From the Elephant's Back: Collected Essays & Travel Writings

by Lawrence Durrell

  Cross to the opposite side of the island and see Kameiros. Here the archaeologist’s spade has exposed the dazzling slender columns and walls of the Hellenic town. It lies in the honey-gold afternoon light, listening to the melodious ringing of water in its own deep cisterns. The light has a peculiar density and weight, as if the blue sea had stained it with some of its own troubled dyes. The amphitheatre is littered with chipped inscriptions. One can make out the names of some of the city fathers: Solon, Aristides, Aristomachos.[11]

  Phileremo lies inland, behind the modern village of Trianda. Standing on its now desolate and empty acropolis, one can look out towards the sea across the delightful green countryside that Timocreon[12] knew as a child. From the inner terraces the ground slopes clear away to Maritza, where the gutted modern Italian aerodrome lies.[13] Phileremo is within walking distance of the modern town.

  At some time before 408 BC disaster overtook the three ancient cities. A great earthquake tore them to pieces. It was then that the inhabitants decided to move eastward and found a joint town which would offer them safety against the hazards of nature. The flat-ended promontory may have suggested a building-site which would prove earthquake-proof. At all events Grecian Rhodes was built in 408. It was perhaps the earliest example of over-all town-planning, for it was designed by the famous Hippodamus[14] who was responsible for the harbour of ancient Piraeus. The city that he created was, by all accounts, staggering in its simplicity and beauty. So selective a judge as Strabo[15] himself preferred it even to Alexandria and Rome. Its length is given as eighty stades,[16] and its inhabitants numbered some two hundred thousand. The carefully grouped buildings and temples ran round the semicircle of the natural amphitheatre, leading down to the three harbours. At their back, on the little hillock today known as Monte Smith, stood a temple and acropolis encircled by a sacred wood. Pliny[17] states that the town was decorated by some three thousand lovely statues of which one hundred were colossi.

  What remains today? Apart from the ancient stadium where the flocks of goats still idly browse, scarcely anything, to remind one of Rhodes’ ancient splendour. On the crown of Monte Smith a few emplacements cut in the rock; towards Simbuli on the western side of the town, some shallow graves. In the centre of the old walled town one stumbles upon some broken drums belonging to an unknown temple. Hard by the Gate of St. Paul a few stone ramps remain to recall the famous Rhodian shipyards which turned out those marvellous triremes. Everything else has been swallowed in the slow succession of earthquakes which began some fifty years after the setting up of the great sun-god, the statue to Helios which we know as the Colossus. Today as one stands above the little theatre which is let into the walls of the stadium and looks down the softly inclining planes of orchard and meadow, it is the mediaeval town alone that one sees: the windmills softly turning against the sky, the great buttresses of the Crusader outworks—and the slender minatory fingers of the mosques which finally triumphed over it all. It is the Rhodes that Richard the Lionheart saw in 1191, when his fleet put into the harbour for a ten-day spell, en route for the shores of Cyprus.[18]

  But what of the more recent history of Rhodes? For three hundred years the island endured the kindly but negligent rule of the Ottoman Turks. Yet it says something for the tenacious nationalism of the Greeks that they retained, and retain to this day, their distinction of tongue, creed, and costume. Throughout the centuries the vague and shifting shape of a possible Union remained with them—a Union which today has become fact and not fancy.[19] Today there are some forty thousand Greeks on Rhodes and some six thousand Turks; though these figures will be altered when all the refugees have returned, the proportions will still be representative. Greek island culture remains predominant throughout the Dodecanese.[20]

  In 1912 the Italians annexed Rhodes, together with some fourteen other islands of the group,[21] and for a while the island remained merely a political counter for the Great Powers to bargain with. As late as 1923, however, an Italian governor of the island (more or less exiled there for his republican sympathies) saw its possibilities as a tourist resort, and started restorations side by side with modern developments. The island was encircled with some 150 kilometres of first-class motor-road which is today intact. Extensive reforestation was begun to check the soil-erosion which has destroyed the productivity of nearly every Aegean island. The ancient monuments were carefully and lovingly restored. Local production was increased by the development of state-subsidized farms. Though the local Greeks suffered from expropriation and petty despotism, the island itself became extremely rich and beautiful. A handsome modern town sprang up outside the mediaeval walled town; and these labours were crowned by the building of a great hotel which even today must rank among the best in Europe.

  The name of the Governor responsible for much of this labour was Mario Lago.[22] His successor,[23] who replaced him in 1936, managed within a comparatively short time to ruin more than half of the town by tasteless and vulgar restoration, and to exhaust the flourishing revenues of the island. Yet despite the handiwork of this parvenu (who was a close personal friend of Mussolini) the island today retains enough of its natural loveliness to delight the eye and mind of the traveller in search of Mediterranean beauties; and more than its fair share of creature comforts to humour the exacting. Even the wartime invasion of the German and Italian armies—when the island became simply a cupboard for the hungry soldiery—did not completely ruin Rhodes. After a two-year interim spell of patient if often improvised work under the British Military Administration the Rhodians today feel confident that before long the normal life of the island will have recovered from the rigours and ravages of war. Much of the damage to buildings and monuments has been repaired. Deforestation has been halted. It remains to be seen whether the incoming Greek administration will be given the necessary budget to guarantee the upkeep of the island. The existing works and amenities of the town, however, make it the fourth or fifth town of Greece now that the Dodecanese are being incorporated into the Aegean group of islands.

  A subject of frequent and admiring comment is the Rhodian character itself, which for gentleness, hospitality, and moderation is a model that might profitably be followed by the rest of the Balkans. The metropolitan Greeks themselves have been amazed at the absence of party strife on the political plane, and at the high degree of public order and civic responsibility apparent in the behaviour of the islanders. Cynics have been apt to suggest that Italian rule was harsh enough to break the natural Greek ebullience of the native character; while politicians point out that the long divorce from metropolitan affairs has made the Rhodian ill-informed about home issues. In justice to Rhodes it should be pointed out that moderation and poise was a remarked characteristic of the ancient Rhodians; while on behalf of the modern one might with justice quote the opinion of Newton, that garrulous English archaeologist and consul whose Travels and Discoveries in the Levant makes an ideal companion for the modern traveller.[24] In 1865 he was able to write: “The Rhodian peasant does not fatigue his guest with cumbrous hospitality as the Greek bourgeois does; he does not poison him with raki, clog him with sweetmeats, cram him with pilaff and sicken him with narguilehs…I have generally found them thrifty, gentle and obliging in their intercourse with strangers and with one another, and far more truthful and honest than any Greeks I have ever had to deal with.”[25] It would be impossible to contest the truth of that judgement even today.

  To the scholar Rhodes offers a variety of instruction; for the Hellenist, Kameiros (Homer’s “golden Kameiros”[26]), Lindos and Phileremo, for the student of Byzance the almost inaccessible churches of Funtocli and Alaerma, for the mediaevalist the incomparably rich material in Rhodes town, and in the frowning Crusader forts with which the long green coastline of Rhodes is studded—Pheraclea, dour Monolithos, Castello, and Villanova. The abundance of material precludes any general view of the island to all who cannot spare six months of study: for the different periods overlap each other closely, and the his
torical events seem at first inextricably entangled. The student of church architecture will be able to study the mosques which rise from the foundations of Byzantine churches, or to read of the Ottoman sieges from the illuminated Arabic texts in the Turkish library. A bowshot from where Demetrius of Macedonia[27] launched in 304 BC the attack which gained him the appellation Poliorcetes (“Besieger”)—the site was subsequently the Grand Master’s[28] garden, and after that the cemetery of the Murad Reis mosque—he will be able, in the cool deep shade of the courtyard, to speculate on the fate of the exiled satiric poet Hascmet, who lies buried there: for Rhodes was also a place of exile for the Turks as it had once been for the Romans.[29]

  Much good paper and ink have been employed by the historians in describing the famous Colossus of Rhodes; the curious traveller who attempts to find his way through the subject by visiting the excellent archaeological library of Rhodes may well be forgiven if he comes away with rather a headache, for the subject has been one of violent controversy among specialists. Perhaps a brief summary of known facts, shorn of conjecture, would be of service to him. The Colossus was designed to commemorate the tremendous siege of antiquity when the Rhodians repulsed the forces of Demetrius Poliorcetes. It took twelve years to design and mount and it was finally thrown down by an earthquake which demolished Rhodes (c. 222 BC). The statue was about 105 feet in height. Its position is not known with any certainty, but the story that it “straddled the harbour” is a medieval concoction. No ancient authority makes this allegation. One of the most popular sites suggested is the present site of the tower of St. Nicholas fronting Mandraccio harbour. After its fall the great statue lay on the ground for some nine centuries. It was finally broken up by the Arabs in the seventh century AD and the metal carried off to Syria where it was put up to auction and knocked down to a Jew from Ur.[30] The amount of the successful bid is unrecorded. It is recorded that several hundreds of camels were needed to load the scrap. Torr,[31] by far the best historian who has written about Rhodes, is inclined to the idea that the Colossus occupied a site somewhere within the Deigma, the oriental bazaar with which Hippodamus beautified the ancient town. The field of conjecture is, however, open to everyone who dares to venture into it.

  Nor will the student of folk-lore be disappointed, for the peasantlore of Rhodes does not seem to have suffered from the exile endured by the Dodecanese. Rather one might imagine that the long seclusion has caused the legends and proverbs of the Rhodians, as it were, to ferment—for solitude and separation quicken memory. Certain it is that whoever hunts for a continuity of culture between Rhodes and Greece will find not an element missing; the nereids, for example, which haunt the springs and waterfalls of Greece, also exist here in great abundance. Everywhere in the long verdant valleys behind Monte Smith one stumbles upon the daisy-starred glades which are their dancing-floors, and every village has some tale to tell about them. Once in Aphando, for example, a shepherdess who had lately borne a child was walking up the hill to her fold when she fell in with a body of nereids. She began to run but they chased and easily overtook her. She was in mortal terror—and with good reason; for whoever gets dragged into a nereid’s dance will not be allowed to stop until she falls dead from exhaustion. However, it so happened that the shepherdess was carrying on her back an embroidered mule-bag with some of the baby’s swaddling clothes in it. This saved her, for when the nereids laid hands upon her they recoiled, screaming: “It burns, how it burns!”[32]

  Among the other tenacious peasant survivals which argue an ancient Greek origin is the modern Pan, who under the name of kallikanzaros makes life a misery for the housewife by his tricks no less in Rhodes than elsewhere in Greece. Here, however, he is often known as the Kaous, a word which seems to derive from the Modern Greek verb meaning “to burn,” and which conveys a pleasing evocation of brimstone and saltpetre. The Kaous is usually encountered at lonely crossroads, or late at night on dark footpaths. Everyone dreads such encounters, for the Kaous is as malicious as he is powerful. Usually he sneaks up behind you and asks hoarsely “Feathers or lead?” You must reply with the greatest circumspection. If you say “Feathers” you may escape, but if you say “Lead” he will leap on your back and throttle you, or ride you all over the landscape like a horse, thrashing you with a stick. In general there is nothing you can do about it; though it is recorded that once a particularly wide-awake villager from Alaerma managed to catch a Kaous by its two pointed ears. Holding it thus he took it home and burnt a hole in its hairy leg with a red-hot iron. The Kaous shrieked and fainted, while out of the wound crawled a mass of small snakes which were killed one by one. This treatment proved beneficial, for the Kaous awoke towards morning healed from its insanity, and muttered: “Deeply, deeply I slept; and lightly, lightly I’ve woken.”

  Some idea of the continuity of myth and belief may be gathered from the story of Helen of Troy and the peasant legend which preserves it to this day. According to one version Helen survived her husband and was driven from her home by her stepsons. It was in Rhodes that she took refuge, where, the story goes on, Polyxo found and hanged her from a tree to avenge himself for the loss of Tlepolemos during the Trojan War. History records a grove of trees at Lindos which were held sacred to “Helen Dendritis” and which preserved the memory of this beautiful and ill-fated woman as a tree goddess. But today Helen Dendritis has disappeared, together with her grove of trees. Instead the modern peasant tells the story of how once a great queen called Helen hung herself because she was unhappy. She hung herself from the tall branches of a pine, using a rainbow for a cord. And to this day the rainbow in some parts of the island is called “Helen’s Cord”—surely a beautiful transition from one myth to another.

  I have quoted these examples of folk-lore to indicate that despite its long separation from Greece, Rhodes may still fairly claim to be within the main current of Greek peasant culture. The songs and legends of the island have never been fully harvested though several industrious workers in this field have made a start, and the average traveller who knows a little modern Greek will have no difficulty in unearthing new ones. The stronghold of Greek lore and habit is undoubtedly the mountain village of Embona which lies at the foot of Mount Atabyron. Here the girls wear a distinctive dress which recalls Crete more than anything else, for their legs are cased in soft jack-boots which guard them against the dense and prickly scrub of their native highlands. On the slopes of the mountain which was once sacred to Taurine Zeus they farm their orchards and rocky holdings. The natives of Embona are celebrated for their dancing and no local fiesta is deemed complete unless a visiting body of Emboniatisses, as they are called, put in an appearance and dance the native dance known as the sousta. This is a sight not easily forgotten; for the traditional costume, with its violent colours, and the speed of the dance produce the most delightful kaleidoscopic effects, as of a great multi-coloured fan opening and shutting. Several villages of Rhodes are celebrated for their dancers, but Embona above any other; and the cry that goes up when the mountain dancers arrive at any lowland fiesta proves conclusively enough that the Rhodians willingly concede the highest honours to them. “The Embona girls have arrived,” cry the peasants; “now we shall see some dancing.”

  The only other mountain of any size apart from Mount Atabyron is the easily accessible and now rather domesticated Profeta. The modern road-system has made it so easy of access that here in spring one may wander for hours through the scented pine-glades, or lie upon a dazzling carpet of anemones and peonies. But its peculiar atmosphere has already been recorded in the beautiful poem of Mr. Sacheverell Sitwell[33] which the curious reader will stumble upon in Canons of Giant Art.[34] The evocation of Profeta and its goddess is far more complete and moving than it could ever be in prose:

  It was her sacred mountain, in the heart of mist,

  A wood of wild rocks where every echo called,

  Where words bent back at you as soon as spoken

  From rocks like houses or like sudden islands;<
br />
  Here stags wandered,…

  Indeed the stags still wander on Profeta, though their numbers have been sadly depleted by the Germans and by neglect during the war years.

  These notes have hinted at the enjoyment that Rhodes offers to the scholar and to the student of folk-lore. Another kind of traveller will no doubt be as interested in the wild flowers which star the green slopes of the hills in spring—the sheets of narcissus and anemone; he will prefer to see contemporary Rhodes, with the whitewashed villages whose orchards and gardens are everywhere stabbed with the scarlet dots of the hibiscus. It is for him that we should record the existence of nearly a hundred different varieties of orchid, and of a rare black peony which may be seen occasionally on the topmost slopes of Monte Profeta. And it is for him also that we should record the existence of a spring at Salaco whose waters exercise a magnetic charm over the wayfarers who quench their thirst at it. The legend says that whoever drinks at Salaco is bound to return to Rhodes, marry a Rhodian girl and spend his life in the island.

  Sea-communication with Alexandria and Beirut has already been restored; a regular air-service from Athens was opened in June of this year. Rhodes, then, is going to be easily accessible both from Egypt and from metropolitan Greece. There could be no lovelier place to spend the cool Mediterranean spring, or the parched and sunny August weather which ushers in the Day of St. Demetrius, upon which the casks of village wine are broached according to custom. The Emperor Tiberius, whose judgement in so many things was at fault, never hesitated when it came to the choice of Rhodes as a place of exile. The contemporary traveller will have no difficulty in endorsing his judgement when he visits this paragon among the islands of the Levant.