Such was the condition in which the poet found the country as he approached Athens; and although the spirit he invoked has reanimated the dejected race he then beheld around him, the traveller who even now revisits the country will still look in vain for that lofty mien which characterises the children of liberty.  The fetters of the Greeks have been struck off, but the blains and excoriated marks of slavery are still conspicuous upon them; the sinister eye, the fawning voice, the skulking, crouching, base demeanour, time and many conflicts only can efface.

The first view of the city was fleeting and unsatisfactory; as the travellers descended from the mountains the windings of the road among the hills shut it out.  Having passed the village of Casha, they at last entered upon the slope, and thence into the plain of Attica but the intervening heights and the trees kept the town concealed, till a turn of the path brought it full again before them; the Acropolis crowned with the ruins of the Parthenon—the Museum hill—and the Monument of Philopappus—

Ancient of Days—august Athena! where,
   Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
   Gone—glimmering through the dreams of things that were:
   First in the race that led to glory’s goal,
   They won, and pass’d away:—is this the whole?
   A schoolboy’s tale, the wonder of an hour!
   The warrior’s weapon, and the sophist’s stole
   Are sought in vain, and o’er each mouldering tower,
   Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.

CHAPTER XVII

Table of Contents

Athens—Byron’s Character of the modern Athenians—Visit to Eleusis—Visit to the Caverns at Vary and Keratéa—Lost in the Labyrinths of the latter

It has been justly remarked, that were there no other vestiges of the ancient world in existence than those to be seen at Athens, they are still sufficient of themselves to justify the admiration entertained for the genius of Greece.  It is not, however, so much on account of their magnificence as of their exquisite beauty, that the fragments obtain such idolatrous homage from the pilgrims to the shattered shrines of antiquity.  But Lord Byron had no feeling for art, perhaps it would be more correct to say he affected none: still, Athens was to him a text, a theme; and when the first rush of curiosity has been satisfied, where else can the palled fancy find such a topic.