University of Virginia Library

87. LETTER LXXXVII.

Piræus.—With a basket of ham and claret in the
stern-sheets, a cool awning over our heads, and twelve
men at the oars, such as the coxswain of Themistocles'
galley might have sighed for, we pulled away from the
ship at an early hour, for Eleusis. The conqueror of
Salamis delayed the battle for the ten o'clock breeze,
and as nature (which should be called he instead of
she, for her constancy) still ruffles the Egean at the
same hour, we had a calm sea through the strait,
where once lay the “ships by thousands.”

We soon rounded the point, and shot along under
the

It is a bare, bold precipice, a little back from the sea,
and commands an entire view of the strait. Here sat
Xerxes, “on his throne of gold,[21] with many secretaries
about him to write down the particulars of the action.”
The Athenians owed their victory to the wisdom
of Themistocles, who managed to draw the Persians
into the strait (scarce a cannon shot across just
here), where only a small part of their immense fleet
could act at one time. The wind, as the wily Greek
had foreseen, rose at the same time, and rendered the
lofty-built Persian ships unmanageable; while the
Athenian galleys, cut low to the water, were easily
brought into action in the most advantageous position.
It is impossible to look upon this beautiful and lovely
spot and imagine the stirring picture it presented.
The wild sea-bird knows no lonelier place. Yet on
that rock once sat the son of Darius, with his royal
purple floating to the wind, and, below him, within
these rocky limits, lay “one thousand two hundred
ships-of-war, and two thousand transports,” while behind
him, on the shores of the Piræus, were encamped
“seven hundred thousand foot, and four hundred
thousand horse”—“amounting,” says Potter, in his
notes, “with the retinue of women and servants that
attended the Asiatic princes in their military expeditions,
to more than five millions.” How like a king
must the royal Persian have felt, when

With an hour or two of fast pulling, we opened into
the broad bay of Eleusis. The first sabbath after the
creation could not have been more absolutely silent.
Megara was away on the left, Eleusis before us at the
distance of four or five miles, and the broad plains
where agriculture was first taught by Triptolemus,
the poetical home of Ceres, lay an utter desert in the
sunshine. Behind us, between the mountains, descended
the Sacra Via, by which the procession came
from Athens to celebrate the “Eleusinian mysteries”—
a road of five or six miles, lined, in the time of Pericles,
with temples and tombs. I could half fancy the
scene as it was presented to the eyes of the invading
Macedonians—when the procession of priests and virgins,
accompanied by the whole population of Athens,
wound down into the plain, guarded by the shining
spears of the army of Alcibiades. It is still doubtful,
I believe, whether these imposing ceremonies were the
pure observances of a lofty and sincere superstition, or
the orgies of licentious saturnalia.

We landed at Eleusis, and were immediately surrounded
by a crowd of people, as simple and curious
in their manners, and resembling somewhat in their
dress and complexion, the Indians of our country.
The ruins of a great city lay about us, and their huts
were built promiscuously among them. Magnificent
fragments of columns and blocks of marble interrupted
the path through the village, and between two of the
houses lay, half buried, a gigantic medallion of Pentelic
marble, representing, in alto relievo, the body and
head of a warrior in full armor. A hundred men
would move it with difficulty. Commodore Patterson
attempted it six years ago, in the Constitution, but his
launch was found unequal to its weight.

The people here gathered more closely around the
ladies of our party, examining their dress with childish
curiosity. They were doubtless the first females ever
seen at Eleusis in European costume. One of the
ladies happening to pull off her glove, there was a
general cry of astonishment. The brown kid had
clearly been taken as the color of the hand. Some
curiosity was then shown to see their faces, which
were covered with thick green veils, as a protection
against the sun. The sight of their complexion (in
any country remarkable for a dazzling whiteness) completed
the astonishment of these children of Ceres.

We, on our part, were scarcely less amused with
their costumes in turn. Over the petticoat was worn
a loose jacket of white cloth reaching to the knee,
and open in front—its edges and sleeves wrought very
tastefully with red cord. The head-dress was composed
entirely of money. A fillet of gold sequins was
first put, a la feroniere, around the forehead, and a
close cap, with a throat-piece like the gorget of a helmet,
fitted the scull exactly, stitched with coins of all
values, folded over each other according to their sizes,
like scales. The hair was then braided and fell down
the back, loaded also with money. Of the fifty or sixty
women we saw, I should think one half had money
on her head to the amount of from one to two hundred
dollars. They suffered us to examine them with perfect
good humor. The greater proportion of pieces
were paras, a small and thin Turkish coin of very small
value. Among the larger pieces were dollars of all
nations, five-franc pieces, Sicilian piastres, Tuscan
colonati, Venetian swansicas, etc., etc. I doubted
much whether they were not the collections of some
piratical caique. There is no possibility of either
spending or getting money within many miles of Eleusis,
and it seemed to be looked upon as an ornament
which they had come too lightly by to know its use.

We walked over the foundations of several large
temples with the remains of their splendor lying unvalued
about them, and at half a mile from the village
came to the “well of Proserpine,” whence, say the
poets, the ravished daughter of Ceres emerged from
the infernal regions on her visits to her mother. The
modern Eelusinians know it only as a well of the purest
water.

On our return, we stopped at the southern point of
the Piræus, to see the tomb of Themistocles. We
were directed to it by thirteen or fourteen frusta of
enormous columns, which once formed the monument
to his memory. They buried him close to the edge
of the sea, opposite Salamis. The continual beat of
the waves for so many hundred years has worn away

the promontory, and his sarcophagus, which was laid
in a grave cut in the solid rock, is now filled by every
swell from the Egean. The old hero was brought
back from his exile to be gloriously buried. He could
not lie better for the repose of his spirit (if it returned
with his bones from Argos). The sea on which he
beat the haughty Persians with his handful of galleys,
sends every wave to his feet. The hollows in the
rock around his grave are full of snowy salt left by the
evaporation. You might scrape up a bushel within
six feet of him. It seems a natural tribute to his
memory.[22]

On a high and lonely rock, stretching out into the
midst of the sea, stands a solitary temple. As far as
the eye can reach, along the coast of Attica and to
the distant isles, there is no sign of human habitation.
There it stands, lifted into the blue sky of Greece, like
the unreal “fabric of a vision.”

Cape Colonna and its “temple of Minerva,” were
familiar to my memory, but my imagination had pictured
nothing half so beautiful. As we approached
it from the sea, it seemed so strangely out of place,
even for a ruin, so far removed from what had ever
been the haunt of man, that I scarce credited my eyes.
We could soon count them—thirteen columns of
sparkling marble, glittering in the sun. The sea-air
keeps them spotlessly white, and, until you approach
them nearly, they have the appearance of a structure,
from its freshness, still in the sculptor's hands.

The boat was lowered, and the ship lay off-and-on
while we landed near the rocks where Falconer was
shipwrecked, and mounted to the temple. The summit
of the promontory is strewn with the remains of
the fallen columns, and their smooth surfaces are
thickly inscribed with the names of travellers. Among
others, I noticed Byron's and Hobhouse's, and that
of the agreeable author of “A year in Spain.” Byron,
by the way, mentions having narrowly escaped robbery
here, by a band of Mainote pirates. He was surprised
swimming off the point, by an English vessel containing
some ladies of his acquaintance. He concludes
the “Isles of Greece” beautifully with an allusion to
it by its ancient name:—

The view from the summit is one of the finest in all
Greece. The isle where Plato was sold as a slave,
and where Aristides and Demosthenes passed their
days in exile, stretches along the west; the wide
Egean, sprinkled with here and there a solitary rock,
herbless, but beautiful in its veil of mist, spreads away
from its feet to the southern line of the horizon, and
crossing each other almost imperceptibly on the light
winds of this summer sea, the red-sailed caique of
Greece, the merchantmen from the Dardanelles, and
the heavy men-of-war of England and France, cruising
wherever the wind blows fairest, are seen like
broad-winged and solitary birds, lying low with spread
pinions upon the waters. The place touched me. I
shall remember it with an affection.

There is a small island close to Sunium, which was
fortified by one of the heroes of the Iliad on his return
from Troy—why, heaven only knows. It was here,
too, that Phrontes, the pilot of Menelaus, died and
was buried.

We returned on board after an absence of two hours
from the ship, and are steering now straight for the
Dardanelles. The plains of Marathon are but a few
hours north of our course, and I pass them unwillingly;
but what is there one would not see? Greece
lies behind, and I have realized one of my dearest
dreams in rambling over its ruins. Travel is an appetite
that “grows by what it feeds on.”