The Greek Islands

by Lawrence Durrell

  In Crete, it was considered a shame for a boy to possess no knightly lover, and a great honour for him to be desired by many. Both parties, the Cretans thought, would profit morally and spiritually from such a union. As in a code of chivalry, each was inspired to do his best in order to prove his mettle, to become an agathos anir (virtuous man). Early heroic tales seem to take this relationship into account, for the wondrous deeds of Heracles were carried out in honour of a male lover, Eurystheus. Repelling a wooing knight was considered a blot on one’s character. Plutarch relates the story of how Aristodamos, a knight, lost patience with an obstinate boy and struck him down with his sword – by which love act the knightly lover transferred his chivalric virtue to his page.

  It is difficult for us who still dwell in the shadow of Freud to realize what all this meant to the people who lived with it then. There are hints of a similar predisposition in the English public school codes of ‘friendship’, though such friendships were implicit, and not institutionalized, while pederasty was and is frowned upon. Moreover, since psychoanalysis raided the larder of the unconscious we have developed notions about narcissism and its effects which the old Greeks would have found bizarre in the extreme. What would they have made of these remarks by Stekel?

  In each of us there lives another who is the precise counterpart of ourselves. In the other sex we love our counterpart and through the love for our own sex we endeavour to run away from that counterpart … The mother instinct and the hatred of motherhood are not split in the human heart. The homosexual woman always shows her hatred of motherhood … What does the homosexual substitute for procreation? In the first place the seeking of himself, his like, and then a purposeful sterility. He renounces the immortality implied in procreation; but many homosexual artists achieve immortality in the realm of spiritual endeavour. We have seen with what powerful hatred the homosexual encounters his own environment; whether he turns his hatred towards the other sex, his own, or even against himself, he remains the inveterate hater trying to reconcile the feelings of man’s aboriginal nature with the ethical requirements of later culture … The truth is that he is unable to love; that is a peculiarity he shares with all artists who are also incapable of loving. Poets formulate a longing for love because they are incapable of it, and this drives them towards the love adventure which proves in vain. But the poet differs from the criminal because he is aware of his incapacity as a grave handicap, and out of hatred and scorn he fashions a love for humanity. It is the function of sexuality to conquer this basic hatred.

  A Greek would have been puzzled and perhaps disdainful because we have not invented a mechanism to cope with this. Also, of course, our view still smells of Pauline repression, of Aboriginal Sin, however much it is disguised in frigid medical terms. The truth perhaps is that nature itself cures imbalances of population, blindly tipping the scales down when it proves necessary, on one side or the other; and so the customs of different peoples at different times vary.

  To return to Sappho: at the moment we do not know the real truth about her, and perhaps we never will; and if we think of the waves of puritan counter-propaganda – such as the one that produced Clement of Alexandria’s attacks on ‘obscene’ gnostics – which always follow relatively calm political periods, we should be warned that our present estimates of the lady may well have been distorted by some witch-burning group of now forgotten historians. Of course fashions in love change, just as fashions in poetry do. I knew an Italian surrealist poet who won a fitful glory by describing the transports of Zeus and Hera as ‘the mating of surgical pianos’. I wonder what Sappho would have thought about that. We are also told that she was after all a married woman, and indeed had a daughter of her own. Her little group may have been as innocent as the ‘finishing school’ that the impoverished Duchess of X set up in Kensington, to gain a few guineas and mould the socialites of the future from the adolescent children of her friends.

  The aristocratic streak in Lesbos seems to have started very early; at one time the nobility liked to trace its descent from Agamemnon, who is supposed to have conquered the island during the Trojan War. Once, the island was called Pentapolis, or the Five Cities (Mytilini, Eressos, Methymna, Antissa and Pyrrha); but her huge natural harbours made it unnecessary for the Lesbians to make the same sort of decision as the Rhodians, in founding their capital. Lesbos was always rich economically, and also, perhaps because of this, politically; it was once a prominent Aeolian settlement, with colonies in the Troad and in Thrace, and with Pergamum not far away. To some extent, one still feels her pre-eminence today, for Lesbos is far more beautiful and colourful than the little group of islands which surround it – certainly than the two northern ones, Samothrace and Lemnos. It was here, in the storming of Mytilini that Julius Caesar first made his mark as a soldier, rescuing one of his comrades under enemy fire, for which he was awarded a crown of oak leaves.

  Nevertheless, this corner of the Aegean is the home of many of history’s greatest fiascos, which stretch from Troy to the Dardanelles campaign. One of the more dramatic disasters occurred during the Peloponnesian War and was caused by Lesbian arrogance. The ruling oligarchy forced a revolt against Athens, which cost the island dear – a two-year siege, followed by a savage sentence upon the islanders which was only avoided because of a gorgeous bit of rhetoric by a certain Demodotus. Cleon had already whipped up the feelings of the Athenian Assembly with his demand for condign punishment – every man in Lesbos to be put to death, every woman and child to be sold into slavery; indeed, the ship bearing these instructions had already left. Then Demodotus took the floor and urged cooler reflection on this quite preposterous judgment. Now, anyone who can persuade a Greek politician to cool his temper and moderate his judgment is a remarkable person, and Demodotus well deserves the generous space which Thucydides accords the text of the speech in his account of what happened. So marked was its effect that the Athenians at once sent off a second ship to countermand the original orders, limiting judgment to the ringleaders of the plot. With every rower’s muscle straining, the relief ship arrived just in time to avoid the unnecessary slaughter, which was just as well; the decision was far-sighted as well as generous, for at the time it was taken Athens was locked in a death-grip with the Spartans.

  To realize the contrast between Lesbos and the rest of the group, you have only to cross the water to Lemnos, a damnably dull island, although there are one or two little items of its classical history worth recording. Here, for example, the brutish Hephaestus set up his forge and bellows. Here he consummated that disastrous marriage with Aphrodite – how did they do it? He was horned like a Medusa in less than no time – and rather surprisingly the women of Lemnos took issue with Aphrodite on his behalf. Of course, it was fatal to incur the wrath of the love-goddess; Aphrodite punished them with a spell which made them repugnant to their husbands, and finally, in despair, the sex-starved women set upon their menfolk and murdered them. There must be a moral in all this, but I confess it escapes me. Happily for the widows, the Argonauts were just passing, so the question of finding newer and abler men was solved and the island instantly re-populated. Another odd visitor was Philoctetes, he of the gangrened leg. Ernle Bradford has suggested that his legend may have got itself mixed up with that of the famous healing earth of Lemnos, which was considered so valuable that only a small portion of it, dug up by a priestess on one certain day of the year, was permitted to leave the island; Galen came to watch it being dug and states that only one cartload was allowed out. Actually this earth has had a wide sale all over Europe and you can still apparently buy portions of it; whether it has ever been analysed or not, I do not know. In classical times the earth ‘cake’ was impressed with the head of Aphrodite. Nowadays the sacred digging takes place under the eye of an Orthodox priest, on the feast of the Saviour, 6 August.

  I do not think it is wrong to take Lesbos as an axis and consider Lemnos, Thasos and Samothrace as forming a small complex of islands, the most northerly group in Gre
ece. Up in this corner of the map the tonality of things changes slightly, especially for the tourist; these islands are the summer playgrounds of Salonika and Kavalla, and communications with them are somewhat awkward and haphazard, involving the use of places like Volos and Alexandroupolis as springboards. The main cruises would certainly visit Lesbos, and perhaps at a pinch Thasos, but probably not Samothrace and Lemnos. What also changes is the prehistory, which here concerns remote and poorly known places like Phrygia and Persia. Before the Greek Olympians came along and orientated religion, quite rightly, towards the Folies Bergères, the dark hinterland of what we now know as Turkey set up puissant secret cults, dominated by gods and goddesses whom the Greeks adopted and humanized – I see it like that. A very powerful and complicated set of superstitions and beliefs about which we know very little today was responsible for temples and altars which stretched from here right the way across to Sicily, to Mount Erix with its strange multi-faceted Aphrodite. The Greek stamp is so firmly upon all this that we tend to forget that some of it existed before the Greeks – and that even their delicious alphabet was borrowed.

  In a sense, Samothrace, which remains so obstinately difficult to land on for lack of a harbour, is the most mysterious of the northern group. Its great fang, Mount Fengari (Mount Moon), rides the sky in a manner worthy of its name – rising out of a lunar landscape of white marble. How to get ashore and how to get away again are the sole preoccupations of the people who travel to this surly and ungiving place. Fengari, over 5000 feet (1520 m) high, is the highest mountain hereabouts, and only equalled by the ragged heights and promontories of secret Athos, which bounds the Thracian Sea on the western arm. Apart from its physical inaccessibility and its impression of withdrawn taciturnity, the place is rendered all the more mysterious by the obscure cult of the Cabeiri which once flourished here, and about which we know hardly anything except that its provenance was Phrygian or Phoenician. Their name (they were a group of interlinked deities, a family) is presumed to come from Phoenician and to mean ‘The Mighty Ones’. They were fertility gods, their chief symbol being the phallus, and their rites of initiation kept strictly secret. On account of these gods, the island has always had a reputation for secrecy and mysterious rites which might have involved human sacrifice (as in Rhodes and in Sicily). I have never managed to get ashore, but even from the sea Samothrace gives an impression of hulking, sulky indifference to visitors. It’s gloomy, it’s barbaric; I didn’t like it one little bit; I felt the cannibals warming up the cooking pots, and opted to stay aboard.

  My choice was a wise one, for the wind changed abruptly in the night and there was that wild scramble to get aboard again which characterizes negligent yachtsmen. No one had a chance to get a sample of the marble and reflect on whether it was exportable – the concern of my companions – or to brood on the secret rites of the Cabeiri. Among the more celebrated historical initiates of the so-called ‘Samothracian gods’ were Philip of Macedon and Olympias his consort. Arsinoe, sister and wife to a Ptolemy, took refuge here as well. The word ‘refuge’ is relevant for, owing to its damnable, harbourless condition, the island remained always separate (and therefore free) during the long inter-island struggles which decimated whole populations, razed the richest towns and spread death and slavery in every corner of the Mediterranean. Physical and geographical factors joined hands with psychological to keep the island in peace through the centuries. But people came in pilgrimage to the shrines of the gods, and retired with purple amulets round their necks which denoted successful initiation into the cult. The Cabeiri were particularly fond of seafarers, if I remember rightly, and their shrines must have been hung with ex-votos almost as profuse in their graphic gratitude as those which modern Greek island churches enjoy – in honour of some patron saint.

  The actual sanctuary of the Cabeiric gods has been found and excavated in a narrow ravine, stony and grim – so I was told – near the township called Palaeopolis. It was in a rock niche somewhere thereabouts that the French discovered the famous Winged Victory of Samothrace which now graces the Louvre. I would like to know how they got it off the island – for this was before the age of helicopters. Incidentally, here once more we come upon our fine-feathered friend Demetrius Polyorcetes (who caused the Colossus of Rhodes) for it was he who, in fine feckless style, had the Winged Victory commissioned and set up to celebrate his victory over Ptolemy II in 305 BC. I wonder that there is not a popular biography of this uncouth but endearing fellow, for his sieges were on a Cecil B. De Mille scale, his defeats were resounding, and he always celebrated a defeat by setting up, or causing to be set up, a masterpiece.

  The Cabeiri were adopted by the ancient Greeks and rebaptized as Castor and Polydeuces; the Romans followed suit, changing the name once more, but leaving the functions of the gods undisturbed. Pilgrimages continued. I am told that there is nothing very much to see – the shattered remains of a theatre and a fine, solitary Genoese castle; but it is on the eminence of Mount Fengari that Poseidon sat to watch the progress of the Trojan War. If there are no harbours, there are plenty of white marble beaches for the curious. But the sea is lonely hereabouts.

  None of this is true of Thasos, which is one of those delights among islands, reserved for travellers who are not afraid to make an effort to seek out the calm green places – so rare in the Aegean – where one can hear the splash of fresh springs on every hand. Thasos is a handsome, romantic little island, named after a grandson of Poseidon, with an atmosphere of calm beatitude which makes one’s sleep most deep and refreshing, the nights being blanket-cool, and the days, though windless, not too hot. In ancient times the wines and nuts were known, and even today they exist in a world which has outstripped the good but modest table-reds of the place; there are two. What one inhales here with dilated nostrils and heart is the scent of pine and lilac. The richness and shadow are balm after you have shed a dozen skins in Delos or Rhodes. In these lowland strips of forest, you can walk on coarse grass and see cattle pastured.

  You can get here from Kavalla – the usual route – but it is a long pull. The island is almost attached to the mainland. What we used to do in the old days, and there is no reason why one should not do the same today, is push up to Keramoti by car. Thence there is a steamer (or caique) run of only about an hour and a half, depending on the mood Poseidon happens to be in. One feels he might be more indulgent to those who wish to visit an island named after his grandson – but he isn’t always. All I can say is that I had no trouble. Of course you would have a more impressive journey if you shipped from Salonika, because the bigger vessels make a wider sweep and usually carry you along the Athos peninsula, which has a weird array of monasteries – so thin and tapering that you are reminded of pictures of the Potala in Lhasa, and are surprised not to see their canted roofs covered with snow. But it is a good deal longer. The direct trip is more intimate because more amateurish, and you will make the acquaintance of village folk coming back from mainland trips to visit relatives, suitably loaded with wine, eggs and various other comestibles which they will not be able to resist opening on board. Burned in my memory is the vision of a fat elderly man with a razor in one hand handing round slices of cold pork to a group of pallid, shivering, village women holding slices of lemon to their noses. He said, in the most definite tone: ‘If anyone is sick I shall cut his or her legs off above the waist and throw him or her into the sea, so help me.’ And this threat had a miraculous effect for, retch as we might, nobody was sick until the little Stavros sailed into the harbour, and delivered us to the tender mercies of the local grog-shop and restaurant – where all inequalities of balance and temper were restored by short swift touches of a marvellous mastika which I found nowhere else.

  If the little capital charms, it is not because it has any very striking antiquities to show, but because the general arrangement is homogeneous – all epochs are simultaneously represented. While the town goes by the official name of Limena, or Limin Panaghias (Virgin’s Harbour) I met nobod
y who did not refer to it as Theases. It is pitched square upon the site of the ancient town, facing the narrow strait, and profits from what wind the sullen mainland sends it – in summer not enough perhaps. The remains of the Heracleion and the triumphal arch of Caracalla are set a little back from the waterfront. The old walls girdle the ensemble of buildings. There are different layers of its cultures co-existing happily with its horrid modern barns and rabbit hutches – what has happened to Greek taste? It is a pleasant place to stroll about in, despite the ferocity of the modern buildings; but it is regrettable that, in an island of marble, only reinforced concrete seems to be used for building. There is enough marble in Thasos to pave all the capitals of Europe – yet the harbour is paved with cement blocks. The only use I saw of the local product was the crushed marble chips that were mixed with clay to surface village roads.

  Never mind. For keen bathers, there are fine beaches like Makri Ammos (Long Sands), while walkers use the efficient local bus system to visit some of the pretty inland villages – which form good take-off points for serious walking, as opposed to just mooching and brooding. The latter can best be done in a town with well-distributed cafés and enough relics of the past to please the more discerning. The Acropolis is pleasant, but in such a state of smithereens that a Guide Bleu will have to be used. Alternatively there is a highly bibulous local guide, whom we christened the Guide Rose, and who was vague, rhapsodic and threw his arms about, speaking what he took to be French. There is a pleasant satyr sculptured over the gate of Silenus – hats should be tipped to him. The guide (Rose) insisted that if you winked at it it winked back – not always, but mostly. We all tried winks of different shapes and sizes, and some even tried a leer or two; but the thing did not stir, and we were forced to abandon this promising ESP experience, persuading the guide back to the tavern, where already a dance to celebrate a wedding was in progress. Before leaving this somewhat immodest relief, the guide pointed out that Silenus’s enormous organs of generation had been hammered away by puritans, whereas, on a postcard of 1935, which he produced, they were in full flower. What to us is obscene was probably holy for the Greeks, as it was for the Indians. St Paul passed Thasos with those three gloomy dicks Timothy, Silas and Luke. Looking at the poor Silenus on the gate, one reflects on the power of paranoiacs and the sadness of monotheism.