THE PERILOUS SEAT
BOOKS BY CAROLINE DALE SNEDEKER
SETH WAY: A ROMANCE OF THE NEW HARMONY COMMUNITY
THE SPARTAN
THE PERILOUS SEAT
THE
PERILOUS SEAT
BY
CAROLINE DALE SNEDEKER
[Illustration]
The untaught maid
Mounting the perilous high seat can, for the god
Speak wisdom kings will seek for, but herself
The god will soon destroy.
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1923
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
_First Edition_
TO MY SON KARL SNEDEKER WHOSE GREEK SCHOLARSHIP HAS AIDED MY TASK, THIS
STORY OF OLD GREECE IS DEDICATED
PREFACE
The background and details of this story have been carefully
authenticated. The founding of the colony Inessa, however, is not an
actual event. It is the union of a number of colony traditions. It is
therefore correct in character and spirit.
The tale was written at the MacDowell Colony at Peterborough, New
Hampshire, and I am constantly mindful of the inspiration given to me by
the beautiful and solitary surroundings in which I there worked.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
BOOK I
_At the Pythian Festival_
I. DRYAS WINS THE PRIZE 1
II. PARENTAL JUSTICE 10
BOOK II
_A Childhood in Delphi_
III. THERIA, SEVEN YEARS OLD 19
IV. ELEUTHERIA LOOKS OUT OF A WINDOW 26
V. THE TRADITIONS OF THE HOUSE 34
VI. THE GUESTS 45
VII. WHAT GIFTS THE GUESTS BROUGHT 51
VIII. DRYAS TAKES A ROBBER 57
IX. LAUREL FROM TEMPÈ 62
X. A BOY CALLED SOPHOCLES 69
XI. WHY NOT BE THE PYTHIA? 78
BOOK III
_Within the Oracle_
XII. “THE PLACE OF GOLDEN TRIPODS” 89
XIII. IN PLEISTOS WOODS 101
XIV. THE POOR SLAVE 105
XV. THE SHATTERED CUP 113
XVI. GATHERING THE THREADS 117
XVII. THE YOUTH UNDER THE WINDOW 122
XVIII. GATHERING MORE THREADS 127
XIX. THE SONG RE-SUNG 133
XX. LOVE IN THE LANE 142
XXI. A PROCESSION OF SACRIFICE 152
XXII. IN THE PYTHIA HOUSE 156
XXIII. THE CHILD PRIESTESS 159
XXIV. THE HIGH, PERILOUS SEAT 164
XXV. BITTER CONSEQUENCES 170
XXVI. “PRAY TO THE WINDS” 177
XXVII. THE MESSENGERS 182
XXVIII. OUTCAST ON PARNASSOS 191
XXIX. EËTÍON PURSUES 196
XXX. SHEPHERD WISDOM 201
XXXI. NIKANDER’S NEAREST OF KIN 210
XXXII. TERRIBLE NEWS FROM THERMOPYLÆ 215
XXXIII. AT EËTÍON’S CALL 221
XXXIV. EËTÍON AND NIKANDER 226
XXXV. THERIA TELLS HER VISION 229
XXXVI. REFUGE IN THE PRECINCT 233
BOOK IV
“_The God Will Care for His Own_”
XXXVII. THE PERSIAN COMES 239
XXXVIII. THANKFULNESS 247
XXXIX. NIKANDER PLEADS FOR HIS DAUGHTER 252
XL. AGAIN HOME 257
XLI. A SCULPTOR’S RESPECTABILITY 261
XLII. THE UNWILLING COLONIST 267
XLIII. THE BIRD IN THE CAGE 278
XLIV. THE METIC 289
XLV. THE MARRIAGE 293
XLVI. THE DOOR OF ESCAPE 297
XLVII. ALIEN MEADOWS 302
XLVIII. TOWN MAKERS 309
BOOK I
AT THE PYTHIAN FESTIVAL
CHAPTER I
DRYAS WINS THE PRIZE
Dryas, the young Delphian, finished his song. As he did so he leaped
impulsively to the sheer edge of the temple platform, leaning forward in
the very attitude of the Archer God. The song was to Apollo. For a moment
he seemed to be the young Apollo himself.
The final note was scarce heard for the surge of applause which met it.
The people pelted the boy with flowers—snatched off their own garlands
to throw to him—until he stood ankle deep in the bloom. He was blushing,
shy, now that his song was finished. Awestruck, too, for he heard
everywhere the shout:
“The Prize! The Prize!”
Thus ended the first day of the Pythian festival at Delphi. The crowds
poured down through the Precinct, a very tumult of colour and motion.
White-robed priests, purple-cloaked kings, Sybarites in cloth of gold,
young athletes beautiful as the sunlight in which they moved; and upon
every man’s head, rich or poor, his crown of flowers.
How freely they talked, how happily gave themselves to laughter! The
truce of God was upon them—that peace which Apollo imposed upon the
passionate, warring Greeks at festival time. Delphi itself, forbidding
amid its beetling cliffs, seemed to lose sternness at this festival. Out
on the far-seen hillsides were the booths and bright-coloured tents of
the visitors, the flash and glitter of things brought for sale. Even yet
crowds of pilgrims were arriving, swarming up the steep winding roads as
the bees were fabled of old to have swarmed thither to build the first
temple in Delphi.
Dryas, his father, Nikander, and his brother, Lycophron, came down
through the stirring Precinct, perhaps the happiest hearts of all the
multitude.
The prize at Delphi! It was an immortal honour. The noblest poets of
Greece would write hymns in his praise. Dryas’s whole town would bask
in the honour of it. Dryas’s statue in bronze would be set up near the
Precinct gate, and in future years his sons and sons’ sons would recount
the victory.
Neighbours, kinsfolk, strangers, halted them on their homeward way.
No man in Hellas was too exalted to pause in humility and delight to
greet the young victor with the crown yet fresh upon his head. But it
was to the father, Nikander, rather than to Dryas that they addressed
themselves, lingering to catch if it were but a reflection of the
surprised joy in that father-face.
Nikander walked holding his boy’s hand, or touching his shoulder as he
presented him to some famous man.
“You liked it?” he would say, his sensitive face flushing almost as
Dryas’s own. “You liked the song? Yes, I, too, enjoyed it—that stern
opening—the Dorian mode. It was as new in my hearing as in yours. The
dear lad kept it so.”
And Dryas’s answering look showed the father’s praise to be the most
precious of all. It was no usual affection which bound these two
together.
And now Pindar, the greatest poet, met them, outstretching both his hands.
“Nikander! Dryas! Kairos bless you both! You are tasting the heady joy of
victory!”
“Eating victory rather,” put in the elder brother, Lycophron, with a
rough laugh. “Feasting on it in courses I should say.”
At his father’s hurt look he stopped and laid his hand upon the father’s
shoulder.
“Tut,” he said, “I meant no harm.” Then he turned to the poet: “Pindar,
I hope you are coming to us to-night, speaking of feasts; a symposium in
Dryas’s honour.”
Pindar frowned at the young man’s forwardness but assented, then smiled
again as he turned to Dryas.
“It was almost as good as your father’s victor song years ago.”
“Oh, better, much better,” urged Nikander. At which Pindar moved onward,
laughing, shaking his head. A lovable man, Pindar.
They arrived finally at their own door. All the slaves were there bowing
and curtseying, Medon, the old pedagogue, at their head. He peered up
eagerly to see if the boy really wore the laurel crown and, at sight of
it, trembled visibly with joy.
“Little Dryas, little Dryas,” he crooned, all love.
Nikander must needs stop to rehearse all his happiness to the old
servant. And who so glad to hear as Medon!
“All Dryas’s songs have been good,” Nikander finished. “But, oh, this one
to-day is in a new class! Do you know what the rascal did, Medon? Brought
out an utterly new poem, different from any I ever heard. Imagine my
amazement when he started out—and my delight!”
“Yes, Master, yes!” assented Medon.
As they talked, they had been moving slowly through the andron and now
entered the women’s court.
Melantho, the mother, hearing them enter, came running down the stair to
fold her son in her arms. Baltè, the old nurse, hobbled up. Nerea, Clito,
and other slave girls came and kissed the hem of his robe.
But Nikander missed one member of the household.
“Where is Eleutheria?” he asked.
Then he caught sight of her standing in the far corner of the court—his
daughter, tall, delicately flushed with that air between shyness and
pride which is common to all new-flowering things.
“Daughter,” said Nikander, “we have come home with the crown!”
She bowed her dark head, fingering her distaff with its tangled threads.
“Come, my dear,” said Nikander, snapping his fingers to hasten her.
“Come, greet your brother victor.”
Then she looked up—a face full of some strange startling emotion.
“No,” she half whispered.
“No? What on earth do you mean?”
“I cannot,” she spoke sharply. “I cannot praise him.”
“You are ill,” said Nikander, going to her. Indeed he feared some fever
had deprived her of her wits.
“No, I am not ill.”
“Then what madness is this? What nonsense!” Nikander could hardly believe
in this sudden quarrel darkening the brightness of his day of joy.
Dryas crossed over to her. He was ever the peacemaker.
“What has happened, Theria?” He began gently.
Her great eyes looked fearfully at him.
“You know perfectly well what has happened. How dare you ask!”
Nikander was now thoroughly angry.
“Theria,” he said, “greet your brother at once or go to your room. Your
whims are unbearable.”
“Theria,” began Dryas again. But at his urging voice her anger took flame.
“I won’t praise you!” she cried wildly. “You know the song is mine, mine.
I made it myself.”
“Great gods!” laughed Lycophron. “Here’s a pother for you!”
“No pother at all,” spoke Dryas quickly. “Who’ll believe her?”
“Nobody, nobody, my son,” sounded Nikander’s deep voice. “Now, Theria,
go! I shall punish you myself for this!”
Here Melantho lifted horrified hands. “What jealousy, Theria! Shame on
you! Shame!”
Theria had already reached the stair-foot, but at this word she faced
them again.
“I am not jealous, I can prove that I made it,” she said, her voice
suddenly clear. “I can sing my song.”
As at sacrilege, Nikander answered:
“Indeed you will do no such thing. Do you suppose I would allow that
perfect creation to be caricatured by you?”
“Father, she heard me sing it,” thus Dryas, pale with the hurt Theria had
given. “She has a perfect memory.”
“My dear boy, do you suppose the matter needs argument?”
“Oh, let her try. Why not?” came the heavy voice of Lycophron. “Then we
can finish the scene with a good laugh, anyway.”
“You will not laugh at me,” cried out Theria. “By Hermes, you will not
laugh!” The look in her face, suddenly visionary and unafraid, found
response in an unexpected quarter.
“Oh, let her try.” Lycophron spoke in a different tone. “Give the poor
child a chance.”
“Surely you need no proof,” said the father.
“Be damned if I don’t,” responded the elder brother.
“Then have your proof. It will need few moments.”
Nikander swiftly took the lyre from Dryas’s slave and gave it into
Theria’s hand. The girl received it with an almost hungry eagerness as
though the song within her burned for expression. Every vestige of anger
died from her. Something from within seemed to sweep her up into a mobile
erectness, holding her delicately steady as a flame is held aloft.
She struck a deep chord from the lyre upon her hip and sang. To their
astonishment, it was not Dryas’s song though haunted ever and again with
bits of the Dryas melody. She tossed the melody from grave to gay with
ease and in the changes swayed softly.
Wherefore, O Muse, dipping from highest heaven
Down through the ambient air
Com’st thou to _me_ in my thick-walled shadowy chamber
To lay on _my_ lips the honey of sweet song?
I am a woman, a spinner.
Not for such is the glory of singing;
Not for such the happiness free in the sunshine
of Pythian contests in song.
In answer the Muse
Inexorable goddess,
Drew with yet stronger cords my will and my spirit.
“Sing!” she commanded, “Sing!”
At this point the rhythm with an increasing purposeful tread marched
into the very tune of Dryas. The ancient story of Apollo slaying the
Python-snake and winning the place of the Oracle from which to speak to
men. The song was greatly enhanced by its prelude:
Fair, fair on the mountains the feet of Apollo striding;
Swift is our God and stern.
Dark, dark in the valley, the snake coiling and sliding
Lone mid the Delphic fern.
Ha, old Dragoness, dost thou possess it—
Oracle meet for the voice of a God?
Nay, for our archer God comes to redress it.
Already are trod
The dear paths of Delphi by feet mysterious, divine.
Apollo, we shall be thine!
Coils of the Python lie over the place
Of Loxias’s[1] grace
The heartening word
Is choked in the depth,
Unheard.
Dark dark is Delphi,
Dark is the dell,
There in the murk the birds of ill-omen, softly horribly fly,
And like waters of hell
Castaly streams from her gorge and is lost in Castaly’s well.
That _gleam_ in the gorge!
That glint in Phaëdriades cleft!
Like a golden spool in the weft
Like a golden bird which flits
’Mong solemn crags of the ghostly place:
Before the God cometh, cometh his grace.
Ha! flash of silver bright as a bolt from the sky
A piercing cry
And straight to the heart of the monster
The arrows of Loxias fly!
Writhe, O Monster, lifting on high.
Now thou must die!
And now from Castaly’s gorge like the beauty of day
Steppeth the God with bow bent broad to the fray
Drawing with lifted arm the shaft to the tip.
Paian, Paian, the pure!
Thou art here, thou art sure,
Immortally tall, fair tressed, crowned with bay.
God of the far-borne voice,
So dost thou capture with valiance the place of thy choice—
Delphi, murmuring, golden.
Hail to thee—God of Day!
[1] Loxias, Son of Leto, Archer God, Paian, son of Zeus—all are
affectionate, worshipful names of Apollo.
To the end she sang it. Not with Dryas’s sensitive handling but with a
dramatic power, possessive, from within, making it inalienably her own.
Then she seemed to waken. She looked around. Her father stood with bowed
head and hidden face. Melantho was weeping. Lycophron motioned a slave to
shut the door lest someone come upon them, and Dryas sat gazing at the
ground with an expression of misery and defeat which scattered the last
vestige of Theria’s creative joy.
Suddenly she would have given worlds not to have sung. All kept silence
as if they were all guilty. And like a guilty thing, Theria gave the lyre
back to the slave and went up the stair.
CHAPTER II
PARENTAL JUSTICE
Theria was gone. Yet in the room the awkward silence held. Then by some
hidden sympathy Nikander’s hand beckoned to Dryas and Dryas himself
started forward at the same moment.
“I wanted,” faltered Dryas, “oh, I wanted you to be proud.”
“I would have been proud anyway,” said Nikander loyally. Dryas began to
sob.
“Son, why did you deceive me? There was no need. I would never have told
the judges.”
“I don’t care for the judges. It was you—you!”
With sorrowful affection Nikander kissed him, then went slowly up the
stair to Theria’s room.
He found her pacing up and down the narrow place. She was talking aloud.
“To take away my song! It wasn’t fair. No! To take away my song!”
Nikander spoke passionately: “Theria, this was the happiest day of my
life and you have made it the most sorrowful.”
“Father!” she cried. “Father!”
She stood instantly still. Tears were running down her face. “Oh, I was
sorry the minute I had done it. There was no use to tell and it only gave
pain to everyone.”
Wistfully she tried to take his hand. Like most children, she had never
told him how intensely she loved him.
“I cannot understand, Theria, why you would give your song to Dryas and
then at a crucial moment snatch it back again. Dryas has done wrong, but
your wrong is sheer cruelty.”
“But, Father——” she began. Then she stopped. She had done enough harm for
one day.
She could not tell him that she had never given the song, but that Dryas
had taken it against her will. Dryas had come to her one morning with a
song of his own. Theria knew at once that it would never win the prize.
They had talked it over, trying to mend it.
That afternoon her own song had flashed upon her. It was, as such flashes
are apt to be, the culmination of long striving and dreaming. And for
days afterward she had worked and perfected it. Then a week before the
Pythian festival she had taken the song to Dryas and had sung it for him.
Of course she was willing to give it to him. It did not occur to her but
that Dryas would share with her the honour of it, at least in their own
home. This Dryas had refused to do. They had quarrelled, and, at the end,
Dryas had flatly told her that since she taught him the song he would
take it for his own, whether she willed or no. He had thought she would
never dare to tell. But now she had told, and the result was this misery.
“Theria,” said her father wearily, “how did it ever occur to you to write
a song?”
“It was just as I told in the singing, Father. I was spinning alone in
the spinning-room and the Muse struck across my mind. She would not let
me go. The words hurried before I could catch up with them; a new chord
waited for every chord I struck.”
Nikander was for a moment awed. He believed in the Muse; no mere poetic
figment was she. She was an accepted goddess, and even thus was she wont
to act.
“But you must have studied and worked,” he said. “You must have had help.”
“Medon has helped me a little. He taught me the scales, and I have taken
your book rolls and made him show me how to read. Do not be angry with
Medon. He is only a slave and I commanded him. It was really myself did
it. I worked very hard.”
Suddenly it seemed to her that some invisible door, which ever for her,
a girl, had always stood ajar, had quietly and irrevocably closed. She
had the instinct to turn this way and that for escape. But there was no
escape.
“What shall I do?” she moaned. “Oh, what shall I do?” It seemed as though
her father, so intelligent, so quick to help all comers to the Oracle,
surely he would know some help for her.
“My dear Theria,” said Nikander, “there is much for you to do here at
home. You have everything, why are you unhappy?”
She bowed her head without answer. There was so much to say that she
could say nothing at all.
“Theria,” he went on kindly, “I must tell you that only yesterday by your
mother’s advice I did something for you. I see now how necessary it was.”
Her lips parted as if in fear.
“I have offered you in marriage,” said Nikander, “to Timon for his eldest
son Theras. Timon has accepted. I am delighted with the alliance and I
shall have the betrothal very soon.”
With a low cry the girl crouched upon the floor, clasping his knees.
“Oh, no, Father, no,” she pleaded. “You are not so angry with me as that.
Don’t send me away! Don’t send me away!”
He took her hands gently and lifted her—put his arm about her pitifully
trembling shoulders.
“What a strange child. What a strange, foolish child. All maidens look
forward to marriage. It is their right.”
“But not I, Father, not I!”
“You must do so. Of course it will be strange at first. Brides are often
timid, but you are not lacking in courage. Theria, your constant dwelling
upon thoughts which are for men makes you cold toward what is your
business in life—which is marriage and childbearing. You are mature in
things not for you and in all the rest an undeveloped child.”
This brutal statement was a nearer reading of Theria’s character than
Nikander himself guessed. An unevenness of development was hers—a kind of
mental hobbledehoy which is not infrequent in high-bred youngsters. Nay,
more than this: An actual shrinking purity was the concomitant of her
poetic gift. Other girls of Delphi discussed the facts of marriage with
primitive frankness and looked forward to marriage as the one event to
break monotony. Theria never spoke of it, and thought of it almost with
horror—the strange house, the strange man, the mysteries from which she
hid her eyes.
Shall we add to this the terrific pride of youth—that she held it a
certainty that no family equalled the Nikanders? To mate even with
another Delphian was a downward step. This pride was in her stubborn
answer.
“Father, I cannot—I cannot.”
“Nonsense,” smiled Nikander, “of course you will. He is a good
man—Timon’s son.”
“Have I seen him?”
“Daughter! Of course you have not.”
She wrung her hands in sudden wildness.
“I won’t marry,” she cried. “I won’t go away from the house I love to one
I have never known. I won’t belong to Theras whom I have never seen. I
will only belong to you, you, you!”
“Theria, my dear child,” began Nikander.
But she was quite beside herself. She stamped the floor with her foot.
“I won’t marry Theras! I won’t! I won’t!” she raged.
At the end of the interview Nikander brought out a small whip which was
used for child slaves. With this he whipped his daughter. Greek fathers
had this right even with grown sons, but Nikander had never used it.
At last, when she stood tall and tearless and he stood trembling in spite
of effort to keep steady, he said:
“Daughter, this is not for your present act alone. It is for your
year-long disobedience. I believe now that you will obey.”
She stood like a straight reed, so still, so horror struck. And in that
stillness her father left her.
* * * * *
An hour later Theria was roused from her apathy by the sound of beautiful
music.
It was in the street, and she curiously stole forward to her father’s
room to look out of the little window there. She was in time to see Dryas
borne along the way on the shoulders of his friends.
The full moon of the festival made the street as bright as day and the
torches of the procession twinkled like jewels in the white light. Pindar
walked in the procession chanting a strophe in Dryas’s honour. A chorus
of youths followed singing the antistrophe, and behind these a boy played
the cymbals upon which the glitter of sound met the lovely glitter of the
moonlight.
Leaning out of the window, Theria suddenly exulted. “It is _my_ song
Pindar is praising. All those words are for me and it is Pindar, Pindar!”
In a burst of joyous music they passed within the house door below her,
and Theria heard the pleasant confusion as they took their seats at the
board and the scurry of the slaves beginning to serve them.
Then after a time came a faint tuning of a lyre, a pause, and Dryas
started once more to sing his song—her song. He faltered. Oh, would her
rumpus of the afternoon make him fail? She was in a panic—family pride,
family affection were strong in the Nikander household—but after a little
flickering Dryas’s flame burned bright. He even imitated his sister’s
dramatic singing of the afternoon.
Theria could not hear Pindar’s exclamation of wonder that the lad should
sing the song this evening with an entirely new meaning. She heard
only the hand clappings, the mingled voices, the chitter of the silver
cups—cups treasured many a year by successive Nikander housewives. A wave
of loneliness swept over her—a Wave of fear, remembering her father’s
purpose. And shrinking back from the window she made her way through the
darkness to her room and bed.
BOOK II
A CHILDHOOD IN DELPHI
CHAPTER III
THERIA, SEVEN YEARS OLD
A little girl in an ancestral house—a slender, vivid, flashing little
girl whom yet the rich traditions of her line filled to the brim with
dreams—such had been Theria in her childhood.
The town in which she was born had not grown haphazard, had not been
founded for trade nor for its nearness to some natural wealth.
Its central life was the god, the god of light and of enlightenment, of
beauty and judicial fairness. Apollo was its source of happiness and its
livelihood as well. He moulded the daily life. The focus of all Delphi
was the shrine where, from a windy cleft beneath the temple, Apollo
spoke, answering the wistful questions of men.
And of such an idealizing force it is true, that while it affects the
community as a whole, it gives to certain individuals a heaped-up gift.
Such a gift was upon this child, peculiar to her in Nikander’s house.
Delphi had imprinted that expression on her baby face, that unmistakable
look of spiritual life which had been the life of her fathers for at
least four hundred years. So many traditions, so many prides, upliftings,
adventures, poetries, and faiths, entering into the heart of a little
girl. Nikander’s sons were just hearty, playful Greek boys. Theria was a
Delphian.
One spring morning, when all Delphi was joyous with an awakening sky and
earth, it happened that Theria was seven years old. She came tripping
down the stairway of the inner court, fresh-washed from the hands of her
nurse, fresh-dressed in a single garment which did not reach her knees.
“Now be good,” the old nurse had admonished her as she gave the last
touch to her dark curls. “Your twin brother is playin’ that sweet down in
the aula. Don’t ye go now and stir him up with your mischievous ways.”
And here in the court sure enough Dryas was playing “that sweet.” He
had made a circle of pebbles and stones and was marching around and
around it chanting some childish, made-up thing—perfectly absorbed,
unseeing. Sunbeams slanted across the court leaving him in a sort of
magic, refracted light; small rain-pools here and there among the
worn pavement-flags gave back the blue, or wrinkled suddenly from the
unseen breeze. In the corner the old, old tiny altar, upon which many
generations of Nikanders had sacrificed, breathed yet the smoke of the
morning rite. The place smelt sweet of wood-smoke. Now Theria was aware
of a shadow moving across the court and looking up saw an eagle swoop
down the sunlit air.
In after years Theria—a woman and far away—was to recall this scene
cut clear and deep by the love she bore her home, but now she tripped
recklessly down the unbalustered stair and scattered Dryas’s circle of
stones with her foot.
“Let’s play,” she announced.
“_Am_ playin’—threshin’-floor,” responded Dryas, breathless from circling.
“You don’t play threshing-floor now. That’s past.”
The Threshing-Floor was an ancient circular platform in the Precinct of
Apollo. Every four years a sacred drama of the Python-snake was performed
upon it and this year little Dryas had seen it.
“I’ll tell you,” said the disturbing Theria, “you fetch more stones.
We’ll make the village and the road that goes by to the Oracle.”
The Oracle was the treasury of beauty and wonder of all Hellas, but to
Delphic children it was just a dear bright place within high walls and
the scene of their holidays.
Dryas did not answer, but he stopped his play and trotted off toward the
outer room, which led to the front door, for the pebbles.
Theria waited impatiently while he brought in skirtful after skirtful of
stones. Then she began to make her village, a stone for each well-known
house, a line of little stones to show the road which passed their own
door and ran windingly along the mountain slope. Theria set her miniature
precinct in the sunny part of the court. To her the sunlight always and
inevitably rested on that temple place where fane after fane and shrine
after shrine mounted the hillside up to the matchless Apollo temple
itself, set like a jewel of red and peacock-blue and gold against the
shining cliffs.
“The Sacred Way,” murmured Dryas happily as he made the path between the
temples. “Here it turns—an’ oh, here’s a sparkly stone for the ’Thenian
Treasury.”
“The Knidian Treasury,” corrected Theria. “It’s the Knidian Treasury at
the turn.”
“No—’Thenian!”
“No, don’t you remember the pretty marble ladies who hold up the porch?”
Still Dryas maintained his Athenian Treasury.
“Shu! You’ve never been there,” he said, “an’ I’ve been there lots o’
times.”
“I go every day,” announced the little girl.
At this evident whopper Dryas’s rosy mouth fell open in dismay.
“Never have you been there. You are only a girl.”
“I go there every day,” repeated Theria.
Quarrel was imminent; was averted only by Dryas scrambling to his feet to
seek old Medon as judge.
“Never mind Medon, I’ll show you how I go,” and, taking her twin
brother’s hand with an air of great bestowing, Theria led him up stairs
and forward to her father’s bedchamber, to its one window. Out of this
she leaned so far that only her chubby legs remained within. Sure enough,
so leaning she could see beyond the shoulder of a cliff a spur of farther
hill, and there in a bath of light the golden tip-edge of a little temple
and on a higher level a single pillar bearing a sphynx of lofty wings.
“I see it every day,” she announced again.
“Only a little piece,” said Dryas contemptuously.
“When I see that I see all,” repeated the child enthusiast. “Medon has
told me all.”
Dryas opened his lips to answer but thought better of it. Theria was a
most determined little person when once she had made up her mind.
They went back to the aula. Here ruin met them. Baltè, the old nurse, was
sweeping up their shrine of Apollo in great indignation.
“Whatever made ye litter up the aula like this?” She complained. “Rubble
and rubbish when the rain washed all so clean last night. Never ye mind.
I’ll be rid o’ _one_ of ye after to-day.”
Dryas did not notice this speech but Theria looked up in alarm.
“Which one?” she asked.
“Never ye mind. There; I should not ’a’ spoken.”
“Why shouldn’t you spoken?”
Such caution was unusual in Baltè. The threat sounded real. Theria caught
Baltè’s skirt.
“Is something goin’ to happen?”
“There, don’t you worry, darlin’. It won’t be you,” said the old nurse as
she hurried away.
Dryas had rescued enough stones to recommence his threshing-floor. To
tell truth, he had preferred this all along.
Theria sat beside him watching his play. The “something” was not going to
happen to herself. Then surely it would happen to Dryas. Her heart began
to yearn over her brother with that frightened tenderness which children
know. She leaned over and kissed him. Dryas wiped off the kiss in frank
disgust.
“Don’t,” he said.
She remembered the eagle. There was no bird so sure of omen as an eagle.
“Dryas,” she said softly, “I’ll tell you a story now.”
“No—please.”
Yet Theria lingered. Dreadful it was that she could do nothing for her
brother when the eagle would so soon be carrying him away.
“I wish you would let me,” she said faintly. “I’ll give you all my honey
cake at noon if you will.”
To such a bribe Dryas consented, squatting down in a chubby heap beside
his pebbles.
“It’s about baby Hermes,” Theria began. “First, he was born, and when
he was three hours old he got out of his cradle and walked straight up
Parnassos Mountain—to the very top.”
“He couldn’t,” objected her auditor.
“But god-legs is strong.”
“Presè’s got a baby three months old and it can’t walk yet. Its worse’n a
puppy.”
“Presè’s a slave. Slave legs is different.”
“But even a god, he couldn’t do it.”
And though Theria knew her story was correct, she did not press the point.
“And little Hermes found some cows,” she went on. “Oh, beautiful wild
cows with sharpy-sharp horns. All the cows were white and were eating
white flowers that grow in the meadows up against the sky.”
“Clouds?” suggested Dryas.
“Yes, clouds were their food,” went on Theria who knew the tale by rote.
“For they were the herd of Apollo. And the little baby called the cows
and they left their white flowers and came; for who can resist the call
of a god? And Hermes, swift of foot——”
“Three-hours-old foot,” interposed Dryas.
“—leaped down the path, and all the cows they followed him. And when he
came to the deep forest he sacrificed the cows to his father, Zeus, and
the smoke went up through the trees to heaven and smelt very sweet. Then
Hermes found a tortoise, and out of the tortoise and the cows’ pretty
horns he made a lyre—oh, the first, first lyre that ever was made. And
the baby Hermes began to play on the lyre—
‘Twink, twink,
Twinky, twink, twink’
—Oh, god-music, as pretty as Father plays or Pindar when he——”
“Here, here!” came an unexpected voice. “It’s very well to compare Pindar
to Hermes but your father is another matter.”
The children scrambled to their feet with faces of delight. It was rare
to see their father at this hour. And Father always brought gaiety.
CHAPTER IV
ELEUTHERIA LOOKS OUT OF A WINDOW
Nikander was a tall slender man, a remarkable uniting of sensitiveness
and force. Twelve generations of his forbears had been priests of Delphi,
statesmen of wide outlook and ministers to the souls of men. Nikander was
a resultant type.
He sat down on a stone bench lifting Dryas to his knee, but Theria crept
into the hollow of his arm. Her fears took flight like scattered birds.
No harm could come to Dryas now that her father was there.
“And what day, think you, is this?” he asked. Birthdays were not so
important in those days and the children did not know.
“It is Dryas’s birthday,” he told them.
“Then my birthday, too,” exclaimed Theria, for though she was taller and
seemed older than her brother, she was his twin.
“Yes, yours, too.” Quite unconscious of his act, Nikander bent and kissed
the little girl. So bending, his face was the mature model for her own.
“And because it is the seventh birthday it is to be the first day of
school. Medon will take you, Dryas. He will be pedagogue. And here is
your little lyre. Father bought it to-day of the old lyre maker. See what
a pretty picture is here beneath the strings. And for you, my daughter,
what you have wanted so long.”
He drew from behind the bench the ropes and seat of a swing. “But I
wanted a lyre, too,” said Theria with wide, blank eyes.
“A lyre for a little girl! Oh, no, kitten. Besides, did you not ask for a
swing?”
“But, oh, Father, it is the lyre I want.”
“Theria must not be envious,” said her father seriously. “That would be a
new fault in my little girl.”
But her wide, astonished eyes disturbed him and again he kissed the child
before he hurried out.
Dryas with little cluckings of delight plucked at his toy, but Theria
stood very still. Since she was to have no lyre, was it also true that
she was not to go to school?
She seemed in the presence of a calamity which had been approaching since
all the days she had been alive, and now was come. With the vagueness of
her seven years, yet very deeply, she knew that not going to school meant
the parting of the ways between her and Dryas, the closing away from her
of precious things. Yet, strangely enough, in her surface, childish self,
she did not believe it at all.
Father had not said she could not go. Besides, she had always got what
she wanted if she persisted. She knew from her big brother Lycophron what
the school was like—a room or portico up near the Precinct, the master
teaching Homer all the day long—wonderful stories which one could not
forget, boys playing their lyres merrily then hanging them upon the wall
to go out and leap and race in contest in the sunshine. Lycophron had
gone to school since the beginning of the world.
Theria did not associate Baltè’s warning with this matter at all.
“I go to school to-day,” she began to say softly to herself. “Then I must
hurry.”
With a certain anxiety she crossed the court to Lycophron’s room. Yes,
there on the chest were his extra stylus and tablets and hanging on the
wall a small lyre which in a temper he had broken.
Theria climbed the chest and got it.
And in possession of these things confidence came to her. She was
perfectly sure now that she should go to school. She began to hum briskly
to herself. She went back into the court to be near Dryas lest when Medon
come he forget her.
Dryas was prancing about, hugging his lyre. He was not slow to taunt her.
“Ai: I’m going to school. You can’t go; you can’t go!”
“I can. Father said I could. I heard him.”
“When did he say it?”
“I don’t know when, but I heard him! ‘Daughter, you are going to school;
you are seven years old! Everybody goes to school then.’”
“He didn’t give you the lyre. He gave it to me,” gloried Dryas.
“I’ve a lyre, too, foolish one.” She held it out.
“Ai, what a broken thing, and it’s Lycophron’s. It’s none of yours.”
“If I had a lyre I’d play it, not hug it,” retorted Theria.
Here Medon came into the aula with sandals on. To Theria it was a
thunder-clap. She watched him steadily as he crossed to them, then with
loving gesture slipped her hand into his.
“But,” said the slave, “my darling is not going to-day. It’s Dryas who
must go. Poor Dryas!”
“Oh, no: you didn’t understand,” she reasoned with him. “Father wants
me to go.” She pushed back her curls with a nervous little gesture and
looked brightly up at him.
Medon dreaded a battle with Theria. The child had a storm-like temper.
To be sure it broke seldom, but it was always on some bright day like
this and nearly always had to do with going out of the house—a privilege
rare for little girls. Most girls did not expect to go out. Theria always
expected it, like a boy, and fought for it like a boy, too. Something
told him she was going to fight now. He must do his best.
“Medon will buy you a hoop in the market—a hoop, mind you, with bells—if
you will be good.”
“I don’t want that.” How tight she held his hand and how black were the
childish eyes gazing up at him. “I’ll tell you, Medon, you can give the
hoop to Dryas. School will be hard for Dryas. It’s going to be so easy
for me.”
“But, my dear little mistress, you cannot go. There are no girls at the
school.”
Medon felt the hand tighten sharply in his. The child was looking off at
a distance. Then with complete change she slipped her hand out of his.
“Yes, you and Dryas go,” she said.
She ran quickly up the stair to the women’s apartments—no doubt to cry
alone, and Medon, seizing his opportunity, fairly fled with his charge
from the house.
Medon carried the little boy’s lyre and very peacefully they walked along
the road toward the Precinct. They had gone some distance when Medon
heard running steps behind him, and, turning, saw to his amazement Theria
as if on wings, her black hair streaming behind, her chubby arms clasping
a lyre.
“I’m going!” she cried. “I will; I will!”
And then it was that Medon had to carry back along the road a strange
wild creature that fought and kicked and bit and clutched at his hair.
The neighbours hearing the cries ran out of their houses and shook their
heads at Nikander’s terrible child. Poor Medon was like to drop into the
earth for shame. Yet amid all the tumult he kept thinking of a mountain
stream which had been dammed back but which one day broke through and
rushed away—a mighty flood.
Nikander’s alarmed family—wife, slaves, and all—met them at the door.
“Now for what do the gods punish me?” cried poor Melantho, “that I should
have such a child! Look at her eyes. She is beside herself. Baltè, hold
her!”
But as Medon set down the little raging tumult old Baltè let her escape.
Up the stairs she flew, her voice like a clarion.
“Leave her be, dear mistress,” pleaded wise old Baltè. “Remember, she is
a twin child and it does grieve her sore to be separate from her twin.”
In the farthest room of the house Theria found refuge and slammed the
door. Here she threw herself face downward and beat the floor with her
fists; yes, and kicked, too, as her childish grief surged to and fro
within her. Her strength spent itself at last and she fell to sobbing,
suffering now as she had not done amid the curious enjoyment of loud woe.
Her thoughts now were not of the school nor of Dryas, but of her father,
the strange horror that her father should have done this and not seem to
care. Always before this had he mended hurts, not made them. Facing this
mystery her dearest faith tottered. Yet after a while even this dread
grew faint. Thoughts faded into fancies. Then she fell asleep.
* * * * *
She must have slept a long while for she awoke strangely quiet. Her
refuge place was a storeroom. Chests stood about full of things used only
at festivals. There were also great earthen jars of grain and wine.
The room was stone floored, stone walled, but its far end was hewn into
the native rock. Nikander’s house, standing on a side hill, was two
storied in front but here at the back melted to the roof in the hillside.
This room had a little low window—the only other window in the house
besides that in Nikander’s room.
To this window the little girl crept, and leaned her two elbows on the
ledge, her chin in her hands. The window showed her only the side lane
which led up between the houses to lose itself in the hill above. This
lane was wider than most of the lanes in Delphi, for it had been chosen
by one of the mountain streams for a bed, and now in the springtime
the foaming waters dashed downward between the house walls beside the
footpath.
There was no sound in the lane save the happy speaking of the waters. An
amber light lay over all as if the sun were setting, and in this rich
light everything stood distinct: ferns, rocks, and the tiny flowers on
the mossy roof of Cousin Phaino’s house across the lane. Every little
wave as it lifted in the stream turned golden and as it dived under again
seemed to peep at Theria and laugh. Presently a child came down from the
upper hills into the lane. What could so small a child have been doing
up there alone in that wilderness of crags? But what a lovely child he
was, what brave, erect little shoulders and rounded legs and what a
mischievous, dream-haunted face! How fearlessly he leaped along! He was
only a baby. Oh, why should he not leap? Wings were on his heels and two
golden wings in his cap—Hermes, and no other!
To Theria it was not strange that Hermes should thus stroll down
Nikander’s lane. Not strange, but it made her very glad. Now the dear
Hermes child paused by the stream, laid his tortoise lyre to his arm, and
began to play. Theria had never heard such music. It was clear like the
amber light and filled her with a joy that was to glisten softly down all
her years. Yet it was very faint, that music. She had to strain her ears
to hear.
Presently under its rhythm the stream grew more turbulent. The waves
dashed higher and turned to foaming white. And suddenly from each white
wave where it tossed in swift succession there swam out into the air
nymphs white as the foam, slender as flowers, immortally fair.
Theria knew it was right for them to come. Nymphs were always the
nursemaids of infant gods. Little Hermes must not wander alone, god
though he be. How delicately they kissed him, bending over him, then
rising, circling up and away as if carried by the breeze. Hermes was safe
now no matter how rough the way.
Suddenly a step sounded in the lane, “clump clump,” coming nearer.
The nymphs and Hermes stopped still, listing as hares do in the path.
Then instantly, thus poised, they vanished.
“Lentils—good lentils, who’ll buy?” came the call of old Labba, the
market woman, so tired with her day’s work, tramping home to her poor
scraggy farm in the hills.
Theria watched her. Poor Labba! She could not see the gods. Labba climbed
the hill and was lost to view. Theria looked again.
Yes—at once, as though bursting out of invisible pods, they came again,
and with them the music so elfin clear. The nymphs formed a circle and
danced, with feet which did not touch the rocks, around their baby god.
Sometimes they circled above the stream, sometimes swept near under
Theria’s very window. So they danced and danced.
Baltè, searching anxiously through the house for her nurseling, found
her at length in the far shadowy room. She was sitting by the window,
her head resting on the window ledge over which was strewn loose her
night-dark hair.
She was sound asleep.
“An’ I only wish,” said Baltè afterward to Medon, “you could ’a’ seen the
smile on her face. You wouldn’t ’a’ thought this very mornin’ she was
like a whole crew o’ mænads!”
CHAPTER V
THE TRADITIONS OF THE HOUSE
So Theria’s world was bounded by the house. Fortunate was it then that
the house was rich in memories. Rich otherwise it was not. No earnest
Greek beautified his own house when he could beautify instead the house
and temple of his deathless gods. So the walls of Nikander’s house were
of plain stucco, its floors, worn flags.
To be sure the furniture, handed down from olden days, was beautiful. The
bedsteads were chastely carved, their coverings were of home-made purple,
and Melantho’s chair in which she sat to spin was of exquisite shape and
balance. The tables in the men’s aula, where Nikander feasted his guests,
were of teak-wood brought from afar by some travelled merchant to the
Pythian feast. The vases in every room and put to all possible uses were
of a grace and workmanship which only the Greeks knew. They were of the
ordinary make, which everyone afforded, from the Delphi pottery below the
hill. Upon them were painted pictures of the heroes and the gods—Theria’s
charming picture books which sometimes told whole stories.
The plain old house had been built upon, lived in, and loved by a dozen
generations of Nikanders. It had absorbed within itself the beauty of
their daily life and seemed to give it forth again—a sort of fragrance to
be sensed the moment you crossed the threshold. The Nikanders were one
of those quiet families of exceeding excellence and highmindedness which
always exist in great numbers in the background of an age of genius.
Time had harmonized the house. The lines of wall and ceiling were no
longer plumb and level. The grey stucco had been stained lavender,
yellow, faint rose by lichen growths. No threshold in the house but was
worn deep by the tread of feet now passed beyond. In front of the little
altar to Hestia the stone floor was hollowed like a bowl, where father
and son, father and son had stood to offer reverent sacrifice to the
goddess of the hearth.
Into this atmosphere Theria had been born and in it her spirit grew,
keeping itself alive within the straitened, prescribed round.
But through the house were also wafted deep draughts of life from the
Oracle—that mysterious shrine which seems to us like some myth, but which
to the Greek was business-real.
The manner of divination at Delphi was peculiar in that it gave the
priests an opportunity to mould the divine answer without at the same
time losing faith in its divineness. The Priestess or Pythoness was a
simple girl comprehending nothing of the knowledge which she must impart.
In preparation for the day of oracle she was subjected to three days
of rite. She fasted, drank of the sacred spring, walked through laurel
smoke; and with her perfect faith in these rites, she must often have
been in the ecstatic state before mounting the tripod.
Then in the shadowy adytum beneath the temple she was placed upon the
golden tripod, the “High Perilous Seat” as it was called. The cold wind
blew out of the cleft below her and in ecstasy she spoke words she
knew not. It is undoubted that in her state of suspended consciousness
she often reflected as in a mirror the knowledge and judgments of the
priests. Her marvellous answers often filled priests and questioners
alike with awe. The priests afterward were allowed to recast the answers
into verse and to remould them. But in spite of the liberty which they
occasionally felt obliged to use in the recasting the priests sincerely
believed that the responses were genuinely from the god.
It was this mingling of faith and liberty which gave Delphi her power, a
power which was for the most part grandly used. At the dawn of Hellas,
from this eerie mountain glen the authority began to be exercised. It
continued down through all the glory of Hellas and for centuries after
her decline. Strong and real indeed must have been the religious impetus
which could outlast the race.
This was the Oracle which Theria’s kin had served with singleness of
heart. Her father, Nikander, served it now. Priest, yes, but priest in
the joyous, free fashion of the Greek. In performance of his priestly
duties to the Oracle Nikander had travelled far, studying the coasts of
the Ægean, Mediterranean, and Euxine seas, wherever lay the colonies of
Delphi’s founding. He had mingled with the barbarians or un-hellenic
peoples and had even learned some of their languages—a sort of knowledge
unknown in Greece. In Thrace he had sojourned with the rude tent
dwellers, in Egypt he had visited the stately temples of Isis and Osiris
and had seen the great Sphynx which so grimly faced the desert. In Persia
he had visited the court of Xerxes and despised its luxury. He had
returned to Delphi broadened and sweetened by his experiences.
Among the narrow one-city men of Greece the Delphian was not provincial.
Nikander was a member of that Council, presided over by Delphi,
called “Amphyction,” which for hundreds of years had upheld the only
international law that Hellas recognized. The Amphyctiony earnestly tried
to keep peace between the passionate cities which were its members.
Nikander personally had great influence in this Council and used that
influence for the constant uplifting of the policy of the Oracle.
Nikander brought with him into his home the very breath of the Oracle.
He spent little time at home, but when he did come his children ran to
him, for no one could tell such wonder stories as Nikander—stories of
shipwreck on savage coasts, of mountains that flamed and smoked, of the
great statue Memnon which stood in Egypt and sang when the sun rose. But
for the most part Nikander’s tales were tales of Delphi. Delphi was so
rich in tradition that Nikander needed never to go far afield for his
stories.
It was from her father that Theria heard of the beautiful coming of
her own ancestors to Delphi, men brought by Apollo himself to be his
worshippers.
“They were in a ship on a trading voyage,” Nikander would relate, “those
ancestors of ours, bold young men, unafraid of the sea, for they were
Cretan islanders. When suddenly there leaped out of the waves a Dolphin,
golden and bright, and lay on their deck. At once the wind changed,
speeding them toward the west. They tried to shift their sails but not
one whit could they shift their course. The men were sore afraid for they
knew they were in the hands of a god.”
“The Dolphin god,” Theria would murmur with Wide eyes.
“Yes, the Delphian,” her father made the age-old pun. “And they saw the
immortal creature shimmer with rainbow colours never ceasing. So the
strong wind blew them against their will first westward then northward
into our own lovely gulf and to our port of Krissa. Here the ship
stopped, held by immortal hands.
“Then at once the Dolphin disappeared and in his stead stood a young man
strong and beautiful with golden locks out-sprayed upon the winds and
eyes whose light was as the dawn of day.”
Theria would clap her hands softly, saying, “And he leaped upon the
shore, our dear Apollo, and beckoned the men with his hand.” She knew the
tale by heart.
Nikander would continue, smiling:
“And Apollo, lightly stepping, playing upon his heavenly lyre, led the
Cretans hither, right by the place where our house now stands and up to
the ‘place of golden tripods’ yonder.
“‘This is to be yours,’ he told the Cretans. ‘Here shall ye serve my
oracle.’
“Then the Cretans looked about them. They saw the sterile cliffs
and rocky hillsides on which nothing would grow. And they asked in
apprehension:
“‘How can we live in this place, O Lord Apollo? Here will no grain grow,
no cattle find fodder. Here we cannot fish.’”
The children laughed at this.
“Fish! O foolish, foolish Cretans!”
“Yes, foolish Cretans. So Apollo called them. ‘Do ye so love to delve
in the earth, and sweat? Do ye so love to be buffeted by salt water and
bitter winds? A secret I will tell you! Sit ye here, attend my worship,
and all the nations of the earth shall bring you gifts. My altars shall
smoke with the fat of lambs, my temples glow with golden things. But
your duty shall be to guard my temple and to receive kindly in my name
the tribes of men who gather here.
“‘But if any of you ill-treat the stranger, if ye do violence or speak
harsh words, then shall others be your masters and make you slaves for
ever.’”
“But we will never be slaves?” Theria would inquire anxiously. “We will
never do those wicked deeds and be slaved?”
“No, never.” Nikander would kiss the child who cuddled so close in his
arms and then with yet more fondness kiss his son Dryas.
Such was the ennobling tradition which the little girl Theria treasured
in her heart. But she knew, too, that the Delphi god had not always been
master of his shrine. Story upon story, faith upon faith went back into
the misty past where the chaste belief in Apollo was underlaid with
grotesque stories of Gaia—Mother Earth—and dragons.
It was from her nurse Baltè that she heard these older tales though they
were sternly and fearfully believed by all Delphians.
Baltè one afternoon found the little girl sitting by Nikander’s front
window gazing outward in silence. It was a place of wide prospect. The
house was one of the few which stood above the main road, and so steep
was the incline that the roofs across the way seemed but little higher
than the road itself. Theria could look over them and over other roofs
in sharp downward succession into the violet depth of Pleistos gorge and
then up to the fir-clad mountain beyond.
A storm of clear-edged cloud was sweeping along that slope with flashes
and mutterings. She watched wistfully its swiftness and its strength.
Baltè came from behind and kissed her.
“Now an’ why aren’t ye down in the aula playin’ with Clitè an’ Nerea?
It’s always I find ye by yourself at the window. It isn’t right for
little girls to be seen from the street.”
But Theria was full of questions. “Baltè, what does the glen find when it
goes down into the shadows? It always seems to stoop down and down.”
“The river, do ye mean, darlin’?”
“But I can’t see the river, I’ve tried so many days.”
“No, the glen is too deep to see the Pleistos.”
“Baltè, did you ever go across the river to the other mountain—far, far
over where Father Zeus has driven his clouds?”
“No, child, not I. What ever would I be doin’ there?”
“I’d like to go,” said the child.
“Don’t ye never! Do ye see that little rift-like all black on the
mountainside among the firs?”
“Yes, Baltè.”
“Well, down in that rift is the cave o’ Lamia—a woman the upper part
of her, but all the rest a _snake_. In the olden time she did come
hitherward and ravaged the country.”
“What’s ravid?”
“Oh, knockin’ down the houses and eatin’ the folk. So at last to quiet
her they did take a boy—oh, a nice likely young boy of the village—and
leave him for her in that cave.”
“What for?”
“To eat! Every day a boy!”
By this time Theria’s eyes were wide, and she reached furtively and
caught Baltè’s skirt.
“But then there came the hero Eurymalos an’ he walked right into the
cave, he did. An’ he caught Lamia and pulled her out, and cast her down
the cliff. Then she fell down, down, a-bumpin’ and bangin’ her head all
the way—right into the river Pleistos.”
“Paian be praised!” breathed the little girl.
“Yes, but them kind don’t stay killed,” said Baltè uncomfortingly. “Look
at the other one, the Python now. Apollo killed her long since. But every
fourth year the Sacred Boy has to go up there in the Precinct an’ kill
her again.”
“But, Baltè, that’s only a play to make a holy memory to the god.” Theria
felt sure of this, for not long ago her cousin had been the Sacred Boy in
the play and she had heard Mother say that if Dryas continued to do so
well in school, and if he grew graceful and fair, he, too, might some day
be the “Boy of The Strepterion Drama.” She somehow felt sure that Dryas
could not kill a real Python.
But Baltè shook her head.
“Don’t tell me!” she said stoutly. “Ye haven’t seen her. I have. I’ve
seen the switch o’ the Python’s tail, an’ heard her teeth grind, the
while she dies. An’ when she is dead, don’t they perform all the
purifications just as when old mistress died in the house? She’s real, I
tell ye!”
Theria was more than half convinced.
Yet even the Python and the boy-eating Lamia did not so strike terror to
the childish Theria as did the strange rites which through winter months
occupied the Delphians. These were no tales of the past but rites of
Dionysos which Theria herself could see.
* * * * *
In the winter came Dionysos, a powerful god, to take possession of the
Precinct while Apollo should be away in the north. Then Theban women—a
large company—arrived in Delphi to greet him. Theria saw them pass and
knew that a like company from Athens was arriving at the other end of the
village.
A society of Delphian ladies never else seen publicly came crowding out
of their houses into the highway. From her favoured window Theria saw
these also, her own kinswomen whom she knew well, no longer sedate and
kind and neat, but with hair disordered, clad in strange spotted fawn
skins over their chitons. They came leaping, shouting, whirling around in
a sort of frenzy as though unable to wait for the rites which they were
about to perform. They were no longer themselves, they were possessed
by the strange god Dionysos. They were no longer called women, but
Bacchantes. They were being swept along by a terrible joy from which the
child shrank in shame though she could not understand.
On one such evening Theria watched them, saw the chill, dusky street
aflare with their torches, saw how the eyes of the Bacchantes caught the
light, staring like the eyes of panthers. Then in a frenzied, noisy rout
they rushed away.
Theria sat by her window quivering while the cold yellow light died out
on glen and mountain. Then quickly she left the window and stole down
to the aula where she sat close to the Hestia fire. One of those first
evenings of frost it was when instinctively men draw near to their hearth
and wish to have about them the home faces and the comfortable voices of
home. Yet the little girl knew that her Aunt Eunomia, her pretty cousin
Clodora, and the rest, were speeding half-naked up Parnassos, there in
the bitter uplands and the wild to rage madly to and fro at the will of
the god.
Lycophron burst into the room, rosy with the cold, rude as fourteen years
could make him.
“Did you see the women?” he shouted. “By the gods, I could hardly get
home for them. Free at last—that’s what they are, havin’ the time of
their lives. Dionysos is only an excuse. Hey, Theria, you are always
wanting to get out. Why don’t you join?”
Lycophron did not see his father who had just come down the stair.
“Lycophron,” said the father sternly, “how do you dare such insolence?
Let me never hear such from you again.”
And Lycophron disappeared more suddenly than he had come.
Nikander drew near the fire, absently warming his hands. Even at this
early time he was disturbed over his eldest son.
“Are they gone?” queried the little girl.
“The Bacchantes? Yes, my child. As I came up the street I saw far up on
the mountain their Bacchic fires gleaming through the dusk. It is cold
for the night of Bromios.”
Theria knew of what he was thinking—a little great-great-aunt of hers
who had died on a night like this, in the cold of the Parnassian rocks.
A tiny room next to Theria’s own had belonged to her and she was said to
visit it on Bromios night, a white, chattering figure trying in vain to
warm herself amid the purple covering of the couch.
Theria stole to her father’s side, slipped her hand In his, and drew him
down to whisper:
“Father, must I be a Bacchante some day?”
“God forbid,” spoke Nikander, then added piously, “unless the god demand
you, Theria.”
“But he will not demand me. Oh, Father, he will not?”
Again she was in the hollow of his arm and again felt safe even from the
god Dionysos himself.
“No, my daughter,” he said, looking into the sane little face. “I do not
believe he will.”
CHAPTER VI
THE GUESTS
So throughout the winter months Dionysos, that god who came from far
Asia into Greece, held sway in Delphi. Apollo was gone on his distant
mysterious journey to the land of the Hyperboreans, those happy,
luxurious folk who live on the farther side of the north wind. Theria
felt keenly this absence of her god: more keenly perhaps than she would
have felt the absence of any person in the household.
For with Apollo’s going the Oracle was silenced. No pilgrims came to
consult it. The pure, ordered songs of Apollo, the throbbing lyre, the
announcing trumpets were stilled. Instead sounded the nervous wailing of
Dionysos pipes. On quiet evenings Theria could hear them, and Baltè told
her of the furious satyr dances in the Precinct. And now the absence of
Apollo brought the rains and the cold. Yes, in the winter Theria missed
her god.
When, therefore, in the spring Apollo returned, the whole heart of the
little girl went forth to him in love. Theria knew well how her god must
look. Every vase and kylix in the house bore pictures of Apollo. And long
ago her child mind had selected, from among the beautiful youths she had
seen come by on pilgrimage, one who seemed to her like the god himself.
Always at the word “Apollo” Theria saw again that fresh-hearted happy
boy moving, flushed and expectant, toward the Precinct, and on his face
that same look of dear surprise, youth’s first response to life.
Apollo always arrived at Delphi on his birthday the seventh of Busious.
Then the whole Precinct and the town awoke to greet him with song and
festival. In Nikander’s house slaves ran to and fro on busy errands;
for of a surety guests would be coming from the ends of the earth.
The purples and the woven curtains came forth from Theria’s familiar
storeroom, and all the house glowed with the patterns and pictures of
tapestries. What joy to the little girl that busyness and commotion.
Past the house on the highroad now came throngs of pilgrims, more of them
every day. At these times no forbiddings or punishments could keep Theria
away from the window.
Here came men from Corinth, Thebes, Argos, and the islands of the sea.
Rich men on horseback with trains of slaves, poor men whose anxious faces
showed plain their question to the god. “Even the wolves bring gifts to
Delphi,” was the saying; and some of these with their heavy mountain
faces and clothes of skin seemed wild and wolf-like to the little girl.
Now would pass a delegation from some distant Delphian colony bearing the
tithe gift to the mother fane; for Apollo was founder of cities. It was
he who had first led the colonists to their distant lands over the misty
deep. Sculptors came accompanying their statues; poets brought their
songs. Now would pass an Ionian gentleman in long purple cloak, laughing,
gesturing; now a quiet young philosopher whose large-eyed vivid face
showed his spirit-quest. Philosophers were well known in Delphi and more
welcome than kings.
How eagerly the visitors talked as they came along. They had arrived
after long journeying to within sight of their goal. The broad Doric
speech, the melodious Attic, the barbarous dialects mixed with the speech
of Scyths, Sikels, and Gauls, all these she heard.
Among these passers-by were sure to be some who would stop and enter
Nikander’s door—guests of the priestly house. Often these were men
of high renown, but quite as often they would be poor, in threadbare
garments, who had came to the Oracle in bitter need. To these Nikander’s
ministry was almost un-Greek in its overflowing sympathy. An inherited
skill of kindness was his and his poet quality of insight was of no
peculiar race or date. Many a troubled wight came forth from Nikander’s
presence, serene to face the god.
* * * * *
In the centre of Nikander’s as in every Greek house there was a
fast-closed door. Behind this door lived the women. They might, when only
the family was in the house, come through this door, but they had no
business or occupation on its outer side. At the appearance of a guest
the women must quickly disappear.
This door was at once Theria’s greatest grief and greatest delight.
Grief that it must constrain her at all. Delight in that she could steal
through it and catch glimpses of her father’s guests. Often though she
was punished for this Theria always did it. Who would not take punishment
for a glimpse of Æschylus, Kimon, Parmenides, or Pindar!
“Back to your room—quick, Daughter!” Nikander would command whenever he
noticed her. But often Nikander would be absorbed in his guest, and the
room would be confused with serving-slaves. Nikander would not even see
Theria’s little figure crouched by a pillar.
Of all the guests the Theban poet Pindar was the one whom Theria loved
best. Indeed all children loved Pindar. Not a child in Delphi but would
lift up eager hands to that radiant smile as Pindar passed. There was in
him an almost aggressive joy. The same vitality which makes a child leap
and run and shout—all this was in his adult nature. It shone out of the
clear deeps which were his eyes and trembled on his full Greek lips. He
seemed always just to have taken a deep breath as if joying in the very
air about him. His rather large mouth and his nose both were well-built
for breathing. Splendour was his—splendour of imagination. His whole
being exulted in response to spiritual beauty unseen by other men.
All Delphi adored him. They had a strangely spiritual custom concerning
him. Wherever Pindar might be in bodily comings or goings, the keeper of
the Apollo temple when closing the shining doors at sunset hour was wont
to call aloud:
“Let Pindar, the poet, go in to the supper of the god!”
Theria was a very little girl when she first saw Pindar. She was awakened
by a sweet commotion of music, and getting up from her bed she trotted
down into the front aula. The fateful door had been left open and she
stole through, a diminutive figure in her short chiton. She went direct
to Pindar.
The poet laid his lyre upon the table and lifted the child to his knee.
“There, there; I awakened you, little one,” he said tenderly.
“No,” she answered, “the music called me.”
“Called you, did it? And so you had to come?”
She did not answer but gazed up at him unwinking, her tiny hands folding
and unfolding in her utter joy at being so near to him. She was unaware
of the others sitting at the feast.
“Where do you get it?” she asked.
“Get what? The lyre? Oh, of the lyre-maker in Athens.”
She shook her curls.
“No, the song. Does it come out of the air?”
“Perhaps so, little one. Apollo gives it, surely.”
“Oh, will he give one to me?” she asked, her hands clasping suddenly
close to her breast. “If I make a prayer to him and a sacrifice—a big,
big sacrifice like Father’s? A sheep, and burn it all up with leaping
flame till it smells so good—so good?”
Her baby nose sniffed deliciously and all the men laughed.
“And where will you get your big sheep?” teased one.
“Nay, do not spoil her hope,” spoke Pindar quickly. He drew the lyre
toward her and instantly her chubby hand reached out to touch the
strings, sounding them lovingly, softly.
Pindar watched her, absorbed.
“The god will give you your song, darling. Apollo’s answer is already in
your eyes and fingers.”
“Do you think so, Pindar?” asked Nikander, amused. “Yet even so the child
must not stop our feast. Medon, will you carry her back to her nurse?”
Nikander expected that she would cry and struggle, but she leaned over
and kissed the lyre, then went away with Medon, quite satisfied.
Ever from that time Theria awakened at the first sound of Pindar’s lyre.
She would steal down as near as she dared. If the door were shut she
would press her ear against it in her eagerness to hear. If it were open
she would crouch in its shadow. The slaves passing to and fro with the
feast never told. Theria was a favourite with them.
It was Pindar’s habit to bring his songs to Nikander when they were
glowing new. Nikander, a poet who had never written himself forth, had
the keenest sense of poetic values and Pindar was glad of his judgments.
Sometimes an ode would be sung again and again before both pronounced it
right. Then Pindar would go out into the Delphic starlight humming the
altered, perfected refrain:
“Harken, for once more we plough the field
of Aphrodite of the glancing eyes,”
or
“In anywise to slake my thirst for song,
The ancient glory of thy forefathers summoneth me,”
or he would address his own songs, calling them
“My lords of lute,
My feathered arrows of sweet song,
My golden pillars of sweet song——”
These were the familiars of Theria’s childhood and entered into the
fabric of her mind. Pindar, as he strode singing away, little recked of
the girl-listener drinking at his fountain and transmuted in all her
being by his supreme expression.
CHAPTER VII
WHAT GIFTS THE GUESTS BROUGHT
It was through a guest that Theria first came to visualize those distant
colonies of the west which gave so many gifts to Delphi and played so
important a part in Delphi’s life.
He was a simple-seeming guest, this young man from far-away Elea in
Italy. But child though Theria was, she could not but note his face. It
shone with an almost startling quietness, a robust and heavenly calm. The
soul of the man had been dipped deep and deep again in abstract thought.
Earthly things were washed away. The “Parmenidean Countenance of Peace”
was soon to be recognized throughout Hellas, for even the disciples of
Parmenides acquired this same look.
“Yes,” he said, smiling, as though it were an ordinary happening. “We
were nearly shipwrecked off Corcyra. Four days of storm. I thought my
earthly term was come. But I knew that I would at once rise from the sea
and begin my long progress toward the Eternal Source.”
“Would you have been glad,” asked the amazed Nikander, “to go on
pilgrimage to Hades?”
“No—no,” laughed Parmenides. “Too much to do here. Elea needs me.
The city is now in my hands to govern quite as I will. I govern by
philosophy. And, Nikander, we are happy in Elea! We are a little city
and on a far-away coast, yet even Athens has not our justice and calm.
Constantly I keep before the minds of our citizens the importance of
right, the unimportance of this world’s goods. They know they are in the
hands of _The One_.”
“I could not worship _The One_,” said Nikander seriously. “Think what
a lonely god—an Only One, sitting sole and wordless in Olympos with no
other god to speak to, to deal with, or to love. Or even to quarrel
with,” he added whimsically.
“But the gods themselves worship my god. They know the One who is above
them and controls.”
“Moira?” asked Nikander in a low voice. “Inexorable Fate?”
“No, Nikander, not Fate, but Love—creating all things—healing all things.
Love—the First—the Source.”
Parmenides’s eyes shone with eerie light. He was fairly launched now. He
began to recite his philosophy. It was—as was all literary expression
in those days—a poem. Nikander listened entranced, laying it away in
his retentive Greek memory which would give him back whole cantos of it
almost entire.
Theria, crouched in the door corner wrapped in a dark cloak, was content
to listen to the rhythm. Of the poem she understood not a word. Then she
grew weary of her stolen pleasure, but she dared not move from her hiding
place.
Presently Baltè began to call her through the house.
“Little mistress, little mistress, your mother asks for you. Little
mistress, she is ill and needs you.”
For, strange to say, in Melantho’s frequent headaches it was Theria’s
little magnetic hands which helped most of all.
“Apollo has blessed the child with his healing touch,” old Baltè was wont
to say.
But now Baltè called in vain, and at last, fearing that her charge might
be in forbidden quarters, she left off her call.
But the interminable poem went on. It mingled at last in Theria’s ears
into a soft humming. Torches were brought, and the evening meal. Priest
and philosopher lingered in ardent converse—that friction of mind upon
mind which the Greek men of that day so loved and which with its sparkle
and contagion of wit made the Greek look with contempt upon the mere
written page.
Nikander, strolling dreamily to bed at midnight, stumbled upon the heap
wrapped in its dark cloak, and lifted his daughter in his arms.
“Strange,” he murmured, “this continual disobedience. What can draw her
hither—I wonder?”
The childish face sleeping upon his arm reminded him of his mother—a
resemblance he had not noted before, and very tenderly he carried her to
her bed where Baltè was waiting.
It was from a guest also that Theria heard the first whisper of The
War—that steadily approaching war which was yet so far off that only the
wise felt its dread.
Theria was older at this time and understood more of what she heard.
Her father one day entered suddenly bringing with him a stranger whose
personality started her interest. Unremitting energy! That was the
keynote of the man. He talked continually. Theria heard him even before
he entered—the clear voice of the orator. His strange Attic dialect, his
swift words made him a little difficult for her to understand. Fair he
was, tall, blue-eyed, strong, something un-Greek about him. Nikander did
not even see Theria this time. He was too absorbed in Themistokles.
Their talk was first about the new play at Athens. Themistokles had just
heard the first great drama. His heart was afire with the excitement of
it.
“It is new, utterly new and powerful,” he exclaimed. “Prometheus, it is
called. Our Æschylus has outdone himself. The very gods come down upon
the stage. And actors! We have never had such actors, Nikander. But it is
the greatness of the play which creates them—the greatness of the play!”
“The lines!” pleaded Nikander. “Tell me the lines.”
And with ready memory Themistokles began. He gestured swiftly with his
hands. “Flashing hands,” Theria named them. He puzzled her. Surely he was
not Athenian—not quite moderate and serene—and his cloak with its border
of purple and gold was a little too conspicuous of beauty.
In the midst of a scene he broke off.
“But here we talk of the play,” he said. “When I want to talk of dear
Athens. Nikander, the Athenians are blind, every one of them, _blind_!”
“Gracious,” laughed Nikander, “no one else thinks so.”
“They will not believe that the Persian will come again. ‘Oh,’ they
boast, ‘We conquered them at Marathon, that deed is done.’ But the deed
is not done. Nikander, _you_ know the Persian will return. Ye of Delphi,
are you so unaware?”
He seized Nikander’s hand and Nikander sobered instantly.
“Indeed we are not unaware,” he answered.
“Oh, Nikander, the trophies of Miltiades will not let me rest. Such
trophies must be won again. May the gods let me win them!”
Nikander did not reply but Theria saw him search the man’s face, as if
anxiously measuring him for some great need.
“Have you news, Themistokles—fresh news?”
“No, only straws, but plenty of them. I keep a clever slave down at
the Piræus who has no other business than to listen to stories of the
ship-merchants and traders. Sailors know the way of the winds—the winds
of the future. They push in at every shore. The Great King they tell us
is now warring against Egypt, but our turn is next. Oh, it is surely the
next. Nikander, the armies which Darius brought against us seven years
agone were but a handful to those which his son Xerxes will bring.”
“I believe that,” said Nikander. “Ay, and the Delphian Council believe
it, too.”
“Good!” exclaimed the Athenian.
“It is not good. Do you know, Themistokles, what this belief breeds in
the Council? Fear; only fear! ‘Hellas cannot withstand the Persian.’ That
is what they are whispering here in Delphi. ‘Hellas is doomed.’”
Themistokles’s face took on a horror which startled the listening girl.
“Nikander,” he cried, “you will not allow Delphi to shirk. The Oracle
must stand by Athens!”
“I will stand by Athens and by all Hellas,” said Nikander solemnly. “I
believe Apollo will defend his own.”
Themistokles now began to talk of the silver mines of Laurium and how he
had been trying to persuade the Athenians to forego their yearly gift of
silver in order to build ships for fighting against the little island of
Ægina.
“Will so many ships be needed?” queried Nikander with sharp insight.
Themistokles leaned toward him, laughing softly, triumphantly. “For the
war with Ægina!” he said, low-toned. “Believe me, for that war the ships
will not be used. But when the Persian comes, he will find certain ships
in our harbour that will give him pause. Remember that, Nikander, so that
you may give credit to Themistokles who saw before the event.”
All too soon Themistokles took his departure. Afterward Theria heard the
slaves gossiping about the man. “He brought with him a purple tent,”
they said, “and furniture and many slaves, even for his short visit.”
Themistokles lived like a prince in Delphi.
CHAPTER VIII
DRYAS TAKES A ROBBER
There was no use mincing matters; Lycophron, the eldest son of Nikander,
was not satisfactory. Handsome in person, he had nevertheless always
been slow to learn and swift in evil doing, the bane of his Delphic
schoolmasters. At fourteen years his features had coarsened, his eyes
grown less intelligent. Now at eighteen that phase was past and he was
clever in a fashion which Nikander vainly tried to think creditable.
Nikander wanted to keep close to his boy in study and sports. Lycophron
was his first-born. Some day Lycophron would be priest in Nikander’s
stead, would take his chair in the Amphictyonic Council. Yet try as he
might, Nikander could never look forward to this succession without shame.
Lycophron now began to demand money for horses and a chariot for the
Olympian games. Nikander could ill afford so expensive a winning. He had
hoped that his eldest son would win the crown for leaping or running,
some act which would be reflected back in manly beauty and strength. Yet
Nikander managed to give Lycophron money for his horses. He loved his
eldest with a sensitive, intimate love.
But now came Dryas. Dryas from the first week of school had shown
himself a promising son of the ancient house, and Nikander’s joy in him
was beautiful to see. Always when Dryas returned from school Nikander
would contrive to be in the aula to greet him, to hear the latest Doric
melody the boy had learned, to correct the faults, or recite with him the
passage of Homer which had been the lesson of the day.
Sometimes Nikander would linger along the road, meet Dryas, and,
dismissing the pedagogue, would himself conduct the boy home.
Dryas was not always strong. Nikander summoned for him the best
physicians from Athens and on his ill days would sit beside him patiently
trying to ease the child. At such times Theria helped, knowing by that
curious instinct of hers what to do. And when the pain was eased, Dryas
would draw her face down and kiss her. Nikander was almost jealous of
the love that Dryas gave to his twin sister. As he grew taller, however,
Dryas grew also well and strong.
* * * * *
One winter evening Dryas and his slave boy were returning from the
gymnasium, old Medon his pedagogue being lame and at home. All afternoon
Dryas had been exercising. Then in the gymnasium he had stood under the
pouring fountain, a chilly bath, and the slave boy had rubbed him to a
glow. He was full of life and of a sense of waxing strength. Dreams of
Olympian contests were in his heart as they were in the heart of every
boy of Greece.
“Come,” said he to the slave. “Let’s go out the eastern road. You have
the bow. Maybe we’ll bring down a hare.”
“It will grow dark soon,” ventured the slave. “And your father will be
coming to meet you.”
“It won’t be dark,” answered Dryas. “Come, I say.”
So together they walked eastward on the hill road. They passed the row
of outer temples and the hillside tombs. Sure enough, against all hope,
a hare leaped across the road. Dryas shot it, and the slave fetched and
slung it over his shoulder. Then they started back to town.
Twilight had fallen when they repassed the graves. The boys shrank close
to each other. Both slave and free were afraid of the spirits which
hovered there.
As they came to the roadside temples they saw a man dart quickly around a
corner.
“What was that?” asked Dryas sharply.
“I don’t know,” answered the slave. Dryas, with wide eyes of fear, backed
behind a rock.
“If he’s stealing from the gods we ought to stop him,” spoke the slave.
“See; we have our bow.”
At this word Dryas, ashamed of his fear, came out from hiding.
“Stay by me,” he pleaded, and the slave advanced first.
These small temples, being outside the Precinct wall, were poorly
guarded. The boys crept nearer and rounded the corner just in time to see
the man with some silver cups in his arms running down the hill.
The boys gave chase. The man circled around so as to come up the hill
again. The upper heights were always a fastness for robbers. The boys
still followed, and above the road overtook the man.
Dryas with a cry half like a sob leaped upon him while the slave at the
same time tripped his heels. The fellow went down like a log, screaming
in panic. The boys quickly possessed themselves of the cups. The slave
with his own leather belt tied the man’s hands, and together the boys
pulled the man down the road—he not resisting at all. They pushed him
along toward town.
At the edge of the village Nikander met them. In all his life Nikander
never forgot that shock—first the fear, then the joy—as he realized that
Dryas, spite of bleeding face and dishevelled hair, was safe and that he
had done a brave deed.
“Father, it is a robber,” Dryas was saying excitedly. “I caught him by
the outer temples. See, he had the silver temple cups.”
“My son,” said Nikander. “My son!”
At sound of Nikander’s voice the man fell down again, howling like an
animal in fear. And strangely, Dryas, too, broke into hysterical weeping.
“Don’t let them kill him, Father. Don’t let them kill the man!”
“But he has committed sacrilege.”
“Oh, no—no, if they kill him I’ll die, too. Oh, I’m afraid! Oh, he would
haunt me.”
“Nonsense, Dryas.”
Here the man tried to get upon his feet but tumbled down again.
“Pitiful Hermes!” cried Nikander. “The wretch is starving.”
Dryas, still sobbing, caught nervously at the man’s bonds and pulled them
off.
“Here, Son,” said Nikander. “Give him a drachma.”
The poor creature snatched the money and seeing the look of relenting in
Nikander’s face, sprang up the hill with sudden life. He was quickly lost
among the crags.
The incident soon got abroad in Delphi. The boys at school made a hero of
Dryas. They had always liked him.
Nikander, however, could not help recurring to Dryas’s curious,
passionate weeping. He told himself that it was natural. The young boy
should be pitiful. But the weeping had not seemed to be pity. Something
selfish, almost craven was in it. And a look in the slave boy’s face made
Nikander think that the slave had done as much or more of the deed than
Dryas himself.
Nikander pushed these thoughts from him and when Dryas’s praise came in
from every side, Nikander gladly forgot them.
For from this time the Delphians began to take notice of Nikander’s
younger son. His beauty was growing every day. He had a voice high,
clear, unearthly sometimes, and he played the lyre with firm touch while
he sang. He was only fourteen years old.
One day, as the priests broke up their council after the giving of the
Oracle, the old Akeratus, president of the priests, detained Nikander. He
told him that his boy Dryas had been chosen the “Laurel-Bearer” for the
next Strepterion feast. It was the greatest honour the Delphians could
give to a young Delphian boy. Then Nikander went home feeling that his
cup of joy was full.
CHAPTER IX
LAUREL FROM TEMPÈ
Theria’s joy, too, was full. The tie between Dryas and herself was very
strong and his happiness closely touched her.
But, oh, the further marvel! Theria was to go up to the Precinct to see
the sacred rite. She was older now. Had she not already dedicated her
girlhood toys to Artemis? Soon she would be a woman and for women there
were certain rare occasions when they might visit the temple place.
The new white himation which she was to wear she hung on a peg in her
room. Gazing at this, fingering it, she could almost realize she was
about to go to the Precinct. The joy caught strongly at her throat. Every
day she begged her mother to name over each temple that she was to see,
each treasury, each statue that flanked the Sacred Way until Melantho
clapped hands over her ears and ordered her out of the room.
Theria never moved quietly about the house. She always ran or skipped.
Now as she ran, she sang aloud or, leaping into her swing in the court,
she swept upward like a swallow, until she could see high over the
balcony into the second-story rooms. The whole house felt the contagion
of her joy.
“I’m to attend little mistress,” boasted Nerea in the kitchen. “By
Hermes, the best o’ the festival will be to see her face goin’ into the
gates.”
The Strepterion was a festival which like the Pythia came every fourth
year. At the Strepterion was performed the sacred drama, “Apollo Killing
the Python,” the very same which Dryas had acted in play when a baby, and
now he was to act it in earnest.
Midway in the Precinct was built a temporary hut called the Palace of
the Snake. And the snake would be there, a marvel of contrivance, his
ugly dragon head, with open mouth and teeth, resting on the threshold.
Dryas, arrayed as the boy Apollo, must in mimic dance and gesture fight
the dragon. A chorus of boys carrying torches would sing the story. Then
after the struggle Apollo must lift his silver bow and shoot the dragon.
It would die with great writhings and agony—a joy to the crowd.
Presently all the actors would come in solemn, silent procession down the
Sacred Way. They would pass out of the gate of the Precinct, through the
village, and away on the western road.
Thus would begin a long journey which would take from moon to moon.
Symbolically, the actors would journey to the land of the Hyperboreans
beyond the north wind. Actually they would trace an ancient way of
pilgrimage, the Pythian Way, to the Vale of Tempè.
At Tempè Dryas, as the Sacred Boy, would gather boughs from a certain
famous laurel tree, and bring them home to be woven into crowns for the
Pythian victors. For the Pythian festival and games always fell in the
same year, a few weeks later than the Strepterion.
All this was to be Dryas’s adventure. He would return to tell of its
wonders. He was a dear, companionable boy. Theria knew he would tell her
the whole of it.
On the morning of Strepterion she awoke before daybreak and lay in that
ecstasy of anticipation which only youth-time knows. Presently dawned the
light and showed her her white dress, still hanging ghostly on its peg.
She arose and went out into the court-balcony. Here she met Dryas. He,
too, had awakened early with the joy of the day.
“Good luck,” she greeted him. “The luck of Loxias.” And he answered
piously, “Apollo bless you.”
Between them they roused the whole family.
At sunrise Dryas must be clothed in his ceremonial robes. He stood in the
court near the Hestia hearth where all the family could see him, where
the slaves could gather proudly to look on. They brought forth the temple
himation, yellow with its border of gold, an ancient, precious thing.
Dreamily, sensitively, Dryas suffered them to put it on him, to unplait
his long hair that it might flow over his shoulders in the manner of
Apollo. Already he felt upon him the sacred character of the god he was
to personate.
Nikander advanced to place the golden laurel crown on Dryas’s head. He
came slowly, unlike himself, and in the ceremony spoke only the necessary
words—no more. He made sacrifice upon the hearth and then, stumbling a
little, stepped back.
It was time to go. The whole family were to walk behind Dryas up to the
Precinct. Theria stood hand in hand with her mother. Her eyes were like
stars.
“Son,” said Nikander in a low voice, “I cannot go with you now. I will
come up in a few moments with Medon. The priests will meet you at the
gate.”
“Father—but why?” A troubled look crossed the boy’s rapt face.
“I am not quite well. Just for a moment. I’ll be with you soon, my son.”
Theria darted out and touched his hand.
“Never mind, Daughter,” he said. “Make haste, all of you.”
Obediently the family formed in a sort of procession and left the house.
Oh, the golden sunshine of that early morning! The sweet cool air with
the blessing of the stars still upon it! Theria took thirsty draughts of
it as she went along.
The cliffs towered nobly about as if in prayer and along their face the
mists, white spirits new risen from the vale, came shouldering, sinking,
lifting, dreamily alive. So tall are the cliffs at Delphi that they meet
the blue and cut off from sight the snowy peak of Parnassos which is back
above them.
Now the procession turned the shoulder of a cliff. The Precinct burst
into view—the Precinct, a golden and many-hued Elysium lying on the slope
above the road within its quadrate wall.
It slanted against the hillside in the sunshine. Theria could see the
bright little fanes, the golden tripods, the zig-zag of the Sacred Way
dividing it in the midst, and the great Apollo temple at the top. The
Precinct seemed to spread itself generously before her sight—all of it at
once—as though knowing how dearly she loved it.
Above the Precinct were the cliffs again soaring terribly to the sky.
Now the procession was stopping. It was before the great bronze doors.
The doors were opening, showing a glimpse of the wonder place within.
Here a company of priests, with the old president or Hosios, received
them.
They greeted Dryas. Then—
“But where is Nikander?” they asked.
“He said he would join us,” answered Dryas. “He should be with us by now.”
“We will wait for him,” said the old Hosios.
And so they waited. Moments—a half hour and still Nikander did not
arrive. The priests began to stir impatiently. Dryas looked around with
anxious eyes.
Theria slipped back among the slaves.
“Baltè,” she said, “he does not come!”
“Hist, little mistress, we must not speak in this place.”
“But, Baltè, perhaps he is ill.”
“Medon is there, and Philo.”
Theria suddenly recalled that her father’s hand when she touched it had
been cold as ice. How curiously he had stumbled as he turned from the
crowning—an ill omen that. Theria had a sure instinct concerning illness.
She knew that her father was in trouble. All the joy of the festival and
of the out of doors folded its wings in her heart. She could think only
of her father.
Now she was dimly aware that the old Hosios had let open the gates and
bade Dryas enter. She caught Baltè’s hand.
“I’m going back home,” she said. “Baltè, come quickly.”
“But, little mistress, what a crazy notion is this?”
“I’ll be back for the festival. Oh, I’ll be back in time. But I must meet
Father.”
“But, little mistress——”
“Baltè, come at once!”
And Baltè, who never before had obeyed her little girl, came without a
word.
They hurried back along the road. Nikander did not meet them on the way.
Theria was the more terrified. Entering the house she heard music—the
music of the physician. She ran to her father’s room.
He lay gasping upon the bed, his fine face drawn like an old, old man’s.
His eyes, haunted with pain, turned toward Theria, but he did not speak;
perhaps he could not. The physician in the corner sang nervously the
healing ode of Apollo. Medon was clasping his hands.
“Oh, Missy, Missy,” he moaned. “The doctor gave the medicine and it did
no good. Now he’s playin’ the music. When he does that—it’s the end—the
end!”
The room was suffocating.
“Air,” thought Theria. “Father must have air.”
She stamped her foot at the physician. “Stop that wailing!” she
commanded. “Stop it at once.”
The physician was glad enough to obey her. If Nikander died it could be
the daughter’s fault.
Then swiftly, businesslike, Theria had them carry her father, bed and
all, into the street and sent Baltè for hot water which she applied. She
was trembling in very childishness of grief. Sometimes she flung herself
upon her father, kissing him, begging him to live. But nevertheless she
kept on with her simple remedies—remedies she had used before.
At last, so gradually that she could not tell when it began, the pain
abated. Nikander’s eyes grew clear and his breath came even once more.
“Daughter!” he spoke at last. “My darling girl.”
And Baltè, putting down the steaming pot of water, gave a shout of joy.
Meanwhile up in the Precinct the festival was going forward, but Theria
had forgotten it.
At length Nikander was strong enough to be carried back into the aula
where he fell asleep. Then it was that Theria heard the sound of pipes
and shouting in the street. Instinctively she ran upstairs to the window.
The sacred drama was over. Here came the actors—now a happy, laughing
rout. It was the custom that the Tempè procession leave the city in haste
so as to out-distance all evil. First Dryas came running in the beautiful
leaps which Greek racers used. His hair was streaming in the wind.
He held aloft his silver bow in triumph and great joy. Then came the
swift boy chorus with backward burning torches and beauty of fluttering
garments, then the sacred women having an awkward time of it to keep the
boys in sight. And the crowd laughing at them and shouting:
“Good luck for the journey. The luck of Loxias.”
So shouting, laughing, the picture of joyous life, they disappeared down
the road.
Ah, there was the last gleam of Dryas’s silver bow!
“At least,” thought Theria, “when Dryas comes back, he will have Father
to greet him instead of—instead——”
Then with tender happiness—or was it the bitterness of missing her one
festival—she hid her face, weeping.
CHAPTER X
A BOY CALLED SOPHOCLES
One hot summer morning Melantho and her daughter were sitting in the
upper room spinning. Or rather it was Melantho who was _sitting_. Theria
was pacing to and fro at her task, stretching out the thread with free
gesture, her fingers twisting, twisting like fluttering wings. Melantho
noted how tall the girl had grown. “Her awkwardness, too, is passing,”
she mused as Theria turned, sweeping the thin folds of her chiton
against her supple limbs. So might Iris have looked, the slender goddess
messenger, running to the divine threshold with news for the blessed gods.
But Melantho had no thought of goddesses.
“She will soon be old enough for a husband,” was Melantho’s thought. “I
must speak to Nikander about it.”
Theria sighed and paced again.
“Theria,” said her mother, “if you would sit down you would not be so
tired.”
“Tired,” spoke the girl, frowning, “Great Hermes, why should I be tired
except from this eternal sitting? There’s no breath in this room.”
“Theria, you grow more impatient every day. Do you suppose your father
can ever get you a husband if you frown like that?”
At the word “husband,” the girl gave her mother a startled, puzzled
look. She said nothing. Melantho’s thoughts ran in given channels. Her
next was of vegetables and fish which Medon must purchase this morning.
“Daughter,” she said, “go down and fetch Medon to me.”
Quick as thought, Theria dropped her spindle into the basket of snowy
wool and sped away.
The morning was full of sunshine. Theria carolled like a lark as she
tripped down the stair. Housed though she was, Theria never seemed
housed. Perhaps the effect upon generation after generation of her
forefathers of living out of doors, the strengthening, sweetening effect
upon mind and body, had entered into her and made her part of the open
air.
Through the inner court she ran and burst open the door into the outer
court of the men. Here pure amazement stopped her motion. In the outer
court stood the most beautiful boy Theria had ever beheld.
He had laid aside his himation for the heat, and stood in his short
chiton, slender, delicately erect, gazing about his new surroundings with
shy yet interested eyes. His hair, honey coloured, was cut short and
filleted as if for a holiday. He himself was bronzed by the sun as all
high-born boys should be. At sight of Theria he smiled.
“Forgive me, lady,” he said. “My father left me here to wait for him.”
“Oh,” said Theria, “I thought perhaps a god had done that.” At which
speech he blushed, and became a little lovelier.
She came toward him. She was not shy, for the boy was younger than she.
Besides, she was too delighted with his beauty to be shy.
“Whence are you?” she queried.
“From Colonos.”
“The grove near Athens?”
“Yes, the shady, sacred grove. The most beautiful place in the world.”
“More beautiful than Delphi?” she smiled.
“I think so, lady.”
“It is your home,” said Theria gently. “Therefore you love it.”
“My father came to consult the Oracle,” explained the boy. “He questions
about his ship which comes not back to us. He is now with your father in
the Precinct. For you are Nikander’s daughter, are you not?”
“Yes—his only daughter,” she answered with pride.
How modestly the boy questioned. His respect toward her was something new
in Theria’s experience. Both her brothers were brotherly contemptuous.
But this stranger was talking with her! To Theria this experience was
nothing short of an adventure. She felt it so. Mind and soul sprang up
vivid and intense. She began to ask her usual eager questions.
“How did you come to Delphi? Was it a long journey? Oh, was it by sea?”
“No, lady, by land—through Bœotia and over the mountains.”
“How many days?”
“Three days—we did not hurry. Yesterday at sunset we came to the Triple
Way.”
“Where Œdipus met his father.”
“Yes,” he answered, “where he killed his father. Of course you know the
story. Oh, lady, such a lovely place it is. Up there where the mountains
pierce the sky; the road runs among the clouds. Where the clouds broke I
could catch glimpses far beneath of the blue valley and the sun setting.
Far down I heard the tinkle of goat bells—the herds hidden below the
clouds. I seemed to be in the home of the gods. And do you know what I
did? I let the others walk onward and I stood there alone. The three
roads went this way and that from the place of my feet. Then I seemed to
see approaching along one road old Laius and his men, and by the other
road Œdipus, young and proud, fulfilling his curse. But before they met
I fled. Oh, I could not bear to think that he would kill his father all
unknowing! What if it had been my own dear father and myself? The curse
of Œdipus, that terrible curse, swept down over me with whirlwind wings.”
The boy put up his hand to his head with a whimsical yet solemn smile.
“It touched me,” he said, “and when I ran up to my dear father and
clasped his hand I was weeping. I would not tell them why. Yet I am
telling _you_.”
“I wish I had been there,” breathed Theria.
“I wish you had,” echoed the boy.
And suddenly the boy’s gentle reverence gave Theria a joy utterly new—a
sense at once of humbleness and power.
“Come,” she said childishly, seizing his hand, “there’s a swing in the
other aula. Let’s swing in it.” Busily she hied him thither. But the boy
would not swing.
“It’s for girls; I’ll push you,” he said.
Soon the court rang with their voices and merry laughter. The boy “ran
under” and Theria flew like a tall nymph in great dips and soarings. Now
her black tresses streamed behind, new they flung over her face—a dusky
veil. After a while the boy stopped, breathless, and the swing “died.”
“Guess who came with us all the way,” he said suddenly.
“I cannot guess.”
“Pindar!” he told her joyously. “That’s what made the journey so
wonderful. All those three days I heard his divine talk with my father.
Never shall I forget it—all about Hellas and the Persians and the war
that is coming. I hope it won’t come too soon before I can fight.”
“Pindar is ours,” said Theria with Delphic pride. “There is a chair set
in the temple just for him. He sits there and the god gives him song.
Tell me: did you hear him sing?”
“Often and often,” boasted the boy. “When we would stop by the road to
sup and pour wine to the blessed gods, then a slave would bring Pindar’s
lyre. A fine old one it is, always fresh stringed. He would sweep it with
his hand and the thing would tremble as if alive. Do you think my hand
is like Pindar’s?” he asked, stretching out his right hand. Slender and
brown it was, expressive as his face.
“No,” said the girl honestly, “but it is a player’s hand.”
“I’m going to be a poet some day,” ran on the boy.
“I wish I might be a poet,” said Theria.
“You! But you are a girl. For you will be the house and children and the
loom.”
“I hate the house!” cried Theria.
“What! The home of your fathers? How can you?” The boy was shocked.
“Oh, I don’t mean the home. I mean the house walls that keep me in.
Sometimes I want to scream and struggle as though I were tied down hand
and foot.”
“But nothing ties you down.”
“Do you call it nothing to stay all day twisting a miserable thread like
this?” Theria spun with her fingers. “When there is so much, oh, so much
in the world.”
“But do women feel that way?” he asked. “They always seem contented in
the house.”
“Would you be content?”
“By the gods, no.”
“But are we not like you, we girls? We are strong—we like to run and
breathe the air. Look at my arm, how ugly white. It has never seen the
sun.” She flashed out her fair arm—free of its drapery.
“That is not ugly,” said the boy gently.
“It is! It is! White as a Persian’s!”
“No, it is Greek,” maintained the boy. “By the gods, I’d like to see you
running brown and free like Artemis in the wood.”
“You don’t think I am foolish to want to run and leap.”
“No—no—no!”
Theria’s eyes widened with delight.
“You don’t think me foolish to read my father’s books?”
“Books!” Here the boy was puzzled. “Why should you read books? Poems are
to sing, not to read.”
“Oh, I sing them, too,” laughed Theria. “Far back in the storeroom, when
nobody can hear, I sing them. I have to make up the tunes.”
“I wish I could hear you; oh, I wish I could hear you.”
That any one should care for what she did! No praise could be sweeter, no
joy. So absorbed were they both that they did not hear the voices calling
through the house, “Sophocles! Sophocles!” until the searchers had
entered the open door—that door which should always be closed.
“Eleutheria,” came her father’s voice, sterner than she had ever heard
it. “The meaning of this! By Hermes, I must know.”
The two turned in confusion.
“Whatever made you think you could bring a stranger here into the inner
court? How long have you been together?”
Theria answered none of his questions. She faced him, her eyes black
lakes of astonishment. So intense a mood could not break at once.
“I have done no wrong,” she asserted. “How can you think I have done
wrong?”
“But you have. You are almost a woman. You cannot receive my guests.”
“_My_ guest he is, this Sophocles,” she answered with frightened face
but steady voice. “We have been talking together about Homer and Pindar.
Surely that is no harm. Where is our wrong?”
A low exclamation came from the corner of the room. Pindar himself was
there with Sophocles’s father.
The boy spoke, blushing, “I am the one to blame. I came in here to push
the swing—not thinking.”
“There is no blame,” repeated the girl passionately. “Don’t call it
blame.”
Had Nikander been an ordinary Greek father, Theria would undoubtedly have
received her whipping at this time.
“Go to your room, Daughter,” said Nikander quietly. “I cannot talk with
you here.”
And Theria fled in an agony of shame.
Pindar’s voice broke the silence.
“By the deep-vested Graces, Nikander, but I think we have broken into a
pretty dialogue. Would I had heard some of it.”
The boy, redder still, hid behind his father.
Nikander shook his head in whimsical despair.
“What am I to do with a daughter like that? I never know what she will do
next. She’s perfectly good, I assure you. She only breaks rules like a
colt.”
“She’s your image,” laughed Pindar. “Your own face faced you when she
spoke. Ay, and your spirit, too. By Artemis, did you mark how she fled up
the stairs with head held high?”
“She’s a twin, you know,” said Nikander. “The boy is more beautiful.”
“Ay, I know your Dryas. The coming beauty they say, and perhaps the
coming singer.”
Nikander’s face flushed with pleasure.
“The lyrists tell me so,” he assented.
* * * * *
Thus Eros brushed his wings across Theria’s fancy and flew away. No
business of his was this. But youth was here—fearful impressibility: A
breath, and youth is changed.
Who shall say that when in after years this boy sang of a woman and gave
her a new type of nobleness the image of this proud sweet maid of Delphi
did not float before him and make his creation real?
And as for Theria, the encounter was a peep outward into the world. From
this time she became more aware of the hurry of development outside in
the awakening land of Greece. From this time she felt it—the joyous
advance into the light, new art, new politics, new thoughts.
The amassing knowledge of centuries was converging to a focus and the
heart of the Greeks soared into a mental atmosphere never known before or
since. This intense point came in Theria’s lifetime. No wonder the light
of it penetrated all her walls and restrictions. No wonder she struggled
to be free to meet it. Her own youth was of the youth-time of Hellas and
longed to be merged with it as flame yearns toward flame.
CHAPTER XI
WHY NOT BE THE PYTHIA?
In times of war we picture every corner of a warring land torn with
passion, dark with fear, dyed with blood. But this is not so. In
Nikander’s household the four meals a day were served by quiet slaves,
the washing was done down in the Pleistos River as the good housewife
Melantho required it. Eleutheria received her daily lesson in spinning
and weaving and damaged more good wool than any maid of all the
generations of Nikanders. This indeed was Dame Melantho’s chief grief,
despite the fact that her little land was cowering under the heaviest
cloud of war that ever threatened a devoted country.
At every festival came crowding news of the great Persian king across the
sea preparing his army to invade and devour. Into every port came sailors
telling of the fleets of Phœnicians, Cyprians, Lykians, Dorians of Asia,
etc., all of which fleets were making ready to pounce upon Greece. Then
arrived the actual ambassadors of the King, demanding earth and water.
Which was to say: “Consent to slavery and the Persians will leave you out
of the fight.” Many cities gave these tokens immediately.
“Who, then, will resist?” “What will happen if any should resist?” “Will
the gods help?” “Have the gods forgotten their beloved Hellas?”
Such were the questions which poured into Delphi. These days Nikander
might be seen pacing to and fro in some lesche or near the Council House,
seeing naught before him, blind to the beauty of hills and far-glimpsed
vale. Then perhaps in desperation he would stride down the hill and along
the road toward home.
In the women’s aula Melantho would greet him with the small worries of
the day. A slave child was ill and she knew not what to do for it. She
must have more grain to store away in the storeroom or Nikander would
have to go without his special cake next winter.
“And will you have a cake now?” she asked. “And a little wine? Do, now;
you look tired.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
And so she went out to make the slaves do all in order.
Meanwhile, Theria came in and sat upon a stool near by. She spoke no
word but tried to untangle a thread from her distaff, parting wisp from
wisp with slender fingers, and watched her father with keen, quiet eyes.
Melantho returned chattering and Nikander ate his cake in silence, and
still Theria watched.
She knew that the Amphictyonic Council, that famous council of many
states, was meeting to-day in its house west of the town. Why was it
meeting now? This was not the season. She knew that her father had been
with it. He was one of the Amphictyons. There had been hot dispute, she
could see that in his face. But had he won? And what was the strife
about? She knew something of the danger which threatened the land. This
she knew in spite of the fact that Nikander had been strict in keeping
the news away from the household. He hated the aspects of fear: these
would come soon enough.
Bitterly Theria longed to ask questions. She knew that there was no use.
She knew that her father had come home for peace, for a respite.
After a while Melantho was called away, and Theria moved over beside her
father on the bench and slipped her hand into his. He sighed restfully as
she did so. Then care again settled like closing wings upon him. Theria
decided that he had not won in the Council—at least not for to-day. She
also decided that the controversy had been serious. She could not guess
that it had to do with the whole policy of the Oracle in the face of the
Persian attack. In that Council Nikander and one friend stood alone for
the defence of Greece. All the others stood for surrender.
Theria’s first instinct was the woman’s, to mend her father’s
disappointment by some diversion.
“Father,” she said, “I have been thinking all day of the birds that Homer
tells of on the Scamandrian plain.”
He frowned and came out of his dream. “What is Homer to you, child?” he
said impatiently.
“Nothing, Father; but I often think of those things. I love the birds,”
she added quietly. “They are so merry and move so swift, so swift. They
are kind, too.”
“Kind! What do you mean?”
“They come to me when I go to the window—oh, just a few moments at the
window, Father, to breathe the air. Then I call them their own calls and
they fly down out of the air, very timid at first. I put out my hand and
hold it still and talk to them. Finally, one of them is sure to flutter
near and sit on my finger with its little sharp claws. They watch me with
clever quick turnings of the head and chirp to make me laugh.”
She leaned forward—very child in this childish pleasure. “Father, tell
me what Homer says about the birds.”
“I am in no mood for Homer’s lines.” And indeed he was not. But presently
he began to say them—
“As the many tribes of feathered birds,
Wild geese and long-necked swans
On the Asian mead by Kystrios stream
Fly hither and thither joying in their plumage
And with loud cries settle ever onward——”
“What a picture!” he commented. “I never realized before how fine it is.”
Did his nearness to the ardent Theria bring this realization? Who can
tell how mind may leap toward mind?
So they were sitting when Olen, the slave boy, came and stood beside them.
“Master, a consultant,” he announced, “at the street door. He will not
come in.”
Nikander rose from the bench, strangely refreshed, and went to the outer
aula. As Olen was following, Theria made him an imperious gesture and the
slave reluctantly left ajar the dividing door. Then Theria moved to sit
where she could command the outer room.
She saw enter a man with white, wrecked face.
“But I must not come in,” he objected. “O priest, I might bring it upon
your house.”
“My house is not afraid,” said Nikander. He sat down, indicating the
bench beside him, and the man sat down fearfully, like one unclean, at
the farther end.
“It is a curse, O priest,” he said. “I am under a curse.”
Very skilfully Nikander quieted him, urging upon him kindness and wisdom
of the Oracle, persuading him to speak. It was a terrible tale of this
man Corobios and his friend Pythias—one of those Greek friendships so
seriously considered that marriage was not allowed between the children
of the two.
“We were on a journey,” said Corobios. “Five robbers leaped from ambush
upon Pythias. It was him they were after, not me. I whipped out my sword
and struck at one of them. And just at that moment Pythias was thrown
in the struggle straight under my blade. It cut him to the bone. Oh,
if he had only lived to exculpate me! If he had only spoken some word.
But there was no time. I saw only his eyes raised to me in agony, in
reproach. O priest—in terrible reproach. Ah, I see them now! Wherever
I go I see them! The Eumenides are coming upon me. To my children’s
children will the curse run unless Apollo will clean me.”
How Theria loved her father as he leaned toward the man laying his hand
upon the shaking shoulder, fearless of the terrible curse which could run
so quickly from man to man.
“The Son of Leto will hear you,” Nikander said. “Our god is pitiful of
those whose hearts are clean. Do not fear. To-morrow you shall consult
the god. I shall see that you go in first of them all to the Oracle. Your
case is needy.”
The interview was long. For as the man grew quieter, Nikander did not
fail to sound him as to his attitude in the coming war. Every pilgrim was
so tested by Nikander. Thus Nikander learned the public mind.
At Corobios’s departure Nikander wandered back to where Theria sat. He
was quite unaware that he was seeking his daughter again.
Theria ran toward him with overflowing eyes.
“Oh the poor man, the poor man! Father, surely the Oracle will help
him—it must help him!”
“The poor man, hey! What do you know about the poor man? Theria, I will
not have you listening from corners—do you heed me?”
“But why did the dying Pythias reproach him? Couldn’t he see that
Corobios didn’t mean to hurt him? Couldn’t he trust his friend that much?”
“Probably Pythias didn’t blame Corobios at all. The eyes were in
death-agony, already unconscious.”
“But will the Pythia tell him that? After all, how can the Pythia help
him? Corobios is a murderer—poor man! poor man!”
“Corobios is not a murderer, Theria. Murder is of the heart’s intention,
not the hand’s mistake. Nay, his hands are clean; cannot you see that?”
Nikander was forgetting the proper reproaches for Theria’s eavesdropping.
The question of blood-guilt was a burning one at Delphi. It concerned a
brand-new policy of the Oracle: that sin was a thing of the heart and
not of outward accident. This moral advance is, in every age, the most
important and most difficult for the human mind to achieve. Nikander was
fighting more battles than the defence against the Persian.
“I wish,” said Nikander, “the people could see that the curse does not
come that way—without fault of the accursed. Corobios is not under a
curse.”
“Not under a curse?” repeated Theria. “Will the god tell him that?”
“How do I know what the god will tell him?” answered Nikander piously.
“Oh, if I were the Pythia I would pray the dear Son of Leto till he gave
me that answer.”
“But you are not the Pythia.”
On a sudden the wish of many moons sprang to Theria’s lips.
“Father, let me be the Pythia, the next Pythian priestess. Oh, Father,
you do not know how I can pray to the god and—and how——”
“Nonsense; the Pythian priestess is a stupid girl. You would never do.”
“But the Pythia need not be a stupid girl,” Theria was talking now
breathlessly. “Father, when I pray, Apollo answers me. He _does_.”
Nikander took her chin in his hand, lifting her pleading face.
“What a queer child it is,” he mused. “What do you mean by Apollo
answering you?”
“I don’t know, Father; but he does. Oh, with the coming down upon me of
something out of the air like wings—no, not like wings—but I know it is
the god.”
Her eyes grew mystic with a curious inner seeing.
“You strange Theria,” said her father. “If you saw all the visions of the
gods it would not make you a good Pythia. You know perfectly well that
the Pythia is a girl of empty mind. The mind must be vacant for the god
to speak through it. She is but the mouthpiece of the god. Besides all
this, she writhes in agony when the oracle comes upon her. Sometimes it
kills her.”
“I wouldn’t mind if it killed me, just so I were Pythia,” Theria urged
solemnly. “Just so I could speak for the god.”
“Well, you’re not going to be Pythia, my child. This whole question is
nonsense. It grows out of nothing but your eternal desire to be doing
something.”
Nikander was right. It was Theria’s burning desire to use the power that
was in her which kept her constantly urging. Her face turned tragic and
Nikander’s anger sharpened. He was under great stress.
“Now, no passion, mind. Theria, I have enough burdens in these terrible
days without your foolish notions. Pythia—faugh! I’d be disgraced to have
you Pythia. Silly girl!”
So he strode out of the house.
Theria ran to her room. She expected to cry but she did nothing of the
sort.
“I _will_ be Pythia,” she said, throwing her long arms above her head and
clasping her hands.
“I will be Pythia—no matter what——”
* * * * *
The springs of poet inspiration are hidden and very strange. Could it be
this opposition which drove Theria to make her song—the prize song of
Dryas? The next day after these events that song came across Theria’s
mind like the flash. Anger was part of its origin. Longing for outlet was
another part. Strongest of all was the damming back of the birth-right
power within her until it welled higher than its nature and broke over
into song.
It was the following week that she showed her song to Dryas, and a yet
further week when Dryas sang the song at the Pythian festival and Theria
snatched it back again. The result was disastrous, as we have seen.
And after her father’s whipping, Theria strangely knew that she would
soon do something to deserve another whipping.
BOOK III
WITHIN THE ORACLE