RHODES.*
Ix would be well if propagandist books, such as have poured from the press in the last few years, were all produced in the style of the sumptuous volume devoted to Rhodes by the enthusiastic head of the Dodecanese Delegation. There would be fewer of them, and they would be at any rate pleasing to the eye. For Dr. Zervos has sought to impress the Western public with the historical and artistic importance of Rhodes as a Greek island by making a large picture-book. In hundreds of excellent photographs, many of them coloured, he displays before us the pottery, coins, sculpture, painting and decorative work produced or found in, or associated with, Rhodes from the fifteenth century before Christ to the present time, with views of the island and its more noteworthy menus:ants. The cumulative effect of these pictures is unquestionably impressive, apart from the thin rivulet of text which meanders among them. They illustrate the immense antiquity of the Hellenic tradition with which the present inhabitants of Rhodes, like all other Greeks, are imbued, and they show how much of the arts of civilization we owe to Hellenism. It is well to have these elementary truths expressed graphically, because the Greek question is too often considered from the mere political or economic standpoint, How far the modern Greeks round the Aegean are the actual descendants of the ancient Greeks may be a matter of controversy for historians and ethnologists, but the people themselves take their descent for granted and look back to Pericles or Plato as great men of their own race just as we look back to Alfred as a great Englishman. In the case of Rhodes, the artistic evidence for continuity is unquestionably strong. It can hardly be an accident that the island has a reputation for its pottery, based on the wares of several periods far removed from one another. The rich finds on the sites of Kameiros, Ialysos, and Lindos, the three cities of early Rhodes, contained remarkable examples of the Mycenaean style, which may date from about 1450 B.c.—graceful cups and bowls with vigorous archaic animals and geometric patterns usually in red and black. Again, these sites yielded many admirable and distinctive painted vases, of the seventh century before Christ, among which the famous " Euphorbos pinax," now in the British Museum, representing the Homeric fight between Menelaus and Hector over the body of Euphorbos, is one of the principal achievements of early Greek art. Then came an age when Rhodes was celebrated for its sculpture, such as the Colossus of the Sun-god by Chores of Lindus, and, probably in the reign of Augustus, the Laocoon group which Pliny ascribed to three Rhodian artists. In the fifth century of our era the Rhodian potters supplied the bricks and tiles for Saint Sophia. Once more in the later middle ages Rhodes was famous for its painted pottery. That the charming dishes, painted with gay tulips and other flowers, which we call Rhodian, were all made in Rhodes is unlikely. There were other and more important pottery centres in Anatolia, such as Kutaia, and it is difficult to suppose that the Persian and Syrian potters had not some hand in their production. Still, Rhodes had evidently a share in the industry. In a view of a modem peasant interior, given by Dr. Zervos, the wall is decorated with Rhodian dishes, as if the people still took a pride in them, and there are even now a few potters producing humble wares for the local market. As the potter's craft is to a large extent hereditary, this survey of Rhodian pottery goes some way at least to prove the continued existence of the same race in the island through all its vicissitudes.
Dr. Zervos is not an exact historian and has a bad habit of introducing politics at the most unexpected places. Thus, when Cassius, needing funds for his conflict with Mark Antony and Octavian, plundered Rhodes and the other cities in Asia Minor in 43 s.c., we are invited to suppose that it was the deliberate act of Rome, anxious to destroy a rival. Cassius, we may be sure, had no such deep designs ; Brutus and he needed money to pay their armies, and the rich Greek cities were an easy prey. Dr. Zervos goes on to accuse the Venetians, at a later date, of stealing from Rhodes the famous bronze horses now in front of St. Mark's. But those horses were taken from Constantinople in 1205, after the Fourth Crusade, and there is no reason to suppose that they were ever at Rhodes ; they may be late copies of the horses in a group representing the chariot of the sun, which Lysippus made for Rhodes, but they are certainly not the work of that great master, as Dr. Zervos thinks. Still, • Rhode.. Capitals du Dodicandss. Par Is Docteur Sksyss Georges Zervos. Pads Delegation du DodScanese. Dr. Zervos in his historical sketch brings out the importance of Rhodes in the ancient world. The island is smaller than Surrey, yet in Homer's day it supported three considerable cities and other towns and sent nine ships to the siege of Troy. Its position, off the south-west corner of Asia Minor, made Rhodes prominent in the shipping trade of the Aegean. An island, near but not too near a rich mainland, naturally becomes a trade depot, because it is protected from the disturbances that afflict the mainland. Zanzibar is a case in point ; indeed, England herself is. Thus Rhodes flourished by trade and became a maritime power at an early date. The city of Rhodes, according to Strabo, was built in 408 B.C. by the co-operation of the older cities. This fortress withstood a long siege by Demetrius, the son of Antigonus, in 305-4 B.C., as it repelled Mithradates two centuries later. When Demetrius abandoned the siege, he left his machines and rams to be sold so that with the proceeds the Rhodians might erect a monument commemorating the episode. Their monument was the famous bronze Colossus, which did not bestride the harbour and which stood erect for less than a century, as it was over- thrown by an earthquake in 222 B.C. Nine centuries later the invading Saracens found the broken statue and sold it to a Syrian Jew, who shipped it to the mainland and thence trans- ported it, as the story goes, on nine hundred camels. The Rhodians, shrewder than many of the Greeks, made friends with the Romans from the outset and thus retained their indepen- dence for a long time. It is not clear that Cassius ruined Rhodes, though he may have hastened a decline which w .8 due to a change in the currents of trade under the Roman Empire.
As a theme or province of the Byzantine Empire Rhodes, according to our author, had 200,000 inhabitants. This conjec- tural estimate seems high, in comparison on with the present population of 37,000, but it may be right. Through the centuries Rhodes has suffered so much at the hands of invaders, especially the Turks, that its people may well have dwindled. The Byzan- tines could not defend it against Moslem and Christian pirates. At last the Knights of St. John, driven from the Holy Land, seized Rhodes in 1309 and established themselves firmly there. Dr. Zervos seems to dislike the Hospitallers, but the Rhodians of that day apparently submitted readily to their new overlords. It is, at any rate, wholly improbable that the Knights tried to erase all signs of Rhodes's glorious past; such an idea would never have entered their heads. Dr. Zervos says that they felt no trace of Western civilization behind them, but he ought to have given them credit for the stately buildings which they erected and which the Italians are now busily restoring with their usual patience and good taste. For two centuries the Knights held Rhodes and in 1480 beat off Mohammed the Second, the conqueror of Constantinople. But in 1522 Suleiman, with an overwhelming host, attacked Rhodes and, after a five months' siege, which Western Europe watched with anxiety, the Grand Master, Villiers de Hale Adam, evacuated the place and retired to Malta. The author accuses the Grand Master of treachery to the Greek population, many of whom were massacred by the conquerors, but it is hard to see how Villiers do l'Isle Adam, with his small band, could have done more than secure, as he did, a treaty promising fair treatment to the natives. Rhodes rapidly declined under Turkish misrule ; though her potters for a time did wonders, they produced very little after the seventeenth century. In 1770 the appearance of a Russian fleet in the Mediterranean provoked a Greek rising, in which Rhodes took part, but the island paid heavily for its offence when the Russians had withdrawn. It did not revolt in 1821, because the islanders were few and dispirited ; Rhodes, it is said, had only 16,000 people left. The Powers were asked to assign the Dodecanese to the new Greek Kingdom, but they thought it best to allot it to Turkey in exchange for Euboea. Since then the Greeks have steadily striven to revive the national spirit in the islands and on the Asiatic coast through the churches and the schools, largely supported by the Greek emigrants in Egypt, America, and elsewhere. We can understand the author's vexation at finding that Rhodes, the chief island in the group called the Dodecanese or the Sporades, is excepted from the reunion of all the other Greek islands with the mother-country. Yet from the national Greek standpoint, in view of the vast terri- tories assigned to Greece, this is surely a very small matter Whether the Italians really want to stay in Rhodes we do not know. But we are sure that their stay will be lengthened rather than shortened by the anti-Italian agitation which Dr. Zervos, not unnaturally but very unwisely, is inclined to promote. Rhodes is, of course, a Greek island, just as Cyprus is. The
Rhodians should appeal, as the Cypriotes do, to the benevolenct of the protecting power which rescued them from Turkish slavery.
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