Glaucon and Hermione were come together to offer thanks to Athena for theglory of the Isthmus. The athlete had already mounted the citadel headinga myrtle-crowned procession to bear a formal thanksgiving, but his wifehad not then been with him. Now they would go together, without pomp. Theywalked side by side. Nimble Chloe tripped behind with her mistress'sparasol. Old Manes bore the bloodless sacrifice, but Hermione said in herheart there came two too many.
Many a friendly eye, many a friendly word, followed as they crossed theAgora, where traffic was in its morning bustle. Glaucon answered everygreeting with his winsome smile.
"All Athens seems our friend!" he said, as close by the Tyrannicides'statues at the upper end of the plaza a grave councilman bowed and an oldbread woman left her stall to bob a courtesy.
"Is _your_ friend," corrected Hermione, thinking only of her husband, "forI have won no pentathlon."
"Ah, _makaira_, dearest and best," he answered, looking not on theglorious citadel but on her face, "could I have won the parsley wreath hadthere been no better wreath awaiting me at Eleusis? And to-day I amgladdest of the glad. For the gods have sent me blessings beyond desert, Ino longer fear their envy as once. I enjoy honour with all good men. Ihave no enemy in the world. I have the dearest of friends, Cimon,Themistocles--beyond all, Democrates. I am blessed in love beyond Peleusespoused to Thetis, or Anchises beloved of Aphrodite, for my goldenAphrodite lives not on Olympus, nor Paphos, nor comes on her doves fromCythera, but dwells--"
"Peace." The hand laid on his mouth was small but firm. "Do not anger thegoddess by likening me unto her. It is joy enough for me if I can look upat the sun and say, 'I keep the love of Glaucon the Fortunate and theGood.' "
Walking thus in their golden dream, the two crossed the Agora, turned tothe left from the Pnyx, and by crooked lanes went past the craggy rock ofAreopagus, till before them rose a wooden palisade and a gate. Throughthis a steep path led upward to the citadel. Not to the Acropolis of fame.The buildings then upon the Rock in one short year would lie in heaps offire-scarred ruin. Yet in that hour before Glaucon and Hermione a notunworthy temple rose, the old "House of Athena," prototype of the laterParthenon. In the morning light it stood in beauty--a hundred Doriccolumns, a sculptured pediment, flashing with white marble and with tintsof scarlet, blue, and gold. Below it, over the irregular plateau of theRock, spread avenues of votive statues of gods and heroes in stone,bronze, or painted wood. Here and there were numerous shrines and smalltemples, and a giant altar for burning a hundred oxen. So hand in hand thetwain went to the bronze portal of the Temple. The kindly old priest onguard smiled as he sprinkled them with the purifying salt water out of thebrazen laver. The door closed behind them. For a moment they seemed tostand in the high temple in utter darkness. Then far above through themarble roof a softened light came creeping toward them. As from unfoldingmist, the great calm face of the ancient goddess looked down with itsunchanging smile. A red coal glowed on the tripod at her feet. Glauconshook incense over the brazier. While it smoked, Hermione laid the crownof lilies between the knees of the half-seen image, then her husbandlifted his hands and prayed aloud.
"Athena, Virgin, Queen, Deviser of Wisdom,--whatever be the name thoulovest best,--accept this offering and hear. Bless now us both. Give us tostrive for the noblest, to speak the wise word, to love one another. Giveus prosperity, but not unto pride. Bless all our friends; but if we haveenemies, be thou their enemy also. And so shall we praise thee forever."
This was all the prayer and worship. A little more meditation, thenhusband and wife went forth from the sacred cella. The panorama--rocks,plain, sea, and bending heavens--opened before them in glory. The lightfaded upon the purple breasts of the western mountains. Behind theAcropolis, Lycabettus's pyramid glowed like a furnace. The marble ondistant Pentelicus shone dazzlingly.
Glaucon stood on the easternmost pinnacle of the Rock, watching thelandscape.
"Joy, _makaira_, joy," he cried, "we possess one another. We dwell in'violet-crowned Athens'; for what else dare we to pray?"
But Hermione pointed less pleased toward the crest of Pentelicus.
"Behold it! How swiftly yonder gray cloud comes on a rushing wind! It willcover the brightness. The omen is bad."
"Why bad, _makaira_?"
"The cloud is the Persian. He hangs to-day as a thunder-cloud above Athensand Hellas. Xerxes will come. And you--"
She pressed closer to her husband.
"Why speak of me?" he asked lightly.
"Xerxes brings war. War brings sorrow to women. It is not the hateful andold that the spears and the arrows love best."
Half compelled by the omen, half by a sudden burst of unoccasioned fear,her eyes shone with tears; but her husband's laugh rang clearly.
"_Euge!_ dry your eyes, and look before you. King AEolus scatters the cloudupon his briskest winds. It breaks into a thousand bits. So shallThemistocles scatter the hordes of Xerxes. The Persian shadow shall come,shall go, and again we shall be happy in beautiful Athens."
"Athena grant it!" prayed Hermione.
"We can trust the goddess," returned Glaucon, not to be shaken from hishappy mood. "And now that we have paid our vows to her, let us descend.Our friends are already waiting for us by the Pnyx before they go down tothe harbours."
As they went down the steep, Cimon and Democrates came running to jointhem, and in the brisk chatter that arose the omen of the cloud and fearsof the Persian faded from Hermione's mind.
* * * * * * *
It was a merry party such as often went down to the havens of Athens inthe springtime and summer: a dozen gentlemen, old and young, for the mostpart married, and followed demurely by their wives with the latter'smaids, and many a stout Thracian slave tugging hampers of meat and drink.Laughter there was, admixed with wiser talk; friends walking by twos andthrees, with Themistocles, as always, seeming to mingle with all and tosurpass every one both in jests and in wisdom. So they fared down acrossthe broad plain-land to the harbours, till the hill Munychia rose steepbefore them. A scramble over a rocky, ill-marked way led to the top; thenbefore them broke a second view comparable almost to that from the Rock ofAthena: at their feet lay the four blue havens of Athens, to the rightPhaleron, closer at hand the land-locked bay of Munychia, beyond that Zea,beyond that still a broader sheet--Peiraeus, the new war-harbour of Athens.They could look down on the brown roofs of the port-town, the forest ofmasts, the merchantman unloading lumber from the Euxine, the merchantmanloading dried figs for Syria; but most of all on the numbers of long blackhulls, some motionless on the placid harbour, some propped harmlessly onthe shore. Hermione clouded as she saw them, and glanced away.
"I do not love your new fleet, Themistocles," she said, frowning at thehandsome statesman; "I do not love anything that tells so clearly of war.It mars the beauty."
"Rather you should rejoice we have so fair a wooden wall against theBarbarian, dear lady," answered he, quite at ease. "What can we do tohearten her, Democrates?"
"Were I only Zeus," rejoined the orator, who never was far from his bestfriend's wife, "I would cast two thunderbolts, one to destroy Xerxes, thesecond to blast Themistocles's armada,--so would the Lady Hermione besatisfied."
"I am sorry, then, you are not the Olympian," said the woman, half smilingat the pleasantry. Cimon interrupted them. Some of the party had caught asun-burned shepherd in among the rocks, a veritable Pan in his shaggygoat-skin. The bribe of two obols brought him out with his pipe. Four ofthe slave-boys fell to dancing. The party sat down upon the burntgrass,--eating, drinking, wreathing poppy-crowns, and watching the nimbleslaves and the ships that crawled like ants in the haven and bay below.Thus passed the noon, and as the sun dropped toward craggy Salamis acrossthe strait, the men of the party wandered down to the ports and foundboats to take them out upon the bay.
The wind was a zephyr. The water spread blue and glassy. The sun wassinking as a ball of infinite light. Themistocles, Democrates, and Glauconwere in one s
kiff, the athlete at the oars. They glided past the scores ofblack triremes swinging lazily at anchor. Twice they pulled around theproudest of the fleet,--the _Nausicaae_, the gift of Hermippus to the state,a princely gift even in days when every Athenian put his all at the publicservice. She would be Themistocles's flag-ship. The young men noted herfine lines, her heavy side timbers, the covered decks, an innovation inAthenian men-of-war, and Themistocles put a loving hand on the keen bronzebeak as they swung around the prow.
"Here's a tooth for the Persian king!" he was laughing, when a secondskiff, rounding the trireme in an opposite direction, collided abruptly. Alurch, a few splinters was all the hurt, but as the boats partedThemistocles rose from his seat in the stern, staring curiously.
"Barbarians, by Athena's owls, the knave at the oars is a sleek Syrian,and his master and the boy from the East too. What business around ourwar-fleet? Row after them, Glaucon; we'll question--"
"Glaucon does no such folly," spoke Democrates, instantly, from the bow;"if the harbour-watch doesn't interfere with honest traders, what's it tous?"
"As you like it." Themistocles resumed his seat. "Yet it would do no harm.Now they row to another trireme. With what falcon eyes the master of thetrio examines it! Something uncanny, I repeat."
"To examine everything strange," proclaimed Democrates, sententiously,"needs the life of a crow, who, they say, lives a thousand years, but Idon't see any black wings budding on Themistocles's shoulders. Pullonward, Glaucon."
"Whither?" demanded the rower.
"To Salamis," ordered Themistocles. "Let us see the battle-place foretoldby the oracle."
"To Salamis or clear to Crete," rejoined Glaucon, setting his strengthupon the oars and making the skiff bound, "if we can find water deepenough to drown those gloomy looks that have sat on Democrates's brows oflate."
"Not gloomy but serious," said the young orator, with an attempt atlightness; "I have been preparing my oration against the contractor I'veindicted for embezzling the public naval stores."
"Destroy the man!" cried the rower.
"And yet I really pity him; he was under great temptation."
"No excuses; the man who robs the city in days like these is worse than hewho betrays fortresses in most wars."
"I see you are a savage patriot, Glaucon," said Themistocles, "despiteyour Adonis face. We are fairly upon the bay; our nearest eavesdroppers,yon fishermen, are a good five furlongs. Would you see something?" Glauconrested on the oars, while the statesman fumbled in his breast. He drew outa papyrus sheet, which he passed to the rower, he in turn to Democrates.
"Look well, then, for I think no Persian spies are here. A month long haveI wrought on this bit of papyrus. All my wisdom flowed out of my pen whenI spread the ink. In short here is the ordering of the ships of the alliedGreeks when we meet Xerxes in battle. Leonidas and our other chiefs gaveme the task when we met at Corinth. To-day it is complete. Read it, for itis precious. Xerxes would give twenty talents for this one leaf fromEgypt."
The young men peered at the sheet curiously. The details and diagrams werefew and easy to remember, the Athenian ships here, the AEginetan next, theCorinthian next, and so with the other allies. A few comments on the useof the light penteconters behind the heavy triremes. A few more commentson Xerxes's probable naval tactics. Only the knowledge that Themistoclesnever committed himself in speech or writing without exhausting everyexpedient told the young men of the supreme importance of the paper. Afterdue inspection the statesman replaced it in his breast.
"You two have seen this," he announced, seemingly proud of his handiwork;"Leonidas shall see this, then Xerxes, and after that--" he laughed, butnot in jest--"men will remember Themistocles, son of Neocles!"
The three lapsed into silence for a moment. The skiff was well out uponthe sea. The shadows of the hills of Salamis and of AEgelaos, the opposingmountain of Attica, were spreading over them. Around the islet ofPsyttaleia in the strait the brown fisher-boats were gliding. Beyond thestrait opened the blue hill-girdled bay of Eleusis, now turning to fire inthe evening sun. Everything was peaceful, silent, beautiful. Again Glauconrested on his oars and let his eyes wander.
"How true is the word of Thales the Sage," he spoke; " 'the world is thefairest of all fair things, because it is the work of God.' It cannot bethat, here, between these purple hills and the glistening sea, there willcome that battle beside which the strife of Achilles and Hector beforeTroy shall pass as nothing!"
Themistocles shook his head.
"We do not know; we are dice in the high gods' dice-boxes.
" 'Man all vainly shall scan the mind of the Prince of Olympus.'
"We can say nothing wiser than that. We can but use our Attic mother wit,and trust the rest to destiny. Let us be satisfied if we hope that destinyis not blind."
They drifted many moments in silence.
"The sun sinks lower," spoke Democrates, at length; "so back again to thehavens."
On the return Themistocles once more vowed he caught a glimpse of theskiff of the unknown foreigners, but Democrates called it mere phantasy.Hermione met them at the Peiraeus, and the party wandered back through thegathering dusk to the city, where each little group went its way.Themistocles went to his own house, where he said he expected Sicinnus;Cimon and Democrates sought a tavern for an evening cup; Glaucon andHermione hastened to their house in the Colonus suburb near the tricklingCephissus, where in the starlit night the tettix(4) in the black oldolives by the stream made its monotonous music, where great firefliesgleamed, where Philomela the nightingale called, and the tall plane treeswhispered softly to the pines. When Hermione fell asleep, she hadforgotten about the coming of the Persian, and dreamed that Glaucon wasEros, she was Psyche, and that Zeus was giving her the wings of abutterfly and a crown of stars.
Democrates went home later. After the heady Pramnian at the tavern, heroved away with Cimon and others to serenade beneath the lattice of alady--none too prudish--in the Ceramicus quarter. But the fair one was cruelthat night, and her slaves repelled the minstrels with pails of hot waterfrom an upper window. Democrates thereupon quitted the party. His head wasvery befogged, but he could not expel one idea from it--that Themistocleshad revealed that day a priceless secret, that the statesman and Glauconand he himself were the only men who shared it, and that it was believedthat Glaucon had visited the Babylonish carpet-seller. Joined to this wasan overpowering consciousness that Helen of Troy was not so lovely asHermione of Eleusis. When he came to his lodgings, however, his witscleared in a twinkling after he had read two letters. The first was short.
"Themistocles to Democrates:--This evening I begin to discover something.Sicinnus, who has been searching in Athens, is certain there is a Persianagent in the city. Seize him.--_Chaire._"
The second was shorter. It came from Corinth.
"Socias the merchant to Democrates:--Tyrrhenian pirates have taken theship. Lading and crew are utterly lost.--_Chaire._"
The orator never closed his eyes that night.