V. TSTILLnAN CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY D 972 ssi'"^" ^"'''"'"*' '-'^™y 3 1924 027 883 887 .„.„ The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027883887 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 BY W: J: STILLMAN BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY %)^t lEtibcrsiDc press, CambriDgr 1 888 //-^4'^/J /CORNELL NiVERS^TY Copyright, 1887, Bt W. J. SIILLMAN. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by II. 0. Hougllton & Co. To WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON. In times when the feveri&h ambition of our peojile so generally climbs to distinction by loays offensive to the true intellectual and moral life, and. when V3e 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 C'ali- fornia lias been able to deflect from that line of perfect rectitude of life lohich, if existence is to be anything but an indecent scramble, ice must recognize as entitling the man who holds it, to the highest respect of his felloiv-men. When besides this claim to our resp)ect he has been able to 7naintain undAmmed the lustre of a name such as you bear, the distinction is still brighter. If therefore my insignificant tribute were only as the dust v^hich, catching the sunshine, mahes it visible, let me offer this dedication in recognition of the true standard of nobility as I knoio it in your father's son. W. J. STILLMAN. PREFACE. The series of jDapers herewith committed to the more or less permanent condition of book form were originally (less some development of their arguments) printed in the CenUiry 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 archaeology 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 con- jecture, 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 archa?ology has fretted over for two generations, and I cannot pretend to have offered a solu- tion Avhich will command assent from the severely scientific archaeologist ; 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 probabil- ity," by which we solve to our satisfaction, more or less com- plete, problems of the gravest imj)ortance — a rule, indeed, which is for many such the only standard of truth. In archge- vi PREFACE. ology, 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 orig- inator 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 Nike Apteros of the restored temple dedicated to that goddess. I must acknowledge the courtesy of the proprietors of the Cenhvry 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 Eoute of Ulysses 1 Ithaca and adjoining Islands 3 West Coast of Schema ........... 8 Geeek Boats and Eosteum of Roman Gallex ...... 13 COEFU, FEOM THE KiNG'S GaEDEN ......... 14 Poet of Phorcys and Neeiton, feom the Mouth of Ulysses' Cave . . 28 Raven's Cliff and the Fountain of Akethusa ...... 34 The Site of Ithaca — Poet Polis ........ 36 Insceiption found at Polis .......... 39 The School of Homee ........... 43 View of Same feom the West, — with paets of Pelasgic and Hellenic Walls ... 58 Ceane from the Sea Shoee .......... 60 Dlstant View of Pale from the Citadel of Crane 63 Zante 64 Citadel of Cerigo 67 Landing-Place of the Cypeian Aphrodite oe Astaete 73 The so-called Venus of Melos 82 Street in Casteo ............ 84 The Site of Old Melos, from the Poet 85 Medicean Venus 88 Venus Ueania ............. 88 Capitoline Venus . 88 Venus of the Vatican" 89 Venus Anadyomene ........... 89 Venus Victels of the Louvre 89 Venus of Capua ............ 90 Rbstoeation O'F the Statue as proposed by Me. Taeeal .... 90 X LIS2' OF ILLUSTRATIONS. ||'i;A(iMp:N rs hdUNii AT Melos attkibuted to the Statue . . . . .91 Vm;i'oi.-,v (lie l)i;,ES(!iA (Front) .......... 92 Vii riiKV dii' ISiticsciA (Side) ........... 92 Viiiii-iuY jiAisiNii A\ Oi'KERiNCi (Temple of Nik^ Aptei'os, the Acropolis, Athens) 93 Vii'TdJiV iiNTViN(i llEl^ Sandal (Temple of Nike Apteros, the Acropolis, Athens) . 96 Vii'i'iuMios MOADiNCJ A 15ULL TO Sai'iufice (Temple of Nik^ Apteros, the Acropo- lis, Athens) 97 The so-called Venus of Melos (Fvont) ....... 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 Nike Apteros 105 Greek Coin ............. 106 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. CHAPTER I. 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 comj^letely by the elements, barbarism, disease, starvation, by nature and inhumanity, that the traveler of modest means and moderate constitution is as effectually de- barred from their discovery as. if they were the moon. What then ? I said to myself, searching for adventvu-e. Let us begin the tread-mill round again and rediscover. I took up 2 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. the earliest book of travel Avliieh remains to us, and set to bur- nish 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 man- kind of that epoch. SjDread on this small loom, the fabric of the story, of the most subtle design, — art of the oldest and noblest, — is made up with Avarp of the Avill 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 endur- ance. But as Homer's humanity mixes by fine degrees with his divinity, so his terra coqnila melts away into fiiiry-land, and we must look for a trace written on water before landing on identifiable shores. The story opens finding Ulysses the pri- soner 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 conjec- ture where Ogygia was, if it was.^ How Ulysses leaves the island alone on a raft is told by the j^oct in the fifth canto ; how he got there the hero recounts in the narration to Alci- notis in Phaeacia. Leaving Troy, he stops at Ismarus, a town on the coast of Thrace, which he surprises and sacks ; but, rej^ulsed by the inhabitants of the lands near by, rallying to the defense, and visited by the wrath of the gods for his ^ It lias been conjectured that the Ogygia in favor of the theory, hut it is possible. 1 of Calypso was a small barren island just adopt it in the route ma]) /««fe f/e «n"eiOT. south of Sardinia. There is no evidence ON THE TRACE OF ULYSSES. impiety, he is punished by a three days' gale, and reaches Cajie Malea, where, unable to stem the north wind Avhich still per- secutes him, he runs past Cerigo down to the African coast, which he reaches in nine days. Here we enter into semi- fable/ The Lotophagi seduce his men with their magic fruit ITHACA AND ADJOINING ISLANDS, 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 whirl- •" The Lotopliag'Itis has heeii recently were hard and the fare of Homeric sim- plausihly identified with Jerba, on tlie coast plieity, should find the conditions of North of Tunis, the word rotos being still used African existence tempting beyond resist- there, evidently a survival of some primitive ance, and the delicious date, (constituting language, for the date ; and the transliter- the principal and often exclusive food of the ation of rotos to lotos being according to people, quite sufficient, in fact, for all needs,) Grimm's law, see Reinach's letter to the a temptation to almndon the toils and dan- Na.tion (Mar. 13, 1884) on Jerba. It is gers of a return home. The inevitable poet- easy to understand that the Greek, coming ical exaggeration adds the magic power. from a country where tlie conditions of life 4 ON TEE TRACK OF ULYSSES. winds — 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 ^gades. 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 fan- tastic tradition), they fly and arrive at the floating island of ^olus, still a creation of mythology, and thence to the shores of the Laestrygonians, another fabulous, man-eating race, in whose land the days are separated only by a brief pretense of night ; escaj^ing thence with his single ship and crew, Ulysses arrives at iEa, the island of Circe, from earliest classical times identified with Cape Circeo, between Naples and Civita Vec- chia. Circe sends the hero to the land of the Cimmerians,^ 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 ^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 onl)' from far remote report ; while his second passage — after the sacrilege committed in the Island of the Sun — through the straits, is i:)uzzling, and the recital makes it clear that till Phajacia 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 ' The Cimmerians have been conjectur- tlie Novtli Sea countries, and there is noth- ally identified with the Cymri, the Cimnie- ing but conjecture in the ease, rian darkness with the fogs of England and ON THE TBACK OF ULYSSES. 5 Ogygia through the straits, a solitary survivor. But on his departure for Phseacia direct, he does not j)ass 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 seven- teen days splits the waves, and sees on the eighteenth the wooded mountain of the island of the Phseacians, the Scheria of the ancients. The continuity of tradition and the consist- ency of the narrative leave nie 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 dis- puted by certain German critics, who Avill have it that all the local allusions of the Odyssey are imaginary. But in the ^neid, when ^ncas is going to Butrintum, Avhich 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 jDoint. 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 hoj^efully strikes out for the land. Athene comes once more to his aid. She chains all the Avinds except Boreas, which, wafting him for two days and nights to the southeast, gives place to a perfect 6 ON THE TRACE OF ULYSSES. 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, be- cause the shock of the great waves against the bare cliffs sounds fearfully, and the sea, for and wide, is covered with foam. But there is no peaceable roadstead, no port, safe re- fuge 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 jDeacefully 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 condi- tion 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 ; ^ 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. ^ The text leaves a doubt if he even re- striking out with the veil of Leucothea un- tained his hold on this, as it describes his der liis breast. ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. 7 Here I found fit to my jDurpose 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 jDounds sterling a month for three months ; and while he was putting in stores, fitting ncAv cables to his anchors, and burnishing ujd a bit, we began to inspect 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 Nausicaa, is put at the " one- gun battery," just south of the harbor of Corfu. Nothing could comport less with the descriiDtion of the Odyssey. The Channel of Corfu, dividing the island from E2)irus, is a land- locked basin in which no such storm could arise as Ulysses encountered, and along Avhich 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 Odys- sey ; 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, Pala30castrizza, shows that it stands near the site of some an- cient city or fortress, as the term " Palgeocastron " is never applied by local tradition to any construction not belonging to the classical or archaic epochs. Even B}'zantuie ruins ON THE TEAGK OF ULYSSES. never receive the ejoithet " jDulaeos." No trace is now to be found of any prior structure near the convent, which, while it j)robably has some rehition to an antique site, certainly is not on that of the city of Alciuoiis, which must have been farther south where the shore breaks down to a jolain. There used to be in the is- land 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 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. 9 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 corre- sponds to my hypothesis that the capital of Alcinoiis 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 permis- sion from the Government, even on one's own land, is forbid- den, 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 archa3ologist 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 archaeological position. As I shall have to show in the course of these articles, grave loss to the science of archge- ology sometimes occurs in this way. In this particular in- stance the loss to me is the being unable to identify, Avith any probability, the place Avhere or near to which Ulysses landed, and where the classic meeting with Nausicaa 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 Phseacia. 10 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. The claim of the city of Corfu to be the site of the ancient Phseacia 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 water- course 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 Alcinoiis was, we are told by Homer, founded by his father Nausitlioiis. His people were formerly inhabitants of Hyj^eria, " near the Cyclops," and were by these latter so ravaged and overborne that they emigrated to Pha^acia. The generally accepted location of the Cyclops in Sicily suggests that Hyperia was probably there or in Italy ; and that the Phgeacians may have been related to the Siculi ; since the Pclasgi, who invaded Italy from the north, and, unit- ing with the Umbri, sjiread 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,^ and as the Cyclops, the children of Hejihaistos, ' I saw, at a recent meeting of the Ger- have led me to the conclusion that bronze man archseologieal Institute at Rome, ex- working- was independently discovered in quisite bronze castings found in a lake city Italy at a ])eriod long anterior to any inter- of northern Italy, of whicli the latest pos- course with Greece, and that it i)robably sibly assignable date is 1500 b. o. Various went from Italy to Corinth, where it is said data, which it is not the place here to discuss, to have been discovered. ON THE TRACK OF ULYliSES. 11 the great metal-worker, are a mythological idealization of a race of smiths who had a habit of covering the eyes, for pro- tection 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 CycloiDS were identical, and that the Phaeacians 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 Phoeni- cians, 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 fiiith 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, ejjoch 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, Phasacia, to have been derived from Phaeacus, son of Poseidon, and places his reign contemporary with the Argonauts, as Phaeacus protected Jason against the king of lolcus 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 Chersicratcs, Avho built a city which he called Chrysopolis. This was probably Corfu, for, as the immi- 12 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. gration of Nausithoiis, coming from Italian shores, first estab- lished 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, Avhich, at its extremes, approaches the mainland. The Hellene of Corinth brought all the seeds of the virtues and vices of his national tempera- ment 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, accord- ing to their tradition, Apollonia and other cities on the main- land ; but, as among the ruins of those cities there are Pelasgic remains, it is not to be supposed that they were the first colo- nists, 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 indej^endence. 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 con- dition of this part of the world at the beginning of historical, or even heroic record, Ave must take into consideration that an epoch of civilization, perhaps of empire, had long preceded the awakening of the Hellenic national life ; an ej)och which ought, perhaps, to be measured by centuries, if we could mea- sure 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 re- maining 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 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. 13 Greeks, which the ex23eclition to Troy perhaps marks, j^erhaps symbolizes ; but at present I have only to do with the history and mythology of Corfu, which is in no way that we can dis- cover connected with the Pelasgi. The first wars of Corcyra were, as was to be expected of an enterprising peojile, with the mother country ; but as in those days piracy was the chief business of every maritime people, ivar was perhaps only a normal condition. The Persian inva- sion brought Corcyra into the Hellenic league, but, with the duplicity of Avhich the race furnished so many iustances in GREEK BOATS AND ROSTRUM OF ROMAN GALLEY. 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 Pelo- ponnesian States. As the union of these was always a chal- lenge to Athens, she sided with the Corcyriotes, and the re- sulting 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, w^hich the divisions of the classes of the population gave opportunity for, reduced the island to anarchy and helpless- ness. Their subsequent history is one of repeated subjuga- tion and revolt. After losing even the relative independence of alliance with Athens, they were conquered by Agathocles of Syracuse, Pyrrhus, and finally by Home. 14 ON THE TRACK OF, ULYSSES. From this time Corcyra was the base of the Roman mihtary 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 mari- time powers of the Mediterranean by turns. In the civil wars of Rome, the island espoused the part of Pompey, later of Bruta> .md C.l'^^iu'5, and then, ah^a}s unfortunate, of An- tony. After the battle of Ac- tium, fought almost ^^'ithin 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 Neaf)olitan wars and invasions, and finally threw itself into the arms of Yenice 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 iden- tified with that of Venice, and all the remains or structures in the island date from the Venetian occupation. I ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. 15 In 1537 the troops of the Sultan, under the orders of the renegade Barbarossa, made a descent on the ishmd and hiid siege to the city, which, taken by surjjrise, was ill-provisioned and with a small garrison. The Turkish fleet blockaded the port, and the troops beleaguered the city by land. The garri- son was under the terrible alternative of being starved into surrender speedily or dismissing all the useless mouths. The latter Avas, on the Avhole, 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 aug- mented the already strong fortifications. The New Fort, as it is still called, was constructed, and, with a paternal regard for the Avell-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, Avhose defense was directed by Count Schulembourg. The outlying heights were taken quickly, and the garrison, shut in the inner line of fortifica- tions, received the desperate assault of the Turks on the main 16 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. works with more desperate resistance. After twenty days of incessant attack, tlie Turks carried the outworks, penetrated to the Phice d'Armcs, 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 tem- pest, which had burst on them in the night, completed the work of defeat, and, seized by panic, they embarked precij^i- tately, leaving baggage and artillery behind them. In forty- two days they had lost fifteen thousand men." {Isles de la Grece.) The victory Avas commemorated by a statue to Scliulem- bourg, which no subsequent conquest has disturbed, and Avhich 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, Avith the excej)tion of an occasional emeute, nothing has come to disturb the peace of Corfu, and the once so splendid courage of the inhabitants has gone out like a fire Avithout a draught. There is jorobably no province of the Hellenic kingdom so devoid of martial spirit or the virtues that groAv out of it. It is noAV a most delightful Avinter resort, a Fortunate Isle left out of the current of political events and given over to invalids and sportsmen, AAdio find on the opposite Albanian coast the best shooting on the Mediterranean. The old citadel, Avitli its double peak, serves as a light-house to the lines of steamers which furrow the Adriatic, cross, and make Corfu their entrepot between Trieste, Venice, Brindisi, Alexandria, Constantino])le, and Smyrna. The English occupation endoAved the island Avith good roads, ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES.' 17 most of which are mamtained in foir 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 Mediter- ranean in great jjerfection, the oranges being only second to those of Crete ; the waters are still well suj^plied 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 appro23riate to the ways of the East and of idle peoj^le than are ours. The kindly, honest old host, appropriately known as Dionysos, lacks but little of giving to the stranger the hospitality of Alcinous. And life is so cheap that one who has Avorn out the world and realized an income of a thousand dollars a year may find a Macarian peace in an uj^per 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 Ejiirus ; 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 18 ON TEE TRACK OF ULYSSES. Corfu which he will carry with him, whether antique or modern, will rarely recompense him for the outlay. The bric- a-brac shops abound in false antiques, arms from Ej)irus, 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-a-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 Alcinoiis. Nothing like it is to be expected to-day, though it is not imj)Ossible 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 wander- ings 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 men- tioning 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 j^alace, 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 01^ THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. 19 warriors of Ithaca ; those of shady Neriton, of Crocyles, of the barren iEgilipos ; those of Samos [Same of Cephulonia, not the island Samos], of Zacynthus [Zante], and of the adjoining continent. Twelve ships Avhose sides were painted red fol- lowed him." But Nericus occurs nowhere. Nothing illustrates so strikingly the change in the condition of civilization as the relations between the ancient and mod- ern 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 caique 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 Avith 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, Avhcre the fertile 20 OJV THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. plains lie. The ruins arc of various ages, embracing Pelasgic, but mainly later, and coming clown to Roman times ; and the great extent of the Pelasgic enceinte, which almost everywhere underlies the Hellenic and Roman work, shows the great early imj^ortance 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. ^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. " Sappho's Leaj)" 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 peoj)le had put up a great inscription in memory of it. He had never seen it, and did n't know exactly where the leap was made ; but I think he was very excusable for his igno- rance, 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 flice of the cliff entirely. As it no'w is, I could find hardly a point where a new Sappho would have found a wel- come 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, Ajihrodite, seeking him through all the earth, finally found him lying- dead in the temple of the Erythraean 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 OiY THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. 21 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 pro- cess a salutary indifference to the charms of his divine sister and afterwards sjaouse, to which temporary coolness on his part might, perhajjs, 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 peojile (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 joick 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 peojile 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 Avliich tradition asserts to have been once united to Corfu and separated by an earth- quake. The breeze quickened at night-fall as we went round the point of the Leukadian cliffs, and before us lay the inland sea, which, sej)arating Santa Maura, Ithaca, Cephalonia, and Zante from the mainland, is a sort of smooth-Avater channel for ships coming out of the Gulf of Patras, or of Corinth, as 22 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. it is indiflPerently 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 jirosperity. 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 fliint for a light-house, and too steady for a house-light, and which perplexed us exceed- ingly, 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 NejDtune, 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 disj^osed to admit. The little chapels which one finds planted by the sea- side or solitary roadside in all the Greek islands, and even on the mainland, Avill 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 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. 23 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 an- cestors, 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 Ave turned in and left the navigation to the sailors. The next morning we woke, as Ulysses did, under the shadow of Neriton, where the Phseacians had left him sleei:)ing. " In one part of Ithaca is the port of Phorcys, the old man of the sea ; the bold jDromontorics 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 de- licious 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 Phaeacians. There they go. The ship runs half-way up the beach, so strong is the stroke of the rowers. Then these land, carry- ing 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 24 ON Tim TRACK OF ULYSSES. 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 archaeology 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, Ave have ample ground to suj)pose 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 Avhat 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 unin- teresting town, neither Avhose 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 chroni- cles 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 26 ON THE TRACK OF ULTSSES. 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 Avas 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 w^hat was to be seen in Ithaca, and study our great predecessor's footjirints, 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 archaeology. 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 archaeology 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 Odysseun movements by the poem), every one Avas ready to show me everything. Before leaving I found an intelligent guide, as such go, in one Angelo Persego, whose name I ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. 27 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 droj) 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 toiDography 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 illus- tration the narrow entrance at the right is Vathy ; the cove in the centre, with the island ofi" it, is the port of Phorcys, where Ulysses was landed, and Avliich, 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 Phseacians 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 land- ing-place. The port of Ulysses' own capital was much nearer Phgeacia, and the shij) might have landed him at his OAvn door. The reason of this excessive caution was that during so long a time he had had no ncAvs from home, and his Phseacian friends knew that he might find his city in the hands of an enemy. Awaking, then, from the sleep in Avhich he had been so gently landed by the crew of the Phaeacian ship, he finds 28 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. himself in a strange land, as he supposed, and in complete solitude, and arms himself with his habitual cunning, distrust- ing 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 wdth joy, but conceals his emotion and addresses the goddess with these hasty w^ords, disguising the truth and telling his story falsely, ahvays turning in his mind many artifices : I, too, have heard, in the far-off, immense island of PORT OF PHORCYS AND NERITON, FROM THE MOUTH OF ULYSSES' CAVE. 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 wdth a long history to account for his presence in Ithaca, a place unknowai to him, which fable he only drops when Athena ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. 29 throws off her disguise ; but he still is uncon^'illced 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 doAvn 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 cautiou^s deportment. They plan as folloAvs : He will be dis- guised by Athena, so that not even his wife shall know him, and will then go to Eumpeus, who keeps his swine by the Raven's Cliff, near Arethusa's fountain, and wait Avith him studying up the position, Avhile she goes off to Laccda^mon to bring back Telemachus, Avhoni she had sent there nominally to get ncAvs of his father, but really, as she informs Ulysses, to give him an opportunity, hitherto Avanting, to see the Avorld and acquire rcnoAvn. Here they separate, and Ulysses takes the secret path. The 2:)osition of the grotto makes the only difficulty in tra- cing all his movements ; for it is not, as one Avould expect from the text, at the head of the port, strictly speaking, but at the head of the little ravine Avliich ends in the port, a good quar- ter of an hour's Avalk from the shore, even making alloAvance for all the recession of the water-line, AA'hich 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 ojoening Avhich looks toAvard the port. " It has tAvo entrances : one, turned toAvard the breath of Boreas, is for human use ; the other, toAvard that of Notes, is more divine. Never man enters by that ; it is the Avay of the 30 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. immortals." The human entrance is a low, almost inyisible 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 u]) the hill, it would easily be hidden by a large stone, as Minerva hides it. The entrance, low and precipitous, widens rajoidly within, and we descend by what might once have been arti- ficially prejDared stcjDS to a vault-like cave, sixteen to twenty feet in diameter, with a curiovis 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 oW of every attackable stalactite, are also formed of carbonate of lime so deposited. The difi^erence be- tween 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 lea^e 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 Avell as from the landing-place of Ulysses and the pig-pens of Eumaeus. The view from the grotto gives us, at the left, a bay of Avhich Yathy and Phorcys are tributaries. ON THE TRACK OF ULTSSUS. 31 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 joresently show ; but on the south are the Raven's Cliff and the fountain of Ai-ethusa, 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 Same on the opposite shore of Cephalonia. The walls of Ulysses' Castle are of great extent, and j)ortions 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 toleral)ly 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 Avhich the great necessity of strong 32 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. 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 hyj^othesis, 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, 1 think Ave shall see, and that consequently the ruins of the Pelasgic epoch, when not continuously inhabited (as were Nericus and Same, the former of which Laertes conquered, and the latter of Avhich sent the largest deputation of " kings " as suitors for Penelope, the foundations of both being Pelas- gic), Avere already so lost in the tAvilight of prehistory as to be Avithout any meaning to the author of the Odyssey. The city Avhose ruins are noAV called the Castle of Ulysses was as unknoAvn to the epoch of Homer as to ours. No one in the AA^hole action of the Odyssey goes in or out of its gates, or turns aside from his path to s^Deak of or visit it. " Kings " were as common as rascals in those days, but that tAvo im- portant cities should exist contemporaneously in the small island of Ithaca, and that the people of Ulysses should live in one, joasture their hogs on the territory of the other, and ignore its existence, is impossible. This does not prevent Schliemann from identifying the house Avails, AA^hich remain to a small height, Avith the pig-jiens of Eumjeus, or a huge stump near the citadel, Avith the tree from Avhicli Ulysses had made his bed {Ithaca., Peloponnesus and Troi/). That this part of the island Avas nearly or quite unpopu- lated 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 Avildness, and forests abandoned to feed- ON THE TRACK OF ULTSSE,^. 33 ing of pigs ; and that Ulysses selects this part for his conceal- ment. The path Ulysses probably followed from the 2:)ort 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 carriage- able for a few miles from Yathy along the ridge southward, and then a fair bridle-path to the cliff, Avhich, had Ave known it, would have led us somewhere near the location of Eu- mseus's sties ; but the guide my friends had recommended me, on his personal assurance, did not know the road, and we Avent Avandering across fields and over hills, abandoning our quadrupeds at the moment Avhen they Avould have been our best guides ; and, finally, the felloAv had to go to a ploughman scratching the earth Avith a crooked stick behind a yoke of year-old heifers, and inquire his Avay. I exhausted my modern Greek in exasperated Adtuperation of his pretentious igno- rance, and took the lead, as I generally have had to do on similar occasions. There Avas a pretty little valley on our Avay, the only arable or fruitful land in this part of the island ; all else Avas bare and bleak. A fcAV tough-lived shrubs, broom and gorse, arbutus, and some others I did not knoAV, Avring a scanty subsistence from the clefts bctAveen the rocks, and in a mass of almost unmitigated limestone Avas cloven a ravine. The roughness of Ithaca Avas proverbial even in Homeric days, since Athena, Avhile 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 Avell select this scene as one of tranquil beauty, Avitli the faint glimpses of the dreamy inner sea above its valley distance, and the golden grain-fields as I saAv them, interspersed Avith vineyards and olive-orchards. The glen of the Raven's Cliff becomes a Avild gorge beloAV the fountain of Arethusa, and descends abruptly to the sea. 31 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. Above, that in a stripe of bare, pale-gray rock doAvn the cliff shows winter it is the location of a cataract, though, Avhen 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. Iicmains of an architec- tural surrounding a r e still to be seen, which, with some foundations of walls of the Roman IDcriod, evidently of a temple to the nymph or local goddess, and " Ulysses' Castle," are RAVEN'S CLIFF AND THE FOUNTAIN OF ARETHUSA. the only traces of ruin discoverable in this lobe of the island. The recess of the fountain has once been much larger, but ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. 35 the slow jDrocess of depositing the ealeareous incrustation which forms its walls has gone on so long that only a small deep hasin remains, from which the people draw the water with a cord and bucket. Its niche is cushioned Avith moss and maidenhair ferns, and the soft jDorous rock is always moist with the filtering through of the water. A wooden trough is placed for the watering of the sheep and goats Avliich take the place of the hogs of Eumseus, 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 h;unlet, was washing her clothes. The wash Avas 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, ^\ii\\ a wire bale fitted in rudely, and the st;unp of the Ncav York Refining ComiJany was still visible on the tin. We talk of the omni- presence of gold, of the omnipotence of cotton ; l)ut in my wanderings on the earth I liaA c found places Avliere the joeople did not know the value of a piece of gold, and ^\OYc 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 j)ens 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 rejDrescntativc of the forest of oaks whose acorns fattened the swine for the revels of the suitors of Penelope. Here Ulysses finds Eumteus, and here, in his anxiety to convince him of the truth of his j^i'ediction of the return of 36 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. the ^vandcrer, he says : "If he return not as I dechire, let your servants seize me and throw me over the high rock, that vagabonds may learn in future to abstain from useless false- hoods." To return to the city of Ithaca, Ulysses must retrace his stcj^s jiast the jjort of Phorcys, and follow the ridge of rock ^vliich connects the diAisions of the is- land past the mass of Neriton. His landing-jjlace was on the east side of the island, the port of the ancient cit} Ithaca on the west ; and there are now on the road between, several villages, the representatives, perhaps, of the ancient towns from which Ulj'sscs drcAV his quota of men for the Trojan campaign, " Crocyles and the rocky ^gilipos." 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 demon- ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. ?j1 stration in his honor, und determined to shoAV them how well he estimated the dignity of an heir of the Odyssean glory, mounted on a table and translated from Homer the passages whieh record Laertes' emotions on the return of his long-lost son. " They wept with emotion," says the nai'f Doctor ; and he rewarded them by some hundred lines more. Remember- ing 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 pre- served a very different recollection of the Doctor's achieve- ment, 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 princii:)al 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 \illages are Anoi and Exo'i, Avhich are clearly from the archaic and (except in the Cretan mountains) obsolete words aiio and era, used as Iudv and c/ee are by us in driving oxen, and of course meaning originally right and left, and these indicate site sur- vivals of early towns or villages. But of Ithaca the ciJi/, the home of Ulysses, not a trace remains except the name Palis (city, the city jjar excellence), A^hich is applied to a locality where not even an ancient Avail shows a claim to the appella- tion. The fragments of substructure shoA\'n on the hill above and near the village of Stavros are undoubtedly mediaeval, and belong to the piratical city Avhich Avas established here, and Avhicli Avas destroyed in the latter part of the sixteenth cen- tury. I searched in vain for anything to indicate the date of the ancient city, but here, doubtless, Avas the home of Ulysses. Its little 25ort is of the nature demanded by ancient mariners, — a smooth beach in a coac, Avith the island of Cephalonia op250site and near enough to shut off an}- great violence of sea 38 ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. or wind. Homer relates that the suitors, when Teleniachus had gone to Pylos to get neAvs of his father, sent out a ship with some of their number to intercei^t and kill him on his return, and that this ship lay in watch at an island off the port where the return of Telemaehus's ship could be seen from afar and preyented. Opposite Port Polis is a rock, prob- ably 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 noAV the only remnant of rock or island which occu2:)ies 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 Avho 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, boustrophcdon, /'. e., going alternately from left to right and right to left, as oxen go when ploughing. It is the oldest knoAvn inscription in the Ithacan alphabet. I placed a coj)y 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 : — " Since I have hitherto spoken of inscriptions very old or archaic, as we say, it will be permitted me to close this com- munication by presenting to the Academy a curious inscrip- tion of this kind recently discovered in Ithaca and communi- cated to me l)y a diligent and cultivated visitor to the Greek lands, the American, Mr. Stillman, who made in Ithaca a pho- tograjjli of the inscription, and, having unsuccessfully asked an ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES. 39 interiiretation of several scholars, applied to me. He has jDerniitted me to make communication to this Academ}', put- ting at my disjDosition also the negatiAC of his j^hotograph, from which are 2)rinted the copies I present. The inscri2)tion 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 expe- rienced hands, presents some confusion and obscurity in parts ; but this is the only difficulty in the epigraph. I saw at ixscr.ir'TiON found at polis. once that this was an inscription of Avhich there was already some notice in a book published by the PlKxniix of discoverers of antiquities, Schliemann, in 1SG8, ' Ithaca, Peloponnesos, and Troy.' Rich as he is in fancy, Schliemann is read\ to believe any story, and at once convinced himself that he had discovered the in- scription of a very old sar- cophagus, and found an hon- est workman who helped him to complete the idea, showing him the bones found in it by him. And in his book, together a\ ith this and other news, he communicated the inscription such as he read it. Of the tAvo fragments, however, he only saw that at the right, and this he read very badly, seeing letters A\'here none are, and imagin- ing incredible forms of letters. KirchhofF in his ' Studien zur Geschichtc des Griechischen Alphabets ' sought to ai^ply this monument to his purposes, but could make nothing of it, and it wotdd 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 saAV the inscription, he saw that it Avas incomj^lete, and seeking amongst the stones, found the other piece, and, divining justly its relation, united them and took the photo- 40 ON THE TEACK OF ULYSSES. graph >\liich no\v permits us to utilize whtit we may cull his discovery. " The epigraph is ccrtaiuly very old, besides being boustro- phedon. This is slio\vn particularly l)y the forms of the si(/ma and iota. It was cut roughly and by hands little used to such Avork, 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 Avearing of the stone, and the entire inscription is mutilated in the lower part. " The reading, with the filling up, is as follows : — Tag ['AjOdj'ag rai (P)[i](as) xa\^L T](d)$ 'Hp ag Ta (f ) [i']rfa Tcj[t]ep(5 ol