AT THERMOPYLÆ.
So far Cleanor's experiences had been distinctly disappointing. But he
still clung to his hopes, trying to comfort himself with the thought
that Greece meant much more than the little tract of country which bore
the name. It was to be found in Egypt, in Syria, in the finest regions
of Lesser Asia; and the country from which the most powerful Greek
influence had come forth was not Athens or Sparta, or any one of the
ancient states, but half-barbarous Macedonia. The next thing was to see
what promise Macedonia held forth.
The season was now growing late for travel by sea, and Cleanor gladly
joined a party which was about to make its way overland to Pella, the
old capital of Macedonia. The route lay through a number of famous
places. His study of history had long since made him familiar with their
names and associations. They were now seen for the first time with the
most vivid interest, an interest which reached its climax in the famous
Pass of Thermopylæ. The place, which has now been altered by the action
of nature and time almost beyond recognition, was then but little
changed. The wall behind which the Greek army took up its position,
though almost in ruins, was still to be seen; the mound upon which the
immortal Three Hundred made their last stand could easily be recognized.
So could the tomb of the heroes, with the epitaph, so appropriate in its
simplicity and modesty,[21] which Simonides the poet had written for it.
Close by was the separate sepulchre of the valiant king Leonidas, with
an epitaph of its own not less happy.[22] Cleanor saw with regret that
there was not enough of local patriotism to keep these memorials of a
splendid past in decent repair. The letters of the inscriptions were so
grown over with moss that it was very difficult to decipher them. Some
of the stones of the tomb of the Three Hundred were out of place; and it
would not be long, unless some repairs were done to it, before the whole
must fall into ruin. The lion, too, had a weather-beaten, almost
dilapidated look. Some mischievous hand, possibly that of a collector of
relics,--a class which was as unscrupulous in its greed for specimens
then as now,--had chipped off a portion from one of the ears. The
pedestal was covered with rudely carved initials, for this foolish
practice was as great a favourite with idle hands in the ancient world
as it is now.
The young man was meditating sadly on the want of public spirit that
suffered so scandalous a neglect of national glories, when he received
another rude shock to his feelings. Something had been said in the
course of the morning's march--it was about noon when they halted in the
Pass--about the tribesmen near Thermopylæ not having the best of
characters, but it had been in a half-jesting way, and Cleanor had paid
little attention to the remark. Nor had he noticed that the party,
which, indeed, had soon exhausted its slender interest in the place, had
gone some distance further to make their halt for the noonday meal in
the open country beyond the Gates.[23] He was roused from a fit of
musing by feeling a hand laid roughly on his shoulder. In a moment the
chance words of the morning came back to him. He swung himself violently
aside, and so released himself from the grasp of the intruder. Instantly
facing about he dealt the man a heavy blow straight from the shoulder,
which tumbled him to the ground. But he was unarmed, except for a short
dagger which he carried in his belt, and which was meant to serve for a
feast rather than for a fray. And he was overmatched. For the moment,
indeed, he was free; his assailant had been alone. But looking up and
down the Pass he saw small parties of armed men advancing in both
directions. Flight, too, was impossible, for the rocks rose sheer on
either side of him. There was nothing to be done but to submit to his
fate, which manifestly was to be captured by bandits. Throwing his
dagger to the ground, he held up his hands in token of surrender.
A man somewhat better clad and better armed than his companions--they
were a ragged, ill-equipped set--advanced from one of the approaching
parties and accosted our hero. Nothing could be more polite than his
manner of address.
"You will excuse us, sir," he said, "for detaining you for a short time.
Nothing but the exigencies of business could have induced us to put you
to any inconvenience."
The fellow whom Cleanor had knocked down had regained his feet, and was
coming up with a threatening air.
"Be quiet, Laches," said the leader. "My friend did nothing but what was
quite right and natural. You took a great liberty. To put your hand upon
a gentleman's shoulder indeed! And your blow, sir, was well delivered,"
he went on, turning to Cleanor. "It was not the first time, I fancy,
that you have used your fists. A very pretty stroke indeed! I am quite
delighted to offer such poor hospitality as I have at command to so
accomplished a guest. I have your promise, I suppose, not to attempt to
leave us till we have improved our acquaintance somewhat. I have been
obliged now and then to handcuff a friend who was so modest as to wish
to withdraw. But you, sir, I know, will accept my friendship as frankly
as it is offered."
Cleanor was not sure whether this elaborate civility was an improvement
on the more brutal manners of the average bandit, but thought it best to
accept the situation with as much show of good-humour as he could
manage. "I shall be delighted," he said, "to improve my acquaintance
with this most interesting country of yours. But I have important
business on hand at Pella, and to business even the most attractive
pleasures must be postponed."
"I shall be delighted to fall in with your views," replied the brigand
chief, with an elaborate bow, "though I cannot but regret that anything
should shorten your visit."
After proceeding down the Pass for some two hundred yards, the party
turned into a path on the right-hand side, and began to climb a somewhat
steep ascent.
"This is the very path, sir," said the chief, "by which Ephialtes
brought the Persians to take King Leonidas and his army in the rear.
That villainous traitor was, I regret to say, a native of Malia, the
only dishonest man that the place has ever produced. I myself have the
honour of having been born there."
An hour's smart walking brought the party to a small grassy plateau.
Here they left the path, and, making their way through a clump of ilex,
reached the entrance to a cavern in the mountain side. The entrance was
narrow, and so low that a man of even moderate stature had to stoop
before he could pass under it; but the cavern was spacious and lofty.
"My men's quarters," said the chief, with a wave of the hand; "rather
dark, as you see, but dry, and fairly warm. My own apartment is a little
further this way."
Another doorway, not unlike that by which they had entered, led from the
larger into a smaller cavern. This, as Cleanor observed, could be shut
off by a thick door solidly backed with iron.
"I like to be by myself now and then," explained the chief. "Our
friends, too, are sometimes a little boisterous in their mirth, and the
noise interferes with my studies."
The arrangement, it occurred to Cleanor, served for protection as well
as retirement. The smaller cave had also, he concluded from a ray of
light which made its way through the wall, a separate exit.
It had been furnished with some attempt at comfort. There was a couch in
one of the corners; in the middle, round a hearth on which a few sticks
were smouldering, coverlets and skins were piled. A couple of
hunting-spears, a bow, and a quiver hung on the walls, and a curtain
could be drawn over the door that led into the outer cave.
"Welcome to my home!" said the chief; "a poor place; but better men have
been worse lodged. If you have any money, you had better let me take
care of it. My men are not bad fellows on the whole, but you must not
trust them too far. They are common Phocians, you must know, not men of
Malia."
Cleanor had again to make a virtue of necessity. He had taken the
precaution of sending a remittance on to Pella, to await his arrival at
that place, and carried about with him little more than what would be
wanted on the journey. This--some twenty gold pieces--he had in a
purse-girdle round his waist,[24] which he now produced and handed to
the chief. The man examined it, not without first making an apology, and
counted the coins. Cleanor fancied that his face fell somewhat at
finding that they were so few. His manner, however, continued to be as
gay and friendly as before, and the talk, which he poured forth in an
unceasing stream, as intelligent as it was amusing.
"The sun must be nearly setting," he said, looking upwards at the
aperture in the roof--long practice had enabled him to guess the time of
day very accurately by the variation in the light--"and you must be
ready by this time for dinner. 'Tis but a humble repast I can offer you,
but you can understand that we have to rough it up here. My neighbours,
however, are very kind, and we always have enough, though the quality
now and then leaves something to be desired."
Opening the door that communicated between the two caves, he called to
Laches--the same, it will be remembered, with whom Cleanor had had a
collision earlier in the day.
"Tell Persis," he said, "to let us have something to eat as soon as
possible. You will join us, Laches," he added, "when it is ready, if by
chance you have any appetite left.
"I thought it as well," he explained, "to do away with any little
soreness there may be in the man's mind. He will be ready to swear
eternal friendship over a flask of wine."
Before long a wrinkled old woman, who looked quite the ideal cook of a
robbers' cave, brought in a smoking dish of roast kid, garnished with
onions. Flat cakes of what we should call "damper" served as bread, for
the latter, as the chief explained, could seldom be made for want of
yeast. A jug of red wine of the country was drawn from a cask which
stood in a corner of the cave, to be succeeded at the proper time by a
flask of stately dimensions, which contained a rich vintage from Lesbos.
"This," said the chief, "my good friend Clarilaus, eparch of Larissa,
was kind enough to supply me with."
Cleanor opened his eyes. Farmers and shepherds might find it worth
while to buy the brigand's forbearance by a toll from their flocks, but
was such a dignitary as an eparch content to pay blackmail? The chief
smiled.
"Perhaps I might explain," he said, "that we came across the eparch's
wagon as it was on its way to Larissa from the coast. As there was
clearly more wine than he could use--it is the one fault of Lesbian wine
that it does not keep very well--I took it for granted that some must
have been meant for me. He is famous for his taste in wine, and I think
you will own that this does him credit."
It was soon evident that the Lesbian wine had strength as well as
flavour, for the two brigands became very communicative as the flask
grew lighter.
"Tell us your story, Laches," said the chief. "It always puts me in
better conceit with myself to hear it. This life of ours here is not
exactly the ideal. My old master at the Academy, Philippus, would
scarcely have approved of it. Yes, my young friend, I too have been in
Arcadia, or rather, I should say, in Athens, though I may not look like
it; but I always console myself by thinking that there are worse thieves
than I am. Go on, Laches."
The man's tale ran thus:--
"I was a shepherd by occupation. My father was a shepherd; so had his
father before him been, and his father too, for many generations. Yes,
for many hundred years, but not always. There was a tradition in the
family that we had been princes once, owning all the land over which the
flocks we cared for grazed, and a great deal more. We believed that we
were descended from the great Thessalus[25] himself. Well, we were
fairly content. Our master was a gay young fellow, a little thoughtless,
and too ready with his hands if things did not go quite as he wished,
but kind and generous. Poor fellow! he was killed by a wild-boar. To
tell the truth, he had taken a cup too much. It was his habit, and a bad
habit too--a very bad habit."
Laches was quite sincere, though his own utterance had grown a little
thick.
"We had found a boar in the morning, and lost him. After the mid-day
meal--he would finish the flask of heady Chian--we found the brute
again. My master threw one of his two hunting-spears, and wounded him in
the shoulder. He was a little flurried, and he threw it too soon, and
with a bad aim. The boar charged, and my master knelt on one knee to
receive it. Flurried again, and the spear not quite straight. I was
running as hard as I could, but it was too late. When I came up, he was
lying on the ground, with as bad a wound in the thigh as ever I saw. He
was dead before you could count twenty.
"Then our troubles began. The master was not married, and all the
property went to an uncle, the meanest old skinflint in Thessaly. He had
been a spendthrift, they said, in his young days; such men always make
the worst kind of misers, I have heard. Anyhow, he was as bad as he
could be. He hadn't been in possession for a week when he began to cut
us short in everything. We used to be allowed half a drachma[26] for
every lamb that we reared. This was taken away. Not only that, but we
had to make good all that died. 'Your fault,' he would say; 'your fault;
a quite healthy lamb.' All the lambs, according to him, were quite
healthy. It was the same if one was killed by a wolf, and there are a
terrible lot of wolves in that part of the country. What used to be our
best time, the lambing season, came to be the worst. There was very
little of our wages left by the time that we had made good all the
losses. Then he charged us for every stick of wood that we picked up. We
were not allowed to catch a fish or snare a bird. We had to buy our
flour at his mill; damp, chalky stuff it was, more like bird-lime than
flour. Sour wine, rotten cloth, stinking salt-fish--we had to buy them
all of him. At every turn the villain made a profit out of us. As for
our wages, it was the rarest thing for us to see an obol[27] of them.
Most months he made out the balance to be on the wrong side."
"Well, to cut the story short, we got pretty deeply into his debt, my
poor father and I. What does the scoundrel do but take my sister--as
good and as pretty a girl as there was in the whole country--to be sold
as a slave, in payment of the debt, he said. He took care to do this
villainy when we--I mean the girl's husband that was to be and I--were
with the sheep on the summer pastures in the hills. A nice home-coming
we had; my old father dead--he had a stroke the day when his daughter
was carried away, dying in an hour,--and my sister gone. She wrenched
herself out of the hands of the slave-dealer as they were crossing the
Peneus, threw herself into the river, and was drowned--the best thing
that could happen to her, poor girl!
"You can guess the end, I dare say. The villain, my master, was found
dead in his bed--his throat cut from ear to ear--three days afterwards.
They caught Agathon--that was the lover, you understand--and crucified
him. And I am here."
"But," cried Cleanor, "are there no laws?"
"Laws!" answered the chief; "laws in plenty. But the question is--who
administers them?"
"The Romans, I suppose," replied Cleanor.
"I only wish they did," was the unexpected answer. "We might get some
sort of justice then. No; they leave the matter in the hands of the
rich, and there is only one in a hundred who has a spark of conscience
or pity in him. Mark this, young sir. I have twelve men in my band, and
there is not one of them but has a story to tell as bad as what Laches
here has told us. And in every one of them the oppressor has been one of
our own people. And now, doubtless, you will be ready for sleep."
Sleep was long in coming that night to the young man, and his thoughts
were full of gloom. He could not but feel some fears for himself. His
captors, it is true, were civil and even friendly; but he knew that such
people conducted their affairs on strict business principles, and that
one invariable principle was to get rid of a prisoner whose ransom was
not forthcoming in good time. He had funds, indeed, in the hands of a
merchant at Pella, but how was he to identify himself? And his
experiences hitherto had been very dispiriting. Whatever he might find
elsewhere, so far he had not met with the vigorous, united, patriotic
Greece of which he had dreamed.
It was late before he fell asleep, and then his slumber was light and
troubled. Just as the day was showing he was roused by the chief.
"Get up," said the man, "there is no time to be lost, if you don't want
to be choked like a rat in a hole."
Cleanor started to his feet. Thin coils of smoke were finding their way
through the crevices of the doorway between the two caves and through
various fissures in the wall. Dazed by the suddenness of his rousing he
looked to the chief for an explanation.
"Don't you understand? They have tracked us, and now they are smoking us
out. I am not going to leave my men. They're a rough lot, but they have
stuck faithfully to me, and I will stick to them. But that is nothing to
you. You have got time to escape; don't waste it. You will find some
steps cut in the far side of the cave. Follow them; they will take you
to a hole near the roof just big enough for you to creep through. That
is the entrance to a narrow passage which leads to the top of the hill.
No one knows it but myself; it was well to have my own way of getting
out. But I am not going to use it now. Take care how you go; the passage
is pitch dark, and has some dangerous places in it. And here is your
purse. I am sorry to have hindered you in your journey. We took you for
something quite different from what you are. Still you have learnt
something. If you can, think kindly of us. Even a set of rascally
robbers may have something to say for themselves."
There was no time to be lost in talking. Cleanor scrambled with little
difficulty to the entrance of the passage. But the passage itself was an
awful experience. As the chief had said, it was pitch dark, and the
Greek had to feel his way as he crept along on hands and knees. Twice he
found the path come to what seemed an abrupt end in what he supposed to
be a chasm, for he heard far below him the sound of falling water. But
exploring the wall on the left hand he found a ledge just broad enough
to allow him to creep along. At last, after what seemed hours of anxious
toil--he found afterwards that the time was much less than it seemed--he
saw a faint speck of light in the distance. Before long he reached the
open air on the hillside, at the height of some four hundred feet above
the plain.
It was not long before Cleanor fell in with a peasant. The man was aware
of what had happened. He had seen the Thessalian troops on their march,
and seeing the smoke rising from the hillside had guessed the tactics
which they had employed. It was plain from the man's talk that the
robbers were not unpopular in the district. As a rule they had paid, and
paid liberally, for supplies. In short, they had been regarded, as such
people often have been before and since, as friends of the poor. The man
took Cleanor by a short cut into the highroad, and so enabled him to
overtake his party, which reached Pella without further adventure. The
banditti, as he heard during his stay in Macedonia, had fallen to a man
in a desperate sally which they had made against the attacking party.
FOOTNOTES:
21: It ran thus:
"Go tell to Sparta, thou that passest by,
That here obedient to her laws we lie".
22: "Bravest of beasts am I, who watch the grave
Of him that, living, was of men most brave.
Lion he was alike in name and heart,
Else had I ne'er endured the watcher's part."
23: Thermopylæ--the Hot Gates; so called from the hot springs
found in the neighbourhood.
24: The same Greek word stands for "purse" and "girdle". The
old-fashioned long silk purse is an interesting survival of this
ancient custom. Those who lead lives of adventure still carry
their money in a belt fastened round the waist.
25: The legendary hero, son of Hæmon, from whom Thessalia was
supposed to have received its name.
26: About fourpence farthing.
27: About five farthings; six obols went to the drachma.