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MOUNT ATHOS
 MOUNT KTHOS
RENEWAL IN PARADISE

by
GRAHAM SPEAKE

Second Edition

Revised & Extended

DENISE HARVEY (PUBLISHER) LIMNI, EVIA, GREECE

 for Aleksandar, Radoman, and Damir

Published by Denise Harvey (Publisher), 34005 Limni, Evia, Greece

www.deniseharveypublisher.gr

Copyright © Graham Speake 2014

All rights reserved

Printed in the UK

First published by Yale University Press in 2002

Cover illustration: the pilgrims way to Simonopetra. Photograph by Graham Speake

ISBN 978'960-7120-34-2
 CONTENTS

Preface to First Edition vii

Preface to the Second Edition ix
Acknowledgements x

Introduction i
i. Athos BC ii

2. The Garden of the Mother of God 21

3. Byzantine Athos 39
4. Palaiologan Athos 70
5. Ottoman Athos 102.
6. Twentieth-Century Athos 138
7. Athos Today: For the Monk 172
8. Athos Today: For the Pilgrim 213
9. Athos and the Modern World 243
Epilogue 265

Select Bibliography 269

Glossary 275
Index 277
Photographic Acknowledgements 288
 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

For many years I RESISTED THE TEMPTATION to write a book such as this,
just as I resisted the temptation to become Orthodox. In the end I found
myself compelled to do both. I became Orthodox largely as a consequence of
the numerous visits that I had made to Mount Athos. My spiritual journey into
Orthodoxy was initially facilitated by the fathers of the monastery of Vatopedi
who arc now my brothers. Since my reception it has been steered by my spiri­
tual father, Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia. Bishop Kallistos is the closest
approximation I know to an Athonite elder outside Athos and I feel deeply
honoured to be numbered among his many spiritual children. My debt to him
and to the Vatopedi fathers is incalculable. I wrote this book because it seemed
to me that there was a need for it. It is in no sense, I hasten to add, a ‘convert s
confession’: that will be a very different book, if indeed I ever write it.
In writing this book, I have received generous assistance from the same
quarters. Bishop Kallistos has read the whole text and provided me with
numerous suggestions for its improvement. The fathers of Vatopedi, probably
without realizing it, have contributed to it at every stage, and have provided
the answers to many of my questions over the years. I am particularly grateful
for their assistance with Chapter 7, which I should not have been able to write
unaided. It goes without saying that any remaining imperfections are mine
alone.
I have written this book for my friend Anthony Hazledine, who has accom­
panied me on many memorable journeys to Athos. It is for him, and others like
him, who may not necessarily be academic or religious, but who have spiritu­
ally inquiring minds and who share a desire to know something more about
the mysterious mountain of the monks, both its past and its present. Athos
remains one of the most fascinating places on earth. The renewal that is cur­
rently taking place there makes it also one of the most challenging and
dynamic. If in this book I succeed in conveying something of that fascination
and that challenge, then it will have been worth writing.

Graham Speake
Pentecost 2001

vii
i. The Mother of God as Ephor (‘overseer’) of Athos, a modern icon
hugely popular on the Mountain today (Cell of Bourazeri).

viii
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

Twelve YEARS HAVE PASSED since I wrote the Preface to the first edition of this
book. I welcome the opportunity to prepare a second edition and to add a new
concluding chapter in which I have been able to recount and reflect on the
changes that have taken place on Mount Athos over these years. I have also
made a number of changes to the original text, for many of which I am
indebted to the kindness of friends and reviewers, and I have updated the
Bibliography. I am grateful to Denise Harvey not only for undertaking publi­
cation of the second edition but also for her warm friendship, generous
hospitality, and shared wisdom over many years. As the widow of Philip Sher­
rard, she occupies a unique place in the literary annals of the Holy Mountain.
I count it a privilege to be numbered among her authors.
The passage of time enables us to view the renewal that took place on Athos
in the last quarter of the twentieth century in its historical context, as some­
thing that has happened and has been succeeded by a period of spiritual and
cultural maturity. The Mountain is a very different place from the one that I
first visited a quarter of a century ago. Most of the changes are for the better,
but some are not, and one of the rewards for growing older is the ability more
easily to distinguish the wood from the trees. Notwithstanding increasing
years and arthritic knees, however, I rejoice that I have finally succeeded in
ascending the peak with the kind support of my friends Aleksandar Gol-
ubovic, Radoman Matovic, and Damir Simoncic. This second edition is
dedicated to them in admiration and gratitude.

Graham Speake
Feast ofthe Transfiguration 2013

ix
 ACKNO WLED GEMENTS

FOR PERMISSION TO QUOTE from E. Amand de Mendieta’s Mount Athos: The

Garden ofthe Panaghia I am grateful to Akademie Verlag GmbH, Berlin; for
permission to quote from the works of the late Philip Sherrard I am grateful
to his widow, Denise Harvey.
For assistance of various kinds in procuring the illustrations I am indebted
to the Holy Community of Mount Athos, the abbot and fathers of Vatopedi,
Fr loustinos of Simonopetra, Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, and the late
John Leatham.
XI
 1

Monastic landholdings on Mount Athos today.

xii
 INTRODUCTION

hen Robert Byron stood on the peak of Athos at sunset one

W September evening in 1926, he claimed that to the east he could see not
only the island of Lemnos but also the coast of Asia Minor beyond: ‘the plains
of Troy, whence Tozer saw this platform of ours “towering up from the hori­
zon, like a vast spirit of the waters, when the rest of the peninsula is concealed
below’”. To the north he looked down on the coastline of Thrace stretching
away to rhe Dardanelles, ‘with Turkeys remnant hovering in soft eternity’; to
the west, he saw the two other fingers of Chalkidiki and beyond them Mount
Olympus; to the south, the islands of Euboea and Skiathos (literally, the
shadow of Athos). But even he was forced to admit that ‘the flat dome of St
Sophia rose only in the mind’.1 There is a tension between physical and spiri­
tual topography that sometimes stretches the limits of credulity.
If geography shapes the pattern of events, it dominates the history of
Greece. Consider the following natural configurations and the images they
bring to mind: the pass of Thermopylae, the island of Salamis, the island of
Sphakteria, the bay of Navarino, the volcanic peaks of the Meteora, the moun­
tains of Souli. It is largely thanks to geography that the flames of the holy
beacon that is Mount Athos have continued to burn so brightly to this day.
Our first definition of Athos must therefore be a geographical one.
Athos is a peninsula. Tie French wordpresquile is so much more graphic—
almost an island. Indeed Xerxes turned it into an island in 482 BC when he
cut a canal across the isthmus to save his ships from the rocks at the southern­
most point. The canal has long since silted up; but many people still think of
Athos as an island, perhaps because the only (legitimate) way to get there is by
sea. It has many of the characteristics of an island, but it is in fact part of the
mainland of northern Greece, being the most easterly of the three prehensile
claws that Chalkidiki extends into the Aegean Sea.
From the isthmus in the north-west to Cape Akrathos in the south-east the
distance, as the eagle flies, is about $6 kilometres; that from the west coast over
the ridge to the Aegean Sea on the east is rarely more than eight kilometres.
Tie border between Athos and Greece is marked by a wall which runs from
coast to coast roughly eight kilometres south of the isthmus, at the point where
the land begins to climb. It continues to rise, steeply at first, to densely wooded
peaks of 500 and 600 metres. Then it levels off and remains at approximately

1 R. Byron, The Station. Athos: Treasures and Men (1931, repr. London, 1984) p. 98.
 INTRODUCTION

that height until a point no more than ten kilometres short of the tip, when
suddenly it rises dramatically to a majestic marble peak of 1,03 3 metres before
making its final plunge into the waves immediately below. Few peaks of such
relatively modest dimensions can have been endowed with so spectacular a
setting.
From physical geography we move to the anthropology of Athos, which is
the prime reason for embarking on its history. Athos is the spiritual capital of
the Orthodox Christian world. Such awesome surroundings inevitably result
in divine associations and even in antiquity Athos was a holy mountain, sacred
to Zeus. For the last thousand years or so it has been dedicated to the glorifi­
cation of the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos or Mother of God as she is known
to the Orthodox. Among Greeks, indeed among all Orthodox Christians,
Mount Athos is known simply as the Holy Mountain. Road signs direct
motorists to Agion Oros’, even though there is no road to the Mountain, and
letters to the inhabitants must be so addressed.
Athos is a self-governing monastic enclave. All its permanent inhabitants
are monks, each of whom owes allegiance to one of the 20 ruling monasteries
that are scattered over the peninsula. Not all the monks live in monasteries,
but only the monasteries may own land and property; and though there are
many smaller settlements and hermitages, all of them are dependencies of one
or another of the monasteries. The monasteries are called ‘ruling* because
between them they govern the Mountain by means of a democratically elected
parliament (known as the Holy Community) to which each monastery sends
an elected representative. The Holy Community meets in Karyes, the capital
of Athos, a small town situated high up in the hills roughly in the middle of
the peninsula. Karyes has a population of 3 00 or 400. Most of them are monks,
dressed uniformly in black from head to toe.
Athos is a male preserve. No woman may reside on the Mountain or even
set foot on its soil. All domestic animals must be male: only the birds and wild
animals (and evidently cats) are exempt from this ruling. The dedication to the
Mother of God means that she alone is held to represent her sex, and the
monks believe that she herself issued the decree. They are not all misogynists,
but they regard the presence of women as a distraction from their vocation.
The exclusion of female animals apparently owes more to a desire to avoid the
inevitable interruptions that milking would cause to the monastic routine than
to any offence that might be given by their breeding, though the official line
given to monks has always been ‘because you have absolutely renounced all
female beings?
Athos is in Greece, but it is not Greek, it is Orthodox; more than that, it is

1 See P. Meyer, DieHaupturkundenfur die Geschichte der Athosklbster (Leipzig, 1894),

pp. 113,121.

2
 INTRODUCTION

pan-Orthodox. The Greek government appoints a civil governor who with the
support of the Greek police is responsible for maintaining law and order. But
for all other purposes the monks govern themselves. A majority of the monas­
teries—17 of the surviving 20—are Greek-speaking and mostly peopled by
Greeks. But there is one monastery for Russians, one for Serbs, and one for
Bulgarians; and there are two sketes (dependent houses) reserved for
Romanian monks. In addition to these monks from the traditional Orthodox
heartlands, there are today monks from all over the world in most monas­
teries—from Western Europe, the United States, Australia, even China.
Throughout its history Athos has been a supranational centre and at more than
one stage Greeks have formed a minority of the population. Unlike the Greek
Church, which is autocephalous (i.e. with its own archbishop as head), Athos
falls directly under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of
Constantinople.
Athos celebrated its millennium in 1963. It was then a thousand years
since the foundation of the first monastery, the Great Lavra, though there had
been communities of monks on the Mountain for some time before that. The
celebrations included high-level visits, impressive publications, even the con-
struction of a road—the first on Athos—from the port of Daphne up to the
town of Karyes. But despite the junketing there was no hiding the fact that the
monasteries gave every appearance of being in terminal decline. Monks were
becoming noticeably older and fewer; buildings were falling into disrepair
through lack of use; standards of spirituality were not all that they might be;
and there was serious talk of at least one monastery having to close.
The response to this disturbing situation was predictable, if—with hind­
sight— alarmist. As long ago as 1935 Michael Choukas concluded his
perceptive sociological study of the Holy Mountain with these words:

[The Mountains] secularization looms imminent. And the next generation of

monks may be predestined by human providence to put the final stamp of fail­
ure upon the material remnants of this greatest of all human experiments of our
millennium—to close up shop and return to their homes and their worldly
occupations. To predict that this will happen within the next generation is haz­
ardous—not because it may not happen; but because it may occur sooner?

All the monasteries of Athos were originally founded as coenobia, that is

communities of monks living and working together and contributing any
wealth that they cither brought with them or that they earned to the common
purse. In the late Byzantine period the so-called idiorrhythmic system was
introduced, allowing monks to retain their personal wealth and the profits
from any work that they might do. This made nonsense of the monastic vow

’ M. Choukas, Black Angels ofAthos (London, 1935), p. 196.

 INTRODUCTION

of poverty, though it served its purpose by attracting wealthy aristocrats to the

monasteries at a time when the future of the empire, and that of the Mountain,
hung in the balance and, in theory at least, it allowed for a greater measure of
austerity than was available in the coenobia. Later, however, the system began
to be abused and Choukas feared that the idiorrhythmic system would sweep
through the whole Mountain, driving before it any remnants of true, cenobitic
monasticism. Happily his prediction was not fulfilled.
A more equivocal note was sounded by Philip Sherrard, an English convert
to Orthodox}7 who knew and loved the Mountain as well as anyone from out­
side but who was alive to the serious dangers that it faced. In i960 he estimated
that the total number of monks was no more than 3,000 (in fact the total was
then well below 2,000):

This number continues to dwindle. New recruits to the monasteries each year
are few, firstly because in Greece itself a spirit hostile to the demands and pur­
poses of the monastic life continues largely co dominate both publicly and
privately; and secondly because the Greek state, for reasons not unconnected
with that tendency to destroy Athos as an Orthodox centre and to turn it into
a purely Greek concern, either directly prohibits or makes extremely difficult
the admission of probationers of non-Greek nationality, as, for instance, the
Roumanians. Whether this policy will have the effect it seems designed to pro­
mote, and Athos be reduced to a kind of glorified Byzantine museum and a
valuable tourist attraction—one eminent Greek politician has proposed chat
the monasteries be converted into casinos—remains to be seen.4

Most depressing of all were the comments of another English visitor, John
Julius Norwich, who wrote in 1966:

Athos is dying—and dying fast. In nearly every monastery the writing looms,
all too plainly, on the wall. We have suggested why this should be; we have even
discussed what may happen when, probably within the liftetime of most read­
ers, the thousand-year history of the Holy Mountain comes to an end. What
we have not done is to make any proposals as to how the disaster may be
averted. There are none to make. The disease is incurable. There is no hope.5

With hindsight we may commend the remarks of Constantine Cavarnos, a

Greek-American academic who visited the Mountain several times during the
19 5 os. In the first of two books based on his visits, he wrote as follows in 1959:

How to stop this unfortunate trend towards a decrease of the monastic popu­
lation of Athos, and to increase the number of monks there, is the biggest and
most vital problem that now concerns many Athonite monks. There are today

4 P. Sherrard, Athos: The Mountain ofSilence (London, 1960), p. 26.

$J.J Norwich and R. Sitwell, Mount Athos (London, 1966), p. 14.

4
 INTRODUCTION

about two thousand monks living in the twenty Athonite monasteries and their
dependencies, whereas at the beginning of the century there were nearly seven and
a half thousand. The problem, as the monks themselves see it, is not merely to
increase their number, but especially to increase the number of younger
monks... Although serious, die problem is not one widiout parallel in the past, and
it does not cause the monks to think that the Mountain will soon cease to be a living
reality and become a mere library or museum... they believe that this unique Pan-
Orthodox democracy of monks will continue to exist until the end of time.6

Professor Cavarnos went on to report some practical ways of solving the

problem that were being put forward by the monks:

As to the measures that should be taken in order to reverse the present trend,
they [the monks] specify the following. First, steps should be taken to
strengthen the piety of men ... Secondly, the economic problem must be
solved. The Greek government must furnish regularly adequate financial com­
pensation to the monasteries for the estates it has expropriated ... Thirdly,
bishops in Greece must stop taking monks from Athos and employing them as
deacons, priests, and preachers of their dioceses... Finally, Athonite monks, as
well as friends of Athos, should strive to provide a better understanding and
appreciation of the ideals of Athonite monasticism.7

The fact that so many of these ‘measures’ have subsequently been realized lends
weight to the prophetic traditions of Athonite divines. In his later book, writ­
ten after another visit in 1965 and first published in 1973, Cavarnos returned
to the same theme:

During the last four decades, there has been much speculation and concern
about the survival of monasticism on the Holy Mountain, prompted by (a) the
reduction of the number of monks, (b) the anti-monastic spirit of our age, and
(c) the invasion of Athos by tourism... Of the three dangers which I have dis­
cussed, the first—the reduction in the number of monks—is regarded by the
Athonites as the most fearful. But these pious and determined men believe that
they will confront this danger, as well as the others, successfully.8

What is especially commendable about Cavarnos’s account is his descrip­

tion of the then very recent changes at the monastery of Stavronikita.9 He
reports that in 1968 the monastery had been forced to close ‘because there
were no more monks there’. Later in the same year it reopened under new
management. Archimandrite Vasileios Gontikakis, a theology graduate of the

6 C. Cavarnos, Anchored in God: An Inside Account of Life, Art, and Thought on the Holy
Mountain ofAthos (1 sr edn. Athens, 1959; 2nd cdn. Belmont, MA, 197$), p. 214.
7 Ibid., pp. 214-15.
8 C. Cavarnos, The Holy Mountain (Belmont, MA, 1973), pp. 128-31.
9 Ibid., p. 129.
 INTRODUCTION

University of Athens, was appointed abbot, a number of other devout monks

joined him, and the monastery changed from the idiorrhythmic to the ceno­
bitic system. ‘Thus the temporary closing down of the Monastery of
Stavronikita turned out to be not a disaster, but an opportunity for inaugurat­
ing there a stricter mode of monasticism.’ Cavarnos cannot have known that
the changes at Stavronikita were the first manifestation of a revival that was to
overtake all the monasteries of Athos in the course of the following quarter­
century. The seeds of revival had been sown many years earlier in the cells and
hermitages in the most remote parts of the Mountain, although the fruits were
not to become apparent for some years to come. Describing this revival is my
first and principal motive for writing this book.
A second motive is that, although much has been written about various
aspects of the Holy Mountain, few authors to my knowledge have attempted
a complete history from earliest times to the present. The task has been made
more laborious and more rewarding as well as more necessary by the monas­
teries’ ongoing publication of their archives. These archives represent a
uniquely valuable resource and include countless charters, chrysobulls, and
other documents covering the entire period of Athonite monasticism from the
ninth century onwards. The information they provide extends way beyond
purely monastic or even ecclesiastical concerns and touches on political, eco­
nomic, legal, social, and cultural matters. Their publication, in a systematic and
scholarly series initiated in Paris in 1937 by Gabriel Millet and continued by
Paul Lemerle, is an undertaking of immense historical importance which,
when complete, will add immeasurably to our understanding of the Orthodox
world throughout the Byzantine and Ottoman periods.
Neither motive would be sufficient justification for the book if Athos were
not itself important. Athos matters to different people for different reasons. I
shall select four areas of concern, all equally important.
The first concern has to be the spiritual tradition. For more than a thou­
sand years Athos has functioned as the principal centre of Orthodox
monasticism and spirituality. At one time it is said to have sheltered 40,000
monks. The Great Lavra alone has been the nursery of 26 patriarchs and more
than 144 bishops. The monastery of Vatopcdi has produced more than 44 rec­
ognized saints. In the twentieth century there was a decline in numbers of
monks, but spiritual traditions were maintained, saints continued to emerge,
and as Archimandrite Gabriel (1886-1983), Abbot ofDionysiou for 50
years, has written,
The splendour and grandeur of the Holy Mountain is not to be judged by the
small or large number of monks who dwell on it. This fluctuation has occurred
many times during its thousand-year period of monastic life... We Hagiorites
steadfastly believe that our holy abodes on Mount Athos will soon be filled with
monks... We believe that the Mountain, by the Grace of God, will continue in

6
 INTRODUCTION

existence till the end of time. The piety of Orthodox people will always envelop
Athos, and souls beloved by God will never cease coming to it, because its spir­
ituality will always have the power of attracting those who are heavy laden with
sin, and its holiness those who are pure in heart.10

Fr Gabriel was just one of the most recent in an unbroken tradition of holy
men, scholars, teachers, and ascetics that stretches back to the ninth century.
They arc the men who have provided the Mountain with its life-blood and
with its means of self-perpetuation. For Athonites arc biologically incapable
of reproducing themselves: they cannot survive without an intake from the
world, and that intake will only present itself if there are enough men like Fr
Gabriel to draw them. That is why the recent revival is so important. It is in no
sense a reform. It is simply yet another manifestation of the Mountain regen­
erating itself in the way that it has always done—from within—and attracting
new blood that will enable it not just to survive but to shine with the mystical
radiance of an authentic icon.
Secondly, Athos is important for historical reasons. From the moment of
its inauguration by the emperor Constantine the Great in 330, the Byzantine
empire was a uniquely God-centred institution. However reduced his circum-
suuices might become, the emperor remained God’s viceroy on earth, supreme
among all other Christian princes, anointed by God, acknowledged by all
Orthodox patriarchs, bishops, and people. Although his territories might be
threatened and even occupied by the enemy, God’s authority would soon be
restored over the full extent of the ancient Roman empire. This remained the
con fident belief of all Byzantines, one of the most devoutly religious people of
all times. The patriarch and other members of the hierarchy enjoyed enormous
prestige and great wealth; but oddly enough it was individual monks and holy
men who were far more influential in Byzantine society in general; and if there
was ever a conflict between the monks and the bishops, it was the monks who
commanded the support of the people. This was one reason why emperors
were so generous with their monastic endowments, and it accounted for the
great wealth and power that the monasteries acquired.
As the principal monastic survivor of the turmoil created by the Fourth
Crusade and the Latin empire of 1204-61, Athos emerged in a position of
greatly enhanced strength. The monks were able to influence political aftairs,
to dominate religious debate, and to play an unprecedented part in adminis­
tration of the Church. This was perhaps their most glorious period in terms of
worldly power. After the fall of the empire in 1453 they acquired a new role:
they became the guardians of Hellenism. During the long centuries of
Ottoman rule, it was largely rhe monasteries that kept alive the spirit of the

10 Gabriel, Abbot of the Monastery of Dionysiou, The Voice of One Cryingin the Wilderness
(Volos, 1955). quoted by C. Cavarnos, Anchored in God, p. 116.

7
 1

INTRODUCTION

Greeks as a people, reminding them of their heritage, preserving the traditions

of Orthodoxy, and in due course fostering the idea of nationalism. Orthodoxy
and Hellenism had long been inextricably intertwined and it is impossible to
separate the secular aspect from the religious in this development. But it is per­
haps true to say that after the Greek War of Independence in 1821-32 and the
eventual disintegration of the Ottoman empire in 1922 the monasteries were
temporarily bereft of part of their raison d’etre. It was as if they suddenly had
to cast around for a new role, and the search for that role may be part of the
explanation for the decline in the number of monks in the half-century follow­
ing the liberation of northern Greece in 1912.
The third area in which Athos is of supreme importance is its cultural her­
itage—the buildings themselves and what they contain. Architecturally the
monasteries are an amalgam. They represent an accumulation of structures of
all periods from the tenth century to the present day, when once again they are
being forced to expand in order to accommodate the new influx of monks.
Among the earliest surviving structures are the principal churches of some of
the first monasteries such as the Great Lavra, Vatopedi, and Iviron and the
church of the Protaton in Karyes, the only basilica on the Mountain, all of
which date (at least in part) from the tenth century. Apart from some early for­
tifications and towers, not much else survives from the Byzantine period. But
the cells and other monastic buildings scattered over the peninsula represent
by far the best witness we have to domestic architecture in Greece during the
Ottoman period, with an interesting admixture of Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian,
Romanian, and Georgian styles thrown in.
All Orthodox churches are decorated in an attempt to make them worthy
symbols of heaven on earth, and the decoration of Athonite churches is emi­
nently suited to the earthly paradise which the monks are proud to inhabit.
Some of the best Byzantine artists and craftsmen were attracted to Athos, and
glorious examples of their work may still be admired in many of the monaster­
ies. In addition to the frescos which colour the walls, roofs, and domes of many
a church and refectory, there are priceless collections of icons, many of them
believed to possess miracle-working properties. Icon-painting is a tradition still
practised by monks today and more than one skete houses a school of painting.
As well as icons, all monasteries have collections of relics—mostly bones of the
saints, fragments of the ‘True Cross’, and other items associated with the early
Church. Many of these are preserved in elaborate reliquaries and put on dis­
play for pilgrims to venerate. Most monasteries also have rich and important
collections of medieval and later manuscripts. The majority of these are litur­
gical, biblical, or patristic texts, some of them resplendent with fine
illuminations; but an important minority are of ancient pagan literature.
Libraries and treasuries often house other valuable items such as jewelled book­
covers, vessels of silver and gold, embroidered vestments, mosaic icons, and

8
 INTRODUCTION

countless gifts from benefactors which together comprise the celebrated

wealth of the Athonite houses.
Finally, as a fourth area of special importance there is the natural environ­
ment. Due to its varied topography, geology, and climate, the peninsula is
home to a wide-ranging flora, including a number of endemic species on the
peak itself. As a result of the exclusion of female domestic animals and the con­
sequent absence of flocks, the slopes of the Mountain have been very little
grazed and therefore retain much of their natural vegetation. Most impressive
to the visitor is the forest cover which, despite numerous fires, extends over
more than 90 per cent of the Mountain. In the north the commonest tree is
the Aleppo pine, but in the uplands of the central region there is an extensive
zone of deciduous broadleaved forest in which the Spanish chestnut predom­
inates. In springtime the visitor will also be struck by the profusion of wild
flowers which seem to carpet every available slope and meadow. If he is lucky,
he may be awakened by the sound of jackals howling at night; and though the
last wolves are said to have died out, there have been reports of their reintro­
duction.
In short, the environment of Athos in the twenty-first century is practically
unchanged since the first monks arrived in the ninth. It is perhaps the nearest
thing co a natural landscape anywhere in southern Europe. It goes without say­
ing that it is indescribably beautiful and naturally conducive to religious
activity. Conservationists have toured the peninsula, visited the monasteries,
and made the monks aware of the value and the fragility of their natural sur­
roundings. The survival of this unique environment depends upon preserving
the seclusion of the Holy Mountain, which remains inviolate after more than
a thousand years of monkish activity. This is perhaps the most important of all
the areas of concern, since should it ever be lost the rest will surely perish with
it. And such an eventuality is unthinkable.

9
 I

A highly stylized nineteenth-century view of both sides of the peninsula. Engravings

such as this provide an (albeit exaggerated) illustration of the Mountain’s remarkable
physiognomy. Every monastery is labelled, there is much traffic both by land and sea,
and the Mother of God Hodegetria presides over all.
 I

ATHOS BC

thos IS AN EXTRAORDINARY place. Its unusual physiognomy is con­

A ducive to religious activity, and it is largely in that context that we think

of it today. But its pre-Christian past helps to explain something of the numi­
nous quality that the place already possessed before the arrival of the monks.
In fact, for its size and its relative remoteness from the centres of contemporary
cultural activity Athos has a pagan past of quite exceptional importance. Three
particular episodes merit narration, each of them connected with a momen­
tous event in Greek history, each the direct result of the peninsulas geography.

THE TROJAN WAR

Robert Byron may have been blessed with exceptional eyesight, or perhaps with
a creative imagination, when he described what he could see from the peak of
Athos on that evening in 1926 (see above, p. 1), but it is significant that the first
two places he mentioned were Lemnos and the plains of Troy. The site of Troy
had been positively identified by Heinrich Schliemann some 50 years earlier,
and there was no more celebrated episode in the annals of prehistory than the
capture of Troy by the Greeks after a ten-year siege. News of the victory was
relayed almost instantly to Argos, where Clytaemnestra, Agamemnons faithless
queen, was waiting to proclaim the joyful tidings to her people. How did she
know so quickly, what messenger could come so fast ? Aeschylus explains it thus:

Hephaestus, launching a fine flame from Ida,

Beacon forwarding beacon, despatch-riders of fire,
Ida relayed to Hermes’ cliff in Lemnos
And the great glow from the island was taken over third
By the height of Athos that belongs to Zeus,
And towering then to straddle over the sea...
Blazing and bounding till it reached at length
The Arachnaean steep, our neighbouring heights;
And leaps in the latter end on the roof of the sons of Atreus
Issue and image of the fire on Ida...
Such is the proof I offer you, the sign
My husband sent me out of Troy.1

1 Aeschylus, Agamemnon. 281-316, translated by Louis MacNeice (London, 1936).

I I
 I

ATHOS BC

Scholars argue over the precise location of some of the beacons, but the prin­
ciple is perfectly sound. Beacons were lit on hilltops all over England in 1988 to
commemorate the manner in which news of the defeat of the Spanish Armada
had been signalled 400 years earlier. Athos was one of the best-known emi­
nences in the Aegean and a landmark familiar to all sailors. Even the Argonauts,
the most dauntless of all mythology’s mariners, were gratified to catch sight of
it as they struck out across the open sea towards the Hellespont; and the poet
comments on the famous shadow which at sunset the mountain casts as far as
the island of Lemnos, a distance of some $0 miles.1 Athos was therefore well
qualified to join the chain of beacons between Troy and Argos that night.

THE PERSIAN WARS

The next time that the Greeks became involved in a major foreign war
occurred early in the fifth century BC when they were twice invaded by the
Persians. On each occasion Athos played a prominent role.
By the end of the sixth century the Persians were by far the strongest power
in the eastern Mediterranean and had established their rule from the north
Aegean as far as Egypt and India. In 492. BC a fleet under the command of
Mardonius, son-in-law of King Darius, was dispatched to re-establish Persian
authority over Thrace and Macedonia, which had supported a recent rebellion.
While a land army crossed the Hellespont and began its march through
Thrace, the fleet overran the island of Thasos and then turned its attention to
the mainland. Herodotus tells the story:

From Thasos the fleet stood across to the mainland and proceeded along the coast
to Acanthus, and from there attempted to double Athos; but before they were
round this promontory, they were caught by a violent northerly gale, which
proved too much for the ships to cope with. A great many of them were driven
ashore on Athos and smashed up—indeed, report says that something like three
hundred were wrecked, and over twenty thousand men lost their lives. The sea in
the neighbourhood of Athos is full of man-eating monsters, so that those of the
ships’ companies who were not dashed to pieces on the rocks, were seized and
devoured. Others, unable to swim, were drowned; others, again, died of cold?

The rocks are still there off the southern tip of the peninsula for all to see.
As for the man-eating monsters, Athos has seen stranger things in its time.
Undeterred, the Persians continued with their invasion, only to be driven back
into the sea by the Athenians when they landed at Marathon in 490 BC.
Ten years later they were ready to try again. As before, the invasion was

1 Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, 1.601-4. See also Sophocles fragment 776 Pearson and
commentary adloc.
’ Herodotus 6.44, translated by Aubrey de Selincourt (Harmondsworth, 1954).

12
 ATHOS BC

planned by both land and sea; but this time Xerxes, who had succeeded to the
throne of his father Darius, decided to cut a canal through the isthmus of
Athos rather than risk his fleet on the rocks at the southern point. This
immense operation took three years to complete, with labour provided by the
inhabitants of Athos as well as by the soldiers of the Persian army based in the
Thracian Chersonese. Herodotus breaks off at this point to give an engaging
description of the peninsula. ‘Everyone knows Mount Athos’, he writes,

that lofty promontory running far out into the sea. People live on it, and
where the high land ends on the landward side it forms a sort of isthmus with
a neck about a mile and a half wide, all of which is level, except for a few low
hills, right across from the coast by Acanthus to the other side near Torone.
On this isthmus to the north of the high ground stands rhe Greek town of
Sane, and south of it, on Athos itself, arc Dium, Olophyxus, Acrothoon,
Thyssus, and Cleonac—the inhabitants of which Xerxes now proposed to
turn into islanders.4

Herodotus gives a detailed description of how the canal was dug and con­
cludes that the enterprise was primarily intended as propaganda to
demonstrate the extent of Persian power. Whatever the motive for building
the canal, the fleet escaped the rocks of Athos this rime, and the Persians went
on to sack the Athenian Acropolis. But their triumph was short-lived. Their
ships came to grief in the narrows off Salamis, and their army was routed at
Plaraea in 479 BC. The Persian threat had been decisively beaten off and
Greece was free to enjoy a cultural golden age.
Xerxes’ enterprise aroused the curiosity of a number of eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century travellers and surveyors. The Compte de Choiseul-
Gouffier, subsequently French ambassador to the Sublime Porte and Elgin’s
rival for possession of the Parthenon marbles, was on the scene in 1776 and
published a description of the canal together with a map.s Then the military
surveyor William Martin Leake examined the site after his tour of the Athos
peninsula in October-November 1806. Leake had a professional concern
with the canal’s military potential and after a detailed description concluded
that ‘it might..., without much labour, be renewed; and there can be no
doubt that it would be useful to the navigation of the Aegean’.6 In 1838
another British officer, Lieutenant T. Spratt R.N. of H.M.S. Beacon, was
detailed to survey it and published his results, again with a map, in 1847.7

4 Herodotus 7.21.
5 M. G. A. P. de Choiseul-Gouffier, Voyagepittoresque en Grice, 2 vols. (Paris, 1782- 1809),
vol.2, pp. 146-50.
6 W. M. Leake, Travels in Northern Greece. 4 vols (London, 1835), vol.3, p. 145.
7 T. Spratt, ‘Remarks on the Isthmus of Mount Athos’, Journal ofthe Royal Geographical Soci­
ety, 17(1847), 145-50.
 I

ATHOS BC

And in 1901 yet another survey was conducted and published, together with
another map, by A. Struck.8
Perhaps surprisingly, it was to be 90 years before modern archaeological
techniques were applied to the canal. In 1991-2. a topographical survey and
various geophysical investigations were carried out under the auspices of the
British School at Athens and the somewhat inconclusive results were pub­
lished in 1994-6.9 More positive results were claimed by a team of Greek
scientists who used seismic resistivity techniques to establish the existence of a
substantial channel which they have calculated to be 65 feet wide at its base,
114 feet broad at the top, and up to 47 feet deep. The depth of the water was
probably between 7 and 10 feet, which would have allowed two unladen
triremes to pass through the canal abreast.10 It begins to look as if there may
indeed be detectable traces of what the British excavator B. S. J. Isserlin has
called ‘not only the most impressive surviving monument of Persia’s short-lived
imperial presence in Europe, but also one of the most important pieces of
ancient marine communication engineering anywhere?1
And the evidence of local tradition, which is often more graphic and more
colourful than that of the spade or the sledge-hammer, should not be ignored.
Joice Loch, an Australian who lived in the Byzantine tower at Prosphori (now
Ouranopolis) from 1928 until her death in 1982, records in her autobiography
that in the 1920s caiques were still being hauled across the narrowest part of
the isthmus on wooden rollers by teams of bullocks, as had been the custom,
she says, from before the time of Xerxes.11 If there was indeed a canal there,
those bullocks would surely be following its route.

THE CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

It was ostensibly to avenge the sack of Athens 150 years earlier that in 3 34 BC

8 A. Struck, ‘Der Xerxeskanal am Athos’, Neue Jahrbucher fur das klassische Altertum:
Geschichte and Literatur, 10 (1907), 115-30. For a fuller treatment of these surveys, with illustra­
tions of some of the maps, see V. della Dora, Imagining Mount Athos: Visions ofa Holy Placefrom
Homer to World War II (Charlottesville, VA, and London, 2011), pp. 116-3 3.
9 B. S.J. Isserlin etal., ‘The Canal ofXcrxcs on the Mount Athos Peninsula: Preliminary Inves­
tigations in 1991-1992’, Annual ofthe British School at Athens, 89 (1994), 277-84 and plates
43-4; ‘The Canal of Xerxes: Investigations in 1993-1994’ Annual ofthe British School at Athens,
91 (1996), 329-40.
10 V. K. Karastathis and S. P. Papamarinopoulos, Geophysical Prospecting, 45(1997). 389-401.
Reported by Norman Hammond in The Times, 5 January 1998.
" B. S.J. Isserlin, ’The Canal ofXcrxcs: Facts and Problems’, Annual ofthe British School of
Athens, 86 (1991), 8 3.
11 J. N. Loch, A Fringe ofBlue (London, 1968), p. 114. Joice’s husband Sydney Loch was a
Scotsman who was welcomed as an honoured guest everywhere on the Holy Mountain and who
knew it as few laymen do, as is evident from his delightful book Athos: The Holy Mountain (Lon­
don, 1957). On the Lochs see further below, p.218.

14
 ATHOS BC

Alexander III of Macedon set out to conquer the Persian empire. He suc­
ceeded in his ambition and went on to become master of the known world,
taking Greek culture as far as Upper Egypt and Central Asia. Megalomaniac
he may have been, but no Greek has equalled his achievement before or since.
Pandering to the general’s vanity and confident in his own ideas and skill, the
young architect Dinocrates came up with an equally astonishing scheme to
commemorate the conquests and reflect Alexander’s scarcely concealed pre­
tensions to divinity. What Dinocrates proposed was nothing less than the
transformation of the whole of Mount Athos into a monumental sculpture of
the king. With his left hand he would embrace the walls of a very extensive city,
with his right a bowl overflowing with water channelled from all the rivers that
spring from that mountain.
The reaction of Alexander, as reported by the Roman architect Vitruvius
writing more than 300 years later, was entirely pragmatic. The scheme was a
bold one; but could the mountain grow enough corn to feed the population
of such a city? Dinocrates was forced to admit that the terrain was too moun­
tainous for the plough and that supplies of corn would have to be imported.
The king then congratulated the young architect on his originality but quietly
dismissed the idea on practical grounds:

I perceive that if anyone leads a colony to that place, his judgment will be
blamed. For just as a child when born, if it lacks the nurse’s milk cannot be fed,
nor led up the staircase of growing life, so a city without cornfields and their
produce abounding within its ramparts, cannot grow, nor become populous
without abundance of food, nor maintain its people without a supply. There­
fore, just as I think your planning worthy of approval, so, in my judgement, the
site is worthy of disapproval.15

However the young architect was not laughed out of court and his services
were retained for other projects that were even dearer to the heart of the
king—first (according to Vitruvius), the design of the new city of Alexandria
in Egypt and, later (according to Plutarch), the fantastically grandiose tomb
of Alexander’s adored friend Hephaestion in Babylon.14 As for Athos, ‘let the
mountain stand as it is’, Alexander is said to have declared; ‘it is sufficient that
another king perpetuated his arrogance by having a canal cut through it?s
Thus Mount Athos, which would ultimately have a very different com­
memorative role, was spared this proposed assault on its craggy features. The
hubristic fantasy of Dinocrates was also condemned by the Renaissance

” Vitruvius, De Architecture 2 praef., translated by F. Granger (Cambridge, MA, and Lon­

don, 1931).
14 P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford, 1972), vol. 1, p. 4 and note 1 2; Plutarch, Life of
Alexander, 71.7.
15 G. Smyrnakis, To Agion Oros (Athens, 1903; wpc. Mount Athos, 1988), p. 12.

1$
 1

ATHOS BC

architect Leon Battista Alberti in his influential study of Vitruvius, written in

1451. In fact he criticizes it twice, the first time for purely practical reasons:

In choosing the region it will be proper to have it such, that the inhabitants may
find it convenient in all respects, both as to its natural properties, and as to the
neighbourhood and its correspondence with the rest of mankind ... For this
reason, more than any other, Alexander was perfectly in the right in not build­
ing a city upon Mount Athos (though the invention and design of the architect
Policrates [5/?] must needs have been wonderful) because the inhabitants could
never have been well supplied with conveniences.’6

Later in the same work Alberti attacks the plan again—for lacking a sense
of proportion, for contravening nature, and for being plain unnecessary:

What the hand or wit of man can add to the region, cither of beauty or dignity,
is hardly discoverable; unless we would give in to those miraculous and super­
stitious accounts which we read of some works. Nor are the undertakers of such
works blamed by prudent men, if their designs answer any great conveniency;
but if they take pains to do what there was no necessity for, they are justly
denied the praise they hunt after. For who would be so daring as to undertake,
like Stasicrates (according to Plutarch) or Dinocrates (according to Vitruvius)
to make Mount Athos into a statue of Alexander, and in one of the hands to
build a city big enough to contain ten thousand men?... But let us leave it to
mighty kings to be delighted with such undertakings: let them join sea to sea
by cutting the land between them: let them level hills: let them make new
islands, or join old ones to the continent: let them put it out of the power of
any others to imitate them, and so make their names memorable to posterity:
still all their vast works will be commended not so much in proportion to their
greatness as their use.'7

Albertis strictures however did nothing to discourage later artists from

depicting a realization of the scheme in order to appeal to the vanity of their
patrons or demonstrate their own antiquarian learning. Thus Pietro da Cor­
tona in about 1655 portrayed himself kneeling before Pope Alexander VII
together with Dinocrates, who directs attention to the anthropomorphic
mountain as if to commend the new popes propitious choice of name and his
ambition to be remembered as Rome’s greatest builder. In his Sketch ojHistor­
ical Architecture (1721) the Baroque architect Johann Bernard Fischer von
Erlach included a dramatic representation of the Athonite colossus with fine
detailing of the imagined city and the flowing streams. And in 1796a blatantly
political statement by the French artist Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes shows a

16 Leone Battista Alberti, Ten Books on Architecture, 1.4, translated by James Leoni, edited by
Joseph Rykwert (repr. London, 1955).
17 Ibid. 6.4.

16
 AT H O s fie

z. Pope
Alexander J7!!
shown
Mount Athos
by Dinocrates,
a drawing
by Pietro
da Cortona
(c.1655).
(British
Museum.)
tranquil Arcadian pastoral scene in the foreground under the watchful eye of
the monumental Alexander, who represents the benign but immutable author­
ity of the republican state in the background. The irony is that Alexander,
epitome of the ruthlessly autocratic monarch, had now become an icon of
republican virtues for the delectation of supporters of the French Revolution.'8
No such volte-face took place in the staunchly royalist waters of the north
Aegean, infested as they are thought to be by man-eating Gorgons (can they
be the same monsters that are referred to by Herodotus?). According to the
folklorists, these creatures usually surface on Saturday nights in particularly
•« The scheme of Dinocrates and the subsequent fashion for mountain carving are well docu­
mented and illustrated in Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (London, 1995), ch. 7, Dinocrates
and die Shaman: Altitude, Beatitude, Magnitude’, and also in della Dora, op. cit., ch. 1, Mythical Athos.
See also H. Meyer, ‘Der Berg des Athos als Alexander: zu den realen Grundlagen der Vision des
Deinokrates’, Rivista di archeologia, 10(1986), 11-30.

17
 ATHOS BC

stormy seas and, grasping the stern of a caique in distress, ask the captain,
‘Is King Alexander living?’ To this question he must reply, ‘He lives and reigns
and keeps the world at peace.’ Provided the correct response is given, the Gor­
gon will disappear and the storm will subside. But if the captain is so foolish as
to reply that the king is dead, the ship will invariably be lost with all hands. No
hero from antiquity is more celebrated in modern Greek folklore than Alexan­
der the Great.'9

THE END OF ANTIQUITY

We have observed Mount Athos implicated in or associated with three of the

most heroic episodes in all ancient history—the Trojan War, the defeat of Persia,
and the conquests of Alexander the Great. Such associations are the life-blood
of legend, though none of these associations would have come about were it not
for the mountain’s remarkable geography. It is also worth remarking at this
point that by the first centuries AD the inhabitants of Athos had acquired a
reputation for longevity, the reason for which may or may not be related
to the mountain’s geography.10 However it came about, the reputation is well
deserved, as is borne out by the experience of many of its latter-day residents.
Given its history, and the fact that we know of the existence of at least five
cities on the shores of the peninsula in antiquity, it is perhaps surprising that
so little of its pre-Christian past survives. The site of none of them is known
for certain.11 And apart from a very few fragments of ancient masonry or
sculpture reused in the walls or preserved in the treasuries of one or two of the
monasteries, nothing of any substance has come to light. But then archaeology
is officially forbidden on Athos; monks, if they are not positively prejudiced
against it, take very little interest in the pagan past of their present surround­
ings; and if any casual find is ever made, the chances of its becoming widely
known are remote.
Nor is the fate of those ancient cities recorded. It must be assumed, how­
ever, that by late antiquity they had become depopulated. Their citizens may
have sailed away in search of more fertile land elsewhere, or they may have suc­
cumbed to some deadly plague, or they may simply have faded away like old
soldiers. The one thing that seems certain is that they were not driven away by
enemy action or by any occupying force. There is nothing to suggest that when
the first monks arrived they had to win the land by conquest or displace an
existing population. It seems that they found a deserted peninsula, suitable in

19 See J. C. Lawson, Modem Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals
(Cambridge, 1910), p. 185.
20 See Pomponios Mela 2.2.32; Lucian, Macrobn, 5; Aelian, Faria Historia, 9.1 o.
21 However, all five cities and the route of the canal are located with bold precision on a map
in my possession printed in London in 1725.

18
 ATHOS BC

every respect for the purpose they had in mind. The President of the Immortals
had ended his sport with the mountain and graciously surrendered his seat to
the Holy Mother of God.

3. The Axion estin icon of the Mother of God, the holiest icon on Athos
(Protaton, Karyes).

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