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wears everywhere a rugged aspect. | Love, of Light, and Poesy." The There is but little cultivation, except prospect is very extensive, but inferior where terraces have been formed on the mountain sides, and planted with vineyards. The scene is occasionally enlivened by a grove of evergreen oaks embosoming a church, or by a village surrounded with clumps of olives and cypresses. During a portion of the winter, the highest ridge of Santa Maura, rising about 3000 ft. over the sea, is robed in snow and mist, as it appeared to the eyes of Æneas (En. iii. 274):—

"Mox et Leucate nimbosa cacumina montis,
Et formidatus nautis aperitur Apollo."
In like manner, the deep water, the
strong currents, and the fierce gales
which they there encounter, have pre-
served among the Greek sailors of the
present day the evil fame which the
Cape of Leucadia bore of old. Nothing
but the substructions of the once far-
famed Temple of Apollo now exist on
the promontory. At a short distance
from it, a small monastery, dedicated
to St. Nicholas, the patron of mariners,
nestles in a sheltered nook. It is a
graceful feeling which has often in-
duced men, both in ancient and in
modern times, to cover with a temple
or a church the cliffs of their native
land. The temple of the Leucadian
Apollo, and that of Athene on Sunium,
are but the forerunners of such shrines
as the chapels of Our Lady above Hon-
fleur and Marseilles, whence the "Star
of the Sea" guides the sailor from afar
to his home, and recalls his wandering
thoughts to that other haven which
awaits him when the storms and trou-
bles of life shall have passed away.

A broken white cliff, rising on one side perpendically from the sea to the height of at least 200 ft., and sloping precipitously into it on the other, is the "ancient mount" beneath whose shadow Childe Harold "saw the evening star above Leucadia's far-projecting rock of woe." Its summit is strewn with fragments of ancient pottery, glass, and hewn stones, the relics of the temple of Apollo; and the coins discovered on the spot generally bear a harp in honour of "the God of

to that from Karus, described above.
The ancient associations of the spot
form its chief charm. At the annual
festival of Apollo it was the custom
to cast down a criminal from this
headland into the sea; to break his
fall birds of various kinds were at-
tached to him, and if he reached the
water uninjured there were boats ready
to pick him up (Strabo, x.; Cicero,
Tusc., iv. 18; Ovid, Heroid., Ep. xv.
165). This appears to have been a
kind of ordeal, or rather an expiatory
rite; and it gave origin to the famous
story that lovers leaped from this rock
in order to seek relief from the pangs
of love, as Sappho when enamoured
of Phaon. That well-known legend,
which vanishes at the first approach
of criticism, is prettily set forth by
Moore in his Evenings in Greece' :--
"The very spot where Sappho sung
Her swan-like music, ere she sprung
(Still holding in that fearful leap
By her loved lyre) into the deep,
And dying quenched the fatal fire
At once of both her heart and lyre.”

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On the island there is too little cover to furnish any quantity of game; but in Acarnania magnificent sport may be enjoyed in a magnificent country. During an easy excursion from Fort Santa Maura there may be found reddeer, fallow-deer, roe, wolves, jackals, &c., as well as an abundance of woodcocks, and every kind of wild fowl, from pelicans to jacksnipes. The best places to land at are Saltoná and Encheleovivari (Εγχελεοβιβάρι, ἐγχελεύς, vivarium, i. e. eel-pond), which are only a short row across the lagoons. Farther to the southward, and nearly opposite to Ithaca, there is good shooting near the bay of Tragamesti, and at the mouth of the Achelous.

Unless the traveller should intend to make a tour in Albania, he ought by no means to omit visiting, while in this island, the Turkish town of Prevesa, and the ruins of Nicopolis, about 3 m. from it. With favourable weather, and a good boat, this excursion can easily be made in a few hours; going and returning the same day. It

the neighbouring islands, and from the mainland of Greece, by whom it was repeopled. Here, therefore, all our recollections are concentrated around the heroic age; every hill and rock, every fountain and olive-grove, breathes Homer and the Odyssey;' and we are transplanted by a sudden leap over a hundred generations to the most brilliant period of Greek chivalry and song.

is only 9 m. by sea from Fort Santa | tant of privileges offered by the VeneMaura to Prevesa. In the West of tian Government to the settlers from Europe, though there are distinct languages in different states, yet the traveller will observe generally only small and progressive varieties of customs and dress. But here the scene is suddenly shifted, and there are presented to his eyes at once many of those appendages of Oriental character, manners, and landscape, by which Englishmen perhaps owing to their early knowledge of the Bible-are so powerfully attracted. From the habits of civilized life the English traveller who crosses to Prevesa is immediately introduced into the solemn stillness of the East. The sedate and bearded Ottoman, veiled women, latticed harems, are around him; and the Albanian mountaineers, with their singular stateliness of carriage, and arrayed in the most picturesque costume of the world. There too is the fantastic tracery of the mosque, and the tall slender minaret from which the Imaum prays with his face to Mecca.

5. ITHACA.

Colonel Mure has remarked that there is, perhaps, no spot in the world where the influence of classical associations is so lively or so pure as in the island of Ithaca. The little rock retired into obscurity immediately after the age of its great mythological warrior and of his poet, and so it has remained for nigh 3000 years. Unlike many other places of ancient fame, it is indebted for no part of its interest to more recent distinctions, or to the rival associations of modern history-so much as the name of Ithaca scarcely occurs in the page of any writer of historical ages, unless with reference to its poetical celebrity. Indeed, in A.D. 1504, it was nearly, if not quite uninhabited, having been depopulated by the incursions of corsairs, and during the fury of the wars waged between the Turks and the Christians; and record is still ex

Like so many other names of classical geography, Ithaca was said to be derived from a chieftain of primitive times called Ithacus, who is mentioned by Homer (Ód., xviii. 207). The measurement of the island, as given by Strabo (x. 2), is very wide of the truth; its extreme length from N. to S. is really about 17 m.; its greatest breadth does not exceed 4. It may be regarded in fact as a single narrow ridge of limestone rock, everywhere rising into rugged hills, of which the chief is the mountain of Anoge ('Avwyn), in shape and size not unlike Benlomond-towering over the N. shore of the great harbour. This, as being the highest and greatest mountain in the island, is, of course, identified with the "Neritos ardua saxis" of Virgil (Æn., iii. 271), and the NýptTov eivooíquaλov of Homer (Od., ix. 21), although the forests which once "waved their leaves" on its sides have now disappeared. That fact is the reason why rain and dew are not so common here now as they were in the poet's time; and why the island no longer abounds in hogs fattening upon acorns, and guarded by "godlike swineherds"-successors of Eumæus. In all other points Homer's descriptions are still as accurate in Ithaca as they are elsewhere-proving him to be the great father of History and Topography as well as of Poetry. His verses present a perfect picture of the island as it now appears :

Ἐν δ ̓ Ἰθάκῃ οὔτ ̓ ἄρ ̓ δρόμοι εὐρέες οὔτε τι λειμών

Αιγίβοτος καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπήρατος ἱπποβότοιο

Οὐ γάρ τις νήσων ἱππήλατος οὐδ ̓ εὐ- | by Ulysses, have puzzled all the com

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"Horrid with cliffs, our meagre land allows
Thin herbage for the mountain-goat to browse,
But neither mead nor plain supplies, to feed
The sprightly courser, or indulge his speed:
To sea-surrounded realms the gods assign

Small tract of fertile lawn, the least to mine."

mentators, both ancient and modern :Αὐτὴ δὲ χθαμαλὴ πανυπέρτατη εἰν ἁλὶ

κεῖται

Πρὸς ζόφον, αἱ δὲ ἄνευθε πρὸς ἠῶ τ ̓ ἠέλιόν τε,

For

(Vide Nitzsch. Cf. also Od., x. 196). Strabo (x. 2) discusses the passage, and perhaps his explanation is the most satisfactory of any. He supposes that by the epithet xlauan the poet intended to express how Ithaca The general aspect is one of rugged-lies under, as it were, the neighbouring ness and sterility; it can hardly be mountains of Acarnania; while by that said that there are a hundred yards of of TavνTEρтárn he meant to denote its continuous level ground in the whole position at the extremity of the group island; which warrants the expression of islands formed by Zacynthus, Ceof Cicero that Ulysses loved his country phallenia, and the Echinades. "not because it was broad, but because another explanation see Wordsworth's it was his own." Nevertheless the Greece."' scenery is rendered striking by the bold The whole population of the island and broken outline of the mountains amounts to about 13,000. It is divided and cliff's indented by numerous small officially into 4 districts. The inhabitharbours and creeks, the Auéves á- ants are extremely laborious both by Vopμo of the Odyssey' (xiii. 193). land and sea, cultivating with patient And Ithaca is not without scenes of a industry the light and scanty soil of softer character-in the cultivated de- their island, and maintaining at the clivities of the ridges, and in the open-same time a considerable part of the ing out towards the sea of many narrow coasting trade of Greece, as well as ravines, where the water is fringed of the general carrying commerce of with feathery woods of olives, oranges, the Mediterranean and the Euxine. and almond-trees, and the slopes are Almost every family possesses a few clothed with vineyards, or with ever-roods of land of its own, as well as a green copses of myrtle, cypress, ar- share in one or more of the large and butus, mastic, oleander, that beauti-excellent ships which belong to their ful rhododaphne or rose-laurel of the ancients, and all the aromatic shrubs of the East. Here and there too among the rocks little green lawns glitter gaily with a thousand wild flowers.

The climate of Ithaca is very healthy, and its inhabitants are famous for their longevity. So it is from no empty patriotism that Ulysses says of his fatherland,

Τρηχεῖ ̓ ἀλλ ̓ ἀγαθὴ κουροτρόφος· οὗτοι ἔγωγε
Ης γαίης δύναμαι γλυκερώτερον ἄλλο ιδέσθαι.
"Low lies our isle, yet bless'd in fruitful stores;
Strong are her sons, though rocky are her

shores;

And none, ah! none so lovely to my sight,
Of all the lands that Heaven o'erspreads with
light!"

(Od., ix. 27). The lines immediately
preceding, and also applied to Ithaca

port, and are continually built and fitted out there. If we call to mind that Ulysses, with the whole force of the neighbouring islands of Cephallenia and Zacynthus, only mustered 12 galleys as his contingent to the Trojan expedition, it must be admitted that Ithaca has no reason to complain of any falling off in her

naval establishment since the heroic age. (I., ii. 631, 637.)

The late Earl of Guilford, who founded the Ionian University, had intended, if insuperable difficulties had not been thrown in his way, to establish that institution in Ithaca. Here

amid mountains and rocks hallowed by a thousand memories-the scholar might have delighted his hours of leisure with the fair visions of Greek

hand there is no evidence to determine whether the agricultural slaves were exterminated by the barbarian invaders of the Hellenic soil, or were absorbed into the mass of the Sclavonian or Byzantine population. These questions prove how uncertain all inquiries into the direct affiliation of the modern Greeks must be. Of what value is the oldest genealogic tree, if a single generation be omitted in the middle?

"The gospel and the laws of Justinian blended all classes of citizens into one mass, and facilitated the acquisition of the boon of freedom by every Christian slave. But

nationality could have conferred. A social organization at variance with all the prejudices of ancient private and political life was framed, and the consequence was that the change created a new people. Such seems to be the origin of the modern Greeks.” 'Medieval Greece,' chap. i. p. 7. Revised Edition.

poetry and philosophy, for which the summer stillness of a Grecian sky appears a natural and congenial accompaniment. There is in Ithaca, as in the other Ionian islands, a good secondary, or grammar school, supported by Government; and in which ancient Greek, mathematics, history, geography, Italian, and English are taught. Primary schools also have been established in the chief villages. There are very few peasants who do not possess at least the rudiments of a good education; and, along with all the courtesy and good humour, they have even more than their share of the usual ready tact and cleverness (arxivoia) of the lower orders through- a Christian church which was neither out Greece. The higher classes re- Greek nor Roman arose and created semble those of the neighbouring to itself a separate power under the islands. Among the Ithacans, as wher-name of Orthodox, forming a partnerever else in Greece there is little ad-ship with the imperial authority, and mixture of Venetian, Albanian, or acquired a power greater than any other foreign blood--the traveller will generally remark that Hellenic cast of features so familiar from ancient statues and coins. With reference to the claims of the Greeks to pure Hellenic descent, "Two questions," says Mr. Finlay, “still admit of doubt and discussion. The one relates to the number of the slave population | employed in agriculture when Greece was in its most flourishing condition, and the other, to the proportions in which the free population and the slaves were diminished in the general depopulation of the country that preceded the Sclavonian emigration. A large proportion of the slaves employed in agriculture were of foreign origin as we know from the enormous extent of the slave-trade. We know also that under the domination of the Romans the higher classes of Greece either died out or lost their nationality by adopting the names and assuming the manners of Roman citizens. It seems therefore probable that pure Hellenic blood began to be greatly adulterated about the time when the ancient dialects fell into disuse. Still there can be no doubt that the Greek population retired before the Selavonian emigration, and did not mingle with the intruders; but on the other

The three principal clans into which the Ithacans are divided are called Petalas, Karabias, and Dendrinos. Nearly all the chief families of the island either bear these names, or, wherever branches of them have taken other appellations, the new patronymics were generally derived from some sobriquet applied to one of their ancestors. For instance, the family of Zabos is a principal branch of the Petalades, and came to be designated by its present name because its immediate founder had that epithet (Caßós, i.e. awkward) given to him. Numerous parallel examples occur in the genealogies of the clans of Ireland and Scotland.

Among the natives of Ithaca there is no other but the national religion. The carved woodwork in the altarscreen of the cathedral is worth a visit; but none of the churches are remarkable for architectural splen

dour or for costly decorations; little chapels are as numerous in this as in the neighbouring islands, and indeed in most parts of Greece.

into two nearly equal portions, connected by a narrow isthmus. On the southern side of this great gulf, local tradition exhibits in a small creek the port of Phorcys, now called by the Ithacans 'Aegía, probably because it is on the right hand of the entrance to the port of Bathy; and a little way up Mount St. Stephen above the harbour, the grotto of the Nymphs, in which the sleeping Ulysses was deposited by the Phæacians (Od., xiii. 116). The only entrance to this cave is a narrow opening to the N.W., admitting but little day. At the southern extremity there is a natural aperture, but one more practicable for gods than for men. The vault within is lighted up by delicate gleams of a bluish hue, and is hung with stalactites, expanding here and there into what Homer calls webs of stone, where the Nymphs may be fancied to have woven their threads whose colour was like the purple of the ocean (Od., xiii. 108). It is highly probable that these are the very localities alluded to by Homer

Ithaca is divided into four districts, Bathy, Actos, Anoge, and Exoge; Batù, 'Aeròs, 'Avwyn, 'Elwyn, i.e., Deep Bay, Eagle's Cliff, Highland, Outland. The first at the southern, and the last at the northern extremity of the island, have each a fertile valley, but the rocky mountains of the two midland districts admit of little cultivation, Currant-grapes form the staple commodity of the Ithacans. A small quantity of oil and wine is also exported, the latter being reputed the best in the Ionian Islands. The produce in grain suffices only for three months' consumption; and even that quantity is raised by great toil and industry. But the natives are enabled to supply themselves from abroad, partly by their profits in the currant trade, and still more by the activity in maritime affairs which forms so remarkable a feature in this little people. The sight of the modern capital of indeed, this seems the only point Ithaca must always excite admiration. exactly corresponding to the poet's Bathy contains about 2500 inhabitants, data :-1. In admitting unobserved of and extends in one narrow stripe of a rugged walk over woods and cliffs white houses round the southern ex-(Od., xiv. 1) to the station of Eumous tremity of the horseshoe port or "deep" at the extremity of the island nearest (Babu), whence it derives its name. Large ships can moor in perfect safety close to the doors of their owners. Here are the dwellings of the chief proprietors and merchants, and several Greek churches.

Peloponnesus (Ód., xv. 36); 2. In being directly in front of Neritos, and so exactly adapted to the speech of the disguised Pallas, when she proves to Ulysses that he is in Ithaca by pointing to the mountain (Od., xiii. 345). It may here be remarked that a late

The beauty of the scene is enhanced by a small island, crowned with build-resident in the winter of 1850 came ings, in the middle of the harbour, and by several insulated houses scattered over the rising ground behind the town, and surrounded with trees and gardens.

in a single day from Ithaca to Corcyra in one of the coasting boats of the island, which are very like ancient galleys both in appearance and in mode of navigation; so there is nothing wonThe whole prospect derives a sin-derful in his predecessor Ulysses having gular aspect of seclusion from the accomplished in a single night-parmountains which hang over it on ticularly with the aid of Athene-the every side. It has no view of the voyage from Corcyra to Ithaca (Od., open sea, because the creek on which xiii. 81). it is built is an inlet of the wide and deep gulf, which, branching out into arms and bays sheltered by lofty hills and projecting cliffs, and running up into the heart of the island, divides it

We have hitherto taken it for granted that this is the Ithaca alluded to by Homer. "Of that fact," says Sir George Bowen, "we have ample testimony in its relative position to Zacyn

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