TELESIPPE.
Pericles had spent many a wakeful night, since the meeting of the
critics in Phidias’ house. His mind was occupied with the treasure of
Delos, with which a new era of power and splendor had come to the
Athenians; the echo of the conversation held in the sculptor’s studio
constantly resounded in his brain, and if to escape this whirl of
thought he closed his eyes, a half-waking, fleeting dream recalled the
charming image of the Milesian, and the dewy, Aphrodite-like lustre of
her bewitching eyes illumined the depths of his soul.
Various plans, which he had long been considering, were seething in his
mind. Vacillating thoughts gradually strengthened, and resolutions
sprang up in a night, as buds develop into roses.
One morning, while seated in his room, absorbed in thought, his friend
Anaxagoras came to visit him. Intimate with the wise Clazomenian from
early youth, Pericles had spent many a morning hour in receiving, with
the open, ardent nature of the Greeks, the new revelations, which bold
thinkers, especially Anaxagoras himself, rising above the childish
opinions of their forefathers, were beginning to draw from the depths
of their own minds.
But to-day the philosopher instantly perceived that his friend was
engrossed by totally different thoughts. He found Pericles, usually so
calm and dignified, much excited, his eyes glowing with the dull fire
that betrays a night spent in meditation.
“Is the populace summoned to-day to an important meeting on the Pnyx?”
asked the old man, gazing at the Olympian. “I never remember to have
found you so thoughtful, save on such an occasion.”
“The people will assemble to-day,” said Pericles, “and I have intended
to urge important matters there. I am anxious as to whether I shall
prevail—.”
“You are a strategus,” [1] replied Anaxagoras, “you are the
administrator of the public revenues, the superintendent of the public
buildings, the director of the public festivals—the gods alone know the
names of the offices and dignities, conferring ordinary and
extraordinary powers, with which the Athenians are constantly loading
you. No matter, you are—what is the important, and in a free state the
principal thing—you are the great orator, whom they call the
‘Olympian,’ because a sort of sovereignty is allied with the thunder of
your words, as with the thunder of Zeus. And you are anxious?”
“Ay,” replied Pericles, “and I assure you that I never ascend the
platform of the Pnyx, without secretly imploring the gods to suffer my
lips to utter no heedless words, and never allow me to forget that I am
speaking to Athenians. You know how impatient the people grew at last,
when I constantly called upon them for more money to build the long
central wall and repair the Piræeus. And now Phidias has overpersuaded
me, infected me with his grand new plans. The eager longing felt by him
and his associates must no longer be restrained, our Athens must be
adorned and glorified before all the rest of Hellas by the
long-considered works of these men. You know I am one of those, who
adopt new ideas only after due reflection, but hold firmly to what I
have once grasped and urge it with ardent zeal. So I at first gave this
matter long deliberation; but now am perhaps secretly more eager in its
behalf than even Phidias and his followers.”
“Is not the Athenian nation enthusiastic and fond of art?” said
Anaxagoras. “And has not the rich treasure of Delos arrived?”
“I fear the distrust sown by open and secret enemies,” replied
Pericles. “The party of the oligarchs is not wholly subdued. You know,
too, that there are friends of the Laconians and others, who are averse
to light and everything that is bright and beautiful. You have learned
this yourself, since you first stood forth between the columns of the
Agora, to announce to us Athenians the message of the pure, free,
soul-born truth. However, I shall to-day play a trump, which will make
the multitude thoroughly indebted to me. There are poor citizens, who
live from hand to mouth, and must starve to-morrow, if they stop work
to-day and go to the assembly, in order not to neglect their duty as
citizens. Why shouldn’t they be paid with a few obols out of the public
treasury? I pity, too, the poor fellows, who would be glad to witness
the public plays, but can’t procure the money for admittance. They
should be permitted to go at the public expense, to be unconsciously
cultivated and ennobled by the works of the poets, while supposing they
are merely pursuing their own pleasure. And the worthy old fellows,
chosen by thousands out of the people and allotted to the numerous
courts of justice, ought not in future to lose the whole day without
compensation, while settling the quarrels of their fellow-citizens in
the sweat of their brows. Athens is rich, fresh fountains of wealth are
springing up around us and pouring into our public treasury from the
countries of our allies. There is a large surplus now remaining. I have
asked myself: should it be kept as a treasure for the future, or used
for the benefit of the present time. I believe the present has a better
right to it. The people must enjoy the fruit of their victories and
aspirations, they must be free and happy; a beautiful, enviable,
dignified existence must be established in our Athens, so favored by
the gods.”
“I have often seen the grave Pericles give utterance to his noble
ardor,” observed Anaxagoras, “but to-day’s emotion seems to be stronger
than all former ebullitions of feeling.”
“I thank the gods,” replied Pericles, “for having given me, in addition
to calmness in reflection, the hasty fire of resolve and tenacious
courage in execution. Are you dissatisfied with me in any way? Do I
seem to go too far in my plans, or my regard for the always uncertain
and sometimes ungrateful people?”
“Let me frankly confess that I do not meddle with politics,” answered
the old man. “I am no Athenian, perhaps not even a Hellene, but a
cosmopolitan, a philosopher. My native land is the infinite realm of
the world.”
“But you are wise,” said Pericles, “and can judge the acts of
statesmen, whether they will result in good or evil.”
“I shall beware of that!” cried Anaxagoras. “Not only poets, but
statesmen ignorantly follow a sign from the gods, are possessed by a
demon, that animates them and almost unconsciously urges them to what
for the moment is really necessary and useful. Ordinary human
understanding often judges prematurely and errs, when the point in
question relates to the deeds of divinely inspired statesmen. I have
gone far into the depths of nature, and everywhere found a mind
pervading her. But the mind is more infallible, more mighty in creating
and toiling than in judging—.”
The two men were thus conversing familiarly in Pericles’ room; but at
this moment a slave entered, sent by Telesippe, the wife of Pericles.
The message brought from the mistress of the house was a singular one.
The steward of Pericles’ country estate had come in that morning and
brought a young ram, born on the said estate, which instead of two
horns, had only one, and that grew in the middle of its forehead. This
animal, the steward, not without many anxious doubts, had just shown
his mistress. Telesippe, a woman of pious mind, hastily sent for the
prophet Lampon, that he might instantly interpret the miracle, and now
summoned her husband to see the strange creature and listen with her to
the opinion of the seer.
Pericles heard the slave’s story and then said good-humoredly, turning
to his friend:
“Let us obey Telesippe’s wish and go to look at the one-horned ram.”
Anaxagoras rose and willingly followed Pericles.
They went out into the peristyle of the house.
Pericles’ residence was a very plain dwelling, neither larger nor more
richly ornamented than that of any other Athenian citizen of moderate
means. It was as simple as its owner’s mode of life. In a republic the
most influential man must live simply, if he wishes to protect himself
from the distrust of his fellow-citizens. But even without calculation
and design, a man who constantly devotes himself to the public, will
always neglect his own household a little. The peristyle of Pericles’
house was also simple and unadorned, yet it did not lack the familiar
charm everywhere associated with this singular, but most pleasant part
of the house, this tiny, hall-like courtyard surrounded by pillars.
Here people were in the house and under the open sky at the same time,
secluded from all the bustle of the outside world, and yet in communion
with the fresh breezes of heaven that blew in from above, with the sun,
moon and stars that cast their beams unimpeded into the marble hall.
The swallows flew twittering in and out, and built their nests on the
capitals of the pillars and the cornices. The dwelling-house offered no
inviting exterior, like the temples, but as if repelling the public,
turned its decoration of pillars within, to create the open, yet cosy
and pleasant family room. Here the inmates sat, walked, and received
their visitors. Here too sometimes the meals were served. Here also
sacrifices to the household gods were offered, here was the real
fireside of the house, the altar of the hearth-protecting Zeus.
Behind the colonnade that enclosed all four sides of the peristyle,
were the various rooms in Pericles’ house. The doors all opened upon
it. Tasteful ornaments adorned the door-posts; the openings were
artistically draped with colored hangings. The women’s apartment was at
the back of the peristyle, and behind it the small, carefully-kept
garden.
On entering the house from the street, a passage which ran through the
front room, led directly to the peristyle. The porticos extended on the
side of the entrance itself, as well as on the right and left of the
apartments opening on the square; but opposite to the entrance a pair
of columns marked a central space, which deepening within, formed a
sort of anteroom, open towards the peristyle, but enclosed by walls on
the three remaining sides.
In this anteroom stood Telesippe, the wife of Pericles, surrounded by
several male and female slaves. Beside her was the steward, who had
come in from the country, holding the one-horned ram in his arms.
Telesippe was a tall woman, with stern, not unlovely, but somewhat
coarse features. Her figure was stately and corpulent, but her flesh no
longer possessed the bloom of youth. Her cheeks and bosom were flabby,
and her garments hung about her limbs in a negligent, ungraceful
fashion. Her hair, still disordered, was twisted in a large roll
behind. Her face was pale, for she had not yet rouged that morning.
This woman, the wife of the great Pericles, had formerly been wedded to
the wealthy Hipponicus. The latter was divorced from her, and she
obtained Pericles for a husband. At that time, she was still youthful
in appearance, and her blooming cheeks made amends for her cold, stern
eyes.
When Telesippe, standing in the anteroom opening upon the peristyle,
saw her husband approaching accompanied by Anaxagoras, she made a
movement, as custom required, to withdraw from the stranger’s presence
into the women’s apartment. Pericles signed to her to stay, and she
remained, but without vouchsafing the old man another glance. Telesippe
thought she had reason to dislike her husband’s grey-haired friend and
counsellor.
“I have sent for the prophet Lampon,” she said, gazing at the ram with
a timid look, “I am afraid this is an evil omen.”
At this moment the porter opened the outer door and admitted the
prophet, who instantly approached through the long passage from the
entrance. The prophet Lampon was the priest of a small temple of
Dionysus, which did not yield much revenue. He therefore devoted
himself to the art of divination, and with excellent success, enjoying
much reputation among the devout. By way of external announcement of
his calling, he wore the priestly fillet on his brow, surmounted by the
laurel of Apollo. For the rest, after the custom of men of his stamp,
he endeavored by negligent dress, tangled beard, dishevelled hair, and
a wandering, abstracted glance, to indicate the rapt transports of the
prophet-soul.
“This wonderful animal,” said Telesippe, “was born on our estate in the
country and brought to Athens this morning. You are one of the most
skilful interpreters of omens; tell us whether we are to regard this
miracle as favorable or dangerous.”
Lampon ordered the ram to be laid on the altar of Zeus.
A coal chanced to be still glimmering on the altar. Lampon pulled a
hair from the ram’s forehead, and threw it on the ember.
“The omen is favorable,” said he, “for the hair burned without loud
crackling.”
Then he looked at Pericles and noticed the position he occupied towards
the ram. He chanced to be standing on the right of the animal. “The
omen is favorable to Pericles,” said the prophet with an important
look, then following the customs of diviners, put a laurel leaf in his
mouth and chewed it, in order, by eating the plant consecrated to the
god of seers, to enter the state of divine rapture, in which, with
clear, divinely inspired gaze he might find the true words of prophecy.
Lampon’s eyes began to twitch convulsively. Suddenly the ram turned its
head aside, the horn on its forehead pointed directly at Pericles and
it uttered a peculiar sound.
“Hail to thee, Alcmæonid,” he cried; “hail, son of Xanthippus,
conqueror of the Persians at Mycale, noble scion of the race of
Buzygen, the sacred guardian of Pallas. Hail, victor of Thracia, Phocis
and Eubœa! The ram of Athens formerly possessed two horns: Thucidydes,
leader of the Oligarchs, and Pericles, head of the popular party. But
henceforward the ram will bear but one horn on its forehead: the
Oligarchist party will be wholly conquered, and Pericles alone guide,
with wisdom and magnanimity, the destiny of the Athenians.”
Anaxagoras smiled. Pericles drew his friend aside and whispered:
“The man is cunning; he expects to be included among the interpreters
of omens, who will accompany me at the public expense in the next
campaign.”
“But what shall be done with the ram?” asked Telesippe.
“He must be fed until he is as fat as possible, and then offered to
Dionysus,” replied Lampon. “Bucks are specially suited for offerings to
this god, on account of the injury they do the vines; especially
he-goats—but a buck is a buck, and for lack of a he-goat, a ram like
this is not displeasing to the god.”
Such was the prophet’s information. He received three obols in payment
for his divination, bent his head, from which hung a mass of tangled
locks and left the house.
“Mistress Telesippe,” said Anaxagoras, “how dearly wisdom is paid for
now-a-days! Three obols given for the oracle of a buck, that appears
with a single horn to tell us, what all the owls in Athens are hooting
in their holes without compensation.”
Telesippe cast an angry glance at the speaker, who received it with the
philosopher’s calm repose.
She was preparing to follow the wrathful glance with a sharp remark,
when some one knocked at the outer door. The porter opened it and a
lady glided in, accompanied by a female slave, who remained at the
entrance. This lady’s countenance had the ruddiness, but also the
wrinkles of an old apple, shrivelled by lying away. A slight down of
short dark hair shaded her upper lip.
“Elpinice, Cimon’s sister!” whispered Pericles to Anaxagoras. “Let us
go to the Agora; for we can’t hold our ground in the house against
these two women.”
So saying, Pericles drew his friend aside into the colonnade, and after
passing Elpinice, hastily went out with him into the street.
Elpinice, Cimon’s sister, was a very singular woman. She was the
daughter of the famous hero Miltiades, the sister of the no less famous
general, Cimon, and the friend of the most admirable Greek painter of
those days, Polygnotus. She had once been rosy and beautiful, beautiful
enough to captivate a sculptor, but must have irritated Aphrodite, for
through some malicious whim of the goddess, no tender feeling save love
for her brother, was implanted in her soul. No longing for conjugal
happiness existed in her half masculine breast; she only desired to be
permitted to remain near her brother all her life. But it happened that
Cimon, through the death of his father Miltiades, was placed in a
position of sore distress. Miltiades had been arraigned by the
thankless Athenians and sentenced to pay a fine of fifty talents, and
as he died soon after, without having paid the sum, the debt, by the
hard provisions of the law, passed to his son Cimon. So long as Cimon
did not pay the fifty talents, he was held a dishonorable citizen. Out
of love for her brother, Elpinice had remained unwedded; out of love
for her brother she now married. For the prize of her hand, a certain
Callias defrayed Cimon’s debt. After some time this Callias died, and
Elpinice immediately returned to her brother’s house.
From the siege and conquest of Thasos, Cimon brought to Athens the
artist Polygnotus, a native of the island. He had perceived the youth’s
talent, become attached to him, and wished to open a wider and more
worthy field for his art. Through Cimon’s mediation, Polygnotus
received from the Athenians the commission to adorn the temple of
Theseus with pictures; he also painted in the great hall of the Agora,
which from this very decoration was called the “gay-colored” or the
“painted,” scenes from the conquest of Troy. Constantly passing in and
out of the house of his friend and patron Cimon, the youth fell in love
with Elpinice, and when the picture of the Greek heroes judging Ajax’s
deed of violence was completed, the fairest of the captive Trojan
women, Laodice, Priam’s daughter, bore the features of Cimon’s sister.
Elpinice was not ungrateful for this homage. True, she refused the
artist her heart and hand, but gave him her friendship. Many, many
years had passed since then, but the bond between these two still
endured, after Cimon died and Elpinice, like Polygnotus, had grown old.
Yes, Elpinice had grown old, and without being aware of it.
Wedded only for a short portion of her life, and against her will, and
engrossed during the remainder of her days by the fruitless enthusiasm
of a sisterly love, she had, although a widow, developed the singular
trait which distinguishes old maids. It is a peculiar characteristic of
spinsters, that growing children do not serve them as landmarks of
advancing time, mile-stones of their life pilgrimage, so that old age
approaches them unobserved. They always feel young. This blending of
inward youth and external age impresses upon them, in the eyes of the
world, at first lightly, but gradually more and more strongly, the
stamp of absurdity.
Thus Elpinice too had grown old without perceiving it. The high price
Callias had paid for her hand, the homage the artist offered, and other
things of this kind, had made her vain of her beauty. She still
remained so, long after the charms that aroused the feeling had
vanished. She thought herself the same as when Polygnotus painted her
as the fairest of Priam’s daughters; for she was unmarried, she had no
husband, to say: “you are old!” Gentle, quiet, reverential Polygnotus
neither could nor would tell her so. He had remained a bachelor, and
offered a bachelor’s somewhat stiff, but well-meant homage, to the
former beloved of his heart.
Her brother Cimon had been exiled by the Athenians some time before his
death. His adherents strove to obtain permission for him to return, but
feared the influence of the youthful Pericles, whose star was rising,
and who could derive nothing but advantage from the absence of his
older rival.
Elpinice, adventurous as she had always been, resolved upon a bold plan
to again secure her brother’s deliverance. She rouged and perfumed
herself, donned a magnificent robe, and went to Pericles. She knew that
the great statesman was not indifferent to feminine beauty. She would
appear before him with all the charms of a figure that had enraptured
Callias, entranced Polygnotus, heightened by art. She went to Pericles,
to induce him to withhold the Olympic thunder of his words in the
popular assembly, when the proposal to recall Cimon was made.
When Pericles saw the fantastic, gaudily-decked, perfumed woman
standing before him, with a look of conscious victory on her face, he
perceived that this was a design upon the susceptibility of his heart.
He knew that he had the reputation of such susceptibility, and the idea
annoyed him. He was vexed that such a character should be ascribed to
him, in spite of his grave, dignified demeanor, and now came this
elderly Elpinice, presuming to seek to ensnare him with the scanty
remnants of her beauty.
Pericles was gentle by nature, but the idea that this bedizened woman,
with down on her lip, should think it so easy a matter to captivate the
friend of beauty, made the kindly man for the moment a tyrant. He gazed
at the intercessor for a time in silence, scanned her dress, then her
face, and at last said very quietly:
“You have grown old, Elpinice.”
He uttered these words in the gentlest tone,—yet they were malicious.
They are the sole instance of ill-nature, that tradition reports of
Pericles, the Olympian.
A secret shiver ran through his own frame, as he spoke the fatal word.
He suspected it was one of those, whose consequences Clio has a stylus
to record.
The sentence: “you have grown old, Elpinice,” might cause a change in
the fate of Pericles, Athens, nay all Hellas—civil war, a Persian
invasion, blood, sorrow, tears, woe of every kind, the ruin of the
Hellenic nation might spring from these words. What may not a woman do,
who has been told: you are old?
And the most kindly of all the Greeks had uttered this harshest of all
words.
Elpinice started, cast an angry glance at Pericles, and left him.
But what did it avail Pericles’ good repute, that he had treated the
coquettish Elpinice with so little courtesy? Did not the kind-hearted
Olympian spoil all, by shuddering at the harsh words which had escaped
his lips, regretting them, and trying to make amends on the Pnyx? When
the people had assembled and the motion for the recall of Cimon was
made, all looked at Pericles, expecting that he would vehemently oppose
it; but he sat silent, gazing into vacancy as if the matter was no
concern of his, so that Cimon’s adherents won their cause, the
Athenians laughed, and one whispered to another with a significant
wink: “There is the elderly Elpinice’s work again! She went to Pericles
in her finery, and the lover of the fair sex bit eagerly—bit at the
rancid bait.”
Poor Pericles!
After Cimon’s death Elpinice was angry with the world, because she was
obliged to live on without him. Now she hated Pericles and the new
times still more.
Her conversation was always spiced with such sayings as: “My brother
Cimon used to say,” or, “my brother Cimon used to do this or that,” or,
“my brother Cimon would have done so or so in this case.”
Cimon had been a friend of Laconia, a man who concealed his sympathy
for Sparta so little, that he gave one of his sons the name of
Lacedæmonius, and whose whole character bore far more resemblance to a
Spartan soldier, than a cultured, refined and volatile Athenian, so no
one could wonder that his masculine sister carried this friendship for
the Laconians to the verge of caricature. She served the party that was
opposed to every free and joyous aspiration of the Attic nature, by the
zeal with which she watched the family life of its foes. She was on the
most intimate terms with the very women, whose husbands she hated. This
was the case with Telesippe, the wife of Pericles.
Yet this walking memento of the good old days, this spinster friend of
the secretly dissatisfied bachelor Polygnotus, did not possess a
thoroughly ungracious and repulsive nature. She was at once malicious
and well-meaning, spiteful and faithful, grave and variable, ridiculous
and worthy of reverence.
Such was the woman, before whom Pericles and his friend, the wise
Anaxagoras, fled so hastily, when she came to visit Telesippe.
Telesippe helped Cimon’s sister to release her thin body from the folds
of the cloak-like himation, in which Elpinice, as beseemed a chaste
Athenian woman, always wrapped not merely the upper portion of her
body, but even her head—with the exception of her mouth and
eyes—whenever she went into the street. Then Telesippe drew out a
chair, laid a cushion on it, and invited her friend to sit down.
Elpinice was dressed very neatly, with a sort of old-fashioned care,
and her hair was no less daintily arranged. Her head-dress corresponded
admirably with its wearer’s character. The locks at the back of the
head were covered by a handkerchief, twisted below and knotted
coquettishly above the so-called “saccus,” while the front was adorned
with the metal plate already mentioned, which, somewhat resembling a
diadem, rose to a point above the brow. Large round ear-rings of
antique pattern dangled on both sides of the venerable Elpinice’s face.
“Telesippe,” cried the visitor, “you look paler than usual to-day. What
does this mean?”
“It may be the result of anxiety,” replied Telesippe. “We had a miracle
in the house.”
“What do you say?” cried Elpinice. “Has oil or wine been spilled while
pouring it out? Or have the beams creaked without cause? Or did a
strange black dog run into the house?”
“The steward brought to the city this morning a ram born on our country
estate, which had only one horn, that grew directly in the middle of
its forehead.”
“A ram with a single horn?” cried Elpinice. “By Artemis! I’m not
surprised that signs and marvels happen. A huge meteoric stone is said
to have fallen from the sky at Brilessus the night before last. Some
say that they saw a comet in the shape of a burning beam. Some of the
statues of the gods are reported to have begun to perspire or bleed. A
short time ago a raven perched on the gilded statue of Pallas at
Delphi, and pecked with its beak the fruits of the brazen palm on which
it stands. But best of all—just imagine. The priestess of the Eumenides
at Orchomenus is said to have grown a long thick beard! Have you sent
for an interpreter of omens?”
“Lampon,” replied Telesippe.
“Lampon is excellent,” said Elpinice, nodding approvingly. “He is the
best of them all. Anybody can slaughter an animal and make predictions
from its entrails. But one should see and hear Lampon, when he holds an
egg over the fire and draws his omens from its sweating or bursting, or
when he forms whole letters and words from grains of corn he lays on
the ground, then lets in the hens and notices which they pick up, and
which not. He knows, too, how to prophecy from the hand, and even from
clear water, or anything one wishes, as nobody else can do. Lampon is
clever and reliable; you can believe what he says, as if the priestess
had uttered it on the tripod at Delphi. But you don’t tell me how he
interpreted the marvel.”
“He interpreted the single horn to mean Pericles’ dominion over
Athens,” replied Telesippe.
Elpinice turned up her nose, and said no more in praise of Lampon. “My
brother Cimon,” said she, “revered the omens of the gods as much as any
one, and once ordered a ram to be slaughtered for twelve days in
succession, until the entrails were favorable. Then he attacked the
enemy. But whenever he went into the field, he always said to the
interpreters, who accompanied him at the public expense. ‘Soothsayers,
do the duties of your office, but don’t flatter me! Don’t falsify the
signs of the gods to please me.’ Modern statesmen, on the contrary,
have quite different wishes. The seers know very well, who desires to
hear the truth and who does not. People who allow themselves to be
flattered, may enjoy a fleeting success; but the real blessing of the
gods never attends those who do not revere the Olympians.”
“Do you suppose that Pericles showed himself particularly grateful to
Lampon for his prediction,” replied Telesippe. “No, he merely smiled,
and his friend, that old, half-starved Anaxagoras, even ventured to
make sneering remarks.”
“Since my brother Cimon’s death,” cried Elpinice, “we have received
into the country those despisers of the gods, the Sophists.”
“And these people,” said Telesippe, “undermine not only reverence for
the gods and good morals in the state, but destroy the happiness and
prosperity of the family. I was the wife of the wealthy Hipponicus, and
might have married the Archon Basileus, whose wife really occupies the
highest position in the nation, because, according to ancient custom,
she shares her husband’s most sacred priestly functions. But I allowed
myself to be won first by the wealthy Hipponicus, then by Pericles’
dignified, yet gentle, flattering manner. Now, what am I, a woman
accustomed to so much better things, compelled to undergo! To what a
household have I descended from that of Hipponicus! And things have
gone constantly from bad to worse. Pericles neglects his home. If I go
to consult him about the most important domestic affairs, he has no
time for them. I scarcely venture to enter his room in the morning. He
fairly shows me to the door. ‘My dear Telesippe,’ he says, ‘don’t
trouble me in the morning with such matters, or at least don’t come
unwashed and uncombed, so that you offend my ears and eyes at the same
time.’ I have been the wife of the wealthy Hipponicus, and he permitted
me to live in splendor; yet never did he address such words to me.
Here, on the contrary, in Pericles’ house, where instead of luxury and
magnificence sordidness and poverty surround me, here I must only
appear before the stern master, bathed and perfumed and crowned with
garlands. How I resisted, when he took it into his head to lease his
estates, and trust all his money to his slave Euangelos. He is now
purse-bearer and steward in the house, and I, its mistress, am
condemned to take money from the hand of a slave. Do you know from whom
Pericles learned this fine way of housekeeping, who leads him to it by
his example? No other than his beloved Anaxagoras. Before this
malicious idler left his house in Clazomenæ, to wander here to Athens,
his relatives reproached him, asking why he did not manage the estates
inherited from his father. He answered: ‘Do it yourselves, if you
choose!’ At last he went away, leaving everything he possessed just as
it stood, and told the Clazomenians they might turn the goats of the
community into his fields and meadows. Such men are the friends and
advisers of Pericles!”
Telesippe’s complaint was interrupted by a slave, who approached to ask
her orders about some domestic matter. Other male and female slaves
returned from the market, bringing the provisions they had purchased.
Telesippe tried the odor or taste of the various articles, but allowed
Elpinice to give her opinion about the freshness of a pike, and issued
certain orders to the cook. She also distributed to the slave-women
flax, linen, and other woven materials for the daily task of spinning,
weaving, and sewing in the house.
Then she turned back to her friend, to continue the interrupted
conversation.
“I haven’t yet told you the worst!” she said. “Formerly this was a
poor, yet a peaceful household. But everything has changed since the
time Pericles, in his thoughtless good-nature, brought home his ward,
the boy Alcibiades, the orphaned son of Cleinias, to be educated with
his own children. I say out of good-nature; but in doing so he only
showed himself kind to his relative, while utterly regardless of me and
his own flesh and blood. You know how well-behaved my two boys,
Xanthippus and Paralus, have always been, and under what control I have
kept them. They sat quietly in a corner all day long, and the pedagogue
actually fell asleep, they gave him so little to do. Pericles never
called them anything but ‘humbugs,’ and scolded them for their want of
activity. But they were really well-behaved children, such as all
fathers would desire. They had learned to obey at a sign, and did
nothing except what they were told to do. They sat or walked, eat and
slept, whenever people desired. If one said: ‘Paralus, don’t put your
hand in your mouth!’ or ‘Xanthippus, don’t touch your nose!’ Paralus
took his fist out of his mouth, and Xanthippus his finger out of his
nose. If either of them ever made a wry face, we need only say: ‘Mormo
is coming,’ or ‘Empusa,’ or ‘Acco,’ or ‘the wolf is there,’ or ‘the
horse will bite,’ and they turned pale and became as gentle as lambs.
And now? You wouldn’t know the boys, since that good-for-nothing
Alcibiades came into the house. With him, noise and shouting and
misbehavior of every kind has been brought into the nursery. The first
thing he did was to throw into one corner the rattles and tops, which
have always afforded Xanthippus and Paralus the utmost pleasure, and
call for wooden horses and carts. Pericles gave him what he wanted, and
then he banged noisily around the peristyle as if he were in the
race-course at Olympia. Soon the wooden horses no longer satisfied him,
and he harnessed Paralus and Xanthippus, and at last, even the
pedagogue, before his ‘Olympic chariot of victory,’ as he called it. By
way of a change, he caught swallows in the peristyle and either clipped
their wings or let them fly as far as long strings would allow them.
“At first the two boys watched their new companion’s conduct with a
sort of timid amazement. Gradually they became accustomed to it,
approached when he was playing some mischievous prank, and watched him
gravely and eagerly. Afterwards they helped, and at last began to
imitate like monkeys everything the fellow did. But the better nature,
innate in them, showed itself in the fact that they never originated
any naughty idea. They only faithfully did whatever Alcibiades ordered.
If I began to say anything about Mormo, Empusa, Acco, the wolf or the
biting horse, Alcibiades laughed. When Xanthippus and Paralus saw him,
and perceived that Mormo, Empusa, the wolf and the horse allowed it,
they laughed too. So I lost all power over the boys. They no longer
obey me. The pedagogue is an old man, a slave grown grey in the service
of the family, who fell from an olive-tree and broke his leg, and whom
Pericles therefore, again out of good-nature, that he might have no
more hard work to do, has made the boys’ overseer. Now the very fire on
the hearth isn’t safe from the rascals; they destroy and break
everything that can be destroyed and broken, climb wherever they can,
and fall down wherever it is possible to fail. The slave-women in the
house are teased and pinched, the men scoffed at and beaten. If I
attempt to interfere, and chase the boys angrily with my sandal in my
hand, Xanthippus and Paralus creep like a flash of lightning under
tables and couches, Alcibiades swings himself like a squirrel up the
pillars of the peristyle to the cornice. And Pericles? If I complain to
him, he smiles and takes the ringleader Alcibiades under his protection
against the humbugs—”
At this moment Telesippe was interrupted by little Paralus, who came
running in, crying bitterly.
The other lads followed close at his heels.
“We were playing the furious Ajax,” said Alcibiades, “the furious Ajax,
who killed so many cattle when he was mad, because he thought them
Achæans, and who is the ancestor of our family, my father Cleinias told
me. I was Ajax, Paralus and Xanthippus were the cattle. But I didn’t
strike them hard.”
“Inhuman boy!” cried Telesippe, in an outburst of anger, and beckoning
to Paralus and Xanthippus, caressed them to soothe their grief.
Meantime Elpinice was gazing intently at little Alcibiades.
“Yet he is a charming lad!” she said. “These sparkling black eyes—this
dazzlingly white forehead—these magnificent floating curls.”
“He’s a good-for-nothing scamp!” cried Telesippe, irritated by the
words of admiration her friend seemed to be lavishing on the boy. Then
she called the pedagogue. The old man came limping up. “Why did you
allow Alcibiades to abuse the two lads?” she exclaimed.
“He was in the game himself,” said Alcibiades; “he stood ready to be
the Trojan horse, with which I intended to enter Ilium.”
Telesippe looked at the pedagogue in astonishment.
“Mistress Telesippe,” replied the latter, “this isn’t the first time I
have been obliged to aid this wild fellow’s pranks. Yesterday he bit my
hand like a young dog—”
“Fie! Say like a young lion!” exclaimed little Alcibiades indignantly.
“O, Zeus and Apollo!” cried Elpinice, with a merry gesture. Then
drawing the boy towards her, she continued coaxingly: “You are
certainly a brave lad, and if you had lived under my brother, the great
Cimon, would have helped him fight the Persians. But in those times, my
child, boys behaved differently from the lads of the present day. They
were not nimble-tongued, saucy and forward, and they despised perfumes
and warm baths. At table they sat properly, without crossing their legs
or taking even a tiny stalk of a vegetable in their own hands. In the
morning they were seen in thin garments, even when it stormed and blew,
on their way to the music teacher, where they learned substantial old
songs like, ‘Pallas, ruler of the city,’ or ‘Shorn, good ram,’ by
Simonides, not the effeminate love ditties that are now the fashion,
with turns and flourishes, which anybody ought to be well beaten for
applauding. Remember, son of Cleinias, you, too, will soon be sent with
your playmates to the teacher’s house, you will study grammar and
gymnastics, playing the lute and blowing the flute—”
“No,” interrupted little Alcibiades; “I don’t want to play the flute—it
makes one look ugly—puffs out the cheeks—so.” He puffed out his cheeks
as far as he could.
“Oh, how vain!” cried Elpinice, trying to kiss him.
But old maids have little luck with children. To escape the kiss
Cimon’s sister offered, Alcibiades, with boyish impudence, blew full
into her face the breath he had been holding in his cheeks, and then
ran away laughing saucily.
Elpinice was furious, and started from her seat to leave the house at
once. Taking her himation, she threw one end of the broad side of the
long piece of cloth over her left shoulder, holding it firmly with her
left arm, than drew the material across her back to the right side, in
such a way that it not only covered this part of her body, but also her
head with the exception of her face. Finally she passed it under her
chin, and again threw it over her left shoulder, so that the point hung
on her back.
“You see what a fate I endure,” said Telesippe, holding her friend’s
hand to detain her. “This is the way I live here, tormented by
troublesome children, by the side of a careless husband, joyless,
vexed, slighted, I who might have been the wife of the Archon
Basileus—the sharer of the most sacred offices of the service of the
Athenian gods.”
“My brother Cimon used to say,” replied Elpinice: “New times are evil
times. The world goes on its course, and ambitious men urge it forward.
But we women are here too. Give heed, Telesippe, and let what I say to
you be enough for to-day! if we women hold together and cling to the
wheels, they won’t succeed speedily in turning this earth completely
out of the old grooves.”