‘When the Turks heard about that they must have been furious.’
‘They were. They brought a case against him, and imposed a heavy fine. But he sent them five times the amount of the fine, in order to win back their goodwill; so they allowed him to return to Troy the next year and continue his digging. In the meantime, though, while the law-suit was going on, he had started to excavate Mycenae.’
Stephanie glanced towards their left where, about two miles away, a lofty foothill rose, commanding the entrance to the valley from which they had just emerged. Upon its crest, some ruins could be seen and further down the slope below it several tourist coaches were parked. ‘And that,’ she murmured, ‘is Mycenae.’
‘That’s it,’ he agreed, ‘and I’m longing to see it. But the horde of tourists now being conducted round it would spoil it for us. We’ll be staying at Navplion for several days, anyway; so we’ll drive out early one morning, then we’ll have the place to ourselves,’ After a moment, he added: ‘Still, we might stop for a bit to take in this wonderful view. Let’s drive up to the Tourist Pavilion and have a drink there.’
Stephanie turned left into a side road, and a few minutes later they were enjoying big tumblers of iced fresh orange juice on the Pavilion’s stoop. For a while they sat in silence, looking out at the blue, sunlit gulf embraced by its long chains of green and brown mountains etched against the pale azure sky; then she said:
‘I think Schliemann’s story is fascinating. What did he do with his treasure after he had saved it from the Turks?’
Robbie raised his eyebrows. ‘Why, he gave it to the museum in Athens. Surely you must have seen it there?’
‘Yes, I suppose I have. But there are such cases and cases of gold ornaments and, knowing nothing about archaeology, I’m afraid I didn’t take in which came from where. I remember those lovely gold drinking cups, though, and all those flat gold masks with such curious features. Did they come from Troy?’
‘No, they came from here. Excavating Mycenae was Schliemann’s greatest triumph. He hit on the Royal burial ground and opened up five or six shaft graves. They contained sixteen corpses and he claimed that one of them was actually that of Agamemnon. Of course, there was nothing to prove it, and it is now believed that they were of people who had lived about three hundred years before the siege of Troy. But out of the graves he got an immense treasure of gold, silver, ivory and precious stones; in fact, by far the greatest treasure that has ever been discovered anywhere in the world. And the ornamentation on these things showed that, in some ways, the artists of the Mycenaean age were superior to those of Athens.’
‘A change of fashion could account for that,’ Stephanie suggested. ‘People always tend, to despise the sort of furniture and art their grandparents admired.’
For the third time that morning Robbie stared at her in amazement, then he said: ‘But the two civilisations were entirely different. There was a gap of at least four hundred years between the end of one and the beginning of the other. Surely you knew that?’
She frowned and gave a little shrug. ‘No. Why should I? When I took on the job of being your secretary, I made no claim to being an authority on ancient history.’
‘Of course not. But you are a Greek and every Greek I’ve met so far is incredibly proud of the achievements of his ancestors, so he—’
‘And so am I,’ she broke in swiftly. ‘But somehow, Robbie, I don’t think you have known many Greek girls. And girls of any nationality are much more interested in living people than what happened in the past.’
‘Then … then,’ his face showed sudden distress, ‘I must have been boring you terribly.’
‘No, no; I didn’t mean that. You are a living person and I’m interested in you. Besides, anyone who talks about a subject that fills him with enthusiasm makes it interesting. Only it’s silly to be surprised that I don’t remember everything I learnt at school. Who does? Naturally, when you tell me these stories, lots of them come back to me; but it’s years since I’ve given a thought to the gods and Heroes and what went on thousands of years ago.’
‘I see. Yes. I ought to have realised that.’
‘I don’t see why you should. Lots of Greek girls probably know nearly as much about these things as you do. It just happens that I have been interested in other subjects. But that doesn’t prevent my enjoying hearing from you now about the ancients.’
‘Do you really mean that?’
‘Of course I do. Counting out the dragons and fire-breathing serpents, you make the Immortals sound wonderfully like real people; and I do want to help you with your book. Tell me now why the civilisation here at Mycenae was so different from that of Athens.’
‘Well, that means going back to Crete. Before Schliemann’s discoveries and those of Sir Arthur Evans, it was thought that no civilisation at all had arisen in this part of the Mediterranean until the Athenians started theirs about seven or eight hundred B.C. But actually, round about three thousand B.C. the Minoans in Crete were as far advanced as Egypt and Assyria. After some hundreds of years a series of great earthquakes set them back for a long time, but about two thousand B.C. the Minoans got their second wind. They became a great naval power, with an empire extending all over the north-eastern Med. from which they drew tribute.
‘Mycenae must have been one of their principal colonies, as from sixteen hundred B.C. a great civilisation began to flourish here, too, with very similar art and culture. Some two hundred years later, another series of earthquakes seems to have knocked out the Minoans altogether, and the Mycenaeans took over. Anyhow, round about twelve hundred B.C. this was the capital of an empire that is believed to have extended all over Greece, Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus, and traded as far west as Sicily. That is why Agamemnon was able to get together such a great Armada and a hundred thousand troops for the siege of Troy.
‘But shortly after the Trojan War, a terrible calamity overtook all the cities in the eastern Med. It was one of the great movements of barbarians from the east, like that of Atilla’s Huns and Genghis Khan’s hordes hundreds of years later. A race called the Dorians came down from the north and looted, burned and murdered wherever they went. The Mycenaean civilisation was entirely wiped out; so was that of the Hittites in Cappadocia, and Greece and Asia Minor were plunged right back into a Dark Age.
‘This Dark Age went on for four hundred years, then the Hellenes gradually began to evolve a new civilisation right from the beginning. It blossomed in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. into the great age of Pericles and the philosophers, but it owed nothing to what had gone before. The extraordinary thing is that the Athenians did not even know about the Empires of the Mycenaeans and the Minoans that had preceded them, and looked on the ruins they had left behind as the buildings of a prehistoric race of giants. In fact, nobody knew about these ancient Empires until less than one hundred years ago, when Schliemann rediscovered Troy, Mycenae and Tiryns; and it wasn’t until the beginning of this century that Sir Arthur Evans revealed to the world that Crete had been a powerful and cultured nation as long before Athens flourished as we are now from the birth of Christ.
‘So you see, until comparatively recently, everyone believed that the works of Homer were only fairy tales, and that Heroditus’s history was mainly imagination. But every year, now, with the deciphering of tablets that are being dug up, they are coming more and more into their own as the chroniclers of real events. The accounts of the gods and heroes were passed on from generation to generation by word of mouth, of course, so the bards embellished them with every sort of exaggeration and fantasy; but there can no longer be any doubt that long ago these characters were living chieftains and champions.
‘As sure as we are sitting here, about three thousand two hundred years ago one of the most beautiful women the world has ever known did elope with her handsome, unscrupulous lover, and it was from down in the bay there that Agamemnon sailed to take command of the hundred thousand men, the majority of whom died before the walls of Troy in t
he ten years’ war that was waged simply to bring her back to Greece.’
Stephanie smiled at him, ‘How could you think, Robbie, that I don’t enjoy listening to you when you find your tongue like that and make things sound so glamorous?’
A few minutes later they were on their way again, down into the plain. The road now ran between orchards of orange and lemon trees, and fields of ancient olive trees, or planted with ripening corn. Passing through the dusty, ramshackle town of Argos, they saw no signs of its ancient glory; but a few miles further on the road ran within a few hundred yards of the great fortress palace of Tiryns, perched on a hill from which rose its cyclopean walls. By twelve o’clock they were entering the pleasant little town of Navplion. Driving right through it, they pulled up at the Hotel Amphitryon.
The hotel had been built only a few years before, and was very different from that in which they had stayed in Corinth. It was constructed so that all its rooms faced the sea, and in its central block it had an eighty-foot-long lounge, the whole of the outer wall of which was of glass, giving a splendid panoramic view over the bay. All the first-floor bedrooms opened on to a wide terrace, furnished with garden furniture, so that visitors could have their breakfast out in the sunshine in dressing gowns or bathing things before going down to the swimming pool that lay across the road between the hotel and the beach.
After lunch they rested for a while, then Stephanie took Robbie out for another driving lesson on the flat stretch of road that curved round the segment of the bay between Navplion and Tiryns. There was little traffic but, when a lorry or a coach did pass them, it churned up clouds of dust, so they were glad of a bath before dinner. They had been given adjacent rooms, and when Stephanie had had her bath she called to Robbie to come out on the terrace to see the sunset. Each room enjoyed a strip of terrace divided from its neighbour by a low, wire fence. Separated only by this, they walked side by side to the far rail.
From Navplion, which is situated on the inner side of a cape, the narrow outlet of the gulf to the sea cannot be seen; so from where they stood, facing west, it looked like a great, placid lake ringed by mountains. The air was so clear that, although the range beyond the opposite shore lay many miles away, it gave the illusion that it was almost within pistol shot. Immediately in front of them, and about three-quarters of a mile distant, there rose from the waters of the gulf a small island. The whole of it was occupied by a little castle, with sheer walls rising from the rocks and a central tower. It added a touch of romance to the scene.
Stephanie had come out in a dressing gown and mules. As she stood now beside Robbie without her high heels, the top of her curls only just came up to his shoulder, and she seemed to him more desirable than ever. For ten minutes, they watched the salmon-and-gold glory of the sunset outlining the long range of peaks as though beyond them the whole country was on fire. Slipping her arm through his, she said:
‘Oh, Robbie, if only you would give up this dangerous business of yours, and if this were not just an interlude, how happy we could be here.’
For a moment he was almost tempted to say that he would. But the shadows were falling, and somewhere up in the cliff that rose steeply behind the hotel an owl hooted. The owl was Athene’s bird, and sacred to her. Its cry was both a warning and a reminder of his pledge.
The past week that he had spent with Stephanie had made him into a different man from the lonely young fellow so lacking in self-confidence who had given that pledge. Now, he would have given a great deal never to have stood on the Acropolis asking Athene’s guidance. But he had, and he knew that he would never again have a quiet mind unless he obeyed her injunction to go through with his self-imposed mission.
17
Of Troy and a Submarine
Although the hoot of Athene’s owl had prevented Robbie from wavering in his resolution, he did his utmost during the next few days to put from him all thoughts of the Czechs and the mystery of their tobacco-oil deal. On their first morning in Navplion, he and Stephanie took things easy. First they explored the little town and, although it was early in the year for bathing, bought swimsuits. Then they walked back beyond the hotel and along the narrow track that ran round the promontory. On its far side they came upon a path that separated the headland from a far higher cliff on the top of which was perched the ancient Acropolis and, by scrambling along it, got back to the town.
Late that afternoon, they drove the few kilometres to Tiryns. The usual coachloads of tourists had gone, so they had it almost to themselves and spent an hour rambling about its ruins. In ancient days the sea had come up to the walls and it had been the port of Mycenae, but now the shore lay nearly two miles distant. The most impressive thing about it was the enormous size of the stones with which the walls were built. There were thousands of them, and many weighed eight to ten tons; so the labour entailed in dragging them up the hill, then lifting them, without mechanical aid, to fit neatly in layer after layer on one another, must have been immense. It was no wonder that the Greeks of the classic age, knowing nothing of the Mycenaean civilisation, called such walls ‘cyclopean’ and believed that they had been built by a race of giants.
Next morning, as the swimming pool had not yet been filled, they braved the sea. Swimming was one of the few things that Nanny Fisher had taught Robbie. She had rightly believed that it would improve the reactions of his muscles, so she had taken him regularly to the baths in Cheltenham, and now that he was fully grown he was a powerful swimmer. The water was on the chilly side, but there was no wind and, as they had left their dip until eleven o’clock, the sun was strong enough to warm them up within a few minutes of leaving the water. During the previous summer, Robbie had been too shy to speak to anyone when bathing on his own from one of the beaches near Athens, and only on three occasions had he been asked to go in a party; so to have a lovely girl for his sole companion was a new delight to him.
On the previous day, they had learned that the little castle on the rock out in the gulf was called Burzi and that, owing to the Greeks’ hatred of state executioners, it had once been used as a retreat for those who had retired; but it was now an hotel. A motor-boat was always available to take visitors out there, so they decided to lunch at it. They found it an intriguing place, as the dome-roofed, white-walled bedrooms on the lower floor had, in the old days, been cells; but each had a window looking out on the sea, which gave them a resemblance to comfortable cabins in a stationary ship. The proprietor was his own chef, and cooked them an excellent meal of freshly caught red mullet.
That afternoon, Robbie decided to go up the great headland that rises in an almost perpendicular cliff behind Navplion to see the remains of the fort that, in ancient times and in later times when the Venetians held that part of Greece, guarded the entrance to the gulf. It was seven hundred feet high, and could be reached only by a flight of eight hundred and fifty-seven steps and several tunnels cut in the face of the rock; so Stephanie smilingly declined to accompany him. As they were going to Mycenae the following day she said that, while he was puffing and blowing his way to the summit, he could think of her sitting in a comfortable chair in the lounge reading his chapter on the Trojan War. Half an hour later she started it, and it read as follows:
People blame Helen for the Trojan War but that isn’t fair, because it was really Zeus who started the whole trouble by refusing to give a judgment and foisting his job off on to a mortal.
Among the Heroes who sailed to get the Golden Fleece there was a chap named Peleus. Owing to a slight misunderstanding about who had been to bed with whom, his first wife had hanged herself and he was looking for another. His eye fell on a Naiad named Thetis; and she must have been quite a girl, as both Zeus and Poseidon had wanted to marry her. But both had hauled off pretty quickly, because Aunty Themis gave them the lowdown that she would produce a son far more powerful than her husband. In view of this, Zeus decided to put a stiff handicap on her by palming her off on to a mortal; so when Peleus came along, the Father of the Gods said:
‘O.K., boy. You can have her.’
Thetis was far from pleased, as she considered herself much too good for a mere King of Thessaly, and she tried all sorts of dodges to get out of this mésalliance. But, as Zeus was backing Peleus, they didn’t work. King Peleus was asked up to Olympus and the couple were given a splendid wedding.
However, the social secretary up there blotted it pretty badly by forgetting to send an invitation to the goddess Eris. She was a very unpleasant type and, as her special province was presiding over Strife, she soon thought up a plan for teaching the other Immortals not to ignore her. Arriving unannounced at the party, she threw a golden apple into the midst of those present with a tag on it that read: ‘Here’s a prize for the best-looking goddess among you.’
The stately Queen of Heaven smiled and said: ‘How kind of Eris to make me such a lovely gift.’ Athene of the classic features snapped: ‘Be your age, Hera, she obviously meant it for me.’ Aphrodite simply gave a little wriggle of her hips and said: ‘Don’t be silly, girls. Ask any of the chaps here and he’ll tell you who that golden apple is for.’
By then the gentle reader may bet that Zeus was tiptoeing away towards the bar. But they called him back and demanded that he judge between them. He shook his head and said: ‘Nothing doing. I’ve trouble enough without setting two of you by the ears. Only last week I had to tie a couple of anvils to Hera’s feet to prevent her following me when I was just popping down to earth to see how an old friend’s wife was getting along; so she doesn’t deserve such a pretty toy. And if I awarded it to either of you others, she would make my life hell for the next six months.’
‘All right, then,’ they said. ‘You must appoint someone to judge for you.’
It was this that triggered off the whole awful business. Zeus probably had a date with one of Thetis’s bridesmaids behind the nearest peak. Anyhow, he wanted to be done with the matter quickly; so, without much thought, he said: ‘On Mount Ida you will find a handsome young herdsman named Paris. He is just the age to have no doubts about “what it takes” most among women. Go and ask him.’
Mayhem in Greece Page 29