Lesvos Island
Lesvos is the most northerly of the eastern Sporades, and one of the largest islands in the Aegean. It is separated from Turkey by the narrow Mytilene channel to the east and by the Muselim channel to the north, the latter no more than five miles across at its widest point. The only deep-water harbour is at Mytilene, on the east coast of a peninsula separated from the southern part of the island by the Gulf of Geras. This is the smaller of the two gulfs which bite deep into the land from the south, both forming almost totally enclosed sea-lochs with very narrow entrances.
As the airport is only a mile or so to the south, Mytilene will probably be your point of arrival whether by sea or by air. As the principal town it has so dominated Lesbos since classical times that its name has often been used synonymously for the whole island, though the authorities now tend to distinguish between the two. The modern harbour is large, usually with a few warships of the Greek navy berthed there. There is a busy if undistinguished air about it, but on the high projecting point to the north the buildings suddenly stop, and the walls of a big mediaeval castle rise out of thick green pine
woods.
Lesbos was always a rich island, and its prosperity was based then as now on its agriculture and its good harbour. Its position off the Asian coast added to its importance, for Mytilene must have been able to trade with the mainland even in winter. Even today, when there is so much suspicion and hostility between the governments of Greece and Turkey, a good deal of friendly local trade goes on across the narrow straits. Every now and then the authorities on either side try to check this, and not long ago some Greek fishermen were arrested in their traditional fishing waters close to the Turkish coast. Almost immediately a bewildered Turk was rounded up in a Myti¬lene bar where he had been a regular customer for years. Honours were considered even, and the prisoners were released on both sides after amicable negotiations.
Rather further back, there was probably a trade connection with Homeric Troy, and Homer says that during the ten years of siege by
the Greeks Lesbos was attacked by Achilles and Odysseus. There is evidence that Mytilene was destroyed by fire at the end of the Myce¬naean period, perhaps as a punishment for taking the wrong side, as she did several times later. In the tenth century BC Aeolian colonists, mainly from Thessaly, joined their neighbours the Achaeans in founding new settlements on the eastern shores of the Aegean. Hero¬dotus lists six cities which they developed in Lesbos, and their names can still be read on the map - Mytilene, Methymna, Eressos, Antissa, Arisbe and Pyrrha.
The last two have little to tell us now, but in the seventh century Antissa produced Terpander, called the father of Greek music, while Arion of Methymna was the first to write personal lyric poetry in¬stead of long epic or descriptive works. It was their influence which inspired the two great lyric poets of the sixth century, Alcaeus of Mytilene, and Sappho, reputedly bom at Eressos. This was a time when Lesbos was also at the height of its material prosperity. The architect of that was Pittacus, a citizen who was chosen as dictator to settle a period of internal strife. His wise and liberal administration secured peace and prosperity for the island, and for himself a place among the Seven Sages of Greece.
It was under his influence that schools of many kinds flourished, with a high standard of education, notably involving freedom for women to participate. In the fourth century a school of philosophy was established, where both Aristotle and Epicurus came to teach. Aristotle’s most famous pupil Theophrastus was born in Eressos, and later succeeded him at the Lyceum in Athens. He was said to have died at the age of a hundred and seven, lamenting the shortness of human life.
The arts necessarily require a soil of prosperity and culture in which to flourish, and one can easily understand how this rich and gracious island provided it. With its olives and its vines, and a large and flourishing commercial port, Lesbos has an economic balance rare in the Aegean. The olive trees seem to grow thicker and more luxuriantly than in any other island, and it was calculated a few years ago that they produced twenty per cent of the whole commercial crop of the Aegean. They still produce a massive crop, but to pick and market the innumerable small holdings is growing less and less prof¬itable, so that thousands of trees are left to shed their fruit ungathered on the ground. Nevertheless they are a fine sight as the wind runs through them like the waves of the sea, with the blue-grey mountains behind them.
The ancient city occupied mostly the neck of land between its acropolis, where the castle now stands, and the area covered by the modern harbour and the streets behind it. It depended more on an older harbour to the north of the acropolis, now largely silted up, but whose southern mole still shows above water. To the north of that was the theatre, excavated in 1958 and partially restored ten years later. The old quarter is still more interesting than the new town which grew up round the southern harbour, which is a hodge-podge of twentieth-century nondescript and nineteenth-century Ottoman. It spreads in an aimless sort of way, with churches and mosques, ouzo exporters’ warehouses and olive refineries around the bay. The tall brick chimneys of the olive refineries are a feature of many parts of Lesbos; they were designed to draw off the fumes when the residue after the crushing process was baked to produce a solid fuel, which was understandably popular as a cheap product of the principal in¬dustry.
A curious and individual feature of domestic architecture in the neighbourhood of Mytilene is a kind of defensible home. Its lower storeys were built foursquare like a tower, while the upper storeys overhung their walls on all four sides. Normally the inhabitants would live and store their goods down below, but if there was danger of attack they could retire to the top and shower all kinds of unpleas¬antness on enemies below. These pirgi, as they are called, date from the unsettled times of the nineteenth century, and are being eagerly bought up for restoration and reoccupation.
There are not many signs of Roman or Byzantine occupation in this part of Lesbos, probably because it was repeatedly devastated by Saracen invasions between AD 800 and 1100. Only such arts sur¬vived as could be developed by monastic foundations outside the capital. Prosperity and security returned when in 1354 the Byzantine emperor John Palaiologos gave Lesbos as a dowry for his sister Maria when she married Francesco Gattilusio of Genoa — a reward for having helped him to regain the throne.
Their first act was to build on the site of the ancient acropolis the enormous fortress whose outer walls we see so clearly from below. It was finished by 1373, and the area enclosed even within the upper bailey was enough to hold a small town, complete with markets, churches and places of entertainment, overlooked by the ruling family’s keep, orphrourio, at the south-east comer. This replaced an earlier Byzantine castle which they incorporated in the western en¬ceinte. High up between the towers of the keep is a decorative marble
slab, featuring the Gattilusi monogram between figures of Crusader soldiers, puzzling scenes of men confronting lions, and the Gattilusi arms, in which the displayed eagle of the Palaiologi joined the curi¬ous pattern of overlapping scales which represented the Genoese family. The same markings can be seen on a large marble sarcopha¬gus which stands Ozymandias-like in the middle of a vast space -empty now but for fragments of buildings from different periods and a stage set for son et lumiere productions.
The western defences are an imposing system of inner and outer walls and moats, but it was the Turks who extended the fortifications to link up with the northern harbour below. Within them has survived a tiny ruined early Byzantine church, standing low with a typical group of flattened domes over a Greek cross plan. You can see it clearly from the walls above, but access from below is prevented by a wire fence. The Turks arrived in 1462, shortly before the fall of Negroponte in Euboea to Sultan Mehmet II, and they held the island until it was freed by treaty in 1912. Ironical that Khair-ed-din ‘Bar-barossa’, the dreaded corsair who ravaged the Aegean coasts in the early sixteenth century, should have been born here of Greek parent¬age.
The harbour to the north of the castle seems to have been preferred in mediaeval times, but we cannot be sure where the two triremes from Athens put in at the climax of a dramatic episode early in the Peloponnesian War. In 428 BC the oligarchs who ruled Mytilene had engineered a revolt against the Athenian alliance, while the second city, Methymna, remained loyal and revealed the conspiracy to Ath¬ens. After a long siege the city surrendered, and in the assembly at Athens the demagogue Cleon proposed a terrible vengeance — to put to death the entire male population and enslave the women and children. The assembly agreed, and a trireme was despatched to instruct the army to carry out its orders. Next day a more sober and less vengeful mood prevailed, and the assembly heard a carefully reasoned speech by one Demodotus which urged clemency, not as the juster but as the wiser course.
They decided to reverse their decision, and immediately sent a second trireme after the first. The first ship had a day and a night’s start; could it be overtaken? Envoys from Mytilene supplied the crew with wine and barley and offered rewards if they got there in time. They slept and rowed in shifts, while the earlier ship sailed slowly on its unpleasant errand. Nevertheless the Athenian general already had the decree in his hand when the second ship entered harbour and the
city was saved. The ringleaders had already been deported to Athens and were executed there.*
Mytilene is strong on museums. Not far from the Tourist Office is the outstanding Archaeological Museum, while at Varia, 3 km down this coast road to the south (served by a regular bus service) the Theophilos Museum displays the work of a local painter who died in 1934, and the Theriade has a remarkable collection of the works of modern artists.
Lesbos is almost split in two by the deep Gulf of Kalloni, which means that Mytilene and Methymna, rivals all through history, are each the principal city of a distinct area. The larger area lies south of the gulf, and can be easily explored from the capital by hired trans¬port, or within narrower limits by bus. The main road leading west¬ward skirts the head of the smaller Gulf of Geras, where it diverges from the principal route to the north. It crosses the northern flank of Mt Olympus, thick with pine woods, and continues to Polychnitos, a small town of no interest in itself, but providing access to holiday resorts at Vatera on the south coast and Skala Polychnitou, just inside the sheltered waters of the Gulf of Kalloni.
It makes a more interesting expedition to turn south off the main road after about twelve miles for Agiassos, an unusual village higher still up the side of Mt Olympus. The streets are cobbled and shaded with climbing plants as well as trees. The centre of a bright and cheerful scene is the big monastery church of the Koimisis, or Dormi-tion of the Virgin Mary. It was a Byzantine foundation, but nine¬teenth-century restoration has not left much of interest inside. The courtyard around it is attractive, though, and gates in each of its sides connect it with the life of the village, which is vaguely Italianate in feeling.
There is supposed to be a ring road round the village, but failing that you can carry on south in the direction of Plomari on the coast by driving bravely up the narrow central street past tethered donkeys and gesticulating villagers. A good road continues south through hills green with pines, planes, chestnuts and small oaks. Plomari is a comfortable and relaxed seaside town with a small harbour. It has some dignity, with good modem buildings and tree-lined streets, but the islanders respect it most as the producer of the best ouzo in Lesbos. There are no signs of fortification in the neighbourhood, and with rather more grudging respect the other towns put this down to
the fact that it needed no defences against pirates because it was for a long time their headquarters.
A rewarding round journey can be completed by taking the road eastward out of Plomari, which later turns north through a varied countryside past the villages of Skopelos, Mesagros and Pappados. The short turning left to Skopelos is the one to pick. It looks and is an ordinary hill village with one narrow street and a fairly large church at the top of it, with two towers. Past this and to the left you come to the smaller church of Agia Magdalena, where in a paved courtyard there is a little stuccoed building with a miniature cupola. If you apply to the nearest house a lady will let you in and unlock an iron gate at the top of a flight of steps, which lead to a genuine and extensive system of catacombs, used for Christian services and buri¬als during the early years of persecution. There are many ramifica¬tions and side-issues, sometimes only four feet high. Unique in the islands, as far as we know, this is a creepy and claustrophobic experi¬ence, totally unexpected. Christianity was accepted in Lesbos by the beginning of the second century, which suggests a very early date for the catacombs. St Paul spent a night in Mytilene on his way back to Jerusalem in AD 52.
A little further on you strike the western shore of the Gulf of Geras, planted with olives, poplars and cypresses, much cultivated
but so far undeveloped; there you can rejoin the main road back to Mytilene. The Gulf seems not to have been used much commercially until modern times, perhaps because there were no unloading facili¬ties. It was however used as an anchorage for British warships during the Dardanelles campaign in 1915. The Admiralty thought they had found a secure hide-out, but the Turks spotted it, and brought up a German ‘Big Bertha’ gun to the mainland coast — the same weapon which was able to lob shells across the Channel from the Belgian coast. From a much closer range the fire became so accurate that the Navy had to pull out.
There are two routes north to Methymna, which may have been your objective in the first place, as it is a good deal more popular as a holiday resort than Mytilene. Most Greeks have abandoned the old classical name and call it Molivos, but all agree on its superior attractions. The easiest road is by way of Kalloni at the head of its gulf, but a more interesting one follows the east coast as far as the bay of Aspropotamos, and then crosses behind the north-western headlands through Mantamados to Sikamia. From Sikamia a some¬times rough but drivable road goes west to Molivos.
Leaving Mytilene by the eastern route you soon come to the village of Moria, where are the remains of a Roman aqueduct which was once the city’s main water supply. Moria is to the left of the main road, and you have to go a little way past it to see several of the dark stone uprights still standing, with a few impressive arches. Just be¬yond the roadside village of Pirgi Thermis a short path leads left to one of the most delightful of small country churches, the Pan agia Tourloti (Our Lady of the Cupola). There is no whitewash; the round roughly-tiled central tower, the high eastern apse and the squared-off transepts make a harmonious picture. Inside there is a small intricate templo in dark wood, and some substantial arches spring from square pillars - all on a very small scale.
On the outside of the south wall facing the road are two stone tablets carved with hunting scenes: in one what looks like a bear is pulling down a stag; in the other a man lies prone on the branch of a tree waving something to attract the same animal’s attention, while another figure is waiting to kill it. The church is probably no later than the fifteenth century, but we could find nobody to explain or put a date on the carvings.
The road continues close to the sea for another ten miles, and then cuts inland through the village of Mantamados. Here a minor road turns off right to the monastery of the Taxiarch Michailis, which is a
great centre of pilgrimage because of its ‘black ikon’ of St Michael. This is a bust portrait carved in strong relief in very dark wood, and in its silver trappings it is prominent to the right of the main entrance to the sanctuary. On a Sunday or feast day many people bring ex voto offerings to be blessed by the priest (and to be photographed while he does it), while the sick or injured come hobbling, hopping or even crawling up the aisle to touch the ikon and bow low before it. Great emotion is shown as they wipe the face with fresh flowers, or touch it with their fingers and afterwards stroke their own face - a flowery fragrance is said to emanate from the ikon. Meanwhile metal bowls of water from a holy spring are brought for invalids to bathe their arms, faces, or other limbs. The scene is a strange mixture of a family day out and primitive superstition. The superstitious element is also present in the eyes painted above the side entrances to the sanctuary -the apotropaia which ward off the evil one.
There is other evidence that the ‘old religion’ survives here as strongly as anywhere in Greece, and that on the doorstep of a Chris¬tian monastery. Mantamados is one of two places in Lesbos where the feast day of Agios Charalambos soon after Easter is celebrated by a ritual slaughter of young bulls which are subsequently eaten at a public festivity. Several promising candidates can be seen in the fields round about. The same far from Christian kind of festivity happens at the same time of year at the village of Agia Paraskevi, a more sophisticated religious centre set in farmland a mile or two out of Kalloni, to the north of the main road between there and Mytilene. In the middle of the village there is a large ornate neo-classical church, in shape a basilica with tall Corinthian columns. Being more accessible than Mantamados it attracts even more local people, and on the feast of Agios Charalambos the ritual bull-slaughter is fol¬lowed by parades and horse-races. As we saw at Skopelos, Christian¬ity came early to Lesbos, and could well have taken a garbled form from the beginning. St Paul would certainly not have approved, and his stopover at Mytilene in AD 52 seems to have had little effect in the long run.
Beyond Mantamados the road rounds the eastern flank of Mt Lepetimnos to Sikamia, and from there continues in a steep descent to Skala Sikamias, a delicious little harbour bright with fishing boats and watched over by a neat church which perches on an isolated rock at the entrance to the harbour. Sikamia, itself an attractive hill village, marks a road junction where the cross-country road to Molivos be¬gins. At the time of writing it was a rough ride through an arid
countryside, but with fine views over the rocky north-east coast. The final approach to Molivos is over a well cultivated plain with a clear view ahead of this historic hill town, built on a headland facing Cape Baba on the Turkish coast. The channel at this point is only five miles wide, running deep and blue with white flecks of broken water where the current swirls into the Gulf of Adramyti.
Molivos is the most exhilarating place in the island. Land and sea breezes blow back and forth across the strait even in midsummer, when Mytilene can be humid and enervating. If by any chance the visitor should be awake at dawn - and Lesbos is a cheerful place where parties can last all night - then is the time to enjoy one of the great moments of the Aegean. The sky lightens behind Mount Ida, thirty miles away in Asia Minor, as the sea begins to take on colour all the way down the gulf. The night fishing boats are coming in, and there is usually a kaiki or coastal trader engraving a deep scroll through the silver of the strait.
A classic island Chora, its narrow dark-paved streets criss-cross below a ruined kastro, the original acropolis. The houses are solid, distinct and well kept. Since 1965 Molivos has been declared a protected national site, and care has been taken to save town and harbour from unsightly development. The final drop to the sea is arrested by a kind of walled promenade which slants down to a tidy little harbour.
The kastro is another Gattilusi stronghold, more impressive seen from outside and below than from inside. The formidable walls en¬close a mostly empty space from which all stonework has been plundered. Yet the southern entrance is impressive, and you can follow a parapet walk most of the way to the great tower at the north-west corner. Two periods of building can be distinguished, as the lower courses of the walls are built of large blocks of dressed stone, while the upper levels are of smaller and more irregular stone¬work, bonded with mortar and brick tile fragments. Apart from the castle fortifications, sections have survived of the city walls, particu¬larly where they support the terrace road leading to the harbour. Their pattern of closely fitting polygonal stones without mortar has become known as the ‘Lesbian method’, and it continued into Hellenistic times.
Molivos attracts the visitor because it is a neat, colourful and picturesque survival. For the more usual tourist lures of sandy beaches in the sun you have to go some distance. To the south it is quite a way before the unfriendly pebbles give place to sand in the
bay of Petra, and if you take the road to Ephtalou you will find two big modern hotels and a long curving beach, but this is still uncom¬fortably stony with a few patches of grey sand.
At a serious level there is an artistic tradition which has encour¬aged both Greek and foreign artists and writers to settle here perma¬nently. Over the past decades there have been several international conferences and symposia, and a Gallery of Fine Arts was opened in 1981. You will not be allowed to forget that Arion was a native of Methymna, though he lived mainly in Corinth under the lucrative patronage of its ruler Periander. Greek story-tellers described his return to Lesbos on the back of a dolphin: the crew of his ship had robbed and threatened to kill him, but Arion attracted the dolphin by playing his lyre and then jumped overboard to ride home on the friendly creature.* In fact he was no romantic troubadour, but a serious poet whose experiments with metre led to some of the choral elements of Greek drama. Greeks have always loved a good story, though, and one of the oldest of the Molivos hotels (now easily the best and largest) is called the ‘Delphinia’ after Arion’s friend and rescuer.
Petra is a long village spread beside about half a mile of water front, within easy reach (even on foot) from Molivos. Its outstanding feature is an isolated outcrop of rock, high on which stands the monastery church of the Panagia Glykyphilosa, an attribute which means ’sweetly affectionate’ rather than implying that Our Lady had a sweet tooth. To reach it you have to climb several flights of steps, but the eighteenth-century interior is not remarkable except for another superstitious eye painted over the centre of the templo. So superstition lives on here too, and outside the church people can be seen filling plastic bottles from a well of holy water.
The much more remarkable church of Agios Nikolaos can be found near the foot of the rock. The present church is said to date from 1600 and contains many frescos of different periods. The later ones are rather crude, but there are some good examples inside the sanctuary. The small gilded templo has a very fine early panel of St John the Baptist, with fluid lines and a naturalistic landscape. In front stand two slender pillars, probably from an earlier basilica church on the same site.
Most visitors to Molivos will sooner or later want to make the longer excursion to the far west of the island which ends at Sigri, a holiday village near the much publicized phenomenon of its ‘petri¬fied forest’. We should say at once that though Sigri itself is a good if isolated place for a holiday the famous ‘forest’ is not in itself worth the journey. Apart from a few other fragments of this coniferous wood, which was buried in volcanic ash, and later turned to stone by the action of a thermal spring containing silicic acid, only one ‘tree’ now remains. Even that has been reduced in size as bits were chipped off as mementos, and it is rough going to reach it by way of a track going south from the village.
The journey west is worth making for its own sake, both for the extraordinary variety of scenery it encompasses and for the places (with their associations) you pass on the way. From Petra there is a ten-mile drive round the pine-clad shoulder of Mt Skoteino and down to the Kalloni plain, really a delta fed by at least four rivers coming down from the ring of mountains round the gulf. Kalloni itself has no place to stop, unless for petrol, though at Skala Kallonis, surrounded by salt pans, they bring in a delicious variety of fresh sardines which you will find on the menus of local restaurants.
Your road turns right just short of Kalloni, and as it begins to climb towards the village of Philia you will see below you the huge red brick rectangles of the Moni Limona. This is said to be a founda¬tion of 1523, but what you see now is mostly of the eighteenth century with modern extensions and a good deal of rebuilding still going on. It is important today because of its library of over 450 valuable manuscripts, which attracts scholars and researchers from many countries.
Its religious function has declined to a strength of nine monks, though they take in novice pupils, which is unusual in island monas¬teries. There are nests of ill-kept little churches and a katholikon basilica, majestic but overdecorated with inferior wall paintings. The lay arrangements are more interesting. They include a splendid wine vault, with huge amphorae sunk up to their necks, and ladles and jugs handy (though one fears that all are now empty). There is a big bakery with the remains of a wood-fired oven, and in the second of the two courtyards there are cages full of lively-looking peacocks -the birds which figured so much in Byzantine church decoration.
The main courtyard has galleries for monastic quarters, and there are notices everywhere warning that women must keep to the cov-
Iered passages at ground level. It turns out that they are now restricted 299
only from entering the main church - which can be seen by men if they apply to the agreeable young igoumenos or Father Superior.
Philia proves to be a small town on a fertile plateau at about 1500 feet, after which comes Skalachori, looking north to the sea past the peak of Mt Prophitis Ilias. The road circles round some lovely val¬leys, in which pines give way suddenly to planes and oaks. One of the loveliest valleys is formed by the bed of the river Voulgaris, which virtually connects the modern inland village of Antissa with the ancient site of the same name on the coast. On the eastern slope of the valley, in a beautiful sheltered glen below the road to the north, is the miniature gem of the Moni Peribolis, or ‘garden monastery’.
A little walled courtyard, full of fruit trees and flowers, encloses a small church. Outside the walls are olive and vegetable patches worked by two part-time gardeners. Inside I hope there still lives one dear old sister who would let you go in between 8 a.m. and 12.30, or between 3 p.m. and 7.30, though wary of visitors since they began to plunder her walnut trees. The church is dated 1590, and has some notable frescos. They are not in good condition, but the west end has some clear scenes of the ‘Second Coming’, with a quite startling picture of the sea giving up its dead. There are two striking ikons of Christ and the Virgin Mary; he is dark-bearded, straight-nosed and formidable, she has a face of great dignity, and both heads are set off by a glowing golden background. A lovely and peaceful place.
Antissa is the best of the villages on this route, almost a small town, with glorious views down the steep romantic valley to the sea. At its foot lay the ancient city, which lasted from the Bronze Age to 168 BC when the Romans destroyed it during the Macedonian wars. It has a special place in the island’s folk-lore, for it was here that the head of Orpheus was washed ashore after his dismemberment in a jealous frenzy by the women of Thrace:
When by the rout that made the hideous roar His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore.*
The sand soon covered his head, but the lyre which came ashore with it was rescued by the inhabitants, and it played by itself when the wind blew through its strings - the first ‘Aeolian harp’. There are no better illustrations of the Greek genius for myth and story-telling than
the tales of Orpheus and Arion, which suggest an origin for the musical and poetic life for which Lesbos became famous and of which the first exponent was Terpander of Antissa.
Just beyond Antissa the road divides - straight on for Sigri and its lone stone tree, left for Eressos, birthplace, it is said, of Sappho. Before the junction you will have entered a landscape which con¬trasts utterly with everything you have seen so far in Lesbos. The hills are bare, the mountains naked rock, and everywhere fantastic rock formations shoot out of the barren earth. It is of course a vol¬canic area, but that the gentle Sappho should have been born or brought up as a child here seems an anomaly in nature. Perhaps it was the contrast of bitter and sweet in the landscape hereabouts which brought out the contradictions in the little we know of her life and work, but it was probably not here but in Mytilene that she chiefly lived and wrote. The idea that she kept a kind of finishing school for girls of good family is only a guess; she obviously lived among the young of her own sex and delighted in their company; women in Lesbos were allowed more freedom to live and develop their own lives than anywhere else in Greece.
In view of the many misconceptions about Sappho, and the uni¬versal modern use of the word Lesbian to describe female homosexu¬ality, it is worth reading the words of a distinguished classical historian:
Sappho, no great beauty - she was little and dark, typically Greek in fact, whereas the ideal was to be tall and fair - enjoyed fame for her poetic genius, and parents even from Ionia would send their daughters to be taught by her. They left, normally, to be married; Sappho herself was married and had a daughter of her own; music was considered a desirable accomplishment for a lady and mistress of a household. . . . But it must be added that a later tradition, which made Sappho nothing more than a pervert, is probably a piece of literary silliness, a caricature of Sappho, produced by solemn scholars in late antiquity.*
Eressos itself is just another pleasant little town, with an open plateia shaded by plane trees. Below it the road continues in an almost straight line down the course of the river Chalandra to Skala Eressou. This is an old-established village with a little rock-girt harbour below the remains of a mediaeval kastro. Now it has been
developed as a holiday village to take advantage of a long stretch of good grey sandy beach - there must be nearly a mile of it. There are rooms to let and cafes and restaurants close to the sea - a good place for a family holiday.
Lesbos is more than a holiday island. With its poets, musicians and philosophers it was one of the cultural centres of the Greek world. We shall always connect it with the enigmatic Sappho, and it matters little what her sexual preferences were. What does matter is the irrevocable and tragic loss of nearly all her poetry. There is no doubt from the small amount that remains that she was a poetic genius and possessed one of those unique voices which occur too rarely in the history of the human race. She wrote in the Aeolian dialect of Greek, and the fragments which have come down to us read like so many petals of spring flowers blown away by the wind, and defy translation. Sappho’s island too has a quality which is hard to analyse.