Between Jambaz and Taxim Tepe

ANTIQUE THEATRE

Trimontium’s antique theatre lies on the low ground between Jambaz and Taxim Tepe. Archaeological excavations have uncovered one of the best-preserved antique theatres in the world, built at the beginning of the 2nd c. during Emperor Trayan’s rule. The theatron, the spectators’ section, is amphitheatrical, in two semi-circles with a wide horizontal aisle in between. Each tier has 14 rows of marble seats divided into sectors by aisles. The area of the stage excels in architectural design. The skene at the back is a two-storey structure with lateral wings ending in imposing triangular pediments.

Inscriptions and exquisite statues found Antique Theatre of Philippopolis on the site have been incorporated in the architecture of the building. The theatre must have seated 5 to 7 thousand people. A fire or an earthquake at the end of the 4th c. caused irreparable damage to this remarkable antique building. The splendid skene was completely demolished, just 20 out of the 28 rows of the theatron survived. In spite of the serious destruction, archaeological research made it possible to execute a successful restoration. Now the ancient building has been entirely adapted to the contemporary cultural functions of Plovdiv and it shows various performances before an audience of 5000 people.

ANTIQUE STADIUM

The imposing remains of the stadium of Philippopolis (Trimontium) were discovered under the square west of Jumaya Mosque (Friday Mosque). Part of them is now displayed below the level of the busy street. The majestic structure measures 1000 Roman steps in length (250m) by 250 steps in width (74m). The main entrance into the stadium is below the junction of Knyaz Alexander I Street and Dr Valkovitch Street. It was designed in the solemn style of Asia Minor cities like Miletus holidays bulgaria, Ephesus and Aspendos. The seats arranged in 14 marble, amphitheatrical rows stand on supports decorated with high relief lions’ paws. The major part of the stadium is occupied by the racetrack whose length is 600 Roman steps.

It starts at the main entrance and reaches the northern side turning into a bend to accommodate chariot-racing. Part of this sector is displayed under street level and under the open sky. The marble seats and the track are clearly identifiable. In the middle of the bend there is an arched corridor leading out into a street built of large syenite slabs. You can see the impressive bases of the columns supporting the aqueduct, which fed the large reservoir on Taxim Tepe with water from the Rhodope Mountains.

During Philippopolis’ apogee (2nd -4th c.) the Antique (Roman) stadium was the venue of the traditional athletic games organized in honour of the god Apollo and Alexander of Macedon. After the Emperor Theodosius the Great suspended the games at the end of the 4th c. the Philippopolis stadium was used as a hippodrome. The final information about it comes from the Byzantine autheress Anna Comnenus (end of the 11thc.) who was deeply impressed . by what had remained of the Roman stadium. In its heyday the stadium could seat thirty thousand spectators and was one of the major public facilities in ancient Philippopolis.

Ihtiman

The next town is Ihtiman (pop. 11,500). Three kilometres north of which are the mins of the medieval town of Stipone. Eledjik Hotel, 2 stars, 120 beds, tel. 24-05. Ihtiman motel, 3 stars, 3 floors, 44 double rooms, a restaurant, night club, free shop and information bureau. Tel. 99-71-41 — 2301.

9 km from Ihtiman along the E-80 road is the Leshta Han restaurant, with its lentil speciality. A further 10 km to the left of the road is the Mirovo national inn. There are bungalows around it for use in summer.

Then comes Kostenets (pop. 10,500).

The mineral spring in the Momin Prohod residential area is 25ih highest in the world for radioactivity and its water temperature is 64.5°C. It is recommended for diabetes, ulcers, rheumatism and skm diseases. The town has an international specialist children’s sanatorium and other therapeutical clinics and rest houses private tour istanbul. Georgi Dimitrov balneological and climatic resort is open all the year round, the water temperature of the mineral spring is 46 °C.

Further on 5 km from Belovo is a camp site with a swimming pool containing mineral water. The camp site has a restaurant and a parking lot. To the right of Belovo a road leads to the mountain resort of Yundola situated between the Rila and the Rhodope Mountains at an altitude of 1,350 m.

Born in Velingrad

40 km further on is the town of Velingrad (pop. 25,000). The town’s 77 mineral springs have a round-the-clock capacity of 5 million litres. Water temperature is from 22 to 90.5°C. In addition to rheumatism, the waters are also used to treat diseases of the peripheral nervous system, gynaecological diseases, inflammatory processes of the respiratory system and the lungs. As a climatic resort Velingrad is also suitable for the treatment of bronchial asthma, chronic bronchitis, thyrotoxicosis, secondary anaemia, etc. Vela Peeva, a prominent partisan, was born in Velingrad and the town is now named after her. She was wounded in 1944 in a skirmish with the po-

lice but managed to escape and hid in the mountains for 37 days. She was discovered and after a five-hour struggle she took her own life. Her birthplace is now a museum.

The Kleptouza spring with a capacity of 900 1/sec. is in the Chepino quarter. There is a restaurant nearby.

Wood and wood-processing hold a prominent place in the town’s economy. The huge hothouses outside the town heated by hot mineral water, grow carnations, 80 per cent of which are exported to the USSR, Austria, FR Germany, Noway and even to the Netherlands.

Mouraviev government

Day Three. The Mouraviev government continues to manoeuvre. The Bulgarian Communist Party organizes mass de-monstrations, strikes, meetings and calls upon the people to rebel. Partisan units from the mountains converge on the cities.

Day Four. The Bulgarian Communist Party organizes a street demonstration in Sofia. The police interfere and arrests are made.

Day Five. Several hours after the Soviet Union has declared war on Bulgaria, the Politburo of the Bulgarian Communist Party and the General Staff of the National Liberation Army hold a meeting to approve a plan for an armed uprising. The main blow has to be struck in Sofia on the night of September 8. Todor Zhivkov, Head of the General Staff of the National Liberation Army, and Peter Iliev, member of the Staff, take part in the meeting.

Day Six. A strike by tram workers paralyzes transport. Demonstrations and meetings of crucial importance to the revolutionary struggle in the country are organized, Units of the Liberation Army occupy more than 20 villages.

Day Seven. The City Party Committee organizes a rally in the garden of the Maternity Hospital. The police attack, kill the trade unionist Peter Topalov-Schmidt and wound two commanders of combat groups. Partisans of the local detachment guarding the rally kill the policeman who fired the shot and disperse the rest of the police force. The Pemik miners and the tobacco workers in Plovdiv go on strike. Demonstrators in Pleven, Varna, Sliven and Sflistra break open the prison gates and free political prisoners. Partisans liberate Gabrovo, Pazardjik, Panagy urishte and fight in other localities.

Plovdiv, Tumovo, Rousse, Lovech

Day Eight daily sofia tour. The revolution spreads. Under the pressure of the people the authorities in Plovdiv, Tumovo, Rousse, Lovech, Yambol and other towns free political prisoners. Demonstrators in Gabrovo start an uprising, disarming local troops and occupying the greater part of the town.

The last secret session of the Politburo is held in Sofia in Morava Street. It decides on a surprise crucial blow at 2.00 ajn. on September 9 to occupy all military and communication centres and to establish a Popular Front government. The main blow is to be struck in Sofia.

At 4 pjn. a session of the National Committee of the Popular Front is held in the home of Kimon Georgiev, the future Prime Minister. The composition of the government is decided and the text of its policy approved.

Day Nine. The crucial blow is struck. In a mere half hour Bulgarian patriots seize the Ministry of War, occupy the radio, Post Office and other government departments. The ministers and regents of the fascist monarchal government are arrested. The first infantry division stationed in the capital and the police force are neutralized by units of the Chavdar partisan brigade, the local partisan detachment and the armed regiment.

At 6,25 a.m. Kimon Georgiev broadcasts the declaration of the newly established Popular Front government.

Monumental sculpture

In aspect, planning, architecture and art, the cities of Moesia and Thrace were no different from those of the eastern Hellenistic provinces. Monumental sculpture, which was, in general, a form of art alien to the Thracians, became widespread towards the end of the 2nd century A. D. Excavations in towns and settlements constantly reveal pedestals of statues, and the statues themselves; they represent various deities both of the Graeco-Roman pantheon and of the cults of other countries and peoples, which invaded and rapidly spread throughout the two provinces, displacing the local Thracian cults to a large extent. One of the largest statues ever found, probably of Demeter,. 2.83 m. in height without its pedestal, came to light at Oescus years ago. The head and arms are lacking; they had been separately made and’ attached to the trunk.

The sculptor had treated the draperies of its clothing with great skill and lightness, not only clearly stressing the difference in the material of chiton and cloak, but also successfully modelling the forms of the body beneath its garments. The works of. the old Greek masters of the classical period of Greek art were particularly highly prized by the cities of Thrace and Moesia. A very fine copy of Praxiteles’s Eros came from Nicopolis ad Istrum. From the Roman camp at the village of Riben, Pleven district, comes a somewhat fragmentary copy of the statue of the Resting Satyr, also by Praxiteles guided istanbul tours. In the sphere of sculpture here too, as in the other Roman provinces, portrait sculpture developed extensively. It followed, on general lines, the development of this art in Rome and Italy. But here too certain nuances of provincial art are noticeable.

Roman busts

The museums of Bulgaria abound in Roman busts — portrait busts of the Emperors, which ornamented the public places and squares, portrait busts of eminent citizens, to whom statues were erected at the decision of the municipalities in gratitude for the services they had rendered their native cities. And lastly portrait sculpture was extensively used on the tombs. Among the numerous works of this nature the head of Gordian III (238—244), row in the Sofia Museum, deserves mention; it belonged to a bronze statue of this emperor, which stood in Niccpolis ad Istrum.

However, together with the great master sculptors, who worked in the workshops of the cities in the style of the official Roman-Hellenistic art, and whose vast output barely managed to satisfy the great needs of construction in the Roman cities, the workshops of the local masters were at work no less intensively in the villages around the local shrines; they had to satisfy the religious needs of the masses in connexion with the rites of the local cults and the cult of the dead.

The custom of consecrating stone tablets or statuettes with the images of the gods worshipped in the small village shrines, or of putting up monuments on tombs with symbolical imagery connected with the activity of the deceased, had penetrated the widest socialstrata under the influence of the Roman and Hellenistic religion. In the conventional images of the gods of the Roman and Greek pantheon, the Thracian population continued to worship its local gods with their specific Thracian names, among which the cult of the «Thracian Horseman» was particularly widespread. Thousands of votive tablets are preserved in the Bulgarian museums upon which the whole scale of the Thracians’ religion in this period is depicted.

SOFIA KARLOVOKAZANLUK MOUNT STOLETOV

SOFIA-KARLOVOKAZANLUK-MOUNT STOLETOV-SLIVEN BOURGAS SLUNCHEV BRYAG (398 km)

The route takes you through the sub-Balkan valley and the famous Valley of Roses to the sea. On your way you will see the attractive sub-Balkan towns and villages of Klissoura, Rozino, Karlovo, Sopot, Kalofer and Kazanluk. From here you can follow the road to the top of Mount Stoletov (in the north there is a side road leading to Kotel and Zheravna) and then on to Bourgas and Slunchev Bryag.

SOFIA PLOVDIV-ASSENOVGRAD PAMPOROVO-SMOLYAN (250 km)

The road passes through Ihtiman, Pazardjik, the second largest Bulgarian city of Plovdiv and then turns south to pass Assen’s fortress and the Bachkovo Monastery (29 km from Plovdiv), up to the modern mountain resort of Pamporovo. 15 km to the south is Smolyan, tucked away in a mountainous area of great scenic beauty. From Plovdiv you may continue via Stara Zagora to Bourgas.

VELIKO TURNOVO-OMOURTAG- TURGOVISHTE-SHOUMEN-PRESLAV- PUSKA- MADARA NOVI PAZAR- VARNA (240 km)

After enjoying the picturesque views in Veliko Turnovo, you set out for the major administrative and economic centre of Shoumen. From here you must without fail go to’Preslav and Pliska, as well as to Madara — a complex of old fortresses, remains of religious buildings and among them a unique rock relief, dating probably from the 9th century and representing a horseman with a lance, piercing a lioness.

SOFIA LOVECH VELIKO TURNOVO- GABROVO (260km)

From Sofia you cross the Balkan Range by the Botevgrad Pass, set out for Lovech, go across the famous covered bridge, the work of the Bulgarian master-builder Nikola Fichev tour bulgaria. Gabrovo was known in the past as Bulgaria’s Manchester. The historical reservations and museum villages Bozhentsi and Etur lie nearby. From here one can set out for Mount Stoletov and the Liberty Monument. Further on you come to Veliko Tur- novo, the capital of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom.

VARNA-DROUZHBA ZLATNI PYASSATSI- ALBENA-ROUSSALKA (80 km)

This route, in addition to the wonderful view of the sea, will enable you to see a number of historical and cultural monuments in Varna, Balchik and Kavarna, plus several modern seaside resorts.

VARNA SLUNCHEV BRYAG- BOURGAS- SOZOPOL PRIMORSKO (190 km)

From Varna, head for Slunchev Bryag and you will pass through several small resorts, such as Byala, the estuary of the Kamchiya River, Obzor, Banya, and further on, after Slunchev Bryag, you will arrive at the old little town of Nessebur. Then on to Pomorie, Bourgas and Sozopol (ancient ApoIIonia), and after that – Primorsko, which has become popular through the International Youth Resort Complex.

Ottoman rule lasted nearly five centuries

Ottoman rule lasted nearly five centuries, impeding the development of the country. The Bulgarian people several times rose up against the oppressors, but their struggles were all drowned in blood. The period of Bulgaria’s National Revival, which set in during the 18th century, coincided with the stepping up of the national-liberation struggle. The monk Paissi of Hilendar is considered the forefather of the Bulgarian National Revival; in 1762 he wrote a Slav-Bulgarian History, which played an exceedingly important role in awakening the Bulgarian people’s national feeling. In the struggle for national liberation the figures of Georgi Rakovski, Lyuben Karavelov, Vassil Levski, Hristo Botev, etc., stand out. After the brutal crushing of the April 1876 Uprising, Russia declared war on Turkey and this war brought the freedom of the Bulgarian people. With the San Stefano treaty between Russia and Turkey on March 3, 1878, Bulgaria became a free state.

The Third Bulgarian State comprises a brief historical period of a little more than five decades, but very important developments took place in the country in that time. At the end of the 19th century Bulgaria embarked on the capitalist road of development. A socialist movement made its appearance in the country, and the Bulgarian Communist Party and the Agrarian Party were founded. In the period between 1912 and 1918 Bulgaria took part in the Balkan Wars and in the First World War. After the legislative elections in 1920, an agrarian government came to power headed by Alexander Stamboliiski. But his rule did not last long. On June 9, 1923 a military fascist coup was perpetrated. In September 1923, under the leadership of the Communist Party, the first anti-fascist uprising in the world broke out in the country.

It was defeated, however, and more than 30,000 loyal sons and daughters of the people were killed by the fascists. The period between 1924 and 1941 was marked by acute political struggles. The king, who had set up a personal dictatorship, in 1941 gave his consent for the nazi forces to invade the country. The armed struggle which was waged from 1941 to 1944 by the Bulgarian people under the leadership of the Bulgarian Communist Party was crowned with the people’s victory of September 9 daily ephesus tours, 1944, thanks to the decisive assistance of the Soviet Army, which was victoriously marching westward. After a referendum, held in 1946, Bulgaria was proclaimed a People’s Republic.

The Bulgarian Communist Party

A new Constitution was adopted by a referendum on May 16, 1971, replacing that of 1947. According to the new constitution, the People’s Republic of Bulgaria is a socialist state of the working people of town and country. The Bulgarian Communist Party is the leading force in the country. In the People’s Republic of Bulgaria power stems from the people and belongs to the people. Every Bulgarian citizen over the age of 18 has the right to elect and to be elected. The supreme representative body of state power is the National Assembly which is constituted for a period of four years. It issues laws, adopts the state budget, approves the economic plans, approves and releases the government, the Supreme Court and the Chief Public Prosecutor. The State Council is a supreme permanent operative organ of the National Assembly, uniting the legislative and executive power in the state, controlling the fulfilment of the decisions of the National Assembly, the activity of the Council of Ministers and other state bodies. It consists of a president, vice-presidents and members – national representatives. The local people’s councils are also elective organs of state power. In the country there are 28 districts, in which power is vested in the district people’s councils. The basic administrative unit in Bulgaria is the municipality, headed by a municipal (town or village) people’s council. The highest executive organ of state government is the Council of Ministers.

In Bulgaria there are two political parties: the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) – with a membership of 700,000 – the universally acknowledged leading force in the country, and the Bulgarian Agrarian Party (BAP) – with a membership of 120,000.The largest mass political organization is the Fatherland Front. Besides it, there are the trade unions, the Dimitrov Young Communist League, as well as women’s, sports and other organizations,

Economically Bulgaria is an industrial and agricultural country with a highly developed industry and a streamlined system of cooperative farming. Hundreds of plants have been built in the various towns. Particularly great attention is devoted to engineering and to the chemical industry products of the ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, to power production, to the light and food and beverage industries.

The Health of Nations

We may take in turn a few of the ways in which the lives of these 30,000 victims a year may be saved; and, with their lives, the infinite sorrow, suffering, and loss which these 30,000 deaths involve. There is a book with a most happy title, the instructive record of a most useful life — I mean The Health of Nations, by the well-known reformer Sir B. Richardson. In that book Dr. Richardson has collected the writings, described the schemes, and explained the work of his friend, Edwin Chadwick, the Nestor of sanitary reform, the Jeremy Bentham of the Victorian epoch, the pioneer and venerable chief of all health reformers.

Edwin Chadwick, himself the philosophical executor and residuary legatee of old Jeremy Bentham as a social and practical reformer, in extreme and hale old age — he was born in the last century, in 1800 — was still in 1887 hearty and energetic in the cause to which he has devoted sixty years of his life—the great cause of the Health of Nations. The Health of Nations is quite as important as the Wealth of Nations. If the Health of Nations does not need the philosophical genius of Adam Smith, or the analytic genius of Jeremy Bentham, it needs a spirit of social devotedness quite as serious, and a practical energy in the apostle quite as great. As Burke told us that John Howard had devoted himself to a ‘ circumnavigation of charity private guide turkey,’ so Edwin Chadwick sixty years ago began a ‘ circumnavigation of sanitation,’ and after all his voyages he has at length finally put into port.

Of all problems

Of all problems, the most important is—water. We are drinking water that at times is contaminated with sewage, as well as with foul surface drainage, and that to a degree which under possible conditions may become deadly. I saw not long ago one of the large affluents of the Upper Thames poisoned by mineral refuse to a degree which suddenly killed the whole of the fish. This garbage — mineral poison, refuse, and decaying fish — we in London had to drink. It is true that such are the forces of nature that even mineral poison and stinking fish does not kill us always — in moderate doses. Were it not for the vis medicatrix naturce in the matter of water, air, and soil, we should all be dead men some morning, the whole four millions of us together.

This want of abundant pure water is one of the most crying wants of our age. There are two or three modes in which London can be supplied with wholesome water. Whether it is to come out of the chalk, whether it is to be collected out of several of the southern rivers at their head sources, whether it is to come by a vast aqueduct from Bala Lake, the West Midland hills, or from Ullswater, we need not discuss. But it has to come — pure, abundant, constant. Ultimately, I believe, there will be a main aqueduct down England from the lakes of Westmoreland, sending off branch mains to the greater Northern and Midland towns, and pouring into London a river like the Eamont at Penrith —an inexhaustible source of pure water, just as the Claudian or the Julian Aqueducts poured their rivers into Rome — Rome, the immortal type of all that a great city ought to have in the way of water supply.

Let us away with all the nastiness and stupidities of cis-terns, with their dirt, poison, discomfort, and cost; away with the ball-cock, and the bursting pipes, and all the abominations of bungling plumbers. A continuous water supply is a necessity of civilisation. But free water is as much a necessity of civilisation as pure water, or continuous water.

Russia in the Balkan peninsula

We are accustomed, again, to treat the position of Russia in the Balkan peninsula as one of influence more or less continuous, but as not practically affecting the Eastern Mediterranean and its lands. Russia has not yet effected any real footing on the peninsula. She finds it occupied by Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Austria, Turkey, and Greece. Over these Russia exercises an intermittent influence, but never controls them all at the same time; and she often finds one or more of them in direct opposition.

Accordingly, we do not regard the Muscovite as dominant in the Balkan peninsula, much less in the Archipelago. But place Russia on the wonderful throne of the Bosphorus, with the inevitable addition of Adrianople and the Maritza Valley, at the very least, in Southern Rou- melia, and the whole situation is transformed. The possession of Constantinople by Russia, with her enormous resources and grand navy, means the control by Russia of the Bosphorus, the Marmora, the Hellespont, and, at least, of South-Eastern Roumelia.

Could it stop there? Would the absolute chief of an army of two millions and a half, with the third great navy of the world, fall into slumber in his new and resplendent capital, rebuild the Seraglio, or amuse himself in Yildiz Kiosk? He would immediately create the second great navy of the world, and for all Mediterranean purposes his navy would be at least the rival of the first guided turkey tours. How long would Roumania and Bulgaria remain their own masters when they found themselves between his countless legions on the Pruth and his great fleet in the Golden Horn? What would Servia say to the change — or Austria?

Musulmans in Roumelia

Would the Albanians be content? And what would become of the Musulmans in Roumelia? The prospect opens at least five or six international imbroglios with knotty problems of race, religion, patriotism, and political sympathies and antipathies. Any one of these is enough to cause a European crisis — and even an embittered war.

In the long run, though it might be a struggle prolonged for a century, Russia would in some form or other command or control the entire peninsula from the Danube to Cape Matapan; not, perhaps, counting it all strictly in Russian territory, but being dominant therein as is Victoria in the Indian peninsula. The geographical conditions of Constantinople are so extraordinary; they offer such boundless opportunities to a first-class military and naval power; they lie so curiously ready to promote the ambition of Russia, that the advent of the Czar to the capital of the Sultan would produce a change in Europe greater than any witnessed in the nineteenth century.

The absolute monarch of a hundred millions, with an army of two and a half millions, possessing sole command of the Black Sea, Bosphorus, Marmora, and Hellespont, together with the incomparable naval basis which is afforded by this chain of four inland seas, would unquestionably be supreme master of the whole of Eastern Europe, which would then extend under one sceptre from the Arctic Ocean to the Greek Archipelago.

Russia in the Balkan peninsula

We are accustomed, again, to treat the position of Russia in the Balkan peninsula as one of influence more or less continuous, but as not practically affecting the Eastern Mediterranean and its lands. Russia has not yet effected any real footing on the peninsula. She finds it occupied by Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Austria, Turkey, and Greece. Over these Russia exercises an intermittent influence, but never controls them all at the same time; and she often finds one or more of them in direct opposition.

Accordingly, we do not regard the Muscovite as dominant in the Balkan peninsula, much less in the Archipelago. But place Russia on the wonderful throne of the Bosphorus, with the inevitable addition of Adrianople and the Maritza Valley, at the very least, in Southern Rou- melia, and the whole situation is transformed. The possession of Constantinople by Russia, with her enormous resources and grand navy, means the control by Russia of the Bosphorus, the Marmora, the Hellespont, and, at least, of South-Eastern Roumelia.

Could it stop there? Would the absolute chief of an army of two millions and a half, with the third great navy of the world, fall into slumber in his new and resplendent capital, rebuild the Seraglio, or amuse himself in Yildiz Kiosk? He would immediately create the second great navy of the world, and for all Mediterranean purposes his navy would be at least the rival of the first guided turkey tours. How long would Roumania and Bulgaria remain their own masters when they found themselves between his countless legions on the Pruth and his great fleet in the Golden Horn? What would Servia say to the change — or Austria?

Musulmans in Roumelia

Would the Albanians be content? And what would become of the Musulmans in Roumelia? The prospect opens at least five or six international imbroglios with knotty problems of race, religion, patriotism, and political sympathies and antipathies. Any one of these is enough to cause a European crisis — and even an embittered war.

In the long run, though it might be a struggle prolonged for a century, Russia would in some form or other command or control the entire peninsula from the Danube to Cape Matapan; not, perhaps, counting it all strictly in Russian territory, but being dominant therein as is Victoria in the Indian peninsula. The geographical conditions of Constantinople are so extraordinary; they offer such boundless opportunities to a first-class military and naval power; they lie so curiously ready to promote the ambition of Russia, that the advent of the Czar to the capital of the Sultan would produce a change in Europe greater than any witnessed in the nineteenth century.

The absolute monarch of a hundred millions, with an army of two and a half millions, possessing sole command of the Black Sea, Bosphorus, Marmora, and Hellespont, together with the incomparable naval basis which is afforded by this chain of four inland seas, would unquestionably be supreme master of the whole of Eastern Europe, which would then extend under one sceptre from the Arctic Ocean to the Greek Archipelago.

Small scale of ancient Athens

It requires an effort to bring home to the mind the small scale of ancient Athens. It does not seem within the old walls to have exceeded a square mile, about the area of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, and one-hundredth part of London. Out of this space, the Acropolis, wholly devoted to public buildings, the Areopagus, the Pnyx, and the Agora must have occupied at least one-tenth. But a few hundred acres, or the area of one of the large London parks, remained for private houses. These were mainly of wood and plaster, principally used at night. Of mansions for private citizens, of a permanent kind there is no vestige nor any reference in classical times. The normal population could hardly have exceeded 25,000 full citizens; and we cannot believe that the city and the ports together could ever have contained 200,000 souls, even counting slaves, strangers, women, and children.

Their whole life was public: their main life was spent in the open air. Their homes were shelters at night, with harems for the women and children. The climate of Athens is such that nothing to be called winter cold occurs between the end of February and the middle of December, and rain seldom falls between May and the end of October. We must imagine the Athenians of the great age as a very small class of free and privileged men, personally known to each other, living on terms of absolute equality walking tours ephesus, passing their lives in public, mainly in the porticoes, colonnades, temples, and market-places, having little serious work except in time of war, with strong civic patriotism, and in-tense local superstitions, lounging about with a noble sense of superiority like the officers of the guard in some military capital.

With all hard work committed

They were educated in certain things and in certain modes beyond the wildest dream of modern culture, with all hard work committed to slaves, all cares of the household to women: passionately keen about grace, beauty, wit, and intellect. Their culture consisted of poetry, mythology, music, gymnastics, arithmetic, the art of conversation, infinite subtlety in the use of their own language, and abnormal sensitiveness to rhythm, grace of expression, wit, and all forms of beauty. So they lived daintily, as their poet said, in a balmy flood of light, sur-rounded by temples, statues, porticoes, shrines, and paintings, and at every corner of their city dominated by the radiant majesty of the Acropolis and its divine Guardian.

It is not easy to conceive the effect of a building of Pentelic marble in that atmosphere until one has seen it on the spot. But when we behold a new marble colonnade in that pellucid air, sparkling like the Silberhorn peak of the Jungfrau in the early morning light, we instantly comprehend the peculiarities of that style. A Doric pediment in London no more enables us to understand a temple at Athens than the bronze Achilles of Hyde Park recalls to us the Athene Promachos of Pheidias. The Vestry of the Church of St. Pancras in Euston Square is not more like the Erechtheum than the pediment of St. Martin’s in the Fields is like the Parthenon. The British Museum, the only tolerable Greek building in London, looks somewhat as a Greek temple might look during the eruption of a volcano. Two thousand three hundred and twenty-five years have tinged the Parthenon and the Propylaea a deep orange or russet.

The Modern City

With all this, there was about the great cities of the Middle Ages a noble spirit of civic life and energy, an ever-present love of Art, a zeal for good work as good work, and a deep under-lying sense of social duty and personal faithfulness. A real and sacred bond held the master and his apprentices together, the master workman to his men, the craftsman to his gild-brethren, the gild- men in the mass as a great aggregate corporation. Each burgher’s house was his factory and workshop, each house, each parish, each gild, each town had its own patron saint, its own special church, its own feudal patron, its corporate life, its own privileges, traditions, and emblems.

Thus grew up for the whole range of the artificer’s life, for the civic life, for the commercial life, a profound sense of consecrated rule which amounted to a kind of religion of Industry, a sort of patriotism of Industry, an Art of Industry, the like of which has never existed before or since. It was in ideal and in aim (though alas! not often in fact) the highest form of secular life that human society has yet reached. It rested ultimately, though somewhat vaguely, on religious Duty. And it produced a sense of mutual obligation between master and man, employer and employed, old and young, rich and poor, wise and ignorant. To restore the place of this sense of social obligation in Industry, the world has been seeking and experimenting now for these four centuries past adventure balkan tours.

The Modern City

It is needless to describe the modern city: we all know what it is, some of us too well. The first great fact about the Modern City is that it is in a far lower stage of organic life. It is almost entirely bereft of any religious, patriotic, or artistic character as a whole. There is in modern cities a great deal of active religious life, much public spirit, in certain parts a love of beauty, taste, and cultivation of a special kind. But it is not embodied in the city; it is not associated with the city; it does not radiate from the city. The Modern City is ever changing, loose in its organization, casual in its form. It grows up, or extends suddenly, no man knows how, in a single generation — in America in a single decade. Its denizens come and go, pass on, changing every few years and even months. Few families have lived in the same city for three successive generations. An Athenian, Syracusan, Roman family had dwelt in their city for twenty generations.

A typical industrial city of modern times has no founder, no traditional heroes, no patrons or saints, no emblem, no .history, no definite circuit. In a century, it changes its population over and over again, and takes on two or three different forms. In ten or twenty years it evolves a vast new suburb, a mere wen of bricks or stone, with no god or demi-god for its founder, but a speculative builder, a syndi-cate or a railway. The speculative builder or the company want a quick return for their money. The new suburb is occupied by people who are so busy, and in such a hurry to get to work, that in taking a house, their sole inquiry is — how near is it to the station, or where the tram-car puts you down.

The national Crown

But in France, whilst the national authority had passed from the lord of the fief to the national Crown, the legal privileges, the personal and local exemptions, were preserved intact. The peasant remained for many practical purposes a serf, even whilst he owned his own farm. A series of dues were payable to the lord; personal services were still exacted; special rights were in full vigour.

The peasant, proprietor as he was, still delved the lord’s land, carted his produce, paid his local dues, made his roads. All this had to be done without payment, as coivte, or forced labour tax. The peasants were in the position of a people during a most oppressive state of siege, when a foreign army is in occupation of a country. The foreign army was the privileged order. Everything and every one outside of this order was the subject of oppressive requisition. The lord paid no taxes on his lands, was not answerable to the ordinary tribunals, was practically exempt from the criminal law, had the sole right of sporting, could alone serve as an officer in the army, could alone aspire to any office under the Crown. In one province alone during a single reign two thousand tolls were abolished. There were tolls on bridges, on ferries, on paths, on fairs, on markets.

There were rights of warren, rights of pigeon-houses, of chase, and fishing. There were dues payable on the birth of an heir, on marriage, on the acquisition of a new property by the lord, dues payable for fire, for the passage of a flock, for pasture, for wood customized tours istanbul. The peasant was compelled to bring his corn to be ground in the lord’s mill, to crush his grapes at the lord’s wine-press, to suffer his crops to be devoured by the lord’s game and pigeons.

Transfer of the property

A heavy fine was payable on sale or transfer of the property; on every side were due quit-rents, rent- charges, fines, dues in money and in kind, which could not be commuted and could not be redeemed. After the lord’s dues came those of the Church, the tithes payable in kind, and other dues and exactions of the spiritual army. And even this was but the domestic side of the picture. After the lord and the Church came the king’s officers, the king’s taxes, the king’s requisitions, with all the multiform oppression, corruption, and peculation of the farmers of the revenue and the intendants of the province.

Under this manifold congeries of more than Turkish misrule, it was not surprising that agriculture was ruined and the ‘country became desolate. A fearful picture of that desolation has been drawn for us by our economist, Arthur Young, in 1787, 1788, 1789.

Every one is familiar with the dreadful passages wherein he speaks of haggard men and women wearily tilling the soil, sustained on black bread, roots, and water, and living in smoky hovels without windows; of the wilderness presented by the estates of absentee grandees; of the infinite tolls, dues, taxes, and impositions, of the cruel punishments on smugglers, on the dealers in contraband salt, on poachers, and deserters. It was not surprising that famines were incessant, that the revenue decreased, and that France was sinking into the decrepitude of an Eastern absolutism. ‘For years,’ said d’Argenson, ‘ I have watched the ruin increasing. Men around me are now starving like flies, or eating grass.’ There were thirty thousand beggars, and whole provinces living on occasional alms, two thousand persons in prison for smuggling salt alone. Men were imprisoned by lettres de cachet by the thousand.

Codex Diplomatics

‘ Arid are we expected to enjoy our Codex Diplomatics as much as our Macaulay and our Froude? ’

‘We do not ask you to enjoy,’ said the Bede, in his dry way, ‘ we only ask you to know — or, to be quite accurate, to satisfy the examiners. The brilliant apologist of Henry vm. seems to give you delightful lectures; but I can assure you that the Schools know no other standard but that of accurate research, in the manner so solidly established by the late Regius Professor whom we have lost.’

‘ Do you think that a thoughtful essay on the typical movements in one’s period would not pay? ’ asked the Admirable one, in a rather anxious tone.

‘My young friend,’ said the Reverend Ethelbald, ‘you will find that dates, authorities, texts, facts, and plenty of diphthongs pay much better. You are in danger of mortal heresy, if you think that anything will show you a royal ‘

road to these. If there is one thing which, more than another private sofia tours, is the mark of Oxford to-day, it is belief in contemporary documents, exact testing of authorities, scrupulous verification of citations, minute attention to chronology, geography, palaeography, and inscriptions. When all these are right, you cannot go wrong. For all this we owe our gratitude to the great historian we have lost.’

‘ Oh, yes,’ said Phil airily, for he was quite aware that he was thought to be shaky in his pre-Ecgberht chronicles; ‘ I am not saying a word against accuracy. But all facts are not equally important, nor are all old documents of the same use. I have been grinding all this term at the History of the Norman Conquest, verifying all the citations as I go along, and making maps of every place that is named. I have only got to the third volume, you know, and I don’t know now what it all comes to. Freeman’s West-Saxon scuffles on the downs seem to me duller than Thucydidesfifty hoplites and three hundred sling-men, and I have not yet come to anything to compare with the Syracusan expedition.’

‘ This is a bad beginning for a history man,’ said Baeda. Is this how they talked at Eton of the greatest period of the greatest race in the annals of the world? All history centres round the early records of the English in the three or four centuries before the first coming of the Jutes, and the three or four after it. Let me advise you to take as your period, say, the battle of Ellandun, and get up all about it, and how “ its stream was choked with slain,” and what led up to it and what came after it. Do you know anything more interesting, as you call it, than that? ’

Recklessness of a smart freshman

‘Yes,’ said Phil readily, with all the recklessness of a smart freshman; ‘why, Ellandun was merely the slogging of savages, of whom we know nothing but a few names. What I call fine history is Macaulay’s famous account of the state of England under the Stuarts, or Froude’s splendid picture of the trial and execution of Mary of Scots. That is a piece of writing that no one can ever forget.’

‘Ah, just so !’ said the Venerable, in that awful mono-syllabic way which he had caught from the Master; ‘ splen-did picture ! — piece of writing ! — fine history ! — here we generally take “fine history” to be — ah! false history.’

‘ But fine history need not be false,’ said Phil.

‘We usually find it so,’ replied his tutor, ‘and it is ten times worse than false quantities in a copy of longs and shorts. There is no worse offence outside the statute book (and many offences in it are less immoral) than the crime of making up a picture of actual events for the sake of literary effect, with no real care for exact truthfulness of detail. A historical romance, as they call novels of past ages, is often a source of troublesome errors; but, at any rate, in a novel we know what to expect. It is a pity that Scott should talk nonsense about Robin Hood in Ivanhoe, and that Bulwer introduced Caxton into the Last of the Barons. But no one expects to find truth in such books, and every one reads them at his own peril. In a history of England it is monstrous to be careless about references, and to trust to a late authority.’