A Victor of Salamis
day falls to sleep in the arms of night as Helios sinks over the western
hill by Daphni. Then the Rock seems to throb and burn with life again.
It is so bare that the hungry goats can hardly crop one spear of grass
along its jagged slopes. It is so steep it scarce needs defence against an
army. It is so commanding that he who stands on the westmost pinnacle can
look across the windy hill of the Pnyx, across the brown plain-land and
down to the sparkling blue sea with the busy havens of Peiræus and
Phalerum, the scattered gray isles of the Ægean, and far away to the
domelike crest of Acro-Corinthus. Let him turn to the right: below him
nestles the gnarled hill of Areopagus, home of the Furies, the buzzing
plaza of the Agora, the closely clustered city. Behind, there spread
mountain, valley, plain,—here green, here brown, here golden,—with
Pentelicus the Mighty rearing behind all, his summits fretted white, not
with winter snows, but with lustrous marble. Look to the left: across the
view passes the shaggy ridge of Hymettus, arid and scarred, as if wrought
by the Titans, home only of goats and bees, of nymphs and satyrs.
That was almost the self-same vision in the dim past when the first savage
clambered this “Citadel of Cecrops” and spoke, “Here is my
dwelling-place.” This will be the vision until earth and ocean are no
more. The human habitation changes, the temples rise and crumble; the red
and gray rock, the crystalline air, the sapphire sea, come from the god,
and these remain.
Glaucon and Hermione were come together to offer thanks to Athena for the
glory of the Isthmus. The athlete had already mounted the citadel heading
a myrtle-crowned procession to bear a formal thanksgiving, but his wife
had not then been with him. Now they would go together, without pomp. They
walked side by side. Nimble Chloë tripped behind with her mistress’s
parasol. Old Manes bore the bloodless sacrifice, but Hermione said in her
heart there came two too many.
Many a friendly eye, many a friendly word, followed as they crossed the
Agora, where traffic was in its morning bustle. Glaucon answered every
greeting 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 old
bread woman left her stall to bob a courtesy.
“Is _your_ friend,” corrected Hermione, thinking only of her husband, “for
I have won no pentathlon.”
“Ah, _makaira_, dearest and best,” he answered, looking not on the
glorious citadel but on her face, “could I have won the parsley wreath had
there been no better wreath awaiting me at Eleusis? And to-day I am
gladdest of the glad. For the gods have sent me blessings beyond desert, I
no longer fear their envy as once. I enjoy honour with all good men. I
have no enemy in the world. I have the dearest of friends, Cimon,
Themistocles—beyond all, Democrates. I am blessed in love beyond Peleus
espoused to Thetis, or Anchises beloved of Aphrodite, for my golden
Aphrodite lives not on Olympus, nor Paphos, nor comes on her doves from
Cythera, but dwells—”
“Peace.” The hand laid on his mouth was small but firm. “Do not anger the
goddess by likening me unto her. It is joy enough for me if I can look up
at the sun and say, ‘I keep the love of Glaucon the Fortunate and the
Good.’ ”
Walking thus in their golden dream, the two crossed the Agora, turned to
the left from the Pnyx, and by crooked lanes went past the craggy rock of
Areopagus, till before them rose a wooden palisade and a gate. Through
this 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 of
fire-scarred ruin. Yet in that hour before Glaucon and Hermione a not
unworthy temple rose, the old “House of Athena,” prototype of the later
Parthenon. In the morning light it stood in beauty—a hundred Doric
columns, a sculptured pediment, flashing with white marble and with tints
of scarlet, blue, and gold. Below it, over the irregular plateau of the
Rock, spread avenues of votive statues of gods and heroes in stone,
bronze, or painted wood. Here and there were numerous shrines and small
temples, and a giant altar for burning a hundred oxen. So hand in hand the
twain went to the bronze portal of the Temple. The kindly old priest on
guard smiled as he sprinkled them with the purifying salt water out of the
brazen laver. The door closed behind them. For a moment they seemed to
stand in the high temple in utter darkness. Then far above through the
marble roof a softened light came creeping toward them. As from unfolding
mist, the great calm face of the ancient goddess looked down with its
unchanging smile. A red coal glowed on the tripod at her feet. Glaucon
shook incense over the brazier. While it smoked, Hermione laid the crown
of lilies between the knees of the half-seen image, then her husband
lifted his hands and prayed aloud.
“Athena, Virgin, Queen, Deviser of Wisdom,—whatever be the name thou
lovest best,—accept this offering and hear. Bless now us both. Give us to
strive for the noblest, to speak the wise word, to love one another. Give
us prosperity, but not unto pride. Bless all our friends; but if we have
enemies, be thou their enemy also. And so shall we praise thee forever.”
This was all the prayer and worship. A little more meditation, then
husband and wife went forth from the sacred cella. The panorama—rocks,
plain, sea, and bending heavens—opened before them in glory. The light
faded upon the purple breasts of the western mountains. Behind the
Acropolis, Lycabettus’s pyramid glowed like a furnace. The marble on
distant Pentelicus shone dazzlingly.
Glaucon stood on the easternmost pinnacle of the Rock, watching the
landscape.
“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 will
cover the brightness. The omen is bad.”
“Why bad, _makaira_?”
“The cloud is the Persian. He hangs to-day as a thunder-cloud above Athens
and 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 and
old 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 Æolus scatters the cloud
upon his briskest winds. It breaks into a thousand bits. So shall
Themistocles 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 his
happy 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 to
the harbours.”
As they went down the steep, Cimon and Democrates came running to join
them, and in the brisk chatter that arose the omen of the cloud and fears
of the Persian faded from Hermione’s mind.
* * * * * * *
It was a merry party such as often went down to the havens of Athens in
the springtime and summer: a dozen gentlemen, old and young, for the most
part married, and followed demurely by their wives with the latter’s
maids, and many a stout Thracian slave tugging hampers of meat and drink.
Laughter there was, admixed with wiser talk; friends walking by twos and
threes, with Themistocles, as always, seeming to mingle with all and to
surpass every one both in jests and in wisdom. So they fared down across
the broad plain-land to the harbours, till the hill Munychia rose steep
before them. A scramble over a rocky, ill-marked way led to the top; then
before them broke a second view comparable almost to that from the Rock of
Athena: at their feet lay the four blue havens of Athens, to the right
Phaleron, closer at hand the land-locked bay of Munychia, beyond that Zea,
beyond that still a broader sheet—Peiræus, the new war-harbour of Athens.
They could look down on the brown roofs of the port-town, the forest of
masts, the merchantman unloading lumber from the Euxine, the merchantman
loading dried figs for Syria; but most of all on the numbers of long black
hulls, some motionless on the placid harbour, some propped harmlessly on
the shore. Hermione clouded as she saw them, and glanced away.
“I do not love your new fleet, Themistocles,” she said, frowning at the
handsome 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 the
Barbarian, dear lady,” answered he, quite at ease. “What can we do to
hearten her, Democrates?”
“Were I only Zeus,” rejoined the orator, who never was far from his best
friend’s wife, “I would cast two thunderbolts, one to destroy Xerxes, the
second to blast Themistocles’s armada,—so would the Lady Hermione be
satisfied.”
“I am sorry, then, you are not the Olympian,” said the woman, half smiling
at the pleasantry. Cimon interrupted them. Some of the party had caught a
sun-burned shepherd in among the rocks, a veritable Pan in his shaggy
goat-skin. The bribe of two obols brought him out with his pipe. Four of
the slave-boys fell to dancing. The party sat down upon the burnt
grass,—eating, drinking, wreathing poppy-crowns, and watching the nimble
slaves 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 across
the strait, the men of the party wandered down to the ports and found
boats to take them out upon the bay.
The wind was a zephyr. The water spread blue and glassy. The sun was
sinking as a ball of infinite light. Themistocles, Democrates, and Glaucon
were in one skiff, the athlete at the oars. They glided past the scores of
black triremes swinging lazily at anchor. Twice they pulled around the
proudest of the fleet,—the _Nausicaä_, the gift of Hermippus to the state,
a princely gift even in days when every Athenian put his all at the public
service. She would be Themistocles’s flag-ship. The young men noted her
fine lines, her heavy side timbers, the covered decks, an innovation in
Athenian men-of-war, and Themistocles put a loving hand on the keen bronze
beak as they swung around the prow.
“Here’s a tooth for the Persian king!” he was laughing, when a second
skiff, rounding the trireme in an opposite direction, collided abruptly. A
lurch, a few splinters was all the hurt, but as the boats parted
Themistocles 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 our
war-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 to
us?”
“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 the
trio 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 I
don’t see any black wings budding on Themistocles’s shoulders. Pull
onward, Glaucon.”
“Whither?” demanded the rower.
“To Salamis,” ordered Themistocles. “Let us see the battle-place foretold
by the oracle.”