‘Laudo manentem; si celeres quatit
Pennas, resigno quæ; dedit ...
... probamque
Pauperiem sine dote quæro.’
HORATIUS: _Od._, iii. 29.
‘I sing her praises should she stay,
But an she shake her lightsome wings,
I give her back the things she gave,
And seek an upright life in poverty.’
IT was early in the afternoon of September the twenty-fifth by our
reckoning when the _Eros_, following the _Salaminia_, got up to Thurii,
an Athenian colony near the site of the old-renowned soft Sybaris. The
fallen strategos landed with his friends. Kryptos, approaching, told the
ex-general he proposed staying there that night, and starting again
early next morning. Alkibiades bowed, saying it was his part to receive
orders now, not to give them.
The people of Thurii, most of whom had come upon the wharf to see the
two great Athenian vessels, were indeed surprised when they recognised
the well-known face of Alkibiades. He had lately called there, when, at
the head of his division of the fleet, he was on his way to Rhegion.
Eumanthes quickly heard the news, and came down at once to welcome his
friend and benefactor, and invited him and his companions to his country
house, and begged they would make it theirs as long as they might stay
at Thurii.
‘’Tis only till to-morrow,’ said Alkibiades, introducing his friends.
Eumanthes begged they would stay longer.
‘Our partridges are good, and our wine thought not the worst in Italy.’
‘So have I often heard, and, indeed, I know it from my own experience,’
said the leader, who wore his most gorgeous purple robe, and looked
ready to enjoy a long symposium after all the rough labours of his
recent voyages.
And a fine symposium it was. Eumanthes, after a little private talk with
his old friend, had summoned the wisest of the Thurians to meet him. All
the sage philosophers of Thurii came. Their philosophy did not prevent
them doing justice to the feast. The daintiest fish of Thurii, cooked,
some in boiling olive-oil, others in the white wine of the country,
others stuffed with olives and wild thyme and baked—all were delicious.
Boiled turkeys, each with a hundred of the famed Thurian oysters in
them, and a boar’s head, with freshly discovered truffles, were followed
by pheasants and young partridges, roasted and stewed in many ways,
which made the chief guest declare that his own head cook Hymettos must
come to Thurii to improve his art. But the snails, collected that
afternoon from the vineyard of white grapes, made them, for a moment,
forget all the rest; until a salad, with cray-fish, straight from the
cool mountain streams, made them almost forget the snails. To the sound
of silver flutes boys came in, bearing upon golden dishes the plump
quails of Egypt, wrapped in the last young leaves of the maturing vines,
and offered them upon bended knee to each guest, the virginal
vine-leaves giving a new flavour to the Egyptian birds, which were
sufficiently appetizing of themselves.
The custom of the luxurious Thurians was to drink wine while the feast
was being served, and not to wait till after the various dishes had been
cleared away, as was the manner in the older country. Each course was
served up with wines which had lain pining for the sunlight for more
than twenty years. Cold white wine, which gave forth an aroma as of
early summer mignonette when the tall, pointed amphoræ were opened, came
with the fish and disappeared again until the salad. Red wine, clear and
delicate, gentle as a maiden, gave flavour to the roasted venison. Red
wines of bolder nature, larger-hearted, with perfume like the flower of
the beech-tree on hot summer nights, added a fresh charm to partridges
and pheasants. But all these wines were vanquished by their king of
exquisitely fine bouquet, and of a vintage which the host admitted he
had not seen himself since he was a youth in his dear old father’s
lifetime. This monarch of all wine came with the fruit—figs bursting
with ripe lusciousness, walnuts, and large bloomy grapes, with the
warmth still on them of the setting sun.
The philosophers and the learned men of Thurii, notwithstanding all the
heat they were wont to show in nightly arguments with one another, and
in discussing the latest works of every sophist writer, were quiet and
subdued before the renowned Athenian. Then did he look more radiant and
beautiful than ever. Seldom did he show such condescension or concern
himself more courteously to instruct and gratify his company. He spoke
of many things—of patriotism, of the love of country. When was man
obliged to die for his home? How far, if ever, was he bound to save his
fatherland, if he must appear an enemy while doing it? Or was it not
nobler to die to save her than to live to teach her, and dying, leave a
fame behind which some day all would recognise, so that his name would
never die, and he would become indeed ‘Athanatos’?
The companions of his voyage rose from their couches one by one, and
stole out unnoticed by the grave philosophers, overcome by the eloquence
they had listened to and the good wine they had drunk. At length
Alkibiades bade them good-night, and his host got rid of them.
Eumanthes, after a few more words with his guest, went down to the wharf
to watch the movements of the _Salaminia_. He found the captain still
superintending the provisioning of the state ship, and invited him to
come and stay a day or two with him. Kryptos declined, as he sailed for
Athens the next morning.
When Eumanthes returned he found that his guest, who in the meantime had
changed his dress for one more suitable to the work before him, was
gone. He had reason to suppose his Athenian friends were by this time
beyond the shrine of Dionysos. There Alkibiades and his companions had
found Diôtes, a faithful servant of Eumanthes, with arms and horses and
some provisions, awaiting them. They mounted, and, led by Diôtes, went
along a narrow pathway in single file up the mountain by the side of the
stream whence the cray-fish had come which formed the chief part of the
wondrous salad.
It was a dark night, and not without some danger did they make their way
to higher ground. Biôtides was better at sea than on horseback. In his
anxiety to show his skill as a horseman, his steed, unaccustomed to such
a rider, got rid of him. He was picked up near a precipice not much the
worse, but it was thought wiser to make him exchange horses with
Agrestides, who was riding a milder animal. They went along merrily
enough, considering their new circumstances. Only Alkibiades was silent
and thoughtful. Before daybreak they reached a small villa, nearly
thirty miles from Thurii, belonging to Eumanthes. Here they rested.
They were not sorry to lie down, though their couches, all except one,
were on the ground, and made up of skins. What was that to sailors after
a long ride through the night? The day was far advanced when Diôtes
awoke them. He had prepared a repast of goat’s milk and venison, with
some cheese and fruit. After that they set out again on their journey,
along a spur of the lower Apennines for some three hours more, at as
quick a pace as Biôtides could keep up. Then they descended into a broad
valley, with a clear stream running through it. At the end of this
valley, shut in on both sides by the hills, was a goatherd’s hut. For
this they made. Here Diôtes put before them the remainder of the
provisions he had brought with him, and left them in charge of Hermas,
the goatherd, telling them that he or some other of the servants of
Eumanthes would come as soon as possible with news and more provisions.
The lodging was rougher than that of the night before, but the spirits
of all were high; those of Alkibiades were now highest of them all.
There was something adventurous about this, and the change from soft
beds and silken coverlets, such as were prepared for him on board the
_Eros_, and from the luxurious living he was accustomed to, brought out
a latent hardihood he was soon to find an opportunity to show. His was a
character which could fit itself to any change of circumstances, to any
country, to any mode of life; but wherever he might be he would be
first, the most beloved, often the most envied of mankind.
Next morning they were up betimes. The supplies Diôtes promised had not
come, nor were they wanted. The stream was full of trout, and no party
of schoolboys out on a holiday ever abandoned themselves to greater
frolic and enjoyment. Alkibiades constructed a net to catch the fish,
and invented a new way of cooking them. By the time they were spread out
smoking on platters made of leaves on the rich turf, the appetites of
the party would have made most fish delectable. So what of this, the
finest flavoured that the streams of earth afford, and cooked by
Alkibiades? Hermas provided bread, coarse, perhaps, and somewhat hard;
but his cheese was excellent; and he produced a basketful of those
cray-fish we have heard of twice before. He had caught and cooked them
while the others were fishing for the trout.
‘Stop,’ said Alkibiades; ‘I see a herb will make a noble salad;’ and so
it did with oil of which Hermas had a store, made from the olives in the
groves through which they had passed two days before. There was no wine
there, and they wanted none. The fresh mountain air in which they took
their breakfast,—a breakfast caught and cooked by themselves, for the
first time in the lives of most of them,—made up for that. Alkibiades
drank from the mountain stream as it flowed by them clear and icy cold.
‘After all,’ said he, ‘water is not so bad to drink—sometimes.’
They had a mid-day slumber on the goatherd’s skins, under the late
September sun, and were aroused by the arrival of two horsemen, whom
they recognised as servants of Eumanthes. They brought a scroll on which
was written: ‘Kryptos and his band are searching; keep quiet and on
guard.’ They also brought two panniers filled with such succulent viands
as only a Eumanthes could imagine. At the evening meal this pampering
food seemed out of place in their surroundings, and yet,—and yet, they
eat it.
Next morning Diôtes came. Kryptos was still looking for them, but on the
wrong side. So all that day, and for many others after it, the band of
fugitives enjoyed the sunshine and the mountain air, and the good things
the gods provided. And then news came that Kryptos, giving up his search
at last, had set sail for Athens. The fugitives started on their journey
back. They bade farewell to Hermas and his quiet valley; and oftentimes
in after-years, amidst the splendours of the East, and all his luxuries,
his troubles and his triumphs, the wandering Alkibiades looked back to
that sweet spot, and wondered which was happier, he or Hermas.
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