A Victor of Salamis
rim whereof glinted with agate and sardonyx. He had no Greek, but Roxana
took the cup from him and held it to Glaucon’s lips.
“Drink,” she commanded, and he was fain to obey. The Athenian felt the
heavily spiced liquor laying hold of him. His eyes closed, despite his
wish to gaze longer on the two beautiful women. He felt their hands
caressing his cheeks. The music grew ever softer. He thought he was
sinking into a kind of euthanasy, that his life was drifting out amid
delightful dreams. But not cold Thanatos, but health-bearing Hypnos was
the god who visited him now. When next he woke, it was with a clearer
vision, a sounder mind.
* * * * * * *
Sardis the Golden, once capital of the Lydian kings and now of the Persian
satraps, had recovered from the devastation by the Ionians in their
ill-starred revolt seventeen years preceding. The city spread in the
fertile Sardiene, one of the garden plains of Asia Minor. To the south the
cloud-crowned heights of Tmolus ever were visible. To the north flowed the
noble stream of Hebrus, whilst high above the wealthy town, the busy
agora, the giant temple of Lydian Cybele, rose the citadel of Meles, the
palace fortress of the kings and the satraps. A frowning castle it was
without, within not the golden-tiled palaces of Ecbatana and Susa boasted
greater magnificence and luxury than this one-time dwelling of Crœsus. The
ceilings of the wide banqueting halls rose on pillars of emerald Egyptian
malachite. The walls were cased with onyx. Winged bulls that might have
graced Nineveh guarded the portals. The lions upbearing the throne in the
hall of audience were of gold. The mirrors in the “House of the Women”
were not steel but silver. The gorgeous carpets were sprinkled with rose
water. An army of dark Syrian eunuchs and yellow-faced Tartar girls ran at
the beck of the palace guests. Only the stealthy entrance of Sickness and
Death told the dwellers here they were not yet gods.
Artaphernes, satrap of Lydia, had his divan, his viziers, and his
audiences,—a court worthy of a king,—but the real lord of Western Asia was
the prince who was nominally his guest. Mardonius had his own retinue and
wing of the palace. On him fell the enormous task of organizing the masses
of troops already pouring into Sardis, and he discharged his duty
unwearyingly. The completion of the bridges of boats across the
Hellespont, the assembling of the fleet, the collecting of provisions,
fell to his province. Daily a courier pricked into Sardis with despatches
from the Great King to his trusted general. Mardonius left the great
levees and public spectacles to Artaphernes, but his hand was everywhere.
His decisions were prompt. He was in constant communication with the
Medizing party in Hellas. He had no time for the long dicing and drinking
bouts the Persians loved, but he never failed to find each day an hour to
spend with Artazostra his wife, with Roxana his half-sister, and with
Glaucon his preserver.
Slowly through the winter health had returned to the Athenian. For days he
had lain dreaming away the hours to the tune of the flutes and the
fountains. When the warm spring came, the eunuchs carried him in a
sedan-chair through the palace garden, whence he could look forth on the
plain, the city, the snow-clad hills, and think he was on Zeus’s Olympian
throne, surveying all the earth. Then it was he learned the Persian
speech, and easily, for were not his teachers Artazostra and Roxana? He
found it no difficult tongue, simple and much akin to Greek, and unlike
most of the uncouth tongues the Oriental traders chattered in Sardis. The
two women were constantly with him. Few men were admitted to a Persian
harem, but Mardonius never grudged the Greek the company of these twain.
“Noble Athenian,” said the Prince, the first time he visited Glaucon’s
bed, “you are my brother. My house is yours. My friends are yours. Command
us all.”
* * * * * * *
Every day Glaucon was stronger. He tested himself with dumb-bells. Always
he could lift a heavier weight. When the summer was at hand, he could ride
out with Mardonius to the “Paradise,” the satrap’s hunting park, and be in
at the death of the deer. Yet he was no more the “Fortunate Youth” of
Athens. Only imperfectly he himself knew how complete was the severance
from his old life. The terrible hour at Colonus had made a mark on his
spirit which not all Zeus’s power could take away. No doubt all the
one-time friends believed him dead. Had Hermione’s confidence in him
remained true? Would she not say “guilty” at last with all the rest?
Mardonius might have answered, he had constant letters from Greece, but
the Prince was dumb when Glaucon strove to ask of things beyond the Ægean.
Day by day the subtle influence of the Orient—the lotus-eating,—“tasting
the honey-sweet fruit which makes men choose to abide forever, forgetful
of the homeward way”—spread its unseen power over the Alcmæonid. Athens,
the old pain, even the face of Hermione, would rise before him only dimly.
He fought against this enchantment. But it was easier to renew his vow to
return to Athens, after wiping out his shame, than to break these bands
daily tightening.
He heard little Greek, now that he was learning Persian. Even he himself
was changed. His hair and beard grew long, after the Persian manner. He
wore the loose Median cloak, the tall felt cap of a Persian noble. The
elaborate genuflexions of the Asiatics no longer astonished him. He
learned to admire the valiant, magnanimous lords of the Persians. And
Xerxes, the distant king, the wielder of all this power, was he not truly
a god on earth, vicegerent of Lord Zeus himself?
“Forget you are a Hellene. We will talk of the Nile, not of the
Cephissus,” Artazostra said, whenever he spoke of home. Then she would
tell of Babylon and Persepolis, and Mardonius of forays beside the wide
Caspian, and Roxana of her girlhood, while Gobryas was satrap of Egypt,
spent beside the magic river, of the Pharaohs, the great pyramid, of Isis
and Osiris and the world beyond the dead. Before the Athenian was opened
the golden East, its glitter, its wonderment, its fascination. He even was
silent when his hosts talked boldly of the coming war, how soon the
Persian power would rule from the Pillars of Heracles to Ind.
Yet once he stood at bay, showing that he was a Hellene still. They were
in the garden. Mardonius had come to them where under the pomegranate tree
the women spread their green tapestry which their nimble needles covered
with a battle scene in scarlet. The Prince told of the capture and
crucifixion of the chiefs of a futile revolt in Armenia. Then Artazostra
clapped her hands to cry.
“Fools! Fools whom Angra-Mainyu the Evil smites blind that he may destroy
them!”
Glaucon, sitting at her feet, looked up quickly. “Valiant fools, lady;
every man must strike for his own country.”
Artazostra shook her shining head.
“Mazda gives victory to the king of Eran alone. Resisting Xerxes is not
rebellion against man, it is rebellion against Heaven.”
“Are you sure?” asked the Athenian, his eye lighting ominously. “Are yours
the greatest gods?”
But Roxana in turn cast down the tapestry and opened her arms with a
charming gesture.
“Be not angry, Glaucon, for will you not become one with us? I dare to
prophesy like a seer from old Chaldea. Assur of Nineveh, Marduk of
Babylon, Baal of Tyre, Ammon of Memphis—all have bent the knee to Mazda
the Glorious, to Mithra the Fiend-Smiting, and shall the weak _dævas_, the
puny gods of Greece, save their land, when greater than they bow down in
sore defeat?”
Yet Glaucon still looked on her boldly.
“You have your mighty gods, but we have ours. Pray to your Mazda and
Mithra, but we will still trust Zeus of the Thunders and Athena of the
Gray Eyes, the bulwarks of our fathers. And Fate must answer which can
help the best.”
The Persians shook their heads. It was time to return to the palace. All
that Glaucon had seen of the Barbarian’s might, since awakening in Sardis,
told him Xerxes was indeed destined to go forth conquering and to conquer.
Then the vision of the Acropolis, the temples, the Guardian Goddess,
returned. He banished all disloyal thoughts for the instant. The Prince
walked with his wife, Glaucon with Roxana. He had always thought her
beautiful; she had never seemed so beautiful as now. Did he imagine
whither Mardonius perhaps was leading him?
CHAPTER XVI
THE COMING OF XERXES THE GOD-KING
At last the lotus-eating ended. Repeated messengers told how Xerxes was
quitting Babylon, was holding a muster in Cappadocia, and now was crossing
Asia Minor toward Sardis. Mardonius and his companions had returned to
that capital. Daily the soldiery poured into Sardis by tens of thousands.
Glaucon knew now it was not a vain boast that for ten years the East had
been arming against Hellas, that the whole power of the twenty satrapies
would be flung as one thunderbolt upon devoted Greece.
In the plain about Sardis a second city was rising, of wicker booths and
gay pavilions. The host grew hourly. Now a band of ebony archers in
leopard skins entered from far Ethiopia, now Bactrian battle-axemen, now
yellow-faced Tartars from the northeast, now bright-turbaned Arabs upon
their swaying camels,—Syrians, Cilicians, black-bearded Assyrians and
Babylonians, thick-lipped Egyptians, came, and many a strange race more.
But the core of the army were the serried files of Aryan horse and
foot,—blond-headed, blue-eyed men, Persians and Medes, veterans of twenty
victories. Their muscles were tempered steel. Their unwearying feet had
tramped many a long parasang. Some were light infantry with wicker shields
and powerful bows, but as many more horsemen in gold-scaled armour and
with desert steeds that flew like Pegasus.
“The finest cavalry in the world!” Mardonius vaunted, and his guest durst
not answer nay.
Satrap after satrap came. When at last a foaming Arab galloping to the
castle proclaimed, “Next morn the Lord of the World will enter Sardis,”
Glaucon could scarce have looked for a greater, though he had expected
Cronian Zeus himself.
Mardonius, as “bow-bearer to the king,” a semi-regal office, rode forth a
stage to meet the sovran. The streets of Sardis were festooned with
flowers. Thousands of spearmen held back the crowds. The Athenian stood
beside Roxana and Artazostra at the upper window of a Lydian merchant
prince, and his eyes missed nothing.
Never had the two women seemed lovelier than when their hearts ran out to
their approaching king. He felt now the power of personal sovranty, how
these children of the East awaited not Xerxes the Master, but Xerxes the
Omnipotent, God-Manifest, whose decrees were as the decrees of Heaven. And
their awe could not fail to awe the Athenian.
At noon the multitude caught the first token of the king. Down the road,
through the gate, walked a man, bare-headed, bare-footed,
alone,—Artaphernes, despot of all Lydia, going to pay his abject homage.
Presently the eunuch priests of Cybele, perched above the gate, clashed
their cymbals and raised their hymn of welcome. To the boom of drums the
thousand chosen cavalry and as many picked footmen of the Life Guard
entered, tall, magnificent soldiers,—caps and spear butts shining with
gold. After these a gilded car drawn by the eight sacred horses, each
milk-white, and on the car an altar bearing the eternal fire of Mazda.
Then, each in his flashing chariot, moved the “Six Princes,” the heads of
the great clans of the Achæmenians, then two hundred led desert horses, in
splendid trappings, and then—after a long interval, that the host might