This is the extreme south-eastern point
of the Cyclades, the island of the rising sun, as its name implies
(’Anafi’), so called from its mythical association with the sun god
Apollo Aeglites. In the whole of the Cycladic and the Sporadic groups
there exists no island so remote in its solitude as Anafi. Though
included in the former group, because it now belongs to Greece, Anafi
has no business to belong to
the Cyclades, for in no sense of the word can it be said to be encircling
Delos. It is a mere speck in the waves, in the direction of Rhodes
or Crete, where no one ever goes, and where the 1,000 inhabitants
of the one village thereon are as isolated as if they dwelt in an
archipelago in the Pacific.
We left Santorini at 9.30 on a lovely January day in a tricandera,
with every prospect of easily accomplishing our sixteen miles’ sail
in a few hours. It was a day which shows the point of the Greek proverb,
that ‘if January could, he would be a summer month.’ Apollo blazed
upon us as we sailed sluggishly out of the port and along the volcanic
coast of Santorini, so that we had time to admire and grow weary in
turns of each strange headland—one black, one green, one red—fantastic
volcanic rocks, and we longed in vain for a breeze. In the blue distance
the peaks of Anafi looked for ever the same— the usual Mount Profitis
Ilias, the rocky Mount of Kalamiotissa, below which the temple of
the sun god still lies, and then we thought how completely the cloak
of Apollo has fallen on Profitis Ilias in modern days. Every highest
hill in every island is as of old dedicated to Ilias; it is an obvious
transition. ‘Helios (the sun) at once suggested Ilias to the easily
accommodating divines of the new religion, and to all intents and
purposes the prophet supplies the place of the sun god of antiquity.
He has power over rain; in times of drought people assemble in crowds
in his church to pray for rain; and in this he has the attribute of
another branch of the sun god, ‘ombrios’, or ‘Huetios Zeus’. When
it thunders they say the prophet is driving in his chariot in pursuit
of demons. A curious manuscript in a convent at Lesbos illustrates
both these ideas; it is in the shape of a dialogue, and the following
is an extract:
Epiphany: Is it true that the Profitis Ilias is in the chariot of
thunder and lightning, and pursues the dragon?
Andreas: Far from it; this is great folly, and only an idle report,
which men have set up out of their own ignorance; as also is the story
that Christ made sparrows out of clay before the Jews, and when He
threw them into the air they flew away, and that He turned snow into
flour. These are also false like the other, and such as the heretics
unreasonably preach; for the prophet has not gone up to heaven, nor
does he sit on a chariot; but he has power to ask God for rain, so
that in a time of drought he can give moisture to the earth.
In classical mythology, it will be remembered, the attitudes of the
sun god were divided amongst many; the oneness of sun worship is of
an earlier date.
Pretty allusions to the Dawn are frequent now in popular verse; it
is the Virgin who has supplied the place of Eos, she is the mother
of the Sun; she opens the gates of the east, through which her son
can pass; and about the all-glorious sun a Greek peasant cannot say
too much. He is the pattern of perfect beauty; ‘beautiful as the sun’
is a constant expression to describe the beauty of a girl. I have
heard an island mother say, ‘Perhaps the sun will carry a message
for me to my child,’ when she was speaking of her daughter in service
somewhere on the mainland. It is but the same idea that Sophocles
puts into the mouth of the dying Ajax, who appeals to the heavenly
body to tell his fate to his old father and his sorrowing spouse.
The belief that the sun is a danger when obscured by an eclipse is
somewhat exploded now, yet there are those living who remember when
the people used to come out with brass kettles to drive away the evil
demons, which were threatening the life-giving sun, traces of which
custom still survive in songs.
Meanwhile the sun pursued his course steadily, and our sailors measured
the light constantly from the sun to the horizon with their fingers.
Each finger’s breadth represents a quarter of an hour’s daylight;
an inch of daylight, as the expression goes; but the sun set before
we were clear of the last cape of Santorini, where we had elected
to pass the night had not a breeze sprung up after sunset, which promised
to help us on our course.
At length, about two o’clock in the night, after a sail of sixteen
hours, we landed on Anafi. Not, alas! near the one town, but on the
north side of the island, two hours away. Not till then did we realise
the benefit of those churches, which are dotted everywhere over the
islands for benighted wayfarers like ourselves. Our only chance of
a little rest lay in entering one of them. It was, of course, only
twelve feet by eight; it had a mud floor and no seats; we had to be
content with stones for pillows and our rugs for bedclothes, but it
was a warm and lovely night, so we were content.
Early next morning we arose, and despatched our manservant, who was
a native of this island, to the town to get us mules, and we were
left to puzzle our brains as to how to get any breakfast, for the
long day in the boat had exhausted our provisions. We got together
some brushwood and lighted a fire, in the embers of which we cooked
some bacon, which we ate with hard bread and washed down with water;
but they say in Greece, ‘hunger has no eyes, and if it had it would
not use them.’
An uninteresting ride of two hours across a hilly, brown, and apparently
barren country brought us to the Chora. On the side along which we
passed we had no difficulty in deciding that Anafi was barren even
for one of the Cyclades; and Tournefort’s naïve remark when he visited
it in 1700 will apply still, that it has not wood enough to cook the
partridges which abound. In red-legged partridges Anafi certainly
does abound. Coveys of partridges and lots of wild pigeons we stirred
up at every turn. A story is current that a brace of partridges was
brought over from Astipalea to Anafi, and became so prolific that
the bird has become a plague. This popular story coincides curiously
with an account Athanasius gives us of the quantities of partridges
in Anafi, where he said that the inhabitants were in danger of having
to quit the island from their abundance. It is just possible that
the stories are identical, and that it has survived for centuries.
There are no serpents in Anafi, only green lizards. It is curious
in almost every island the reptiles are different. In Sifnos they
have very poisonous snakes; in Kea they have scorpions; in Antiparos
they have only little adders; whereas on the adjoining Paros they
have very huge and poisonous snakes. Anafi is blessed in this respect,
if not in trees and verdure.
The town, as usual, crowns a conical hill, and on the vantage ground
afforded by two windmills we saw, when fully a mile away, all the
population of the place straining their eyes to get a glimpse at the
strange foreigners who had come to visit their shores. This was not
to be wondered at, for in winter time the Anafiotes must be very dull,
for at Santorini they had taken the opportunity to give us the post
for Anafi, a small packet of a dozen letters, nearly all of which
were from the Government to the demarch, and it was the first post
they had had for two months.
‘Often we have no communication with the outer world for three months
in winter time,’ replied the demarch in answer to my expressions
of surprise; ‘for Anafi has no harbour whatsoever, and the small
cleft where the fishermen draw up their boats is exposed to the
full fury of a southern gale. Those who come here are often obliged
to stay longer than they expect,’ he concluded with a hospitable
ring in his voice. We smiled in return, but felt apprehensive all
the same, for we did not wish our stay here to be too protracted.
The great name in the island is Chalaris. The demarch’s name is
Chalaris, and to him we were introduced as soon as we had taken
possession of an empty house which was placed at our disposal during
our stay by the brother of our servant. Shortly afterwards another
Chalaris was brought in, a deaf, shrivelled-up old man of ninety,
who had assisted Ross to dig in 1836, and was prepared to tell us
of all the antiquities in the place. No sooner was he deposited
on the sofa than he asked, ‘‘What men are these?’ ‘English,’ was
the reply (Aggloi). ‘Wild men (agroi)?’ said he with surprise. ‘No,
I will never believe that they are wild men;’ whereat there was
a great laugh at our expense, and we soon became very friendly.
We liked the Anafiotes extremely; they were so cheery and simple,
and, furthermore, a strikingly handsome set of people. There was
the old grandmother dressed in black, her head almost buried in
a black handkerchief, who sat neglected, and like a bundle of rugs,
in a corner; then there was a portly lady, wife to our host, who
was absent, and her beautiful daughter Eutimia, whose dark hair,
pencilled eyebrows, classic profile, and rich complexion made her
a picture even in her working clothes; but when that evening, at
our request, she donned one of the old Anafiote costumes her appearance
was magnificent; it consisted of a violet silk brocade skirt, green
velvet bodice, gold embroidered stomacher, and a short pink satin
jacket, edged round the cuffs and down the front with pink fur.
The headdress somewhat resembled the pina of Sifnos, but is here
called ‘the circle’ (ho kuklos): it consists of a tall wedge of
cotton inside, over which Oriental handkerchiefs are gracefully
arranged, so that the
ends hang down over the shoulders. During the last few years this
style of dress has been entirely abandoned; those who wore it
were laughed at; and Eutimia that evening came in for a good share
of ridicule, but I think a consciousness of our approval more
than made up of this.
As it is at present, the dress of the women of Anafi is more than
usually sombre. After the death of a near relative they wear black
for an immense time: girls after the loss of a parent do not go
out of mourning till they are married; widows and elderly people
never dream of removing their black. Knitting seems to be their
great industry; they sit at their doors knitting and gossiping
hard, with their thread fastened round a button sewn to their
dress at the shoulder for this purpose.
After a rest and a repast, at which partridges formed a prominent
feature, we issued forth, accompanied by the two Chalaris, to
take stock of Anafi. Chalaris the elder insisted on our first
visiting his house, which consists of one room, and is furnished
with a bed, sofa, chair, table, and endless archaeological trophies
scattered around. With pride he pointed out the various objects
he had collected—the torso of a statue let in over his door, an
inscription let into his well before the house—and finally he
pointed to a large slab of polished marble leaning against the
wall.
‘That is to be my tombstone,’ said the old man with pride. ‘I
have just got it, and I am going to begin at once to carve the
inscription on it.’
‘He is very proud of himself,’ put in his kinsman, the demarch,
in a low voice. ‘He is determined not to be buried in a cemetery
amongst us, with just a stick to mark the place; he has chosen
his own tomb, and, depend upon it, he will carve something extravagantly
laudatory on that slab.’
‘I am not dead yet,’ put in the old man rather testily, for he
did not like his kinsman’s cynical face and subdued voice; ‘and,
if you like, I will take you to see the ruins to-morrow, ’ he
said, turning towards us; but knowing this to be impossible, for
the old man was already worn out by the excitement of our company,
we thanked him and bade him adieu, and continued our walk with
the demarch.
‘Anafi is one of the healthiest of the Cyclades,’ remarked our
friend with pride; ‘it is by no means rare for people to reach
a great age, and we have no doctor in the place.’ ‘Then what do
you do when ill?’ I enquired.
‘Oh! We understand a little about medicines ourselves. I keep
a few drugs, which I dispense at the demarcheion; but our remedies
are chiefly the herbs which grow on our mountains.’
Certainly the lot of the thousand Anafiotes is an enviable one.
No steamer, rarely any letters, splendid air, no doctors. No wonder
they live to ninety! The town, too, is exceptionally clean for
an island; the houses have all vaulted roofs, like those of Santorini,
and consist for the most part of only one long narrow room, a
door into the street, a window on each side of the door, and one
above. They are whitewashed within and without, and each house
has its round vaulted stove, about five yards from the house,
where all the things that cannot be cooked are taken on a small
brazier. The chief cooking utensil of an Anafiote cottage is a
long pole, at the end of which is attached an oval board, on which
they place anything they wish to cook, to shove it into the oven;
this pole is called Lazarus, and the answer to a quaint Anafiote
riddle, ‘Long, long as Lazarus with a cake on his head,’ is this
pole. For a long time the reason for this simile
baffled me, but at last I discovered that the popular idea
of Lazarus when he was raised from the dead is that he was
an abnormally tall, thin man with a round, flat head.
Anafi is celebrated for good bread, and when they have a baking
they do it with a vengeance, for they bake 100 to 150 okes
for one family at a time, and what they cannot eat fresh they
dry, and call biscuit, which it is necessary to soak in water
or coffee before eating. A good deal of this hard bread they
send out of the island.
Everything is done at home at Anafi; their windmills grind
their corn, their fields produce a sufficiency of grain, their
looms make all the materials for their clothes, their hill
slopes produce excellent grapes. ‘If the rest of the world
was to disappear,’ said the demarch, ‘and Anafi alone be left,
the only thing we should miss would be tobacco;’ and relative
to the subject of tobacco I asked him if he approved of the
new tax the Greek Government had recently put on cigarette
papers.
‘Bah!’ exclaimed he with a wink, ‘the tax has not yet reached
Anafi;’ and the chief functionary of the law chuckled to himself
as he rolled a cigarette in smuggled paper. ‘I suppose,’ continued
I to change the subject, ‘that the war of independence and
the liberties of Greece did not affect you much?’
‘We are Greeks,’ he said indignantly, ‘and we sent our two
caïques full of men to take part in the war.’
On the top of the conical hill is a mediaeval citadel. William
Crispi, brother of James XII, Duke of Naxos, got Anafi as
an appanage, and here he built the castle which we now saw.
Eventually his elder brother died, and he in his turn became
duke of Naxos, and left his daughter Florence as lady of Anafi.
After her death the Turks seized it, and under the Turks the
Anafiotes had a very easy time of it. In 1700 they paid a
fine of 500 crowns for all their rights, and after that no
Turk ever came near them, for their annual tribute was collected
by a native epitropos, who once a year betook himself to Cape
Drio, on Paros, when he handed it over to the Kapitan Pasha;
if this tribute was paid regularly the islanders had no cause
to fear a visit from the Turks.
Catherine II of Russia was the first to break the peace of
these outlying islands in 1770 by inciting them to rebel.
An old tradition existing in Greece, that the Turks would
be destroyed by a fair race, favoured her scheme, and, of
course, the bond of religion was a great one, and for nearly
five years, under Prince Orloff, the Russians ruled in the
Cyclades.
Next morning, accompanied by Demarch Chalaris, we set off
on mules to visit the old Hellenic town of Anafi. It was a
threatening morning, and showery at first, and Chalaris the
younger did not seem at all inclined to start; however we
assured him that we often went out in the rain in England,
so he laughed at us, and referred to his kinsman’s mistake
about wild men, and finally consented to be one for once in
his life. On our way a glorious rainbow appeared before us,
and the demarch told us how the peasants of Anafi know how
to foretell the crops by the colours of the rainbow. If red
prevails in it the crop of grapes will be abundant; if green,
that of the olive; if yellow that of corn. ‘A rainbow in the
morning,’ he added, ‘denotes luck; in the evening, woe;’ so
we felt to-day that the omen was in our favour.
‘The nun’s girdle’ as they call the rainbow in these parts,
strongly recalls the ancient myth about the virgin goddess
Iris, and the idea that God sends it to show where a treasure
is buried reminds one of the belief that Iris was Jove’s messenger
from heaven to earth.
It hailed pretty sharply now and again, or, as they will persist
in saying, ‘it snowed.’ Everything, including even cold rain,
is called snow in these islands. ‘White as an egg it was,
round as a peppercorn, but by St. George it was neither of
them,’ is an Anafiote riddle, to which the answer is, not
hail, but snow.
The old town of Anafi had a very commanding position, and
from the remains we saw it appears to have once been a very
strong rich city, amongst the finest in the Cyclades. On the
summit of the ancient acropolis are the remains of a temple.
Some portions of the cella are still to be seen. From an inscription
which was found on a votive statue we learn that there was
once here another temple to Pythian Apollo combined with Artemis
Soteira. All around are colossal walls, the foundations of
houses, cisterns, and quantities of headless statues. On the
slope of the hill between the town and the harbour was the
necropolis of ancient Anafi, which has contributed rich ‘finds’
to excavators—gold earrings, bracelets, precious stones, and
things betokening a rich community. Close to a little church
we came across two lovely marble sarcophagi; on one of these
was a beautifully executed representation of children bringing
sacrifices to Bacchus, one of whom is in a well-portrayed
state of intoxication, as he places something on the altar;
on the other side are Bellerophon and Pegasus; and on the
two narrow sides Sphinxes. The other sarcophagus, which appears
to have been ever richer in execution, is smashed up and built
into walls.
An old woman who was looking after her crops here gave us
a fig, curiously moulded in a sort of clay, which she had
found in one of these tombs; and we saw two round balls, of
the same material, with inscriptions on them, which had likewise
been found in tombs.
We then made our way down to the shore, where was the ancient
port, and where we saw traces of houses, a mole, and steps
going down into the sea. This spot still bears an old name
(kataluma), called so probably from the fact of its containing
inns or halting places for travellers: it is an exceedingly
rare classical word, and entirely unknown in modern Greek.
Here, too, is a lime-kiln, the invariable destroyer of marble
remains. Let us hope that this barbarous custom of converting
marble friezes and statues into lime will soon be heard of
no more in Greece.
Down by the shore, with a deliciously warm sun to dry the
effects of our early morning wetting, we sat down to our midday
repast. Demarch Chalaris waxed gay and talkative as he quaffed
the good wine of his island; and he pressed us to eat an abominable
black and green sausage of bacon and garlic, and seemed disappointed
at our refusal; so he pulled a long face by way of revenge
at some chocolate we gave him, called it horrid stuff, and
said he would keep it till he got home to make coffee of,
as it was raw.
On
our way home we passed through some of the demarch’s own fields,
where they were busy ploughing. A plough in these parts is
an exceedingly primitive article, somewhat similar to those
which Homer would have seen if he had not been blind. The
chief ingredient in a plough, and a rarity in Anafi, is a
tree with a trunk and two branches; one branch serves as a
tail and the other has a bit of iron fixed to it, and penetrates
the ground; the trunk is the pole. Sometimes there are slight
improvements on this, but not often. The beauty of this plough
is that it is so light that the farmer can carry it over his
shoulders as he drives his bullocks before him; they never
care about making deep furrows, and they never make straight
ones. Often the farmer begins by ploughing out a circle for
his morning’s work; this he goes round and round and across
in a careless manner until his task is over.
We kept along by the shore on our way home, and the demarch
told us much about the great quantity of sea demons (thalassamachiai)
that they have at Anafi. From his description we gathered
that they were a species of Nereid of the sea who are for
ever fighting with the Nereids of the land. One day a shipowner
who put into Anafi with a cargo of cotton went up to the town
to see about his affairs, and in returning to the port he
there encountered a demon, ten times bigger than himself,
which chased him down the hill and then disappeared in the
waves. Such stories remind one of the adventures of Ulysses.
Another species of hobgoblin occurs in Anafi, bearing the
ancient name and attributes: they are the Lamiae, evil-working
women who live in desert places, ill-formed like their ancestors,
daughters of Belus and Sibyl. Utterly unfit are they for household
duties, for they cannot sweep; so an untidy woman to-day is
said to have made the sweepings of a Lamia (tis Lamias ta
saromata); they cannot bake—a great offence, indeed, in Anafi—for
they put bread into the oven before heating it; they have
dogs and mules, but give bones to their mules and straw to
their dogs. They are very gluttonous, so that in Byzantine
and modern Greek the verb ‘lamiono’ is used to express over-eating.
They have a special predilection for baby’s flesh, and a Greek
mother of to-day will frighten her child by saying that a
Lamia will come if it is naughty, just as was said to naughty
children in ancient days; for the legend used to run that
Zeus loved Lamia too well, untidy though she was, and Hera
out of jealousy killed her children; whereat Lamia was so
grieved that she took to eating the children of others.
Some Lamiae are like Sirens, and by taking the form of lovely
nymphs beguile men to their destruction; for example, an ecclesiastical
legend, savouring strongly of Boccaccio, tells us how a Lamia
charmed a monk as he sat by the side of a lake one evening.
Dawn came, and the monk was seen no more; some children swore
to having seen his hoary beard floating in the waters of the
lake.
That evening after our dinner Eutimia and her mother determined
that we should see all that was best of Anafiote society,
and invited their friends and acquaintances to a ball: this
was very pleasing to us, as now we knew we should see the
manners and customs of their private life to perfection. Dancing
is a passion amongst them, and one can easily imagine their
love for it when one thinks how shut off they are from all
the pleasures of the outer world. As for the syrtos, they
dance it admirably and in a most pathetic manner: the leader
bends on his knee in prayer to his adored one, he stretches
out his hands to heaven to supplicate the intervention of
divine power on his behalf. Dancing, in short, as in ancient
times, is considered as a means by which to
express feeling by the evolution of hands and legs. The social
dance, as we know it in Western Europe, is unknown.
They have several local dances in Anafi; the ‘susta’, danced
only by men, is curious: they stand, as in the syrtos, in
a semicircle, with their hands on each other’s shoulders,
and then they begin to move slowly backwards and forwards,
quickening their steps as they go, until they end in an exceedingly
rapid motion. Demarch Chalaris joined in this, with the result
that, being no longer young, he got much exhausted, and excused
himself for the rest of the evening by saying that he had
too young a heart in too old a body.
Another pretty dance is the ‘moloritis’; Eutimia and another
girl danced it with two men: first they danced hand in hand,
like the lady’s chain in a quadrille, then they danced separately,
the women, of course, demurely, whilst the men performed acrobatic
feats, as in the syrtos; and they sang little ballads (madinada)
as they danced.
After a while a rough, coarse-looking shepherd came in, and
his advent was greeted with great joy, for he was reckoned
the best singer in Anafi. Poor man! He was very shy, and they
had to ply him with constant bumpers, for ‘Andronico never
can sing till he is drunk,’ they said, quite as a matter of
course. At last Andronico gathered himself together for a
song, and a boy played a goatskin sabouna—that wretched Grecian
substitute for the bagpipe—by way of accompaniment. When thoroughly
prepared to begin Andronico shut his eyes with determination
and threw back his head, shaking as he did so his long, shaggy,
unkempt locks and his whole body. Then he opened his mouth
wide, and thereout proceeded the most melancholy, deep-noted,
timeless utterances that ever could be called a song.
The words of this song Eutimia kindly copied for me next morning,
and as they struck me as a production of a curious nature
I will append a literal translation:
Your figure is a lemon tree,
Its branches are your hair;
Joy to the youth who climbs
To pluck the fruit so fair.
Black garments, such as now you wear,
Myself I will cast off,
That I may clothe you all in gold,
And take you as my love.
Ah me! Ah me!
Now withered is that lemon tree,
And I am full of woe.
Come let us walk, and let us grieve
Together as we go.
And I will tell, and you will talk,
Will tell, will talk together
Anent the woes that blight our hearts,
That they may wither, wither!
Andronico’s song was covered with applause, and more wine
was administered, which resulted in his consenting to dance
in a musical syrtos, of which he was to take the lead. First,
he cast off his shoes, by way of preparation; such shoes
as peasants in Anafi wear, being made of thick pig’s skin,
with the bristles left on: they are excellent for climbing
rocks and keeping out the wet, but not for dancing: and
now he sang more wildly than before and danced more vigorously
than anyone else. The verses of the song he sang were answered
by the young man who danced at the other end of the wavy
line. But as the dance went on Andronico forgot to sing;
he got wilder and wilder in his evolutions, until at length
his movements were scarcely creditable, and he was conducted
home.
‘Andronico,’ said Eutimia smiling, ‘never can do anything
till he is drunk.’
The following day was devoted to a visit to the monastery
of Kalamiotissa, built out of what is left of the old temple
of Apollo Aeglites. The demarch accompanied us as before,
but this time we went by boat, for the distance on muleback
would be weary. One of our men took some dynamite with him,
and though the representative of the law in Anafi was with
us he winked at the boatmen fishing in this forbidden manner,
and I thought again of the cigarette papers.
The legend in olden times ran that Apollo raised up an island
out of the sea to succour the heroes on their return from
Colchis in search of the golden fleece; and this island
was Anafi. In return for this benefit a gorgeous temple
was built to Apollo Aeglites on a narrow tongue of land
which unites the mainland of Anafi to a gigantic mountain
rock which stands boldly out into the sea, now called Mount
Kalamos. All the way from the old town to the temple, some
two miles distant, can be seen traces of the old sacred
way, the pavement of which is left in parts, and is worn
with chariot wheels; and on either side of the way are frequent
tombs, as on the road between Athens and Eleusis.
Three monks only now live at the monastery of Kalamiotissa,
the only one in Anafi; and the day before our visit the
superior had died, and they had had splendid lamentations
over his body, at which we regretted not to have been present.
The monastery now belongs to one in Santorini, and is built
on the gigantic foundation walls which supported the temple
of Apollo, one stone of which I measured, and found it to
be two yards twenty-eight inches long by two and a half
feet high: these stones are of a coarse sort of marble which
is found close by.
The pronaos of the temple is standing as it was, and is
now used by the monks as a store, where they keep their
grain and instruments of husbandry; the peribolos of the
temple is worked into the present church and other cloister
buildings; and the cella is the present refectory. In every
direction are to be seen inscriptions let into the walls.
There are two platforms, which apparently seem to have been
used for buildings, and all round are traces of foundations;
and it would appear from the inscriptions that this ground
was once covered with temples, the principal one being dedicated
to Apollo Aeglites, another to Aphrodite, another to Aesculapius,
etc.
Before returning to our boat we were taken to see an inscription
in a ruined house which gave a catalogue of the consuls
to the deme of Anafi in letters of Attic type. There are
enumerated on this stone seven consuls from different parts
of Greece resident at Anafi—one from Thessaly, others from
Mykonos, Knidos, Paros, Chios, Lacedaemon, and Sifnos—which
fact points to the importance of Anafi at that period.
The monks of Kalamiotissa received us well, and offered
us the best of their cellar and larder; but they were depressed,
poor men, at the recent loss of their superior; so we burdened
them with as little of our company as possible, and returned
to the town as soon as our investigations were concluded.
We had intended to spend a few more days at Anafi; our quarters
were comfortable, our friends genial and quaint; but on
the following morning there was a breeze, which promised
to carry us quickly back to Santorini; so, deeming it prudent
to secure a passage whilst we could, we bid a reluctant
farewell to the Anafiotes. Eutimia and several others accompanied
us to our boat, and in four hours we were once more under
lee of Thira.
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