A Victor of Salamis
Council House, a sign that the “Five Hundred” had been called in hurried
session. Simultaneously a dense column of smoke leaped up from the
market-place. The archons had ordered the hucksters’ booths to be burned,
as a signal to all Attica that the worst had befallen.
After inexpressibly long waiting Phormio came, then Hermippus, to tell all
they knew. Leonidas had perished gloriously. His name was with the
immortals, but the mountain wall of Hellas had been unlocked. No Spartan
army was in Bœotia. The bravest of Athens were in the fleet. The easy
Attic passes of Phyle and Decelea could never be defended. Nothing could
save Athens from Xerxes. The calamity had been foreseen, but to foresee is
not to realize. That night in Athens no man slept.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE EVACUATION OF ATHENS
It had come at last,—the hour wise men had dreaded, fools had scoffed at,
cowards had dared not face. The Barbarian was within five days’ march of
Attica. The Athenians must bow the knee to the world monarch or go forth
exiles from their country.
In the morning after the night of terror came another courier, not this
time from Thermopylæ. He bore a letter from Themistocles, who was
returning from Eubœa with the whole allied Grecian fleet. The reading of
the letter in the Agora was the first rift in the cloud above the city.
“Be strong, prove yourselves sons of Athens. Do what a year ago you so
boldly voted. Prepare to evacuate Attica. All is not lost. In three days I
will be with you.”
There was no time for an assembly at the Pnyx, but the Five Hundred and
the Areopagus council acted for the people. It was ordered to remove the
entire population of Attica, with all their movable goods, across the bay
to Salamis or to the friendly Peloponnesus, and that same noon the heralds
went over the land to bear the direful summons.
To Hermione, who in the calm after-years looked back on all this year of
agony and stress as on an unreal thing, one time always was stamped on
memory as no dream, but vivid, unforgetable,—these days of the great
evacuation. Up and down the pleasant plain country of the Mesogia to
southward, to the rolling highlands beyond Pentelicus and Parnes, to the
slumbering villages by Marathon, to the fertile farm-land by Eleusis, went
the proclaimers of ill-tidings.
“Quit your homes, hasten to Athens, take with you what you can, but
hasten, or stay as Xerxes’s slaves.”
For the next two days a piteous multitude was passing through the city. A
country of four hundred thousand inhabitants was to be swept clean and
left naked and profitless to the invader. Under Hermione’s window, as she
gazed up and down the street, jostled the army of fugitives, women old and
young, shrinking from the bustle and uproar, grandsires on their staves,
boys driving the bleating goats or the patient donkeys piled high with
pots and panniers, little girls tearfully hugging a pet puppy or hen. But
few strong men were seen, for the fleet had not yet rounded Sunium to bear
the people away.
The well-loved villas and farmsteads were tenantless. They left the
standing grain, the ripening orchards, the groves of the sacred olives.
Men rushed for the last time to the shrines where their fathers had
prayed,—the temples of Theseus, Olympian Zeus, Dionysus, Aphrodite. The
tombs of the worthies of old, stretching out along the Sacred Way to
Eleusis, where Solon, Clisthenes, Miltiades, and many another bulwark of
Athens slept, had the last votive wreath hung lovingly upon them. And
especially men sought the great temple of the “Rock,” to lift their hands
to Athena Polias, and vow awful vows of how harm to the Virgin Goddess
should be wiped away in blood.
So the throng passed through the city and toward the shore, awaiting the
fleet.
It came after eager watching. The whole fighting force of Athens and her
Corinthian, Æginetan, and other allies. Before the rest raced a stately
ship, the _Nausicaä_, her triple-oar bank flying faster than the spray.
The people crowded to the water’s edge when the great trireme cast off her
pinnace and a well-known figure stepped therein.
“Themistocles is with us!”
He landed at Phaleron, the thousands greeted him as if he were a god. He
seemed their only hope—the Atlas upbearing all the fates of Athens. With
the glance of his eye, with a few quick words, he chased the terrors from
the strategi and archons that crowded up around him.
“Why distressed? Have we not held the Barbarians back nobly at Artemisium?
Will we not soon sweep his power from the seas in fair battle?”
With almost a conqueror’s train he swept up to the city. A last assembly
filled the Pnyx. Themistocles had never been more hopeful, more eloquent.
With one voice men voted never to bend the knee to the king. If the gods
forbade them to win back their own dear country, they would go together to
Italy, to found a new and better Athens far from the Persian’s power. And
at Themistocles’s motion they voted to recall all the political exiles,
especially Themistocles’s own great enemy Aristeides the Just, banished by
the son of Neocles only a few years before. The assembly dispersed—not
weeping but with cheers. Already it was time to be quitting the city.
Couriers told how the Tartar horsemen were burning the villages beyond
Parnes. The magistrates and admirals went to the house of Athena. The last
incense smoked before the image. The bucklers hanging on the temple wall
were taken down by Cimon and the other young patricians. The statue was
reverently lifted, wound in fine linen, and borne swiftly to the fleet.
“Come, _makaira_!” called Hermippus, entering his house to summon his
daughter. Hermione sent a last glance around the disordered aula; her
mother called to the bevy of pallid, whimpering maids. Cleopis was bearing
Phœnix, but Hermione took him from her. Only his own mother should bear
him now. They went through the thinning Agora and took one hard look at
each familiar building and temple. When they should return to them, the
inscrutable god kept hid. So to Peiræus,—and to the rapid pinnaces which
bore them across the narrow sea to Salamis, where for the moment at least
was peace.
All that day the boats were bearing the people, and late into the night,
until the task was accomplished, the like whereof is not found in history.
No Athenian who willed was left to the power of Xerxes. One brain and
voice planned and directed all. Leonidas, Ajax of the Hellenes, had been
taken. Themistocles, their Odysseus, valiant as Ajax and gifted with the
craft of the immortals, remained. Could that craft and that valour turn
back the might of even the god-king of the Aryans?
CHAPTER XXV
THE ACROPOLIS FLAMES
A few days only Xerxes and his host rested after the dear-bought triumph
at Thermopylæ. An expedition sent to plunder Delphi returned
discomfited—thanks, said common report, to Apollo himself, who broke off
two mountain crags to crush the impious invaders. But no such miracle
halted the march on Athens. Bœotia and her cities welcomed the king;
Thespiæ and Platæa, which had stood fast for Hellas, were burned. The
Peloponnesian army lingered at Corinth, busy with a wall across the
Isthmus, instead of risking valorous battle.
“By the soul of my father,” the king had sworn, “I believe that after the
lesson at Thermopylæ these madmen will not fight again!”
“By land they will not,” said Mardonius, always at his lord’s elbow, “by
sea—it remains for your Eternity to discover.”
“Will they really dare to fight by sea?” asked Xerxes, hardly pleased at
the suggestion.
“Omnipotence, you have slain Leonidas, but a second great enemy remains.
While Themistocles lives, it is likely your slaves will have another
opportunity to prove to you their devotion.”
“Ah, yes! A stubborn rogue, I hear. Well—if we must fight by sea, it shall
be under my own eyes. My loyal Phœnician and Egyptian mariners did not do
themselves full justice at Artemisium; they lacked the valour which comes
from being in the presence of their king.”
“Which makes a dutiful subject fight as ten,” quickly added Pharnaspes the
fan-bearer.
“Of course,” smiled the monarch, “and now I must ask again, Mardonius, how
fares it with my handsome Prexaspes?”
“Only indifferently, your Majesty, since you graciously deign to inquire.”
“Such a sad wound? That is heavy news. He takes long in recovering. I
trust he wants for nothing.”
“Nothing, Omnipotence. He has the best surgeons in the camp.”
“To-day I will send him Helbon wine from my own table. I miss his comely
face about me. I want him here to play at dice. Tell him to recover
because his king desires it. If he has become right Persian, that will be
better than any physic.”
“I have no doubt he will be deeply moved to learn of your Eternity’s
kindness,” rejoined the bow-bearer, who was not sorry that further
discussion of this delicate subject was averted by the arch-usher
introducing certain cavalry officers with their report on the most
practicable line of march through Bœotia.
Glaucon, in fact, was long since out of danger, thanks to the sturdy
bronze of his Laconian helmet. He was able to walk, and, if need be, ride,
but Mardonius would not suffer him to go outside his own tents. The
Athenian would be certain to be recognized, and at once Xerxes would send
for him, and how Glaucon, in his new frame of mind, would deport himself
before majesty, whether he would not taunt the irascible monarch to his
face, the bow-bearer did not know. Therefore the Athenian endured a manner
of captivity in the tents with the eunuchs, pages, and women. Artazostra
was often with him, and less frequently Roxana. But the Egyptian had lost
all power over him now. He treated her with a cold courtesy more painful
than contempt. Once or twice Artazostra had tried to turn him back from
his purpose, but her words always broke themselves over one barrier.
“I am born a Hellene, lady. My gods are not yours. I must live and die
after the manner of my people. And that our gods are strong and will give
victory, after that morning with Leonidas I dare not doubt.”
When the host advanced south and eastward from Thermopylæ, Glaucon went
with it, riding in a closed travelling carriage guarded by Mardonius’s
eunuchs. All who saw it said that here went one of the bow-bearer’s harem
women, and as for the king, every day he asked for his favourite, and
every day Mardonius told him, “He is even as before,” an answer which the
bow-bearer prayed to truth-loving Mithra might not be accounted a lie.
It was while the army lay at Platæa that news came which might have shaken
Glaucon’s purpose, had that purpose been shakable. Euboulus the Corinthian
had been slain in a skirmish shortly after the forcing of Thermopylæ. The
tidings meant that no one lived who could tell in Athens that on the day
of testing the outlaw had cast in his lot with Hellas. Leonidas was dead.
The Spartan soldiers who had heard Glaucon avow his identity were dead. In
the hurried conference of captains preceding the retreat, Leonidas had
told his informant’s precise name only to Euboulus. And now Euboulus was
slain, doubtless before any word from him of Glaucon’s deed could spread
abroad. To Athenians Glaucon was still the “Traitor,” doubly execrated in
this hour of trial. If he returned to his people, would he not be torn in
pieces by the mob? But the young Alcmæonid was resolved. Since he had not
died at Thermopylæ, no life in the camp of the Barbarian was tolerable. He
would trust sovran Athena who had plucked him out of one death to deliver
from a second. Therefore he nursed his strength—a caged lion waiting for