The orario for the month gave 4.56, and how could the
time of a train be changed without public notice?
Changed it was,
insisted the waiter; it had happened a few days ago, and they had
only heard of it at the hotel this very morning. Angry and
uncomfortable, I got my clothes on, and drove to the station, where
I found that a sudden change in the time-table, without any regard
for persons relying upon the official guide, was taken as a matter
of course. In chilly darkness I bade farewell to Taranto.
At a little after six, when palest dawn was shimmering on the sea, I
found myself at Metaponto, with no possibility of doing anything for
a couple of hours. Metaponto is a railway station, that and nothing
more, and, as a station also calls itself a hotel, I straightway
asked for a room, and there dozed until sunshine improved my humour
and stirred my appetite. The guidebook had assured me of two things:
that a vehicle could be had here for surveying the district, and
that, under cover behind the station, one would find a little
collection of antiquities unearthed hereabout. On inquiry, I found
that no vehicle, and no animal capable of being ridden, existed at
Metaponto; also that the little museum had been transferred to
Naples. It did not pay to keep the horse, they told me; a stranger
asked for it only "once in a hundred years." However, a lad was
forthcoming who would guide me to the ruins. I breakfasted (the only
thing tolerable being the wine), and we set forth.
It was a walk of some two or three miles, by a cart road, through
fields just being ploughed for grain. All about lay a level or
slightly rolling country, which in winter becomes a wilderness of
mud; dry traces of vast slough and occasional stagnant pools showed
what the state of things would be a couple of months hence. The
properties were divided by hedges of agave - huge growths, grandly
curving their sword-pointed leaves. Its companion, the spiny cactus,
writhed here and there among juniper bushes and tamarisks. Along the
wayside rose tall, dead thistles, white with age, their great
cluster of seed-vessels showing how fine the flower had been. Above
our heads, peewits were wheeling and crying, and lizards swarmed on
the hard, cracked ground.
We passed a few ploughmen, with white oxen yoked to labour.
Ploughing was a fit sight at Metapontum, famous of old for the
richness of its soil; in token whereof the city dedicated at Delphi
its famous Golden Sheaf. It is all that remains of life on this part
of the coast; the city had sunk into ruin before the Christian era,
and was never rebuilt. Later, the shore was too dangerous for
habitation. Of all the cities upon the Ionian Sea, only Tarentum and
Croton continued to exist through the Middle Ages, for they alone
occupied a position strong for defence against pirates and invaders.
A memory of the Saracen wars lingers in the name borne by the one
important relic of Metapontum, the Tavola de' Paladini; to this my
guide was conducting me.
It is the ruin of a temple to an unknown god, which stood at some
distance north of the ancient city; two parallel rows of columns,
ten on one side, five on the other, with architrave all but entire,
and a basement shattered. The fine Doric capitals are well
preserved; the pillars themselves, crumbling under the tooth of
time, seem to support with difficulty their noble heads. This
monument must formerly have been very impressive amid the wide
landscape; but, a few years ago, for protection against peasant
depredators, a wall ten feet high was built close around the
columns, so that no good view of them is any longer obtainable. To
the enclosure admission is obtained through an iron gateway with a
lock. I may add, as a picturesque detail, that the lock has long
been useless; my guide simply pushed the gate open. Thus, the ugly
wall serves no purpose whatever save to detract from the beauty of
the scene.
Vegetation is thick within the temple precincts; a flowering rose
bush made contrast of its fresh and graceful loveliness with the
age-worn strength of these great carved stones. About their base
grew luxuriantly a plant which turned my thoughts for a moment to
rural England, the round-leaved pennywort. As I lingered here, there
stirred in me something of that deep emotion which I felt years ago
amid the temples of Paestum. Of course, this obstructed fragment
holds no claim to comparison with Paestum's unique glory, but here,
as there, one is possessed by the pathos of immemorial desolation;
amid a silence which the voice has no power to break, nature's
eternal vitality triumphs over the greatness of forgotten men.
At a distance of some three miles from this temple there lies a
little lake, or a large pond, which would empty itself into the sea
but for a piled barrier of sand and shingle. This was the harbour of
Metapontum.
I passed the day in rambling and idling, and returned for a meal at
the station just before train-time. The weather could not have been
more enjoyable; a soft breeze and cloudless blue. For the last
half-hour I lay in a hidden corner of the eucalyptus grove - trying
to shape in fancy some figure of old Pythagoras. He died here (says
story) in 497 B.C. - broken-hearted at the failure of his efforts
to make mankind gentle and reasonable. In 1897 A.D. that hope had
not come much nearer to its realization. Italians are yet familiar
with the name of the philosopher, for it is attached to the
multiplication table, which they call tavola pitagorica. What, in
truth, do we know of him? He is a type of aspiring humanity; a sweet
and noble figure, moving as a dim radiance through legendary Hellas.
The English reader hears his name with a smile, recalling only the
mention of him, in mellow mirth, by England's greatest spirit.
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