The Near East / Dalmatia, Greece and Constantinople

oads and the terrors of dust, I chose the latter; and I was well rewarded. For the drive is a glorious one, though very long and fatiguing, and it enabled

ouki, and arrived at Thebes. There I halted for an hour. After leaving Thebes, the journey became continually more and more interesting as I drew near to Parnassus: over the plain of Livadia, through the village and khan o

the level of the sea. Delphi, I felt, ought to be there. Delphi, I believed, must be there, hidden somewhere among the rocks and the fir-woods, where wolves lurk, and where the eagle circles and swoops above peaks which are cold and austere. Only when we

r olive-groves, now upon plains which extended to shadowy ranges of mountains, and which here and there reminded me of the plains of Palestine. Strange it seemed to come upon an occasional village of Greeks or Albanians, strayed, surely, and lost and forgotten in the wilderness; stranger still to see now and then some tiny Byzantine church

OF CORINTH I

an ferocious; and they greet you with loud cries in an unknown tongue, and with gestures expressive of the perpetual desire to receive which seems inherent in all true vagabonds. They pitch their tents usually on the outskirts of the villages, staying for days or weeks, as the luck serves them. And, so far as I could judge, people receive them with good nature, perhaps grateful for the excitement they bring into lives that know little variation as season follows season and year glides into year. Just outside Thebes I found eleven of their tents set

hen put the question that is forever on the lips of the Greek, "What is the news?" Every Greek has a passion for the latest news. Often, wh

bove all the cities of its fatherland-Thebes, where letters were first brought into use among the Greeks, and where weak-voiced Demosthenes by his eloquence persuaded the people to march to their glorious death against Philip of Macedon, is now just a busy village on the flank of a hill. Frequently devastated by earthquakes, which are the scourge of this region, it looks newly built, fairly clean and neat. It dominates th

nassus, the mighty flanks of which were already visible in the distance. When he pulled up we were already almost out of sight of the lion

r, but not to their cowardice or shame? I have heard people say that the face of the lion does express shame. It seems to me nobly passionate, loftily angry and sad, but not ashamed. The Thebans raised it to commemorate those of their comrades in arms who died on the battle-field. What shame can attach to such men? For long years the lion lay broken in pieces and buried in the earth. Onl

EA, THE ACROPOLIS

as if the claws were extended in an impulse of irresistible anger. The head is raised. The expression on the face is wonderful. There is in it a savage intensity of feeling that is rarely to be found in anything Greek. But the savagery is ennobled in some mysterious way by the sublime art of the sculptor, is lifted

tely different from the contented republic which has been chosen by Europe as its playground. But there were moments, as we slowly ascended the Pass of Amblema, when I thought of the North. For the delicate and romantic serenity of the Greek landscape did here give way to something that was almost savage, almost spectacular. The climbing

ed, and the world seemed closing brutally about us, I felt no longer in doubt. We must be close to Delphi, old region of mysteries and terror, whe

E FAMOUS OR

dise, which now looks the home of peace, a veritable Garden of Eden lying between mountains and sea. Pilgrims traveling to Delphi were forced to pay toll there, and eventually the extortion became so intolerable that it led to war. That evening, as we drove along a road cut straight through the heart of the olive-woods, the whole region seemed sunk in a dream. We met no one; we heard no traffic, no voices, no barking of dogs. The thousands of splendid trees, planted symmetrically, were moved by no breeze. War

ere else in Greece. I saw none that night; but one morning, after leaving Delphi, I met a train of them pacing sof

e did not look savage. I heard goat-bells tinkling now and then not far off. Presently some lights beamed out above us, as if in welcome. We passed through a friendly village street, came out on the mountain-side, and drew up before a l

green toward olive-trees on the slopes beneath them; of a perpetual sweet sound of water. And beside the water travelers from the plain of Krissa, and travelers from Arachova, that wonderfully placed Parnassian village, renowned for it

sprinkled themselves before consulting the oracle; there, now, the brown women of the mountains chatter gaily as they wash their clothes. The mountain is bare behind the shrine, where perhaps is a figure of Mary with Christ in her arms, or some saint with outspread win

alley, or ravine, and a bare, calm mountain, scarred by zigzag paths, which look almost like lines sharply cut in the volcanic soil with an instrument. In the distance, away to the right, the

tain spot within the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, where the eagles of Zeus, flying from the two ends of the earth, had met. The foundations, and some portions of the walls of this celebrated shrine, in which two golden eagles stood, may be visited, but very little of it remains. On the foundation has been set up a large Roman column, upon which once stood a statue. The fallen blocks of Doric columns are gigantic, and from them it is possible to gain some faint idea of the temple's immense size and massiveness. In the midst of a pit of stone, not far from the columns, I f

MOUNT

the fragments of the original temple. It is, in fact, a tiny Doric temple. The marble, of a beautiful yellow-white color, is mingled here and there with limestone. This little temple stands on a platform, with the clearly defined Sacred Way winding up the hill beside it. The front of it is approached by two steps, and it has two Doric columns, containing, however, only two blocks

ling slopes beyond the road are covered thickly with olive-trees, among which the goat-bells chime almost perpetually; and on the far side of the narrow valley the ba

p, and above it towers a precipice. Near by, between the theater and the stadium, Parnassus gives back to your cry a swift and sharp echo. The gold, red-gold, and gray stadium, which lies farther up the mountain than the theater, is partly ruined, but in parts is well preserved. As I stood in it, thinking of th

aces you as you enter the museum. It is marvelously alive, almost seems to glow with vitality. The feet should be specially noticed. They are bare, and are miracles of sensitiveness. Farther on there is a splendid Antinous, robust, sensual, egoistic, a type of muscular beauty and crude determination, without heart or any sparkle of intellect. Two othe

there is width between the two ranges, and the large volcanic slopes are splendidly spacious. Here and there on these slopes are large wine-colored splashes such as you see often on the mountains of Syria, and these splashes give w

TEMPLE OF APO

her ethereal ranges which seem to you, as you gaze on them, impalpable, fluid almost, like a lovely imagination of mountains summoned up in your mind. Black-green is the plain. Under the tree of Agamemnon glows a tiny light, like an earth-bound star. Where once the pilgrims gathered who knew only the gods, Christian hands have tended the lamp before the holy picture. And a little farther on, among the foliage of the olive-

ngs, its almost reflective tenderness, its profound calm, and its far-off freedom from any sadness. When I stayed there I was the only traveler. Never did I see any human being among the beautiful ruins, or hear any voice to break their silence. Only the peasants of th

ers among the stones of the Temple of Zeus. Her vines creep down to the edge of that cup of her earth which holds gently, as a nurse holds a sleeping child, palaces, temples, altars, shrine

that may be seen in Greece at this time, a jackal whined in its dwelling. Sheep-bells were sounding plaintively down the valley beyond the arch leading to the walled way by which the great stadium, where the games

E OF HERA

ch stand the hotel and the museum is strung out a small, straggling hamlet of peasants' houses. It is very difficult to realize that this remote sanctuary, hidden away in the green glades and amid the pastures of Elis, where the waters of Cladeus and Alpheus glide among reeds and rushes, was ever crowded with

remains of the temples. A river runs by them. Excavations, though usually interesting, are often both dusty and ugly. At Olympia they are pastoral. Dryads might love them. Pan might sit happily on almost any bit of the walls and play his pipe. They form a unique sylvan paradise, full of wonderful a

n in color, and are of course Doric, very massive and rather squat. The temple, the base of which is very clearly marked, must have looked very powerful, but, I should think, heavy rather than really majestic. I cannot imagine the wonderfully delicate Herm

the middle of the sacred precinct, and which once contained Phidias's statue of Zeus, about forty feet high, one can gather something of what was the builders' conception of the chief of all the gods of Olympus. To them he must surely have been simply the Thunderer, a deity terrific and forbidding, to whose worship must be raised a temple grand but probably almost repellent. Legend relates that when Phidias had completed his great statue of Zeus, and it had been placed in position, Zeus sent down a thunderbolt which struck the ground close to the statue. The Greeks considered the thunderbolt to be the god's characteristic expression of conten

ad ceased to be held, and no doubt the place was beginning to fall into the neglect which, with the lapse of the centuries, has become so romantic. After it was forgotten by men, nature began to remember

or fish with hand-nets, and mounted the hill to the museum, which looks out over the delicious valley, and is attended by some umbrella-pines. It was clo

ANCE TO THE

in flight, radiantly advancing, with thin draperies floating back from an exquisitely vital form-the celebrated "Victory" of P?onius, now more than two thousand years old. Beyond this marvel of suggested motion I saw part of another room very much smaller than the hall and apparently empty. It drew me on, as in cert

istant entrance of the museum. The keeper, when letting me in, had left the big door wide open. In my he

estrain. The result is nullity. In striving to become "Greek," too many unhappy ones become nothing at all. Standing before the Hermes of Olympia, one realizes as never before the meaning, the loveliness, of restraint, of the restraint of a great genius, one who could be

ir hands for education. Semele, the mother, is dead, and surely this gracious and lovely child, touching because of his innocent happiness, his innocent eagerness in pleasure, looks to Hermes as his protector. He stretches out one soft arm in an adorable gesture of desire. The

ies sound in the midst of that darkness which is created by our misunderstanding. No longer do the frantic footf

f the museum, I saw a tiny picture of Elis bathed in soft, golden light; a calm hillside, s

sire, our branch, perhaps our crown, of w

NSTAN

AZAAR IN CO