T

CHAPTER XXXVII.

ATHENS.

HE GREAT Plain of Attica is bounded on the

south by the Saronic Gulf, on the west by

Mount Egaleos and Mount Parnes, and on the east by Mount Hymettus and Mount Pentelicus. I give the boundaries as if the valley lay north and south; but, in fact, from the south end its course is a little east of north. The highest of the mountains named is a little over 3,000 feet. They are bold in outline, and in the distance seem bare. In fact, there is but a scant vegetation upon them, with here and there a slope covered thinly with trees of a small growth.

This Great Plain has an average width of not more than eight miles, and is about twice as long as it is broad; yet, comparing one thing with another in Greece, it is, what its name purports, a great plain.

There is a range of independent hills running north and south in the valley, near its eastern edge, rising southward from Pentelicus, and terminating about three miles from the Gulf. About midway of this range is Lycabettus, which is the highest of these independent hills, being about 900 feet high. South of it, and in the same range, though separated from it by a valley near a mile in width, is the Acropolis, 400 feet high. To the west and south of the

Acropolis there are several other elevations, separated from it by narrow valleys, or ravines rather, from which the range drops down and ends.

In the valley between Lycabettus and the Acropolis lies the modern city of Athens-the neopolis, called by the Greeks, Athena. The old city occupied the same area, and also spread around the eastern end, and to the south side, of the Acropolis.

Of what this city was in the time of its classical splendor I will not write, nor of the unhappy vicissitudes of its mediæval and later history. At the beginning of this century it was a town of 10,000 inhabitants, but at the end of the revolution in 1832 it was a ruin.

What it is now it owes mainly, I suppose, to its classical renown; for that, I imagine, more than any thing else, determined its selection as the capital of the new kingdom of Greece. It is not well located either for a commercial or political center. Its salubrious atmosphere, its reputed freedom from earthquakes, which are frequent and severe at Corinth, and its memories, no doubt, secured for it its present metropolitan position. "What is it that makes Athens?" I asked an intelligent Greek. The reply was prompt and concise: "Three things-it is the center of education-it is the center of the Government; it is the center of Hellenism." The center of Hellenism-that signifies much. All over Europe and Western Asia, and to some extent in Northern Africa, there are Greek merchants and bankers, who are generally prosperous. When they have amassed a fortune they go to Athens to live, or, in some instances, expend large sums of

money there in establishing institutions of learning. A family of Greek bankers in Vienna have devoted over a million of dollars in erecting an Observatory and an Academy of Sciences in the city of Plato. Another has established a great grammar school, named for its founder, Varvakion, his name being Barbakes. The modern Greeks give beta the sound of v. Still another-Arsakes-has built a girls' school, and endowed it very handsomely. This school is also named for its founder, the Arsakion.

The University, with its four Faculties-of law, theology, philosophy, and medicine-its pharmaceutic school, anatomical museum, collection of ancient coins, cabinet of natural history, and its library of 120,000 volumes, including a good many fine manuscripts, is a grand seat of learning already, where twelve or thirteen hundred youths are in annual attendance.

There is also an Archæological Society earnestly at work, collecting and preserving the hitherto neglected specimens of classical art that abound in the country. They have exhumed many fine specimens of sculpture in Athens and elsewhere, and provided a spacious museum for their preservation and exhibition. Nearly all are more or less mutilated; but, even to an uncritical eye, like mine, they show the genius that brought them into existence.

Thus, since its emancipation from the deadly power of the Turk, in 1832, Greece has brought her great historical city into a new life, and started it upon a new career. From being nothing at the end of the war of independence, Athens has come to be a city of 65,000 inhabitants, with a large proportion of

elegant houses, streets well paved, lighted with gas, and planted on both sides with beautiful shade-trees. Many of the streets are narrow and irregular; but several of them are wide and beautiful. In addition, the old port is revived, and Piræus has a flourishing business and a population of 18,000-all this from nothing, in the space of forty-five years. Even an American can afford to call that Progress. Ay, and there are many religions in the Levant which await only the day of their redemption from the power of the Moslem to start up, like Greece and the Government of the Lebanon, into development and vigor. There is the most lamentable fatality in the touch of the Turk. He is the Upas-shadow of the Levant. A blight falls from him upon all human activities.

But it is the antiquities of Athens that attract the traveler; and while I cannot attempt any exhaustive account of them, I will attempt a running sketch.

For this purpose let us ascend the Acropolis. Here we are, with the city on the north, at our very feet; for this Acropolis, over 400 feet high, is very steep. Beyond the city is Lycabettus, rising abruptly 900 feet, and crowned with a mass of perpendicular limestone. To our right is the dry channel of the Ilissus, which separates this independent chain of hills from the Hymettus. The Ilissus is not above eight miles long in its whole course. In the time of heavy rains it becomes quite a little torrent; but usually, as now, it shows a naked, rocky bed. Its course is within two or three hundred yards of the foot of the Acropolis. East of that, and from the very bank of it, the foot-hills of Hymettus appear, and within two miles the bold ridge of the mountain

begins to swell up, its summit, nearly 3,000 feet high, running north and south for eight or ten miles. North of it, and a little east of north from us here on the Acropolis, is Mount Pentelicus, projecting its bold, rounded mass, over 3,000 feet high, farther westward than the line of Hymettus, so encroaching upon the valley on that side. Due north, the eye detects no mountain barrier, though the valley does actually rise into low hills.

Turning now to the west, we have a valley of level land about four miles wide just opposite to us, and still wider both to the north and to the south of this point. This reach of level land is covered with olivetrees, so that it looks like a forest from this distance, but, in fact, the trees are so thinly scattered over the ground that there are cultivated fields and vineyards among them. Directly west of us, beyond the olivetrees, is Mount Ægaleos, about 1,500 feet high, and north of it Mount Parnes. These are separated from each other by the Pass of Daphne. All these mountains in sight are precipitous, with scant vegetation, and trees growing only on a few slopes. For the most part they are masses of limestone and marble. If Lycabettus were not in our line of vision we could sce, from where we stand, a marble quarry on Pentelicus, as white as snow. Remember, we are on the Acropolis.

Turning to the west again we see a road crossing the plain, and trace it distinctly to where it disappears in the Pass of Daphne. It is the road to Eleusis.

Coming down from the north, and running down through the plain, is the Cephisus, hid from our view