modified by the establishment of the Sacred Synod. That body consisted at first of the twenty deputies only. The deputies, like most officials who have got little to do, and can get any body else to do that little, left off attending to their work; so that in course of time the power was confined to the representatives of the five monasteries above mentioned, and at that time the largest on the mountain, and Cutlumush, then large, but since much reduced. The present system, a compromise, like many constitutional reforms, between primitive equality and gradual usurpation, came into use in the last century. † This brings us to consider the general history of Athos, of which we have been anticipating a portion. * We can hardly wonder that the sublime elevation of Mount Athos attracted the attention and excited the imagination of the ancients, or that they entertained vastly exaggerated notions of its extent and altitude. It was known to the Hellenic mariner for ages before the first Eubœan colonist had planted his foot upon the barbarous shores of Thrace, and was to him what the Table Mountain was to Vasco de Gama and his adventurous messmates. Homer sings of it, and Eschylus, who probably hands down unaltered the heroic legend, fixes upon it as a link in the chain of signal-fires which announced to Argos the completion of the Trojan war. § An obscure fragment of questionable authority appears to connect it in some way with the fabled rebellion of the Giants. || Nor was its celebrity diminished after it was partially brought within the pale of Grecian civilisation. Herodotus describes it as a great and notable mountain; ' it appeared to Virgil a fit and lively similitude for a stalwart hero**, and it stands as the representative of the snowy North in the pastoral songs of Sicily. It Pliny believed the peninsula to extend seventy-five miles into the sea‡‡; and even in modern times the mountain has been estimated at no less than four miles in height §§, and ranked among the twelve principal mountains of the world. Of old it was supposed to soar above the region of the rain-cloud ¶¶,' and on a clear summer evening to cast its shadow to a distance of some eighty miles upon the brazen ox which adorned the market-place of Rycaut, p. 250. Hom. Il. xiv. 229. † Ib. p. 253. § Esch. Agam. 285. Nicander (?) apud Steph. Byz. in voc. "Abwc. Herod. vii. 22. tt Theocr. vii. 77. §§ Pocock's Travels in the East, vol. iii. Palæographia Græca, p. 452. ¶ Pomponius Mela, de Situ Orbis, ii. 2.; Solinus, Polyhist. ch. 16. Myrina, in Lemnos. This palpable figment is as old as Apollonius of Rhodes*, and is seriously repeated by Pliny and Solinus. + The summit was sacred to the monarch of the gods §, and covered by his altar and effigy. It was believed in later times to have been the site of a town T, and the assertion is repeated by a writer who supposed that it never rained there **, and who does not seem to have considered water as one of the necessaries of life. There can be no doubt that the error arose from the ambiguous meaning of Acrathos, which might denote the peak as well as the promontory of Athos. The inhabitants of Apollonia, another of the towns of Acte, were called the Long-lived,'tt and their existence was prolonged, it is said, to the patriarchal period of a hundred and thirty years. Solinus attributes this marvellous longevity to the people who lived on the summit §§, and may, perhaps, have ascribed it to their want of water, in defiance of Dr. Preissnitz and Father Matthew. 6 After all, the event which has principally ennobled Athos in ancient history is the extraordinary enterprise of Xerxes-the ship-canal which bore his triremes from the Strymonic to the Singitic gulf. The actual magnitude of the work, the length of time allotted to it, the numerous labourers of many races toiling beneath the task, the precocious skill of the Phoenician excavators, and, if we are to credit Herodotus, the magnificent inutility of the whole undertaking |||, are elements of greatness which have fascinated the imagination and riveted the belief of succeeding ages. T¶ A single Roman writer has dared, in the face of all antiquity, to throw doubt upon the fact, and to ascribe to the Father of History the mendacity which distinguished and disgraced the Greeks of his own time. *** Modern criticism has shown that in matters of history Greece is much less lying' than Rome. Colonel Leake, however, has not only relieved * Ap. Rh. I. 601. Solin. ch. 16. † Plin. H. M. iv. 12. § Esch. Agam. 285. Hesych. in Voc. "A0wc. Compare Mela, D. S. O. ii. 2. ** Solin. ch. 16. †† Plin. H. M. iv. 10. Compare Ælian. V. H. ix. 10. + Lucian. Μακρόβιοι. Herod. vii. 24. §§ Solin. ch. 16. ¶¶ Thuc. iv. 109.; Plato, Legg. iii. p. 699.; Isocr. Paneg. p. 58. E.; Lysias, Or. Funeb. p. 193.; Lycophron, Alex. 1415.; Cicero de Fin. ii. 112.; Lucan, ii. 677.; Statius, Silv. 1. iii. 55.; Virg. (?) Culex, 30.; Ælian, N. A. xiii. 20.; Ammian. Marcell. xxii. 8. *** Juvenal, Sat. x. 174. Herodotus from the accusation of Juvenal, but has defended Xerxes from the charges of Herodotus. He has discovered traces of the canal in the valley which intersects the low undulating hills of the isthmus, and finds its name in the modern appellation of the isthmus itself.* And he maintains that the Great King' was perfectly justified in cutting this canal, as well 'from the security which it afforded to his fleet as from the 'facility of the work;' that it might without much labour 'be renewed;' and that it would be useful to the navi'gation of the Ægæan.'† When Dinocrates undertook to sculpture the mountain into a colossal effigy of Alexander, the king declined the honour, on the ground that it was enough for Athos to have been the monument of one monarch's folly.‡ The more intelligent researches of Colonel Leake have vindicated the Persian, and left the magnanimous moral pointless. 6 Certainly the mountain has become a monument of far greater things than the folly of Xerxes or his wisdom. It is a memorial of the first historic struggle between the East and the West, between the strength of despotism and that of free political organisation. It records the watchful care of the Great Ruler of nations over the nascent influence of Greek civilisation, manifested in the providential destruction of the Persian fleet. Aflavit Deus, et dissipantur inimici. And by bearing an additional testimony to the overwhelming might of Xerxes, it has become an additional trophy of that illustrious race whose combined energies resisted his aggression and broke his power. It tells us how the pioneers and masters of all human culture were protected from the dangerous influence of the East, until they should themselves be fitted to receive from the East the lessons of a more divine philosophy. And it is a lasting and wonderful monument of that novel influence which issued from an obscure corner of Asia, took the civilised world by storm, and has held possession of it ever since. Probably there is no spot over which the Church has a dominion so complete and exclusive, none in which every thing is so visibly and singly devoted to a religious end. Rome is the metropolis of a spiritual empire, has priests for her princes, and luxuriates in solemn ceremonies. The English universities are testimonies to the triumphs of the Faith over every branch of human know Northern Greece, vol. iii. p. 143. 'The modern name of this 'neck of land is Próslaka, evidently the Romaic form of the word poaula, having reference to the canal in front of the Peninsula of 'Athos.' Plutarch, De Fort. Alex. Or. II. † Ib. p. 145. ledge. But the religious character of the one is visibly alloyed with secular power, that of the other necessarily tempered with secular learning. The monasteries of Athos are without power and without learning. An accurate history of these institutions is a desideratum in that of the Eastern Church, and a critical writer who should follow Gibbon through the entire cyclus of Byzantine history, and then make a voyage of discovery into the unexplored region of diplomas and golden bulls, might do good service in his generation. We shall at present venture only to give a skeleton of their history, such as may be constructed out of the scanty materials which lie before us. If we are to believe the traditions current and recognised among the caloyers, their monasteries must be referred to a very high and honoured antiquity. St. Helena is said to have been the first to settle monks on the peninsula. Two of the monasteries claim to be founded by Constantine the Great, and two more by the Empress Pulcheria. † One of the former, Castamonitu, was completed, it is said, by Constans, whose peculiar love of seclusion was certainly not the fruit of an ascetic temper. The Protaton, or Metropolitan Church, at Caryæ is also ascribed to Constantine, and is said to have been destroyed, together with his other foundations, by the apostate Julian-the Cromwell of Greek ecclesiastical tradition. The Protaton, indeed, although set on fire, was not destroyed, as marks of the conflagration were exhibited on its walls in the days of John Commenus, and in all probability are so still. Batopedion had a second founder in Theodosius, of whom a story is related concerning a bush' and a 'child'§, probably invented, as Mr. Bowen shrewdly observes, to account for the singular name.' He might have added, that the orthography has been perverted to bring it into harmony with the legend, as all the best authorities, from John Cantacuzene to John Commenus, spell it in a way which admits of a much more simple etymology. These are the only foundations claiming a date prior to the tenth century, and even these are confessed to have been restored or re-founded in that or the following age. We believe there is no contemporary or documentary evidence of any establishment prior to the reign of Nicephorus Phocas, who became emperor in the year 963. The names of Constantine and Pul * Palæographia Græca, pp. 459. 498. Palæographia Græca, p. 484. † Ib. 496. Walpole's Memoirs, p. 218. Compare Goar, Rituale Græcorum, p. 120. note. cheria are a most tempting nucleus for an ecclesiastical mythus, and they seem to be regarded in that light by the more intelligent among the monks themselves; so that we may fairly conclude that these personages are to Batopedion and Castamonitu, Sphigmenu and Xeropotamu, what Alfred the Great is to University College, or to the King's Hall, and College of Brasenose.' It is probable, however, that there were recluses on Athos long before the time of Nicephorus Phocas. A large proportion even at the present day are scattered about the mountain in separate hermitages, and it is said that this was universally the case before the institution of the monasteries. And as ten of the monasteries, including the four whose apocryphal origin has just been related, appear to have been founded in the course of a century and a half, we may infer that Athos was already extensively tenanted by the ascetics, and had been for a considerable time a place of religious retirement. We will not attempt to fix the date at which its religious character was first stamped upon it. Nor need we go about to account for that character. The vulgar stories of its being the scene of the Temptation or the Transfiguration are evidently a result, and not the cause, of its supposed sanctity. The chapel of the Transfiguration on the summit of the mountain proves nothing as to the antiquity of the legend, as in Greece churches in high places commonly and naturally receive their names from that mystery. In fact, the geographical seclusion of the peninsula, coupled with its wild beauty, would naturally attract ascetics in the days of asceticism; and it is no more necessary to look for any predetermining cause than it is in the case of St. David's or Iona. The place, once inhabited by anchorites, would become hallowed in the popular imagination; its holiness would attract new comers, who would further establish its character; until a spot, originally regarded as convenient for devotional retirement, would be consecrated to a sort of Christian fetichism. At whatever period the mountain was first tenanted by recluses, it is probable that it was not extensively occupied by them, if at all, until the northern shores of the Egaan had been brought into prominence by the establishment of a new focus of empire and of Christianity. Monks are not drawn together by seclusion merely, but by a visible and notorious seclusion; and if there had been no Constantinople it is probable that there would have been no Hagion Oros. Mr. Bowen asserts, or conjectures, that a great migration of monks and anchorites took place hither when Egypt, their 'first stronghold, was first conquered by the Saracens. VOL. CI. NO. CCV. Р A |