
-makes it difficult to believe that it was chiefly inhabited by a race
-kindred to that of Ithaca when Homer knew it, because Homer was too much
-disposed to make use of the antique traditions when apposite, to have
-left unnoticed that of Jason at Palé.
-
-Cephalus having, according to the legend, killed his wife Procris,
-mistaking her for a wild animal as she, excited to jealousy by his
-devotion to the chase, which she attributed to another love, hid herself
-in the thickets to watch him, was banished from Athens, and, wandering
-in exile, came to Thebes, just then under excitement owing to the
-Telebœans of Cephalonia having killed the brothers of Alcmena, wife of
-the Theban Amphytrion, and he was requested to take charge of the
-expedition to avenge the murder. He succeeded in conquering the island
-and gave it his name. His descendants reigned there two generations,
-after which, the latest rulers of his blood being recalled to Attica by
-the oracle, a federative republic succeeded, formed by the four
-principal cities, or perhaps by the four which had survived the changes
-of race, for there are more than four antique sites. Those which history
-has preserved as having submitted to the Romans in the year of Rome 563
-were Samé, Nesia, Crané, and Palé.
-
-The city of Samé alone presents, in the annals of historical times, any
-interest, and this is sad and glorious. Livy says that at the end of the
-Ætolian war the Romans sent to Cephalonia to know whether they would
-submit or try the fortune of war, as they seem to have joined in the war
-with the Ætolians, though he gives no record of the part they took. He
-gives the account, brief and tragic, of the fate of the city, which I
-will neither dilute nor abbreviate:—
-
-“An unhoped-for peace had now shone on Cephalonia when one state, the
-Saméans, suddenly revolted, from some motive not yet ascertained. They
-said that as their city was commodiously situated they were afraid the
-Romans would compel them to remove from it. But whether they conceived
-this in their own minds and under the impulse of a groundless fear
-disturbed the general quiet, or whether such a project had been
-mentioned in conversation among the Romans and reported to them, nothing
-is ascertained except that, having given hostages, they suddenly shut
-their gates, and would not relinquish their design even for the prayers
-of their friends whom the consul sent to the walls to try how far they
-might be influenced by compassion for their parents and countrymen. When
-no pacific answer was given, the city began to be besieged.
-
-“The consul had all the apparatus, engines, and machines which had been
-brought from Ambracia, and the soldiers executed with great diligence
-the works necessary to be made. The rams were therefore brought forward
-in two places, and began to batter the walls.
-
-“The townsmen omitted nothing by which the works or the motions of the
-besiegers could be obstructed. But they resisted in two ways in
-particular, one of which was to raise constantly opposite the part of
-the wall attacked a new wall of equal strength on the inside; and the
-other was to make sudden sallies at one time against the enemy’s works,
-at another against his advanced guard, and in those attacks they
-generally got the better. The only plan that was invented to confine
-them within the walls, though ineffectual, deserves to be recorded. One
-hundred slingers were brought from Ægium, Patræ, and Dymæ
-[Peloponnesus]. These men, according to the customary practice of that
-nation, were exercised from their childhood in throwing with a sling,
-into the open sea, the round pebbles with which, mixed with sand, the
-shores were generally strewn; therefore they cast weapons of that sort
-to a greater distance, with surer aim and more powerful effect, than
-even the Balearian slingers. Besides, their sling does not consist
-merely of a single strap like the Balearic and that of other nations,
-but the thong of the sling is threefold and made firm by several seams,
-that the missile may not, by the yielding of the strap in the act of
-throwing, be let fly at random; but, after sticking fast while whirled
-about, it may be discharged as if sent from the string of a bow. Being
-accustomed to drive their missiles through circular marks of small
-circumference placed at a great distance, they not only hit the enemy’s
-heads, but any part of their faces that they aimed at. These slings
-checked the Saméans from sallying either so frequently or so boldly;
-insomuch that they would sometimes from the walls beseech the Achæans to
-retire for a while and be quiet spectators of their fight with the Roman
-guards. Samé supported a siege of four months. When some of their small
-number were daily killed or wounded, and the survivors were, through
-continual fatigues, greatly reduced both in strength and spirits, the
-Romans, one night, scaling the wall of the citadel which they call
-Cyatides (for the city, sloping toward the sea, verges toward the west),
-made their way into the forum. The Saméans, on discovering that a part
-of the city was taken, fled with their wives and children into the
-greater citadel; but, submitting next day, they were all sold as slaves,
-their city being plundered.” (Bohn’s translation.)
-
-It is only by conjecture we can distinguish between the two hills, both
-being covered with ruins; and the walls are so broken in their circuit,
-and so complex as well as various in their epoch of construction, that
-no plan of the siege could be made, but the above indicates the
-westernmost as first captured.
-
-The city must have been very wealthy, if we may judge from that
-generally excellent indication, the tombs, which line the roads and the
-sea-shore beyond the city (looking from the point where the general view
-is taken), and by the enumeration of the booty taken by the Romans,
-which is given as follows: Two hundred golden crowns of ten Roman pounds
-each, eighty-three thousand pounds of silver, two hundred and
-forty-three pounds of gold, one hundred and eighteen pieces of Athenian
-money, two thousand four hundred and twenty-two of Macedonian, two
-hundred and eighty-three statues of bronze, two hundred and thirty of
-marble, besides the money distributed to the army.
-
-I know of no place where the ruins of all epochs are so well indicated
-as at Samé. The large fragment of wall of the best Hellenic time which
-runs down the slope of the eastern hill is one of the finest, if not
-_the_ finest, I have ever seen. Its stones are perfectly hewn, and some
-of them are twelve to fourteen feet long, and the highest portion still
-standing is not less than twenty feet high. At other points are various
-examples of the Pelasgic, similar to that of “Ulysses’ Castle,” but of
-better work. There are magnificent subterranean passages, one of which
-leads to the citadel on the easternmost hill, the more remote in the
-distant view, but the higher and probably the site of the greater
-citadel, being marked by the most imposing ruins and remains of works,
-and without doubt the locality of the original settlement. On the lower
-hill stand some interesting remains—a tower and remains of city wall of
-mixed Hellenic and Pelasgic, the tower being of the very latest
-Hellenic, showing the beginning of “rustication.” It was built upon in
-the middle ages, and the whole mass of buildings transformed into a
-fortress and afterward into a convent. Samé must very early have been a
-large and important city, as the whole of the space, including the two
-hills and the land between them, shows traces of Pelasgic construction,
-and one fragment on the brow of the hill near the tower is one of the
-most perfect examples of the best Pelasgic work one can find away from
-Mykenæ and Argos. The stones in the illustration range about five feet
-in length, and are faced with exquisite exactness. A wild fig-tree has
-taken root in the interstices of the stones, and the roots have pushed
-the masses of rock apart, but in several places it is difficult to see
-the junction when the light is flat against them. Of Roman work there is
-little; but some thermæ walls on the plains by the sea and some tombs
-show a considerable Roman occupation. Livy says that Marcus Tullius, the
-conqueror of Samé, went over to the Peloponnesus “after having placed a
-garrison in Samé.” This negatives the notion that the walls were razed
-to the foundations, as is asserted by La Croix; and it is also rendered
-improbable by the existing ruins, though it is not impossible that so
-much of the wall was destroyed as made the defense of it temporarily
-impracticable. There are, however, some slight traces of rubble-wall on
-the old ruins, which show a Roman (or possibly middle-age, though I
-incline to the former) construction, which negative any supposition that
-the _enceinte_ was rendered useless for defense; for no one would repair
-a wall which was not tolerably complete in its circuit. The remains of
-the Roman time, however, are insignificant compared with those of the
-Pelasgic, either as to preservation or quality.
-
- [Illustration: VIEW OF SAMÉ FROM THE WEST,—WITH PARTS OF PELASGIC AND
-                            HELLENIC WALLS.]
-
-At present Samé is an insignificant village, consisting of twenty or
-thirty small houses stretched along the beach, with a tiny port formed
-by a breakwater constructed from the stones of the city wall, the
-fairest and best cut that could be found. The people are a thievish
-clan, who set on any chance comer, like mosquitoes on a solitary and
-bewildered fisherman in a swampy land. They have coins and antiquities
-to sell, for which, as everywhere else in Greece, they demand the most
-absurd prices; and they beset one with offers of service as guides,
-etc., etc., etc., till they weary all human patience. This may be said
-of the Ionians in general, but less of the people of Cerigo, perhaps,
-than the others. We found, however, a grateful exception. We had
-wandered along the beach to the furthermost houses of the line, and on
-passing a very respectable-looking house, the owner, sitting in the
-coolness of the twilight at his gates, seeing two strangers, rose to
-salute us and invited us to enter; an invitation so amiable and earnest
-that we accepted, and were ushered into the guest-chamber, clean and
-furnished with divans in eastern fashion, where we were entertained with
-the usual sweetmeats and coffee, while the daughter of the house went
-into the garden and collected for each of us a bouquet of roses, the
-most fragrant I ever remember to have seen. Our host narrated many
-incidents of the English rule in Cephalonia, and when we rose to go
-urged us to take up our quarters in his house; and finally, as we stood
-before the gates, as a last favor, offered me two beautiful Greek stelæ,
-memorials of the ancient dead, possibly of the period of the heroic
-defense of Samé. He had found them in digging his house cellar, and they
-were the ornaments of his court-yard; but learning that we were in
-search of antiquities, he offered them freely as his contribution. I
-shall not soon forget him or his fragrant roses and the dark-eyed Saméan
-girl who offered them to us.
-
-Of Crané scarcely a trace remains, even of the Pelasgic walls. It stood
-originally on the Lake of Argostoli (to which place we drove from Samé
-across the island), but at a point now far from the water’s edge. The
-lake is a singular geological phenomenon, formed by a number of springs
-bursting out from under the hills on which Crané lay, with a force
-sufficing to drive mills and form a strong current over the whole extent
-of the lake, which is a mile or more in diameter, though the surface of
-land to be drained by these subterranean outpours is, one would say,
-utterly inadequate to the quantity of water delivered.
-
-I took a guide at Argostoli, a man of the usual type of Greek guide, who
-assured me that he knew the ancient city, and had often guided strangers
-there. On arriving at the head of the lake I found him taking useless
-détours to bring me to the mills, which were driven by the springs; and
-on asking him what he went there for, he replied that he supposed I
-wanted to see the mills—since that was what other people had come for. I
-gave him an energetic sample of modern Greek, and ordered him to show me
-the way to the ancient city—Palaiokastron. “Palaiokastron!” he
-ejaculated with surprise and bewilderment in his eyes, and turned to ask
-some shepherd boys or other vagabonds, who were sauntering near by and
-watching us, where the Palaiokastron was. They declined to give any
-information, probably regarding him as a poacher on their preserves. I
-had, therefore, to depend on my antiquarian instincts, and, taking the
-lead, climbed over the heights above until, guided by the nature of the
-ground, I found the traces of the old wall.
-
-               [Illustration: CRANÉ FROM THE SEA SHORE.]
-
-The position of the city was entirely characteristic of the sites of the
-Pelasgic epoch: a bold, double peak, almost inaccessible on the
-sea-side, and on the two flanks still very precipitous, but connected
-with higher land on the side opposite the water. On the side from which
-the view is taken none of the ancient walls remain. The movement of
-earthquakes, the gradual fall of the rock at the precipitous edge, or
-the leveling labor of man has carried away all the blocks that made this
-side of the _enceinte_; but many of the stones may be recognized at the
-foot of the slope, some worked into modern walls, and some in the débris
-of the hill. On the opposite side the traces are more distinct, and the
-wall may be traced a long way, and the site of the citadel determined,
-with a gate and the angles of some of the towers. From near the citadel
-a view is obtained which shows a long line of the débris with a distant
-view of the town of Argostoli and the lake, and far beyond the lines
-that form the western shore of the superb harbor of Argostoli, almost
-without a rival in the Adriatic. The mass of wall is hardly to be
-distinguished from mere decomposed rock; so much have time and frost,
-the great demolishers, split and crumbled the flinty, massive limestone,
-the preferred material of the Pelasgi. On the further shore shown in the
-view may be seen, when the air is clear, the houses which form a modern
-village on the site of the ancient Palé. Here were Jason and his fellow
-adventurers entertained on their search after the golden fleece,—an
-expedition which perhaps we may translate from myth into probability, as
-an expedition to obtain an improved breed of sheep, a finer-wooled
-stock, from one of the northern and inland countries.
-
-At Argostoli I inquired about the ruins of Palé, but was told that they
-are mainly built over, and what is visible is only of the Roman period.
-I attempted, however, on our return to Samé, to run around in the
-_Kestrel_, as the voyage across the bay from Argostoli is neither
-pleasant nor sure in the small boats that make the service. We got up
-anchor as the land breeze began to blow at midnight, and I went to bed,
-having given orders to anchor in a little bay about half-way to the
-southern extremity of the island near which some ruins are indicated on
-the map. Awaking in the morning and finding a most suspicious
-tranquillity prevailing, I took a look at the outside surroundings, and
-found the yacht quietly moored on the same spot she had occupied the day
-before. A furious sirocco had sprung up and met us half-way to our
-destined anchorage, and after beating for an hour in vain, our little
-boat nearly buried in the seas, we were compelled to retreat and run
-back to our former place of refuge. There is no getting ahead in such
-small craft against the sharp, violent seas of the Mediterranean.
-
-Three days the sirocco blew, and we tried in vain to pass the time
-fishing. The Ionians have adopted dynamite so universally to catch their
-fish that they are as scarce as honest people on shore. One does find
-them sometimes, and we caught a shark about four feet long and a half
-dozen red mullet where, before dynamite was discovered, we could have
-caught in the same time a hundred-weight.
-
-The third night we got under way again, and, with a heavy swell still
-on, ran down to our harbor, reaching it as a flaming, splendid
-thunder-storm was coming up, the finale of our southern blow. We moored
-with cables out in three directions, and when the storm had all gone by
-I went ashore to hunt my ruins. A vagabond Cephalonian offered his
-services to carry my camera and guide me; but his crafty and evasive
-face, coupled with the assurance with which he clung to me, so irritated
-me that to rid myself of him I plunged into the pathless thicket.
-Traveling by compass, and searching long and closely, I found at last
-the remains of an early Pelasgic wall on a magnificent site, with a
-breezy outlook to sea north and west and overlooking a fertile valley
-inland, not especially pictorial, for it was too regular and too
-thoroughly cultivated, but through it ran a bright crystal brook
-overhung by huge pollard sycamores and fringed with oleanders just
-bursting into blossom and making the valley look like a rose-garden.
-Beyond the hill on which the city stood is a wild ravine through which
-runs the brook, which in Greek would naturally be dignified by the name
-of a river. Only a narrow neck, as usual, gave access to the site. It is
-impossible to ascertain with any kind of assurance what the name of the
-city was. It could not have been Nesia, the only one of the four
-principal ones we have not visited, for no ruins are visible approaching
-so late an epoch as the Roman, and it was probably Heraclea. Its
-position was magnificent for defense and on account of the fertility of
-the country behind it, but the site was probably abandoned very early
-for one further inland, where I was assured there were ruins of an
-ancient city. But my time had been so invaded by the loss of three days
-through the storm, and I was already so behind my programme, that I was
-not able to give the time necessary to the search and examination, or,
-indeed, to follow my plan of visiting Palé.
-
-    [Illustration: DISTANT VIEW OF PALÉ FROM THE CITADEL OF CRANÉ.]
-
-We climbed down to the brook, and I enjoyed the pastime of wading in the
-gurgling water as if I were a boy—it was so long since I had had that
-pleasure! We followed it into a close and gloomy gorge, where the crag
-of the ancient site overhung us like a huge, rough wall, almost a sheer
-precipice, and down at the foot ran the brook, which we followed to the
-sea. The sun was setting as we reached the yacht, and before we waked
-from sleep next morning we were bounding toward Zante.
-
-In Zante (Zakynthos) there is, so far as I could find, no ancient ruin
-whatever. The character of the rock explains this; for, except at the
-extreme southern end of the island, there is no stone which would resist
-even the weather-wear since the Roman epoch. The island seems to be a
-bed of sand raised from the sea and slightly hardened, so that, though
-the citadel hill is imposing enough as a mass, the material of it is
-being continually dissolved, and looks at a distance more like a bank of
-clay than like rock.
-
-                         [Illustration: ZANTE.]
-
-Zante is rhymingly called the “fior di Levante” (flower of the Levant),
-but it is difficult to see wherein it surpasses Corfu in any flowery
-attribute. I guess that, as in many other cases, the rhyme went for more
-than the fact, poetical or otherwise. It is fertile, and the land
-extends in an immense unpicturesque plain covered with olive-orchards
-and vineyards for miles from the port. Its history is unimportant and
-its mythology not interesting. It was said to have been colonized by
-Zakynthos, son of Dardanus of Troy, about 1500 years before Christ; but,
-as I have before said, all Greek dates and traditions of migration
-earlier than 1000 B. C. are purely conjectural. Zante suffered with the
-other islands from the endless and furious feuds of the Greek states;
-ravaged by turns by Athenian and Lacedæmonian, it came down to the
-Romans an unruly subject province, conquered and reconquered, and
-finally lay still in the tranquillity of slavery until Geneseric, king
-of the Vandals, began an epoch of devastation, which only concluded with
-the purchase, by the Venetians from the Sultan, of its soil depopulated
-by the sword and slavery.
-
-He who goes about in the Mediterranean has great chance of seeing bad
-weather, for it is the reverse of a pacific sea, and in a scrap of a
-boat like the _Kestrel_ the phenomena are sometimes interesting. Our
-course from Zante to Cerigo (ancient Cythera) leads by Cape Mátapan,
-opposite Cape Maleá, the two southern points of Greece, which enjoy a
-reputation of the kind that the American proverb gives to Hatteras and
-Lookout. The _Kestrel_ was again baffled, and, after beating for hours
-to get past the point, we had to put up the helm and run back to
-Navarino, the nearest shelter, before a gathering southerly blow. We lay
-in our old anchorage another day, and as the wind fell at night we beat
-out again and ran through the little archipelago of barren and desolate
-islands which lie off this part of the Morea. The weather still looked
-ugly, and thunder-clouds were gathering on the hills of Lacedæmon, and
-we could see the storm creeping down toward the sea, but the wind was
-fair, and we hoped to make Kapsali, in Cerigo, before the squall came
-down. Already the heights of Cerigo loomed before us, and we had begun
-to look for the landmarks, when the wind struck us. All hands made what
-haste was possible to get in sail and get up a small storm jib to lie to
-under, and not too quickly, for no common canvas would have stood that
-blast when it struck us. The sun was setting, and soon we were out of
-sight of all land in the driving spray and rain. The lightning was such
-as only they who sail in semi-tropical seas can have known, blinding and
-incessant; it seemed to have gathered around the mountains of Cerigo as
-a centre, for it went and came and still hung there as the rain swept
-down the coast and up again. As the wind fell off with the down-pouring
-of the torrents we got off again and pointed our bowsprit for Kapsali;
-and as the waters above and those below seemed to have formed an
-alliance against us, we went below and shut the hatch. Fortunately the
-wind was off shore and we had little sea, and managed to creep along
-nearly as much as we had drifted to the leeward; so that when the storm
-broke and the rain held up we were able to see the rocks off the coast,
-and finally to grope our way into the little port of Kapsali, which is
-secure against everything but a southerly blow. The wind, always
-contrary, fell off as we drew near the light-house, and we had to get in
-with our sweeps in the small hours of the morning, wet, cold, hungry,
-and jaded from the excitement of the night; for, though it is simple and
-safe in the telling, a large Greek brig foundered only two miles from us
-in the squall, and we had experienced the worst weather we had yet felt,
-and since the storm began no one had been able to eat or even get a cup
-of coffee.
-
-At Kapsali one begins to see the antique sailor ways and the evidence of
-the intense conservatism of the eastern world. The ships are drawn up on
-the beach at night as of old, and this necessitates a construction of
-the hull which cannot be far removed from that of the antique. Indeed, I
-have seen fishing-boats which might have served for the models of the
-galley on the Roman coins. The rigging, again, is of the simplest, and
-fitted for these seas, where the sudden squalls and the “meltem,” or
-gusts which come down from the mountains with no warning but a little
-cloud appearing on the summit, sometimes leave brief space for the
-taking in of sail. On the whole, wherever we look we see ample evidence
-that in the whole Levant, where the original population exists in a
-considerable proportion, the ways of life and thought are the same as
-those of Homer’s day. Nature has changed more than man. Where the
-Venetians came they brought new habits of military life and
-construction, and demolished all the old ruins to make fortresses; but
-on the domestic life and on the character of the Greek they had little
-or no influence.
-
-Whether Kapsali, a mere village, the port of Cerigo, had any ancient
-existence, we do not know. Cerigo lies on the high rock above it, and is
-a Venetian fortress; and, as is generally the case with Venetian
-fortresses, has used up all ancient masonry, if any existed, in its
-construction.
-
-                   [Illustration: CITADEL OF CERIGO.]
-
-The road from Kapsali to the town of Cerigo is of Venetian construction,
-kept in repair by those fitting successors of Venice, the English, who
-certainly left the Ionian Islands in a state of prosperity higher than
-that of to-day. Good roads were almost everywhere provided, and good
-ways of other kinds, now lost entirely, if I might believe the
-complaints of the people. The position of Cerigo is very strong for the
-days of Venetian rule, and it overhangs the port and country round on
-every side, except one, like a Pelasgic site, but I could find no stone
-of that date. It is not likely that there was any very ancient city
-there, as no tombs or evidences of a necropolis have been found. The
-formidable character of the position in the times of the Venetians is
-shown by the view from the road above the ravine which severs the
-mountain from the lesser hill over the port—a ravine whose existence is
-quite unsuspected from the port.
-
-The city itself is without interest except as the first really Eastern
-city one will see coming from the West, and as an example of Venetian
-fortress-building. The view from the citadel is fine and breezy, the
-islands of Ovo, Cerigotto, and Crete being visible, and a great expanse
-of that sea which, on sunny days, is in itself so beautiful from its
-color. You look down on the houses, white as continual whitewashing will
-make them, whose flat, terraced roofs serve in the hot and rainless
-summer as sleeping-places for the whole family. How many nights I have
-dragged my mattress from the bedroom out on this delightful substitute
-and let the night breeze fan me to sleep!
-
-Of history the island has next to none. Mythology puts the landing of
-Aphrodite here, as she came, foam-born and sea-borne, to found her
-religion in the Greek worlds.[7] The first who are traditionally
-reported to have colonized the island are the Phœnicians; but it is
-impossible to ignore the previous coming of the Pelasgi, who have left a
-well-marked ruin of the earliest type. To see the traces of the antique
-settlements, one had better go to Port San Nicolo if provided as we
-were; but secure an intelligent guide previously from Cerigo, as the
-country people, as in other islands, while pretending to know all about
-the antiquities, really know absolutely nothing. They know the tombs
-because they serve as sheep-folds, and they have sometimes a curious
-knowledge of the relative antiquity of the ruins; but they have heard
-modern myths, and apply them with the least possible regard to
-archæological facts, and invariably assure you that they know
-everything.
-
-So it happened that I was again, for want of choice, out on a search
-with an ignorant guide. There had been some excavations commenced on the
-site of what is now known as Palaiopolis (the old city), which evidently
-was Phœnician, and was occupied down to Roman times. There were some
-columns of Roman or Byzantine work unearthed, and from mere curiosity to
-know _his_ notions, I asked a shepherd boy watching his sheep near by
-what they were. “This,” he said, “was the palace of the king.” “Of what
-king?” I asked. “Don’t you know?” he said, opening his eyes at me as if
-this were the very _a b c_ of history. “Why, the palace of Menelaus.”
-There is an old tradition that it was the place of residence of Menelaus
-and Helen, and all the objects to be seen are attributed to them. The
-Phœnician city is close to the sea; the Pelasgic site is several miles
-back, and looms up on the highest mountains in the vicinity. In a
-previous visit I had seen but had not explored it; but now I determined
-to see the whole extent of it. My guide, who brought a donkey for my
-occasional changes of mode of locomotion, pretended to lead me to the
-ancient citadel; but when we reached the hill on which I knew it to be
-better than he, he began to inquire about it of the women at work in the
-fields; thereupon I, as usual, took the lead. Guided by the nature of
-the ground, I found all that remained of the ancient citadel wall—a
-fragment kept up by the chance of its being the limit of a field, and so
-kept in repair, but in such a state of dilapidation that but for the
-evidences of the continuity I would not have been sure that it was a
-wall. I followed the main wall a mile or more along the edge of the
-precipitous slope, and saw that it bore testimony to the importance of
-the ancient city, for it was wide in its compass and massive, with
-towers, gates, and flanking towers of the true Pelasgic style, but in
-most places only two or three stones high. I got an imposing view of the
-hill from below the lowest trace of wall, showing its position with
-reference to the valley below, through which ran once a river of some
-volume, if we may judge by the alluvial plains at its mouth, but which
-at the time of my visit in midsummer, was dry as desert dust. A strip of
-white pebbles shows where it still runs in winter-time. On the hills
-close to the sea-side, and on both sides of the mouth of this ancient
-river, used to lie the old Phœnician, Greek, and Roman city, whatever it
-was originally called,—probably Cythera, like the island. As I have
-said, it is now called Palaiopolis. The temple of Aphrodite, the people
-pretend, was on the hill near the citadel where now is an insignificant
-chapel, but with no evidence of antiquity except that there are in the
-construction of the chapel some large stones which are evidently of
-Hellenic cutting; but as the Greeks had the habit in all ages of keeping
-up the temples of their gods, there is nothing to show that it was a
-temple of Aphrodite rather than a Pelasgic god, which Aphrodite-Astarte
-was not, and her temple must have been near the sea.
-
-The site of Palaiopolis is marked by a quantity of tombs, most, if not
-all, of Hellenic date. There are now no temple remains there; but Spon,
-who visited the spot two hundred years ago, says that he saw the statue
-of Aphrodite, which was very ugly and of coarse brown stone, which
-reminds us of the statues of Cyprus. The rock is a soft conglomerate
-which the sea cuts away very rapidly, and apparently there has been a
-subsidence of the soil, since they say that when the sea is tranquil
-there may be seen beneath the water, some distance out from the actual
-shore, the ruins of a city. This may have been the port of
-Cythera—scarcely a fortified city, as the site must have been too low.
-Right and left of the rivulet which now represents the ancient river are
-bluffs of conglomerate, that on the left honeycombed by tombs, some of
-which have fallen with the rock, but of which others are still visible,
-opened to the elements but showing within the rock-cut graves. Many
-valuable articles of gold work have been found in past times, but the
-treasure seems to have been exhausted. These two bluffs are the lineal
-representatives and successors by right of position of what Aphrodite
-must have seen as she came ashore on the foam, otherwise they have no
-interest.
-
-The two low hills which were included in the city of Cythera are covered
-with fragments of building and traces of tombs, but, so far as I could
-find, no wall. This is all that is left of Aphrodite, Helen, and
-Menelaus in their land of fabled existence. The coming ashore of
-Aphrodite undoubtedly indicates, like that of Europa at Gortyna in
-Crete, the landing of a colony from Phœnicia, bearing the worship of
-Astarte, who became later assimilated to Aphrodite. Of the presence here
-of Helen and Menelaus there is no evidence in any trustworthy tradition.
-The subjection of Cythera to Sparta is of historic date. My conclusion
-as to the island is that in Homeric times it was Phœnician in its
-relations as Melos was at one time, as well as Santorin and other
-eastern islands, and that, like Corfu, it did not come into the Greek
-system.
-
-Opposite Cerigo, and with its snowy peaks glistening under the noonday
-sun, lies Crete. The strangest omission of the Odyssey would have been
-that of the island of Minos from its reminiscences, if the author had
-known of it; but, as we have seen in his interviews with Athene, Ulysses
-did not fail to include it in his geography though he had apparently
-never visited it, and like Egypt and Lotophagitis it was known by
-report. Of Egypt we had heard mention through the visit of Helen and
-Menelaus. Of the country where subsequently was established the Great
-Greek-African colony, Cyrene, we have no hint, yet the inhabitants of
-the Peloponnesus knew of Libya earlier than the Dorian invasion—as
-early, in fact, as 1500 B. C., as we know by the Karnac inscriptions.
-The story of Eumæus shows knowledge of the ways of that race of
-merchants and pirates, the Phœnicians, but nothing of their country.
-
-The questions of the personality and date of Homer and of the reality of
-the Trojan war are utterly diverse, and not, in fact, interdependent. As
-to the latter we have thus far no direct evidence whatever, beyond
-poetic traditions in which the supernatural is so strongly and
-inextricably involved with the pretense or actuality of history that no
-inferences can be drawn from any part of the narrative, though from its
-_ensemble_ we are assured that in its ancient form it was accepted as
-history by the entire Greek world as early as we know anything of that
-world with historical certainty. But that is no criterion. Even at this
-day myths grow and crystallize in the Oriental mind with a rapidity
-which leaves the ancients without any advantage. The universal belief
-from the first to the eighth century B. C. that the Iliad was history
-need not weigh with us. Scientific investigators differ so widely that
-we have no general inference to draw from their arguments. The most
-recent excavations leave a grave doubt whether any of the ruins
-excavated in the Troad can by any reasoning be admitted to be as old as
-the Iliad, and the remains on Hissarlik hill which Schliemann _more suo_
-has identified with Homer’s Troy are clearly the remains of the city of
-Crœsus, being of brick, which does not appear in the classic traditions
-or structures until his time, and we know by authentic history that he
-did build a city on this hill. Professor Jebb, one of the most acute of
-the literary investigators of the question, is convinced that the
-topography of the Iliad is eclectic, some of its indications suiting
-only Hissarlik and others only Bunarbashi; Max Müller maintains that the
-whole story is a solar myth; while Nicolaïdes, a patient and thorough
-Greek student of the Iliad, believes that he can follow the whole
-strategy of the poem on the plain of Troy. But the main questions
-involved in the Odyssey are of a different character and determined by
-different criteria. I offer my suggestions as to some of them with the
-deference due my masters in archæology.
-
-   [Illustration: LANDING-PLACE OF THE CYPRIAN APHRODITE OR ASTARTE.]
-
-The general knowledge shown in the Odyssey divides itself into kinds:
-that which was part of the general geography of the day, and this
-included the coasts shown on our route map; and that of which the poet
-had personal cognizance, which is limited to Corfu, Ithaca, Nericus, and
-possibly Pylos; and this exclusiveness suggests to us that Homer, a
-stranger in the West, had come, as I did, simply to follow and study the
-traces of Ulysses’ wanderings, and that he did so in obedience to a
-clearly preserved tradition as to his great exemplar, which was almost
-impossible without the still remembered personal presence. What he
-describes is admirably told, even to the “sandy shore” of Pylos, in a
-world whose sandy shores are rare; but Homer does not seem to have any
-mental vision of the lands and islands of which Ulysses only speaks in
-his story—the lands of the Cimmerians, of the Læstrygonians, the
-Cyclops, the Lotophagi, the homes of Circe and Calypso, are only heard
-of. Cythera, close by, is not named, and Crete and Egypt are only named.
-This kind of fulfillment, as well as this kind of omission, gives a tone
-of personality to the poem, as the composition of one person, and that
-one familiar with the scene of its major events, and it strengthens my
-belief in the hypothesis of the presence of Homer in Ithaca, and of the
-early date of the Odyssey, and by a certain implication argues for a
-logical relation between the hero and the Trojan war, implying the
-actuality of both.
-
-
-
-
-                     THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS.
-
-
-In the year 1820, before the struggle between the Hellenic population of
-the Turkish empire and the Porte had begun, and when all that attracted
-the notice of the civilized world to modern Greece was the little
-preserved to us of her art,—occasionally and fragmentarily found in the
-ruins of her great communities,—a peasant of Melos whose name was
-Theodore Kondros Botoni, working in his field to enlarge it by clearing
-away the _débris_ of the walls and structures of ancient Melos (which
-had been built on a steep hill-side, on a series of terraces, more or
-less natural or artificial, so that the ruins of one terrace fell down
-upon and encumbered that below it), saw, to his great bewilderment, the
-heap of rubbish which he was digging away at the bottom suddenly crumble
-down and display the upper part of an antique statue. The peasant
-hastened to the French consul to inform him of the discovery, and the
-latter negotiated the purchase of it for five hundred piastres and a
-complete dress of the fashion of the country. This was the statue known
-as the Venus of Melos.
-
-So far, there are no variations of the history, but one account says
-that the first or upper part was found several days before the lower,
-and the other, that they were found together; but the inexactitude of
-the documentary contemporary evidence is clear from the examination of
-the ground to-day, and from the contradictions contained in it. Dumont
-d’Urville, the commander of the _Chevrette_, a French man-of-war which
-visited Melos after the statue was found, alluding to the discovery of
-the theatre, says: “All the ground is covered with drums of columns and
-fragments of statues. One finds here and there great pieces of wall of a
-very solid construction, and many important tombs have been opened
-through the curiosity of strangers, and the cupidity of the
-inhabitants.” But neither the wall nor the tombs, nor any drum of column
-or fragment of statue (if any was found), could have had anything to do
-with the theatre. The theatre is very late work, and was never nearly
-finished, so could have possessed neither columns nor statues. This
-shows that the idea the commandant carried away was confused and
-untrustworthy as to details. He goes on to say: “Three weeks before our
-arrival at Melos, a Greek peasant, digging in his field inclosed in this
-circuit, struck some pieces of cut stone. As these stones, employed by
-the inhabitants, have a certain value, this induced him to dig farther,
-and he thus happened to uncover a species of niche, in which he found a
-marble statue, _two Hermes_, and some other marble fragments. The statue
-_was in two pieces, joined by two strong iron clamps_. The Greek,
-fearing to lose the fruit of his labor, had carried the upper part to a
-stable. The other was still in the niche.... It represented a naked
-woman, _whose left hand raised an apple and the right held a
-drapery_,[8] well composed and falling negligently from the hips to the
-feet. For the rest, _they are both mutilated, and actually detached from
-the body_.”
-
-I note by italics the points which are to be contrasted with other
-evidence.
-
-M. Dauriac, captain of the frigate _La Bonté_, writes from Melos, date
-11th of April, 1820: “There has been found, three days ago, by a peasant
-who was digging in his field, a marble statue of _Venus receiving the
-apple from Paris_. It is larger than life; _they have at this moment
-only the bust as far as the waist_. _I have been to see it._” Mr. Brest
-again writes, 12th of April: “A peasant has found in a field which
-belonged to him three marble statues, representing, one Venus holding
-the apple of discord in one hand, the other represents _the god Hermes,
-and the third a young child_.” The correspondence shows that Mr. Brest
-was entirely ignorant of everything connected with archæology or art. He
-probably heard one of the officers say that one of the objects was a
-Hermes, and he changes it into a statue of the god Hermes, but we see
-that there was only one Hermes. November 26th, Brest again writes: “His
-Excellency has left me orders to make researches in order to find the
-arms and other _débris_ of the statue, but to do that it is necessary to
-obtain a _bouyourouldon_ which will permit us to make excavations at our
-own expense, _because in the same niche where it was found there is
-reason to hope that we might find other objects_.”
-
-The contradictions are so palpable that it is clear that these documents
-are only of value as secondary archæological evidence. No one seems to
-have made an observation with exactitude.
-
-We have the whole statue found, in one, bound together by iron clamps;
-in another, only half had yet been found; in one, the statue is found
-holding the apple of discord in one hand; in another, receiving it from
-Paris; and in another still, we are told that search has been ordered
-for the arms, etc.
-
-In 1865 I visited Melos, and having made the acquaintance of Mr. Brest,
-son and successor of the French consul who secured the statue for the
-Louvre, he politely offered to guide me through the ruins of the ancient
-city. Among other things, we visited the locality where the statue was
-found, and he showed me the niche still standing as when the discovery
-was made.
-
-It was a slightly built work, of the height, _as nearly as I can
-remember_, of ten or at most twelve feet, and about five wide. It formed
-a part of an old boundary-wall of the field on which it opened, and
-above it the ground was level with the crown of the arch of the niche.
-It had no suite or connection with any other structure, except the
-boundary-wall in which it was, and there were no evidences of ruin or of
-foundation of antique buildings about it. The opening had been closed
-with rubbish, not with masonry, as was evident from the face of the side
-walls, which were of smooth, if not carefully laid, masonry. If as I
-believe not built for the concealment of the statue, it had been made
-for some unimportant purpose; perhaps the protection from the weather of
-the poor Hermes which is said to have been found with it. C. Doupault,
-architect, has published a _brochure_ with what he supposed important
-evidence on the question, in which, from data given him by old Brest
-twenty-seven years after the discovery, he reconstructs the apse of a
-seventh-century church, in which he places the statue. The whole study
-has no value whatever, as the sketch does not correspond with the ruins
-which I saw, and looking back to the correspondence quoted, it is clear
-that Brest, knowing nothing of archæology or art, caught at certain
-suggestions of the officers who saw the statue, and affirmed what they
-surmised. As to the fragments found, to which constant reference is
-made, there is not the slightest evidence that they were found in any
-connection with the statue, as none of the early evidence indicates that
-they were known when the statue was first taken under notice—on the
-contrary, it is said explicitly by Brest that he had orders to make
-researches to find the arms and other portions of the statue; indicating
-clearly that the arms alluded to had not been found with the statue, and
-that the connection between them and it was an after-thought, either of
-the peasant, who wished to increase the value of the statue by
-connecting with it fragments which he had found in other parts, or of
-the archæologists, who, seeking to restore the statue to what they
-judged to be its true action, connected the arm found, no one knows
-where, except at Melos, with the statue. It is undeniable that when the
-letters before quoted were written, there had been only conjecture as to
-the arms. Dauriac, writing on the 11th of April, says that they have
-only found the bust. Brest, November 26th, says that there is reason to
-hope that they might find other objects _in the same niche_—proof that
-it had not even then been cleared out. In fact, all we have of
-documentary evidence goes for nothing beyond showing that the statue was
-found at a certain place on a certain date; and if the two halves of the
-statue did not fit exactly we could not be certain that they were found
-at the same time and place. The hypothesis of the apple of discord is
-based on a conjecture of some of the officers, and has no further
-confirmation than that an arm and hand, with what may be an apple or a
-cup, seem to have been found somewhere in the island about the same
-time; but they evidently are not of the statue, nor even of the same
-epoch.
-
-Over or somewhere near the niche an inscription was said to have been
-found which records the dedication of an exedra by a gymnasiarch to
-Hercules and Hermes. The date of this inscription, according to
-conjecture based on the inscription itself, is about a century before
-Christ, _i. e._, long after any possibility of such a work being
-produced had gone by.
-
-These are all the positive data we have to work on. They suffice,
-however, for about twenty monographs in French, German, and English; and
-a late German work, by Dr. Goeler von Ravensburg, exhausts all the
-possible and impossible conjectures to establish its character in
-accordance with the original attribution of a Venus receiving the apple.
-
-In the year 1880, I made another visit to Melos, on commission from “The
-Century” magazine, to photograph whatever might remain which had any
-connection with the statue; but found the niche gone, and no trace of
-foundations of any kind, or walls, city or other, very near the spot
-which was again pointed out to me as that where the Venus was found.
-
-It would seem that in the energetic excavation that followed the last
-great archæological revival, everything that was suspected to conceal
-works of art had been dug away.
-
-I found an old man, a pilot well known in our navy, Kypriotis, who had
-seen the statue when it was brought out, being a boy of about fourteen.
-At that time Mr. Brest was a child, and retained only slight personal
-recollection of the event; but it was evident that he, like his father
-in 1847, had mingled in his impressions conjecture of others and his
-own, with facts perverted, and details conceived without sufficient
-basis. Nothing new was to be got.
-
-The old Melos is utterly deserted, and the modern town is built on a
-pinnacle above it, which does not seem ever to have been included in the
-range of the city. The port is changed from the ancient site, where now
-a breakwater would be needed, as the land seems to have sunk greatly,
-and the old basin of the port is silted up to a point at the bottom of
-the bay, where a comparatively modern village has grown up, called
-Castro.
-
-The magnificent harbor used to make of the island an important station
-before telegraphs were established, and might again, if the telegraph
-were laid to it; but now a man-of-war rarely calls, except to take a
-pilot for the Archipelago, and a Greek steamer stops once in a
-fortnight. But in heavy weather, any ship caught near runs for Melos.
-This keeps the place alive, but it has dwindled to a mere island
-village, where the vast labyrinths of tombs which perforate the hills
-show more human industry than the dwellings of the living. Earthquakes
-and malaria have desolated and almost depopulated it.
-
-We had left Cerigo for Crete, and intended to take Melos on our return
-to Peiræus, but when within an hour of land we were caught by a terrific
-south-wester, the most to be dreaded of all the winds of the Ægean, and
-in spite of all we could do we were obliged to give up and run before
-the gale where it would send us. It was late in the evening when its
-fury came down on us, and taking in all sail except a small storm-sail
-at the foot of the mast to keep from coming up into the wind, we ran
-before it into the black night. I knew that there were no rocks ahead
-before Melos, and if we only made the island by daylight, we could
-easily fetch the port; but if not, and the yacht ran at night into the
-little archipelago of which Melos is part, it would be next to
-impossible to choose where our bones should be laid, for there are no
-lights, and many islands and rocks. The sea was, for our little
-twelve-ton craft, something fearful, and we thumped and hammered till
-the little thing quivered, when a wave struck her, almost as if we had
-come to the rocks. Sleep was out of the question—to sit or stand,
-equally so, and we kept to our berths, as the only way to avoid being
-pitched about like blocks. How long that night was! and in the middle of
-it I attempted to get up, and when I put my foot on the cabin-floor,
-found myself stepping into the water. We had sprung a leak with the
-straining.
-
-But day came and cheerfulness. We ran in between the huge cliffs which
-form the portal of Melos harbor, with the wild surges beating against
-them till the spray flew high enough to have buried a larger craft than
-ours. Tired, aching, and hungry, for nothing could we get to eat till we
-arrived in port, we cast anchor in the welcome harbor late in the
-afternoon. Even then, the sea ran so high that we could not land until
-the next day.
-
-Castro is a pile of white houses, rising in terraces from the shore; the
-streets mostly stairways, and the houses all whitewashed till they blind
-one in that rarely broken sunlight.
-
-  [Illustration: THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS. (DRAWN BY BIRCH FROM A
-                             PHOTOGRAPH.)]
-
-I landed, and, as usual, went to the little café, where the magnates of
-the village were discussing the arrival and the storm—the worst, they
-said, for many years. I called, of course, on Brest, who, to my
-surprise, remembered me after eighteen years; and we made an appointment
-to revisit together the sites I knew, and to see those I had not known
-before,—important excavations having been made since my former visit.
-
-We went first to the new port, where some admirable statues, since taken
-to Athens, had been recently found. The owner of the little field by the
-water, which occupies the site of the inner port, having occasion to
-sink a well, struck the ruins of a temple of Neptune, and three statues
-were found, one of Neptune, a female goddess draped, but lacking the
-head, and a mounted warrior, apparently Perseus.
-
-The Greek Government, according to their laws, forbade the exportation
-of them by any foreign government, and finally purchased them for thirty
-thousand francs—certainly a very small price. I succeeded in seeing them
-later, still in their boxes at Athens, and though not equal to the
-Venus, or of the same epoch, they are very fine works.
-
-But there the excavations stop; the owner had no means to pump out the
-water that flooded his diggings, the Government had no more, and as no
-one is allowed to dig unless for the Greek museum, whatever remains
-under ground and water is likely to remain there another generation.
-
-We then climbed up the zigzag road to the theatre. It is, as I have
-said, of late times, probably Roman, and was never complete. Fragments
-of unfinished ornament lie still where the stage should have been, but
-it had clearly never been carried up above the seven ranges of seats now
-existing. It was just outside the wall of the inner city, on the brow of
-the hill, and overlooked the spacious harbor and looked out to sea.
-There is no record of any sculpture having been found there. It was
-purchased and excavated by the King of Bavaria.
-
-Less than half a mile beyond, going with the sea at our backs, was the
-field where the statue was found. The Greeks have entertained a great
-deal of indignation at the rape, which they affect to call robbery; but
-the civilized world may thank the French captain who, coming to get it,
-and finding it already half-embarked on board a Turkish vessel, destined
-for Constantinople, made the most legitimate use that was ever made of
-_force majeure_, and took it away from the Turk to transfer it to the
-hold of his own ship. Otherwise, no one knows what vile uses it might
-have gone to, or what oblivion and destruction. All the world knows it
-now, but Greek genius would have forever lacked one of its greatest
-triumphs in modern times if it had disappeared in the slums of Stamboul.
-
-                   [Illustration: STREET IN CASTRO.]
-
-As I have said, there is now no trace of any construction of any kind to
-be seen at the locality. The wall in which was the niche was gone, and
-the field of the present owner has encroached considerably on the space
-beyond, the _débris_ being piled up in huge masses like walls, and two
-or three terraces above runs the citadel wall, a mass of Hellenic
-masonry built of blocks of lava. The Pelasgic walls, of which some
-authors speak, do not exist anywhere in the island. Brest took up a
-stone, and as we stood on the wall of _débris_ above, cast it into the
-field, and said, “There stood the Venus!” In the illustration I have put
-a white cross on the spot.
-
-There cannot remain the slightest doubt that the statue had been
-concealed, and to my mind, the circumstances indicated for its
-concealment are these: The niche, judging from its character, had been
-built in Roman times; as the rubbly nature of the masonry indicated,
-probably covered with stucco, as it would have been if intended for
-ornament, and was designed as a shelter for an altar, or for the statue
-of some divinity—Terminus, Hermes, Pan or Faunus, the more Roman
-companion of him. Here the inscription and the Hermes found furnish a
-plausible clew, and agree with the indication of the masonry in pointing
-out the epoch of this conjunction of circumstances as subsequent to the
-second century before Christ; how long after we cannot in any wise
-indicate.
-
-[Illustration: THE SITE OF OLD MELOS, FROM THE PORT. (WHITE CROSS SHOWS
-                     WHERE THE “VENUS” WAS FOUND.)]
-
-Now as to the epoch of the statue there can be no doubt that it was of
-the immediately post-Phidian epoch; and all the most authoritative
-opinions attribute it to the Attic school, and probably of the time and
-school of Scopas—and some of the weightiest authorities have accepted
-Scopas himself as the author.
-
-Anything more definite than this it is impossible to establish by any
-now known evidence. The concealment of the statue, then, was several
-centuries later than the execution of it.
-
-The Greeks of the classical epoch, even down to the first century after
-Christ, retained, amidst all the degradation of their contemporary art,
-a distinct recognition of the excellence of the elder work, as the
-enormous artistic as well as pecuniary value of some of the masters’
-_chefs d’œuvre_ prove. That this was one of them, and of one of the
-chief masters, all civilization agrees, and, although we have lost the
-name of the author, the people who hid it must have known it well. The
-availing themselves of the niche, ready-made to their hands, indicates
-that the possessors of the statue worked in haste, piling up stones in
-front of the niche, instead of walling it up.
-
-This indicates the haste of impending attack, or work done in secret. In
-either case, if the statue had a temple in that locality, it would be
-concealed near it, or near the place where it was accustomed to stand;
-but no such temple is known. We may remember the contrast with the
-colossal and magnificent Hercules found in a drain at Rome, carefully
-covered over with good masonry. Concealment was the object in both
-cases, and the greater haste and furtiveness with the Melian statue
-indicate rather that it was brought from a distance than that it could
-be a divinity of the island.
-
-Conjecture as to the origin of the statue, if my hypothesis is true,
-points to Athens, not only because the work is Attic, but because we
-know by the coins of Melos, which in all the latest coinages still bear
-the owl of Athens, that Melos belonged to that city as late as she had
-any Greek allegiance, which must have been some time into the Empire, as
-the Romans long made it a policy to preserve a certain kind of autonomy
-in the Greek states, even when their subjection was complete. That it is
-Attic, no one can doubt in face of the evidence I shall show. That
-Athens was the only city likely to send to Melos a treasure of this
-kind, concealment of which was impossible in Athens, is almost certain.
-
-I conclude that it was a highly valued statue of Athens, sent to Melos
-in time of great danger, to be concealed and preserved. What period this
-might have been is only to be guessed at; it is therefore hardly worth
-while to say more about it, except to indicate that four periods in late
-Athenian history might furnish the motive requisite: when the army of
-Mithridates, under Archelaus, took Athens; the wars between the factions
-of Marius and Sylla; the Lacedemonian war, and the invasions of the
-Iconoclasts. The Romans do not appear, in spite of all their plundering
-and the enormous quantity of statues carried away from Greece, to have
-desecrated the temples of the Greek gods, as we see that Pausanias, in
-the century after Christ, found the most valuable of them _in situ_, as,
-for instance, the Diana Brauronia of Praxiteles, the Perseus of Myron,
-with others of great fame. The above conclusion, considering all the
-known and reasonably conjecturable details of the discovery and
-concealment, seems to me justifiable,—as well as that it was concealed
-at some time between the century or two centuries before Christ and the
-end of the first century after.
-
-Now, what was the statue? We have so long been in the habit of accepting
-all female statues, not distinguished by well-known symbols of their
-divinity, as Venuses, that we make no distinction even in cases where
-the type demands it. And yet the dominant characteristic of Greek
-sculpture is this close adherence to established types. We are never at
-a loss to distinguish Diana, Minerva, Juno, or even Ceres and the lesser
-deities. Venus, it is true, came into vogue as subject for the sculptors
-of sacred statues later than some of the others; but all that we know of
-the Venus of the artists indicates that it was _par excellence_ the
-womanly type. The treatment of the head in Greek sculpture was a point
-apparently of doctrine, as it was in Byzantine and in the later
-ecclesiastical art of Greece. It is always in a conventional type,
-utterly separated from the individual.
-
-                    [Illustration: MEDICEAN VENUS.]
-
-                     [Illustration: VENUS URANIA.]
-
-                   [Illustration: CAPITOLINE VENUS.]
-
-                 [Illustration: VENUS OF THE VATICAN.]
-
-                   [Illustration: VENUS ANADYOMENE.]
-
-              [Illustration: VENUS VICTRIX OF THE LOUVRE.]
-
-This unquestionable fact should have taught us to reject from the Venus
-category many statues which are now included in it, as for instance, the
-Callipyge, and all in which a trace of portraiture is to be found,
-besides diminishing that category by all the statues of the heroic type,
-as in none of the legends of beliefs of the Greek faith was Venus ever
-endowed with a heroic quality. The preconceived notion that the Melian
-statue was a Venus has been a continual cause of confusion. This was, as
-I have shown, the first hypothesis of the French officers, none of whom
-appear to have been possessed of any archæological knowledge, and who
-had the commonly prevailing notion that any nude statue must be a Venus.
-I have taken the pains to collect a number of representations of the
-various so-called Venuses, and most of which the type, or symbols,
-justify us in so classifying; and a comparison of their character will
-show what is the Venus type,—making this proviso, however, that we have
-no other than internal evidence for denominating most of them Venuses.
-The chief of these, in what we seek for most, _i. e._, the impersonal
-type, which was inseparable from the Greek deities down through the
-decline of art, which began in the time of Alexander, are: the Medici, a
-distinctly marked Attic work, later, however, than the Melian statue;
-the Capitoline, apparently a still later reminiscence of the Medici and
-one of many similar reminiscences; and the “Venus coming out of the
-bath,” at Naples, a better work than the last, but still already widely
-separated from the purely conventional type of the Medicean, which we
-may authoritatively accept as the Venus type of the best period of the
-Venus sculpture. The close comparison of the heads and details of the
-flesh will give those who do not know the originals an invaluable lesson
-in the treatment of the figure in Greek art. The so-called “Venus
-Urania,” at Florence, marks, to my mind, a distinct departure from the
-Venus type,—so marked, indeed, as to make me decline to accept it as a
-Venus, while the still typical character of the face is one which must
-place it in a good period of art, before ideality of treatment had
-entirely given way to individuality. The art is of too good an epoch to
-have departed so far from the type of Venus, if intended for her, and
-indicates rather a nymph, or some inferior deity. The Venus of the
-Vatican is too late and too low down in the scale of art to be an
-authoritative witness in the matter; while the Venus Anadyomene, while
-still reserving the ideal character, resembles the Urania rather, in a
-separation of the type from the Venus. Later still, and perhaps at the
-end of that period which may be called the ideal period of antique
-sculpture, most probably of Græco-Roman art, is the Venus Victrix of the
-Louvre; unquestionably a Venus, for she bears in her hand the
-apple—symbol of fruitfulness. But how far from the type of our Melian
-treasure! In that is the most distinct approach to the Athena type—a
-purely heroic ideal. I cannot believe that its sculptor intended it for
-a Venus.
-
-                    [Illustration: VENUS OF CAPUA.]
-
-  [Illustration: RESTORATION OF THE STATUE AS PROPOSED BY MR. TARRAL.]
-
-The patient German admirer of our statue, which Von Ravensburg is, has
-gone through all the literature and all the conjectures which it has
-given rise to, as to the chief problem which gives interest to any
-investigation, _i. e._, the restoration of the statue. No attempt will
-satisfy all the investigators; but that which Von Ravensburg accepts
-with approval—viz., the restoration of Mr. Tarral (an Englishman
-residing in Paris for many years, who has given his chief attention to
-this problem)—shows so entire a want of appreciation of the character of
-antique design, which is, after all, our only clew, that I shall not
-hesitate to put aside, not only the solution proposed, but the judgment
-that could accept as satisfactory such a solution of one of the most
-interesting of artistic problems. I give the figure which Von Ravensburg
-publishes as Tarral’s restoration of the statue, that one may see how
-absolutely its inanity is at variance with the spirit of Greek design.
-The mere completion of the statue, in this sense, destroys the dignity
-and unity of the work so completely that to look at it is enough for a
-cultivated judgment to decide that, whatever it may have been, this it
-was _not_. The author gives, also, photographs of the fragments
-found—fragments so imperfect and corroded that we can only say that they
-appear to be from a very low period of art, and are utterly worthless as
-data for measure or opinion, from their extremely fragmentary state.
-
-   [Illustration: FRAGMENTS FOUND AT MELOS ATTRIBUTED TO THE STATUE.]
-
-Besides, I have shown, from the records of discovery, that there is no
-further reason to connect them with the statue than that they were also
-found at Melos.
-
-In following the whole course of the demonstration which Von Ravensburg
-attempts of this solution of the problem, I arrive at the conclusion
-that, with all his patience and research, his judgment is utterly
-untrustworthy on a problem which requires not only freedom from
-preconception, but long cultivation of artistic perception and general
-critical ability. Mr. Tarral’s attempt proves, to my mind, only that
-this was not the solution.
-
-               [Illustration: VICTORY OF BRESCIA—FRONT.]
-
-                [Illustration: VICTORY OF BRESCIA—SIDE.]
-
-The various suggestions, more or less authoritative, made as to the
-restoration, and thence as to the determination of the attributes of the
-statue, are to be summed up briefly. The Count de Clarac, the then
-curator of the antiques of the Louvre, adopted the Venus with the apple
-hypothesis, but afterward abandoned it in favor of one put forward by
-Millingen, that it was a Victory. This is one of the theories of the
-restoration which has found the greatest number of adherents. Several
-restorations have been proposed, which make the statue part of a group,
-all which, though defended or proposed by many _dilettanti_, I reject,
-for what to me seem sufficient reasons, viz.: _Firstly_, we have in the
-statue no evidence whatever that it formed part of a group, and without
-some such the hypothesis is gratuitous; _Secondly_, we have—with one
-exception, which I shall presently note, and which gives no countenance
-to such a theory—no statue or parts of statues which agree with it in
-artistic quality, or even none which lend themselves to a group, if such
-were made up by various sculptors; _Thirdly_, that, at the epoch in
-which the statue was produced, any group which has been suggested would
-have been out of accordance with the aims of art, as practiced by the
-Greeks. The only evidence in favor of such a theory is that in some
-antique fragments or coins are indications of such a figure as the
-Melian in combination. But, as this statue must have been in its own
-time nearly as celebrated, relatively, as in ours, it must have given
-rise to many imitations and adaptations. It may have given rise to some
-which support the group theory, but to more which support an opposing
-theory.
-
-[Illustration: VICTORY RAISING AN OFFERING (TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS, THE
-                          ACROPOLIS, ATHENS).]
-
-Von Ravensburg goes over, in detail, all the group theories, and easily
-finds fatal objections to all. What most surprises me is that any one
-ever tried to put it into a group, so completely by itself does it stand
-in every sense of the word.
-
-Millingen, in 1826, started his theory that it was a Victory holding a
-shield in both hands. I am quite convinced that many who have started
-other theories would have adopted this if they had not been anticipated
-in proposing it. The vanity of archæological research, and eagerness to
-propose something new is so dominant in most archæologists that they
-exercise more ingenuity to advance some new theory than would be
-requisite to show the validity of an old one. And the statue of Melos
-has been preëminent in fruitfulness of theories of all qualities and
-grades of improbability. Millingen, however, supported his theory by a
-similar statue known as the Capuan Venus, a reproduction, I believe, in
-Roman times, of the Melian statue, probably through some other
-intermediate copy or reproduction, as the sculptors of the Capuan statue
-could not have seen the Melian. The arms are a modern and abominable
-restoration. Here, again, I must, in passing, protest against the
-attribution to the Venus type of all nude or semi-nude statues. There is
-nothing in the Capuan which indicates that it was intended as a Venus.
-Millingen quotes Apollonius of Rhodes as describing a statue of Venus
-looking at herself in the shield of Mars, which she herself is holding,
-but this is no evidence of the type correspondence, and the gravamen of
-the matter lies precisely in the diversity of the type from the
-recognizable Venuses. But the Capuan is too far in type and treatment
-from the Melian to serve as definite argument. Such as it is, an item in
-the discussion, I will not exaggerate its importance, though I believe
-it to be a far-away recollection of the Melian statue.
-
-“The Victory of Brescia” is another of the recollections, rather than
-reproductions, of the type of which I believe the Melian statue to be
-the original. It is in bronze, is later, and has the wings, but the type
-is unmistakable, and the action of the torso and head is sufficiently
-different from our statue to show that it was only an emulation, and not
-a plagiarism, that was intended.
-
-The drapery differs in the arrangement, being of bronze and agreeing
-with some undisputed Victories at Athens, but the action of the left leg
-holding the shield is the same, and that of the arms corresponds very
-nearly, as far as the arms remain in the Melian work. As a whole, it
-reminds one more of the latter than does any other of the statues of its
-class.
-
-The case is one in which archæological knowledge is of very little
-value, unless it be aided by thorough artistic study and a knowledge of
-the requirements of art proper. The archæologist, like other scientists,
-must have positive evidence to work on; and the testimony of pure taste,
-the intuitions of an artistic education, are of no use to him except as
-confirmatory. The intuition of the artist, whose taste has been educated
-by long study of the works he has to deal with, arrives at opinions by a
-kind of inspiration to which science often lacks all means of access. In
-the case of this statue, archæology has no evidence to weigh, and the
-ponderous erudition which Overbeck, Müller, Jahn, Welcker, and others
-have piled on the question has no foundation. We can determine with
-comparative certainty that the statue belongs to the epoch between
-Phidias and Praxiteles, because we have the work of the school of
-Phidias and sufficient comparative data for that of Praxiteles [and now,
-since the discovery of the Hermes at Olympia, positive data] to judge
-from; and we have a right to say that the Melian statue came between
-these, but beyond this nothing—no clew except what lies in the design
-and the unities attendant on it, of which _per se_ the professed
-archæologist is no judge.
-
-In working about the Acropolis of Athens some years ago, I photographed,
-amongst other sculptures, the mutilated Victories in the Temple of Niké
-Apteros, the “Wingless Victory,” the little Ionic temple in which stood
-that statue of Victory of which it is said that “_the Athenians made her
-without wings that she might never leave Athens_”; and looking at the
-photographs afterward, when the impression of the comparatively
-diminutive size had passed, I was struck with the close resemblance of
-the type to that of the “Venus” of Melos. There are the same large,
-heroic proportions, the same ampleness in the development of the nude
-parts, the same art in the management of the draperies, and Richard
-Greenough, the American sculptor, has called my particular attention to
-the curious similarity in the treatment of the folds of the drapery, in
-the introduction of a plane between the folds, a resemblance not found
-in any other similar works as far as I know.
-
- [Illustration: VICTORY UNTYING HER SANDAL (TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS, THE
-                          ACROPOLIS, ATHENS).]
-
-  [Illustration: VICTORIES LEADING A BULL TO SACRIFICE (TEMPLE OF NIKÉ
-                   APTEROS, THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS).]
-
-They are little high reliefs, part of a balustrade which surrounded the
-cortile of the Temple of Niké Apteros, hardly three feet high in their
-perfect state, and now without heads or hands or feet. There are four of
-them: one apparently untying her sandal; another,—that which best shows
-the type of the figure—raising an offering or crown, and two others
-leading a bull to sacrifice. I give the series. Note the exquisite
-composition of the drapery below the knee of the Victory raising the
-offering, and the superb flow of the entire draperies in the
-sandal-tying figure, but, above all, the Victory type in the whole
-assemblage. How absolutely it agrees with that of the Melian statue, and
-how utterly alone in all antique art that is but for these!
-
-Since I have begun this study, it has twice happened that artist friends
-trained in the French school (_i. e._, in the only school which
-cultivates the perception of style in design, and the only one that
-emulates the Greek in its characteristics), both trained draughtsmen,
-came into my room, and without any remark I showed them the photographs
-of the Victories at Athens. They were new to both, but in one case as in
-the other the first expression was: “How like the Venus of Melos!” And
-the similarity runs through the treatment of every part—the management
-of drapery to express the action of the limbs, the firm, heroic mould of
-the figure, and the modeling of the round contours. Compare (in the
-casts, if possible, as the small scale of my illustrations will not show
-the point so clearly) the right shoulder of the Venus with that in the
-stooping Victory. The slight differences which exist are just what might
-be expected between a figure which stands as principal, isolated, and to
-be seen from all sides, and one which was secondary, subordinate, of
-partial decorative use, and to be seen only in one view. My
-illustrations will hardly convey the strikingness of the similarity, but
-I defy any one to compare side by side the series of Victories and the
-Melian statue in casts and not admit that the type, the treatment, the
-ideal, are the same, as sisters may be the same, or at least as mother
-and daughter.
-
-The little Temple of Niké Apteros had once, we know, a statue of Victory
-without wings, and we know the _bon mot_, which I have given above,
-which it suggested. The decorations of the temple are attributed to
-Scopas and his school, and this Victory was unique, so far as we know,
-in being wingless. We may well conceive, with the symbolical
-meaning—talismanic, rather—implied in what we know of it by this
-witticism, that the Athenians would have a special anxiety to keep it
-from becoming a trophy in the hands of an enemy, even one who might not
-be disposed to desecrate the temples of the greater gods. Niké was
-rather an attribute or variation of Athena than a distinct goddess, and
-was as such both of great value to the Athenians, being the _alter ego_
-of their patroness; and of less reverence to the enemy, as not Minerva
-herself. At all events, when Pausanias visited Athens the Niké Apteros
-had gone. Her temple still stood there, and near it on the Acropolis
-hill stood some of the greatest art-treasures of the antique world
-untouched.
-
-          [Illustration: THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS—FRONT.]
-
-               [Illustration: THE “VENUS” RESTORED—FRONT.
-             (TRACED FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF A LIVING MODEL.)]
-
-               [Illustration: THE “VENUS” RESTORED—SIDE.
-             (TRACED FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF A LIVING MODEL.)]
-
-           [Illustration: THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS—SIDE.]
-
-My theory, open to the grave objection that it is one in which
-hypothesis bears an undue proportion to proven fact (yet not so great as
-any of the group theories, and hardly more than any other theory, for
-all are constructed out of the same aerial substance), is that the
-Melian statue is the original Niké Apteros from the little temple on the
-Acropolis of Athens. If so, one can understand the whole of my theory of
-concealment, attribution, and type, because this statue above all others
-would come under the rancor of a victor and its flight would become an
-humiliation to Athens. It was like the standard of a defeated army, to
-be kept at all hazards from the enemy. Hurried away to Melos, it was
-safe from the invader, but no nearer point was secure. The restoration
-in my hypothesis becomes that of the Victory in some attitude connected
-with regarding, or recording, on the shield or a tablet the names of the
-Attic heroes, or battles, and my opinion is that she has just finished
-writing, but I am disposed to uncertainty on the exact phase of the
-action, only insisting on that of the Recorder. The minutiæ of
-description of many antique works of art which we owe to Pausanias and
-Pliny was plainly impossible with this. Neither ever saw it, but its
-memory existed in artistic tradition and has been repeated in the
-statues we have seen, probably only a few of those which once existed.
-
-Von Ravensburg sums up the objections to the shield-bearing Victory and
-to the theory of Millingen as follows: The theory would indicate that
-she leaned back to balance the weight of the shield, but the objections
-urged are that if the shield were larger it would hide too much (yet in
-an earlier part of the book the statement is made that a part of the
-figure, and just that part covered by the shield, is comparatively
-unfinished, which has given rise to the theory of a group in which one
-side of the statue was hidden); if it were small, the weight would not
-be enough to account for the attitude. And, in the next breath, he urges
-that the grand heroic character _is an objection to her struggling with
-a burden_. But if a goddess, and of this robust type, the burden ought
-not to oppress her, however great, humanly speaking. But in point of
-fact there is no noteworthy degree of backward inclination. To test the
-question, I photographed a model in the attitude required to hold a
-shield on her left knee and write on it.
-
-The result was very slightly different from that of the statue. A part
-of the backward action of the model was due to the necessity of a
-support to enable her to remain in the pose necessary to be
-photographed, but the action of writing is better expressed by the
-statue.
-
-The action of the statue is that of a figure which stands nearly
-balanced and in repose, with the first movement in a forward action,
-like one who reaches out to give, take, or write, or any similar action
-or the moment after the action is complete. The particular moment we
-cannot determine without the possession of the fore-arms. Von Ravensburg
-goes on to say that he does not mean to affirm that the holding of a
-shield does not suit the action of the upper part of the body, but
-maintains that it does not explain it _particularly well_. But after the
-inane restoration given forth with his high approval, we may be
-permitted to doubt that his artistic taste has been as carefully
-developed as his archæological acumen. He quotes Overbeck as objecting
-to the shield resting on the left knee, that there are no traces on the
-left thigh which the shield must have left; but Wittig and Von Lützow
-have recognized these very marks, and they are distinctly visible even
-in the east, as far as would be expected if a bronze shield merely
-rested on the drapery, and the shield, if there was one, was in all
-probability of bronze, held well out from the body, and resting on the
-knee raised for that purpose, the foot being supported by a helmet lying
-on the ground. But, further, he says these considerations are quite
-superfluous, for the position of the left leg of the Melian statue
-contradicts the shield-supporting, and he quotes in support Valentin,
-that the left thigh would incline outward to secure a balance, and that
-the supporting of a heavy object on the thigh thrown in would violate
-the laws of equilibrium. That this is not true is shown by the “Victory
-of Brescia,” in which the action is precisely this, and the pose of the
-thigh is the same as that of the Melian statue. Moreover, I tried a
-model again in this view, and the result is given in the illustration.
-
-The knee took quite readily the action indicated, and, indeed, would be
-compelled to by the pressure of the shield if the weight rested partly
-on the left hand, as it must to have left the right free for any action
-whatever. Both nature and the antique assert precisely the contrary to
-that which Valentin assumes. The length to which the argument against
-this restoration is carried by him may be judged from the assertion that
-the action of the “Victory of Brescia” is that of an outward push of the
-left thigh, to make it agree with that of the theory Von Ravensburg lays
-down. But the assertion is purely gratuitous. If the Brescian bronze is
-an argument, as far as it goes it obviates every difficulty in the
-interpretation of the Melian statue by taking, so far as the action of
-the limbs is concerned, the very action of the latter.
-
-There is but one objection to the restoration theory I propose which
-deserves serious consideration—that of the goddess looking off or above
-the point at which she would be writing _if she were writing_. Half the
-ingenuity displayed in many of the proposed restorations, or half the
-sophistry employed by Von Ravensburg to combat this, would carry us over
-much greater difficulties. In later Greek work, when art was sought for
-its own sake, and consistency continually sacrificed to the grace of a
-pose and harmony of the lines, we should not be surprised at the goddess
-looking at one point and writing at another; but at this period the
-dramatic unities were sacred alike in poetry as in art. But I suppose
-that, unlike the Brescian statue, she is not at the moment engaged in
-writing, but pausing as having just finished, and, looking out from her
-pedestal in the little temple, gazes out toward Marathon, in which
-direction the temple opens, and this is no difficulty in the
-restoration. A little of that kind of imagination so much abused in
-modern art-criticism, which consists in attributing to the artist all
-the fancies which arise in our minds in the contemplation of his work,
-all the far-fetched and poetic visions our own eyes have conjured up,
-would supply all deficiencies in our theory.
-
-But while I maintain that my theory has more accordances with the known
-facts and actual qualities of the statue than any other, and presents
-fewer gaps in the demonstration, I am unwilling to lay down any theory
-not sustainable by what we know of Greek art, and I admit the difficulty
-as frankly as I state those of other theories. Doing so, however, I
-still maintain that not only is there the means of reconciliation of my
-hypothesis of an actual shield-inscribing Victory with the statue as it
-is, but even in case I am compelled to abandon this particular point,
-and advocate the modification of Millingen that she holds the shield
-with both hands and looks at it, my main hypothesis—that the statue is a
-Victory and no Venus, and the particular wingless Victory of Athens—is
-untouched. We do not know what the Niké Apteros was doing. What we can
-see is that this statue was more probably holding a shield, either
-contemplatively, or pausing, just having written on it, than taking any
-other action.
-
-                  [Illustration: VICTORY OF CONSANI.]
-
-If we may accept the analogy of the Apollo Belvidere, which also looks
-off in the same inexplicable way, it would illustrate my hypothesis
-still further, but the Apollo is later and less dramatic. If we hold to
-the strict dramatic quality of the best Greek art, we must suppose that
-the goddess has just finished writing, and looks up and out toward the
-field where her heroes died. Or even if the shield was a high one, such
-as the Spartan wounded used to be brought home on, she might still be
-looking at the shield, if not at the words she has just written. In
-fact, several suggestions offer themselves, and none open to accusation
-of such flagrant inconsistencies as those involved in Tarral’s
-restoration, which shocks the dramatic sense beyond endurance.
-
-The objection that the shield would hide so large a part of the figure
-goes for absolutely nothing. We continually find Greek work completely,
-or nearly, finished in positions where by necessity much of it must have
-been hidden. As the pediments of the Parthenon were originally placed,
-they would never have been half seen, and how the Panathenaic frieze
-could have been adequately seen, once the building scaffolds were taken
-down, we can much less easily conjecture than how the Victory could have
-been seen behind her shield. The Brescian, a later and more realistic
-work, is seen behind hers. Consani has made a very happy emulation of
-the motive in his Victory. It is amongst the best of the modern Italian
-works of its class, and illustrates the manner of avoiding the
-difficulties we have seen adduced. The principal arguments in favor of
-my theory are these: The statue is not of the Venus type but on the
-contrary agrees distinctly with known statues of Victory, some of which
-I have indicated, of which another is in the coin of Agathocles, and in
-the Museum of Naples is a terra cotta Victory in almost the identical
-action and drapery; it is of the epoch of the Victories of the temple of
-Niké Apteros, and of the same style of treatment and type of figure; it
-was found where we might expect the Athenians to hide a treasure; and,
-while unquestionably a Victory, it is the only wingless Victory of the
-great Attic school we know of. I do not consider this archæological, but
-artistic demonstration.
-
-                [Illustration: TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS.]
-
-The little Temple of Niké Apteros has had a destiny unique amongst its
-kind. Like the Parthenon, it was standing little more than two hundred
-years ago, but during the Turkish occupation it was razed, and its
-stones all built into the great bastion which covered the front of the
-Acropolis and blocked up the staircase to the Propylæa. It was dug out
-and restored, nearly every stone in its place, by two German architects
-during the reign of Otho, and it stands again as Pausanias describes it,
-on the spot where old Ægeus watched for the return of Theseus from
-Crete, and seeing the black sails of his son’s ship returning, token of
-failure (for Theseus had forgotten to raise the white sail, the signal
-of success), threw himself from the precipice, and was dashed into black
-death on the rocks below. In the distance are Salamis and Ægina, and the
-straits through which the ships came from Melos and Crete, and to the
-south is Hymettus, beyond which are Marathon and the road by which the
-Persians came, and the Turks after them. There certainly was the spot,
-and this the occasion, if ever, that an Attic sculptor should feel that
-spiritual enthusiasm below which Greek art stopped and lost the clew
-which, in later centuries, the Florentine found again and followed to
-new, if not higher, heights.
-
-                       [Illustration: GREEK COIN]
-
-
-
-
-                               FOOTNOTES
-
-
-[1]It has been conjectured that the Ogygia of Calypso was a small barren
-    island just south of Sardinia. There is no evidence in favor of the
-    theory, but it is possible. I adopt it in the route map _faute de
-    mieux_.
-
-[2]The Lotophagitis has been recently plausibly identified with Jerba,
-    on the coast of Tunis, the word _rotos_ being still used there,
-    evidently a survival of some primitive language, for the date; and
-    the transliteration of _rotos_ to _lotos_ being according to Grimm’s
-    law, see Reinach’s letter to the _Nation_ (Mar. 13, 1884) on Jerba.
-    It is easy to understand that the Greek, coming from a country where
-    the conditions of life were hard and the fare of Homeric simplicity,
-    should find the conditions of North African existence tempting
-    beyond resistance, and the delicious date, (constituting the
-    principal and often exclusive food of the people, quite sufficient,
-    in fact, for all needs,) a temptation to abandon the toils and
-    dangers of a return home. The inevitable poetical exaggeration adds
-    the magic power.
-
-[3]Cimmerians have been conjecturally identified with the Cymri, the
-    Cimmerian darkness with the fogs of England and the North Sea
-    countries, and there is nothing but conjecture in the case.
-
-[4]The text leaves a doubt if he even retained his hold on this, as it
-    describes his striking out with the veil of Leucothea under his
-    breast.
-
-[5]I saw, at a recent meeting of the German archæological Institute at
-    Rome, exquisite bronze castings found in a lake city of northern
-    Italy, of which the latest possibly assignable date is 1500 B. C.
-    Various data, which it is not the place here to discuss, have led me
-    to the conclusion that bronze working was independently discovered
-    in Italy at a period long anterior to any intercourse with Greece,
-    and that it probably went from Italy to Corinth, where it is said to
-    have been discovered.
-
-[6]I suspect the word which I have translated Sicilian to be a mistake
-    in transcribing, for Homer evidently knew nothing of Sicily or he
-    would have given it its name when dealing with the hero’s adventures
-    there. It is however possible that he knew the island by name but
-    had not identified it with Ulysses’ Cyclops-land.
-
-[7]The confusion which is so common between Aphrodite, the Greek
-    goddess, and Astarte, the Phœnician, had its beginning at Cythera.
-    It is only in later Greek mythology that they are confounded. The
-    true Aphrodite was the first-born of Zeus, the creating
-    Intelligence, and Dione the prolific Earth—Spirit and Matter—and
-    Aphrodite was Divine Love;—Astarte, lust.
-
-[8]The worthlessness of the testimony of d’Urville is shown by this
-    statement—no hand has ever held or touched this drapery, as the
-    least examination shows.
-
-
-
-
-                          Transcriber’s Notes
-
-
---Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
-  is public-domain in the country of publication.
-
---Silently corrected a few palpable typos.
-
---In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
-  _underscores_.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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-
-Project Gutenberg's On the track of Ulysses, by William James Stillman
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
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-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: On the track of Ulysses
-       Together with an excursion in quest of the so-called Venus
-              of Melos: two studies in archaeology, made during a cruise
-              among the Greek islands
-
-Author: William James Stillman
-
-Release Date: December 26, 2019 [EBook #61025]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Turgut Dincer, Stephen Hutcheson, and the
-Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-(This file was produced from images generously made
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-</pre>
-
-<div id="cover" class="img">
-<img id="coverpage" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="On the Track of Ulysses" width="500" height="681" />
-</div>
-<div class="img">
-<img src="images/i00.jpg" alt="(uncaptioned)" width="421" height="799" />
-</div>
-<div class="box">
-<h1>ON THE TRACK OF
-<br /><span class="small">ULYSSES</span></h1>
-<p class="tbcenter"><span class="smallest">TOGETHER WITH</span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="large">AN EXCURSION IN QUEST OF THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS</span></p>
-<p class="tbcenter"><i>TWO STUDIES IN ARCH&AElig;OLOGY, MADE DURING A CRUISE AMONG THE GREEK ISLANDS</i></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smallest">BY</span>
-<br />W. J. STILLMAN</p>
-<div class="img">
-<img src="images/i00a.jpg" alt="(uncaptioned)" width="137" height="300" />
-</div>
-<p class="center"><span class="smaller">BOSTON AND NEW YORK</span>
-<br />HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
-<br /><b><i>The Riverside Press, Cambridge</i></b>
-<br />1888</p>
-</div>
-<p class="tbcenter">Copyright, 1887,
-<br /><span class="sc">By</span> W. J. STILLMAN.</p>
-<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved.</i></p>
-<p class="tbcenter"><i>The Riverside Press, Cambridge</i>:
-<br />Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton &amp; Co.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_iii">iii</div>
-<h3><span class="small">To</span>
-<br />WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON.</h3>
-<p><i>In times when the feverish ambition of our people so
-generally climbs to distinction by ways offensive to the
-true intellectual and moral life, and when we find the old
-standards of human dignity so often forgotten; it renews
-one&rsquo;s faith in the future of humanity to meet a man
-whom neither the &ldquo;Olympian dust&rdquo; nor that of California
-has been able to deflect from that line of perfect
-rectitude of life which, if existence is to be anything but
-an indecent scramble, we must recognize as entitling the
-man who holds it, to the highest respect of his fellow-men.
-When besides this claim to our respect he has been able
-to maintain undimmed the lustre of a name such as
-you bear, the distinction is still brighter. If therefore
-my insignificant tribute were only as the dust which,
-catching the sunshine, males it visible, let me offer this
-dedication in recognition of the true standard of nobility
-as I know it in your father&rsquo;s son.</i></p>
-<p><span class="lr"><span class="smaller">W. J. STILLMAN.</span></span></p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_v">v</div>
-<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
-<p>The series of papers herewith committed to the more or
-less permanent condition of book form were originally (less
-some development of their arguments) printed in the <i>Century</i>
-magazine, being the results of an exploring visit to Greek
-lands taken as a commission for that periodical. I have
-sought in them to solve, in a popular form, certain problems
-in arch&aelig;ology which seemed to me to have that romantic
-interest which is necessary to general human interest; and
-while necessarily, in such a study, dealing much with conjecture,
-I have not ventured to assume anything which I am
-not satisfied is true. The problem of the so-called Venus of
-Melos is one of those which arch&aelig;ology has fretted over for
-two generations, and I cannot pretend to have offered a solution
-which will command assent from the severely scientific
-arch&aelig;ologist; but I have an interior conviction, stronger than
-any authority of ancient tradition to my own mind, that
-that solution is the true one. I do not wish it to be judged
-as a demonstration, but as an induction in which a kind of
-artistic instinct, not communicable or equally valuable to all
-people, has had the greatest part; and, for the rest, I am
-satisfied to let it be taken by the rule of &ldquo;highest probability,&rdquo;
-by which we solve to our satisfaction, more or less complete,
-problems of the gravest importance&mdash;a rule, indeed,
-which is for many such the only standard of truth. In arch&aelig;ology,
-<span class="pb" id="Page_vi">vi</span>
-as in some other inexact sciences, opinion has with
-most people greater weight than it always merits, but it
-should have weight in proportion to the knowledge its originator
-may have of his subject. As to this I have done all
-that any man can to penetrate to the material which exists
-for forming an opinion, and I rest in the sincere conviction,
-sustained through a study of many years, that the so-called
-Venus of Melos is really the Nik&eacute; Apteros of the restored
-temple dedicated to that goddess.</p>
-<p>I must acknowledge the courtesy of the proprietors of the
-<i>Century</i> magazine in according me the use of the admirable
-illustrations accompanying my text, which were put on the
-blocks by Harry Fenn from my own sketches or photographs.</p>
-<p><span class="lr"><span class="smaller">W. J. STILLMAN.</span></span></p>
-<p><span class="smaller"><span class="sc">New York</span>, <i>September, 1887</i>.</span></p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_vii">vii</div>
-<h2 id="toc">CONTENTS.</h2>
-<dl class="toc">
-<dt><span class="smallest">PAGE</span></dt>
-<dt class="dsp"><a href="#c1">ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES</a> 1</dt>
-<dt class="dsp"><a href="#c2">THE ODYSSEY, ITS EPOCH AND GEOGRAPHY</a> 50</dt>
-<dt class="dsp"><a href="#c3">THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS</a> 75</dt>
-</dl>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_ix">ix</div>
-<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
-<dl class="toc tocill">
-<dt><span class="smallest">PAGE</span></dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig1"><span class="sc">The Route of Ulysses</span></a> 1</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig2"><span class="sc">Ithaca and adjoining Islands</span></a> 3</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig3"><span class="sc">West Coast of Scheria</span></a> 8</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig4"><span class="sc">Greek Boats and Rostrum of Roman Galley</span></a> 13</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig5"><span class="sc">Corfu, from the King&rsquo;s Garden</span></a> 14</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig6"><span class="sc">Port of Phorcys and Neriton, from the Mouth of Ulysses&rsquo; Cave</span></a> 28</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig7"><span class="sc">Raven&rsquo;s Cliff and the Fountain of Arethusa</span></a> 34</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig8"><span class="sc">The Site of Ithaca&mdash;Port Polis</span></a> 36</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig9"><span class="sc">Inscription found at Polis</span></a> 39</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig10"><span class="sc">The School of Homer</span></a> 43</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig11"><span class="sc">View of Sam&eacute; from the West,&mdash;with parts of Pelasgic and Hellenic Walls</span></a> 58</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig12"><span class="sc">Cran&eacute; from the Sea Shore</span></a> 60</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig13"><span class="sc">Distant View of Pal&eacute; from the Citadel of Cran&eacute;</span></a> 63</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig14"><span class="sc">Zante</span></a> 64</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig15"><span class="sc">Citadel of Cerigo</span></a> 67</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig16"><span class="sc">Landing-Place of the Cyprian Aphrodite or Astarte</span></a> 73</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig17"><span class="sc">The so-called Venus of Melos</span></a> 82</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig18"><span class="sc">Street in Castro</span></a> 84</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig19"><span class="sc">The Site of Old Melos, from the Port</span></a> 85</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig20"><span class="sc">Medicean Venus</span></a> 88</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig21"><span class="sc">Venus Urania</span></a> 88</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig22"><span class="sc">Capitoline Venus</span></a> 88</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig23"><span class="sc">Venus of the Vatican</span></a> 89</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig24"><span class="sc">Venus Anadyomene</span></a> 89</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig25"><span class="sc">Venus Victrix of the Louvre</span></a> 89</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig26"><span class="sc">Venus of Capua</span></a> 90</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig27"><span class="sc">Restoration of the Statue as proposed by Mr. Tarral</span></a> 90</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig28"><span class="sc">Fragments found at Melos attributed to the Statue</span></a> 91</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig29"><span class="sc">Victory of Brescia</span> (Front)</a> 92</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig30"><span class="sc">Victory of Brescia</span> (Side)</a> 92</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig31"><span class="sc">Victory raising an Offering</span> (Temple of Nik&eacute; Apteros, the Acropolis, Athens)</a> 93</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig32"><span class="sc">Victory untying her Sandal</span> (Temple of Nik&eacute; Apteros, the Acropolis, Athens)</a> 96</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig33"><span class="sc">Victories leading a Bull to Sacrifice</span> (Temple of Nik&eacute; Apteros, the Acropolis, Athens)</a> 97</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig34"><span class="sc">The so-called Venus of Melos</span> (Front)</a> 99</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig35"><span class="sc">The &ldquo;Venus&rdquo; Restored</span> (Front. Traced from a Photograph of a living Model)</a> 99</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig36"><span class="sc">The &ldquo;Venus&rdquo; Restored</span> (Side. Traced from a Photograph of a living Model)</a> 100</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig37"><span class="sc">The so-called Venus of Melos</span> (Side)</a> 100</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig38"><span class="sc">Victory of Consani</span></a> 104</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig39"><span class="sc">Temple of Nik&eacute; Apteros</span></a> 105</dt>
-<dt><a href="#fig40"><span class="sc">Greek Coin</span></a> 106</dt>
-</dl>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_1">1</div>
-<h2 id="c1"><span class="large">ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES.</span></h2>
-<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
-<div class="img" id="fig1">
-<img src="images/i01.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="804" />
-<p class="caption">THE ROUTE OF ULYSSES.</p>
-</div>
-<p>What remains for exploration to find on the surface of our
-little earth? The north and south poles, some outlying bits of
-Central Africa, some still smaller remnants of Central Asia,&mdash;all
-defended so completely by the elements, barbarism, disease,
-starvation, by nature and inhumanity, that the traveler of
-modest means and moderate constitution is as effectually debarred
-from their discovery as if they were the moon.</p>
-<p>What then? I said to myself, searching for adventure. Let
-us begin the tread-mill round again and rediscover. I took up
-<span class="pb" id="Page_2">2</span>
-the earliest book of travel which remains to us, and set to burnish
-up again the golden thread of the journey of the most
-illustrious of travelers, as told in the Odyssey, the book of
-the wanderings of Odysseus, whom we unaccountably call
-Ulysses, which we may consider not only the first history of
-travel, but the first geography, as it is doubtless a compendium
-of the knowledge of the earth&rsquo;s surface at the day when it
-was composed, as the Iliad was the census of the known mankind
-of that epoch. Spread on this small loom, the fabric of
-the story, of the most subtle design,&mdash;art of the oldest and
-noblest,&mdash;is made up with warp of the will of the great gods,
-crossed by the woof of the futile struggles of the lesser, the
-demi-gods, the heroes, and tells the miserable labors of the
-most illustrious of wanderers, the type for all time of craft,
-duplicity, and daring, as well as of faith and patient endurance.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_3">3</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig2">
-<img src="images/i02.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="800" />
-<p class="caption">ITHACA AND ADJOINING ISLANDS.</p>
-</div>
-<p>But as Homer&rsquo;s humanity mixes by fine degrees with his
-divinity, so his <i>terra cognita</i> melts away into fairy-land, and
-we must look for a trace written on water before landing on
-identifiable shores. The story opens finding Ulysses the prisoner
-of Love and Calypso, in Ogygia, a fairy island of which
-the Greek of Homeric days had heard, perhaps, from some
-storm-driven mariner, or which may be a bit of brain-land.
-The details of the story make it very difficult even to conjecture
-where Ogygia was, if it was.<a class="fn" id="fr_1" href="#fn_1">[1]</a> How Ulysses leaves the
-island alone on a raft is told by the poet in the fifth canto;
-how he got there the hero recounts in the narration to Alcino&uuml;s
-in Ph&aelig;acia. Leaving Troy, he stops at Ismarus, a town
-on the coast of Thrace, which he surprises and sacks; but,
-repulsed by the inhabitants of the lands near by, rallying to
-the defense, and visited by the wrath of the gods for his
-impiety, he is punished by a three days&rsquo; gale, and reaches Cape
-Malea, where, unable to stem the north wind which still persecutes
-him, he runs past Cerigo down to the African coast,
-which he reaches in nine days. Here we enter into semi-fable.<a class="fn" id="fr_2" href="#fn_2">[2]</a>
-The Lotophagi seduce his men with their magic fruit
-which brings oblivion, and he is obliged to fly again. This
-time he goes north, and comes to an island which lies before
-the port of the Cyclops, a terrible race: giants with one eye,
-and cannibals, over whose land the smoke hangs like whirlwinds&mdash;evidently
-<span class="pb" id="Page_4">4</span>
-Sicily. This little island, where the Greeks
-debark, is not to be identified, but is probably one of those to
-the west of Sicily, called later the &AElig;gades. Thence, after the
-famous adventure of the Cyclops&rsquo; cave, one of the poet&rsquo;s most
-marvelous inventions (since every detail shows that there was
-no positive knowledge of the land or its people&mdash;only a fantastic
-tradition), they fly and arrive at the floating island of
-&AElig;olus, still a creation of mythology, and thence to the shores
-of the L&aelig;strygonians, another fabulous, man-eating race, in
-whose land the days are separated only by a brief pretense of
-night; escaping thence with his single ship and crew, Ulysses
-arrives at &AElig;a, the island of Circe, from earliest classical times
-identified with Cape Circeo, between Naples and Civit&agrave; Vecchia.
-Circe sends the hero to the land of the Cimmerians,<a class="fn" id="fr_3" href="#fn_3">[3]</a>
-where time touches eternity, and the shades of the dead come
-to visit the unterrified living; and here Tiresias, the dead
-soothsayer, tells the future wanderings of the Ithacan chief.
-Again, returning to &AElig;a, he is redirected toward home through
-the strait where Scylla and Charybdis menace his existence.
-This we recognize by later tradition as the Straits of Messina,
-but the fabulous so dominates the slight element of geography
-in it, that it is clear that Homer never passed that way, and
-gained his knowledge only from far remote report; while his
-second passage&mdash;after the sacrilege committed in the Island
-of the Sun&mdash;through the straits, is puzzling, and the recital
-makes it clear that till Ph&aelig;acia was reached the poet was not
-in <i>terra cognita</i>.</p>
-<p>The indications are hardly reconcilable with the map.
-Leaving Circe to go home, he passes the straits, and stopping
-at the Island of the Sun, his comrades commit a sacrilege
-which leads to their destruction and his being driven back to
-<span class="pb" id="Page_5">5</span>
-Ogygia through the straits, a solitary survivor. But on his
-departure for Ph&aelig;acia direct, he does not pass again through
-the straits, evidently returning to the south of Sicily.</p>
-<p>Released by Calypso, he goes on a raft with the sailing
-direction to keep the Great Bear, &ldquo;which is also called the
-Wain,&rdquo; on his left,&mdash;that is, he sails eastward, and for seventeen
-days splits the waves, and sees on the eighteenth the
-wooded mountain of the island of the Ph&aelig;acians, the Scheria
-of the ancients. The continuity of tradition and the consistency
-of the narrative leave me no doubt that this was our
-Corfu, the uttermost of the lands positively known to the
-geography of that day. The actuality of Scheria has been disputed
-by certain German critics, who will have it that all the
-local allusions of the Odyssey are imaginary. But in the
-&AElig;neid, when &AElig;neas is going to Butrintum, which is now
-Butrinto, opposite Corfu on the Albanian coast, he says that
-no land was in sight except Scheria. This makes it certain
-that in Virgil&rsquo;s time there was no question on the point.</p>
-<p>Already in sight of Scheria, Ulysses is overtaken again by
-the wrath of Poseidon, who unchains on him all his tempests;
-and, his raft wrecked in open sea, himself swept away from it
-into the mountainous waves, he regrets not having found a
-glorious death before Troy, seeing an inevitable and unhonored
-end before him, with no funeral rites to give his soul peace.
-Leucothea, the white goddess, throws into the black warp a
-silver thread, and brings the story into new light and color.
-She gives him an amulet which, by its magic, carries him
-through the last of his grave perils, and preserves him when,
-with a great and wrathful burst of wind, Poseidon disperses
-the timbers of his raft and leaves him floating in the yeasty
-sea. He seizes on one of the timbers and hopefully strikes
-out for the land. Athene comes once more to his aid. She
-chains all the winds except Boreas, which, wafting him for
-two days and nights to the southeast, gives place to a perfect
-<span class="pb" id="Page_6">6</span>
-calm. Ulysses, raised on the summit of a huge wave, looks
-out and sees the land. But it is a terrible, rock-bound coast.
-&ldquo;He hears the roar of the waves that break on the rocks, because
-the shock of the great waves against the bare cliffs
-sounds fearfully, and the sea, far and wide, is covered with
-foam. But there is no peaceable roadstead, no port, safe refuge
-of ships; everywhere high, mountainous rocks and cliffs.&rdquo;
-He appeals to the gods for pity, and just then, &ldquo;while he turns
-these thoughts in his spirit and heart, an immense wave
-throws him on the bare shore. Then his flesh would have
-been torn and his bones broken if Athene had not inspired
-him. With both hands he clutches the rock and embraces it
-with groans until the wave had withdrawn. He in this way
-escapes death, but the return of the wave falls on him, strikes
-him, and withdraws him into the open sea. He, emerging
-from the depths, more prudently coasts along, swimming until
-he can find an opening in the rocks where he may enter, and
-finally perceives the mouth of a river. He offers a prayer to
-the river god, and is heard and peacefully received by the
-peaceable wave, which lands him on the sandy shore.&rdquo; The
-whole of the finale of the fifth book is grand and imaginative,
-especially in the description of the stormy sea and the condition
-of Ulysses as he sinks on the hospitable sands exhausted,
-half dead from his long struggle and his two days&rsquo; and nights&rsquo;
-swim, sustained only by one of the logs of his raft;<a class="fn" id="fr_4" href="#fn_4">[4]</a>
-but what to my present purpose is of most significance is the striking
-description of the west coast of Corfu and the unmistakable
-evidence of the mythologist giving way to the traveler.
-Here we strike the veritable track of Ulysses, and here begin
-our researches. To reach this point all the commerce of the
-Levant aids us&mdash;steamers from Trieste, Brindisi, Naples,
-Patras, Malta, etc.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_7">7</div>
-<p>Here I found fit to my purpose a little yacht of twelve
-tons, cutter-rigged and Malta-built, the <i>Kestrel</i>, with whose
-master and owner I made my bargain, namely: he was to
-obey all my reasonable orders for any voyage within the two
-archipelagos, find his ship and crew of two sailors in all they
-needed for service and safety, do my cooking, and insure
-himself, for the sum of fifteen pounds sterling a month for
-three months; and while he was putting in stores, fitting new
-cables to his anchors, and burnishing up a bit, we began to
-inspect Scheria.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_8">8</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig3">
-<img src="images/i03.jpg" alt="" width="639" height="800" />
-<p class="caption">WEST COAST OF SCHERIA.</p>
-</div>
-<p>The popular tradition of to-day fixes the landing of Ulysses
-near the actual city of Corfu, and an island is pointed out as
-the ship turned to a rock; while the spot where he landed,
-and the scene of that most charming of all the episodes of his
-wanderings, the meeting with Nausic&aacute;a, is put at the &ldquo;one-gun
-battery,&rdquo; just south of the harbor of Corfu. Nothing
-could comport less with the description of the Odyssey. The
-Channel of Corfu, dividing the island from Epirus, is a land-locked
-basin in which no such storm could arise as Ulysses
-encountered, and along which no such rocks exist as are
-described in the poem. The seventeen days&rsquo; drift from the
-westward before the tempest, and the next two days after it,
-wafted by Boreas, show that he was in the open Adriatic, and
-coasting along the rock-bound western coast of Scheria to find
-an inlet where he might enter. The illustration shows the
-character of this coast in entire concordance with the Odyssey;
-and there is near the spot from which my view of the
-west coast of Scheria is taken, a convent (which is visited by
-all the tourists who, having some days in Corfu, care for the
-most picturesque part of the island), and which by its name,
-Pal&aelig;castrizza, shows that it stands near the site of some ancient
-city or fortress, as the term &ldquo;Pal&aelig;castron&rdquo; is never
-applied by local tradition to any construction not belonging
-to the classical or archaic epochs. Even Byzantine ruins
-never receive the epithet &ldquo;pal&aelig;os.&rdquo; No trace is now to be
-found of any prior structure near the convent, which, while
-it probably has some relation to an antique site, certainly is
-not on that of the city of Alcino&uuml;s, which must have been
-farther south where the shore
-breaks down to a plain.
-There used to be in the island
-an old antiquity-hunter
-who brought from time to
-time to sell clandestinely in
-the city, objects of gold and terra-cotta, vases, etc., dug up
-at a site which only he seems to have known, and of which
-he would never disclose the location. On inquiring for him
-on this my last visit to Corfu for these researches, he was
-<span class="pb" id="Page_9">9</span>
-not to be heard of. All that we had learned from him was
-that the ruins of which he knew and where he excavated in
-secret were somewhere on the western coast, which corresponds
-to my hypothesis that the capital of Alcino&uuml;s was
-there.</p>
-<p>There is something so unpractical in the Greek laws on the
-subject of excavation and exportation of antique objects, that
-it is to be hoped that the shrewd common sense of the people
-will ere long see their impolicy. Excavation without permission
-from the Government, even on one&rsquo;s own land, is forbidden,
-which is not unreasonable considering all things; but
-even when permission is accorded or when objects are found
-by chance, the Government practically confiscates the find
-when the finders are feeble, and levies a tax of half the value
-when they are not. Everything, therefore, is done in secret,
-and exportation by contraband is the only possible manner of
-profiting by one&rsquo;s good fortune. The peasant who finds an
-antique site carefully conceals it; and the objects he finds,
-instead of enabling the arch&aelig;ologist to classify the antiquities
-by reference to their provenance, are sold to some one who
-removes them from the country, and so all clue is lost to
-their true arch&aelig;ological position. As I shall have to show in
-the course of these articles, grave loss to the science of arch&aelig;ology
-sometimes occurs in this way. In this particular instance
-the loss to me is the being unable to identify, with any
-probability, the place where or near to which Ulysses landed,
-and where the classic meeting with Nausic&aacute;a took place.
-When we get to Ithaca we shall find that the author of
-the Odyssey knew well every foot of land he describes; and
-the scene of Ulysses&rsquo; disaster, already translated, accords so
-well with the actual topography that it is difficult to suppose
-that a mere inspiration dictated it, and that the author was
-not well acquainted with the island of Scheria, whose capital
-was Ph&aelig;acia.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_10">10</div>
-<p>The claim of the city of Corfu to be the site of the ancient
-Ph&aelig;acia rests on nothing but the fact that it is the only city
-in the island; but the ever-tranquil bay on which it lies, and
-the fact that Ulysses, instead of searching for a place where he
-could land, would rather have had to search for a place where
-he could not, shows conclusively that no part of the eastern
-coast is entitled to the honor. The &ldquo;one-gun battery,&rdquo; where
-local tradition places his landing, is perhaps the least likely
-point, as no running stream is to be found near there. The
-lake, which is now suggested as the tranquil water in which
-Ulysses came to land, must then have been much larger than
-at present, and now in nowise resembles a river: it is the half-filled
-arm of the sea into which a wide basin of marshy land
-has been for centuries draining, but into which no watercourse
-leads, and the view seen from above the &ldquo;one-gun&rdquo;
-needs scarcely a commentary to show its entire incompatibility
-with the Odyssey.</p>
-<p>The capital of Alcino&uuml;s was, we are told by Homer,
-founded by his father Nausitho&uuml;s. His people were formerly
-inhabitants of Hyperia, &ldquo;near the Cyclops,&rdquo; and were by
-these latter so ravaged and overborne that they emigrated to
-Ph&aelig;acia. The generally accepted location of the Cyclops in
-Sicily suggests that Hyperia was probably there or in Italy;
-and that the Ph&aelig;acians may have been related to the Siculi;
-since the Pelasgi, who invaded Italy from the north, and, uniting
-with the Umbri, spread over the whole of southern Italy,
-expelling the aborigines, are continually confounded by the
-earliest traditions with the Cyclops. As, from all we know,
-the Tyrrhene Pelasgi were the earliest metal-workers in that
-part of Europe,<a class="fn" id="fr_5" href="#fn_5">[5]</a> and as the Cyclops, the children of Hephaistos,
-<span class="pb" id="Page_11">11</span>
-the great metal-worker, are a mythological idealization of a
-race of smiths who had a habit of covering the eyes, for protection
-from sparks, with a screen in which a single hole was
-cut to see through, which was transmogrified into a single eye
-in the middle of the forehead, there is nothing unlikely in the
-inference that the Pelasgi and Cyclops were identical, and that
-the Ph&aelig;acians were refugees from the conquest of southern
-Italy by that formidable people. That they were not Greeks
-we know by their absence from the catalogue of the &ldquo;Iliad,&rdquo;
-where all the Hellenic tribes were recorded in their places in
-the league.</p>
-<p>The Corfiotes of to-day boast of descent from the Ph&oelig;nicians,
-and certainly they are not to be measured by the same
-standard as the Greek race in general. Their reputation for
-dishonesty has given rise to a Greek proverb, which relegates
-a person of more than usual craftiness and bad faith to the
-&ldquo;Corfiotes.&rdquo; &ldquo;He behaves like a Corfiote&rdquo; is the greatest
-reproach the continental Greek can bring against a man who
-is too clever in business matters. In character as well as
-history the Corfiote has little in common with Greece. As he
-had no place inside the line drawn around the Hellenic world
-at the great critical, even if mythical, epoch assigned to the
-siege of Troy, so in his latest history he has always maintained
-a position more or less apart. Diodorus Siculus makes the
-Homeric name of the city, Ph&aelig;acia, to have been derived from
-Ph&aelig;acus, son of Poseidon, and places his reign contemporary
-with the Argonauts, as Ph&aelig;acus protected Jason against the
-king of Iolcus when, returning from Colchis with Medea, he
-took refuge at Scheria. Mythology begins with it in the
-combat of Zeus and Poseidon in their struggle for supremacy
-in the government of the universe, and finishes with Ulysses&rsquo;
-visit. History commences with the arrival of a colony of
-Corinthians under Chersicrates, who built a city which he
-called Chrysopolis. This was probably Corfu, for, as the immigration
-<span class="pb" id="Page_12">12</span>
-of Nausitho&uuml;s, coming from Italian shores, first established
-itself on the coast looking toward their old home, so the
-Corinthians, coming by the islands and the Epirote shores,
-would find their first landing in the spacious and tranquil bay
-formed by the crescent-shaped island, which, at its extremes,
-approaches the mainland. The Hellene of Corinth brought
-all the seeds of the virtues and vices of his national temperament
-to the fertile soil of Corcyra, as it is henceforward called
-by the Hellenic chronicles, colonization and war with their
-neighbors filling all their early history. They founded, according
-to their tradition, Apollonia and other cities on the mainland;
-but, as among the ruins of those cities there are Pelasgic
-remains, it is not to be supposed that they were the first colonists,
-but that they merely colonized, as the Romans did in the
-later times, with a dominant population, cities in decline or
-too weak to maintain their independence. This is, in ancient
-Greek history, oftener the meaning of the word <i>colonize</i> than
-the founding of a new city. To get a clear idea of the condition
-of this part of the world at the beginning of historical,
-or even heroic record, we must take into consideration that
-an epoch of civilization, perhaps of empire, had long preceded
-the awakening of the Hellenic national life; an epoch which
-ought, perhaps, to be measured by centuries, if we could measure
-it at all, and whose record is preserved in the stupendous
-ruins we call Pelasgic, a name applied by the Greeks to a
-people who preceded them, derived possibly from the Greek
-name of the stork, indicating a migrating or wandering people,&mdash;wandering,
-probably, because their empire had been broken
-up by some newer and stronger race, but which the various remaining
-traditions accord in asserting to have once held great
-rule in Italy, where they were known also as Tyrrhenians,
-in the Peloponnesus, and in Crete. We shall see presently
-some indications of the correctness of the assumption that
-they preceded by an infinite period the great assemblage of
-<span class="pb" id="Page_13">13</span>
-Greeks, which the expedition to Troy perhaps marks, perhaps
-symbolizes; but at present I have only to do with the history
-and mythology of Corfu, which is in no way that we can discover
-connected with the Pelasgi.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig4">
-<img src="images/i04.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="323" />
-<p class="caption">GREEK BOATS AND ROSTRUM OF ROMAN GALLEY.</p>
-</div>
-<p>The first wars of Corcyra were, as was to be expected of an
-enterprising people, with the mother country; but as in those
-days piracy was the chief business of every maritime people,
-<i>war</i> was perhaps only a normal condition. The Persian invasion
-brought Corcyra into the Hellenic league, but, with the
-duplicity of which the race furnished so many instances in
-ancient times, the Corcyriote fleet only sailed, and took good
-care not to be in time for the battle, fearing the vengeance of
-the Persians. Their prudence brought on them, after the
-defeat of Xerxes at Salamis, a combined attack of the Peloponnesian
-States. As the union of these was always a challenge
-to Athens, she sided with the Corcyriotes, and the resulting
-war plunged Corcyra into intestine and social strife, in
-which the most horrible cruelties were perpetrated by the
-islanders; and the animosities and renewals of revolt and war,
-which the divisions of the classes of the population gave
-opportunity for, reduced the island to anarchy and helplessness.
-Their subsequent history is one of repeated subjugation
-and revolt. After losing even the relative independence
-of alliance with Athens, they were conquered by Agathocles
-of Syracuse, Pyrrhus, and finally by Rome.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_14">14</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig5">
-<img src="images/i05.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="726" />
-<p class="caption">CORFU, FROM THE KING&rsquo;S GARDEN.</p>
-</div>
-<p>From this time Corcyra was the base of the Roman military
-movements against the Levantine enemies of the republic.
-The commanding position of the island has, from that day to
-this, made it an object of the covetousness of all the maritime
-powers of the Mediterranean by turns. In the civil wars
-of Rome, the island espoused the part of Pompey, later of
-Brutus and Cassius, and then,
-always unfortunate, of Antony.
-After the battle of Actium,
-fought almost within
-sight of its shores, Corcyra was
-besieged, taken, and rigorously
-punished by Augustus, and then relegated to an obscurity out
-of which only the great Ottoman invasion of Europe brought
-it. It was involved more or less in the Saracenic, Bulgarian,
-Norman, and Neapolitan wars and invasions, and finally threw
-itself into the arms of Venice to save itself from conquest by
-Genoa. From this time (1386) the history of Corcyra, become
-Corfu, until the overthrow of the republic by Napoleon, is identified
-with that of Venice, and all the remains or structures
-in the island date from the Venetian occupation.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_15">15</div>
-<p>In 1537 the troops of the Sultan, under the orders of the
-renegade Barbarossa, made a descent on the island and laid
-siege to the city, which, taken by surprise, was ill-provisioned
-and with a small garrison. The Turkish fleet blockaded the
-port, and the troops beleaguered the city by land. The garrison
-was under the terrible alternative of being starved into
-surrender speedily or dismissing all the useless mouths. The
-latter was, on the whole, safer, for the surrender would have
-been disastrous even to the non-combatants, who were to
-Turkish barbarity no less obnoxious than the soldiers. The
-old men, women, and children were sent out of the city,
-perhaps the most horrible necessity which ever befell brave
-men. A successful defense of the city justified, in a military
-point of view, the terrible sacrifice; and, after a long and
-obstinate siege, Barbarossa, his army nearly destroyed by
-battle and pestilence, withdrew, defeated. The island was
-almost depopulated, ravaged, and so utterly impoverished that
-Venice was obliged to send the people seed-corn and beasts to
-till their fields. Nearly the whole of the nobility of the island
-had been killed in the defense.</p>
-<p>To be in readiness for a similar emergency, the Senate augmented
-the already strong fortifications. The New Fort, as it
-is still called, was constructed, and, with a paternal regard for
-the well-being of the islanders, which Venice did not always
-show for her Greek insular possessions, institutions were
-founded and regulations made which contributed greatly to
-the prosperity of the island.</p>
-<p>In 1716 a new and determined attack was made by the
-Turks, under the leadership of Achmet III. Their fleet drove
-off that of Venice, and an army of thirty thousand men was
-debarked and laid siege to the city, whose defense was directed
-by Count Schulembourg. The outlying heights were taken
-quickly, and the garrison, shut in the inner line of fortifications,
-received the desperate assault of the Turks on the main
-<span class="pb" id="Page_16">16</span>
-works with more desperate resistance. After twenty days of
-incessant attack, the Turks carried the outworks, penetrated
-to the Place d&rsquo;Armes, which is under the walls of the New
-Fort, and attempted to scale the walls themselves.</p>
-<p>&ldquo;The assault lasted more than six hours with an incredible
-fury. The women brought assistance to the defenders, and
-the priests, crucifix in hand, ran along the ramparts or threw
-themselves into the fight. Finally a vigorous sortie terminated
-this bloody day. Attacked on every side, the assaulting force
-beat a retreat and lost all the outposts it had taken. A tempest,
-which had burst on them in the night, completed the
-work of defeat, and, seized by panic, they embarked precipitately,
-leaving baggage and artillery behind them. In forty-two
-days they had lost fifteen thousand men.&rdquo; (<i>Isles de la
-Gr&egrave;ce.</i>)</p>
-<p>The victory was commemorated by a statue to Schulembourg,
-which no subsequent conquest has disturbed, and which
-stands on the parade-ground among monuments of greater or
-less good taste (generally the latter), to mark the history of
-the island in modern days.</p>
-<p>From that day to this, with the exception of an occasional
-<i>&eacute;meute</i>, nothing has come to disturb the peace of Corfu, and
-the once so splendid courage of the inhabitants has gone out
-like a fire without a draught. There is probably no province
-of the Hellenic kingdom so devoid of martial spirit or the
-virtues that grow out of it. It is now a most delightful
-winter resort, a Fortunate Isle left out of the current of
-political events and given over to invalids and sportsmen, who
-find on the opposite Albanian coast the best shooting on the
-Mediterranean. The old citadel, with its double peak, serves
-as a light-house to the lines of steamers which furrow the
-Adriatic, cross, and make Corfu their <i>entrep&ocirc;t</i> between Trieste,
-Venice, Brindisi, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Smyrna.</p>
-<p>The English occupation endowed the island with good roads,
-<span class="pb" id="Page_17">17</span>
-most of which are maintained in fair condition still; and a
-winter&rsquo;s sojourn here lacks nothing which could be expected
-in the compass of ten by thirty miles, with two posts per week
-from Europe. The fruits are those of the northern Mediterranean
-in great perfection, the oranges being only second to
-those of Crete; the waters are still well supplied with fish,
-though the people do all they can to exterminate them by
-the use of dynamite in fishing; and the Bella Venezia is
-a hotel which, though still strange to the resources of our
-American caravansaries, is more appropriate to the ways of the
-East and of idle people than are ours. The kindly, honest old
-host, appropriately known as Dionysos, lacks but little of
-giving to the stranger the hospitality of Alcino&uuml;s. And life is
-so cheap that one who has worn out the world and realized an
-income of a thousand dollars a year may find a Macarian
-peace in an upper room of the Bella Venezia, with windows
-looking out on the beautiful mountains of Epirus, snow-clad
-all winter, and the bright blue of the intervening sea, with the
-coming, going, and merely passing ships of all nations; and,
-when the sun is low, have a comfortable carriage to thread the
-labyrinths of the immense olive groves which form almost the
-only shade in the island. Here one meets men of all races&mdash;Turkish
-reliefs on their way from Stamboul to Durazzo,
-or Scutari of Albania; white-skirted palikars from Epirus;
-Eastern Jews, with their characteristic long robes; Persians,
-Montenegrins, Peloponnesians, etc., who, changing steamers
-here, or glad to breathe a land air during the stay in port of
-their steamers, stroll up and down the parade, with the easy-going
-townsmen and tourists of all nations, seeing the island
-in comfort or rushing over it in the custody of Cook or Gaze,
-to carry away a confused remembrance of Corfu and Syra,
-hardly recalling which was which.</p>
-<p>Ulysses was dismissed from Scheria loaded with presents.
-The modern voyager is not so fortunate. The souvenirs of
-<span class="pb" id="Page_18">18</span>
-Corfu which he will carry with him, whether antique or
-modern, will rarely recompense him for the outlay. The bric-&agrave;-brac
-shops abound in false antiques, arms from Epirus, Greek
-laces, and Eastern embroideries, which no wise buyer meddles
-with, dear beyond measure as they are. Be content with the
-moderate <i>pension</i> of the Bella Venezia, and tempt not Mercury
-in his favored island; he was the god of thieves as well as
-merchants, and was never better worshiped in his capacity of
-joint protector than in the bric-&agrave;-brac shops of Corfu.</p>
-<p>Ulysses went to Ithaca in one night, in what must have
-been, for the time, the quickest passage on record, and a great
-credit to the rowers of King Alcino&uuml;s. Nothing like it is to
-be expected to-day, though it is not impossible still, and the
-steamer which does the service makes a long, roundabout
-voyage. Our yacht, though small, was too big for rowing,
-and we had no special motive, as Ulysses had, to get quickly
-to Ithaca. As our route lay by Santa Maura, which has to
-do with the story of the Odyssey, if not with the wanderings
-from Troy, we turned aside from his course to visit it.
-Nericus, as it was called in Homeric nomenclature, probably
-formed part of the realm of the Ithacan kings, Laertes mentioning
-his conquest of it; but it is not mentioned in the
-catalogue, and we may conclude was not Greek. It is barely
-separated from the mainland by a narrow channel, cut by the
-Corinthians through a flat, which more anciently, however,
-must have been a shallow arm of the sea. The action of the
-elements is filling it up again, so that time may unite it to the
-Acarnanian shore, as in the Homeric days; for Laertes, in
-recalling to Ulysses some of his old exploits (Odyssey, book
-24), says: &ldquo;Ah, that it had pleased Zeus, Apollo, Athene, to
-have borne me to your palace, such as I was when, at the
-head of the Cephalonians, I took, <i>on the continent</i>, the proud
-city of Nericus!&rdquo; In the catalogue of the Iliad we find that
-&ldquo;Ulysses commands the magnanimous Cephalonians; the
-<span class="pb" id="Page_19">19</span>
-warriors of Ithaca; those of shady Neriton, of Crocyles, of the
-barren &AElig;gilipos; those of Samos [Sam&eacute; of Cephalonia, not
-the island Samos], of Zacynthus [Zante], and of the adjoining
-continent. Twelve ships whose sides were painted red followed
-him.&rdquo; But Nericus occurs nowhere.</p>
-<p>Nothing illustrates so strikingly the change in the condition
-of civilization as the relations between the ancient and modern
-chief cities of the Greek islands. The substitute for the
-stately Nericus is a low, flat, uninteresting town, built on the
-plain which lies north of Nericus, and next the roadstead.
-To the east lie the rugged mountains of Acarnania and the
-Gulf of Arta; north, in full view, is the modern fortress of
-Prevesa; further, and to the east, Arta, the ancient Ambracia;
-and the long strip of low coast which stretches away from
-Prevesa northward is dotted with masses of ruin&mdash;those of
-the imperial Nicopolis, monument of the victory of Actium,
-won in those blue waters. The idle shepherds of those days,
-watching their sheep on these hills, saw the crash of prows,
-the flight of Egypt, and the shame of Antony. Perhaps,
-through this very channel, where the light-draft ca&iuml;que now
-glides, to gain the shelter of the islands going southward, ran
-the fugitive ships of Cleopatra; for this was evidently the
-channel by which the craft of those days avoided the stormy
-capes of Cephalonia and the southern point of Nericus.
-Standing on the eastern brow of the hill on which the old
-city stood, and on which its ruins still mark a noble past, is
-the citadel. Along the plain, among the olives, the fragments
-of tombs lie spread like flocks of sleeping sheep. The port
-was on the bay now connected with the northern roadstead
-by the Corinthian Channel; and two or three underground
-passages, in part cut in solid rock, one being high enough for
-a man to walk in upright, and cut as cleanly and evenly as
-the walls of a chamber, connect it with the citadel which
-dominates the northern part of the island, where the fertile
-<span class="pb" id="Page_20">20</span>
-plains lie. The ruins are of various ages, embracing Pelasgic,
-but mainly later, and coming down to Roman times; and the
-great extent of the Pelasgic <i>enceinte</i>, which almost everywhere
-underlies the Hellenic and Roman work, shows the great early
-importance of the city. The citadel is bold and commanding,
-and looks out on the northern and western seas on one side,
-and the Corinthian Channel and the inland sea on the other,
-and down to Ithaca, which, indeed, is visible from some points.</p>
-<p>The post-Homeric name of Nericus was Leucadia. &AElig;neas
-is represented as having debarked there, and Apollo had a
-temple on the heights which terminate the island to the south.
-From the cliffs which overlook the Adriatic on that side,
-Sappho is said to have leaped into the sea, overcome by the
-sorrows of her unhappy love. &ldquo;Sappho&rsquo;s Leap&rdquo; is the name
-of the cliff to this day, and my Corfiote captain, as we glided
-by, told me how the place was celebrated because the Duchess
-of the island had jumped off into the sea from it, and that
-the people had put up a great inscription in memory of it.
-He had never seen it, and didn&rsquo;t know exactly where the leap
-was made; but I think he was very excusable for his ignorance,
-as the action of the sea, driven as it is sometimes by the
-furious southwest wind into a very &ldquo;hell of waters,&rdquo; which
-consume the rock in their fury, must long ago have brought
-down all that classical times had seen of the rock, and changed
-the face of the cliff entirely. As it now is, I could find
-hardly a point where a new Sappho would have found a welcome
-so gentle as the embrace of the Adriatic; masses of
-fallen rock and stony beach would have given a harsher but
-more speedy end.</p>
-<p>Mythology says that when Adonis was killed, Aphrodite,
-seeking him through all the earth, finally found him lying
-dead in the temple of the Erythr&aelig;an Apollo. The Sun-god,
-to cure her grief, counseled her to throw herself from the cliffs
-of Leucadia into the sea, where she would find oblivion. Here
-<span class="pb" id="Page_21">21</span>
-Zeus, who seems to have found obstacles in the way of his
-legitimate marriage, and to have wooed Hera at first with less
-success than attended his mortal loves, found by the same process
-a salutary indifference to the charms of his divine sister
-and afterwards spouse, to which temporary coolness on his
-part might, perhaps, be ascribed his ultimate success with the
-fickle fair.</p>
-<p>And here, in practical historical times, criminals condemned
-to death were thrown into the sea. The people (who even
-now preserve a certain sympathy with the criminal class) used
-to tie numbers of birds to the limbs of the condemned and
-cover them with feathers to break the force of their fall, and
-then send boats to pick them up. If they survived, they were
-pardoned.</p>
-<p>In modern times nothing has occurred to signalize Santa
-Maura, or &ldquo;Levkadi,&rdquo; as it is indifferently called. It was
-taken and retaken by Turks and Venetians, and finally passed
-with the rest of the Ionian Islands to the heirs of Venice.
-Its people are a mild, hospitable race, to whom the stranger is
-a guest almost in the antique sense.</p>
-<p>We loitered along with a feeble west wind, under the
-western shore, bold and desolate, of Levkadi, its high peaks
-above us breaking into ravines, and the ravines ending in cliffs,
-doubled &ldquo;Sappho&rsquo;s Leap,&rdquo; and before us lay Ithaca, the ten-years-sought-for
-island. To the north was still visible a dim
-film which we knew to be Corfu; nearer, one less dim, which
-we recognized by its outline to be Paxos, an island without
-history and without interest, but which tradition asserts to
-have been once united to Corfu and separated by an earthquake.
-The breeze quickened at night-fall as we went round
-the point of the Leukadian cliffs, and before us lay the inland
-sea, which, separating Santa Maura, Ithaca, Cephalonia, and
-Zante from the mainland, is a sort of smooth-water channel
-for ships coming out of the Gulf of Patras, or of Corinth, as
-<span class="pb" id="Page_22">22</span>
-it is indifferently called, or running in there from Corfu and
-the upper Adriatic. The bolder portions of Ithaca are almost
-utterly denuded rock. One hollow, like a great theatre, opens
-northward between two bold rocky peninsulas, and this is the
-vale from which the Odyssean city drew its prosperity. Olive-trees
-and vineyards still cover its slopes, and suggestions of
-white villages flashed out from the silvery green sea of olive
-orchards as we flitted by, running under the eastern shore to
-catch the breeze that blew down from the mountain as the sun
-sank. We had all the wind our cutter could carry, and bowled
-along through the smooth water in the lee of the island like a
-steamer. Far ahead we saw, in the gathering night, a faint
-glimmer of light, which seemed too faint for a light-house, and
-too steady for a house-light, and which perplexed us exceedingly,
-as no light was indicated on the chart; but, creeping
-along shore, we found that it was a tiny chapel standing on a
-long and menacing peninsula of bare rock, in the window of
-which burned a lamp,&mdash;in all probability the fulfillment of a
-vow made by some devout Greek sailor who had escaped the
-teeth of this Scylla; or the perpetuation of an antique custom,
-when the little chapel of St. Nicholas, protector of sailors,
-was a temple of Neptune, whom the saint replaces in function
-and respect of the seafarer. Nothing is more interesting in
-this part of the world than the evidences of the unbroken
-continuity of religious tradition, and the gradual change of
-paganism into Christianity,&mdash;if, indeed, the change has taken
-place, which in certain districts I am scarcely disposed to
-admit. The little chapels which one finds planted by the seaside
-or solitary roadside in all the Greek islands, and even on
-the mainland, will generally be found to have some antique
-material in them, some evidence of the earlier shrine which
-honored one of the Greek gods. The Olympians have their
-homologues if not their homonyms. Zeus goes back to his
-awful antique dignity of the All-father, the original sole deity
-<span class="pb" id="Page_23">23</span>
-of the Pelasgian, worshiped in a temple not made by hands,
-under the speaking oak of Dodona, the one God, maker of
-heaven and earth, the Dyaus or Sky-father of our Aryan ancestors,
-and Zeus (Deus, Divus) of the western branch of the
-family; but his creatures and children fall into the lower
-rank of saints: Apollo becomes St. Elias (Helios); Athena,
-the Virgin Mary; Ares, St. George; Poseidon, St. Nicholas,
-etc., etc.</p>
-<p>We left St. Nicholas and his night-light behind us, and,
-rounding a cape into the Bay of Vathy, saw in the dim
-distance the light of the outer light-house, and met the wind
-coming out of the bay. It was late, and beating up the bay
-would be a long job; so we turned in and left the navigation
-to the sailors. The next morning we woke, as Ulysses did,
-under the shadow of Neriton, where the Ph&aelig;acians had left
-him sleeping.</p>
-<p>&ldquo;In one part of Ithaca is the port of Phorcys, the old man
-of the sea; the bold promontories forming the circuit protect
-it from the great waves and the sounding winds. The ships
-which have once entered it may lie without cables. At its
-extremity is a bushy olive-tree whose shadow hides a delicious
-grotto and shady retreat, sacred to the Nereids. In
-this asylum, refreshed by an inexhaustible fountain, are placed
-the vases and the jars of stone.... It has two entrances:
-one, looking toward the north, is for the use of men; the
-other, to the east, is more divine. Never man enters there:
-it is the path of the immortals.</p>
-<p>&ldquo;The olive-tree and the grotto are known to the Ph&aelig;acians.
-There they go. The ship runs half-way up the beach, so
-strong is the stroke of the rowers. Then these land, carrying
-Ulysses, still plunged in profound sleep, and lay him on
-the sand, wrapped in brilliant blankets and woven linen.&rdquo;</p>
-<p>Waking, he is bewildered by the artifice of Athena, and
-does not recognize his native island; but finally, when he
-<span class="pb" id="Page_24">24</span>
-appeals to the Goddess to tell him the truth, if he be in
-Ithaca, she replies to him:&mdash;</p>
-<p>&ldquo;Now I will show you the localities of Ithaca, that you
-may doubt no more. There is the port of Phorcys, old man
-of the sea; there, at the extremity of the port, the bushy
-olive-tree, and under its shade a delicious grotto, dark resting-place,
-and sacred to the nymphs. This is the vaulted grotto
-where often you sacrificed entire hecatombs to the nymphs.
-There is Mount Neriton, shadowed by forests.&rdquo;</p>
-<p>The identification of this little bay or &ldquo;port&rdquo; is the one
-contested point of the topography, and, on account of its
-greater commodiousness, Port Vathy (at the left as we enter
-the roadstead) is maintained by some authorities to be the
-&ldquo;port of Phorcys.&rdquo; The geology of the two bays is conclusive
-evidence in favor of that which the Greeks now call Port
-Dexia (the right-hand port), as Port Vathy has not, and by
-its geological formation never could have had, a beach such as
-Homer describes, and which was indispensable to the ancient
-sailor, while that of Dexia is superb&mdash;a soft, unbroken
-stretch of sand. Other objections we shall meet further on.</p>
-<blockquote>
-<p>[<span class="sc">Note.</span>&mdash;The puzzling question of the forms of classical names in these articles
-has been carefully considered, and the difficulty of adapting consistent classical
-orthography to popular arch&aelig;ology seems too great to be overcome in this place.]</p>
-</blockquote>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_25">25</div>
-<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
-<p>The changes of the conditions of existence in what we call
-civilization resemble, a good deal more than we generally
-imagine, the progress of a horse in a tread-mill. Comparing
-the evidences of a higher prosperity which history affords with
-what we now find in Ithaca, we have ample ground to suppose
-that, while our part of the world has made certain advances,
-this has rather retrograded. A scanty population, the greater
-part of the island indeed uninhabited; ruins of great cities
-where now there is not a shepherd&rsquo;s hut; a wretched, sordid
-life in which not even poetry, the offspring of sorrow, can find
-a foothold; utter insignificance in the world of men,&mdash;this is
-what the island of Ulysses, which fills so large a part of the
-Old World&rsquo;s poetry, shows us to-day.</p>
-<p>We woke like Ulysses under the shadow of Neriton, but not
-like him under the olive&rsquo;s shade. Our yacht was anchored in
-a tranquil and land-locked bay, Port Vathy (the deep), round
-the shores of which stretch and gleam, white in the sun, the
-houses of the modern capital of Ithaca, a dull, utterly uninteresting
-town, neither whose past nor present is worth a note.</p>
-<p>Devastated by Turks and corsairs by turns, conquered by
-Christian and Infidel, the tribute of death and pillage had at
-one time nearly left the island a desert, and Venetian chronicles
-report the repeopling of it by a Slavonic colony; but
-there is good evidence, as we shall see presently, that there
-was never quite an end of the original stock. Though one
-does see occasionally strongly Slavonic faces, the population is
-now in language and manners purely Greek, with some of the
-worst traits of the race strongly developed. By good chance I
-<span class="pb" id="Page_26">26</span>
-found an old acquaintance in Mr. Caravia, a deputy for Ithaca
-to the Greek Assembly, then in vacation, and I had a letter to
-Aristides Dendrinos, the principal personage of the island; and
-through their united attentions we were made as much at
-home in Ithaca as possible. But the Ithacans are shrewd folk,
-sharp dealers who look at foreigners as the Hebrews did on
-the Egyptians, as made to be spoiled; and we were unlucky
-enough to have arrived in the Greek Lent, which, as they
-observe it, is equal to starvation to outsiders. The excellent
-wine of Ithaca, one of the best of Greek wines, is quite
-worthy its ancient reputation; but flesh was unattainable,
-and fish so rare, owing to the people&rsquo;s habit of killing them
-with dynamite, that we could not get enough for a breakfast.
-The fowls in Greek lands, living an outcast life, never fed, but
-expected to grow, as the partridges do, on the bounties of
-nature, hardly offer a compensation for the trouble of picking
-their bones. They combine all the misfortunes of the wild
-and domesticated conditions, with none of the advantages of
-either, and offer a scant resource to the caterer. We made
-haste to see what was to be seen in Ithaca, and study our
-great predecessor&rsquo;s footprints, but we found the learning
-harder than the living. The island Greek is quick-witted,
-and, like the Irishman, never confesses himself at fault in
-anything you want to know, especially in things connected
-with ancient history or arch&aelig;ology. He solves the hardest
-and most obscure problem by a bold dash, and is even surer
-than Schliemann in his breezy inductions. It is amusing and
-cheering to see a man so cock-sure of what arch&aelig;ology has
-puzzled over so many years. On inquiring for a guide to
-shorten my researches (for, though Homer is guide-book
-enough for Ithaca, one may be a long time in tracing out the
-Odyssean movements by the poem), every one was ready to
-show me everything. Before leaving I found an intelligent
-guide, as such go, in one Angelo Persego, whose name I
-<span class="pb" id="Page_27">27</span>
-record for the benefit of such of my readers as may be tempted
-(out of the Greek Lent) to visit Ithaca. But here let me
-drop a word of advice for all voyagers in Greek lands. Take
-a guide for lodgings and living, but never place any confidence
-in his identifications or local traditions. He may be right,
-but the chances are nine to one he is not. He may even have
-been over the ground before, but his assurance to that effect
-is no evidence. I found the men I selected utterly ignorant,
-as usual, of almost all I wanted to learn; but I found a little
-book by G. F. Bowen, one time Fellow of Brasenose and
-President of the Ionian University, which, though dated in
-1850, gives a sufficient clue to the topography to enable one
-to dispense with a guide, except to find the best roads.</p>
-<p>Vathy does not occur in the Odyssey under any name, nor
-is there any trace of antique structures about it. In the illustration
-the narrow entrance at the right is Vathy; the cove
-in the centre, with the island off it, is the port of Phorcys,
-where Ulysses was landed, and which, for the uses of ancient
-mariners, who beached their ships instead of anchoring them,
-was a better port than Vathy. It corresponds in the minutest
-detail to Homer&rsquo;s account of it,&mdash;a smooth, sandy beach,
-complete shelter from all winds, and only varying in any
-particulars in its surroundings by a greater distance from the
-grotto where the Ph&aelig;acians hide the presents Ulysses brings
-with him; but of this more is to be said.</p>
-<p>The Odyssey gives no intimation of any city near the landing-place.
-The port of Ulysses&rsquo; own capital was much nearer
-Ph&aelig;acia, and the ship might have landed him at his own door.
-The reason of this excessive caution was that during so long
-a time he had had no news from home, and his Ph&aelig;acian
-friends knew that he might find his city in the hands of an
-enemy.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_28">28</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig6">
-<img src="images/i06.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="773" />
-<p class="caption">PORT OF PHORCYS AND NERITON, FROM THE MOUTH OF ULYSSES&rsquo; CAVE.</p>
-</div>
-<p>Awaking, then, from the sleep in which he had been so
-gently landed by the crew of the Ph&aelig;acian ship, he finds
-himself in a strange land, as he supposed, and in complete
-solitude, and arms himself with his habitual cunning, distrusting
-everything. When Athena comes to him in the form of
-a shepherd, he asks where he is; and being told that he is at
-last in the long-sought Ithaca, he is transported with joy, but
-conceals his emotion and addresses the goddess with these
-hasty words, disguising the
-truth and telling his story
-falsely, always turning in
-his mind many artifices:
-&ldquo;I, too, have heard, in the
-far-off, immense island of
-Crete, of the island of Ithaca. It is, then, in that country
-that I have arrived with my treasures. I have left an equal
-part to my children because I fly from my native land, where
-I killed the dear son of Idomeneus,&rdquo; etc., etc., going on with
-a long history to account for his presence in Ithaca, a place
-unknown to him, which fable he only drops when Athena
-<span class="pb" id="Page_29">29</span>
-throws off her disguise; but he still is unconvinced that he is
-in Ithaca. She calls his attention to Neriton in front of him,
-and having convinced him, helps him hide his treasures in the
-grotto, when they sit down under the olive-tree over its
-entrance, and she tells him how matters stand at home, and
-contrives plans for getting rid of the pretendants, who would,
-no doubt, put an end to him if he fell into their hands. This
-seems to be his conviction, for he exclaims: &ldquo;Great gods! if
-you had not enlightened me I should have perished in my
-palace, like Agamemnon. Come, let us plan a means by which
-I may revenge myself on them all.&rdquo; This hint of the fate
-of Agamemnon, whose end he had learned, is the clue to his
-cautious deportment. They plan as follows: He will be disguised
-by Athena, so that not even his wife shall know him,
-and will then go to Eun&aelig;us, who keeps his swine by the
-Raven&rsquo;s Cliff, near Arethusa&rsquo;s fountain, and wait with him
-studying up the position, while she goes off to Laced&aelig;mon to
-bring back Telemachus, whom she had sent there nominally
-to get news of his father, but really, as she informs Ulysses, to
-give him an opportunity, hitherto wanting, to see the world
-and acquire renown. Here they separate, and Ulysses takes
-the secret path.</p>
-<p>The position of the grotto makes the only difficulty in tracing
-all his movements; for it is not, as one would expect from
-the text, at the head of the port, strictly speaking, but at the
-head of the little ravine which ends in the port, a good quarter
-of an hour&rsquo;s walk from the shore, even making allowance
-for all the recession of the water-line, which has evidently
-been considerable. The grotto itself corresponds exactly with
-the description, and can be entered by mortals only in the
-usual way, by the small opening which looks toward the port.
-&ldquo;It has two entrances: one, turned toward the breath of
-Boreas, is for human use; the other, toward that of Notos, is
-more divine. Never man enters by that; it is the way of the
-<span class="pb" id="Page_30">30</span>
-immortals.&rdquo; The human entrance is a low, almost invisible
-opening, or at least, easily passed without notice, at a short
-distance. Even now, when all vegetation has disappeared
-from around it, and the olive-trees come only half-way up the
-hill, it would easily be hidden by a large stone, as Minerva
-hides it. The entrance, low and precipitous, widens rapidly
-within, and we descend by what might once have been artificially
-prepared steps to a vault-like cave, sixteen to twenty
-feet in diameter, with a curious recess at the farther end, and
-at the top of the vault another opening, like the top window
-of the Pantheon of Rome, or any of the circular temples
-whose form was derived from the vaulted tomb or treasury of
-Pelasgic architecture. At first sight I thought this opening
-might have been artificial, but on close examination I saw that
-the formation of the rock led to it naturally, and that, hardly
-large enough to admit a human body readily, it could only, if
-enlarged, be entered by a person&rsquo;s being let down with a cord.
-This is the &ldquo;immortals&rsquo; entrance.&rdquo; Under this opening lies
-a huge heap of stones, the accumulation of centuries, for the
-lower portions are cemented together by the stalagmitic
-deposit from the rock above; and the walls of the grotto,
-despite the breaking off of every attackable stalactite, are also
-formed of carbonate of lime so deposited. The difference between
-the actual distance from the water&rsquo;s edge to the grotto
-and that which is indicated by the narrative of the Odyssey
-is not more than a fair poetic license would permit; or the
-memory of the narrator, having known the localities, might
-well in a few years of absence leave out this short distance.</p>
-<p>The Odyssean topography is greatly confused to the modern
-traveler by the fact that the Homeric city undoubtedly stood
-at the northern end of the island, and far remote from the
-modern city as well as from the landing-place of Ulysses and
-the pig-pens of Eum&aelig;us. The view from the grotto gives us,
-at the left, a bay of which Vathy and Phorcys are tributaries.
-<span class="pb" id="Page_31">31</span>
-This cuts the island nearly in two, a narrow ridge of rock
-only connecting its two great masses. On the north is the
-site of the Homeric city, as I shall presently show; but on
-the south are the Raven&rsquo;s Cliff and the fountain of Arethusa,
-together with an ancient ruin known by the people as the
-&ldquo;Castle of Ulysses.&rdquo; These ruins are of the earliest form
-of Pelasgic, commonly named Cyclopean, though there is no
-justification for any distinction between the &ldquo;Pelasgic&rdquo; and
-the &ldquo;Cyclopean,&rdquo; or any proper distinction of styles, as they
-run into each other, from the form shown at &ldquo;Ulysses&rsquo; Castle&rdquo;
-to the most elaborate and carefully fitted polygonal which
-we shall find at Sam&eacute; on the opposite shore of Cephalonia.
-The walls of Ulysses&rsquo; Castle are of great extent, and portions
-still remaining near the summit are well preserved, some
-fragments being nearly twenty feet high. It must have been
-the work of a powerful tribe and a great stronghold. Seen
-from the sea, it shows on a sharp conical rock precipitously
-trending down to the shore. The Odyssey in no manner
-makes allusion to this, either as city or as ruin. Ulysses passes
-very near it going south, leaving it on the right, apparently
-ignoring its existence. This makes it tolerably clear that it
-had been so long in ruin that it was in no way to be connected
-with the Odyssean dynasty or colonization even, or that it was
-constructed after the Homeric epoch. The latter hypothesis
-is untenable, because we find in many parts, especially in the
-Argolid, ruins clearly contemporary with this, which are in
-the Hellenic traditions regarded as the work of a vanished
-and semi-divine race of giants, the Cyclopes or the &ldquo;divine
-Pelasgi;&rdquo; while, of the Homeric epoch, as distinguished from
-the Pelasgic, which preceded it, and the Hellenic, which
-followed it, we have no recognizable remains, and the cities
-known to have existed, such as the Ithaca of Ulysses, have left
-no ruin durable enough to show in our time. This indicates
-a state of civilization in which the great necessity of strong
-<span class="pb" id="Page_32">32</span>
-walls as a defense had passed, or that, by the use of cement,
-walls were made so light in structure that they were efficient
-for the day, but perished utterly in the intervening time,
-which again is an untenable hypothesis, because we find
-cement used nowhere in Greece in work known to be earlier
-than the third century <span class="smaller">B. C.</span> I leave the question of the
-identity of the Odyssean epoch with that of the composition
-of the poem at present untouched. I am dealing only with
-the poem which philologists suppose to have been composed
-about 850 <span class="smaller">B. C.</span> That the author knew Ithaca perfectly, I
-think we shall see, and that consequently the ruins of the
-Pelasgic epoch, when not continuously inhabited (as were
-Nericus and Sam&eacute;, the former of which Laertes conquered,
-and the latter of which sent the largest deputation of &ldquo;kings&rdquo;
-as suitors for Penelope, the foundations of both being Pelasgic),
-were already so lost in the twilight of prehistory as to
-be without any meaning to the author of the Odyssey. The
-city whose ruins are now called the Castle of Ulysses was
-as unknown to the epoch of Homer as to ours. No one in
-the whole action of the Odyssey goes in or out of its gates, or
-turns aside from his path to speak of or visit it. &ldquo;Kings&rdquo;
-were as common as rascals in those days, but that two important
-cities should exist contemporaneously in the small
-island of Ithaca, and that the people of Ulysses should live
-in one, pasture their hogs on the territory of the other, and
-ignore its existence, is impossible. This does not prevent
-Schliemann from identifying the house walls, which remain to
-a small height, with the pig-pens of Eum&aelig;us, or a huge stump
-near the citadel, with the tree from which Ulysses had made
-his bed (<i>Ithaca, Peloponnesus and Troy</i>).</p>
-<p>That this part of the island was nearly or quite unpopulated
-is made more than probable by the facts that no mention
-is made of any city or people here; that the only features
-mentioned are the wildness, and forests abandoned to feeding
-<span class="pb" id="Page_33">33</span>
-of pigs; and that Ulysses selects this part for his concealment.
-The path Ulysses probably followed from the port of
-Phorcys to the Raven&rsquo;s Cliff is by far too hard for dilettante
-following; it is not only impassable to beasts of burden, but, I
-should say, difficult for a pedestrian. There is a road carriageable
-for a few miles from Vathy along the ridge southward,
-and then a fair bridle-path to the cliff, which, had we known
-it, would have led us somewhere near the location of Eum&aelig;us&rsquo;s
-sties; but the guide my friends had recommended me,
-on his personal assurance, did not know the road, and we
-went wandering across fields and over hills, abandoning our
-quadrupeds at the moment when they would have been our
-best guides; and, finally, the fellow had to go to a ploughman
-scratching the earth with a crooked stick behind a yoke of
-year-old heifers, and inquire his way. I exhausted my modern
-Greek in exasperated vituperation of his pretentious ignorance,
-and took the lead, as I generally have had to do on
-similar occasions.</p>
-<p>There was a pretty little valley on our way, the only arable
-or fruitful land in this part of the island; all else was bare
-and bleak. A few tough-lived shrubs, broom and gorse,
-arbutus, and some others I did not know, wring a scanty
-subsistence from the clefts between the rocks, and in a mass
-of almost unmitigated limestone was cloven a ravine. The
-roughness of Ithaca was proverbial even in Homeric days,
-since Athena, while disguised as a shepherd, replies to Ulysses,
-&ldquo;If it [Ithaca] is rocky, if it breeds not horses in its moderate
-space, it is not quite barren,&rdquo; etc. One might well select this
-scene as one of tranquil beauty, with the faint glimpses of the
-dreamy inner sea above its valley distance, and the golden
-grain-fields as I saw them, interspersed with vineyards and
-olive-orchards.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_34">34</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig7">
-<img src="images/i07.jpg" alt="" width="551" height="800" />
-<p class="caption">RAVEN&rsquo;S CLIFF AND THE FOUNTAIN OF ARETHUSA.</p>
-</div>
-<p>The glen of the Raven&rsquo;s Cliff becomes a wild gorge below
-the fountain of Arethusa, and descends abruptly to the sea.
-Above, a stripe of bare, pale-gray rock down the cliff shows
-that in winter it is the location of a cataract, though, when I
-visited the locality, dry
-as summer dust. The
-fountain of Arethusa is
-situated about half-way
-from the cliff to the sea,
-and bears the evidences
-of an immense antiquity.
-Remains of an architectural
-surrounding are
-still to be seen, which,
-with some foundations
-of walls of the Roman
-period, evidently of a
-temple to the nymph
-or local goddess, and
-&ldquo;Ulysses&rsquo; Castle,&rdquo; are
-the only traces of ruin discoverable in this lobe of the island.
-The recess of the fountain has once been much larger, but
-<span class="pb" id="Page_35">35</span>
-the slow process of depositing the calcareous incrustation
-which forms its walls has gone on so long that only a small
-deep basin remains, from which the people draw the water
-with a cord and bucket. Its niche is cushioned with moss
-and maidenhair ferns, and the soft porous rock is always
-moist with the filtering through of the water. A wooden
-trough is placed for the watering of the sheep and goats
-which take the place of the hogs of Eum&aelig;us, for this is the
-only perennial source of water in the region.</p>
-<p>An old woman, wrinkled and bowed, looking like one of the
-Fates, sat near the fountain, combing the wool she had washed
-at it; and on the opposite side the nymph of the fountain, in
-the shape of a young matron of some neighboring hamlet, was
-washing her clothes. The wash was boiling when we came
-up, over a fire of brambles and weeds; but the utensil which
-took the place of the bronze caldron of the antique house-mother
-was an American petroleum-can, with a wire bale
-fitted in rudely, and the stamp of the New York Refining
-Company was still visible on the tin. We talk of the omnipresence
-of gold, of the omnipotence of cotton; but in my
-wanderings on the earth I have found places where the people
-did not know the value of a piece of gold, and wore nothing
-but the homespun and woven wool of their flocks and flax
-of their fields, while I have never found one that did not
-know petroleum; and I have learned that the petroleum-can
-is a more universal concomitant of civilization than English
-cutlery or American drillings.</p>
-<p>The pens of Ulysses&rsquo; pig-herd were at the top of the cliff,
-where a plain of small extent and soil of scanty depth still
-maintains an olive-grove, sole representative of the forest of
-oaks whose acorns fattened the swine for the revels of the
-suitors of Penelope.</p>
-<p>Here Ulysses finds Eum&aelig;us, and here, in his anxiety to
-convince him of the truth of his prediction of the return of
-<span class="pb" id="Page_36">36</span>
-the wanderer, he says: &ldquo;If he return not as I declare, let
-your servants seize me and throw me over the high rock, that
-vagabonds may learn in future to abstain from useless falsehoods.&rdquo;</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig8">
-<img src="images/i08.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="650" />
-<p class="caption">FROM AN OLD GREEK VASE.
-<br />THE SITE OF ITHACA&mdash;PORT POLIS.</p>
-</div>
-<p>To return to the city of Ithaca, Ulysses must retrace his
-steps past the port of Phorcys, and follow the ridge of rock
-which connects the
-divisions of the island
-past the mass
-of Neriton. His
-landing-place was on the
-east side of the island, the
-port of the ancient city
-Ithaca on the west; and there are now on the road between,
-several villages, the representatives, perhaps, of the ancient
-towns from which Ulysses drew his quota of men for the
-Trojan campaign, &ldquo;Crocyles and the rocky &AElig;gilipos.&rdquo; It
-was in one of these villages that Schliemann, visiting the
-island for the first time, in his Homeric enthusiasm, as the
-villagers, in their habitual curiosity to see the stranger, came
-out to gaze and question, taking the assemblage as a demonstration
-<span class="pb" id="Page_37">37</span>
-in his honor, and determined to show them how well
-he estimated the dignity of an heir of the Odyssean glory,
-mounted on a table and translated from Homer the passages
-which record Laertes&rsquo; emotions on the return of his long-lost
-son. &ldquo;They wept with emotion,&rdquo; says the na&iuml;f Doctor; and
-he rewarded them by some hundred lines more. Remembering
-this incident, I inquired about the matter, and found that
-it had excited much merriment in the cultivated circles of
-Vathy, and, as I expected, the other side in the rencontre preserved
-a very different recollection of the Doctor&rsquo;s achievement,
-and that the tears were of merriment rather than of
-pathos. No one in the assemblage could understand a word
-of the Greek in the Doctor&rsquo;s pronunciation of it.</p>
-<p>In the nomenclature of the two principal higher villages of
-the northern section, I found a curious survival of archaic
-language, which, so far as I could learn, is as incomprehensible
-as Homer, in the original, to the inhabitants. The villages
-are Ano&iuml; and Exo&iuml;, which are clearly from the archaic and
-(except in the Cretan mountains) obsolete words <i>ano</i> and <i>exo</i>,
-used as <i>haw</i> and <i>gee</i> are by us in driving oxen, and of course
-meaning originally right and left, and these indicate site survivals
-of early towns or villages. But of Ithaca the <i>city</i>, the
-home of Ulysses, not a trace remains except the name <i>Polis</i>
-(city, <i>the</i> city par excellence), which is applied to a locality
-where not even an ancient wall shows a claim to the appellation.
-The fragments of substructure shown on the hill above
-and near the village of Stavros are undoubtedly medi&aelig;val, and
-belong to the piratical city which was established here, and
-which was destroyed in the latter part of the sixteenth century.
-I searched in vain for anything to indicate the date of
-the ancient city, but here, doubtless, was the home of Ulysses.
-Its little port is of the nature demanded by ancient mariners,&mdash;a
-smooth beach in a cove, with the island of Cephalonia
-opposite and near enough to shut off any great violence of sea
-<span class="pb" id="Page_38">38</span>
-or wind. Homer relates that the suitors, when Telemachus
-had gone to Pylos to get news of his father, sent out a ship
-with some of their number to intercept and kill him on his
-return, and that this ship lay in watch at an island off the
-port where the return of Telemachus&rsquo;s ship could be seen
-from afar and prevented. Opposite Port Polis is a rock, probably
-the remnant of that island; for, as the material of it is a
-conglomerate easily subdued by the elements and decomposing
-rapidly, it must have been once a considerable island, and it is
-now the only remnant of rock or island which occupies any
-such relative position.</p>
-<p>In searching around the neighborhood for traces of antiquity
-I was accosted by a peasant, who told me that there had been
-found a stone with some letters on it, and I made haste to
-hunt it out. They (for there were two fragments) were at
-the bottom of a heap of stone which had been exhumed from
-under a land-fall, and which were evidently part of a very
-ancient building. I hired the men who gathered round to
-remove the heap, and photographed the stones, which had
-been originally one. The inscription is in the early style of
-Greek epigraphy, boustrophedon, <i>i. e.</i>, going alternately from
-left to right and right to left, as oxen go when ploughing. It
-is the oldest known inscription in the Ithacan alphabet.</p>
-<p>I placed a copy of the photograph in the hands of Professor
-Comparetti of Florence, amongst others, and received from
-him the following, read at a meeting of the Academy of the
-Lincei:&mdash;</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_39">39</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig9">
-<img src="images/i09.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="366" />
-<p class="caption">INSCRIPTION FOUND AT POLIS.</p>
-</div>
-<p>&ldquo;Since I have hitherto spoken of inscriptions very old or
-archaic, as we say, it will be permitted me to close this communication
-by presenting to the Academy a curious inscription
-of this kind recently discovered in Ithaca and communicated
-to me by a diligent and cultivated visitor to the Greek
-lands, the American, Mr. Stillman, who made in Ithaca a photograph
-of the inscription, and, having unsuccessfully asked an
-interpretation of several scholars, applied to me. He has
-permitted me to make communication to this Academy, putting
-at my disposition also the negative of his photograph,
-from which are printed the copies I present. The inscription is
-tolerably roughly cut in a friable stone, broken in two, worn
-by time and water. The photograph, which is never the best
-means of representing monuments of this kind even in experienced
-hands, presents some confusion and obscurity in parts;
-but this is the only difficulty in the epigraph.... I saw at
-once that this was an inscription of which there was already
-some notice in a book published by the Ph&oelig;nix of discoverers
-of antiquities, Schliemann, in 1868, &lsquo;Ithaca, Peloponnesos,
-and Troy.&rsquo; Rich as he is in
-fancy, Schliemann is ready
-to believe any story, and at
-once convinced himself that
-he had discovered the inscription
-of a very old sarcophagus,
-and found an honest
-workman who helped
-him to complete the idea, showing him the bones found in it
-by him. And in his book, together with this and other news,
-he communicated the inscription such as he read it. Of the
-two fragments, however, he only saw that at the right, and this
-he read very badly, seeing letters where none are, and imagining
-incredible forms of letters. Kirchhoff in his &lsquo;Studien zur
-Geschichte des Griechischen Alphabets&rsquo; sought to apply this
-monument to his purposes, but could make nothing of it, and
-it would have been impossible to get anything from it. Now,
-thanks to the intelligent care of Mr. Stillman, we have before
-us the monument as it is; he knew nothing of Schliemann;
-when he saw the inscription, he saw that it was incomplete,
-and seeking amongst the stones, found the other piece, and,
-divining justly its relation, united them and took the photograph
-<span class="pb" id="Page_40">40</span>
-which now permits us to utilize what we may call his
-discovery.</p>
-<p>&ldquo;The epigraph is certainly very old, besides being boustrophedon.
-This is shown particularly by the forms of the <i>sigma</i>
-and <i>iota</i>. It was cut roughly and by hands little used to such
-work, without any care for symmetry in the disposition of the
-letters or of the lines, nor for the uniformity of the letters.
-Some letters are lost in the fracture, others by the wearing of
-the stone, and the entire inscription is mutilated in the lower
-part.</p>
-<p>&ldquo;The reading, with the filling up, is as follows:&mdash;</p>
-<p class="center">&tau;&#8118;&sigmaf; [&#7944;]&theta;&#8049;&nu;&alpha;&sigmaf;
-<br />&tau;&#8118;&sigmaf; (&Rho;)[&#8051;](&alpha;&sigmaf;)
-<br />&chi;&alpha;[&#8054; &tau;](&#8118;)&sigmaf; &#7977;&rho;
-<br />&alpha;&sigmaf; &tau;&alpha; (&#7956;) [&nu;]&tau;&epsilon;&alpha;
-<br />&tau;&#8182;[&#7985;]&epsilon;&rho;&#8182; &omicron;&#7985;
-<br />&#7985;&epsilon;[&rho;]&epsilon;&epsilon;[&sigmaf;] (&Kappa;&epsilon;&sigmaf;-
-<br />&pi;</p>
-<p>&ldquo;Translation: &lsquo;Of Athena&mdash;of Rhea&mdash;and of Hera&mdash;the
-sacred utensils of the temple&mdash;the priests, Kes&mdash;placed.&rsquo;</p>
-<p>&ldquo;Probably the names of the three priests followed, the first
-commencing with the letters Kes,&mdash;perhaps Kesiphron,&mdash;and
-there ought to follow
-&tau;&#8049;&delta;&rsquo; &#7954;&nu;&epsilon;&theta;&epsilon;&nu;
-or
-&tau;&#8049;&delta;&epsilon; &chi;&#8049;&tau;&epsilon;&theta;&epsilon;&nu;,
-or similar
-expression. The inscription, then, has nothing to do with a
-sarcophagus, or with the dead. It treats, on the contrary, of
-a hidden treasure, that is to say, of the sacred utensils of a
-temple in which were worshiped the three divinities, Athena,
-Rhea, and Hera, each one having her peculiar priest. It is
-well known that there is nothing new in this case of three
-divinities worshiped in the same temple. We know that
-Athena was especially reverenced in Ithaca, and are not surprised
-to find her first in the list. Then to explain this inscription,
-it may be supposed that in some perilous time of
-war, revolution, or other danger, these priests decided to put
-<span class="pb" id="Page_41">41</span>
-in security the treasures of the temple and hid them in a safe
-and secret place, leaving there this inscription, so that in any
-case the nature and origin of the objects might be known.
-Probably they cut the inscription themselves that no one else
-might be in the secret, and this would explain the signs of
-haste and inexperience in the cutting, while on the other
-hand the language, like the orthography, is correct.&rdquo;</p>
-<p>The attribution to a sarcophagus by Schliemann is difficult
-to explain as a mistake. If it had been, as he says, on a sarcophagus
-that he found the right half of the inscription, he
-must have found the whole; but the fact is that there was in
-the whole pile of stones no fragment of anything like a sarcophagus,
-an object unknown in Greece till centuries later.
-The inscription had evidently been a mural tablet and was
-about eighteen inches deep and of a shape and size which
-made it impossible to take it for a fragment of a sarcophagus;
-and underneath the mass of debris from which it was extracted
-the workmen found a pit, which was excavated, they
-told me, without finding anything; nor, they said, was any
-object of antiquity found with the stones, while Schliemann
-engraves a lance head and a coin of about 300 B. C. which he
-says were found in the sarcophagus. This proves nothing, for
-when anything is found the absurd rigor of the Greek laws
-makes the concealment of it the first object of the finder.
-If this pit, when discovered, had still contained the sacred objects,
-what a find if arch&aelig;ology could have profited by it!
-But as the Greek law in case of concealment would have punished
-the excavator by confiscation, or in the best case by
-taking the half of the objects found, the first precaution
-taken by the finder would have been to remove, if possible, to
-a foreign shore, and if not, to melt down, if of precious metal,
-the objects found. Until Greek legislation on arch&aelig;ological
-research is more intelligent, it will be gravely handicapped.
-The greater part of the value of an object is often to know
-<span class="pb" id="Page_42">42</span>
-where it came from, and this we never know of objects found
-in Greece by chance or private excavation. There was some
-years ago a report, which had certainly considerable confirmation,
-of the discovery of a great treasure in this very part
-of Ithaca; possibly it may have been this. If we could have
-found the vessels of the temple, they would have given us the
-art of the descendants of the Dorians in Ithaca at least six
-hundred years <span class="smaller">B. C.</span>; for this inscription is Doric, and dates
-from about that time.</p>
-<p>In any case, we may be confident that our inscription marks
-the site as having been in the vicinity of a city of, or little
-later than, the Homeric epoch, as, supposing the Odyssey to
-have been composed in 850 B. C., only about two hundred and
-fifty years could have intervened between its composition and
-the placing of this inscription; and we know of no ethnic revolution
-which would have destroyed the Homeric city between
-the Dorian invasion and the wars of Corinth.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig10">
-<img src="images/i10.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="800" />
-<p class="caption">THE SCHOOL OF HOMER.</p>
-</div>
-<p>But if there are no traces of the Homeric city, and none of
-earlier construction in the immediate neighborhood of the
-site, there is in the interior of the island, and in the northern
-lobe, which we see was probably the special domain of the
-Ithaca of Ulysses, a most interesting antiquity which is now
-known as the &ldquo;school of Homer.&rdquo; It is in all probability a
-sacred place of the Pelasgic epoch, as on the rock above it is
-a chapel whose substructions are clearly Pelasgic and most
-probably the remains of a Pelasgic temple, which alone would
-account for its preservation, and is probably also the reason of
-its conversion into a Christian church. It is on a scale in
-keeping with all the remains we have of the heroic epoch,
-about twelve by twenty feet, and though much repaired in
-the modern adaptation, still shows its ancient dimensions and
-style of building in the lower courses, too solid to have been
-rearranged, though some of the upper stones have evidently
-been replaced in later times. It stands on the brow of a low
-<span class="pb" id="Page_43">43</span>
-bluff, below the village of Exo&iuml; and not far from the &ldquo;field of
-Laertes,&rdquo; which tradition points out at a little hamlet below.
-Traces of other walls extend to the brink of the precipice
-that overhangs the
-&ldquo;school,&rdquo; and round by the
-side is an antique flight of
-steps, mostly preserved and
-cut in the solid rock, that
-served as passage between the
-temple and the &ldquo;school,&rdquo;
-which may have been the
-place of sacrifice or possibly an area for the holding of the
-council. It is mainly cut in the rock at the foot of the precipice
-on which the temple was built, with a double flight of
-steps, also cut in the rock, descending to the ground below.
-<span class="pb" id="Page_44">44</span>
-It is not above fifteen feet across at its widest, and the decomposition
-of the solid rock by time and weather leaves only the
-general shape and character, with some of the steps above and
-below it, still tolerably perfect. It was a lovely place, and if
-the shade now thrown by the olive-trees which surround it
-was anciently given by plane-trees, it would have been still
-more striking. You look off on the sea and the distant island
-of Levkadi with the mountains of Acarnania, and through the
-interstices of the olive-trees you catch glimpses of the cultivated
-valley beneath, where, if anywhere in this end of the
-island, old Laertes must have had his field, as here only is tillage
-possible. North is the sea, south the huge wall of Neriton,
-east the rugged mountain that looks out on the inner sea,
-and west that on which Exo&iuml; is raised to the clouds and from
-which one looks down on the Cephalonian channel at its foot.
-Like the plain or valley between the Raven&rsquo;s Cliff and Vathy
-for the southern lobe, this is the only valley for the northern.
-The &ldquo;school&rdquo; is poised thus midway between the valley and
-the mountain peak; and whether, as the islanders pretend,
-it was the place where Homer read his poems, the council
-place of the ancient heroes and kings, or the hieron of
-Pelasgic priests whence the smoke of sacrifice went up to the
-great Zeus, the choice of locality was one which suited alike
-its uses. The young wheat was springing into head in all the
-interspaces of the close-standing olive-trees, and the rocks
-above were overhung and draped with wild sage and gemmed
-with wild flowers. The boy who guided us assured us that
-there was a secret passage to the top of the rock, filled up
-now; and a peasant passing by stopped to see what we might
-be saying or doing, and finding that our interest was fixed on
-<i>palaia pragmata</i>, offered to guide us to an ancient rock-cut
-well in the valley below. We found the door which opens to
-the passage, which led down a stone-cut staircase to the well,
-far in the ground; but as the well belonged to the priest,
-<span class="pb" id="Page_45">45</span>
-who had the key in his pocket, and was, no one knew where,
-we had to be content with the door, which was modern
-enough, though fitting an opening cut in the rock very evidently
-ancient.</p>
-<p>In this vicinity must, by the force of nature, have been the
-residence of all the agricultural part of the population of the
-ancient Ithaca. Says the poem:&mdash;</p>
-<p>&ldquo;Ulysses and his companions withdrew from the city and
-soon arrived at the magnificent garden of Laertes, which the
-hero had formerly purchased with his wealth after the many
-ills he had suffered. There stands his dwelling, surrounded
-on all sides by a portico where the slaves who cultivate his
-estate sleep and eat. In the porter&rsquo;s lodge is an old
-Sicilian,<a class="fn" id="fr_6" href="#fn_6">[6]</a>
-who in this solitary place, far from the city, takes care of the
-noble old man.... At these words he gives his arms to the
-herdsmen who enter into the house of their master, while
-Ulysses, to find Laertes, enters into the garden. The hero
-goes down into the great vineyard and finds neither Dolias
-nor his sons, nor the other slaves. Dolias has led them far
-away to gather thorns to make hedges round the inclosure.
-Ulysses finds his father digging round the root of a tree in
-the garden. Laertes is dressed in a dirty patched tunic;
-around his legs he has bound, to preserve them, greaves of
-sewn leather; gloves protect his hands, and his head is
-covered by a cap of goat-skin, which completes his mournful
-appearance....</p>
-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; replied Laertes, &lsquo;if you are Ulysses, if you are my
-son returned to this island, describe to me a sure sign that I
-cannot mistake.&rsquo;</p>
-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;See first,&rsquo; replies Ulysses, &lsquo;this wound, which long ago
-on Parnassus a wild boar gave me with his tusk, when I went
-<span class="pb" id="Page_46">46</span>
-to Autolycus to bring the presents which he here had promised
-me. Then listen, I will describe to you the trees of your
-beautiful garden which you gave me, and I asked of you in
-my childhood as I ran behind you. We passed through your
-inclosure; you told me the name of every tree, and you gave
-me thirteen pear-trees, ten apple-trees, forty fig-trees, and
-then you promised to give me fifty rows of vines in full bearing.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
-<p>The legends of the modern population of Ithaca must not
-be confounded with real local tradition, transmitted from ancient
-times. They are unquestionably the reflection of literary
-statement, the reiterated conclusions of students more or
-less well informed as to the true arch&aelig;ological bases of opinion.
-The attribution of the particular spot we visited as the
-garden of Laertes is doubtless due to reading of the Odyssey,
-and, like the location of the &ldquo;Castle of Ulysses&rdquo; on A&euml;tos,
-arose from a popular rendering of the story as handed down
-by literature and converted into legend, which is located
-wherever the crude antiquarianism of the people judges best.
-An instance of the real tradition which has a distinct value
-in arch&aelig;ological research is that of the preservation of the
-name Polis for the abandoned site where unquestionably the
-Homeric city stood; and this simple indication is sufficient
-to prove that Ithaca was never entirely depopulated and repeopled
-by Slavs, because in this case the continuity of tradition
-would have been lost, and there is no ruin to restore
-it in modern times, even if it were capable of surviving the
-interruption. If it had simply been handed down by a Slavonic
-colony, it would have been &ldquo;Arad&rdquo; instead of &ldquo;Polis,&rdquo;
-while, if the depopulation had once been complete, names
-which are not now understood by the present inhabitants
-could not have originated with them. If the name had
-sprung from the presence of ruins, the site on A&euml;tos would
-have received it instead of its present legendary appellation, so
-<span class="pb" id="Page_47">47</span>
-that in no way can we explain the survival of the name Polis
-for the site, or the names Ano&iuml; and Exo&iuml;, except by supposing
-them to have clung to the places from Homeric times through
-a continuous population of Hellenic stock, however thinned.
-Another curious incident illustrates the tenacity of this kind
-of survival. As we were passing through one of the villages,
-I heard one child calling to others to run to see the barbarians,
-&omicron;&#7985; &beta;&#8049;&rho;&beta;&alpha;&rho;&omicron;&iota;
-(<i>v&aacute;rvari</i>), just as the Greek children of ancient
-times would have called us,&mdash;<i>i. e.</i>, foreigners, people
-who spoke a strange language, a babble, unintelligible sounds
-like those of children. I heard it twice and could not be
-mistaken, though a Greek friend to whom I related it would
-have it that they said
-&beta;&alpha;&upsilon;&#8049;&rho;&omicron;&iota;
-(Bavarians), since in continental
-Greece, Bavarian (German) has been a term of contempt from
-the days of King Otho. But I am certain of the word; and
-besides, the children of Ithaca never had anything to do with
-the Bavarians, as they were under the Ionian Government
-till after the fall of Otho and the departure of the Bavarians.</p>
-<p>On the whole, I think that there is the strongest ground
-of probability for these conclusions: that, whatever may be
-the relation of the real Ulysses to Ithaca, the hero as conceived
-and represented in the Odyssey, the Ulysses of the
-Homeric poems, <i>if he was an actuality</i>, lived at the site known
-as Polis; and that this site, and all the others mentioned in
-the poem, were known by the author of it from personal inspection.
-The inscription found at Polis is in Doric Greek,
-which gives us a right to conclude that the city continued to
-be inhabited by the mixed population, result of the Dorian
-immigration; while the entire oversight of the Pelasgic site
-on A&euml;tos indicates the total interruption of race connection
-and the immense interval which must have come between its
-construction and the transfer of the seat of power to Polis,
-as, if still habitable when the new race took possession, it
-<span class="pb" id="Page_48">48</span>
-would, like Nericus, Sam&eacute;, and Cran&eacute;, which we shall examine
-in Cephalonia, have been made the basis of the newer city.
-That it was then utterly abandoned, we conclude, not only
-from the neglect of it by Ulysses in the passages we have noticed,
-but from the fact that while Sam&eacute;, on the other island,
-sends suitors, and Ithaca itself (the city) adds its quota, no allusion
-is made to any from any other place in the island. In
-short, the total silence through the whole poem in regard to
-any place which can be by possibility connected with A&euml;tos,
-justifies my concluding that it was as much an abandoned ruin
-in the time of Homer as now.</p>
-<p>The episode of the voyage of Telemachus to Pylos and
-Sparta, which brings into the Odyssey the western shore of
-the Peloponnesus, is, with the exception of some unimportant
-allusions, the only interjection of continental Greece into
-the poem.</p>
-<p>We went over to look for some trace of the sage Nestor,
-but as usual found that while the people had enough of the
-after-growth of legend out of the Odyssey, they knew absolutely
-nothing of the antique site. I had no guide then to
-lead me to the Pylos where the ship of Telemachus found
-&ldquo;the Pyleans scattered along the shore offering a sacrifice to
-Neptune, black bulls without a spot.&rdquo;</p>
-<p>The bay of Navarino is a vast marine lake, known to us
-mainly by its being the locality of the decisive combat between
-the fleets of the great European powers and the Turkish
-and Egyptian, which decided the destiny of modern
-Greece. We ran in from the open Adriatic, whose waters
-were uncomfortably agitated by the south-west wind, glad of
-the safe and convenient anchorage. But a sleepier place than
-the modern substitute for the &ldquo;sandy Pylos&rdquo; I have never
-found in Greece. Nobody could give me a word of direction,
-and all our searching round the extended sheet of water for
-the antique site, only perhaps to be recognized by some half-hidden
-<span class="pb" id="Page_49">49</span>
-remnant of Pelasgian walls, was fruitless; we neither
-saw nor heard of any ruin. We paid a visit to the splendidly
-picturesque old Venetian fortress commanding the entrance
-of the bay, which perhaps has used up the stones of Nestor&rsquo;s
-Pylos, and which has looked down on one of the most murderous
-combats of modern naval history. It is garrisoned by
-a little guard of Greek soldiers, and its keep is the prison of
-the district. The gate is a good sample of the fortifications
-by which the Venetian Republic held her Eastern possessions.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_50">50</div>
-<h2 id="c2">THE ODYSSEY, ITS EPOCH AND GEOGRAPHY.</h2>
-<p>The mythical world which had for its centre Ithaca, and
-for its chief people Penelope and Ulysses, was out of all proportion
-larger than the Europe of to-day; for it comprised
-the whole known world, from the shadows of Cimmeria to
-the clouds that gave birth to the Nile. Its geography, however,
-has a value to arch&aelig;ology and prehistory which has not
-been fully recognized. The date and place of origin of the
-Odyssey will never be determined with any high degree of
-certainty, but in dealing with epochs that comprise unmeasured
-centuries we need not fear a variation of two or three.
-And the collation of traditions from the same mythical world
-will help us to this approximation to the probable date of
-Homer&rsquo;s life, if not that of Ulysses.</p>
-<p>Gladstone, in the &ldquo;Juventus Mundi,&rdquo; has made use of an
-argument which, even if not sound as to the Trojan war, I
-believe to be good for the Odyssey. The earliest authentic
-records in Greek history reveal Greece as under the control
-of two races, the Ionians and the Dorians, elements whose
-antagonisms have been the chief cause of the disasters and
-ruin of Greece.</p>
-<p>But neither Dorians nor Ionians were the dominant race
-when the Odyssey was written, as neither Ionians nor Dorians
-appear in the record. The Greeks of the Trojan war are
-always called Achaioi, and the Dorians were evidently, as a
-dominant race, unknown to the author of the Homeric
-poems. Now, as they came into Greece about 1000 <span class="smaller">B. C.</span>,
-and as our researches show the island of Ithaca, with which
-<span class="pb" id="Page_51">51</span>
-Homer was well acquainted, to have become Dorian with the
-rest of Greece, the substance of the Odyssey must have been
-earlier than we have supposed, and could hardly have been as
-late as 850 <span class="smaller">B. C.</span>, unless the Dorian so-called invasion was an
-immigration spreading very slowly from the main line of its
-movement, and its stock still a recognizably new people. Nor
-does any possible modification of the Homeric poems in the
-recitals, continued over centuries, affect this argument in the
-least, as, being common property of all the bards and all the
-tribes, they were liable to be modified in the various versions
-according to the localities and local knowledge of the singers;
-and, one &ldquo;rhapsody&rdquo; being preserved by one tribe and another
-by another, of this hardly homogeneous people, the
-traces of the modifications received in their migrations could
-not be by the philology of the date of their collation so effaced
-as to leave no marks of their incomplete restoration.</p>
-<p>It is impossible that any idea of arch&aelig;ological consistency
-had led to the exclusion of the Dorians from the Odyssey.
-If the Dorians had been ruling in Greece when it was composed,
-it seems to the last degree improbable that they could
-have been so completely ignored, if it were but for the deference
-to be paid the rulers of half the Greek world; and
-whether we look at the invariable practice of all early poets
-to adapt their work to their own times and surroundings, or
-to the entire consistency of the work in this respect,&mdash;too
-complete to be due to the study of utterly unscientific or
-illiterate later times,&mdash;I think it is to be admitted as probable
-that the Odyssey was composed before the great ethnical
-revolution in Greece was complete.</p>
-<p>The purely local evidence supports this hypothesis to a certain
-extent, and in this topography and geography I propose
-to wander as far as it is possible to do so with advantage to
-our knowledge of the Odyssean world. Corfu was inhabited
-by a race alien to the Greek, and which recognized its descent
-<span class="pb" id="Page_52">52</span>
-from the Siculi displaced by the Pelasgi from Sicily.
-Opposite Ithaca lies the more important island of Cephalonia,
-to which Ithaca is now completely subordinate, but which
-then was less important apparently than Ithaca, in all probability
-only because it was only partly Hellenic. Now, the
-earliest classical name of this Island, <i>Kephallenia</i>, was derived
-from Cephalus, a mythical hero who appears to have been
-contemporary with Minos. But this name is never applied to
-it in the Odyssey. Of the island nothing is said, but of the
-chief city, Samos (a colony from which gave its name to the
-Asiatic island now known under that appellation), Homer has
-much to say. It lies clearly in sight from Ithaca, from which
-it is separated only by a narrow strait, and is one of the
-prominent objects in the view from Ithaca. It was originally
-one of that line of prehistoric cities whose only record is in
-the stones of their walls, and from these we learn that it was
-a very ancient coast settlement, which, unlike the city on
-A&euml;tos, survived through successive civilizations until history
-got hold of it. In Ulysses&rsquo; day it must have been a rich
-place, for it furnished twenty-four pretendants to the hand of
-Penelope. &ldquo;There are first fifty-two young men, the chosen
-of Dulichios&mdash;six servants accompany them; twenty-four
-have come from Samos; twenty from Zakynthos [Zante]; and
-from Ithaca were twelve, the bravest.&rdquo; But the author of
-the Odyssey seems to have had no personal knowledge of
-the topography of Cephalonia, and mentions no other locality
-in the island. Tradition tells us that the island was peopled
-by Teleb&oelig;ans, a people driven from the continent by Achilles,&mdash;before
-the siege of Troy, therefore, but subsequent to
-Cephalus; but this is one of the confusions of mythology, as
-Cephalus found the Teleb&oelig;ans in the island. The usual condensation
-of history into myth leaves very little clear in these
-early traditions. Races become personified in individuals,
-and the work of centuries is attributed to a life-time and an
-<span class="pb" id="Page_53">53</span>
-individual. Whether Cephalus was in reality a race or a man
-it is impossible to do more than conjecture, but though the
-poems mention the <i>Kephallenes</i>, the entire ignoring of its topography
-and traditions, even of the visit of the Argonauts
-to it, makes it difficult to believe that it was chiefly inhabited
-by a race kindred to that of Ithaca when Homer knew it, because
-Homer was too much disposed to make use of the antique
-traditions when apposite, to have left unnoticed that of
-Jason at Pal&eacute;.</p>
-<p>Cephalus having, according to the legend, killed his wife
-Procris, mistaking her for a wild animal as she, excited to
-jealousy by his devotion to the chase, which she attributed to
-another love, hid herself in the thickets to watch him, was banished
-from Athens, and, wandering in exile, came to Thebes,
-just then under excitement owing to the Teleb&oelig;ans of Cephalonia
-having killed the brothers of Alcmena, wife of the
-Theban Amphytrion, and he was requested to take charge of
-the expedition to avenge the murder. He succeeded in conquering
-the island and gave it his name. His descendants
-reigned there two generations, after which, the latest rulers
-of his blood being recalled to Attica by the oracle, a federative
-republic succeeded, formed by the four principal cities,
-or perhaps by the four which had survived the changes of
-race, for there are more than four antique sites. Those which
-history has preserved as having submitted to the Romans in
-the year of Rome 563 were Sam&eacute;, Nesia, Cran&eacute;, and Pal&eacute;.</p>
-<p>The city of Sam&eacute; alone presents, in the annals of historical
-times, any interest, and this is sad and glorious. Livy says
-that at the end of the &AElig;tolian war the Romans sent to Cephalonia
-to know whether they would submit or try the fortune
-of war, as they seem to have joined in the war with the &AElig;tolians,
-though he gives no record of the part they took. He
-gives the account, brief and tragic, of the fate of the city,
-which I will neither dilute nor abbreviate:&mdash;</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_54">54</div>
-<p>&ldquo;An unhoped-for peace had now shone on Cephalonia
-when one state, the Sam&eacute;ans, suddenly revolted, from some
-motive not yet ascertained. They said that as their city was
-commodiously situated they were afraid the Romans would
-compel them to remove from it. But whether they conceived
-this in their own minds and under the impulse of a
-groundless fear disturbed the general quiet, or whether such
-a project had been mentioned in conversation among the Romans
-and reported to them, nothing is ascertained except
-that, having given hostages, they suddenly shut their gates,
-and would not relinquish their design even for the prayers of
-their friends whom the consul sent to the walls to try how
-far they might be influenced by compassion for their parents
-and countrymen. When no pacific answer was given, the
-city began to be besieged.</p>
-<p>&ldquo;The consul had all the apparatus, engines, and machines
-which had been brought from Ambracia, and the soldiers executed
-with great diligence the works necessary to be made.
-The rams were therefore brought forward in two places, and
-began to batter the walls.</p>
-<p>&ldquo;The townsmen omitted nothing by which the works or
-the motions of the besiegers could be obstructed. But they
-resisted in two ways in particular, one of which was to raise
-constantly opposite the part of the wall attacked a new wall
-of equal strength on the inside; and the other was to make
-sudden sallies at one time against the enemy&rsquo;s works, at another
-against his advanced guard, and in those attacks they
-generally got the better. The only plan that was invented to
-confine them within the walls, though ineffectual, deserves
-to be recorded. One hundred slingers were brought from
-&AElig;gium, Patr&aelig;, and Dym&aelig; [Peloponnesus]. These men, according
-to the customary practice of that nation, were exercised
-from their childhood in throwing with a sling, into the
-open sea, the round pebbles with which, mixed with sand, the
-<span class="pb" id="Page_55">55</span>
-shores were generally strewn; therefore they cast weapons of
-that sort to a greater distance, with surer aim and more
-powerful effect, than even the Balearian slingers. Besides,
-their sling does not consist merely of a single strap like the
-Balearic and that of other nations, but the thong of the sling
-is threefold and made firm by several seams, that the missile
-may not, by the yielding of the strap in the act of throwing,
-be let fly at random; but, after sticking fast while whirled
-about, it may be discharged as if sent from the string of a
-bow. Being accustomed to drive their missiles through circular
-marks of small circumference placed at a great distance,
-they not only hit the enemy&rsquo;s heads, but any part of
-their faces that they aimed at. These slings checked the
-Sam&eacute;ans from sallying either so frequently or so boldly; insomuch
-that they would sometimes from the walls beseech the
-Ach&aelig;ans to retire for a while and be quiet spectators of their
-fight with the Roman guards. Sam&eacute; supported a siege of
-four months. When some of their small number were daily
-killed or wounded, and the survivors were, through continual
-fatigues, greatly reduced both in strength and spirits, the Romans,
-one night, scaling the wall of the citadel which they
-call Cyatides (for the city, sloping toward the sea, verges toward
-the west), made their way into the forum. The Sam&eacute;ans,
-on discovering that a part of the city was taken, fled
-with their wives and children into the greater citadel; but,
-submitting next day, they were all sold as slaves, their city
-being plundered.&rdquo; (Bohn&rsquo;s translation.)</p>
-<p>It is only by conjecture we can distinguish between the two
-hills, both being covered with ruins; and the walls are so
-broken in their circuit, and so complex as well as various in
-their epoch of construction, that no plan of the siege could
-be made, but the above indicates the westernmost as first
-captured.</p>
-<p>The city must have been very wealthy, if we may judge
-<span class="pb" id="Page_56">56</span>
-from that generally excellent indication, the tombs, which
-line the roads and the sea-shore beyond the city (looking from
-the point where the general view is taken), and by the enumeration
-of the booty taken by the Romans, which is given
-as follows: Two hundred golden crowns of ten Roman pounds
-each, eighty-three thousand pounds of silver, two hundred and
-forty-three pounds of gold, one hundred and eighteen pieces
-of Athenian money, two thousand four hundred and twenty-two
-of Macedonian, two hundred and eighty-three statues of
-bronze, two hundred and thirty of marble, besides the money
-distributed to the army.</p>
-<p>I know of no place where the ruins of all epochs are so
-well indicated as at Sam&eacute;. The large fragment of wall of the
-best Hellenic time which runs down the slope of the eastern
-hill is one of the finest, if not <i>the</i> finest, I have ever seen.
-Its stones are perfectly hewn, and some of them are twelve
-to fourteen feet long, and the highest portion still standing is
-not less than twenty feet high. At other points are various
-examples of the Pelasgic, similar to that of &ldquo;Ulysses&rsquo; Castle,&rdquo;
-but of better work. There are magnificent subterranean
-passages, one of which leads to the citadel on the easternmost
-hill, the more remote in the distant view, but the higher and
-probably the site of the greater citadel, being marked by the
-most imposing ruins and remains of works, and without doubt
-the locality of the original settlement. On the lower hill
-stand some interesting remains&mdash;a tower and remains of city
-wall of mixed Hellenic and Pelasgic, the tower being of the
-very latest Hellenic, showing the beginning of &ldquo;rustication.&rdquo;
-It was built upon in the middle ages, and the whole mass of
-buildings transformed into a fortress and afterward into a
-convent. Sam&eacute; must very early have been a large and important
-city, as the whole of the space, including the two hills
-and the land between them, shows traces of Pelasgic construction,
-and one fragment on the brow of the hill near the
-<span class="pb" id="Page_57">57</span>
-tower is one of the most perfect examples of the best Pelasgic
-work one can find away from Myken&aelig; and Argos. The
-stones in the illustration range about five feet in length, and
-are faced with exquisite exactness. A wild fig-tree has taken
-root in the interstices of the stones, and the roots have
-pushed the masses of rock apart, but in several places it is
-difficult to see the junction when the light is flat against
-them. Of Roman work there is little; but some therm&aelig;
-walls on the plains by the sea and some tombs show a considerable
-Roman occupation. Livy says that Marcus Tullius,
-the conqueror of Sam&eacute;, went over to the Peloponnesus &ldquo;after
-having placed a garrison in Sam&eacute;.&rdquo; This negatives the notion
-that the walls were razed to the foundations, as is asserted by
-La Croix; and it is also rendered improbable by the existing
-ruins, though it is not impossible that so much of the wall
-was destroyed as made the defense of it temporarily impracticable.
-There are, however, some slight traces of rubble-wall
-on the old ruins, which show a Roman (or possibly middle-age,
-though I incline to the former) construction, which negative
-any supposition that the <i>enceinte</i> was rendered useless for
-defense; for no one would repair a wall which was not tolerably
-complete in its circuit. The remains of the Roman
-time, however, are insignificant compared with those of the
-Pelasgic, either as to preservation or quality.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_58">58</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig11">
-<img src="images/i11.jpg" alt="" width="630" height="800" />
-<p class="caption">VIEW OF SAM&Eacute; FROM THE WEST,&mdash;WITH PARTS OF PELASGIC AND HELLENIC WALLS.</p>
-</div>
-<p>At present Sam&eacute; is an insignificant village, consisting of
-twenty or thirty small houses stretched along the beach, with
-a tiny port formed by a breakwater constructed from the
-stones of the city wall, the fairest and best cut that could
-be found. The people are a thievish clan, who set on any
-chance comer, like mosquitoes on a solitary and bewildered
-fisherman in a swampy land. They have coins and antiquities
-to sell, for which, as everywhere else in Greece, they demand
-the most absurd prices; and they beset one with offers of
-service as guides, etc., etc., etc., till they weary all human
-patience. This may be said of the Ionians in general, but
-less of the people of Cerigo, perhaps, than the others. We
-found, however, a grateful exception. We had wandered
-along the beach to the furthermost
-houses of the line,
-and on passing a very respectable-looking
-house, the
-owner, sitting in the coolness
-of the twilight at his
-gates, seeing two strangers,
-rose to salute us and invited
-us to enter; an invitation so
-amiable and earnest that
-we accepted, and were
-ushered into the guest-chamber,
-clean and furnished
-with divans in
-eastern fashion, where we
-were entertained with
-the usual sweetmeats and coffee, while the daughter of the
-house went into the garden and collected for each of us a
-bouquet of roses, the most fragrant I ever remember to have
-<span class="pb" id="Page_59">59</span>
-seen. Our host narrated many incidents of the English rule
-in Cephalonia, and when we rose to go urged us to take up
-our quarters in his house; and finally, as we stood before the
-gates, as a last favor, offered me two beautiful Greek stel&aelig;,
-memorials of the ancient dead, possibly of the period of the
-heroic defense of Sam&eacute;. He had found them in digging his
-house cellar, and they were the ornaments of his court-yard;
-but learning that we were in search of antiquities, he offered
-them freely as his contribution. I shall not soon forget him
-or his fragrant roses and the dark-eyed Sam&eacute;an girl who offered
-them to us.</p>
-<p>Of Cran&eacute; scarcely a trace remains, even of the Pelasgic
-walls. It stood originally on the Lake of Argostoli (to which
-place we drove from Sam&eacute; across the island), but at a point
-now far from the water&rsquo;s edge. The lake is a singular geological
-phenomenon, formed by a number of springs bursting out
-from under the hills on which Cran&eacute; lay, with a force sufficing
-to drive mills and form a strong current over the whole
-extent of the lake, which is a mile or more in diameter,
-though the surface of land to be drained by these subterranean
-outpours is, one would say, utterly inadequate to the
-quantity of water delivered.</p>
-<p>I took a guide at Argostoli, a man of the usual type of
-Greek guide, who assured me that he knew the ancient city,
-and had often guided strangers there. On arriving at the
-head of the lake I found him taking useless d&eacute;tours to bring
-me to the mills, which were driven by the springs; and on
-asking him what he went there for, he replied that he supposed
-I wanted to see the mills&mdash;since that was what other
-people had come for. I gave him an energetic sample of
-modern Greek, and ordered him to show me the way to the
-ancient city&mdash;Palaiokastron. &ldquo;Palaiokastron!&rdquo; he ejaculated
-with surprise and bewilderment in his eyes, and turned to ask
-some shepherd boys or other vagabonds, who were sauntering
-<span class="pb" id="Page_60">60</span>
-near by and watching us, where the Palaiokastron was. They
-declined to give any information, probably regarding him as
-a poacher on their preserves. I had, therefore, to depend on
-my antiquarian instincts, and, taking the lead, climbed over
-the heights above until, guided by the nature of the ground,
-I found the traces of the old wall.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig12">
-<img src="images/i12.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="332" />
-<p class="caption">CRAN&Eacute; FROM THE SEA SHORE.</p>
-</div>
-<p>The position of the city was entirely characteristic of the
-sites of the Pelasgic epoch: a bold, double peak, almost inaccessible
-on the sea-side, and on the two flanks still very precipitous,
-but connected with higher land on the side opposite
-the water. On the side from which the view is taken none
-of the ancient walls remain. The movement of earthquakes,
-the gradual fall of the rock at the precipitous edge, or the
-leveling labor of man has carried away all the blocks that
-made this side of the <i>enceinte</i>; but many of the stones may
-be recognized at the foot of the slope, some worked into
-modern walls, and some in the d&eacute;bris of the hill. On the
-opposite side the traces are more distinct, and the wall may
-be traced a long way, and the site of the citadel determined,
-with a gate and the angles of some of the towers. From
-near the citadel a view is obtained which shows a long line
-of the d&eacute;bris with a distant view of the town of Argostoli and
-the lake, and far beyond the lines that form the western shore
-<span class="pb" id="Page_61">61</span>
-of the superb harbor of Argostoli, almost without a rival in
-the Adriatic. The mass of wall is hardly to be distinguished
-from mere decomposed rock; so much have time and frost,
-the great demolishers, split and crumbled the flinty, massive
-limestone, the preferred material of the Pelasgi. On the further
-shore shown in the view may be seen, when the air is
-clear, the houses which form a modern village on the site of
-the ancient Pal&eacute;. Here were Jason and his fellow adventurers
-entertained on their search after the golden fleece,&mdash;an
-expedition which perhaps we may translate from myth into
-probability, as an expedition to obtain an improved breed of
-sheep, a finer-wooled stock, from one of the northern and inland
-countries.</p>
-<p>At Argostoli I inquired about the ruins of Pal&eacute;, but was
-told that they are mainly built over, and what is visible is
-only of the Roman period. I attempted, however, on our
-return to Sam&eacute;, to run around in the <i>Kestrel</i>, as the voyage
-across the bay from Argostoli is neither pleasant nor sure in
-the small boats that make the service. We got up anchor as
-the land breeze began to blow at midnight, and I went to
-bed, having given orders to anchor in a little bay about half-way
-to the southern extremity of the island near which some
-ruins are indicated on the map. Awaking in the morning
-and finding a most suspicious tranquillity prevailing, I took a
-look at the outside surroundings, and found the yacht quietly
-moored on the same spot she had occupied the day before.
-A furious sirocco had sprung up and met us half-way to our
-destined anchorage, and after beating for an hour in vain, our
-little boat nearly buried in the seas, we were compelled to
-retreat and run back to our former place of refuge. There is
-no getting ahead in such small craft against the sharp, violent
-seas of the Mediterranean.</p>
-<p>Three days the sirocco blew, and we tried in vain to pass
-the time fishing. The Ionians have adopted dynamite so universally
-<span class="pb" id="Page_62">62</span>
-to catch their fish that they are as scarce as honest
-people on shore. One does find them sometimes, and we
-caught a shark about four feet long and a half dozen red mullet
-where, before dynamite was discovered, we could have
-caught in the same time a hundred-weight.</p>
-<p>The third night we got under way again, and, with a heavy
-swell still on, ran down to our harbor, reaching it as a flaming,
-splendid thunder-storm was coming up, the finale of our
-southern blow. We moored with cables out in three directions,
-and when the storm had all gone by I went ashore to
-hunt my ruins. A vagabond Cephalonian offered his services
-to carry my camera and guide me; but his crafty and evasive
-face, coupled with the assurance with which he clung to me,
-so irritated me that to rid myself of him I plunged into the
-pathless thicket. Traveling by compass, and searching long
-and closely, I found at last the remains of an early Pelasgic
-wall on a magnificent site, with a breezy outlook to sea north
-and west and overlooking a fertile valley inland, not especially
-pictorial, for it was too regular and too thoroughly cultivated,
-but through it ran a bright crystal brook overhung by huge
-pollard sycamores and fringed with oleanders just bursting
-into blossom and making the valley look like a rose-garden.
-Beyond the hill on which the city stood is a wild ravine
-through which runs the brook, which in Greek would naturally
-be dignified by the name of a river. Only a narrow
-neck, as usual, gave access to the site. It is impossible to
-ascertain with any kind of assurance what the name of the
-city was. It could not have been Nesia, the only one of the
-four principal ones we have not visited, for no ruins are visible
-approaching so late an epoch as the Roman, and it was
-probably Heraclea. Its position was magnificent for defense
-and on account of the fertility of the country behind it, but
-the site was probably abandoned very early for one further
-inland, where I was assured there were ruins of an ancient
-<span class="pb" id="Page_63">63</span>
-city. But my time had been so invaded by the loss of three
-days through the storm, and I was already so behind my programme,
-that I was not able to give the time necessary to the
-search and examination, or, indeed, to follow my plan of visiting
-Pal&eacute;.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig13">
-<img src="images/i13.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="604" />
-<p class="caption">DISTANT VIEW OF PAL&Eacute; FROM THE CITADEL OF CRAN&Eacute;.</p>
-</div>
-<p>We climbed down to the brook, and I enjoyed the pastime
-of wading in the gurgling water as if I were a boy&mdash;it was
-so long since I had had that pleasure! We followed it into
-a close and gloomy gorge, where the crag of the ancient site
-overhung us like a huge, rough wall, almost a sheer precipice,
-and down at the foot ran the brook, which we followed to the
-sea. The sun was setting as we reached the yacht, and before
-we waked from sleep next morning we were bounding
-toward Zante.</p>
-<p>In Zante (Zakynthos) there is, so far as I could find, no
-ancient ruin whatever. The character of the rock explains
-this; for, except at the extreme southern end of the island,
-<span class="pb" id="Page_64">64</span>
-there is no stone which would resist even the weather-wear
-since the Roman epoch. The island seems to be a bed of
-sand raised from the sea and slightly hardened, so that,
-though the citadel hill is imposing enough as a mass, the material
-of it is being continually dissolved, and looks at a distance
-more like a bank of clay than like rock.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig14">
-<img src="images/i14.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="293" />
-<p class="caption">ZANTE.</p>
-</div>
-<p>Zante is rhymingly called the &ldquo;fior di Levante&rdquo; (flower of
-the Levant), but it is difficult to see wherein it surpasses
-Corfu in any flowery attribute. I guess that, as in many
-other cases, the rhyme went for more than the fact, poetical
-or otherwise. It is fertile, and the land extends in an immense
-unpicturesque plain covered with olive-orchards and
-vineyards for miles from the port. Its history is unimportant
-and its mythology not interesting. It was said to have been
-colonized by Zakynthos, son of Dardanus of Troy, about 1500
-years before Christ; but, as I have before said, all Greek dates
-and traditions of migration earlier than 1000 <span class="smaller">B. C.</span> are purely
-conjectural. Zante suffered with the other islands from the
-endless and furious feuds of the Greek states; ravaged by
-turns by Athenian and Laced&aelig;monian, it came down to the
-Romans an unruly subject province, conquered and reconquered,
-and finally lay still in the tranquillity of slavery
-until Geneseric, king of the Vandals, began an epoch of devastation,
-which only concluded with the purchase, by the Venetians
-<span class="pb" id="Page_65">65</span>
-from the Sultan, of its soil depopulated by the sword
-and slavery.</p>
-<p>He who goes about in the Mediterranean has great chance
-of seeing bad weather, for it is the reverse of a pacific sea,
-and in a scrap of a boat like the <i>Kestrel</i> the phenomena are
-sometimes interesting. Our course from Zante to Cerigo (ancient
-Cythera) leads by Cape M&aacute;tapan, opposite Cape Male&aacute;,
-the two southern points of Greece, which enjoy a reputation
-of the kind that the American proverb gives to Hatteras and
-Lookout. The <i>Kestrel</i> was again baffled, and, after beating
-for hours to get past the point, we had to put up the helm
-and run back to Navarino, the nearest shelter, before a
-gathering southerly blow. We lay in our old anchorage another
-day, and as the wind fell at night we beat out again and
-ran through the little archipelago of barren and desolate islands
-which lie off this part of the Morea. The weather still
-looked ugly, and thunder-clouds were gathering on the hills
-of Laced&aelig;mon, and we could see the storm creeping down toward
-the sea, but the wind was fair, and we hoped to make
-Kapsali, in Cerigo, before the squall came down. Already the
-heights of Cerigo loomed before us, and we had begun to look
-for the landmarks, when the wind struck us. All hands made
-what haste was possible to get in sail and get up a small storm
-jib to lie to under, and not too quickly, for no common canvas
-would have stood that blast when it struck us. The sun was
-setting, and soon we were out of sight of all land in the driving
-spray and rain. The lightning was such as only they who sail
-in semi-tropical seas can have known, blinding and incessant;
-it seemed to have gathered around the mountains of Cerigo
-as a centre, for it went and came and still hung there as the
-rain swept down the coast and up again. As the wind fell off
-with the down-pouring of the torrents we got off again and
-pointed our bowsprit for Kapsali; and as the waters above
-and those below seemed to have formed an alliance against
-<span class="pb" id="Page_66">66</span>
-us, we went below and shut the hatch. Fortunately the wind
-was off shore and we had little sea, and managed to creep
-along nearly as much as we had drifted to the leeward; so
-that when the storm broke and the rain held up we were able
-to see the rocks off the coast, and finally to grope our way
-into the little port of Kapsali, which is secure against everything
-but a southerly blow. The wind, always contrary, fell
-off as we drew near the light-house, and we had to get in with
-our sweeps in the small hours of the morning, wet, cold,
-hungry, and jaded from the excitement of the night; for,
-though it is simple and safe in the telling, a large Greek brig
-foundered only two miles from us in the squall, and we had
-experienced the worst weather we had yet felt, and since the
-storm began no one had been able to eat or even get a cup of
-coffee.</p>
-<p>At Kapsali one begins to see the antique sailor ways and
-the evidence of the intense conservatism of the eastern world.
-The ships are drawn up on the beach at night as of old, and
-this necessitates a construction of the hull which cannot be
-far removed from that of the antique. Indeed, I have seen
-fishing-boats which might have served for the models of the
-galley on the Roman coins. The rigging, again, is of the
-simplest, and fitted for these seas, where the sudden squalls
-and the &ldquo;meltem,&rdquo; or gusts which come down from the
-mountains with no warning but a little cloud appearing on
-the summit, sometimes leave brief space for the taking in of
-sail. On the whole, wherever we look we see ample evidence
-that in the whole Levant, where the original population exists
-in a considerable proportion, the ways of life and thought are
-the same as those of Homer&rsquo;s day. Nature has changed more
-than man. Where the Venetians came they brought new
-habits of military life and construction, and demolished all
-the old ruins to make fortresses; but on the domestic life and
-on the character of the Greek they had little or no influence.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_67">67</div>
-<p>Whether Kapsali, a mere village, the port of Cerigo, had
-any ancient existence, we do
-not know. Cerigo lies on the
-high rock above it, and is a
-Venetian fortress; and, as is generally
-the case with Venetian
-fortresses, has used up all ancient
-masonry, if any existed, in
-its construction.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig15">
-<img src="images/i15.jpg" alt="" width="529" height="799" />
-<p class="caption">CITADEL OF CERIGO.</p>
-</div>
-<p>The road from Kapsali to
-the town of Cerigo is of Venetian
-construction, kept in
-repair by those fitting successors
-of Venice, the English,
-who certainly left the Ionian
-Islands in a state of prosperity
-higher than that of to-day.
-Good roads were almost everywhere
-provided, and good ways of other kinds, now lost entirely,
-if I might believe the complaints of the people. The
-<span class="pb" id="Page_68">68</span>
-position of Cerigo is very strong for the days of Venetian
-rule, and it overhangs the port and country round on every
-side, except one, like a Pelasgic site, but I could find no stone
-of that date. It is not likely that there was any very ancient
-city there, as no tombs or evidences of a necropolis have been
-found. The formidable character of the position in the times
-of the Venetians is shown by the view from the road above
-the ravine which severs the mountain from the lesser hill over
-the port&mdash;a ravine whose existence is quite unsuspected from
-the port.</p>
-<p>The city itself is without interest except as the first really
-Eastern city one will see coming from the West, and as an
-example of Venetian fortress-building. The view from the
-citadel is fine and breezy, the islands of Ovo, Cerigotto, and
-Crete being visible, and a great expanse of that sea which, on
-sunny days, is in itself so beautiful from its color. You look
-down on the houses, white as continual whitewashing will
-make them, whose flat, terraced roofs serve in the hot and
-rainless summer as sleeping-places for the whole family. How
-many nights I have dragged my mattress from the bedroom
-out on this delightful substitute and let the night breeze fan
-me to sleep!</p>
-<p>Of history the island has next to none. Mythology puts
-the landing of Aphrodite here, as she came, foam-born and
-sea-borne, to found her religion in the Greek worlds.<a class="fn" id="fr_7" href="#fn_7">[7]</a>
-The first who are traditionally reported to have colonized the
-island are the Ph&oelig;nicians; but it is impossible to ignore the
-previous coming of the Pelasgi, who have left a well-marked
-ruin of the earliest type. To see the traces of the antique
-settlements, one had better go to Port San Nicolo if provided
-<span class="pb" id="Page_69">69</span>
-as we were; but secure an intelligent guide previously from
-Cerigo, as the country people, as in other islands, while pretending
-to know all about the antiquities, really know absolutely
-nothing. They know the tombs because they serve as
-sheep-folds, and they have sometimes a curious knowledge of
-the relative antiquity of the ruins; but they have heard modern
-myths, and apply them with the least possible regard to
-arch&aelig;ological facts, and invariably assure you that they know
-everything.</p>
-<p>So it happened that I was again, for want of choice, out on
-a search with an ignorant guide. There had been some excavations
-commenced on the site of what is now known as
-Palaiopolis (the old city), which evidently was Ph&oelig;nician,
-and was occupied down to Roman times. There were some
-columns of Roman or Byzantine work unearthed, and from
-mere curiosity to know <i>his</i> notions, I asked a shepherd boy
-watching his sheep near by what they were. &ldquo;This,&rdquo; he
-said, &ldquo;was the palace of the king.&rdquo; &ldquo;Of what king?&rdquo; I
-asked. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know?&rdquo; he said, opening his eyes at me
-as if this were the very <i>a b c</i> of history. &ldquo;Why, the palace
-of Menelaus.&rdquo; There is an old tradition that it was the place
-of residence of Menelaus and Helen, and all the objects to be
-seen are attributed to them. The Ph&oelig;nician city is close to
-the sea; the Pelasgic site is several miles back, and looms up
-on the highest mountains in the vicinity. In a previous visit
-I had seen but had not explored it; but now I determined to
-see the whole extent of it. My guide, who brought a donkey
-for my occasional changes of mode of locomotion, pretended
-to lead me to the ancient citadel; but when we reached the
-hill on which I knew it to be better than he, he began to inquire
-about it of the women at work in the fields; thereupon
-I, as usual, took the lead. Guided by the nature of the
-ground, I found all that remained of the ancient citadel wall&mdash;a
-fragment kept up by the chance of its being the limit of
-<span class="pb" id="Page_70">70</span>
-a field, and so kept in repair, but in such a state of dilapidation
-that but for the evidences of the continuity I would not
-have been sure that it was a wall. I followed the main wall a
-mile or more along the edge of the precipitous slope, and saw
-that it bore testimony to the importance of the ancient city,
-for it was wide in its compass and massive, with towers, gates,
-and flanking towers of the true Pelasgic style, but in most
-places only two or three stones high. I got an imposing view
-of the hill from below the lowest trace of wall, showing its
-position with reference to the valley below, through which
-ran once a river of some volume, if we may judge by the alluvial
-plains at its mouth, but which at the time of my visit in
-midsummer, was dry as desert dust. A strip of white pebbles
-shows where it still runs in winter-time. On the hills close
-to the sea-side, and on both sides of the mouth of this ancient
-river, used to lie the old Ph&oelig;nician, Greek, and Roman city,
-whatever it was originally called,&mdash;probably Cythera, like
-the island. As I have said, it is now called Palaiopolis. The
-temple of Aphrodite, the people pretend, was on the hill near
-the citadel where now is an insignificant chapel, but with no
-evidence of antiquity except that there are in the construction
-of the chapel some large stones which are evidently of
-Hellenic cutting; but as the Greeks had the habit in all ages
-of keeping up the temples of their gods, there is nothing to
-show that it was a temple of Aphrodite rather than a Pelasgic
-god, which Aphrodite-Astarte was not, and her temple must
-have been near the sea.</p>
-<p>The site of Palaiopolis is marked by a quantity of tombs,
-most, if not all, of Hellenic date. There are now no temple
-remains there; but Spon, who visited the spot two hundred
-years ago, says that he saw the statue of Aphrodite, which
-was very ugly and of coarse brown stone, which reminds us
-of the statues of Cyprus. The rock is a soft conglomerate
-which the sea cuts away very rapidly, and apparently there
-<span class="pb" id="Page_71">71</span>
-has been a subsidence of the soil, since they say that when
-the sea is tranquil there may be seen beneath the water, some
-distance out from the actual shore, the ruins of a city. This
-may have been the port of Cythera&mdash;scarcely a fortified city,
-as the site must have been too low. Right and left of the
-rivulet which now represents the ancient river are bluffs of
-conglomerate, that on the left honeycombed by tombs, some
-of which have fallen with the rock, but of which others are
-still visible, opened to the elements but showing within the
-rock-cut graves. Many valuable articles of gold work have
-been found in past times, but the treasure seems to have been
-exhausted. These two bluffs are the lineal representatives
-and successors by right of position of what Aphrodite must
-have seen as she came ashore on the foam, otherwise they
-have no interest.</p>
-<p>The two low hills which were included in the city of Cythera
-are covered with fragments of building and traces of
-tombs, but, so far as I could find, no wall. This is all that
-is left of Aphrodite, Helen, and Menelaus in their land of
-fabled existence. The coming ashore of Aphrodite undoubtedly
-indicates, like that of Europa at Gortyna in Crete, the
-landing of a colony from Ph&oelig;nicia, bearing the worship of
-Astarte, who became later assimilated to Aphrodite. Of the
-presence here of Helen and Menelaus there is no evidence
-in any trustworthy tradition. The subjection of Cythera to
-Sparta is of historic date. My conclusion as to the island is
-that in Homeric times it was Ph&oelig;nician in its relations as
-Melos was at one time, as well as Santorin and other eastern
-islands, and that, like Corfu, it did not come into the Greek
-system.</p>
-<p>Opposite Cerigo, and with its snowy peaks glistening under
-the noonday sun, lies Crete. The strangest omission of the
-Odyssey would have been that of the island of Minos from
-its reminiscences, if the author had known of it; but, as we
-<span class="pb" id="Page_72">72</span>
-have seen in his interviews with Athene, Ulysses did not fail
-to include it in his geography though he had apparently never
-visited it, and like Egypt and Lotophagitis it was known by
-report. Of Egypt we had heard mention through the visit of
-Helen and Menelaus. Of the country where subsequently
-was established the Great Greek-African colony, Cyrene, we
-have no hint, yet the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus knew
-of Libya earlier than the Dorian invasion&mdash;as early, in fact,
-as 1500 B. C., as we know by the Karnac inscriptions. The
-story of Eum&aelig;us shows knowledge of the ways of that race of
-merchants and pirates, the Ph&oelig;nicians, but nothing of their
-country.</p>
-<p>The questions of the personality and date of Homer and of
-the reality of the Trojan war are utterly diverse, and not, in
-fact, interdependent. As to the latter we have thus far no
-direct evidence whatever, beyond poetic traditions in which
-the supernatural is so strongly and inextricably involved with
-the pretense or actuality of history that no inferences can be
-drawn from any part of the narrative, though from its <i>ensemble</i>
-we are assured that in its ancient form it was accepted
-as history by the entire Greek world as early as we know anything
-of that world with historical certainty. But that is no
-criterion. Even at this day myths grow and crystallize in the
-Oriental mind with a rapidity which leaves the ancients without
-any advantage. The universal belief from the first to
-the eighth century <span class="smaller">B. C.</span> that the Iliad was history need not
-weigh with us. Scientific investigators differ so widely that
-we have no general inference to draw from their arguments.
-The most recent excavations leave a grave doubt whether
-any of the ruins excavated in the Troad can by any reasoning
-be admitted to be as old as the Iliad, and the remains
-on Hissarlik hill which Schliemann <i>more suo</i> has identified
-with Homer&rsquo;s Troy are clearly the remains of the city of
-Cr&oelig;sus, being of brick, which does not appear in the classic
-<span class="pb" id="Page_73">73</span>
-traditions or structures until his time, and we know by authentic
-history that he did build a city on this hill. Professor
-Jebb, one of the most acute of the literary investigators of
-the question, is convinced that the topography of the Iliad is
-eclectic, some of its indications suiting only Hissarlik and
-others only Bunarbashi; Max M&uuml;ller maintains that the whole
-story is a solar myth; while Nicola&iuml;des, a patient and thorough
-Greek student of the Iliad, believes that he can follow
-the whole strategy of the poem on the plain of Troy.
-But the main questions involved in the Odyssey are of a
-different character and determined by different criteria. I
-offer my suggestions as to some of them with the deference
-due my masters in arch&aelig;ology.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig16">
-<img src="images/i16.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="656" />
-<p class="caption">LANDING-PLACE OF THE CYPRIAN APHRODITE OR ASTARTE.</p>
-</div>
-<p>The general knowledge shown in the Odyssey divides itself
-into kinds: that which was part of the general geography of
-the day, and this included the coasts shown on our route
-map; and that of which the poet had personal cognizance,
-<span class="pb" id="Page_74">74</span>
-which is limited to Corfu, Ithaca, Nericus, and possibly Pylos;
-and this exclusiveness suggests to us that Homer, a stranger in
-the West, had come, as I did, simply to follow and study the
-traces of Ulysses&rsquo; wanderings, and that he did so in obedience
-to a clearly preserved tradition as to his great exemplar, which
-was almost impossible without the still remembered personal
-presence. What he describes is admirably told, even to the
-&ldquo;sandy shore&rdquo; of Pylos, in a world whose sandy shores are
-rare; but Homer does not seem to have any mental vision of
-the lands and islands of which Ulysses only speaks in his story&mdash;the
-lands of the Cimmerians, of the L&aelig;strygonians, the
-Cyclops, the Lotophagi, the homes of Circe and Calypso, are
-only heard of. Cythera, close by, is not named, and Crete and
-Egypt are only named. This kind of fulfillment, as well as
-this kind of omission, gives a tone of personality to the poem,
-as the composition of one person, and that one familiar with
-the scene of its major events, and it strengthens my belief in
-the hypothesis of the presence of Homer in Ithaca, and of
-the early date of the Odyssey, and by a certain implication
-argues for a logical relation between the hero and the Trojan
-war, implying the actuality of both.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_75">75</div>
-<h2 id="c3">THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS.</h2>
-<p>In the year 1820, before the struggle between the Hellenic
-population of the Turkish empire and the Porte had begun,
-and when all that attracted the notice of the civilized world
-to modern Greece was the little preserved to us of her art,&mdash;occasionally
-and fragmentarily found in the ruins of her great
-communities,&mdash;a peasant of Melos whose name was Theodore
-Kondros Botoni, working in his field to enlarge it by clearing
-away the <i>d&eacute;bris</i> of the walls and structures of ancient Melos
-(which had been built on a steep hill-side, on a series of terraces,
-more or less natural or artificial, so that the ruins of
-one terrace fell down upon and encumbered that below it),
-saw, to his great bewilderment, the heap of rubbish which he
-was digging away at the bottom suddenly crumble down and
-display the upper part of an antique statue. The peasant
-hastened to the French consul to inform him of the discovery,
-and the latter negotiated the purchase of it for five hundred
-piastres and a complete dress of the fashion of the country.
-This was the statue known as the Venus of Melos.</p>
-<p>So far, there are no variations of the history, but one account
-says that the first or upper part was found several days
-before the lower, and the other, that they were found together;
-but the inexactitude of the documentary contemporary
-evidence is clear from the examination of the ground to-day,
-and from the contradictions contained in it. Dumont
-d&rsquo;Urville, the commander of the <i>Chevrette</i>, a French man-of-war
-which visited Melos after the statue was found, alluding
-to the discovery of the theatre, says: &ldquo;All the ground is
-<span class="pb" id="Page_76">76</span>
-covered with drums of columns and fragments of statues.
-One finds here and there great pieces of wall of a very solid
-construction, and many important tombs have been opened
-through the curiosity of strangers, and the cupidity of the
-inhabitants.&rdquo; But neither the wall nor the tombs, nor any
-drum of column or fragment of statue (if any was found),
-could have had anything to do with the theatre. The theatre
-is very late work, and was never nearly finished, so could
-have possessed neither columns nor statues. This shows that
-the idea the commandant carried away was confused and untrustworthy
-as to details. He goes on to say: &ldquo;Three weeks
-before our arrival at Melos, a Greek peasant, digging in his
-field inclosed in this circuit, struck some pieces of cut stone.
-As these stones, employed by the inhabitants, have a certain
-value, this induced him to dig farther, and he thus happened
-to uncover a species of niche, in which he found a marble
-statue, <i>two Hermes</i>, and some other marble fragments. The
-statue <i>was in two pieces, joined by two strong iron clamps</i>. The
-Greek, fearing to lose the fruit of his labor, had carried the
-upper part to a stable. The other was still in the niche....
-It represented a naked woman, <i>whose left hand raised an apple
-and the right held a drapery</i>,<a class="fn" id="fr_8" href="#fn_8">[8]</a>
-well composed and falling negligently
-from the hips to the feet. For the rest, <i>they are both
-mutilated, and actually detached from the body</i>.&rdquo;</p>
-<p>I note by italics the points which are to be contrasted with
-other evidence.</p>
-<p>M. Dauriac, captain of the frigate <i>La Bont&eacute;</i>, writes from Melos,
-date 11th of April, 1820: &ldquo;There has been found, three
-days ago, by a peasant who was digging in his field, a marble
-statue of <i>Venus receiving the apple from Paris</i>. It is larger
-than life; <i>they have at this moment only the bust as far as the
-waist</i>. <i>I have been to see it.</i>&rdquo; Mr. Brest again writes, 12th of
-<span class="pb" id="Page_77">77</span>
-April: &ldquo;A peasant has found in a field which belonged to
-him three marble statues, representing, one Venus holding
-the apple of discord in one hand, the other represents <i>the god
-Hermes, and the third a young child</i>.&rdquo; The correspondence
-shows that Mr. Brest was entirely ignorant of everything connected
-with arch&aelig;ology or art. He probably heard one of
-the officers say that one of the objects was a Hermes, and he
-changes it into a statue of the god Hermes, but we see that
-there was only one Hermes. November 26th, Brest again
-writes: &ldquo;His Excellency has left me orders to make researches
-in order to find the arms and other <i>d&eacute;bris</i> of the
-statue, but to do that it is necessary to obtain a <i>bouyourouldon</i>
-which will permit us to make excavations at our own expense,
-<i>because in the same niche where it was found there is reason to
-hope that we might find other objects</i>.&rdquo;</p>
-<p>The contradictions are so palpable that it is clear that these
-documents are only of value as secondary arch&aelig;ological evidence.
-No one seems to have made an observation with exactitude.</p>
-<p>We have the whole statue found, in one, bound together by
-iron clamps; in another, only half had yet been found; in
-one, the statue is found holding the apple of discord in one
-hand; in another, receiving it from Paris; and in another
-still, we are told that search has been ordered for the arms,
-etc.</p>
-<p>In 1865 I visited Melos, and having made the acquaintance
-of Mr. Brest, son and successor of the French consul
-who secured the statue for the Louvre, he politely offered to
-guide me through the ruins of the ancient city. Among other
-things, we visited the locality where the statue was found,
-and he showed me the niche still standing as when the discovery
-was made.</p>
-<p>It was a slightly built work, of the height, <i>as nearly as I
-can remember</i>, of ten or at most twelve feet, and about five
-<span class="pb" id="Page_78">78</span>
-wide. It formed a part of an old boundary-wall of the field
-on which it opened, and above it the ground was level with
-the crown of the arch of the niche. It had no suite or connection
-with any other structure, except the boundary-wall in
-which it was, and there were no evidences of ruin or of foundation
-of antique buildings about it. The opening had been
-closed with rubbish, not with masonry, as was evident from
-the face of the side walls, which were of smooth, if not carefully
-laid, masonry. If as I believe not built for the concealment
-of the statue, it had been made for some unimportant
-purpose; perhaps the protection from the weather of the
-poor Hermes which is said to have been found with it. C.
-Doupault, architect, has published a <i>brochure</i> with what he
-supposed important evidence on the question, in which, from
-data given him by old Brest twenty-seven years after the discovery,
-he reconstructs the apse of a seventh-century church,
-in which he places the statue. The whole study has no value
-whatever, as the sketch does not correspond with the ruins
-which I saw, and looking back to the correspondence quoted,
-it is clear that Brest, knowing nothing of arch&aelig;ology or art,
-caught at certain suggestions of the officers who saw the statue,
-and affirmed what they surmised. As to the fragments found,
-to which constant reference is made, there is not the slightest
-evidence that they were found in any connection with the
-statue, as none of the early evidence indicates that they were
-known when the statue was first taken under notice&mdash;on
-the contrary, it is said explicitly by Brest that he had orders
-to make researches to find the arms and other portions of the
-statue; indicating clearly that the arms alluded to had not
-been found with the statue, and that the connection between
-them and it was an after-thought, either of the peasant, who
-wished to increase the value of the statue by connecting with
-it fragments which he had found in other parts, or of the
-arch&aelig;ologists, who, seeking to restore the statue to what
-<span class="pb" id="Page_79">79</span>
-they judged to be its true action, connected the arm found,
-no one knows where, except at Melos, with the statue. It is
-undeniable that when the letters before quoted were written,
-there had been only conjecture as to the arms. Dauriac,
-writing on the 11th of April, says that they have only found
-the bust. Brest, November 26th, says that there is reason to
-hope that they might find other objects <i>in the same niche</i>&mdash;proof
-that it had not even then been cleared out. In fact, all
-we have of documentary evidence goes for nothing beyond
-showing that the statue was found at a certain place on a certain
-date; and if the two halves of the statue did not fit exactly
-we could not be certain that they were found at the
-same time and place. The hypothesis of the apple of discord
-is based on a conjecture of some of the officers, and has no
-further confirmation than that an arm and hand, with what
-may be an apple or a cup, seem to have been found somewhere
-in the island about the same time; but they evidently
-are not of the statue, nor even of the same epoch.</p>
-<p>Over or somewhere near the niche an inscription was said
-to have been found which records the dedication of an exedra
-by a gymnasiarch to Hercules and Hermes. The date of this
-inscription, according to conjecture based on the inscription
-itself, is about a century before Christ, <i>i. e.</i>, long after any
-possibility of such a work being produced had gone by.</p>
-<p>These are all the positive data we have to work on. They
-suffice, however, for about twenty monographs in French,
-German, and English; and a late German work, by Dr. Goeler
-von Ravensburg, exhausts all the possible and impossible conjectures
-to establish its character in accordance with the original
-attribution of a Venus receiving the apple.</p>
-<p>In the year 1880, I made another visit to Melos, on commission
-from &ldquo;The Century&rdquo; magazine, to photograph whatever
-might remain which had any connection with the statue;
-but found the niche gone, and no trace of foundations of any
-<span class="pb" id="Page_80">80</span>
-kind, or walls, city or other, very near the spot which was
-again pointed out to me as that where the Venus was found.</p>
-<p>It would seem that in the energetic excavation that followed
-the last great arch&aelig;ological revival, everything that was
-suspected to conceal works of art had been dug away.</p>
-<p>I found an old man, a pilot well known in our navy, Kypriotis,
-who had seen the statue when it was brought out, being
-a boy of about fourteen. At that time Mr. Brest was a
-child, and retained only slight personal recollection of the
-event; but it was evident that he, like his father in 1847, had
-mingled in his impressions conjecture of others and his own,
-with facts perverted, and details conceived without sufficient
-basis. Nothing new was to be got.</p>
-<p>The old Melos is utterly deserted, and the modern town is
-built on a pinnacle above it, which does not seem ever to have
-been included in the range of the city. The port is changed
-from the ancient site, where now a breakwater would be
-needed, as the land seems to have sunk greatly, and the old
-basin of the port is silted up to a point at the bottom of the
-bay, where a comparatively modern village has grown up,
-called Castro.</p>
-<p>The magnificent harbor used to make of the island an important
-station before telegraphs were established, and might
-again, if the telegraph were laid to it; but now a man-of-war
-rarely calls, except to take a pilot for the Archipelago, and
-a Greek steamer stops once in a fortnight. But in heavy
-weather, any ship caught near runs for Melos. This keeps
-the place alive, but it has dwindled to a mere island village,
-where the vast labyrinths of tombs which perforate the hills
-show more human industry than the dwellings of the living.
-Earthquakes and malaria have desolated and almost depopulated
-it.</p>
-<p>We had left Cerigo for Crete, and intended to take Melos
-on our return to Peir&aelig;us, but when within an hour of land
-<span class="pb" id="Page_81">81</span>
-we were caught by a terrific south-wester, the most to be
-dreaded of all the winds of the &AElig;gean, and in spite of all we
-could do we were obliged to give up and run before the gale
-where it would send us. It was late in the evening when its
-fury came down on us, and taking in all sail except a small
-storm-sail at the foot of the mast to keep from coming up
-into the wind, we ran before it into the black night. I knew
-that there were no rocks ahead before Melos, and if we only
-made the island by daylight, we could easily fetch the port;
-but if not, and the yacht ran at night into the little archipelago
-of which Melos is part, it would be next to impossible to
-choose where our bones should be laid, for there are no lights,
-and many islands and rocks. The sea was, for our little
-twelve-ton craft, something fearful, and we thumped and hammered
-till the little thing quivered, when a wave struck her,
-almost as if we had come to the rocks. Sleep was out of the
-question&mdash;to sit or stand, equally so, and we kept to our
-berths, as the only way to avoid being pitched about like
-blocks. How long that night was! and in the middle of it I
-attempted to get up, and when I put my foot on the cabin-floor,
-found myself stepping into the water. We had sprung
-a leak with the straining.</p>
-<p>But day came and cheerfulness. We ran in between the
-huge cliffs which form the portal of Melos harbor, with the
-wild surges beating against them till the spray flew high
-enough to have buried a larger craft than ours. Tired, aching,
-and hungry, for nothing could we get to eat till we arrived
-in port, we cast anchor in the welcome harbor late in
-the afternoon. Even then, the sea ran so high that we could
-not land until the next day.</p>
-<p>Castro is a pile of white houses, rising in terraces from the
-shore; the streets mostly stairways, and the houses all whitewashed
-till they blind one in that rarely broken sunlight.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_82">82</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig17">
-<img src="images/i17.jpg" alt="" width="419" height="801" />
-<p class="caption">THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS. (DRAWN BY BIRCH FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.)</p>
-</div>
-<p>I landed, and, as usual, went to the little caf&eacute;, where the
-magnates of the village were discussing the arrival and the
-storm&mdash;the worst, they said, for many years. I called, of
-<span class="pb" id="Page_83">83</span>
-course, on Brest, who, to my surprise, remembered me after
-eighteen years; and we made an appointment to revisit together
-the sites I knew, and to see those I had not known before,&mdash;important
-excavations having been made since my former
-visit.</p>
-<p>We went first to the new port, where some admirable statues,
-since taken to Athens, had been recently found. The
-owner of the little field by the water, which occupies the site
-of the inner port, having occasion to sink a well, struck the
-ruins of a temple of Neptune, and three statues were found,
-one of Neptune, a female goddess draped, but lacking the
-head, and a mounted warrior, apparently Perseus.</p>
-<p>The Greek Government, according to their laws, forbade the
-exportation of them by any foreign government, and finally
-purchased them for thirty thousand francs&mdash;certainly a very
-small price. I succeeded in seeing them later, still in their
-boxes at Athens, and though not equal to the Venus, or of
-the same epoch, they are very fine works.</p>
-<p>But there the excavations stop; the owner had no means
-to pump out the water that flooded his diggings, the Government
-had no more, and as no one is allowed to dig unless
-for the Greek museum, whatever remains under ground and
-water is likely to remain there another generation.</p>
-<p>We then climbed up the zigzag road to the theatre. It is,
-as I have said, of late times, probably Roman, and was never
-complete. Fragments of unfinished ornament lie still where
-the stage should have been, but it had clearly never been
-carried up above the seven ranges of seats now existing. It
-was just outside the wall of the inner city, on the brow of
-the hill, and overlooked the spacious harbor and looked out
-to sea. There is no record of any sculpture having been
-found there. It was purchased and excavated by the King
-of Bavaria.</p>
-<p>Less than half a mile beyond, going with the sea at our
-<span class="pb" id="Page_84">84</span>
-backs, was the field where the statue was found. The Greeks
-have entertained a great deal of indignation at the rape,
-which they affect to call robbery; but the civilized world may
-thank the French captain who, coming to get it, and finding
-it already half-embarked on board a Turkish vessel, destined
-for Constantinople, made the most legitimate use that was
-ever made of <i>force majeure</i>, and took it away from the Turk
-to transfer it to the hold of his own ship. Otherwise, no one
-knows what vile uses it might have gone to, or what oblivion
-and destruction. All the world knows it now, but Greek
-genius would have forever
-lacked one of its greatest
-triumphs in modern times if
-it had disappeared in the
-slums of Stamboul.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig18">
-<img src="images/i18.jpg" alt="" width="560" height="700" />
-<p class="caption">STREET IN CASTRO.</p>
-</div>
-<p>As I have said, there is
-now no trace of any construction
-of any kind to be
-seen at the locality. The
-wall in which was the niche
-was gone, and the field of the
-present owner has encroached
-considerably on the space beyond,
-the <i>d&eacute;bris</i> being piled
-up in huge masses like walls, and two or three terraces above
-runs the citadel wall, a mass of Hellenic masonry built of blocks
-of lava. The Pelasgic walls, of which some authors speak, do
-not exist anywhere in the island. Brest took up a stone, and
-as we stood on the wall of <i>d&eacute;bris</i> above, cast it into the field,
-and said, &ldquo;There stood the Venus!&rdquo; In the illustration I
-have put a white cross on the spot.</p>
-<p>There cannot remain the slightest doubt that the statue
-had been concealed, and to my mind, the circumstances indicated
-for its concealment are these: The niche, judging from
-<span class="pb" id="Page_85">85</span>
-its character, had been built in Roman times; as the rubbly
-nature of the masonry indicated, probably covered with
-stucco, as it would have been if intended for ornament, and
-was designed as a shelter for an altar, or for the statue of
-some divinity&mdash;Terminus, Hermes, Pan or Faunus, the more
-Roman companion of him. Here the inscription and the
-Hermes found furnish a plausible clew, and agree with the indication
-of the masonry in pointing out the epoch of this conjunction
-of circumstances as subsequent to the second century
-before Christ; how long after we cannot in any wise indicate.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig19">
-<img src="images/i19.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="472" />
-<p class="caption">THE SITE OF OLD MELOS, FROM THE PORT. (WHITE CROSS SHOWS WHERE THE &ldquo;VENUS&rdquo; WAS FOUND.)</p>
-</div>
-<p>Now as to the epoch of the statue there can be no doubt
-that it was of the immediately post-Phidian epoch; and all
-the most authoritative opinions attribute it to the Attic
-school, and probably of the time and school of Scopas&mdash;and
-some of the weightiest authorities have accepted Scopas himself
-as the author.</p>
-<p>Anything more definite than this it is impossible to establish
-by any now known evidence. The concealment of the
-statue, then, was several centuries later than the execution
-of it.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_86">86</div>
-<p>The Greeks of the classical epoch, even down to the first
-century after Christ, retained, amidst all the degradation of
-their contemporary art, a distinct recognition of the excellence
-of the elder work, as the enormous artistic as well as pecuniary
-value of some of the masters&rsquo; <i>chefs d&rsquo;&oelig;uvre</i> prove. That
-this was one of them, and of one of the chief masters, all
-civilization agrees, and, although we have lost the name of
-the author, the people who hid it must have known it well.
-The availing themselves of the niche, ready-made to their
-hands, indicates that the possessors of the statue worked in
-haste, piling up stones in front of the niche, instead of walling
-it up.</p>
-<p>This indicates the haste of impending attack, or work done
-in secret. In either case, if the statue had a temple in that
-locality, it would be concealed near it, or near the place
-where it was accustomed to stand; but no such temple is
-known. We may remember the contrast with the colossal
-and magnificent Hercules found in a drain at Rome, carefully
-covered over with good masonry. Concealment was the object
-in both cases, and the greater haste and furtiveness with
-the Melian statue indicate rather that it was brought from a
-distance than that it could be a divinity of the island.</p>
-<p>Conjecture as to the origin of the statue, if my hypothesis
-is true, points to Athens, not only because the work is Attic,
-but because we know by the coins of Melos, which in all the
-latest coinages still bear the owl of Athens, that Melos belonged
-to that city as late as she had any Greek allegiance,
-which must have been some time into the Empire, as the Romans
-long made it a policy to preserve a certain kind of autonomy
-in the Greek states, even when their subjection was
-complete. That it is Attic, no one can doubt in face of the
-evidence I shall show. That Athens was the only city likely
-to send to Melos a treasure of this kind, concealment of
-which was impossible in Athens, is almost certain.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_87">87</div>
-<p>I conclude that it was a highly valued statue of Athens,
-sent to Melos in time of great danger, to be concealed and
-preserved. What period this might have been is only to be
-guessed at; it is therefore hardly worth while to say more
-about it, except to indicate that four periods in late Athenian
-history might furnish the motive requisite: when the army of
-Mithridates, under Archelaus, took Athens; the wars between
-the factions of Marius and Sylla; the Lacedemonian war, and
-the invasions of the Iconoclasts. The Romans do not appear,
-in spite of all their plundering and the enormous quantity of
-statues carried away from Greece, to have desecrated the temples
-of the Greek gods, as we see that Pausanias, in the century
-after Christ, found the most valuable of them <i>in situ</i>, as,
-for instance, the Diana Brauronia of Praxiteles, the Perseus of
-Myron, with others of great fame. The above conclusion, considering
-all the known and reasonably conjecturable details of
-the discovery and concealment, seems to me justifiable,&mdash;as
-well as that it was concealed at some time between the century
-or two centuries before Christ and the end of the first
-century after.</p>
-<p>Now, what was the statue? We have so long been in the
-habit of accepting all female statues, not distinguished by well-known
-symbols of their divinity, as Venuses, that we make no
-distinction even in cases where the type demands it. And
-yet the dominant characteristic of Greek sculpture is this
-close adherence to established types. We are never at a loss
-to distinguish Diana, Minerva, Juno, or even Ceres and the
-lesser deities. Venus, it is true, came into vogue as subject
-for the sculptors of sacred statues later than some of the
-others; but all that we know of the Venus of the artists indicates
-that it was <i>par excellence</i> the womanly type. The
-treatment of the head in Greek sculpture was a point apparently
-of doctrine, as it was in Byzantine and in the later
-ecclesiastical art of Greece. It is always in a conventional
-type, utterly separated from the individual.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_88">88</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig20">
-<img src="images/i20.jpg" alt="" width="203" height="600" />
-<p class="caption">MEDICEAN VENUS.</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig21">
-<img src="images/i20a.jpg" alt="" width="177" height="600" />
-<p class="caption">VENUS URANIA.</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig22">
-<img src="images/i20c.jpg" alt="" width="216" height="600" />
-<p class="caption">CAPITOLINE VENUS.</p>
-</div>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_89">89</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig23">
-<img src="images/i21.jpg" alt="" width="213" height="593" />
-<p class="caption">VENUS OF THE VATICAN.</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig24">
-<img src="images/i21a.jpg" alt="" width="194" height="582" />
-<p class="caption">VENUS ANADYOMENE.</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig25">
-<img src="images/i21c.jpg" alt="" width="262" height="582" />
-<p class="caption">VENUS VICTRIX OF THE LOUVRE.</p>
-</div>
-<p>This unquestionable fact should have taught us to reject
-from the Venus category many statues which are now included
-in it, as for instance, the Callipyge, and all in which a
-trace of portraiture is to be found, besides diminishing that
-category by all the statues of the heroic type, as in none of the
-legends of beliefs of the Greek faith was Venus ever endowed
-with a heroic quality. The preconceived notion that the
-Melian statue was a Venus has been a continual cause of confusion.
-This was, as I have shown, the first hypothesis of
-the French officers, none of whom appear to have been possessed
-of any arch&aelig;ological knowledge, and who had the commonly
-prevailing notion that any nude statue must be a Venus.
-I have taken the pains to collect a number of representations
-of the various so-called Venuses, and most of which the type,
-or symbols, justify us in so classifying; and a comparison of
-their character will show what is the Venus type,&mdash;making
-this proviso, however, that we have no other than internal
-evidence for denominating most of them Venuses. The chief
-of these, in what we seek for most, <i>i. e.</i>, the impersonal type,
-which was inseparable from the Greek deities down through
-the decline of art, which began in the time of Alexander,
-are: the Medici, a distinctly marked Attic work, later, however,
-than the Melian statue; the Capitoline, apparently a
-still later reminiscence of the Medici and one of many similar
-reminiscences; and the &ldquo;Venus coming out of the bath,&rdquo; at
-Naples, a better work than the last, but still already widely
-separated from the purely conventional type of the Medicean,
-which we may authoritatively accept as the Venus type of
-the best period of the Venus sculpture. The close comparison
-of the heads and details of the flesh will give those who
-do not know the originals an invaluable lesson in the treatment
-of the figure in Greek art. The so-called &ldquo;Venus
-Urania,&rdquo; at Florence, marks, to my mind, a distinct departure
-from the Venus type,&mdash;so marked, indeed, as to make me
-decline to accept it as a Venus, while the still typical character
-of the face is one which must place it in a good period
-of art, before ideality of treatment had entirely given way to
-individuality. The art is of too good an epoch to have departed
-so far from the type of Venus, if intended for her, and
-indicates rather a nymph, or some inferior deity. The Venus
-<span class="pb" id="Page_90">90</span>
-of the Vatican is too late and too low down in the scale of art
-to be an authoritative witness in the matter; while the Venus
-Anadyomene, while still reserving the ideal character, resembles
-the Urania rather, in a separation of the type from the
-Venus. Later still, and perhaps at the end of that period
-which may be called the ideal period of antique sculpture,
-most probably of Gr&aelig;co-Roman art, is the Venus Victrix of
-the Louvre; unquestionably a Venus, for she bears in her
-hand the apple&mdash;symbol of fruitfulness. But how far from
-the type of our Melian treasure! In that is the most distinct
-approach to the Athena type&mdash;a purely heroic ideal. I cannot
-believe that its sculptor intended it for a Venus.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig26">
-<img src="images/i22.jpg" alt="" width="272" height="600" />
-<p class="caption">VENUS OF CAPUA.</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig27">
-<img src="images/i22a.jpg" alt="" width="264" height="600" />
-<p class="caption">RESTORATION OF THE STATUE AS PROPOSED BY MR. TARRAL.</p>
-</div>
-<p>The patient German admirer of our statue, which Von
-Ravensburg is, has gone through all the literature and all the
-conjectures which it has given rise to, as to the chief problem
-which gives interest to any investigation, <i>i. e.</i>, the restoration
-of the statue. No attempt will satisfy all the investigators;
-but that which Von Ravensburg accepts with approval&mdash;viz.,
-the restoration of Mr. Tarral (an Englishman residing in Paris
-for many years, who has given his chief attention to this problem)&mdash;shows
-<span class="pb" id="Page_91">91</span>
-so entire a want of appreciation of the character
-of antique design, which is, after all, our only clew, that
-I shall not hesitate to put aside, not only the solution proposed,
-but the judgment that could accept as satisfactory such
-a solution of one of the most interesting of artistic problems.
-I give the figure which Von Ravensburg publishes as Tarral&rsquo;s
-restoration of the statue, that one may see how absolutely its
-inanity is at variance with the spirit of Greek design. The
-mere completion of the statue, in this sense, destroys the
-dignity and unity of the work so completely that to look at
-it is enough for a cultivated judgment to decide that, whatever
-it may have been, this it was <i>not</i>. The author gives,
-also, photographs of the fragments found&mdash;fragments so imperfect
-and corroded that we can only say that they appear
-to be from a very low period of art, and are utterly worthless
-as data for measure or opinion, from their extremely fragmentary
-state.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig28">
-<img src="images/i23.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="143" />
-<p class="caption">FRAGMENTS FOUND AT MELOS ATTRIBUTED TO THE STATUE.</p>
-</div>
-<p>Besides, I have shown, from the records of discovery, that
-there is no further reason to connect them with the statue
-than that they were also found at Melos.</p>
-<p>In following the whole course of the demonstration which
-Von Ravensburg attempts of this solution of the problem, I
-arrive at the conclusion that, with all his patience and research,
-his judgment is utterly untrustworthy on a problem
-which requires not only freedom from preconception, but long
-cultivation of artistic perception and general critical ability.
-Mr. Tarral&rsquo;s attempt proves, to my mind, only that this was
-not the solution.</p>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_92">92</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig29">
-<img src="images/i24.jpg" alt="" width="338" height="600" />
-<p class="caption">VICTORY OF BRESCIA&mdash;FRONT.</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig30">
-<img src="images/i24a.jpg" alt="" width="434" height="600" />
-<p class="caption">VICTORY OF BRESCIA&mdash;SIDE.</p>
-</div>
-<p>The various suggestions, more or less authoritative, made
-as to the restoration, and thence as to the determination of
-the attributes of the statue, are to be summed up briefly.
-The Count de Clarac, the then curator of the antiques of the
-Louvre, adopted the Venus with the apple hypothesis, but
-afterward abandoned it in favor of one put forward by Millingen,
-that it was a Victory. This is one of the theories of
-the restoration which has found the greatest number of adherents.
-Several restorations have been proposed, which make
-the statue part of a group, all which, though defended or proposed
-by many <i>dilettanti</i>, I reject, for what to me seem sufficient
-reasons, viz.: <i>Firstly</i>, we have in the statue no evidence
-whatever that it formed part of a group, and without
-some such the hypothesis is gratuitous; <i>Secondly</i>, we have&mdash;with
-one exception, which I shall presently note, and
-which gives no countenance to such a theory&mdash;no statue or
-parts of statues which agree with it in artistic quality, or
-<span class="pb" id="Page_93">93</span>
-even none which lend themselves to a group, if such were
-made up by various sculptors; <i>Thirdly</i>, that, at the epoch in
-which the statue was produced, any group which has been
-suggested would have been out of accordance with the aims
-of art, as practiced by the Greeks. The only evidence in
-favor of such a theory is that in some antique fragments or
-coins are indications of such
-a figure as the Melian in
-combination. But, as this
-statue must have been in its
-own time nearly as celebrated,
-relatively, as in ours,
-it must have given rise to
-many imitations and adaptations.
-It may have given
-rise to some which support
-the group theory, but to
-more which support an opposing
-theory.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig31">
-<img src="images/i25.jpg" alt="" width="431" height="800" />
-<p class="caption">VICTORY RAISING AN OFFERING (TEMPLE OF NIK&Eacute; APTEROS, THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS).</p>
-</div>
-<p>Von Ravensburg goes over,
-in detail, all the group theories,
-and easily finds fatal
-objections to all. What
-most surprises me is that
-any one ever tried to put it
-into a group, so completely
-by itself does it stand in
-every sense of the word.</p>
-<p>Millingen, in 1826, started his theory that it was a Victory
-holding a shield in both hands. I am quite convinced that
-many who have started other theories would have adopted
-this if they had not been anticipated in proposing it. The
-vanity of arch&aelig;ological research, and eagerness to propose
-something new is so dominant in most arch&aelig;ologists that
-<span class="pb" id="Page_94">94</span>
-they exercise more ingenuity to advance some new theory
-than would be requisite to show the validity of an old one.
-And the statue of Melos has been pre&euml;minent in fruitfulness
-of theories of all qualities and grades of improbability. Millingen,
-however, supported his theory by a similar statue
-known as the Capuan Venus, a reproduction, I believe, in
-Roman times, of the Melian statue, probably through some
-other intermediate copy or reproduction, as the sculptors of
-the Capuan statue could not have seen the Melian. The
-arms are a modern and abominable restoration. Here, again,
-I must, in passing, protest against the attribution to the
-Venus type of all nude or semi-nude statues. There is nothing
-in the Capuan which indicates that it was intended as a
-Venus. Millingen quotes Apollonius of Rhodes as describing
-a statue of Venus looking at herself in the shield of Mars,
-which she herself is holding, but this is no evidence of the
-type correspondence, and the gravamen of the matter lies
-precisely in the diversity of the type from the recognizable
-Venuses. But the Capuan is too far in type and treatment
-from the Melian to serve as definite argument. Such as it is,
-an item in the discussion, I will not exaggerate its importance,
-though I believe it to be a far-away recollection of the
-Melian statue.</p>
-<p>&ldquo;The Victory of Brescia&rdquo; is another of the recollections,
-rather than reproductions, of the type of which I believe the
-Melian statue to be the original. It is in bronze, is later, and
-has the wings, but the type is unmistakable, and the action
-of the torso and head is sufficiently different from our statue
-to show that it was only an emulation, and not a plagiarism,
-that was intended.</p>
-<p>The drapery differs in the arrangement, being of bronze and
-agreeing with some undisputed Victories at Athens, but the
-action of the left leg holding the shield is the same, and that
-of the arms corresponds very nearly, as far as the arms remain
-<span class="pb" id="Page_95">95</span>
-in the Melian work. As a whole, it reminds one more of
-the latter than does any other of the statues of its class.</p>
-<p>The case is one in which arch&aelig;ological knowledge is of very
-little value, unless it be aided by thorough artistic study and
-a knowledge of the requirements of art proper. The arch&aelig;ologist,
-like other scientists, must have positive evidence to
-work on; and the testimony of pure taste, the intuitions of
-an artistic education, are of no use to him except as confirmatory.
-The intuition of the artist, whose taste has been educated
-by long study of the works he has to deal with, arrives
-at opinions by a kind of inspiration to which science often
-lacks all means of access. In the case of this statue, arch&aelig;ology
-has no evidence to weigh, and the ponderous erudition
-which Overbeck, M&uuml;ller, Jahn, Welcker, and others have
-piled on the question has no foundation. We can determine
-with comparative certainty that the statue belongs to the
-epoch between Phidias and Praxiteles, because we have the
-work of the school of Phidias and sufficient comparative data
-for that of Praxiteles [and now, since the discovery of the
-Hermes at Olympia, positive data] to judge from; and we have
-a right to say that the Melian statue came between these, but
-beyond this nothing&mdash;no clew except what lies in the design
-and the unities attendant on it, of which <i>per se</i> the professed
-arch&aelig;ologist is no judge.</p>
-<p>In working about the Acropolis of Athens some years ago,
-I photographed, amongst other sculptures, the mutilated Victories
-in the Temple of Nik&eacute; Apteros, the &ldquo;Wingless Victory,&rdquo;
-the little Ionic temple in which stood that statue of
-Victory of which it is said that &ldquo;<i>the Athenians made her without
-wings that she might never leave Athens</i>&rdquo;; and looking at
-the photographs afterward, when the impression of the comparatively
-diminutive size had passed, I was struck with the
-close resemblance of the type to that of the &ldquo;Venus&rdquo; of Melos.
-There are the same large, heroic proportions, the same
-<span class="pb" id="Page_96">96</span>
-ampleness in the development of the nude parts, the same art
-in the management of the draperies, and Richard Greenough,
-the American sculptor, has called my particular attention to
-the curious similarity in the treatment of the folds of the
-drapery, in the introduction of a plane between the folds, a
-resemblance not found in any other similar works as far as I
-know.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig32">
-<img src="images/i26.jpg" alt="" width="435" height="801" />
-<p class="caption">VICTORY UNTYING HER SANDAL (TEMPLE OF NIK&Eacute; APTEROS, THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS).</p>
-</div>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_97">97</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig33">
-<img src="images/i27.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="679" />
-<p class="caption">VICTORIES LEADING A BULL TO SACRIFICE (TEMPLE OF NIK&Eacute; APTEROS, THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS).</p>
-</div>
-<p>They are little high reliefs, part of a balustrade which surrounded
-the cortile of the Temple of Nik&eacute; Apteros, hardly
-three feet high in their perfect state, and now without heads
-or hands or feet. There are four of them: one apparently
-untying her sandal; another,&mdash;that which best shows the type
-of the figure&mdash;raising an offering or crown, and two others
-leading a bull to sacrifice. I give the series. Note the exquisite
-composition of the drapery below the knee of the
-Victory raising the offering, and the superb flow of the entire
-draperies in the sandal-tying figure, but, above all, the Victory
-<span class="pb" id="Page_98">98</span>
-type in the whole assemblage. How absolutely it agrees
-with that of the Melian statue, and how utterly alone in all
-antique art that is but for these!</p>
-<p>Since I have begun this study, it has twice happened that
-artist friends trained in the French school (<i>i. e.</i>, in the only
-school which cultivates the perception of style in design, and
-the only one that emulates the Greek in its characteristics),
-both trained draughtsmen, came into my room, and without
-any remark I showed them the photographs of the Victories
-at Athens. They were new to both, but in one case as in the
-other the first expression was: &ldquo;How like the Venus of Melos!&rdquo;
-And the similarity runs through the treatment of
-every part&mdash;the management of drapery to express the action
-of the limbs, the firm, heroic mould of the figure, and the
-modeling of the round contours. Compare (in the casts, if
-possible, as the small scale of my illustrations will not show
-the point so clearly) the right shoulder of the Venus with
-that in the stooping Victory. The slight differences which
-exist are just what might be expected between a figure which
-stands as principal, isolated, and to be seen from all sides, and
-one which was secondary, subordinate, of partial decorative
-use, and to be seen only in one view. My illustrations will
-hardly convey the strikingness of the similarity, but I defy
-any one to compare side by side the series of Victories and
-the Melian statue in casts and not admit that the type, the
-treatment, the ideal, are the same, as sisters may be the same,
-or at least as mother and daughter.</p>
-<p>The little Temple of Nik&eacute; Apteros had once, we know, a
-statue of Victory without wings, and we know the <i>bon mot</i>,
-which I have given above, which it suggested. The decorations
-of the temple are attributed to Scopas and his school,
-and this Victory was unique, so far as we know, in being
-wingless. We may well conceive, with the symbolical meaning&mdash;talismanic,
-rather&mdash;implied in what we know of it by
-<span class="pb" id="Page_99">99</span>
-this witticism, that the Athenians would have a special anxiety
-to keep it from becoming a trophy in the hands of an enemy,
-even one who might not be disposed to desecrate the temples
-of the greater gods. Nik&eacute; was rather an attribute or variation
-of Athena than a distinct goddess, and was as such both
-of great value to the Athenians, being the <i>alter ego</i> of their
-patroness; and of less reverence to the enemy, as not Minerva
-herself. At all events, when Pausanias visited Athens the
-Nik&eacute; Apteros had gone. Her temple still stood there, and
-near it on the Acropolis hill stood some of the greatest art-treasures
-of the antique world untouched.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig34">
-<img src="images/i28.jpg" alt="" width="218" height="576" />
-<p class="caption">THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS&mdash;FRONT.</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig35">
-<img src="images/i28a.jpg" alt="" width="220" height="600" />
-<p class="caption">THE &ldquo;VENUS&rdquo; RESTORED&mdash;FRONT.
-<br />(TRACED FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF A LIVING MODEL.)</p>
-</div>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_100">100</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig36">
-<img src="images/i29.jpg" alt="" width="323" height="600" />
-<p class="caption">THE &ldquo;VENUS&rdquo; RESTORED&mdash;SIDE.
-<br />(TRACED FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF A LIVING MODEL.)</p>
-</div>
-<div class="img" id="fig37">
-<img src="images/i30.jpg" alt="" width="269" height="600" />
-<p class="caption">THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS&mdash;SIDE.</p>
-</div>
-<p>My theory, open to the grave objection that it is one in
-which hypothesis bears an undue proportion to proven fact
-(yet not so great as any of the group theories, and hardly
-more than any other theory, for all are constructed out of the
-same aerial substance), is that the Melian statue is the original
-Nik&eacute; Apteros from the little temple on the Acropolis of
-Athens. If so, one can understand the whole of my theory
-of concealment, attribution, and type, because this statue
-above all others would come under the rancor of a victor and
-its flight would become an humiliation to Athens. It was like
-the standard of a defeated army, to be kept at all hazards
-from the enemy. Hurried away to Melos, it was safe from
-the invader, but no nearer point was secure. The restoration
-in my hypothesis becomes that of the Victory in some attitude
-connected with regarding, or recording, on the shield or a
-tablet the names of the Attic heroes, or battles, and my opinion
-is that she has just finished writing, but I am disposed to
-uncertainty on the exact phase of the action, only insisting
-on that of the Recorder. The minuti&aelig; of description of
-many antique works of art which we owe to Pausanias and
-<span class="pb" id="Page_101">101</span>
-Pliny was plainly impossible with this. Neither ever saw
-it, but its memory existed in artistic tradition and has been
-repeated in the statues we have seen, probably only a few of
-those which once existed.</p>
-<p>Von Ravensburg sums up the objections to the shield-bearing
-Victory and to the theory of Millingen as follows: The
-theory would indicate that she leaned back to balance the
-weight of the shield, but the objections urged are that if the
-shield were larger it would hide too much (yet in an earlier
-part of the book the statement is made that a part of the
-figure, and just that part covered by the shield, is comparatively
-unfinished, which has given rise to the theory of a
-group in which one side of the statue was hidden); if it were
-small, the weight would not be enough to account for the attitude.
-And, in the next breath, he urges that the grand
-heroic character <i>is an objection to her struggling with a burden</i>.
-But if a goddess, and of this robust type, the burden ought
-not to oppress her, however great, humanly speaking. But
-in point of fact there is no noteworthy degree of backward
-inclination. To test the question, I photographed a model in
-the attitude required to hold a shield on her left knee and
-write on it.</p>
-<p>The result was very slightly different from that of the
-statue. A part of the backward action of the model was
-due to the necessity of a support to enable her to remain in
-the pose necessary to be photographed, but the action of writing
-is better expressed by the statue.</p>
-<p>The action of the statue is that of a figure which stands
-nearly balanced and in repose, with the first movement in a
-forward action, like one who reaches out to give, take, or
-write, or any similar action or the moment after the action is
-complete. The particular moment we cannot determine without
-the possession of the fore-arms. Von Ravensburg goes on
-to say that he does not mean to affirm that the holding of a
-<span class="pb" id="Page_102">102</span>
-shield does not suit the action of the upper part of the body,
-but maintains that it does not explain it <i>particularly well</i>.
-But after the inane restoration given forth with his high approval,
-we may be permitted to doubt that his artistic taste
-has been as carefully developed as his arch&aelig;ological acumen.
-He quotes Overbeck as objecting to the shield resting on the
-left knee, that there are no traces on the left thigh which
-the shield must have left; but Wittig and Von L&uuml;tzow have
-recognized these very marks, and they are distinctly visible
-even in the east, as far as would be expected if a bronze
-shield merely rested on the drapery, and the shield, if there
-was one, was in all probability of bronze, held well out from
-the body, and resting on the knee raised for that purpose, the
-foot being supported by a helmet lying on the ground. But,
-further, he says these considerations are quite superfluous,
-for the position of the left leg of the Melian statue contradicts
-the shield-supporting, and he quotes in support Valentin,
-that the left thigh would incline outward to secure
-a balance, and that the supporting of a heavy object on the
-thigh thrown in would violate the laws of equilibrium. That
-this is not true is shown by the &ldquo;Victory of Brescia,&rdquo; in
-which the action is precisely this, and the pose of the thigh
-is the same as that of the Melian statue. Moreover, I tried
-a model again in this view, and the result is given in the illustration.</p>
-<p>The knee took quite readily the action indicated, and, indeed,
-would be compelled to by the pressure of the shield if
-the weight rested partly on the left hand, as it must to have
-left the right free for any action whatever. Both nature and
-the antique assert precisely the contrary to that which Valentin
-assumes. The length to which the argument against this
-restoration is carried by him may be judged from the assertion
-that the action of the &ldquo;Victory of Brescia&rdquo; is that of an
-outward push of the left thigh, to make it agree with that of
-<span class="pb" id="Page_103">103</span>
-the theory Von Ravensburg lays down. But the assertion is
-purely gratuitous. If the Brescian bronze is an argument,
-as far as it goes it obviates every difficulty in the interpretation
-of the Melian statue by taking, so far as the action of
-the limbs is concerned, the very action of the latter.</p>
-<p>There is but one objection to the restoration theory I propose
-which deserves serious consideration&mdash;that of the goddess
-looking off or above the point at which she would be writing
-<i>if she were writing</i>. Half the ingenuity displayed in many
-of the proposed restorations, or half the sophistry employed
-by Von Ravensburg to combat this, would carry us over much
-greater difficulties. In later Greek work, when art was
-sought for its own sake, and consistency continually sacrificed
-to the grace of a pose and harmony of the lines, we should
-not be surprised at the goddess looking at one point and writing
-at another; but at this period the dramatic unities were
-sacred alike in poetry as in art. But I suppose that, unlike
-the Brescian statue, she is not at the moment engaged in
-writing, but pausing as having just finished, and, looking out
-from her pedestal in the little temple, gazes out toward Marathon,
-in which direction the temple opens, and this is no difficulty
-in the restoration. A little of that kind of imagination
-so much abused in modern art-criticism, which consists in attributing
-to the artist all the fancies which arise in our minds
-in the contemplation of his work, all the far-fetched and
-poetic visions our own eyes have conjured up, would supply
-all deficiencies in our theory.</p>
-<p>But while I maintain that my theory has more accordances
-with the known facts and actual qualities of the statue than
-any other, and presents fewer gaps in the demonstration, I am
-unwilling to lay down any theory not sustainable by what we
-know of Greek art, and I admit the difficulty as frankly as
-I state those of other theories. Doing so, however, I still
-maintain that not only is there the means of reconciliation of
-<span class="pb" id="Page_104">104</span>
-my hypothesis of an actual shield-inscribing Victory with the
-statue as it is, but even in case I am compelled to abandon
-this particular point, and advocate the modification of Millingen
-that she holds the shield with both hands and looks at
-it, my main hypothesis&mdash;that the statue is a Victory and no
-Venus, and the particular wingless Victory of Athens&mdash;is
-untouched. We do not know what the Nik&eacute; Apteros was
-doing. What we can see is that this statue was more probably
-holding a shield, either contemplatively, or pausing, just
-having written on it, than taking any other
-action.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig38">
-<img src="images/i31.jpg" alt="" width="272" height="601" />
-<p class="caption">VICTORY OF CONSANI.</p>
-</div>
-<p>If we may accept the analogy of the
-Apollo Belvidere, which also looks off in the
-same inexplicable way, it would illustrate
-my hypothesis still further, but the Apollo
-is later and less dramatic. If we hold to the
-strict dramatic quality of the best Greek art,
-we must suppose that the goddess has just
-finished writing, and looks up and out toward
-the field where her heroes died. Or
-even if the shield was a high one, such as
-the Spartan wounded used to be brought
-home on, she might still be looking at the shield, if not at the
-words she has just written. In fact, several suggestions offer
-themselves, and none open to accusation of such flagrant inconsistencies
-as those involved in Tarral&rsquo;s restoration, which
-shocks the dramatic sense beyond endurance.</p>
-<p>The objection that the shield would hide so large a part of
-the figure goes for absolutely nothing. We continually find
-Greek work completely, or nearly, finished in positions where
-by necessity much of it must have been hidden. As the
-pediments of the Parthenon were originally placed, they
-would never have been half seen, and how the Panathenaic
-frieze could have been adequately seen, once the building
-<span class="pb" id="Page_105">105</span>
-scaffolds were taken down, we can much less easily conjecture
-than how the Victory could have been seen behind her shield.
-The Brescian, a later and more realistic work, is seen behind
-hers. Consani has made a very happy emulation of the motive
-in his Victory. It is amongst the best of the modern
-Italian works of its class, and illustrates the manner of avoiding
-the difficulties we have seen adduced. The principal arguments
-in favor of my theory are these: The statue is not
-of the Venus type but on the contrary agrees distinctly with
-known statues of Victory, some of which I have indicated, of
-which another is in the coin of Agathocles, and in the Museum
-of Naples is a terra cotta Victory in almost the identical
-action and drapery; it is of the epoch of the Victories of the
-temple of Nik&eacute; Apteros, and of the same style of treatment
-and type of figure; it was found where we might expect the
-Athenians to hide a treasure; and, while unquestionably a
-Victory, it is the only wingless Victory of the great Attic
-school we know of. I do not consider this arch&aelig;ological, but
-artistic demonstration.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig39">
-<img src="images/i32.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="530" />
-<p class="caption">TEMPLE OF NIK&Eacute; APTEROS.</p>
-</div>
-<p>The little Temple of Nik&eacute; Apteros has had a destiny unique
-<span class="pb" id="Page_106">106</span>
-amongst its kind. Like the Parthenon, it was standing little
-more than two hundred years ago, but during the Turkish occupation
-it was razed, and its stones all built into the great
-bastion which covered the front of the Acropolis and blocked
-up the staircase to the Propyl&aelig;a. It was dug out and restored,
-nearly every stone in its place, by two German architects
-during the reign of Otho, and it stands again as Pausanias
-describes it, on the spot where old &AElig;geus watched for
-the return of Theseus from Crete, and seeing the black sails
-of his son&rsquo;s ship returning, token of failure (for Theseus had
-forgotten to raise the white sail, the signal of success), threw
-himself from the precipice, and was dashed into black death
-on the rocks below. In the distance are Salamis and &AElig;gina,
-and the straits through which the ships came from Melos
-and Crete, and to the south is Hymettus, beyond which are
-Marathon and the road by which the Persians came, and the
-Turks after them. There certainly was the spot, and this the
-occasion, if ever, that an Attic sculptor should feel that spiritual
-enthusiasm below which Greek art stopped and lost the
-clew which, in later centuries, the Florentine found again
-and followed to new, if not higher, heights.</p>
-<div class="img" id="fig40">
-<img src="images/i40.png" alt="" width="222" height="216" />
-<p class="caption">GREEK COIN</p>
-</div>
-<div class="pb" id="Page_107">107</div>
-<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2>
-<div class="fnblock"><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_1" href="#fr_1">[1]</a>It has been conjectured that the Ogygia
-of Calypso was a small barren island just
-south of Sardinia. There is no evidence
-in favor of the theory, but it is possible. I
-adopt it in the route map <i>faute de mieux</i>.
-</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_2" href="#fr_2">[2]</a>The Lotophagitis has been recently
-plausibly identified with Jerba, on the coast
-of Tunis, the word <i>rotos</i> being still used
-there, evidently a survival of some primitive
-language, for the date; and the transliteration
-of <i>rotos</i> to <i>lotos</i> being according to
-Grimm&rsquo;s law, see Reinach&rsquo;s letter to the
-<i>Nation</i> (Mar. 13, 1884) on Jerba. It is
-easy to understand that the Greek, coming
-from a country where the conditions of life
-were hard and the fare of Homeric simplicity,
-should find the conditions of North
-African existence tempting beyond resistance,
-and the delicious date, (constituting
-the principal and often exclusive food of the
-people, quite sufficient, in fact, for all needs,)
-a temptation to abandon the toils and dangers
-of a return home. The inevitable poetical
-exaggeration adds the magic power.
-</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_3" href="#fr_3">[3]</a>Cimmerians have been conjecturally
-identified with the Cymri, the Cimmerian
-darkness with the fogs of England and
-the North Sea countries, and there is nothing
-but conjecture in the case.
-</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_4" href="#fr_4">[4]</a>The
-text leaves a doubt if he even retained
-his hold on this, as it describes his
-striking out with the veil of Leucothea under
-his breast.
-</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_5" href="#fr_5">[5]</a>I saw, at a recent meeting of the German
-arch&aelig;ological Institute at Rome, exquisite
-bronze castings found in a lake city
-of northern Italy, of which the latest possibly
-assignable date is 1500 <span class="smaller">B. C.</span> Various
-data, which it is not the place here to discuss,
-have led me to the conclusion that bronze
-working was independently discovered in
-Italy at a period long anterior to any intercourse
-with Greece, and that it probably
-went from Italy to Corinth, where it is said
-to have been discovered.
-</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_6" href="#fr_6">[6]</a>I suspect the word which I have translated
-Sicilian to be a mistake in transcribing,
-for Homer evidently knew nothing of
-Sicily or he would have given it its name
-when dealing with the hero&rsquo;s adventures
-there. It is however possible that he knew
-the island by name but had not identified
-it with Ulysses&rsquo; Cyclops-land.
-</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_7" href="#fr_7">[7]</a>The
-confusion which is so common between
-Aphrodite, the Greek goddess, and
-Astarte, the Ph&oelig;nician, had its beginning
-at Cythera. It is only in later Greek mythology
-that they are confounded. The true
-Aphrodite was the first-born of Zeus, the
-creating Intelligence, and Dione the prolific
-Earth&mdash;Spirit and Matter&mdash;and Aphrodite
-was Divine Love;&mdash;Astarte, lust.
-</div><div class="fndef"><a class="fn"  id="fn_8" href="#fr_8">[8]</a>The worthlessness of the testimony of
-d&rsquo;Urville is shown by this statement&mdash;no
-hand has ever held or touched this drapery,
-as the least examination shows.
-</div>
-</div>
-<h2>Transcriber&rsquo;s Notes</h2>
-<ul>
-<li>Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.</li>
-<li>Silently corrected a few palpable typos.</li>
-<li>In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.</li>
-</ul>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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