The crier paused for the fifth time. The crowd—knotty Spartans, keen Athenians, perfumed Sicilians—pressed his pulpit closer, elbowing for the place of vantage. Amid a lull in their clamour the crier recommenced.
“And now, men of Hellas, another time hearken. The sixth contestant in the pentathlon, most honourable of the games held at the Isthmus, is Glaucon, son of Conon the Athenian; his grandfather—” a jangling shout drowned him.
“The most beautiful man in Hellas!” “But an effeminate puppy!” “Of the noble house of Alcmæon!” “The family’s accursed!” “A great god helps him—even Eros.” “Ay—the fool married for mere love. He needs help. His father disinherited him.”
“Peace, peace,” urged the crier; “I’ll tell all about him, as I have of the others. Know then, my masters, that he loved, and won in marriage, Hermione, daughter of Hermippus of Eleusis. Now Hermippus is Conon’s mortal enemy; therefore in great wrath Conon disinherited his son,—but now, consenting to forgive him if he wins the parsley crown in the pentathlon—”
“A safe promise,” interrupted a Spartan in broadest Doric; “the pretty boy has no chance against Lycon, our Laconian giant.”
“Boaster!” retorted an Athenian. “Did not Glaucon bend open a horseshoe yesterday?”
“Our Mœrocles did that,” called a Mantinean; whereupon the crier, foregoing his long speech on Glaucon’s noble ancestry, began to urge the Athenians to show their confidence by their wagers.
“How much is staked that Glaucon can beat Ctesias of Epidaurus?”
“We don’t match our lion against mice!” roared the noisiest Athenian.
“Or Amyntas of Thebes?”
“Not Amyntas! Give us Lycon of Sparta.”
“Lycon let it be,—how much is staked and by whom, that Glaucon of Athens, contending for the first time in the great games, defeats Lycon of Sparta, twice victor at Nemea, once at Delphi, and once at Olympia?”
The second rush and outcry put the crier nearly at his wits’ end to record the wagers that pelted him, and which testified how much confidence the numerous Athenians had in their unproved champion. The brawl of voices drew newcomers from far and near. The chariot race had just ended in the adjoining hippodrome; and the idle crowd, intent on a new excitement, came surging up like waves. In such a whirlpool of tossing arms and shoving elbows, he who was small of stature and short of breath stood a scanty chance of getting close enough to the crier’s stand to have his wager recorded. Such, at least, was the fate of a gray but dignified little man, who struggled vainly—even with risk to his long linen chiton—to reach the front.
“Ugh! ugh! Make way, good people,—Zeus confound you, brute of a Spartan, your big sandals crush my toes again! Can I never get near enough to place my two minæ on that Glaucon?”
“Keep back, graybeard,” snapped the Spartan; “thank the god if you can hold your money and not lose it, when Glaucon’s neck is wrung to-morrow.” Whereupon he lifted his own voice with, “Thirty drachmæ to place on Lycon, Master Crier! So you have it—”
“And two minæ on Glaucon,” piped the little man, peering up with bright, beady eyes; but the crier would never have heard him, save for a sudden ally.
“Who wants to stake on Glaucon?” burst in a hearty young Athenian who had wagered already. “You, worthy sir? Then by Athena’s owls they shall hear you! Lend us your elbow, Democrates.”
The latter request was to a second young Athenian close by. With his stalwart helpers thrusting at either side, the little man was soon close to the crier.
“Two minæ?” quoth the latter, leaning, “two that Glaucon beats Lycon, and at even odds? But your name, sir—”
The little man straightened proudly.
“Simonides of Ceos.”
The crowd drew back by magic. The most bristling Spartan grew respectful. The crier bowed as his ready stylus made the entry.
“Simonides of Ceos, Simonides the most noted poet in Hellas!” cried the first of his two rescuers; “it’s a great honour to have served so famous a man. Pray let me take your hand.”
“With all the joy in the world.” The little poet coloured with delight at the flattery. “You have saved me, I avow, from the forge and anvil of Hephæstus. What a vulgar mob! Do stand apart; then I can try to thank you.”
Aided again by his two protectors, Simonides was soon clear of the whirlpool. Under one of the graceful pines, which girded the long stadium, he recovered breath and looked at leisure upon his new acquaintances. Both were striking men, but in sharp contrast: the taller and darker showed an aquiline visage betraying a strain of non-Grecian blood. His black eyes and large mouth were very merry. He wore his green chiton with a rakishness that proved him anything but a dandy. His companion, addressed as Democrates, slighter, blonder, showed Simonides a handsome and truly Greek profile, set off by a neatly trimmed reddish beard. His purple-edged cloak fell in statuesque folds of the latest mode, his beryl signet-ring, scarlet fillet, and jewelled girdle bespoke wealth and taste. His face, too, might have seemed frank and affable, had not Simonides suddenly recalled an old proverb about mistrusting a man with eyes too close together.
“And now,” said the little poet, quite as ready to pay compliments as to take them, “let me thank my noble deliverers, for I am sure two such valorous young men as you must come of the best blood of Attica.”
“I am not ashamed of my father, sir,” spoke the taller Athenian; “Hellas has not yet forgotten Miltiades, the victor of Marathon.”
“Then I clasp the hand of Cimon, the son of the saviour of Hellas.” The little poet’s eyes danced. “Oh! the pity I was in Thessaly so long, and let you grow up in my absence. A noble son of a noble father! And your friend—did you name him Democrates?”
“I did so.”
“Fortunate old rascal I am! For I meet Cimon the son of Miltiades, and Democrates, that young lieutenant of Themistocles who all the world knows is gaining fame already as Nestor and Odysseus, both in one, among the orators of Athens.”
“Your compliments exceed all truth,” exclaimed the second Athenian, not at all angered by the praise. But Simonides, whose tongue was brisk, ran on with a torrent of flattery and of polite insinuation, until Cimon halted him, with a query.
“Yet why, dear Cean, since, as you say, you only arrived this afternoon at the Isthmus, were you so anxious to stake that money on Glaucon?”
“Why? Because I, like all Greece outside of Sparta, seem to be turning Glaucon-mad. All the way from Thessaly—in Bœotia, in Attica, in Megara—men talked of him, his beauty, his prowess, his quarrel with his father, his marriage with Hermione, the divinest maiden in Athens, and how he has gone to the games to win both the crown and crusty Conon’s forgiveness. I tell you, every mule-driver along the way seemed to have staked his obol on him. They praise him as ‘fair as Delian Apollo,’ ‘graceful as young Hermes,’ and—here I wonder most,—‘modest as an unwedded girl.’ ” Simonides drew breath, then faced the others earnestly, “You are Athenians; do you know him?”
“Know him?” Cimon laughed heartily; “have we not left him at the wrestling ground? Was not Democrates his schoolfellow once, his second self to-day? And touching his beauty, his valour, his modesty,” the young man’s eyes shone with loyal enthusiasm, “do not say ‘over-praised’ till you have seen him.”
Simonides swelled with delight.
“Oh, lucky genius that cast me with you! Take me to him this moment.”
“He is so beset with admirers, his trainers are angry already; besides, he is still at the wrestling ground.”
“But soon returns to his tents,” added Democrates, instantly; “and Simonides—is Simonides. If Themistocles and Leonidas can see Glaucon, so must the first poet of Hellas.”
“O dearest orator,” cried the little man, with an arm around his neck, “I begin to love you already. Away this moment, that I may worship your new divinity.”
“Come, then,” commanded Cimon, leading off with strides so long the bard could hardly follow; “his tent is not distant: you shall see him, though the trainers change to Gorgons.”
The “Precinct of Poseidon,” the great walled enclosure where were the temples, porticos, and the stadium of the Isthmus, was quickly behind them. They walked eastward along the sea-shore. The scene about was brisk enough, had they heeded. A dozen chariots passed. Under every tall pine along the way stood merchants’ booths, each with a goodly crowd. Now a herd of brown goats came, the offering of a pious Phocian; now a band of Aphrodite’s priestesses from Corinth whirled by in no overdecorous dance, to a deafening noise of citharas and castanets. A soft breeze was sending the brown-sailed fisher boats across the heaving bay. Straight before the three spread the white stuccoed houses of Cenchræa, the eastern haven of Corinth; far ahead in smooth semicircle rose the green crests of the Argive mountains, while to their right upreared the steep lonely pyramid of brown rock, Acro-Corinthus, the commanding citadel of the thriving city. But above, beyond these, fairer than them all, spread the clear, sun-shot azure of Hellas, the like whereof is not over any other land, save as that land is girt by the crisp foam of the blue Ægean Sea.
So much for the picture, but Simonides, having seen it often, saw it not at all, but plied the others with questions.
“So this Hermione of his is beautiful?”
“Like Aphrodite rising from the sea foam.” The answer came from Democrates, who seemed to look away, avoiding the poet’s keen glance.
“And yet her father gave her to the son of his bitter enemy?”
“Hermippus of Eleusis is sensible. It is a fine thing to have the handsomest man in Hellas for son-in-law.”
“And now to the great marvel—did Glaucon truly seek her not for dowry, nor rank, but for sheer love?”
“Marriages for love are in fashion to-day,” said Democrates, with a side glance at Cimon, whose sister Elpinice had just made a love match with Callias the Rich, to the scandal of all the prudes in Athens.
“Then I meet marvels even in my old age. Another Odysseus and his Penelope! And he is handsome, valiant, high-minded, with a wife his peer? You raise my hopes too high. They will be dashed.”
“They will not,” protested Democrates, with every sign of loyalty; “turn here: this lane in the pines leads to his tent. If we have praised too much, doom us to the labours of Tantalus.”
But here their progress was stopped. A great knot of people were swarming about a statue under a pine tree, and shrill, angry voices proclaimed not trafficking, but a brawl.
