The Greek Islands (17 page)

With the birth of Rhodes city and its harbours, the island was able to afford itself the best fleet of the age, and its rise to power in economic terms was extraordinarily swift and complete. Moreover, they were diplomats, the Rhodians, as well as tough sailors, and they managed to play the surrounding states off against each other and thus keep their freedom. They were also
far-seeing enough to recognize the powers of young Alexander the Great and to throw in their lot with him; they helped his forces destroy Tyre and then, as the conquests of Alexander swiftly succeeded one another, it fell to the lot of Rhodes to dominate rich markets – Cyprus, Cilicia, Syria and Egypt. Taking full advantage of this, Rhodes became the richest and most peaceful of all the Aegean islands of that time. It appears that Alexander himself was so great an admirer of Rhodian institutions that he was later to try to introduce them into Alexandria around 331
BC
. He even had the little island opposite the harbour christened Antirhodos.

But the situation was not to last. Even though Rhodes had been masterful at trimming its sails according to the prevailing winds, it found with the death of Alexander that the whole pattern of things in the Middle East had begun to fall apart. Within a decade dissident generals began to emerge as the kings of warring states. There was nobody sufficiently strong to back. Which way should they turn? Ptolemy’s Greek kingdom was in Egypt, Seleucus’s in Asia, Cassander’s in Macedon; Lysimachus held Thrace … and so on. Antigonus was the only ruler with the will and the sea-power to try to restore the unity of the Empire, and his efforts went as far as the creation of a new league for the Aegean Islands. Rhodes stayed clear and independent still – happily so, for Antigonus was smashed at the Battle of Ypsos in 301
BC
. But the island was not forgiven for her supercilious attitude, especially because, before being smashed, Antigonus had nursed schemes for an attack on Ptolemy and had asked Rhodes for an alliance – which the island refused on the grounds that Egypt was their main
trading
partner. Thus, when the son of Antigonus, Demetrius, set out upon his military career in the vain hope of imitating Alexander, he decided to teach the Rhodians a sharp lesson, and assembled a large force with which to do so. The gloomy
Rhodians found that they had to face some forty thousand men excluding cavalry and sailors and sappers. The armada which carried them was 170 ships strong and filled the straits, while 200 men-of-war convoyed them and guarded an innumerable flotilla of small craft carrying provisions of all kinds – plus the inevitable swarm of scavengers who smelled loot and booty.

What Rhodes could muster was heartbreakingly small. About six thousand troops with a thousand aliens in the city
represented
the hard core; then they armed the slaves which gave them another sixteen thousand men. Crete and Egypt sent help, so that the final score was about twenty-five thousand men versus twice that number. However, the figures take no account of the machinery which Demetrius had brought.

Today this machinery may seem faintly comic, but any study of the science of siegecraft of that time can only impress the reader with the complexity and efficiency of the weaponry they used. ‘Sophisticated’ is the
mot juste
and, when one thinks of the sheer presence of the giant
Helepolis
as it hovered up over the walls of Rhodes, one wonders why the Rhodians did not simply give in without firing an incendiary arrow. This famous
assault-tower
was nine storeys high, was propelled on oaken wheels, and reared up above the high towers of the city. It had catapults, grappling irons and drawbridges which could be lowered to release a stream of skirmishing infantry upon the bastions. It took an operational force of some 3000 men to propel the thing. The whole structure was given a thick outer skin of osier and hides, enough to stop arrows; the top floor was a nest of archers who could shoot down into the town. Diodorus says it was fifty metres high, and the careful Vitruvius calculated its weight as 125 tons. This dreadful contrivance gnawed away at the walls of Rhodes and succeeded in causing extensive damage, though not to the morale of the defenders. They held firm and drove back repeated assaults. After a year of inconclusive
operations, Demetrius received a pigeon from his father
ordering
him to return to his home; he was, however, told to sign a treaty with Rhodes before leaving. As this was rather generous in its terms, the Rhodians were relieved and signed it.

Demetrius, though something of a lout, had a generous side to his Macedonian nature; no doubt too he felt a bit of a fool for not having done better with all his toys. At any rate he left the famous assault-tower as well as all his siege equipment, ordering that it be sold and the proceeds donated towards a statue which would commemorate this great siege. The
Rhodians
accepted the terms, and thus the statue of the sun god Helios was born – the original Colossus of Rhodes. Work on the statue began in 302
BC
by Chares of Lindos. It took twelve years of his life to complete, and when it was finished stood some thirty-five metres high, all in bronze. The precise site of this huge figure is still subject to argument; as is its pose also, for it was never described by reliable eyewitnesses. It served as a landmark for all vessels as they neared the island, and by
superstition
it became the protector and guardian angel of the city. For sixty-odd years it stood there until the earthquake of 227
BC
toppled it over. Could it have straddled the harbour as some people said? It does not seem likely. At any rate when the statue fell it fell on land, and lay there for centuries, as famous in its ruin as it had been when erect.

According to rumours and legends Helios was supposed to have been displeased with the statue, and his oracle forbade any attempt at restoration. No Rhodian therefore dared touch it once it fell and the huge thing lay there for nine hundred years until
AD
635, when it was taken off by Saracen marauders and sold to the Jewish merchants of the Levant.

So foundered the fame of Demetrius Polyorcetes leaving only a footnote in the history books. It is just, for he lacked the magnetism of the truly great man. In him you smell the
personal ambition behind the deeds. The boy Alexander, on the other hand, gives the impression of being a sleepwalker of genius pursuing an ever-receding dream of human unity. Nor is there anybody very interesting in the bead-roll of the generals and kings who, like termites, chewed his fragile dream-empire to pieces within a decade.

So the Colossus crashed down, and gave a chance to the superstitious to read into it omens of divine displeasure. When finally it was carried off, piece by piece, popular rumour said that it took nine hundred camels to do so. Does that seem excessive for 125 tons of scrap? I know nothing of the habits of camels; perhaps it was. Another rumour, which sounds like the work of an ironist, insists that Rhodes got back her Colossus later, during the siege of 1522 in the form of cannonballs fired by the investing Turks.

The glory and intellectual fame of Rhodes can hardly be exaggerated; and it endured for many centuries, through
flourishing
schools of rhetoric and fine arts. It is pitiful what little remains today, of what is recorded by Pliny and praised by Pindar. Her fame held on into Roman times, and famous Romans like Caesar, Brutus, Antony, Cassius, Tiberius and Cicero all studied in Rhodes. Some contracted a great affection for the island with its wonderful winter climate, and Tiberius spent one of his exiles in the island, transporting his entire retinue of concubines, catamites and conjurers; for once, at least, the comparison with Capri seems reasonably apt. The mystic Apollonius was another who made several stays in the island; there was also a host of other poets and painters who are now just names, attached to empty plinths or broken chips of vases.

The Rhodians evolved a code of laws which was, in its time, world-famous and was later adopted by the Antonines; parts of it were later absorbed into the Venetian sea code. In addition, the island played a very powerful part in commerce; spices,
resins, ivory, silver, wine, oil, fish, amber, from every point of the compass, came to her and were sold in her marts. Yet, though the Rhodian fleet was considered the best in the Mediterranean, it seems not to have numbered more than fifty ships of the line.

However, history is cruel. There was no deep economic or military reason for the decline and fall of Rhodes. Rome was jealous of the island’s riches and out of spite declared Delos a free port – which dealt a fatal blow to the Rhodian commerce. Then, in 42
BC
, came an unexpected physical assault by Cassius, who stripped and destroyed the town and butchered most of its inhabitants. Kaput the glory and power; and there was no way to recover them. Of her thousands of statues, buildings and harbours, nothing remained – or hardly anything. The invaders left no stone upright upon another. The pathetic relics are there in the museum – among them my favourite stone jujube-woman (the marine Venus), a statue as much the work of the sea as of a sculptor. Mostly such things were fished up from the harbour or discovered by accident during recent excavations. The story-book town in the story-book island has vanished.

But what you do not know you do not miss; the present beauty of Rhodes, together with its buoyant blue sea and
crystalline
air is more than enough to delight the visitor. Although Swedish tourism seems to have turned it into a Swedish town if one judges by street signs, menus etc., this does not really
matter
. The afternoon prowl round the four kilometres of bastion is an unfailing delight, ending as it does with a coffee or a
mastika
under the spreading tree which shades a little café (Barba Jani’s it was when first I went there). Then it is pleasant to saunter out through the great barbican and on to the waterfront, where the little harbour of Mandraccio has a handsome line of outdoor cafés at which you can read a paper, send off incoherent
postcards, and do the hundred and one things that tourists feel called upon to do.

The modern architecture of the administrative buildings and the cinema is suitably chocolate-box, but the little Turkish-style market place is a success because of its layout and because the Italian tenderness for trees makes certain that shade is not lacking. The sunset, as seen from the top of Monte Smith, is worth the short walk, and will probably put you in a mood to round the crest of the hill and push on until you reach the ancient stadium in the midst of green glades starred with flowers. The spring flower riot in Rhodes is easily as splendid as that of Corfu; and after spring rain there is one hill on the right just before you reach Lindos which turns blood red, covered as it is in sheets of anemones. The town has little architectural merit but its wide streets and general impression of space lavishly treated are pleasant, and also enable it to be kept clean; after the insanitary uncleanliness of so many provincial Middle Eastern towns this is particularly striking.

I had the luck during my stay on the island some time ago to be a Foreign Office Information man on loan to the Army, and the Army treated me well. I had an office jeep – or rather a captured German Volkswagen which looked a total wreck but remained valiant, indestructible and faithful right to the end. With this whizzing old thing, I was able to get to know Rhodes over two and a half years as few people did soon after the last war. They were the happiest two years of my life. My duties were not killing, and continually interesting. Since the war was over and Enosis was heralded as the right and true end of Rhodes, the Greeks were all amiability. The Army relaxed, dreaming of Wimbledon and Winchester. Strange to say, a lot of people there didn’t think the climate of Rhodes was a patch on that of England – which proves the truth of the old proverb
attributed to Euripides, ‘Home is where the heart is,’ a proverb that no Greek would disapprove of.

Fate was even more lavish with its gifts to me, for I was accredited not only to Rhodes but to the whole Dodecanese group – the fourteen islands. It was assumed that these fourteen islands were crying out for the rich and copious information which I had to offer. My saddle-bags were crammed with
syndicated
intellectual fodder, and since the Greek is so greedy for news, I had a marvellous client to serve. Moreover, when I presented my case to the Navy, I was allowed to declare myself an official passenger and travel, when I wished, by naval craft of all sizes. What an experience this form of travel offered! It was infinitely more speedy than the lagging inter-island
caiques
which, like a slow train, put in everywhere. I continued to take
caiques
when in search of local colour, or when hunting for a friend, because it gave me an invaluable sensation of leisure; I wandered about, calling in at the various islands for a drink, so to speak, and wandered away again having transacted my business.

The sea has no timetable, and one may be locked into ports for days at a time when the weather turns sour. Nothing to do but play cards and drink and watch the barometer. This is why seamen have such unwrinkled faces; they co-operate with the inevitable, they let Jeeves cope. When young, I travelled much in these waters and have vivid memories of being locked into harbour for as much as ten days, with very little to eat or drink; at such times Ithaca, Patmos, Mykonos, Leros, Calymnos, seem to raise themselves from the ocean floor with the spray
exploding
all over them, and smile, their fingers to their lips. The winters in Greece are really more marvellous than the summers … but you need to be young and fit to enjoy the necessary struggle against cold and wind.

It is partly poverty that keeps the Greeks so happy, so spare
and in tune with things. There are no psychoanalysts in Athens; they would not be able to make a living. The Greeks act things out with total abandon. No sooner is something felt than it’s done; there is no room or time for gloomy self-questionings and lucubrations. When you know that you might die of
starvation
this winter, when you feel your ribs stick out, what point is there in indulging your Oedipus complex? If he is mentally troubled, the Greek sets himself a long pilgrimage to some
distant
monastery and consults a local sage. He makes a real thing of his religious problems – and fundamentally (apart from lesions) there is no problem of mental health which is not in the last analysis a religious problem.