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Mosaics of Grecian History by Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

M >> Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson >> Mosaics of Grecian History




"The dervis, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to abandon to
his comrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while
he retained the casket of that mysterious juice which enabled him
to behold at one glance all the hidden riches of the universe.
Surely it is no exaggeration to say that no external advantage
is to be compared with that purification of the intellectual
eye which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the
mental world; all the hoarded treasures of the primeval dynasties,
and all the shapeless ore of its yet unexplored mines. This is
the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power have been
annihilated for more than twenty centuries; her people have
degenerated into timid slaves; [Footnote: But this is not the
character of the Athenians of the present day.] her language
into a barbarous jargon; her temples have been given up to the
successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but
her intellectual empire is imperishable. And, when those who
have rivaled her greatness shall have shared her fate; when
civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant
continents; when the sceptre shall have passed away from England;
when, perhaps, travelers from distant regions shall in vain labor
to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest
chief--shall hear savage hymns chanted to some misshapen idol
over the ruined dome of our proudest temple, and shall see a
single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten
thousand masts--the influence and glory of Athens will still
survive, fresh in eternal youth, exempt from mutability and decay,
immortal as the intellectual principle from which they derived
their origin, and over which they exercise their control."

Genius of Greece! thou livest; though thy domes
Are fallen; here, in this thy loved abode,
Thine Athens, as I breathe the clear pure air
Which thou hast breathed, climb the dark mountain's side
Which thou hast trod, or in the temple's porch
Pause on the sculptured beauties which thine eye
Has often viewed delighted, I confess
Thy nearer influence; I feel thy power
Exalting every wish to virtuous hope;
I hear thy solemn voice amid the crash
Of fanes hurled prostrate by barbarian hands,
Calling me forth to tread with thee the paths
Of wisdom, or to listen to thy harp
Hymning immortal strains.

Greece! though deserted are thy ports, and all
Thy pomp and thy magnificence are shrunk
Into a narrow circuit; though thy gates
Pour forth no more thy crested sons to war;
Though thy capacious theatres resound
No longer with the replicated shouts
Of multitudes; although Philosophy
Is silent 'mid thy porticos and groves;
Though Commerce heaves no more the pond'rous load,
Or, thund'ring with her thousand cars, imprints
Her footsteps on thy rocks; though near thy fanes
And marble monuments the peasant's hut
Rears its low roof in bitter mockery
Of faded splendor--yet shalt thou survive,
Nor yield till time yields to eternity.
--HAYGARTH.




CHAPTER XVIII.

GREECE SUBSEQUENT TO THE ROMAN CONQUEST.

I. GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS.

The Romans conducted their administration of Greece with much
wisdom and moderation, treating both its religion and municipal
institutions with great respect. As MR. FINLAY says, "Under these
circumstances prudence and local interests would everywhere favor
submission to Rome; national vanity alone would whisper incitements
to venture on a struggle for independence." [Footnote: "History
of Greece from 146 B.C. to A.D. 1864;" by George Finlay, LL.D.]
But the latter induced the Greeks to attempt to regain their
liberties at the time of the first Mithridatic war, about 87
B.C. Sylla, the Roman general, marched into Greece at the head
of a powerful army, and laid siege to Athens, which made a
desperate defence. At last, their resources exhausted, the
Athenians sent a deputation of orators to negotiate with the old
Roman; and it is stated that "their spokesman began to remind
him of their past glory, and was proceeding to touch upon Marathon,
when the surly soldier fiercely replied, 'I was sent here to
punish rebels, not to study history.' And he did punish them.
Breaking down the wall, his soldiers poured into the city, and
with drawn swords they swept through the streets." The severe
losses sustained by Greece in this rebellion were never repaired.
The same historian adds that both parties--Greeks and Romans--
"inflicted severe injuries on Greece, plundered the country,
and destroyed property most wantonly. The foundations of national
prosperity were undermined; and it henceforward became impossible
to save from the annual consumption of the inhabitants, the sums
necessary to replace the accumulated capital of ages which this
short war had annihilated. In some cases the wealth of the
communities became insufficient to keep the existing public works
in repair."

Cilician pirates soon after commenced their depredations, and
ravaged both the main-land and the islands until expelled by
Pompey the Great. The civil wars that overthrew the Roman republic
next added to the desolation of Greece; but on the establishment
of the Roman empire the country entered upon a career of peace
and comparative prosperity. Says a late compiler, [Footnote: Edward
L. Burlingame, Ph.D.] "Augustus and his successors generally
treated Greece with respect, and some of them distinguished her
by splendid imperial favors. Trajan greatly improved her condition
by his wise and liberal administration. Hadrian and the
Antonines venerated her for her past achievements, and showed
their good-will by the care they extended to her works of art,
and their patronage of the schools." It was at this time, also,
that the Christian religion was gaining great victories 'over
the indifference of the people to their ancient rites,' and was
thus essentially changing the moral and intellectual condition
of Greece. Aside from its power to fill the void in the heart
that philosophy, though strengthening the intellect, could not
reach, Christianity bore certain relations to the ancient
principles of government, that commended it to the acceptance
of the Greeks. These relations, and their effects, are thus
explained by DR. FELTON and a writer that he quotes: [Footnote:
"Lecture on "Greece under the Romans."]

"Besides the peculiar consolations afforded by Christianity to
the afflicted of all ranks and classes, there were popular elements
in its early forms which could not fail to commend it to the
regards of common men. It borrowed the designation ecclesia from
the old popular assembly, and liturgy from the services required
by law of the richer citizens in the popular festivities. It
taught the equality of all men in the sight of God; and this
doctrine could not fail to be affectionately welcomed by a
conquered people. The Christian congregations were organized upon
democratic principles, at least in Greece, and presented a
semblance of the free assemblies of former times; and the daily
business of communities was, equally with their spiritual affairs,
transacted under these popular forms. 'From the moment a people,'
says a recent writer, 'in the state of intellectual civilization
in which the Greeks were, could listen to the preachers, it was
certain they would adopt the religion. They might alter, modify,
or corrupt it, but it was impossible they should reject it. The
existence of an assembly in which the dearest interests of all
human beings were expounded and discussed in the language of
truth, and with the most earnest expressions of persuasion, must
have lent an irresistible charm to the investigation of the new
doctrine among a people possessing the institutions and the
feelings of the Greeks. Sincerity, truth, and a desire to persuade
others, will soon create eloquence where numbers are gathered
together. Christianity revived oratory, and with oratory it
awakened many of the characteristics which had slept for ages.
The discussions of Christianity gave also new vigor to the
commercial and municipal institutions, as they improved the
intellectual qualities of the people.'"

Among the imperial friends of Greece, whose reign has been
characterized by some writers as "the last fortunate period in
the sad annals of that country," was the Emperor Julian, known
as "The Apostate." He ascended the throne in 361 A.D.; and,
although he sought to overthrow Christianity and re-establish
the pagan religion, "he founded charities, aimed at the suppression
of vice and profligacy, and was distinguished for his devotion
to the happiness of the people." Well educated in early life,
he became an accomplished and cultured sovereign, "and in many
ways manifested his passionate attachment to Greece, her
literature, her institutions, and her arts."

* * * * *

II. CHANGES DOWN TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

On the establishment of the Eastern empire of the Romans, with
Byzantium for its capital, the Greeks began to exert a greater
influence in the affairs of government, and, outside of the
metropolis itself, the Roman spirit of the administration was
gradually destroyed. In the third and fourth centuries Greece
suffered from invasions by the Goths and Huns, and all apparent
progress was stopped; but during the long reign of Justinian,
from 527 to 565, many of its cities were embellished and fortified,
and the pagan schools of Athens were closed. No farther events
of importance affecting the condition of Greece occurred until
the immigrations of the Slavonians and other barbarous races,
in the sixth and eighth centuries. The population of Greece had
dwindled rapidly, and its revenues were so small that the Eastern
emperors cared little to defend it. Hence these northern migratory
hordes rapidly acquired possession of its soil. Finally this great
body of settlers broke up into a number of tribes and disappeared
as a people, leaving behind them, however, still existing evidences
of their influence upon the country and its inhabitants.


THE COURTS OF CRUSADING CHIEFTAINS.

The next important changes in the affairs of Greece were wrought
by warriors from the West. In 1081 the Norman, Robert Guiscard,
and in 1146 Roger, King of Sicily, conquered portions of the
country, including Corinth, Thebes, and Athens; and in the time
of the fourth Crusade to the Holy Land (1203), when Constantinople
was captured by Latin princes (1204), Greece became a prize for
some of the most powerful crusading chieftains, under whose rule
the courts of Thessaloni'ca, Athens, and the Peloponnesus attained
to considerable celebrity even throughout Europe. "But their
magnificence," says a writer in the Edinburgh Review, "was entirely
modern. It centered wholly round their own persons and interests;
and although the condition of the people was in no respects worse,
in some respects palpably better, still they did but minister
to the glory of the houses of Neri or Acciajuoli, or De la Roche
or Brienne. The beautiful structures of Athens and the Acropolis
were prized, not as heirlooms of departed greatness, but as the
ornaments of a feudal court, and the rewards of successful valor."

The Duchy of Athens was the most interesting and renowned of
these Frankish kingdoms; and in one of his lectures PRESIDENT
FELTON [Footnote: Lecture on "Turkish Conquest of Constantinople."]
points out the traces which this duchy has left here and there
in modern literature. "The fame of the brilliant court of Athens,"
he says, "resounded through the west of Europe, and many a chapter
of old romance is filled with gorgeous pictures of its splendors.
One of the heroines of Boccacio's Decameron, in the course of
her adventurous life, is found at Athens, inspiring the duke
by her charms. Dan'te was a contemporary of Guy II. and Walter
de Brienne; and in his Divina Commedia he applies to Theseus,
King of ancient Athens, the title so familiar to him, borne by
the princely rulers in his own day. Chaucer, too--the bright
herald of English poetry--had often heard of the dukes of Athens;
and he too, like Dante, gives the title to Theseus. Finally, in
the age of Elizabeth, when Italian poetry was much studied by
scholars and courtiers, Shakspeare, in the delightful scenes of
the Midsummer Night's Dream, introduces Theseus, Duke of Athens,
as the conqueror and the lover of Hippol'yta, the warrior-queen
of the Amazons."

Theseus. Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword,
And won thy love, doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.
--Act I. Scene I.


THE TURKISH INVASION.

Some of these Latin principalities and dukedoms existed until
they were swept away by the Turks, who, after the fall of
Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire in 1453, by degrees
obtained possession of Greece.

Then, Greece, the tempest rose that burst on thee,
Land of the bard, the warrior, and the sage!
Oh, where were then thy sons, the great, the free,
Whose deeds are guiding stars from age to age?
Though firm thy battlements of crags and snows,
And bright the memory of thy days of pride,
In mountain might though Corinth's fortress rose,
On, unresisted, rolled th' invading tide!
Oh! vain the rock, the rampart, and the tower,
If Freedom guard them not with Mind's unconquered power.

Where were th' avengers then, whose viewless might
Preserved inviolate their awful fane,
When through the steep defiles to Delphi's height
In martial splendor poured the Persian's train?
Then did those mighty and mysterious Powers,
Armed with the elements, to vengeance wake,
Call the dread storms to darken round their towers,
Hurl down the rocks, and bid the thunders break;
Till far around, with deep and fearful clang,
Sounds of unearthly war through wild Parnassus rang.

Where was the spirit of the victor-throng,
Whose tombs are glorious by Scamander's tide,
Whose names are bright in everlasting song,
The lords of war, the praised, the deified?
Where he, the hero of a thousand lays,
Who from the dead at Marathon arose
All armed, and, beaming on th' Athenian's gaze,
A battle-meteor, guided to their foes?
Or they whose forms, to Alaric's awe-struck eye,
[Footnote: GIBBON says: "From Thermopylae to Sparta the leader
of the Goths (Alaric) pursued his victorious march without
encountering any mortal antagonist; but one of the advocates of
expiring paganism has confidently asserted that the walls of
Athens were guarded by the goddess Minerva with her formidable
aegis, and by the angry phantom of Achilles; and that the
conqueror was dismayed by the presence of the hostile deities
of Greece." But Gibbon characteristically adds, "The Christian
faith which Alaric had devotedly embraced taught him to despise
the imaginary deities of Rome and Athens."--Milman's "Gibbon's
Rome," vol. ii., p. 215.]
Hovering o'er Athens, blazed in airy panoply?

Ye slept, oh heroes! chief ones of the earth--
High demi-gods of ancient day--ye slept.
There lived no spark of your ascendant worth,
When o'er your land the victor Moslem swept;
No patriot then the sons of freedom led,
In mountain-pass devotedly to die;
The martyr-spirit of resolve was fled,
And the high soul's unconquered buoyancy;
And by your graves, and on your battle-plains,
Warriors, your children knelt, to wear the stranger's chains.
--MRS. HEMANS.

* * * * *

III. CONTESTS BETWEEN THE TURKS AND VENETIANS.

Greece was long the scene of severe contests between the Turks
and the Venetians. Athens was first captured by the Turks in
1456, but they were driven from it in 1467 by the Venetians, who
were in turn expelled from the city by the Turks in 1470. But
Venice, as a French historian--COMTE DE LABOURDE--has observed,
"Alone of the states of Europe could feel, from a merely material
point of view, the force of the blow struck at Europe and her
own commerce by the submission of almost the whole of Greece
to Turkish rule;" and this feeling survived many centuries. In
1670 the Turks conquered Crete from the Venetians, and in 1684
the latter retaliated by offensive operations against the
Peloponnesus, which was soon reconquered by the Venetian admiral
Morosini. In 1687 Morosini crowned his successes by the capture
of Athens. The Turkish garrison had retired to the Acropolis,
and the victory is principally of interest on account of the
irreparable injury done to the works of art on that "rock-shrine
of Athens." Although he subsequently sought to evade all
responsibility for the desolation that ensued, it was Morosini
who directed his batteries to hurl their fatal burdens against
the Acropolis, and it was he who afterward robbed it of many
of its treasures. Hitherto the alterations made for military
purposes, and the slight injuries inflicted at various times,
had not marred the general beauty and effect of its buildings;
but when the troops of Venice entered Athens, the Parthenon and
others of that gorgeous assemblage of structures were in ruins,
and the glory of the Athenian Acropolis survived only in the
past. Contrasting its past glory and its present decay, a writer
in a recent Review makes these interesting observations:

"No other fortress has embraced so much beauty and splendor within
its walls, and none has witnessed a series of more startling
and momentous changes in the fortunes of its possessors. Wave
after wave of war and conquest has beaten against it. The city
which lies at its feet has fallen beneath the assaults of the
Persian, the Spartan, the Macedonian, the Roman, the Goth, the
Crusader, and the Turk. Through all these and other vicissitudes
the Acropolis passed, changing only in the character of its
occupants, unchanged in its loveliness and splendor. With a few
blemishes and losses, whether from the decaying taste of later
times or the occasional robberies of a foreign conqueror, but
unaffected in its general aspect, it presented to the eyes of
the victorious Ottoman the same front of unparalleled beauty
which it had displayed in the days of Pericles. To him who looks
upon it now, however, the scene is changed indeed--changed not
only in the loss of its treasures of decorative art (for of many
of these it had been robbed before), but with its loveliest fabrics
shattered, many reduced to hopeless ruin, and not a few utterly
obliterated. Less than two centuries sufficed to bring about
all this dilapidation: less than three months sufficed to complete
the ruin. If the Venetian, by his abortive conquest, inflicted
not more injury on the fair heritage of Athenian art than it had
undergone from all preceding spoliations, he left it, not merely
from the havoc of war, but by wanton subsequent mutilation,
in that state which rendered the recovery of its ancient grace
and majesty impossible."

The Venetians evacuated Athens in 1688, and a few years
subsequently the Peloponnesus was their only possession in Greece.
In 1715 a Turkish army of one hundred thousand men under Al'i
Coumour'gi, the Grand Vizier of Ach'met III., invaded the
Peloponnesus, and first attacked Corinth. Historians tell us
that the garrison, weakened by several unsuccessful attacks,
opened negotiations for a surrender; but, while these were in
progress, the accidental firing of a magazine in the Turkish
camp so enraged the infidels that they at once broke off the
negotiations, stormed and captured the city, and put most of
the garrison, with Signor Minotti, the commander, to the sword.
Those taken prisoners were reserved for execution under the walls
of Nauplia, within sight of the Venetians.

In BYRON'S Siege of Corinth, founded on the historical narrative; a
poetical license is taken, and the death of Minotti and the remnant
of his followers is attributed to the explosion of a powder-magazine
fired by Minotti himself. From the fine descriptions which this poem
contains we extract the following verses:


The Siege and Fall of Corinth.

On dim Cithaeron's ridge appears
The gleam of twice ten thousand spears;
And downward to the Isthmian plain,
From shore to shore of either main,
The tent is pitched, the crescent shines
Along the Moslem's leaguering lines;
And the dusk Spae'hi's bands advance
Beneath each bearded pae'sha's glance;
And far and wide as eye can reach
The turbaned cohorts throng the beach;
And there the Arab's camel kneels,
And there his steed the Tartar wheels;
The Turcoman has left his herd,
The sabre round his loins to gird;
And there the volleying thunders pour,
Till waves grow smoother to the roar.
The trench is dug, the cannon's breath
Wings the far hissing globe of death;
Fast whirl the fragments from the wall,
Which crumbles with the ponderous ball;
And from that wall the foe replies,
O'er dusty plain and smoky skies,
With fires that answer fast and well.
The summons of the Infidel.

The walls grew weak; and fast and hot
Against them poured the ceaseless shot,
With unabating fury sent
From battery to battlement;
And thunder-like the pealing din
Rose from each heated culverin;
And here and there some crackling dome
Was fired before the exploding bomb;
And as the fabric sank beneath
The shattering shell's volcanic breath,
In red and wreathing columns flashed
The flame, as loud the ruin crashed,
Or into countless meteors driven,
Its earth-stars melted into heaven--
Whose clouds that day grew doubly dun,
Impervious to the hidden sun,
With volumed smoke that slowly grew
To one wide sky of sulphurous hue.

Having made a breach in the walls, as morning dawns the Turks
form in line, and wait for the word to storm the intrenchments.
Coumourgi addresses them--the command is given, and with the
irresistible force of an avalanche the infidels pour into Corinth.

Tartar, and Spaehi, and Turcoman,
Strike your tents and throng to the van;
Mount ye, spur ye, skirr the plain,
That the fugitive may flee in vain
When he breaks from the town; and none escape,
Aged or young, in the Christian shape;
While your fellows on foot, in a fiery mass,
Bloodstain the breach through which they pass.
The steeds are all bridled, and snort to the rein;
Curved is each neck, and flowing each mane;
White is the foam of their champ on the bit:
The spears are uplifted, the matches are lit,
The cannon are pointed, and ready to roar,
And crush the wall they have crumbled before:
The khan and the paeshas are all at their post;
The vizier himself at the head of the host.
When the culverin's signal is fired, then on;
Leave not in Corinth a living one--
A priest at her altars, a chief in her halls,
A hearth in her mansions, a stone on her walls.
God and the prophet-Ala Hu!
Up to the skies with that wild halloo!
"There the breach lies for passage, the ladder to scale;
And your hands on your sabres, and how should ye fail?
He who first downs with the red cross may crave
His heart's dearest wish; let him ask it, and have!"
Thus uttered Coumourgi, the dauntless vizier;
The reply was the brandish of sabre and spear,
And the shout of fierce thousands in joyous ire;
Silence--hark to the signal--fire!

* * * * *

As the spring-tides, with heavy plash,
From the cliffs invading, dash
Huge fragments, sapped by the ceaseless flow,
Till white and thundering down they go,
Like the avalanche's snow,
On the Alpine vales below;
Thus at length, outbreathed and worn,
Corinth's sons were downward borne
By the long and oft renewed
Charge of the Moslem multitude.
In firmness they stood, and in masses they fell,
Heaped, by the host of the infidel,
Hand to hand, and foot to foot:
Nothing there, save death, was mute;
Stroke, and thrust, and flash, and cry
For quarter, or for victory,
Mingle there with the volleying thunder,
Which makes the distant cities wonder
How the sounding battle goes,
If with them or for their foes.

From the point of encountering blades to the hilt
Sabres and swords with blood were gilt;
But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun,
And all but the after-carnage done.
Shriller shrieks now mingling come
From within the plundered dome:
Hark to the haste of flying feet,
That splash in the blood of the slippery street;
But here and there, where 'vantage ground
Against the foe may still be found,
Desperate groups of twelve or ten
Make a pause, and turn again--
With banded backs against the wall
Fiercely stand, or fighting fall.

Minotti, though an old man, has an "arm full of might," and he
disputes, foot by foot, the successful and deadly onslaughts
of the Turks. He finally retires, with the remnant of his gallant
band, to the fortified church, where lie the last and richest
spoils sought by the infidels, and in the vaults beneath which,
lined with the dead of ages gone, was also "the Christians' chiefest
magazine." To the latter a train had been laid, and, seizing
a blazing torch, his "last and stern resource,"

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He wrote it in just three weeks, furiously and loudly tap-tap-tapping away on his typewriter on 12ft long reels of paper so that he did not have to stop, just writing writing writing fuelled only, he said, by coffee…

It became one of the most important American novels of the last century and yesterday the original manuscript - a scroll taped together with eight reels of paper - of Jack Kerouac's On The Road was unfurled in the UK for the first time.
Fifty years after the novel which more or less defined the Beat generation, was published in Britain, the Barber Institute in Birmingham is showing what is now one of the most valuable literary manuscripts in existence as part of its exhibition Jack Kerouac: Back On the Road.

The exhibition's curator Professor Dick Ellis said there had been a lot of competition to get the scroll which is itself spending a lot of time on the move, having toured a string of US cities and hitting the road to Rome once this show is over. "We're very excited indeed," he said. "This is an iconic manuscript. It is a record of the huge effort Kerouac put into composing it. It was 20 days of typing 6,500 words a day, flat out, in spontaneous composition. He wanted to record things with the most possible accuracy using the spontaneous technique. His typewriter became a compositional instrument.

"Truman Capote once accused Kerouac of typing rather than writing, I would say he was learning the ability of using the typewriter like a jazz instrument, like a saxophone. He also had an incredible memory. And he had great speed at typing, he became a lightning typist. He came to be able to use a typewriter in a way that has not been seen before or since. Kerouac said he wrote fast because the road was fast."

About 22 of the scroll's 120ft will be on display in a specially built cabinet and while visitors will have to slightly tilt their heads, Ellis believes they will get a much deeper knowledge of what Kerouac was all about. It comes to Birmingham courtesy of Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, who bought it for $2.4m (£1.6m) in 2001 before agreeing to a tour. Of course, in the published novel, there are paragraph breaks but in the scroll, there are none. Kerouac did not have the time. The exhibition runs until January 28.

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