What follows makes no pretense whatever of being a scientific work on Greece, from an archÆological or other standpoint. That it is written at all is the resultant of several forces, chief among which are the consciousness that no book hitherto published, so far as I am aware, has covered quite the same ground, and the feeling, based on the experience of myself and others, that some such book ought to be available. By way of explanation and apology, I am forced to admit, even to myself, that what I have written, especially in the opening chapters, is liable to the occasional charge that it has a guide-bookish sound, despite an honest and persistent effort to avoid the same. In the sincere desire to show how easy it really is to visit Hellas, and in the ardent hope of making a few of the rough places smooth for first visitors, I have doubtless been needlessly prolix and explicit at the outset, notably in dealing with a number of sordid details and directions. Moreover, to deal in so small a compass with so vast a subject as that of ancient and modern Athens is a task fraught with many difficulties. One certainly cannot in such a book as this ignore Aside from the preliminary chapters and those dealing with Athens itself, I hope to have been more successful. I have, at any rate, been free in those other places from the depressing feeling that I was engaged on a work of supererogation, since this part of the subject is by no means hackneyed even through treatment by technical writers. Since the publication of most of the better known books on Greek travel, a great deal has been accomplished in the way of excavation, and much that is interesting has been laid bare, which has not been adequately described, even in the technical works. In dealing with these additions and in describing journeys to less familiar inland sites, as well as cruises to sundry of the classic islands of the Ægean, I hope this book will find its real excuse for being. In mercy to non-Hellenic readers, I have likewise sought to exclude with a firm hand quotations from the Greek language, and as far as reasonably possible to avoid the use of Greek words or expressions when English would answer every purpose. If, in such places as have seemed to demand it, I In the writing of these chapters an effort has been made to set forth in non-technical terms only what the writer himself has seen and observed among these haunts of remote antiquity, with the idea of confining the scope of this book to the needs of those who, like himself, possess a veneration for the old things, an amateur’s love for the classics, and a desire to see and know that world which was born, lived, and died before our own was even dreamed of as existing. If by what is written herein others are led to go and see for themselves, or are in any wise assisted in making their acquaintance with Greece, or, better still, are enabled the more readily to recall Philip Sanford Marden. Lowell, Mass., August, 1907. |