Samos. captivating in Greek life. Schools, colleges, libraries were founded and So in a sense is her neighbor to the south, but with a difference. Samos holds at present the place of privilege under the Porte which Chios held at the opening of the last century. For sixty years and more the island has enjoyed substantial independence with a constitution and council and flag of its own, though its governor is named by the Porte, and it pays a nominal tribute, most of which is expended on the improvement of the island. The governor, who must be a Christian, bears the title of prince, and is not removable at pleasure, like the ordinary Turkish pasha. When I visited Samos in 1893, that dignity was held, as it had been for eight years previous, by Prince Karatheodori, an accomplished statesman and a wise administrator, who subsequently undertook the government of Crete. Under him education was flourishing (there were forty-eight schools with one hundred and twelve teachers and some five thousand pupils, the system culminating in a full gymnasium for boys and a high school for girls); the chief places were connected by telephone; public works were fostered, industry being the rule, and crime the rare exception, only nine minor criminal cases being reported in a year. Approaching Samos from the north, we make our first landing at the new capital, officially known as Samos, popularly as Vathy (Bathu, Deephaven), a name which it shares with the new capital of Ithaca and many another place on Greek coasts. The harbor, a great bottle-necked gulf with an ample well-built quay, might shelter the world's navies; and it is a grand mountain amphitheater that closes it in. The town-built partly around the harbor, partly on the steep slopes half a mile back-is clean, well-to-do, inviting, with a solid self-respecting air which in itself is proof of good government. But we must get out of this great harbor, and thread the narrow channel where isle and mainland approach within speaking distance, as it were, if we are to realize what Samos was. With Mycale rising almost within touch and with Herodotus in hand, one becomes in a sense eyewitness of that last well-aimed blow that avenged Eretria and Athens, and sent the invader scurrying out of Greek waters. Clearing the strait we run into the ancient harbor, still well-nigh closed by the great mole Ancient harbor at which was a marvel to Herodotus, and provided with a fine modern quay. Samos. The shape of the port within the breakwater seems to have suggested the vile name now borne by what was once the port and capital of Polycrates viz. Tegani, which being interpreted is "The Frying Pan." Certainly what we yet see of old Samos, to say nothing of what it must have been in its prime, is a crying protest against this vulgarization. For few finer sites or nobler ruins are to be found even in Greece: there is the picturesque land's end and the level shore, with the parallel ridge rising seven or eight hundred feet behind it, and commanding wide views over the Ægean and the Ionian mainland. Tegani, indeed, is only a curved line. of houses on the water-side, with a fine church and a ruined castle to show that Venice held on to the old site; but old Samos (as Strabo describes it, and as we can trace it on the ground today) not only occupied the level shore but stretched up the mountainside above. The entire ridge was a strong-walled city, and hardly at Eleutheræ or under Mt. Ithome could one see nobler Hellenic walls than the line which extends down the northwestern slope of the hill, much of it intact and the rest traceable to the water's edge. Works described by Exploring the tunnel. The Heræum. Herodotus probably passed a season of exile here, and he knew Samos well. And he told the simple truth in his account of "three of the greatest works in all Greece made by the Samians." Two of these, the great mole and the great temple, have always witnessed to his veracity; but the third-was it not just another of his yarns? And yet how circumstantial! "One of these works," he says, "is a tunnel, under a hill one hundred and fifty fathoms high, carried entirely through the base of the hill, with a mouth at either end. The length of the cutting is seven furlongs, the height and width are each eight feet. Along the whole course there is a second cutting, twenty cubits deep and three feet broad, whereby water is brought, through pipes, from an abundant source into the city. The architect of this tunnel was Eupalinos, son of Naustrophus, a Megarian." Singularly enough this remarkable work is mentioned nowhere else in ancient literature, and all traces of the tunnel had been lost until one day in 1878 a monk from the neighboring monastery stumbled upon the opening, and it was partly cleared out and restored. Today we may follow a line of air-shafts up from the theater to the tunnel mouth, and go down with tallow dips to light the way to verify for ourselves the story of Herodotus. A steep stairway cut in the rock leads down to an arched gallery, at first so narrow as to accommodate but one person stooping a little at that then widening to admit two or three abreast. Farther on we find the tunnel, now hung with stalactites, quite answering to the historian's description-seven or eight feet wide and eight or more in height, though not uniformly so-with the aqueduct proper some thirty feet deep alongside. After penetrating as far as you like, you may go around the mountain and trace the source, the ancient reservoir, and the tunnel from its starting-point on the north. Without that we have seen enough to show that Eupalinos was no ordinary engineer for his time, and that Polycrates was an enterprising ruler who knew how to promote public works and to keep his people out of mischief withal. If he built also the mighty breakwater and the great temple, his reign must have been a strenuous time in Samos. Of the Heræum-first founded by the Argonauts, burned by the Persians, plundered by Verres, visited by Antony and Cleopatra and by King Herod-one lonely column still stands; but enough foundations and bases remain in place to determine the plan and dimensions, which are about double those of the great temple of Zeus at Olympia. Here, as in Argolis, Hera's temple is a solitary place an hour from her city; and the way to it crosses the Imbrasos on whose banks the white-armed goddess was born" under the willow which," according to Pausanias, "still grows in her sanctuary," and which the same veracious traveler declares to be the oldest tree in the Greek world. But the willow is gone, and with it the image of the goddess wrought by Smilis of Ægina. And, indeed, as we strike across the Egean, we are reminded that Icaria and Patmos. Dædalus himself had traveled these wet ways before us. For straight ahead lies Icaria washed by the Icarian sea, both bearing the name of the great artist's unlucky son. Icaria is interesting only for its name's sake, but not so the smaller island to our left. Patmos, like Ithaca, is almost cut in two by the sea, the two parts being held together by a narrow isthmus surmounted by the old Hellenic acropolis. The isle is volcanic, southern half of the island is still sacred TENOS: MODERN of St. John, the after illiterate monks had done their worst; the latter containing the very cave where John saw the Vision. Delos, the holy island. Entering the great sanctuary. From the isle of the Apocalypse one turns not inaptly to the serenest theophany of old Greece "Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung." Behind us curves There our anchor drops amid a nest of granite isles. But it is sacred rather than secular Delos that appeals to the pilgrim in us; and, whether the twin gods only followed the traders' flag or it was the other way about, we care less for Roman and Tyrian warehouses, and the mart where ten thousand slaves were sold in a day, than for the sanctuaries and the still waters of the Sacred Lake. As a proof text on human vanity nothing could be more pointed or more pathetic than this labyrinth of marble wreck which M. Homolle has laid bare and out of which Dr. Dörpfeld (our cicerone upon the ground) builds you up a sacred and secular city wherein he walks about as confidently as in Athens. As we enter the great sanctuary, the well-worn steps bear witness to the thronging pilgrimages of other days; but it is only on leaving the theater behind to climb the Cynthian steep that old old Delos becomes real to us. For, half way up the hill, we come to that rock-rift Cynthian shrine which the young world first roofed over for its young god. Roofed over," we say, as does Chryses in that eldest prayer to this same 66 |