A Victor of Salamis
Hegias, the “King Archon,” chief of the state religion, took the Bema. His
speech was brief and to the point.
“All the priests and seers of Attica have consulted. Xenagoras speaks for
them all save Hermippus of the house of Eumolpus, who denies the others’
interpretation.”
Confusion followed. Men rose, swung their arms, harangued madly from where
they stood. The chairman in vain ordered “Silence!” and was fain to bid
the Scythian constables restore order. An elderly farmer thrust himself
forward, took the wreath, and poured out his rustic wisdom from the Bema.
His advice was simple. The oracle said “the wooden wall” would be a
bulwark, and by the wooden wall was surely meant the Acropolis which had
once been protected by a palisade. Let all Attica shut itself in the
citadel and endure a siege.
So far he had proceeded garrulously, but the high-strung multitude could
endure no more. “_Kataba! Kataba!_” “Go down! go down!” pealed the yell,
emphasized by a shower of pebbles. The elder tore the wreath from his head
and fled the Bema. Then out of the confusion came a general cry.
“Cimon, son of Miltiades, speak to us!”
But that young nobleman preserved a discreet silence, and the multitude
turned to another favourite.
“Democrates, son of Myscelus, speak to us!”
The popular orator only wrapped his cloak about him, as he sat near the
chairman’s stand, never answering the call he rejoiced of wont to hear.
There were cries for Hermippus, cries even for Glaucon, as if prowess in
the pentathlon gave ability to unravel oracles. The athlete sitting beside
Democrates merely blushed and drew closer to his friend. Then at last the
despairing people turned to their last resource.
“Themistocles, son of Neocles, speak to us!”
Thrice the call in vain; but at the fourth time a wave of silence swept
across the Pnyx. A figure well beloved was taking the wreath and mounting
the Bema.
The words of Themistocles that day were to ring in his hearer’s ears till
life’s end. The careless, almost sybaritic, man of the Isthmus and Eleusis
seemed transfigured. For one moment he stood silent, lofty, awe-inspiring.
He had a mighty task: to calm the superstitious fears of thirty thousand,
to silence the prophets of evil, to infuse those myriads with his own high
courage. He began with a voice so low it would have seemed a whisper if
not audible to all the Pnyx. Quickly he warmed. His gestures became
dramatic. His voice rose to a trumpet-call. He swept his hearers with him
as dry leaves before the blast. “When he began to weave his words, one
might have deemed him churlish, nay a fool, but when from his chest came
his deep voice, and words like unto flakes of winter snow, then who could
with him contend?” Thus Homer of Odysseus the Guileful, thus as truly of
Themistocles saviour of Hellas.
First he told the old, but never wearisome story of the past of Athens.
How, from the days of Codrus long ago, Athens had never bowed the knee to
an invader, how she had wrested Salamis from greedy Megara, how she had
hounded out the tyrannizing sons of Peisistratus, how she had braved all
the wrath of Persian Darius and dashed his huge armament back at Marathon.
With such a past, only a madman as well as traitor would dream of
submitting to Xerxes now. But as for the admonition of Xenagoras to quit
Attica and never strike a blow, Themistocles would have none of it. With a
clearness that appealed to every home-loving Hellene he pictured the fate
of wanderers as only one step better than that of slaves. What, then, was
left? The orator had a decisive answer. Was not the “wooden wall” which
should endure for the Athenians the great fleet they were just completing?
And as for the fate of the battle the speaker had an unexpected solution.
“Holy Salamis,” spoke the Pythoness. And would she have said “holy,” if
the issue had been only woe to the sons of Athens? “Luckless Salamis” were
then more reasonably the word; yet the prophetess so far from predicting
defeat had assured them victory.
Thus ran the substance of the speech on which many a soul knew hung the
mending or ending of Hellas, but lit all through with gleams of wit,
shades of pathos, outbursts of eloquence which burned into the hearers’
hearts as though the speaker were a god. Then at the end, Themistocles,
knowing his audience was with him, delivered his peroration:—
“Let him who trusts in oracles trust then in this, and in the old prophecy
of Epimenides that when the Persian comes it is to his hurt. But I will
say with Hector of Troy, ‘One oracle is best—to fight for one’s native
country.’ Others may vote as they will. My vote is that if the foe by land
be too great, we retire before him to our ships, ay, forsake even
well-loved Attica, but only that we may trust to the ‘wooden wall,’ and
fight the Great King by sea at Salamis. We contend not with gods but with
men. Let others fear. I will trust to Athena Polias,—the goddess terrible
in battle. Hearken then to Solon the Wise (the orator pointed toward the
temple upon the soaring Acropolis):—
“ ‘Our Athens need fear no hurt
Though gods may conspire her ill.
The hand that hath borne us up,
It guides us and guards us still.
Athena, the child of Zeus,
She watches and knows no fear.
The city rests safe from harm
Beneath her protecting spear.’
Thus trusting in Athena, we will meet the foe at Salamis and will destroy
him.”
“Who wishes to speak?” called the herald. The Pnyx answered together. The
vote to retire from Attica if needs be, to strengthen the fleet, to risk
all in a great battle, was carried with a shout. Men ran to Themistocles,
calling him, “Peitho,—Queen Persuasion.” He made light of their praises,
and walked with his handsome head tossed back toward the general’s office
by the Agora, to attend to some routine business. Glaucon, Cimon, and
Democrates went westward to calm their exhilaration with a ball-game at
the gymnasium of Cynosarges. On the way Glaucon called attention to a
foreigner that passed them.
“Look, Democrates, that fellow is wonderfully like the honest barbarian
who applauded me at the Isthmus.”
Democrates glanced twice.
“Dear Glaucon,” said he, “that fellow had a long blond beard, while this
man’s is black as a crow.” And he spoke the truth; yet despite the
disguise he clearly recognized the “Cyprian.”
CHAPTER VII
DEMOCRATES AND THE TEMPTER
In the northern quarter of Athens the suburb of Alopece thrust itself
under the slopes of Mt. Lycabettus, that pyramid of tawny rock which
formed the rear bulwark, as it were, of every landscape of Athens. The
dwellings in the suburb were poor, though few even in the richer quarters
were at all handsome; the streets barely sixteen feet wide, ill-paved,
filthy, dingy. A line of dirty gray stucco house-fronts was broken only by
the small doors and the smaller windows in the second story. Occasionally
a two-faced bust of Hermes stood before a portal, or a marble lion’s head
spouted into a corner water trough. All Athenian streets resembled these.
The citizen had his Pnyx, his Jury-Court, his gossiping Agora for his day.
These dingy streets sufficed for the dogs, the slaves, and the women, whom
wise Zeus ordered to remain at home.
Phormio the fishmonger had returned from his traffic, and sat in his
house-door meditating over a pot of sour wine and watching the last light
flickering on the great bulk of the mountain. He had his sorrows,—good
man,—for Lampaxo his worthy wife, long of tongue, short of temper, thrifty
and very watchful, was reminding him for the seventh time that he had sold
a carp half an obol too cheap. His patience indeed that evening was so
near to exhaustion that after cursing inwardly the “match-maker” who had
saddled this Amazon upon him, he actually found courage for an outbreak.
He threw up his arms after the manner of a tragic actor:—
“True, true is the word of Hesiod!”
“True is what?” flew back none too gently.
“ ‘The fool first suffers and is after wise.’ Woman, I am resolved.”
“On what?” Lampaxo’s voice was soft as broken glass.
“Years increase. I shan’t live long. We are childless. I will provide for
you in my will by giving you in marriage to Hyperphon.”(3)
“Hyperphon!” screamed the virago, “Hyperphon the beggarly hunchback, the
laughing-stock of Athens! O Mother Hera!—but I see the villain’s aim. You
are weary of me. Then divorce me like an honourable man. Send me back to
Polus my dear brother. Ah, you sheep, you are silent! You think of the
two-minæ dowry you must then refund. Woe is me! I’ll go to the King
Archon. I’ll charge you with gross abuse. The jury will condemn you.
There’ll be fines, fetters, stocks, prison—”
“Peace,” groaned Phormio, terrified at the Gorgon, “I only thought—”
“How dared you think? What permitted—”
“Good evening, sweet sister and Phormio!” The salutation came from Polus,
who with Clearchus had approached unheralded. Lampaxo smoothed her ruffled
feathers. Phormio stifled his sorrows. Dromo, the half-starved slave-boy,
brought a pot of thin wine to his betters. The short southern twilight was
swiftly passing into night. Groups of young men wandered past, bound
homeward from the Cynosarges, the Academy, or some other well-loved
gymnasium. In an hour the streets would be dark and still, except for a
belated guest going to his banquet, a Scythian constable, or perhaps a
cloak thief. For your Athenian, when he had no supper invitation, went to
bed early and rose early, loving the sunlight far better than the flicker
of his uncertain lamps.
“And did the jury vote ‘guilty’?” was Phormio’s first question of his
brother-in-law.
“We were patriotically united. There were barely any white beans for
acquittal in the urn. The scoundrelly grain-dealer is stripped of all he
possesses and sent away to beg in exile. A noble service to Athens!”
“Despite the evidence,” murmured Clearchus; but Lampaxo’s shrill voice
answered her brother:—
“It’s my opinion you jurors should look into a case directly opposite this
house. Spies, I say, Persian spies.”
“Spies!” cried Polus, leaping up as from a coal; “why, Phormio, haven’t
you denounced them? It’s compounding with treason even to fail to report—”
“Peace, brother,” chuckled the fishmonger, “your sister smells for treason
as a dog for salt fish. There is a barbarian carpet merchant—a Babylonian,
I presume—who has taken the empty chambers above Demas’s shield factory
opposite. He seems a quiet, inoffensive man; there are a hundred other
foreign merchants in the city. One can’t cry ‘Traitor!’ just because the
poor wight was not born to speak Greek.”
“I do not like Babylonish merchants,” propounded Polus, dogmatically; “to
the jury with him, I say!”
“At least he has a visitor,” asserted Clearchus, who had long been silent.
“See, a gentleman wrapped in a long himation is going up to the door and
standing up his walking stick.”
“And if I have eyes,” vowed the juror, squinting through his hands in the
half light, “that closely wrapped man is Glaucon the Alcmæonid.”
“Or Democrates,” remarked Clearchus; “they look much alike from behind.
It’s getting dark.”
“Well,” decided Phormio, “we can easily tell. He has left his stick below
by the door. Steal across, Polus, and fetch it. It must be carved with the
owner’s name.”
The juror readily obeyed; but to read the few characters on the crooked
handle was beyond the learning of any save Clearchus, whose art demanded
the mystery of writing.
“I was wrong,” he confessed, after long scrutiny, “ ‘Glaucon, son of
Conon.’ It is very plain. Put the cane back, Polus.”
The cane was returned, but the juror pulled a very long face.