Trafalgar School - Echoes Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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On the other side of the hall is a struggling mass of Centaurs and Lapiths with Apollo, an almost perfect figure, directing or controlling the conflict. The severity and dignity of these figures are only equalled by their simplicity and perfect harmony. At the back of the Hall are two of the greatest treasures of Greek art, the Hermes of Praxitiles, and the Victory of Paeonius. We looked at these glorious statues forever young, forever fair , and then glanced down the valley and in a moment it was peopled — for me at least — with the splendid past, and I found myself wondering what men or gods are these! Then the sun sank, and turning away we drove back through the gathering dusk past the humble shacks, the now deserted fields, the little churches. The contrast between the past and present struck us sharply. But the sky was brilliant with stars, and looking up we felt the gods were still in Greece. Our next visit was to Athens. Rather to our surprise we found it quite a modern city with white houses, red roofs, handsome public buildings, broad boulevards lined with pepper-trees and fine open squares. We had forgotten that this Athens was built within the last seventy years, and that its chief function is to be a sort of frame for the Acropolis. This is a flat rock rising abruptly almost in the middle of the city, and crowned with a temple in honour of Athene. It is called the Parthenon which is the Greek word for [20]

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we rattled past a little church of the Byzantine type, and sitting near it was the Greek priest in his long white robes and high, round black headdress. And then suddenly we swung up the hill of Cronus, crossed a bridge under which a tiny stream trickled in an exhausted way. Someone called out excitedly That must be the Alphaeus! We rounded a corner and found ourselves looking down on the broad and rich valley of Olympia. My first impression was one of exquisite peace and beauty. It was one of the few places in Greece where we saw trees — pines, myrtles, turpentine trees, and a kind of rock-rose. Green banks rose on either side on which sheep and goats peacefully browsed. It was a pastoral scene, the whole bathed in that strangely trans- figuring light which to my mind makes Greece a land apart. Then we remembered that this peaceful valley had once been a vast sanctuary to Zeus, a meeting place for the entire Greek race, where all forgot their feuds and fra- ternised in the worship of strength, skill and beauty. For it was here that the great Olympic games were held every four years from 776 B.C. till the fourth century A.D. In the spring when the date was fixed, heralds went through Greece proclaiming the fact. All wars had to cease for the time being, and none dared to molest the competitors or spectators on their way to Olympia. For more than a thousand years this valley must have been thronged every four years with athletes, poets, princes, sculptors and musi- cians, and all they would bring in their train. I tried to imagine the running, the wrestling, the boxing, and above all, the chariot-races. What sights this valley must have seen! No wonder they kindled the soul of Pindar into song and inspired the masterpieces of Phidias and Praxitiles. In the stadium, recently excavated, w e saw the very stones sunk flush !with the earth where the runners got a grip with their toes to be ready for the start. The Palaestra or gymnasium, where candidates trained for a month before the events, the Bouleu- terion where they took oaths to obey all the rules of the games, the Prytaneum where the winners were feasted and crowned with wild olive — there are traces of all these still left. But what interested me most were the grey ruins of the ancient temple to Hera, Mother of the Gods, and close to it the huge broken pillars of the temple to Zeus. I thought of the god ' s colossal statute in gold and ivory — forty feet high — which once stood there. It perished long ago, but the splendid marble figures which were once in the eastern and western pediments of the temple, have recently been excavated, and are now in the museum on the top of the hill. We hurried to see them, and the past sud- denly came flashing back to us as we gazed at these grave and lovely men and women in sculptured marble, as fresh and true today as they were over two thousand years ago. On the left is a striking scene showing two groups preparing for a chariot race. In the centre stands Zeus between the girl Hippodameia with her young lover, Pelops, on the one hand, and the girl ' s parents on the other. The father has challenged all his daughter ' s suitors to a chariot-race, and if he wins, he slays them for their presumption in aspiring to his daughter ' s hand. Here, however, he meets his match, for Pelops is the victor, and the father, though he does not know it, is going out to meet his doom. Chariots, horses and servants are grouped on either side, among them an old man whose face of despair plainly shows that he foresees his master ' s fate. [19]

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maiden, and is the remains of the loveliest thing in Greek architecture. They say no one is in Athens more than a quarter of an hour before he hurries up to see it and we were no exception. On our way we stopped at the open-air stone theatre of Dionysus, cut out of the side of the hill. It is splendidly preserved, and plays can still be acted there. Soon we had climbed to the top, passing on our left the Erechtheum, a temple built in the Ionic style with slender delicately ornamented columns and an exquisite porch where every pillar is carved in the shape of a maiden. Facing it is the Parthenon built in simple Doric style with seventeen pillars on either side and eight at either end. Although it is over two thousand years old, it gives the impression of something living and lovely. It has the supple straightness that makes all other straight things look stiff. It is straight like a living thing, like a tree or the stem of a flower. And yet there is not a single straight line in the building. Look along the steps, and you will see a slight convex curve along what you had taken to be a straight line, while the columns have an almost imperceptible curve inward, and it has been calculated that if prolonged a mile into the air they would meet in a point. This temple, the home of a goddess, was treated as though it were sculpture, and with sure instinct every line, every pillar was adjusted, with the result that no two pillars are alike. These exquisite proportions are one cause of its beauty; another is its colour. Built of the purest Pentelic marble it is the colour of flesh — a rosy-gold mellowed by twenty- four centuries of exposure to Greek sunlight. And no words can give an adequate idea of what this light is like. It has a certain luminous quality which for revealing and intensifying beauty is unlike anything else in the world. I stayed up there on the Acropolis all the afternoon, watching the light deepen from golden to amethyst, and then to violet and seeing the Porch of the Maidens spring- ing into new loveliness in the changing light. Then the sun dipped over the bay of Salamis; a Greek guard blew a trumpet as a sign that all should depart. I took one last look around me, knowing that from this point I could see everything that was significant in Greek life. Here I was on the rock-like citadel with the city at my feet, and beyond, the plain, ringed round by mountains, open only to the sea. Across the bay lay Salamis where the Persians had been trapped twenty-four centuries ago and close by, the stirring sea always a challenge to the Greeks. I felt I was in the very heart of Greece, beside the loveliest thing she had produced, and surrounded by all the natural features which conditioned her history and existence. Thermopylae, high in the mountains, was the next place we visited. But the cele- brated Pass, once held by Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans, is no longer a pass but a plain. The river has brought down so much deposit that what was once a narrow- passage between the high cliffs and the river is now a wide plain. However the famous hot springs which give the place its name are still there, and we could not resist dipping our hands and feet in water where once the Spartans may have refreshed themselves for battle. Then we sailed northward to Thessaly, and coming to a picturesque village called Tsagarada, we got mules, and attended by our muleteers — mine was called Dmitri — we went swiftly enough up the shaggy side of Mount Pelion. I was thrilled at the thought of going up this mountain. It was here that Achilles had been brought up; it had [21]