THE ACROPOLIS FLAMES
A few days only Xerxes and his host rested after the dear-bought triumph
at Thermopylæ. An expedition sent to plunder Delphi returned
discomfited—thanks, said common report, to Apollo himself, who broke off
two mountain crags to crush the impious invaders. But no such miracle
halted the march on Athens. Bœotia and her cities welcomed the king;
Thespiæ and Platæa, which had stood fast for Hellas, were burned. The
Peloponnesian army lingered at Corinth, busy with a wall across the
Isthmus, instead of risking valorous battle.
“By the soul of my father,” the king had sworn, “I believe that after the
lesson at Thermopylæ these madmen will not fight again!”
“By land they will not,” said Mardonius, always at his lord’s elbow, “by
sea—it remains for your Eternity to discover.”
“Will they really dare to fight by sea?” asked Xerxes, hardly pleased at
the suggestion.
“Omnipotence, you have slain Leonidas, but a second great enemy remains.
While Themistocles lives, it is likely your slaves will have another
opportunity to prove to you their devotion.”
“Ah, yes! A stubborn rogue, I hear. Well—if we must fight by sea, it shall
be under my own eyes. My loyal Phœnician and Egyptian mariners did not do
themselves full justice at Artemisium; they lacked the valour which comes
from being in the presence of their king.”
“Which makes a dutiful subject fight as ten,” quickly added Pharnaspes the
fan-bearer.
“Of course,” smiled the monarch, “and now I must ask again, Mardonius, how
fares it with my handsome Prexaspes?”
“Only indifferently, your Majesty, since you graciously deign to inquire.”
“Such a sad wound? That is heavy news. He takes long in recovering. I
trust he wants for nothing.”
“Nothing, Omnipotence. He has the best surgeons in the camp.”
“To-day I will send him Helbon wine from my own table. I miss his comely
face about me. I want him here to play at dice. Tell him to recover
because his king desires it. If he has become right Persian, that will be
better than any physic.”
“I have no doubt he will be deeply moved to learn of your Eternity’s
kindness,” rejoined the bow-bearer, who was not sorry that further
discussion of this delicate subject was averted by the arch-usher
introducing certain cavalry officers with their report on the most
practicable line of march through Bœotia.
Glaucon, in fact, was long since out of danger, thanks to the sturdy
bronze of his Laconian helmet. He was able to walk, and, if need be, ride,
but Mardonius would not suffer him to go outside his own tents. The
Athenian would be certain to be recognized, and at once Xerxes would send
for him, and how Glaucon, in his new frame of mind, would deport himself
before majesty, whether he would not taunt the irascible monarch to his
face, the bow-bearer did not know. Therefore the Athenian endured a manner
of captivity in the tents with the eunuchs, pages, and women. Artazostra
was often with him, and less frequently Roxana. But the Egyptian had lost
all power over him now. He treated her with a cold courtesy more painful
than contempt. Once or twice Artazostra had tried to turn him back from
his purpose, but her words always broke themselves over one barrier.
“I am born a Hellene, lady. My gods are not yours. I must live and die
after the manner of my people. And that our gods are strong and will give
victory, after that morning with Leonidas I dare not doubt.”
When the host advanced south and eastward from Thermopylæ, Glaucon went
with it, riding in a closed travelling carriage guarded by Mardonius’s
eunuchs. All who saw it said that here went one of the bow-bearer’s harem
women, and as for the king, every day he asked for his favourite, and
every day Mardonius told him, “He is even as before,” an answer which the
bow-bearer prayed to truth-loving Mithra might not be accounted a lie.
It was while the army lay at Platæa that news came which might have shaken
Glaucon’s purpose, had that purpose been shakable. Euboulus the Corinthian
had been slain in a skirmish shortly after the forcing of Thermopylæ. The
tidings meant that no one lived who could tell in Athens that on the day
of testing the outlaw had cast in his lot with Hellas. Leonidas was dead.
The Spartan soldiers who had heard Glaucon avow his identity were dead. In
the hurried conference of captains preceding the retreat, Leonidas had
told his informant’s precise name only to Euboulus. And now Euboulus was
slain, doubtless before any word from him of Glaucon’s deed could spread
abroad. To Athenians Glaucon was still the “Traitor,” doubly execrated in
this hour of trial. If he returned to his people, would he not be torn in
pieces by the mob? But the young Alcmæonid was resolved. Since he had not
died at Thermopylæ, no life in the camp of the Barbarian was tolerable. He
would trust sovran Athena who had plucked him out of one death to deliver
from a second. Therefore he nursed his strength—a caged lion waiting for
freedom,—and almost wished the Persian host would advance more swiftly
that he might haste onward to his own.
* * * * * * *
Glaucon had cherished a hope to see the whole power of the Peloponnesus in
array in Bœotia, but that hope proved quickly vain. The oracle was truly
to be fulfilled,—the whole of “the land of Cecrops” was to be possessed by
the Barbarian. The mountain passes were open. No arrows greeted the
Persian vanguard as it cantered down the defiles, and once more the king’s
courtiers told their smiling master that not another hand would be raised
against him.
The fourth month after quitting the Hellespont Xerxes entered Athens. The
gates stood ajar. The invaders walked in silent streets as of a city of
the dead. A few runaway slaves alone greeted them. Only in the Acropolis a
handful of superstitious old men and temple warders had barricaded
themselves, trusting that Athena would still defend her holy mountain. For
a few days they defended the steep, rolling down huge boulders, but the
end was inevitable. The Persians discovered a secret path upward. The
defenders were surprised and dashed themselves from the crags or were
massacred. A Median spear-man flung a fire-brand. The house of the
guardian goddess went up in flame. The red column leaping to heaven was a
beacon for leagues around that Xerxes held the length and breadth of
Attica.
Glaucon watched the burning temple with grinding teeth. Mardonius’s tents
were pitched in the eastern city by the fountain of Callirhoë,—a spot of
fond memories for the Alcmæonid. Here first he had met Hermione, come with
her maids to draw water, and had gone away dreaming of Aphrodite arising
from the sea. Often here he had sat with Democrates by the little pool,
whilst the cypresses above talked their sweet, monotonous music. Before
him rose the Rock of Athena,—the same, yet not the same. The temple of his
fathers was vanishing in smoke and ashes. What wonder that he turned to
Artazostra at his side with a bitter smile.
“Lady, your people have their will. But do not think Athena Nikephorus,
the Lady of Triumphs, will forget this day when we stand against you in
battle.”
She did not answer him. He knew that many noblemen had advised Xerxes
against driving the Greeks to desperation by this sacrilege, but this fact
hardly made him the happier.
At dusk the next evening Mardonius suffered him to go with two faithful
eunuchs and rove through the deserted city. The Persians were mostly
encamped without the walls, and plundering was forbidden. Only Hydarnes
with the Immortals pitched on Areopagus, and the king had taken his abode
by the Agora. It was like walking through the country of the dead.
Everything familiar, everything changed. The eunuchs carried torches. They
wandered down one street after another, where the house doors stood open,
where the aulas were strewn with the débris of household stuff which the
fleeing citizens had abandoned. A deserter had already told Glaucon of his
father’s death; he was not amazed therefore to find the house of his birth
empty and desolate. But everywhere else, also, it was to call back
memories of glad days never to return. Here was the school where crusty
Pollicharmes had driven the “reading, writing, and music” into Democrates
and himself between the blows. Here was the corner Hermes, before which he
had sacrificed the day he won his first wreath in the public games. Here
was the house of Cimon, in whose dining room he had enjoyed many a bright
symposium. He trod the Agora and walked under the porticos where he had
lounged in the golden evenings after the brisk stroll from the wrestling
ground at Cynosarges, and had chatted and chaffered with light-hearted
friends about “the war” and “the king,” in the days when the Persian
seemed very far away. Last of all an instinct—he could not call it
desire—drove him to seek the house of Hermippus.
They had to force the door open with a stone. The first red torch-light
that glimmered around the aula told that the Eumolpid had awaited the
enemy in Athens, not in Eleusis. The court was littered with all manner of
stuff,—crockery, blankets, tables, stools,—which the late inhabitants had
been forced to forsake. A tame quail hopped from the tripod by the now
cold hearth. Glaucon held out his hand, the bird came quickly, expecting
the bit of grain. Had not Hermione possessed such a quail? The outlaw’s
blood ran quicker. He felt the heat glowing in his forehead.
A chest of clothes stood open by the entrance. He dragged forth the
contents—women’s dresses and uppermost a white airy gauze of Amorgos that
clung to his hands as if he were lifting clouds. Out of its folds fell a
pair of white shoes with clasps of gold. Then he recognized this dress
Hermione had worn in the Panathenæa and on the night of his ruin. He threw
it down, next stood staring over it like a man possessed. The friendly
eunuchs watched his strange movements. He could not endure to have them
follow him.
“Give me a torch. I return in a moment.”
He went up the stair alone to the upper story, to the chambers of the
women. Confusion here also,—the more valuable possessions gone, but much
remaining. In one corner stood the loom and stretched upon it the
half-made web of a shawl. He could trace the pattern clearly wrought in
bright wools,—Ariadne sitting desolate awaiting the returning of Theseus.
Would the wife or the betrothed of Democrates busy herself with _that_,
whatever the griefs in her heart? Glaucon’s temples now were throbbing as
if to burst.
A second room, and more littered confusion, but in one corner stood a
bronze statue,—Apollo bending his bow against the Achæans,—which Glaucon
had given to Hermione. At the foot of the statue hung a wreath of purple
asters, dead and dry, but he plucked it asunder and set many blossoms in
his breast.
A third room, and almost empty. He was moving back in disappointment, when
the torch-light shook over something that swung betwixt two beams,—a
wicker cradle. The woollen swaddling bands were still in it. One could see
the spot on the little pillow with the impress of the tiny head. Glaucon
almost dropped the torch. He pressed his hand to his brow.
“Zeus pity me!” he groaned, “preserve my reason. How can I serve Hellas
and those I love if thou strikest me mad?”
With feverish anxiety he sent his eyes around that chamber. His search was
not in vain. He almost trampled upon the thing that lay at his feet,—a
wooden rattle, the toy older than the Egyptian pyramids. He seized it,
shook it as a warrior his sword. He scanned it eagerly. Upon the handle
were letters carved, but there was a mist before his eyes which took long
to pass away. Then he read the rude inscription: “ΦΟΙΝΙΞ : ΥΙΟΣ :
ΓΛΑΥΚΟΝΤΟΣ.” “Phœnix the son of Glaucon.” _His_ child. He was the father
of a fair son. His wife, he was sure thereof, had not yet been given to
Democrates.
Overcome by a thousand emotions, he flung himself upon a chest and pressed
the homely toy many times to his lips.
* * * * * * *
After a long interval he recovered himself enough to go down to the
eunuchs, who were misdoubting his long absence.
“Persian,” he said to Mardonius, when he was again at the bow-bearer’s
tents, “either suffer me to go back to my people right soon or put me to
death. My wife has borne me a son. My place is where I can defend him.”
Mardonius frowned, but nodded his head.
“You know I desire it otherwise. But my word is given. And the word of a
prince of the Aryans is not to be recalled. You know what to expect among
your people—perhaps a foul death for a deed of another.”
“I know it. I also know that Hellas needs me.”
“To fight against us?” asked the bow-bearer, with a sigh. “Yet you shall
go. Eran is not so weak that adding one more to her enemies will halt her
triumph. To-morrow night a boat shall be ready on the strand. Take it. And
after that may your gods guard you, for I can do no more.”
All the next day Glaucon sat in the tents and watched the smoke cloud
above the Acropolis and the soldiers in the plain hewing down the sacred
olives, Athena’s trees, which no Athenian might injure and thereafter
live. But Glaucon was past cursing now,—endure a little longer and after
that, what vengeance!
The gossiping eunuchs told readily what the king had determined. Xerxes
was at Phaleron reviewing his fleet. The Hellenes’ ships confronted him at
Salamis. The Persians had met in council, deliberating one night over
their wine, reconsidering the next morning when sober. Their wisdom each
time had been to force a battle. Let the king destroy the enemy at
Salamis, and he could land troops at ease at the very doors of Sparta,
defying the vain wall across the Isthmus. Was not victory certain? Had he
not two ships to the Hellenes’ one? So the Phœnician vassal kings and all
his admirals assured him. Only Artemisia, the martial queen of
Halicarnassus, spoke otherwise, but none would hear her.
“To-morrow the war is ended,” a cup-bearer had told a butler in Glaucon’s
hearing, and never noticed how the Athenian took a horseshoe in his slim
fingers and straightened it, whilst looking on the scorched columns of the
Acropolis.
At length the sun spread his last gold of the evening. The eunuchs called
Glaucon to the pavilion of Artazostra, who came forth with Roxana for
their farewell. They were in royal purple. The amethysts in their hair
were worth a month’s revenues of Corinth. Roxana had never been lovelier.
Glaucon was again in the simple Greek dress, but he knelt and kissed the
robes of both the women. Then rising he spoke to them.
“To you, O princess, my benefactress, I wish all manner of blessing. May
you be crowned with happy age, may your fame surpass Semiramis, the
conqueror queen of the fables, let the gods refuse only one prayer—the
conquest of Hellas. The rest of the world is yours, leave then to us our
own.”
“And you, sister of Mardonius,” he turned to Roxana now, “do not think I
despise your love or your beauty. That I have given you pain, is double
pain to me. But I loved you only in a dream. My life is not for the rose
valleys of Bactria, but for the stony hills by Athens. May Aphrodite give
you another love, a brighter fortune than might ever come by linking your
fate to mine.”
They held out their hands. He kissed them. He saw tears on the long lashes
of Roxana.
“Farewell,” spoke the women, simply.
“Farewell,” he answered. He turned from them. He knew they were
re-entering the tent. He never saw the women again.
Mardonius accompanied him all the long way from the fount of Callirhoë to
the sea-shore. Glaucon protested, but the bow-bearer would not hearken.
“You have saved my life, Athenian,” was his answer, “when you leave me
now, it is forever.”
The moon was lifting above the gloomy mass of Hymettus and scattering all
the Attic plain with her pale gold. The Acropolis Rock loomed high above
them. Glaucon, looking upward, saw the moonlight flash on the spear point
and shield of a soldier,—a Barbarian standing sentry on the ruined shrine
of the Virgin Goddess. Once more the Alcmæonid was leaving Athens, but
with very different thoughts than on that other night when he had fled at
Phormio’s side. They quitted the desolate city and the sleeping camp. The
last bars of day had long since dimmed in the west when before them loomed
the hill of Munychia clustered also with tents, and beyond it the
violet-black vista of the sea. A forest of masts crowded the havens, the
fleet of the “Lord of the World” that was to complete his mastery with the
returning sun. Mardonius did not lead Glaucon to the ports, but southward,
where beyond the little point of Colias spread an open sandy beach. The
night waves lapped softly. The wind had sunk to warm puffs from the
southward. They heard the rattle of anchor-chains and tackle-blocks, but
from far away. Beyond the vague promontory of Peiræus rose dark mountains
and headlands, at their foot lay a sprinkling of lights.
“Salamis!” cried Glaucon, pointing. “Yonder are the ships of Hellas.”
Mardonius walked with him upon the shelving shore. A skiff, small but
stanch, was ready with oars.
“What else will you?” asked the bow-bearer. “Gold?”
“Nothing. Yet take this.” Glaucon unclasped from his waist the golden belt
Xerxes had bestowed at Sardis. “A Hellene I went forth, a Hellene I
return.”
He made to kiss the Persian’s dress, but Mardonius would not suffer it.
“Did I not desire you for my brother?” he said, and they embraced. As
their arms parted, the bow-bearer spoke three words in earnest whisper:—
“Beware of Democrates.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can say no more. Yet be wise. Beware of Democrates.”
The attendants, faithful body-servants of Mardonius, and mute witnesses of
all that passed, were thrusting the skiff into the water. There were no
long farewells. Both knew that the parting was absolute, that Glaucon
might be dead on the morrow. A last clasping of the hands and quickly the
boat was drifting out upon the heaving waters. Glaucon stood one moment
watching the figures on the beach and pondering on Mardonius’s strange
warning. Then he set himself to the oars, rowing westward, skirting the
Barbarian fleet as it rode at anchor, observing its numbers and array and
how it was aligned for battle. After that, with more rapid stroke, he sent
the skiff across the dark ribbon toward Salamis.