Part 8 (1/2)
Oh, thou Parnassus! whom I now survey Not in the frensy of a drea snow-clad through thy native sky, In the wild pomp of ?
The huladly woo thine echoes with his string, Though fro
Oft have I drealorious name Who knows not, knows not man's divinest lore; And now I view thee, 'tis, alas! with shame That I in feeblest accents must adore
When I recount thy worshi+ppers of yore I tremble, and can only bend the knee; Nor raise aze beneath thy cloudy canopy In silent joy, to think at last I look on thee
CHAPTER XVI
Vostizza--Battle of Lepanto--Parnassus--Livadia--Cave at Trophonius-- The Fountains of Oblivion and Memory--Chaeronea--Thebes--Athens
Vostizza was then a considerable town, containing between three and four thousand inhabitants, chiefly Greeks It stands on a rising ground on the Peloponnesian side of the Gulf of Corinth I say stands, but I know not if it has survived the war The scenery around it will always htful, while the associations connected with the Achaian League, and the important events which have happened in the vicinity, will ever render the site interesting
The battle of Lepanto, in which Cervantes lost his hand, was fought within sight of it
What a strange thing is glory! Three hundred years ago all Christendo with the battle of Lepanto, and yet it is already probable that it will only be interesting to posterity as an incident in the life of one of the private soldiers engaged in it This is certainly no very mournful reflection to one who is of opinion that there is no per to the comforts and pleasures of mankind Military transactions, after their immediate effects cease to be felt, are little productive of such a result Not that I valueof this opinion; on the contrary, I auardedly said, 'that vice loses half its rossness'; but public virtue ceases to be useful when it sickens at the calamities of necessary war The ive way to corruption The evils and dangers of war seem as requisite for the preservation of public morals as the laws themselves; at least it is the melancholy moral of history, that when nations resolve to be peaceful with respect to their neighbours, they begin to be vicious with respect to themselves But to return to the travellers
On the 14th of December they hired a boat with fourteen men and ten oars, and sailed to Salona; thence they proceeded to Crisso, and rode on to Delphi, ascending the y path towards the north-east After scaling the side of Parnassus for about an hour, they saw vast ments of stone, piled in a perilous manner above them, with niches and sepulchres, and relics, and remains on all sides
They visited and drank of Castalia, and the prophetic font, Cassotis; but still, like every other traveller, they were disappointed
Parnassus is an emblem of the fortune that attends the votaries of the Muses, harsh, rugged, and barren The woods that once waved on Delphi's steep have all passed away, and ht in vain
A few traces of terraces may yet be discovered--here and there the stus are nu the cliffs, but it is a lone and dismal place; Desolation sits with Silence, and Ruin there is so decayed as to be alle e; the cloven summit appears most conspicuous when seen from the south The northern view is, however, uishable, and seven lower peaks suggest, in contemplation with the summits, the fancy of so many seats of the Muses These peaks, nine in all, are the first of the hills which receive the rising sun, and the last that in the evening part with his light
Fro in the course of the journey the confluence of the three roads where OEdipus slew his father, an event with its hideous train of fatalities which could not be recollected by Byron on the spot, even after the tales of guilt he had gathered in his Albanian journeys, without agitating associations
At Livadia they re which they examined with more than ordinary minuteness the cave of Trophonius, and the strealed waters of the two fountains of Oblivion and Me the battlefield of Chaeronea (the birthplace of Plutarch), and also many of the alhbourhood, the travellers proceeded to Thebes--a poor town, containing about five hundred wooden houses, with two shabbyworthy of notice in it is a public clock, to which the inhabitants direct the attention of strangers as proudly as if it were indeed one of the wonders of the world There they still affect to show the fountain of Dirce and the ruins of the house of Pindar
But it is unnecessary to describe the nus of Greece, which every hour, as they approached towards Athens, lay more and more in their way Not that h ht far froed; not for their beauty, or on account of the veneration which the sight of them inspired, but because they would burn into better lime than the coarser rock of the lulls Nevertheless, abased and returned into rudeness as all things were, the presence of Greece was felt, and Byron could not resist the inspirations of her genius
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Ireat; Who now shall lead thy scatter'd children forth And long-accustoe uncreate?
Not such thy Sons hilo dooallant spirit shall resume, Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call thee from the tomb!
In the course of the afternoon of the day after they had left Thebes, in attaining the summit of a mountain over which their road lay, the travellers beheld Athens at a distance, rising loftily, croith the Acropolis in the ina blue in the distance
On a rugged rock rising abruptly on the right, near to the spot where this interesting vista first opened, they beheld the remains of the ancient walls of Phyle, a fortress which commanded one of the passes from Baeotia into Attica, and famous as the retreat of the chief patriots concerned in destroying the thirty tyrants of Athens