than the Piræus itself. It reminds one strongly of suburban beach places at home, lined as it is with cheap cottages, coffee-houses, restaurants, bicycle shops, and here and there a more pretentious residence, while at least one big and garish hotel is to be seen. The sea, varying from a light green to a deep Mediterranean blue, laps gently along the side of the highway toward the open ocean, while ahead, up the straight boulevard, appears the Acropolis of Athens, now seen for the first time in its proper light as one of the most magnificent ruins of the earth. The road thither is good but uncomfortably new. When its long lines of pepper trees, now in their infancy, shall have attained their growth, it will be a highway lined with shade and affording a prospect of much beauty. In its present state, however, which is destined to endure for some years to come, it is a long, straight, and rather dreary boulevard, relieved only by the glorious prospect of the crowning ruin of Athens something like four miles away, but towering alone and grand, and no longer dwarfed by the surrounding gray hills. Still this route seems to me infinitely better, even to-day, than the older road from Piræus, which approaches Athens from the western side without going near the sea, but which is not without its charms, nevertheless, and certainly does give the one who takes it a splendid view of the imposing western front of the Acropolis and its array of temples, across a plain green with waving grasses.
Approaching the city from the Phalerum side serves to give a very striking impression of the inaccessibility of the Acropolis, showing its precipitous southern face, crowned by the ruined Parthenon, whose ancient pillars, weathered to a golden brown, stand gleaming in the sun against the deep and brilliant blue of the Greek sky. Those who have pictured the temple as glistening white will be vastly surprised, no doubt, on seeing its actual color; for the iron and other metals present in the Pentelic marble, of which it was built, have removed almost entirely the white or creamy tints, and have given in their place a rich mottled appearance, due to the ripe old age of this shrine.
Aside from the ever present prospect of the Acropolis and its promise of interest in store, the road to Athens is devoid of much to attract attention. The long, gray ridge of Hymettus, which runs along just east of the road, of course is a famous mountain by reason of its well-known brand of honey, if for no other reason. Halfway up the gradual incline to the city there is a small and rather unattractive church, said to be a votive offering made by the king in thankfulness at escaping the bullets of two would-be assassins at this point. On the left, and still far ahead, rises the hill, crowned by the ruined but still conspicuous monument of Philopappus. Situated on a commanding eminence south of the Acropolis, this monument is a dominant feature of almost every view of Athens; but it is entirely out of proportion to the importance of the man whose vague memory it recalls.
Passing the eastern and most lofty end of the Acropolis, the carriage at last turns into the outskirts of the city proper and traverses a broad and pleasant avenue, its wide sidewalks shaded by graceful and luxuriant pepper trees, while the prosperous looking houses give an attractive first impression of residential Athens. The modern is curiously intermingled with the ancient; for on the right, in the fields which border the highway, are to be seen the few remaining colossal columns of the rather florid temple of Olympian Zeus and the fragmentary arch of Hadrian, the Roman emperor in whose reign that temple was at last completed. It is peculiarly fitting to enter Athens between these ruins on the one hand and the Acropolis on the other, for they are so characteristic of the great chief attraction of the place—its immortal past.
The city proper now opens out before, and as the carriage enters the great principal square of Athens, the “Syntagma,” or Place de la Constitution, handsome streets may be seen radiating from it in all directions, giving a general impression of cleanly whiteness, while the square itself, spreading a wide open space before the huge and rather barnlike royal palace, is filled with humanity passing to and fro, or seated at small tables in the open air, partaking of the coffee so dear to the heart of the Greek; and carriages dash here and there, warning pedestrians only by the driver’s repeated growl of “empros, empros!” (εμπρός), which is exactly equivalent to the golf-player’s “fore!” And here in the crowded square we may leave the traveler for the present, doubtless not far from his hotel—for hotels are all about—with only the parting word of advice that he shall early seek repose, in the certitude that there will be some little noise. For the Athenians are almost as noisy and nocturnal creatures as the Palermitans or Neapolitans, and the nights will be filled with music and many other sounds of revelry. To be sure, there are no paved streets and no clanging trolley cars; but the passing throngs will make up for any lack in that regard, even until a late hour of the night.
CHAPTER IV. ATHENS; THE
MODERN CITY
Athens lies in a long and narrow plain between two rocky mountain ridges that run down from the north. The plain to-day is neither interesting nor particularly fertile, although it is still tilled with some success. Once when it was better watered by the Cephissus and Ilissus rivers, whose courses are still visible though in the main dry and rocky, it was doubtless better able to support the local population; but to-day it is rather a bare and unattractive intervale between mountains quite as bare—gray, rocky heights, covered with little vegetation save the sparse gorse and thyme. At that point in the plain where a lofty, isolated, and nearly oblong rock, with precipitous sides, invited the foundation of a citadel, Athens sprang into being. And there she stands to-day, having pivoted around the hoary Acropolis crag for centuries, first south, then west, then north, until the latter has become the final abiding place of the modern town, while the older sites to the southward and westward lie almost deserted save for the activities of the archæologists and students, who have found them rich and interesting ground for exploration. Always, however, the Acropolis was the fulcrum or focus, and it was on this unique rock that Poseidon and Athena waged their immortal contest for the possession of the Attic plain. Tradition says that Poseidon smote with his trident and a salt spring gushed forth from the cleft rock, thus proving his power; but that the judgment of the gods was in favor of Athena, who made to spring up from the ground an olive tree. Wherefore the land was allotted to her, and from her the city took its name. Under the northern side of the towering rock and around to the east of it runs the thriving city of to-day, thence spreading off for perhaps two miles to the northward along the plain, first closely congested, then widening into more open modernized streets, and finally dwindling into scattered suburbs out in the countryside.
The growth of Athens has left its marks of progress in well-defined strata. The narrow, squalid, slummy streets of the quarter nearest the Acropolis belong to the older or Turkish period of the city’s renascent life. Beyond these one meets newer and broader highways, lined in many cases with neat modern shops, called into life by the city’s remarkable growth of the past two decades, which have raised Athens from the rank of a dirty village to a clean and attractive metropolis—in the better sense of that much abused word. Still farther away are seen the natural products of the overflow of a thriving modern town—suburbs clustering around isolated mills or wine-presses. The present population is not far from a hundred thousand persons, so that Athens to-day is not an inconsiderable place. The population is chiefly the native Greek, modified no doubt by long submission to Turkish rule and mingled with a good deal of Turkish blood, but still preserving the language, names, and traditions that bespeak a glorious past. Despite the persistence of such names as Aristeides, Miltiades, Themistocles, Socrates, and the like among the modern Athenians, it would no doubt be rashly unreasonable to expect to find in a population that was to all intents and purposes so long enslaved by Turkey very much that savors of the traditional Greek character as it stood in the days of Pericles. But there have not been wanting eminent scholars, who have insisted that our exalted ideas of the ancient Greeks are really derived from a comparatively few exceptional and shining examples, and that the ancient population may have resembled the present citizens more than we are prone to think, in traits and general ability.
On
