Chapter I: Front Matter

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GREECE
AND
THE ÆGEAN ISLANDS

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GREECE
AND THE
ÆGEAN ISLANDS

BY

PHILIP SANFORD MARDEN

~London~

ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO., LTD.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
1907

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COPYRIGHT 1907 BY PHILIP S. MARDEN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

_Published November 1907_

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PROLEGOMENA

What follows makes no pretense whatever of being a scientific work on Greece, from an archæological or other standpoint. That it is written at all is the resultant of several forces, chief among which are the consciousness that no book hitherto published, so far as I am aware, has covered quite the same ground, and the feeling, based on the experience of myself and others, that some such book ought to be available.

By way of explanation and apology, I am forced to admit, even to myself, that what I have written, especially in the opening chapters, is liable to the occasional charge that it has a guide-bookish sound, despite an honest and persistent effort to avoid the same. In the sincere desire to show how easy it really is to visit Hellas, and in the ardent hope of making a few of the rough places smooth for first visitors, I have doubtless been needlessly prolix and explicit at the outset, notably in dealing with a number of sordid details and directions. Moreover, to deal in so small a compass with so vast a subject as that of ancient and modern Athens is a task fraught with many difficulties. One certainly cannot in such a book as this ignore Athens utterly, despite the fact that so much has been published hitherto about the city and its monuments that no further description is at all necessary. My object is not to make Athens more familiar, but rather to describe other and more remote sites in Greece for the information, and I hope also for the pleasure, of past and future travelers. Athens, however, I could not ignore; and while such brief treatment as is possible here is necessarily superficial, it may help to awaken an additional interest in that city where none existed before.

Aside from the preliminary chapters and those dealing with Athens itself, I hope to have been more successful. I have, at any rate, been free in those other places from the depressing feeling that I was engaged on a work of supererogation, since this part of the subject is by no means hackneyed even through treatment by technical writers. Since the publication of most of the better known books on Greek travel, a great deal has been accomplished in the way of excavation, and much that is interesting has been laid bare, which has not been adequately described, even in the technical works. In dealing with these additions and in describing journeys to less familiar inland sites, as well as cruises to sundry of the classic islands of the Ægean, I hope this book will find its real excuse for being.

In adopting a system for spelling the names of Greek cities, towns, and islands, I have been in something of a quandary, owing to the possibilities presented by the various customs of authors in this field, each one of which has something to recommend it and something, also, of disadvantage. If one spells Greek names in the more common Anglicized fashion, especially in writing for the average traveler, one certainly avoids the appearance of affectation, and also avoids misleading the reader by an unfamiliar form of an otherwise familiar word. Hence, after much debate and rather against my own personal preferences and usage in several instances, I have adhered in the main to the forms of name most familiar to American eyes and ears. In cases of obscure or little known sites, where it is occasionally more important to know the names as locally pronounced, I have followed the Greek forms. This, while doubtless not entirely logical, has seemed the best way out of a rather perplexing situation, bound to be unsatisfactory whichever way one attempts to solve the problem.

In mercy to non-Hellenic readers, I have likewise sought to exclude with a firm hand quotations from the Greek language, and as far as reasonably possible to avoid the use of Greek words or expressions when English would answer every purpose.

If, in such places as have seemed to demand it, I have touched upon archæological matters, I hope not to have led any reader far from the truth, although one admittedly an amateur in such matters runs grave risk in committing himself to paper where even the doctors themselves so often disagree. I hope especially to have escaped advancing mere personal opinions on moot points, since dilettanti in such a case have little business to own any opinions, and none at all to exploit them to the untutored as if they had importance or weight. Rather I have only the desire to arouse others to a consciousness that it is as easy now to view and enjoy the visible remnants of the glory that was Greece, as it is to view those of the grandeur that was Rome.

In the writing of these chapters an effort has been made to set forth in non-technical terms only what the writer himself has seen and observed among these haunts of remote antiquity, with the idea of confining the scope of this book to the needs of those who, like himself, possess a veneration for the old things, an amateur’s love for the classics, and a desire to see and know that world which was born, lived, and died before our own was even dreamed of as existing. If by what is written herein others are led to go and see for themselves, or are in any wise assisted in making their acquaintance with Greece, or, better still, are enabled the more readily to recall days spent in that most fascinating of all the bygone nations, then this book, however unworthily dealing with a great subject, will not have been written in vain.

PHILIP SANFORD MARDEN.

LOWELL, MASS., August, 1907.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. TRAVELING IN GREECE 1

II. CRETE 18

III. THE ENTRANCE TO GREECE 37

IV. ATHENS; THE MODERN CITY 50

V. ANCIENT ATHENS: THE ACROPOLIS 76

VI. ANCIENT ATHENS: THE OTHER MONUMENTS 96

VII. EXCURSIONS IN ATTICA 123

VIII. DELPHI 146

IX. MYCENÆ AND THE PLAIN OF ARGOS 169

X. NAUPLIA AND EPIDAURUS 193

XI. IN ARCADIA 211

XII. ANDHRITSÆNA AND THE BASSÆ TEMPLE 229

XIII. OVER THE HILLS TO OLYMPIA 247

XIV. THE ISLES OF GREECE: DELOS 272

XV. SAMOS AND THE TEMPLE AT BRANCHIDÆ 286

XVI. COS AND CNIDOS 304

XVII. RHODES 318

XVIII. THERA 334

XIX. NIOS; PAROS; A MIDNIGHT MASS 351

XX. CORFU 368

INDEX 381

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

ACROPOLIS, SHOWING PROPYLÆA _Frontispiece_

MAP 1

LANDING-PLACE AT CANEA 20—

THRONE OF MINOS AT CNOSSOS 34

STORE-ROOMS IN MINOAN PALACE, CNOSSOS 36

OLD CHURCH IN TURKISH QUARTER, ATHENS 60

TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS 80

THE PARTHENON, WEST PEDIMENT 86

TEMPLE OF OLYMPIAN ZEUS 104

THE AREOPAGUS 108

THE THESEUM 112

TOMB AMPHORA, CERAMICUS 116

TOMB RELIEF, CERAMICUS 118

BRONZE EPHEBUS, NATIONAL MUSEUM, ATHENS 120

THE TEMPLE AT SUNIUM 134

THE APPROACH TO ÆGINA 138

THE TEMPLE AT ÆGINA 138

PEASANT DANCERS AT MENIDI 142

THE PLAIN BELOW DELPHI 150

THE VALE OF DELPHI 156

CHARIOTEER, DELPHI 166

AGORA, MYCENÆ 180

WOMAN SPINNING ON ROAD TO EPIDAURUS 198

EPIDAURIAN SHEPHERDS 202

THEATRE AT EPIDAURUS 206

AN OUTPOST OF ARCADY 224

THE GORGE OF THE ALPHEIOS 226

ANDHRITSÆNA 230

AN ARBOREAL CAMPANILE. ANDHRITSÆNA 234

THRESHING FLOOR AT BASSÆ 240

TEMPLE AT BASSÆ, FROM ABOVE 244

TEMPLE AT BASSÆ, FROM BELOW 244

HERÆUM. OLYMPIA 258

ENTRANCE TO THE STADIUM. OLYMPIA 262

DELOS, SHOWING GROTTO 282

GROTTO OF APOLLO, DELOS 282

COLUMN BASES. SAMOS 296

CARVED COLUMN-BASE. BRANCHIDÆ 296

TREE OF HIPPOCRATES. COS 306

CNIDOS, SHOWING THE TWO HARBORS 314

SCULPTURED TRIREME IN ROCK AT LINDOS. 327 (From a Sketch by the Author)

ARCHED PORTAL OF ACROPOLIS. LINDOS 328

SANTORIN 336

LANDING-PLACE AT THERA 338

THERA 342

A THERAN STREET 346

OLD COLUMNS IN CHURCH, PAROS 362

“SHIP OF ULYSSES.” CORFU 374

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GREECE

AND

THE ÆGEAN ISLANDS

SKETCH MAP
OF
GREECE
AND THE
ÆGEAN ISLANDS
]

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