DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4593#0219
THE SHRINES OF ATTICA
197
As I lived for months in a Greek home, I know
it from the inside. I had no occasion to lock my
drawers or my trunk against the curiosity or cupid-
ity of Spiridion or Elizabeth, who were the souls of
honesty, and I am not cynical enough to believe that
the tears of the Kyria and her daughters and of
my faithful servant when I left Athens were such
as crocodiles shed on the waters of the Nile.
" Pray that you may not be in Greece in Lent,"
said a friend of mine; "you will starve to death."
It is not only then that the lives of the people,
especially in the rural districts, are marked by ab-
stinence and frugality. Lent is no reaction from
violent excesses. The simplicity and frugality of
Greek tastes go back to days even beyond Lycurgus.
Abstinence is not a virtue, but a habit confirmed by
years of poverty. The peasant may not taste meat
for weeks at a time. Black bread and cheese, olives
and figs, and a little wine at his meals, with fish on
the sea-coast, and a few vegetables, furnish the staple
articles of diet. The wine drunk by the peasantry is
strongly flavored with resin, which is supposed to
preserve the wine and the wine drinker. It is a
curious draught to an unaccustomed palate. An
American who learned to like it sent a barrel to New
York. The custom-house officers were much per-
plexed, but finally entered it as turpentine! I have
never seen a drunken woman in Greece at any time,
and rarely a drunken man, though there are crimes
of violence which come from wine-heated blood.
Such terrible scenes as London furnishes of women
and children crowding into bar-rooms and drinking
from the same cup are unknown in Greece, nor can
197
As I lived for months in a Greek home, I know
it from the inside. I had no occasion to lock my
drawers or my trunk against the curiosity or cupid-
ity of Spiridion or Elizabeth, who were the souls of
honesty, and I am not cynical enough to believe that
the tears of the Kyria and her daughters and of
my faithful servant when I left Athens were such
as crocodiles shed on the waters of the Nile.
" Pray that you may not be in Greece in Lent,"
said a friend of mine; "you will starve to death."
It is not only then that the lives of the people,
especially in the rural districts, are marked by ab-
stinence and frugality. Lent is no reaction from
violent excesses. The simplicity and frugality of
Greek tastes go back to days even beyond Lycurgus.
Abstinence is not a virtue, but a habit confirmed by
years of poverty. The peasant may not taste meat
for weeks at a time. Black bread and cheese, olives
and figs, and a little wine at his meals, with fish on
the sea-coast, and a few vegetables, furnish the staple
articles of diet. The wine drunk by the peasantry is
strongly flavored with resin, which is supposed to
preserve the wine and the wine drinker. It is a
curious draught to an unaccustomed palate. An
American who learned to like it sent a barrel to New
York. The custom-house officers were much per-
plexed, but finally entered it as turpentine! I have
never seen a drunken woman in Greece at any time,
and rarely a drunken man, though there are crimes
of violence which come from wine-heated blood.
Such terrible scenes as London furnishes of women
and children crowding into bar-rooms and drinking
from the same cup are unknown in Greece, nor can