A Victor of Salamis
“To Salamis or clear to Crete,” rejoined Glaucon, setting his strength
upon the oars and making the skiff bound, “if we can find water deep
enough to drown those gloomy looks that have sat on Democrates’s brows of
late.”
“Not gloomy but serious,” said the young orator, with an attempt at
lightness; “I have been preparing my oration against the contractor I’ve
indicted 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 he
who betrays fortresses in most wars.”
“I see you are a savage patriot, Glaucon,” said Themistocles, “despite
your Adonis face. We are fairly upon the bay; our nearest eavesdroppers,
yon fishermen, are a good five furlongs. Would you see something?” Glaucon
rested on the oars, while the statesman fumbled in his breast. He drew out
a 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 have
I wrought on this bit of papyrus. All my wisdom flowed out of my pen when
I spread the ink. In short here is the ordering of the ships of the allied
Greeks when we meet Xerxes in battle. Leonidas and our other chiefs gave
me the task when we met at Corinth. To-day it is complete. Read it, for it
is precious. Xerxes would give twenty talents for this one leaf from
Egypt.”
The young men peered at the sheet curiously. The details and diagrams were
few and easy to remember, the Athenian ships here, the Æginetan next, the
Corinthian next, and so with the other allies. A few comments on the use
of the light penteconters behind the heavy triremes. A few more comments
on Xerxes’s probable naval tactics. Only the knowledge that Themistocles
never committed himself in speech or writing without exhausting every
expedient told the young men of the supreme importance of the paper. After
due 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, but
not in jest—“men will remember Themistocles, son of Neocles!”
The three lapsed into silence for a moment. The skiff was well out upon
the sea. The shadows of the hills of Salamis and of Ægelaos, the opposing
mountain of Attica, were spreading over them. Around the islet of
Psyttaleia in the strait the brown fisher-boats were gliding. Beyond the
strait opened the blue hill-girdled bay of Eleusis, now turning to fire in
the evening sun. Everything was peaceful, silent, beautiful. Again Glaucon
rested on his oars and let his eyes wander.
“How true is the word of Thales the Sage,” he spoke; “ ‘the world is the
fairest of all fair things, because it is the work of God.’ It cannot be
that, here, between these purple hills and the glistening sea, there will
come that battle beside which the strife of Achilles and Hector before
Troy 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 destiny
is not blind.”
They drifted many moments in silence.
“The sun sinks lower,” spoke Democrates, at length; “so back again to the
havens.”
On the return Themistocles once more vowed he caught a glimpse of the
skiff of the unknown foreigners, but Democrates called it mere phantasy.
Hermione met them at the Peiræus, and the party wandered back through the
gathering 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 and
Hermione hastened to their house in the Colonus suburb near the trickling
Cephissus, where in the starlit night the tettix(4) in the black old
olives by the stream made its monotonous music, where great fireflies
gleamed, where Philomela the nightingale called, and the tall plane trees
whispered softly to the pines. When Hermione fell asleep, she had
forgotten about the coming of the Persian, and dreamed that Glaucon was
Eros, she was Psyche, and that Zeus was giving her the wings of a
butterfly and a crown of stars.
Democrates went home later. After the heady Pramnian at the tavern, he
roved away with Cimon and others to serenade beneath the lattice of a
lady—none too prudish—in the Ceramicus quarter. But the fair one was cruel
that night, and her slaves repelled the minstrels with pails of hot water
from an upper window. Democrates thereupon quitted the party. His head was
very befogged, but he could not expel one idea from it—that Themistocles
had revealed that day a priceless secret, that the statesman and Glaucon
and he himself were the only men who shared it, and that it was believed
that Glaucon had visited the Babylonish carpet-seller. Joined to this was
an overpowering consciousness that Helen of Troy was not so lovely as
Hermione of Eleusis. When he came to his lodgings, however, his wits
cleared 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 Persian
agent in the city. Seize him.—_Chaire._”
The second was shorter. It came from Corinth.
“Socias the merchant to Democrates:—Tyrrhenian pirates have taken the
ship. Lading and crew are utterly lost.—_Chaire._”
The orator never closed his eyes that night.
CHAPTER IX
THE CYPRIAN TRIUMPHS
Democrates fronted ruin. What profit later details from Socias of the
capture of the merchantman? Unless three days before the coming festival
of the Panathenæa the orator could find a large sum, he was forever
undone. His sequestering of the ship-money would become public property.
He would be tried for his life. Themistocles would turn against him. The
jury would hardly wait for the evidence. He would drink the poisonous
hemlock and his corpse be picked by the crows in the Barathrum,—an open
pit, sole burial place for Athenian criminals.
One thing was possible: to go to Glaucon, confess all, and beg the money.
Glaucon was rich. He could have the amount from Conon and Hermippus for
the asking. But Democrates knew Glaucon well enough to perceive that while
the athlete might find the money, he would be horrified at the foul
disclosure. He would save his old comrade from death, but their friendship
would be ended. He would feel in duty bound to tell Themistocles enough to
ruin Democrates’s political prospects for all time. An appeal to Glaucon
was therefore dismissed, and the politician looked for more desperate
remedies.
Democrates enjoyed apartments on the street of the Tripods east of the
Acropolis, a fashionable promenade of Athens. He was regarded as a
confirmed bachelor. If, therefore, two or three dark-eyed flute girls in
Phaleron had helped him to part with a good many minæ, no one scolded too
loudly; the thing had been done genteelly and without scandal. Democrates
affected to be a collector of fine arms and armour. The ceiling of his
living room was hung with white-plumed helmets, on the walls glittered
brass greaves, handsomely embossed shields, inlaid Chalcidian scimitars,
and bows tipped with gold. Under foot were expensive rugs. The orator’s
artistic tastes were excellent. Even as he sat in the deeply pillowed
arm-chair his eye lighted on a Nike,—a statuette of the precious
Corinthian bronze, a treasure for which the dealer’s unpaid account lay
still, alas! in the orator’s coffer.
But Democrates was not thinking so much of the unpaid bronze-smith as of
divers weightier debts. On the evening in question he had ordered Bias,
the sly Thracian, out of the room; with his own hands had barred the door
and closed the lattice; then with stealthy step thrust back the scarlet
wall tapestry to disclose a small door let into the plaster. A key made
the door open into a cupboard, out of which Democrates drew a brass-bound
box of no great size, which he carried gingerly to a table and opened with
a complex key.
The contents of the box were curious, to a stranger enigmatic. Not money,
nor jewels, but rolls of closely written papyri, and things which the
orator studied more intently,—a number of hard bits of clay bearing the
impressions of seals. As Democrates fingered these, his face might have
betrayed a mingling of keen fear and keener satisfaction.
“There is no such collection in all Hellas,—no, not in the world,” ran his
commentary; “here is the signet of the Tagos of Thessaly, here of the
Bœotarch of Thebes, here of the King of Argos. I was able to secure the
seal of Leonidas while in Corinth. This, of course, is Themistocles’s,—how
easily I took it! And this—of less value perhaps to a man of the world—is
of my beloved Glaucon. And here are twenty more. Then the papyri,”—he
unrolled them lovingly, one after another,—“precious specimens, are they
not? Ah, by Zeus, I must be a very merciful and pious man, or I’d have
used that dreadful power heaven has given me and never have drifted into
these straits.”
What that “power” was with which Democrates felt himself endued he did not
even whisper to himself. His mood changed suddenly. He closed the box with
a snap and locked it hurriedly.
“Cursed casket!—I think I would be happier if Phorcys, the old man of the
deep, could drown it all! I would be better for it and kept from foul
thoughts.”
He thrust the box back in the cupboard, drew forth a second like it,
unlocked it, and took out more writings. Selecting two, he spread ink and
papyrus before him, and copied with feverish haste. Once he hesitated, and
almost flung back the writings into the casket. Once he glanced at the
notes he had prepared for his speech against the defrauding contractor. He
grimaced bitterly. Then the hesitation ended. He finished the copying,
replaced the second box, and barred and concealed the cupboard. He hid his
new copies in his breast and called in Bias.
“I am going out, but I shall not be late.”
“Shall not Hylas and I go with lanterns?” asked the fellow. “Last night
there were foot-pads.”
“I don’t need you,” rejoined his master, brusquely.
He went down into the dimly lighted street and wound through the maze of
back alleys wherein Athens abounded, but Democrates never missed his way.
Once he caught the glint of a lantern—a slave lighting home his master
from dinner. The orator drew into a doorway; the others glided by, seeing
nothing. Only when he came opposite the house of the Cyprian he saw light
spreading from the opposite doorway and knew he must pass under curious
eyes. Phormio was entertaining friends very late. But Democrates took
boldness for safety, strode across the illumined ring, and up to the
Cyprian’s stairway. The buzz of conversation stopped a moment. “Again
Glaucon,” he caught, but was not troubled.
“After all,” he reflected, “if seen at all, there is no harm in such a
mistake.”
The room was again glittering in its Oriental magnificence. The Cyprian
advanced to meet his visitor, smiling blandly.
“Welcome, dear Athenian. We have awaited you. We are ready to heal your
calamity.”
Democrates turned away his face.
“You know it already! O Zeus, I am the most miserable man in all Hellas!”
“And wherefore miserable, good friend?” The Cyprian half led, half
compelled the visitor to a seat on the divan. “Is it such to be enrolled
from this day among the benefactors of my most gracious lord and king?”