John Stephens - Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Corinth.

It was late in the afternoon when we set out for the Acropolis. About a mile from the city we came to the foot of the hill, and ascended by a steep and difficult path, with many turnings and windings, to the first gate. Having been in the saddle since early in the morning, we stopped several times to rest, and each time lingered and looked out with admiration upon the wild and beautiful scenery around us; and we thought of the frequently recurring times when hostile armies had drawn up before the city at our feet, and the inhabitants, in terror and confusion, had hurried up this path and taken refuge within the gate before us.

Inside the gate were the ruins of a city, and here, too, we saw the tokens of ruthless war; the fire-brand was hardly yet extinguished, and the houses were in ruins. Within a few years it has been the stronghold and refuge of infidels and Christians, taken and retaken, destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again, and the ruins of Turkish mosques and Christian churches are mingled together in undistinguishable confusion. This enclosure is abundantly supplied with water, issuing from the rock, and is capable of containing several thousand people. The fountain of Pyrene, which supplies the Acropolis, called the most salubrious in Greece, is celebrated as that at which Pegasus was drinking when taken by Bellerophon. Ascending among ruined and deserted habitations, we came to a second gate flanked by towers. A wall about two miles in circumference encloses the whole summit of the rock, including two principal points which still rise above the rest. One is crowned with a tower and the other with a mosque, now in ruins; probably erected where once stood a heathen temple. Some have mistaken it for a Christian church, but all agree that it is a place built and consecrated to divine use, and that, for unknown ages men have gone up to this cloud-capped point to worship their Creator. It was a sublime idea to erect on this lofty pinnacle an altar to the Almighty. Above us were only the unclouded heavens; the sun was setting with that brilliancy which attends his departing glory nowhere but in the East; and the sky was glowing with a lurid red, as of some great conflagration. The scene around and below was wondrously beautiful. Mountains and rivers, seas and islands, rocks, forests, and plains, thrown together in perfect wantonness, and yet in the most perfect harmony, and every feature in the expanded landscape consecrated by the richest associations. On one side the Saronic Gulf, with its little islands, and Ægina and Salamis, stretching off to "Sunium's marble height," with the ruins of its temple looking out mournfully upon the sea; on the other, the Gulf of Corinth or Lepanto, bounded by the dark and dreary mountains of Cytheron, where Acteon, gazing at the goddess, was changed into a stag, and hunted to death by his own hounds; and where Bacchus, with his train of satyrs and frantic bacchantes, celebrated his orgies. Beyond were Helicon, sacred to Apollo and the Muses, and Parnassus, covered with snow. Behind us towered a range of mountains stretching away to Argos and the ancient Sparta, and in front was the dim outline of the temple of the Acropolis at Athens. The shades of evening gathered thick around us while we remained on the top of the Acropolis, and it was dark long before we reached our locanda.

The next morning we breakfasted at the coffee-house, and left Corinth wonderfully pleased at having outwitted Demetrius and our brigand host, who gazed after us with a surly scowl as we rode away, and probably longed for the good old days when, at the head of his hanged companions, he could have stopped us at the first mountain-pass and levied contributions at his own rate. I probably condemn myself when I say that we left this ancient city with such a trifle uppermost in our thoughts, but so it was; we bought a loaf of bread as we passed through the market-place, and descended to the plain of Corinth. We had still the same horses which we rode from Padras; they were miserable animals, and I did not mount mine the whole day. Indeed, this is the true way to travel in Greece; the country is mountainous, and the road or narrow horse-path so rough and precipitous that the traveller is often obliged to dismount and walk. The exercise of clambering up the mountains and the purity of the air brace every nerve in the body, and not a single feature of the scenery escapes the eye.

But, as yet, there are other things beside scenery; on each side of the road and within site of each other are the ruins of the ancient cities of Lechæum and Cenchreæ, the ports of Corinth on the Corinthian and Saronic Gulfs; the former once connected with it by two long walls, and the road to the latter once lined with temples and sepulchres, the ruins of which may still be seen. The isthmus connecting the Peloponnesus with the continent is about six miles wide, and Corinth owed her commercial greatness to the profits of her merchants in transporting merchandise across it. Entire vessels were sometimes carried from one sea and launched into the other. The project of a canal across suggested itself both to the Greeks and Romans, and there yet exist traces of a ditch commenced for that purpose.

On the death of Leonidas, and in apprehension of a Persian invasion, the Peloponnesians built a wall across the isthmus from Lechæum to Cenchreæ. This wall was at one time fortified with a hundred and fifty towers; it was often destroyed and as often rebuilt; and in one place, about three miles from Corinth, vestiges of it may still be seen. Here were celebrated those Isthmian games so familiar to every tyro in Grecian literature and history; toward Mount Oneus stands on an eminence an ancient mound, supposed to be the tomb of Melicertes, their founder, and near it is at this day a grove of the sacred pine, with garlands of the leaves of which the victors were crowned.

In about three hours from Corinth we crossed the isthmus, and came to the village of Kalamaki on the shore of the Saronic Gulf, containing a few miserable buildings, fit only for the miserable people who occupied them. Directly on the shore was a large coffee-house enclosed by mud walls, and having branches of trees for a roof; and in front was a little flotilla of Greek caiques.

Next to the Greek's love for his native mountains is his passion for the waters that roll at their feet; and many of the proprietors of the rakish little boats in the harbour talked to us of the superior advantage of the sea over a mountainous road, and tried to make us abandon our horses and go by water to Athens; but we clung to the land, and have reason to congratulate ourselves upon having done so, for our road was one of the most beautiful it was ever my fortune to travel over. For some distance I walked along the shore, on the edge of a plain running from the foot of Mount Geranion. The plain was intersected by mountain torrents, the channel-beds of which were at that time dry. We passed the little village of Caridi, supposed to be the Sidus of antiquity, while a ruined church and a few old blocks of marble mark the site of ancient Crommyon, celebrated as the haunt of a wild boar destroyed by Theseus.

At the other end of the plain we came to the foot of Mount Geranion, stretching out boldly to the edge of the gulf, and followed the road along its southern side close to and sometimes overhanging the sea. From time immemorial this has been called the Kaka Scala, or bad way. It is narrow, steep, and rugged, and wild to sublimity. Sometimes we were completely hemmed in by impending mountains, and then rose upon a lofty eminence commanding an almost boundless view. On the summit of the range the road runs directly along the mountain's brink, overhanging the sea, and so narrow that two horsemen can scarcely pass abreast; where a stumble would plunge the traveller several hundred yards into the waters beneath. Indeed, the horse of one of my companions stumbled and fell, and put him in such peril that both dismounted and accompanied me on foot. In the olden time this wild and rugged road was famous as the haunt of the robber Sciron, who plundered the luckless travellers, and then threw them from this precipice. The fabulous account is, that Theseus, three thousand years before, on his first visit to Athens, encountered the famous robber, and tossed him from the same precipice whence he had thrown so many better men. According to Ovid, the earth and the sea refused to receive the bones of Sciron, which continued for some time suspended in the open air, until they were changed into large rocks, whose points still appear at the foot of the precipice; and to this day, say the sailors, knock the bottoms out of the Greek vessels. In later days this road was so infested by corsairs and pirates, that even the Turks feared to travel on it; at one place, that looks as though it might be intended as a jumping-off point into another world, Ino, with her son Melicertes in her arms (so say the Greek poets), threw herself into the sea to escape the fury of her husband; and we know that in later days St. Paul travelled on this road to preach the gospel to the Corinthians.