Home life in Hellas, Greece and the Greeks - eBooks4Greeks.gr

TYPES AND TRAITS 133latter in times past. Now it moulds him in certainways ; but he is a Hellene for all that, andthere is more than the breadth of the Adriaticbetween Brindisi and Patras. Gaetano saw youoff on the Apulian shore ;Spiridion greets you onthe shore of Achaia. Apulia is remote, on theheel of Italy.It was Magna Graecia once, and atleast one Greek song — 'H Vovfiaa-roXa. — is stillsung in it. But Gaetano is much nearer to Doverthan Spiridion. The latter is probably closer tothe Dover man in complexion than Gaetano, whois usually brown of hue, and he is more thanprobably better educated, but he is farther fromWestern Europe. His komboloia is a detailwhich indicates that. The beads which he letsslide through his listless fingers may once havehad a religious signification. But now theyneither represent the ninety-nine attributes ofAllah nor the Catholic rosary. That chapletwhich is his inseparable companion when hisfingers are not otherwise employed, in which hefinds a solace unknown to Westerns, marks himoff from Apulia as much as from Kent. He playscards in the street at ten o'clock in the morning—proceeding which would excite remark at Dover,though not at Brindisi. But the komboloia isunknown to Gaetano ; so is the water-pipe, thenargileh, whose soothing bubble we hear as wepass the long lines of littletables on the quay atPatras. Yet Patras is very Western for Greece.It is the only considerable town with its face to the