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The Great Island
never saw a vampire, ghost, Nereid or phantom army. I wish I had;
I should then have been better placed in arguments about their
existence and explanation. The total sceptic tends to look smug in
such circum-stances.
This excursus round Sphakia would not be complete without a side
trip to Frangokastello, a few miles eastward down the coast.
Frangokastello stands like a lonely sentinel a few yards from the
sea, where the twisting cliffs have receded and left a few miles of
scrubby plain along the shore. From the hills above Sphakia you look
eastwards and see a pinpoint of light gleaming in the distance – a gold
sovereign dropped by some passing Frankish millionaire. The Franks,
all of them rich in the eyes of the Cretans, left treasures buried all over
Crete, we are told. Of these Castel Franco is the unique golden survivor.
This is not to say that there are not other Genoese or Venetian remains
and buildings – the monastery of Arcade is a splendid example of
sixteenth-century baroque, with its scrolls and flowery garlands, its
light Corinthian columns splitting the facade; only that Frangokastello
in its lonely eminence seems untouched by subsequent history, totally
foreign. From a distance the castle seems perfect, unscarred. The
golden, honey-coloured stone glows and traps the light. Only when
you approach can you see that the weather-beaten, battered lion of
St Mark, who stands guard over the southern door, is protector of a
ruin. The roof has gone. Lizards bask on the sun-baked stone. Coarse
grasses and pungent herbs have wedged themselves into the fissures
and taken possession of the Franks’ preserve.
I thought of Pashley, whom ruins inspired to almost Gibbonian
aphorisms. In Gaidouropolis, over the gateway of a palatial Venetian
building, he saw the motto OMNIA MUNDI FUMUS ET UMBRA :
a moral aphorism of the truth of which Venice has certainly afforded a memorable
example. What a contrast between her state at the time to which these few
words carry us back, and at the present day ! Then, the shade of her power was
spread over several of the fairest countries of the world; now, her very name is
blotted out from the list of nations. And yet how little can anyone, who loves
his kind, regret her fall ?
Smoke and shade. From Castel Temene, erected in 961, the year when
Nicephoras Phocas reclaimed Crete from the Arabs, to Castel Sfacchia
(1526), all the great castles are more or less gone, and Frangokastello
is the best preserved. Of the others, Boschini’s drawings are the
memorial.
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