"You are from Athens, beautiful Hellene," spoke Xerxes, still admiring the stranger. "I will question you. Let Mardonius interpret."

"I have learned Persian, great sir," interposed Glaucon, never waiting for the bow-bearer.

"You have done well," rejoined the smiling monarch; "yet better had you learned our Aryan manners of courtliness. No matter—you will learn them likewise in good time. Now tell me your name and parentage."

"I am Glaucon, son of Conon, of the house of the Alcmaeonidae."

"Great nobles, Omnipotence," interposed Mardonius, "so far as nobility can be reckoned among the Greeks."

"I have yet to learn their genealogies," remarked Xerxes, dryly; then he turned back to Glaucon. "And do your parents yet live, and have you any brethren?" The question was a natural one for an Oriental. Glaucon's answer came with increased pride.

"I am a child of my parent's old age. My mother is dead. My father is feeble. I have no brethren. Two older brothers I had. One fell here at Sardis, when we Athenians sacked the city. One fell victorious at Marathon, while he burned a Persian ship. Therefore I am not ashamed of their fates."

"Your tongue is bold, Hellene," said the good-natured king; "you are but a lame courtier. No matter. Tell me, nevertheless, why you churlishly refuse to do me reverence. Do you set yourself above all these princes of the Persians who bow before me?"

"Not so, great sir. But I was born at Athens, not at Susa. We Hellenes pray standing even to Zeus, stretching forth our hands and looking upward. Can I honour the lord of all the satrapies above the highest god?"

"A nimble tongue you have, Athenian, though an unbending neck." Xerxes sat and stroked his beard, pleased at the frank reply. "Mardonius has told how you saved his and my sister's lives, and that you are an outlaw from Athens."

"The last is all too true, great sir."

"Which means you will not pray your gods too hard for my defeat? ha?"

Glaucon blushed, then looked up boldly.

"A Persian king, I know, loves truth-telling. I still love and pray for Athens, even if unknown enemies conspired against me."

"Humph! You can learn our other virtues later. Are you blind to my power? If so, I pity more than I blame you."

"The king is kind," returned Glaucon, putting by a part of his hauteur. "I would not anger him. I only know he would rather have men say, 'Xerxes conquered a proud nation, hard to subdue,' than, 'He conquered a feeble race of whining slaves.' "

"Excellent! In all save your vain confidence of victory, you seem wise beyond your youth. You are handsome. You are noble—"

"Very noble," interposed Mardonius.

"And you saved the lives of Mardonius and Artazostra. Did you know their nobility when you rescued them?"

"Not so. I would not let them drown like sheep."

"The better, then. You acted without low motive of reward. Yet let the day never come when Xerxes is called 'ungrateful' for benefits done his servants. You shall come to love me by beholding my magnanimity. I will make you a Persian, despite your will. Have you seen battle?"

"I was too young to bear a spear at Marathon," was the unflinching answer.

"Learn then to wield it in another army. Where is the archsecretary?"

That functionary was present instantly. Mardonius, taking the whispers of the king, dictated an order which the scribe stamped on his tablet of wet clay with a rapid stylus.

"Now the chief proclaimer," was the king's order, which brought a tall man in a bright scarlet caftan salaaming to the dais.

He took the tablet from the secretary and gave a resounding blow upon the brass gong dangling from his elbow. The clatter of wine cups ceased. The drinkers were silent on pain of death. The herald sent his proclamation in stentorian voice down the hall:—

"In the name of Xerxes the Achaemenian, king of kings, king of Persia, Media, Babylon, and Lydia; smiter of the Scythians, dominator of the Indians, terror of the Hellenes; to all peoples of the world his slaves,—hear ye!

"Says Xerxes the king, whose word changes not. Forasmuch as Glaucon the Athenian did save from death my servant and my sister, Mardonius and Artazostra, I do enroll him among the 'Benefactors of the King,' a sharer of my bounty forever. Let his name henceforth be not Glaucon, but Prexaspes. Let my purple cap be touched upon his head. Let him be given the robe of honour and the girdle of honour. Let the treasurer pay him a talent of gold. Let my servants honour him. Let those who mock at him be impaled. And this I proclaim as my decree."

What followed Glaucon was too bewildered to recall clearly. He knew that the archchamberlain lifted the great jewel-crusted hat from the king's head and set it on his own for an instant, that they brought him a flowing purple robe, and clasped about his waist a golden belt, every link set with a stone of price. The hall arose en masse to drink to the man whom the sovran delighted to honour.

"Hail! Thrice hail to the Lord Prexaspes! Justly rewarded by our gracious king!"

No man refused his plaudit, and Glaucon never knew how many envious courtiers cheered with their lips and in their hearts muttered dark things against "the manner in which his Majesty loved to play the god and promote this unknown Hellene above the heads of so many faithful subjects."

Glaucon had made shift to speak some words of deprecation and gratitude to royalty; his bow was deeper when the supreme usher led him away from the throne than when he approached it. As he made his way out of the banqueting hall, a score of noblemen, captains of thousands, over-eunuchs, and more trailed at his heels, salaaming, fawning, congratulating, offering all manner of service. Not on the days following his victory at the Isthmia had his head been in such a whirl. He hardly heard the well-meant warning which Artabanus, the shrewd old vizier, gave as he passed the door of the great hall.

"Play the game well, my new Lord Prexaspes. The king can make you satrap or he can crucify you. Play the game well, the stakes are high."

Neither did he hear the conversation betwixt Xerxes and the bow-bearer whilst he was being conducted away.

"Have I done well to honour this man, Mardonius?"

"Your Eternity was never more wise. Bear with his uncourtliness now, for he is truthful, upright, and noble in soul—qualities rare in a Hellene. Give me but time. I will make him a worthy Persian indeed."

"Do not fail therein," ordered the monarch, "for the youth has such beauty, both of body and mind, I am grieved he was born in Athens. Yet there is one short way to wean him from his doomed and miserable country."

"Will Omnipotence but name it?"

"Search out for him a Persian wife, no, three or four wives—although I have heard the custom of these witless Greeks is to be content with only one. There is no surer way to turn his heart than that."

"I thank your Eternity for your commandment. It shall not be forgotten."

Mardonius bowed himself. Xerxes called for more wine. The feast lasted late and ended in an orgy.



CHAPTER XVII

THE CHARMING BY ROXANA

Glaucon's longing for the old life ebbed and flowed. Sometimes the return of memory maddened him. Who had done it?—had forged that damning letter and then hid it with Seuthes? Themistocles? Impossible. Democrates?—"the friend with the understanding heart no less than a brother dear," as Homer said? More impossible. An unknown enemy, then, had stolen the fleet order from Themistocles? But what man had hated Glaucon? One answer remained,—unwittingly the athlete had offended some god, forgotten some vow, or by sheer good fortune had awakened divine jealousy. Poseidon had been implacable toward Odysseus, Athena toward Hector, Artemis toward Niobe,—Glaucon could only pray that his present welcome amongst the Persians might not draw down another outburst of Heaven's anger.

More than all else was the keen longing for Hermione. He saw her in the night. Vainly, amidst the storms of the gathering war, he had sought a messenger to Athens. In this he dared ask no help from Mardonius. Then almost from the blue a bolt fell that made him wish to tear Hermione from his heart.

A Carian slave, a trusted steward at the Athenian silver mines of Laurium, had loved his liberty and escaped to Sardis. The Persians questioned him eagerly, for he knew all the gossip of Athens. Glaucon met the runaway, who did not know then who he was, so many Greek refugees were always fluttering around the king's court. The Carian told of a new honour for Democrates.

"He is elected strategus for next year because of his proud patriotism. There is talk, too, of a more private bit of good fortune."

"What is it?"

"That he has made successful suit to Hermippus of Eleusis for his daughter,—the widow of Glaucon, the dead outlaw. They say the marriage follows at the end of the year of mourning—Sir, you are not well!"

"I was never better." But the other had turned ashen. He quitted the Carian abruptly and shut himself in his chamber. It was good that he wore no sword. He might have slain himself.

Yet, he communed in his heart, was it not best? Was he not dead to Athens? Must Hermione mourn him down to old age? And whom better could she take than Democrates, the man who had sacrificed even friendship for love of country?

Artabanus, the vizier, gave a great feast that night. They drank the pledge, "Victory to the king, destruction to his enemies." The lords all looked on Glaucon to see if he would touch the cup. He drank deeply. They applauded him. He remained long at the wine, the slaves bore him home drunken. In the morning Mardonius said Xerxes ordered him to serve in the cavalry guards, a post full of honour and chance for promotion. Glaucon did not resist. Mardonius sent him a silvered cuirass and a black horse from the steppes of Bactria,—fleet as the north wind. In his new armour he went to the chambers of Artazostra and Roxana. They had never seen him in panoply before. The brilliant mail became him rarely. The ladies were delighted.

"You grow Persian apace, my Lord Prexaspes,"—Roxana always called him by his new name now,—"soon we shall hail you as 'your Magnificence' the satrap of Parthia or Asia or some other kingly province in the East."

"I do well to become Persian," he answered bitterly, unmoved by the admiration, "for yesterday I heard that which makes it more than ever manifest that Glaucon the Athenian is dead. And whether he shall ever rise to live again, Zeus knoweth; but from me it is hid."

Artazostra did not approach, but Roxana came near, as if to draw the buckle of the golden girdle—the gift of Xerxes. He saw the turquoise shining on the tiara that bound her jet-black hair, the fine dark profile of her face, her delicate nostrils, the sweep of drapery that half revealed the form so full of grace. Was there more than passing friendship in the tone with which she spoke to him?

"You have heard from Athens?"

"Yes."

"And the tidings were evil."

"Why call them evil, princess? My friends all believe me dead. Can they mourn for me forever? They can forget me, alas! more easily than I in my lonesomeness can forget them."

"You are very lonely?"—the hand that drew the buckle worked slowly. How soft it was, how delicately the Nile sun had tinted it!

"Do you say you have no friends? None? Not in Sardis? Not among the Persians?"

"I said not that, dear lady,—but when can a man have more than one native country?—and mine is Attica, and Attica is far away."

"And you can never have another? Can new friendships never take the place of those that lie forever dead?"

"I do not know."

"Ah, believe, new home, new friends, new love, are more than possible, will you but open your heart to suffer them."

The voice both thrilled and trembled now, then suddenly ceased. The colour sprang into Roxana's forehead. Glaucon bowed and kissed her hand. It seemed to rise to his lips very willingly.

"I thank you for your fair hopes. Farewell." That was all he said, but as he went forth from Roxana's presence, the pang of the tidings brought by the Carian seemed less keen.

* * * * * * *

The hosts gathered daily. Xerxes spent his time in dicing, hunting, drinking, or amusing himself with his favourite by-play, wood-carving. He held a few solemn state councils, at which he appeared to determine all things and was actually guided by Artabanus and Mardonius. Now, at last, all the colossal machinery which was to crush down Hellas was being set in motion. Glaucon learned how futile was Themistocles's hope of succour to Athens from the Sicilian Greeks, for,—thanks to Mardonius's indefatigable diplomacy,—it was arranged that the Phoenicians of Carthage should launch a powerful armament against the Sicilians, the same moment Xerxes descended on Sparta and Athens. With calm satisfaction Mardonius watched the completion of his efforts. All was ready,—the army of hundreds of thousands, the twelve hundred war-ships, the bridges across the Hellespont, the canal at Mt. Athos. Glaucon's admiration for the son of Gobryas grew apace. Xerxes was the outward head of the attack on Hellas. Mardonius was the soul. He was the idol of the army—its best archer and rider. Unlike his peers, he maintained no huge harem of jealous concubines and conspiring eunuchs. Artazostra he worshipped. Roxana he loved. He had no time for other women. No servant of Xerxes seemed outwardly more obedient than he. Night and day he wrought for the glory of Persia. Therefore, Glaucon looked on him with dread. In him Themistocles and Leonidas would find a worthy foeman.

Daily Glaucon felt the Persian influence stealing upon him. He grew even accustomed to think of himself under his new name. Greeks were about him: Demaratus, the outlawed "half-king" of Sparta, and the sons of Hippias, late tyrant of Athens. He scorned the company of these renegades. Yet sometimes he would ask himself wherein was he better than they,—had Democrates's accusation been true, could he have asked a greater reward from the Barbarian? And what he would do on the day of battle he did not dare to ask of his own soul.

* * * * * * *

Xerxes left Sardis with the host amidst the same splendour with which he had entered. Glaucon rode in the Life Guard, and saw royalty frequently, for the king loved to meet handsome men. Once he held the stirrup as Xerxes dismounted—an honour which provoked much envious grumbling. Artazostra and Roxana travelled in their closed litters with the train of women and eunuchs which followed every Persian army. Thus the myriads rolled onward through Lydia and Mysia, drinking the rivers dry by their numbers; and across the immortal plains of Troy passed that army which was destined to do and suffer greater things than were wrought beside the poet-sung Simois and Scamander, till at last they came to the Hellespont, the green river seven furlongs wide, that sundered conquered Asia from the Europe yet to be conquered.

Here were the two bridges of ships, more than three hundred in each, held by giant cables, and which upbore a firm earthen road, protected by a high bulwark, that the horses and camels might take no fright at the water. Here, also, the fleet met them,—the armaments of the East, Phoenicians, Cilicians, Egyptians, Cyprians,—more triremes and transports than had ever before ridden upon the seas. And as he saw all this power, all directed by one will, Glaucon grew even more despondent. How could puny, faction-rent Hellas bear up against this might? Only when he looked on the myriads passing, and saw how the captains swung long whips and cracked the lash across the backs of their spearmen, as over driven cattle, did a little comfort come. For he knew there was still a fire in Athens and Sparta, a fire not in Susa nor in Babylon, which kindled free souls and free hands to dare and do great things. "Whom will the high Zeus prosper when the slaves of Xerxes stand face to face with men?"

A proud thought,—but it ceased to comfort him, as all that afternoon he stood near the marble throne of the "Lord of the World," whence Xerxes overlooked his myriads while they filed by, watched the races of swift triremes, and heard the proud assurances of his officers that "no king since the beginning of time, not Thothmes of Egypt, not Sennacherib of Assyria, not Cyrus nor Darius, had arrayed such hosts as his that day."

Then evening came. Glaucon was, after his wont, in the private pavilion of Mardonius,—itself a palace walled with crimson tapestry in lieu of marble. He sat silent and moody for long, the bright fence of the ladies or of the bow-bearer seldom moving him to answer. And at last Artazostra could endure it no more.

"What has tied your tongue, Prexaspes? Surely my brother in one of his pleasantries has not ordered that it be cut out? Your skin is too fair to let you be enrolled amongst his Libyan mutes."

The Hellene answered with a pitiful attempt at laughter.

"Silent, am I? Then silent because I am admiring your noble ladyship's play of wit."

Artazostra shook her head.

"Impossible. Your eyes were glazed like the blue of Egyptian beads. You were not listening to me. You were seeing sights and hearkening to voices far away."

"You press me hard, lady," he confessed; "how can I answer? No man is master of his roving thoughts,—at least, not I."

"You were seeing Athens. Are you so enamoured of your stony country that you believe no other land can be so fair?"

"Stony it is, lady,—you have seen it,—but there is no sun like the sun that gilds the Acropolis; no birds sing like the nightingales from the grove by the Cephissus; no trees speak with the murmur of the olives at Colonus, or on the hill slope at Eleusis-by-the-Sea. I can answer you in the words of Homer, the singer of Hellas, the words he sets on the tongue of a wanderer and outcast, even as I. 'A rugged land, yet nurse of noble men, and for myself I can see naught sweeter than a man's own country.' "

The praise of his native land had brought the colour into the cheeks of the Athenian, his voice rose to enthusiasm. He knew that Roxana was watching him intently.

"Beautiful it must be, dear Hellene," she spoke, as she sat upon the footstool below the couch of her brother, "yet you have not seen all the world. You have not seen the mystic Nile, Memphis, Thebes, and Sais, our wondrous cities; have not seen how the sun rises over the desert, how it turns the sand hills to red gold, how at sunset the cliffs glow like walls of beryl and sard and golden jasper."

"Tell then of Egypt," said Glaucon, clearly taking pleasure in the music of her voice.

"Not to-night. I have praised it before. Rather I will praise also the rose valleys of Persia and Bactria, whither Mardonius took me after my dear father died."

"Are they very beautiful also?"

"Beautiful as the Egyptian's House of the Blessed, for those who have passed the dread bar of Osiris; beautiful as Airyana-Vaeya, the home land of the Aryans, whence Ahura-Mazda sent them forth. The winters are short, the summers bright and long. Neither too much rain nor burning heat. The Paradise by Sardis is nothing beside them. One breathes in the roses, and hearkens to the bulbuls—our Aryan nightingales—all day and all night long. The streams bubble with cool water. At Susa the palace is fairer than word may tell. Hither the court comes each summer from the tedious glories of Babylon. The columns of the palace reach up to heaven, but no walls engirdle them, only curtains green, white, and blue,—whilst the warm sweet breeze blows always thither from green prairies."

"You draw a picture fair as the plains of Elysium, dear lady," spoke Glaucon, his own gaze following the light that burned in hers, "and yet I would not seek refuge even in the king's court with all its beauty. There are times when I long to pray the god, 'Give to me wings, eagle wings from Zeus's own bird, and let me go to the ends of the earth, and there in some charmed valley I may find at last the spring of Lethe water, the water of forgetfulness that gives peace.' "

Roxana looked on him; pity was in her eyes, and he knew he was taking pleasure in her pitying.

"The magic water you ask is not to be drunk from goblets," she answered him, "but the charmed valley lies in the vales of Bactria, the 'Roof of the World,' high amid mountains crowned with immortal snows. Every good tree and flower are here, and here winds the mystic Oxus, the great river sweeping northward. And here, if anywhere, on Mazda's wide, green earth, can the trouble-tossed have peace."

"Then it is so beautiful?" said the Athenian.

"Beautiful," answered Mardonius and Artazostra together. And Roxana, with an approving nod from her brother, arose and crossed the tent where hung a simple harp.

"Will my Lord Prexaspes listen," she asked, "if I sing him one of the homely songs of the Aryans in praise of the vales by the Oxus? My skill is small."

"It should suffice to turn the heart of Persephone, even as did Orpheus," answered the Athenian, never taking his gaze from her.

The soft light of the swinging lamps, the heavy fragrance of the frankincense which smouldered on the brazier, the dark lustre of the singer's eyes—all held Glaucon as by a spell. Roxana struck the harp. Her voice was sweet, and more than desire to please throbbed through the strings and song.

"O far away is gliding The pleasant Oxus's stream, I see the green glades darkling, I see the clear pools gleam. I hear the bulbuls calling From blooming tree to tree. Wave, bird, and tree are singing, 'Away! ah, come with me!'

"By Oxus's stream is rising Great Cyrus's marble halls; Like rain of purest silver, His tinkling fountain falls; To his cool verdant arbours What joy with thee to flee. I'll join with bird and river, 'Away! rest there with me!'

"Forget, forget old sorrows, Forget the dear things lost! There comes new peace, new brightness, When darksome waves are crossed; By Oxus's streams abiding, From pang and strife set free, I'll teach thee love and gladness,— Rest there, for aye, with me!"

The light, the fragrance, the song so pregnant with meaning, all wrought upon Glaucon of Athens. He felt the warm glow in his cheeks; he felt subtle hands outstretching as if drawing forth his spirit. Roxana's eyes were upon him as she ended. Their gaze met. She was very fair, high-born, sensitive. She was inviting him to put away Glaucon the outcast from Hellas, to become body and soul Prexaspes the Persian, "Benefactor of the King," and sharer in all the glories of the conquering race. All the past seemed slipping away from him as unreal. Roxana stood before him in her dark Oriental beauty; Hermione was in Athens—and they were giving her in marriage to Democrates. What wonder he felt no mastery of himself, though all that day he had kept from wine?

"A simple song," spoke Mardonius, who seemed marvellously pleased at all his sister did, "yet not lacking its sweetness. We Aryans are without the elaborate music the Greeks and Babylonians affect."

"Simplicity is the highest beauty," answered the Greek, as if still in his trance, "and when I hear Euphrosyne, fairest of the Graces, sing with the voice of Erato, the Song-Queen, I grow afraid. For a mortal may not hear things too divine and live."

Roxana replaced the harp and made one of her inimitable Oriental courtesies,—a token at once of gratitude and farewell for the evening. Glaucon never took his gaze from her, until with a rustle and sweep of her blue gauze she had glided out of the tent. He did not see the meaning glances exchanged by Mardonius and Artazostra before the latter left them.

When the two men were alone, the bow-bearer asked a question.

"Dear Prexaspes, do you not think I should bless the twelve archangels I possess so beautiful a sister?"

"She is so fair, I wonder that Zeus does not haste from Olympus to enthrone her in place of Hera."

The bow-bearer laughed.

"No, I crave for her only a mortal husband. Though there are few in Persia, in Media, in the wide East, to whom I dare entrust her. Perhaps,"—his laugh grew lighter,—"I would do well to turn my eyes westward."

Glaucon did not see Roxana again the next day nor for several following, but in those days he thought much less on Hermione and on Athens.



CHAPTER XVIII

DEMOCRATES'S TROUBLES RETURN

All through that year to its close and again to the verge of springtime the sun made violet haze upon the hills and pure fire of the bay at Eleusis-by-the-Sea. Night by night the bird song would be stilled in the old olives along the dark waters. There Hermione would sit looking off into the void, as many another in like plight has sat and wearily waited, asking of the night and the sea the questions that are never answered. As the bay shimmered under the light of morning, she could gaze toward the brown crags of Salamis and the open AEgean beyond. The waves kept their abiding secret. The tall triremes, the red-sailed fishers' boats, came and went from the havens of Athens, but Hermione never saw the ship that had borne away her all.

The roar and scandal following the unmasking of Glaucon had long since abated. Hermippus—himself full five years grayer on account of the calamity—had taken his daughter again to quiet Eleusis, where there was less to remind her of that terrible night at Colonus. She spent the autumn and winter in an unbroken shadow life, with only her mother and old Cleopis for companions. Reasons not yet told to the world gave her a little hope and comfort. But in mere desire to make her dark cloud break, her parents were continually giving Hermione pain. She guessed it long before her father's wishes passed beyond vaguest hints. She heard him praising Democrates, his zeal for Athens and Hellas, his fair worldly prospects, and there needed no diviner to reveal Hermippus's hidden meaning. Once she overheard Cleopis talking with another maid.

"Her Ladyship has taken on terribly, to be sure, but I told her mother 'when a fire blazes too hot, it burns out simply the faster.' Democrates is just the man to console in another year."

"Yes," answered the other wiseacre, "she's far too young and pretty to stay unwedded very long. Aphrodite didn't make her to sit as an old maid carding wool and munching beans. One can see Hermippus's and Lysistra's purpose with half an eye."

"Cleopis, Nania, what is this vile tattling that I hear?"

The young mistress's eyes blazed fury. Nania turned pale. Hermione was quite capable of giving her a sound whipping, but Cleopis mustered a bold front and a ready lie:

"Ei! dear little lady, don't flash up so! I was only talking with Nania about how Phryne the scullion maid was making eyes at Scylax the groom."

"I heard you quite otherwise," was the nigh tremulous answer. But Hermione was not anxious to push matters to an issue. From the moment of Glaucon's downfall she had believed—what even her own mother had mildly derided—that Democrates had been the author of her husband's ruin. And now that the intent of her parents ever more clearly dawned on her, she was close upon despair. Hermippus, however,—whatever his purpose,—was considerate, nay kindly. He regarded Hermione's feelings as pardonable, if not laudable. He would wait for time to soothe her. But the consciousness that her father purposed such a fate for her, however far postponed, was enough to double all the unanswered longing, the unstilled pain.

Glaucon was gone. And with him gone, could Hermione's sun ever rise again? Could she hope, across the end of the aeons, to clasp hands even in the dim House of Hades with her glorious husband? If there was chance thereof, dark Hades would grow bright as Olympus. How gladly she would fare out to the shade land, when Hermes led down his troops of helpless dead.

"Downward, down the long dark pathway, Past Oceanus's great streams, Past the White Rock, past the Sun's gates Downward to the land of Dreams: There they reach the wide dim borders Of the fields of asphodel, Where the spectres and the spirits Of wan, outworn mortals dwell."

But was this the home of Glaucon the Fair; should the young, the strong, the pure in heart, share one condemnation with the mean and the guilty? Homer the Wise left all hid. Yet he told of some not doomed to the common lot. Thus ran the promise to Menelaus, espoused to Helen.

"Far away the gods shall bear you: To the fair Elysian plains, Where the time fleets gladly, swiftly, Where bright Rhadamanthus reigns: Snow is not, nor rain, nor winter, But clear zephyrs from the west, Singing round the streams of Ocean Round the islands of the Blest."

Was the pledge for Menelaus only?

The boats came, the boats went, on the blue bay. But as the spring grew warm, Hermione thought less of them, less almost of the last dread vision of Glaucon.

* * * * * * *

The cloud of the Persian hung ever darkening over Athens. Continual rumours made Xerxes's power terrible even beyond fact. It was hard to go on eating, drinking, frequenting the jury or the gymnasium, when men knew to a certainty the coming summer would bring Athens face to face with slavery or destruction. Wise men grew silent. Fools took to carousing to banish care. But one word not the frailest uttered—"submission." Worldly prudence forbade that. The women would have stabbed the craven to death with their bodkins. For the women were braver than the men. They knew the fate of conquered Ionia: for the men only merciful death, for the women the living death of the Persian harems and indignities words may not utter. Whether Hellas forsook her or aided, Athens had chosen her fate. Xerxes might annihilate her. Conquer her he could not.

Yet the early spring came back sweetly as ever. The warm breeze blew from Egypt. Philomela sang in the olive groves. The snows on Pentelicus faded. Around the city ran bands of children singing the "swallow's song," and beseeching the spring donation of honey cakes:—

"She is here, she is here, the swallow; Fair seasons bringing,—fair seasons to follow."

And many a housewife, as she rewarded the singers, dropped a silent tear, wondering whether another spring would see the innocents anywhere save in a Persian slave-pen, or, better fate, in Orchus.

Yet to one woman that spring there came consolation. On Hermippus's door hung a glad olive wreath. Hermione had borne a son. "The fairest babe she had ever seen," cried the midwife. "Phoenix," the mother called him, "for in him shall Glaucon the Beautiful live again." Democrates sent a runner every day to Eleusis to inquire for Hermione until all danger was passed. On the "name-day," ten days after the birth, he was absent from the gathering of friends and kinsmen, but sent a valuable statuette to Hermione, who left it, however, to her father to thank him.

The day after Phoenix was born old Conon, Glaucon's father, died. The old man had never recovered from the blow given by the dishonourable death of the son with whom he had so lately quarrelled. He left a great landed estate at Marathon to his new-born grandson. The exact value thereof Democrates inquired into sharply, and when a distant cousin talked of contesting the will, the orator announced he would defend the infant's rights. The would-be plaintiff withdrew at once, not anxious to cross swords with this favourite of the juries, and everybody said that Democrates was showing a most scrupulous regard for his unfortunate friend's memory.

Indeed, seemingly, Democrates ought to have been the happiest man in Athens. He had been elected "strategus," to serve on the board of generals along with Themistocles. He had plenty of money, and gave great banquets to this or that group of prominent citizens. During the winter he had asked Hermippus for his daughter in marriage. The Eumolpid told him that since Glaucon's fearful end, he was welcome as a son-in-law. Still he could not conceal that Hermione never spoke of him save in hate, and in view of her then delicate condition it was well not to press the matter. The orator had seemed well content. "Woman's fantasies would wear away in time." But the rumour of this negotiation, outrunning truth, grew into the lying report of an absolute betrothal,—the report which was to drift to Asia and turn Glaucon's heart to stone, gossip having always wrought more harm than malignant lying.

Yet flies were in Democrates's sweet ointment. He knew Themistocles hardly trusted him as frankly as of yore. Little Simonides, a man of wide influence and keen insight, treated him very coldly. Cimon had cooled also. But worse than all was a haunting dread. Democrates knew, if hardly another in Hellas, that the Cyprian—in other words Mardonius—was safe in Asia, and likewise that he had fled on the Solon. Mardonius, then, had escaped the storm. What if the same miracle had saved the outlaw? What if the dead should awake? The chimera haunted Democrates night and day.

Still he was beginning to shake off his terrors. He believed he had washed his hands fairly clean of his treason, even if the water had cost his soul. He joined with all his energies in seconding Themistocles. His voice was loudest at the Pnyx, counselling resistance. He went on successful embassies to Sicyon and AEgina to get pledges of alliance. In the summer he did his uttermost to prepare the army which Themistocles and Evaenetus the Spartan led to defend the pass of Tempe. The expedition sailed amid high hopes for a noble defence of Hellas. Democrates was proud and sanguine. Then, like a thunderbolt, there came one night a knock at his door. Bias led to his master no less a visitor than the sleek and smiling Phoenician—Hiram.

The orator tried to cover his terrors by windy bluster. He broke in before the Oriental could finish his elaborate salaam.

"Of all the harpies and gorgons you are the least welcome. Were you not warned when you fled Athens for Argos never to show your face in Attica again?"

"Your Excellency said so," was the bland reply.

"Admirably you obey it. It remains for me to reward the obedience. Bias, go to the street; summon two Scythian watchmen."

The Thracian darted out. Hiram simply stood with hands folded.

"It is well, Excellency, the lad is gone. I have many things to say in confidence to your Nobility. At Lacedaemon my Lord Lycon was gracious enough to give certain commands for me to transmit to you."

"Commands? To me? Earth and gods! am I to be commanded by an adder like you? You shall pay for this on the rack."

"Your slave thinks otherwise," observed Hiram, humbly. "If your Lordship will deign to read this letter, it will save your slave many words and your Lordship many cursings."

He knelt again before he offered a papyrus. Democrates would rather have taken fire, but he could not refuse. And thus he read:—

"Lycon of Lacedaemon to Democrates of Athens, greeting:—Can he who Medizes in the summer Hellenize in the spring? I know your zeal for Themistocles. Was it for this we plucked you back from exposure and ruin? Do then as Hiram bids you, or repay the money you clutched so eagerly. Fail not, or rest confident all the documents you betrayed shall go to Hypsichides the First Archon, your enemy. Use then your eloquence on Attic juries! But you will grow wise; what need of me to threaten? You will hearken to Hiram.

"From Sparta, on the festival of Bellerophon, in the ephorship of Theudas.—Chaire!"

Democrates folded the papyrus and stood long, biting his whitened lips in silence. Perhaps he had surmised the intent of the letter the instant Hiram extended it.

"What do you desire?" he said thickly, at last.

"Let my Lord then hearken—" began the Phoenician, to be interrupted by the sudden advent of Bias.

"The Scythians are at the door, kyrie," he was shouting; "shall I order them in and drag this lizard out by the tail?"

"No, in Zeus's name, no! Bid them keep without. And do you go also. This honest fellow is on private business which only I must hear."

Bias slammed the door. Perhaps he stood listening. Hiram, at least, glided nearer to his victim and spoke in a smooth whisper, taking no chances of an eavesdropper.

"Excellency, the desire of Lycon is this. The army has been sent to Tempe. At Lacedaemon Lycon used all his power to prevent its despatch, but Leonidas is omnipotent to-day in Sparta, and besides, since Lycon's calamity at the Isthmia, his prestige, and therefore his influence, is not a little abated. Nevertheless, the army must be recalled from Tempe."

"And the means?"

"Yourself, Excellency. It is within your power to find a thousand good reasons why Themistocles and Evaenetus should retreat. And you will do so at once, Excellency."

"Do not think you and your accursed masters can drive me from infamy to infamy. I can be terrible if pushed to bay."

"Your Nobility has read Lycon's letter," observed the Phoenician, with folded arms.

There was a sword lying on the tripod by which Democrates stood; he regretted for all the rest of his life that he had not seized it and ended the snakelike Oriental then and there. The impulse came, and went. The opportunity never returned. The orator's head dropped down upon his breast.

"Go back to Sparta, go back instantly," he spoke in a hoarse whisper. "Tell that Polyphemus you call your master there that I will do his will. And tell him, too, that if ever the day comes for vengeance on him, on the Cyprian, on you,—my vengeance will be terrible."

"Your slave's ears hear the first part of your message with joy,"—Hiram's smile never grew broader,—"the second part, which my Lord speaks in anger,—I will forget."

"Go! go!" ordered the orator, furiously. He clapped his hands. Bias reentered.

"Tell the constables I don't need them. Here is an obol apiece for their trouble. Conduct this man out. If he comes hither again, do you and the other slaves beat him till there is not a whole spot left on his body."

Hiram's genuflexion was worthy of Xerxes's court.

"My Lord, as always," was his parting compliment, "has shown himself exceeding wise."

Thus the Oriental went. In what a mood Democrates passed the remaining day needs only scant wits to guess. Clearer, clearer in his ears was ringing AEschylus's song of the Furies. He could not silence it.

"With scourge and with ban We prostrate the man Who with smooth-woven wile And a fair-faced smile Hath planted a snare for his friend! Though fleet, we shall find him; Though strong, we shall bind him, Who planted a snare for his friend!"

He had intended to be loyal to Hellas,—to strive valiantly for her freedom,—and now! Was the Nemesis coming upon him, not in one great clap, but stealthily, finger by finger, cubit by cubit, until his soul's price was to be utterly paid? Was this the beginning of the recompense for the night scene at Colonus?

The next morning he made a formal visit to the shrine of the Furies in the hill of Areopagus. "An old vow, too long deferred in payment, taken when he joined in his first contest on the Bema," he explained to friends, when he visited this uncanny spot.

Few were the Athenians who would pass that cleft in the Areopagus where the "Avengers" had their grim sanctuary without a quick motion of the hands to avert the evil eye. Thieves and others of evil conscience would make a wide circuit rather than pass this abode of Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, pitiless pursuers of the guilty. The terrible sisters hounded a man through life, and after death to the judgment bar of Minos. With reason, therefore, the guilty dreaded them.

Democrates had brought the proper sacrifices—two black rams, which were duly slaughtered upon the little altar before the shrine and sprinkled with sweetened water. The priestess, a gray hag herself, asked her visitor if he would enter the cavern and proffer his petition to the mighty goddesses. Leaving his friends outside, the orator passed through the door which the priestess seemed to open in the side of the cave. He saw only a jagged, unhewn cranny, barely tall enough for a man to stand upright and reaching far into the sculptured rock. No image: only a few rough votive tablets set up by a grateful suppliant for some mercy from the awful goddesses.

"If you would pray here, kyrie," said the hag, "it is needful that I go forth and close the door. The holy Furies love the dark, for is not their home in Tartarus?"

She went forth. As the light vanished, Democrates seemed buried in the rock. Out of the blackness spectres were springing against him. From a cleft he heard a flapping, a bat, an imprisoned bird, or Alecto's direful wings. He held his hands downward, for he had to address infernal goddesses, and prayed in haste.

"O ye sisters, terrible yet gracious, give ear. If by my offerings I have found favour, lift from my heart this crushing load. Deliver me from the fear of the blood guilty. Are ye not divine? Do not the immortals know all things? Ye know, then, how I was tempted, how sore was the compulsion, and how life and love were sweet. Then spare me. Give me back unhaunted slumber. Deliver me from Lycon. Give my soul peace,—and in reward, I swear it by the Styx, by Zeus's own oath, I will build in your honour a temple by your sacred field at Colonus, where men shall gather to reverence you forever."

But here he ceased. In the darkness moved something white. Again a flapping. He was sure the white thing was Glaucon's face. Glaucon had perished at sea. He had never been buried, so his ghost was wandering over the world, seeking vainly for rest. It all came to Democrates in an instant. His knees smote together; his teeth chattered. He sprang back upon the door and forced it open, but never saw the dove that fluttered forth with him.

"A hideous place!" he cried to his waiting friends. "A man must have a stronger heart than mine to love to tarry after his prayer is finished."

Only a few days later Hellas was startled to hear that Tempe had been evacuated without a blow, and the pass left open to Xerxes. It was said Democrates, in his ever commendable activity, had discovered at the last moment the mountain wall was not as defensible as hoped, and any resistance would have been disastrous. Therefore, whilst the retreat was bewailed, everybody praised the foresight of the orator. Everybody—one should say, except two, Bias and Phormio. They had many conferences together, especially after the coming and going of Hiram.

"There is a larger tunny in the sea than yet has entered the meshes," confessed the fishmonger, sorely puzzled, after much vain talk.

But Hermione was caring for none of these things. Her hands were busy with the swaddling clothes. Her thoughts only for that wicker cradle which swung betwixt the pillars, where Hermippus's house looked toward Salamis.



CHAPTER XIX

THE COMMANDMENT OF XERXES

It is easy to praise the blessings of peace. Still easier to paint the horrors of war,—and yet war will remain for all time the greatest game at which human wits can play. For in it every form of courage, physical and moral, and every talent are called into being. If war at once develops the bestial, it also develops as promptly the heroic. Alone of human activities it demands a brute's strength, an iron will, a serpent's intellect, a lion's courage—all in one. And of him who has these things in justest measure, history writes, "He conquered." It was because Mardonius seemed to possess all these, to foresee everything, to surmount everything, that Glaucon despaired for the fate of Hellas, even more than when he beheld the crushing armaments of the Persian.

Yet for long it seemed as if the host would march even to Athens without battle, without invoking Mardonius's skill. The king crossed Thrace and Macedonia, meeting only trembling hospitality from the cities along his route. At Doriscus he had held a review of his army, and smiled when the fawning scribes told how one million seven hundred thousand foot and eighty thousand horse followed his banners.(8) Every fugitive and spy from southern Hellas told how the hearts of the stanchest patriots were sinking, how everywhere save in Athens and Sparta loud voices urged the sending of "earth and water,"—tokens of submission to the irresistible king. At the pass of Tempe covering Thessaly, Glaucon, who knew the hopes of Themistocles, had been certain the Hellenes would make a stand. Rumour had it that ten thousand Greek infantry were indeed there, and ready for battle. But the outlaw's expectations were utterly shattered. To the disgust of the Persian lords, who dearly loved brisk fighting, it was soon told how the cowardly Hellenes had fled by ship, leaving the rich plains of Thessaly bare to the invader.

Thus was blasted Glaucon's last hope. Hellas was doomed. He almost looked to see Themistocles coming as ambassador to bring the homage of Athens. Since his old life seemed closed to the outlaw, he allowed Mardonius to have his will with him,—to teach him to act, speak, think, as an Oriental. He even bowed himself low before the king, an act rewarded by being commanded one evening to play at dice with majesty itself. Xerxes was actually gracious enough to let his new subject win from him three handsome Syrian slave-boys.

"You Hellenes are becoming wise," announced the monarch one day, when the Locrian envoys came with their earth and water. "If you can learn to speak the truth, you will equal even the virtues of the Aryans."

"Your Majesty has not found me a liar," rejoined the Athenian, warmly.

"You gather our virtues apace. I must consider how I can reward you by promotion."

"The king is overwhelmingly generous. Already I fear many of his servants mutter that I am promoted beyond all desert."

"Mutter? mutter against you?" The king's eyes flashed ominously. "By Mazda, it is against me, then, who advanced you! Hearken, Otanes,"—he addressed the general of the Persian footmen, who stood near by,—"who are the disobedient slaves who question my advancement of Prexaspes?"

The general—he had been the loudest grumbler—bowed and kissed the carpet.

"None, your Eternity; on the contrary, there is not one Aryan in the host who does not rejoice the king has found so noble an object for his godlike bounty."

"You hear, Prexaspes," said Xerxes, mollified. "I am glad, for the man who questions my wisdom touching your advancement must be impaled. To-morrow is my birthday, you will not fail to sit with the other great lords at the banquet."

"The king overpowers me with his goodness."

"Do not fail to deserve it. Mardonius is always praising you. Consider also how much better it is to depend on a gracious king than on the clamour of the fickle mob that rules in your helpless cities!"

* * * * * * *

The next morning was the royal birthday. The army, pitched in the fertile plain by Thessalian Larissa, feasted on the abundance at hand. The king distributed huge largesses of money. All day long he sat in his palace-like tent, receiving congratulations from even the lowest of his followers, and bound in turn not to reject any reasonable petition. The Magi sacrificed blooded stallions and rare spices to Mithra the "Lord of Wide Pastures," to Vohu-Manu the "Holy Councillor," and all their other angels, desiring them to bless the arms of the king.

The "Perfect Banquet" of the birthday came in the evening. It hardly differed from the feast at Sardis. The royal pavilion had its poles plated with silver, the tapestries were green and purple, the couches were spread with gorgeous coverlets. Only the drinking was more moderate, the ceremonial less rigid. The fortunate guests devoured dainties reserved for the special use of royalty: the flour of the bread was from Assos, the wine from Helbon, the water to dilute the wine had come in silver flasks from the Choaspes by Susa. The king even distributed the special unguent of lion's fat and palm wine which no subject, unpermitted, could use and shun the death penalty.

Then at the end certain of the fairest of the women came and danced unveiled before the king—this one night when they might show forth their beauty. And last of all danced Roxana. She danced alone; a diaphanous drapery of pink Egyptian cotton blew around her as an evening cloud. From her black hair shone the diamond coronet. To the sensuous swing of the music she wound in and out before the king and his admiring lords, advancing, retreating, rising, swaying, a paragon of agility and grace, feet, body, hands, weaving their charm together. When at the end she fell on her knees before the king, demanding whether she had done well, the applause shook the pavilion. The king looked down on her, smiling.

"Rise, sister of Mardonius. All Eran rejoices in you to-night. And on this evening whose request can I fail to grant? Whose can I grant more gladly than yours? Speak; you shall have it, though it be for half my kingdoms."

The dancer arose, but hung down her flashing coronal. Her blush was enchanting. She stood silent, while the good-humoured king smiled down on her, till Artazostra came from her seat by Mardonius and whispered in her ear. Every neck in the crowded pavilion was craned as Artazostra spoke to Xerxes.

"May it please my royal brother, this is the word of Roxana. 'I love my brother Mardonius; nevertheless, contrary to the Persian custom, he keeps me now to my nineteenth year unwedded. If now I have found favour in the sight of the king, let him command Mardonius to give me to some noble youth who shall do me honour by the valiant deeds and the true service he shall render unto my Lord.' "

"A fair petition! Let the king grant it!" shouted twenty; while others more wise whispered, "This was not done without foreknowledge by Mardonius."

Xerxes smiled benignantly and rubbed his nose with the lion's fat while deliberating.

"An evil precedent, lady, an evil precedent when women demand husbands and do not wait for their fathers' or brothers' good pleasure. But I have promised. The word of the king is not to be broken. Daughter of Gobryas, your petition is granted. Come hither, Mardonius,"—the bow-bearer approached the throne,—"you have heard the bold desire of your sister, and my answer. I must command you to bestow on her a husband."

The bow-bearer bowed obediently.

"I hear the word of the king, and all his mandates are good. This is no meet time for marriage festivities, when the Lord of the World and all the Aryan power goes forth to war. Yet as soon as the impious rebels amongst the Hellenes shall be subdued, I will rejoice to bestow my sister upon whatsoever fortunate servant the king may deign to honour."

"You hear him, lady,"—the royal features assumed a grin, which was reflected throughout the pavilion. "A husband you shall have, but Mardonius shall be revenged. Your fate is in my hands. And shall not I,—guardian of the households of my empire,—give a warning to all bold maidens against lifting their wills too proudly, or presuming upon an overindulgent king? What then shall be just punishment?" The king bent his head, still rubbing his nose, and trying to persuade all about that he was meditating.

"Bardas, satrap of Sogandia, is old; he has but one eye; they say he beats his eleven wives daily with a whip of rhinoceros hide. It would be just if I gave him this woman also in marriage. What think you, Hydarnes?"

"If your Eternity bestows this woman on Bardas, every husband and father in all your kingdoms will applaud your act," smiled the commander.

The threatened lady fell again on her knees, outstretching her hands and beseeching mercy,—never a more charming picture of misery and contrition.

"You tremble, lady," went on the sovran, "and justly. It were better for my empire if my heart were less hard. After all, you danced so elegantly that I must be mollified. There is the young Prince Zophyrus, son of Datis the general,—he has only five wives already. True, he is usually the worse for wine, is not handsome, and killed one of his women not long since because she did not sing to please him. Yes—you shall have Zophyrus—he will surely rule you—"

"Mercy, not Zophyrus, gracious Lord," pleaded the abject Egyptian.

The king looked down on her, with a broader grin than ever.

"You are very hard to please. I ought to punish your wilfulness by some dreadful doom. Do not cry out again. I will not hear you. My decision is fixed. Mardonius shall bestow you in marriage to a man who is not even a Persian by birth, who one year since was a disobedient rebel against my power, who even now contemns and despises many of the good customs of the Aryans. Hark, then, to his name. When Hellas is conquered, I command that Mardonius wed you to the Lord Prexaspes."

The king broke into an uproarious laugh, a signal for the thousand loyal subjects within the great pavilion to roar with laughter also. In the confusion following Artazostra and Roxana disappeared. Fifty hands dragged the appointed bridegroom to the king, showering on him all manner of congratulations. Xerxes's act was a plain proof that he was adopting the beautiful Hellene as one of his personal favourites,—a post of influence and honour not to be despised by a vizier. What "Prexaspes" said when he thanked the king was drowned in the tumult of laughing and cheering. The monarch, delighted to play the gracious god, roared his injunctions to the Athenian so loud that above the din they heard him.

"You will bridle her well, Prexaspes. I know them—those Egyptian fillies! They need a hard curb and the lash at times. Beware the tyranny of your own harem. I would not have the satrapies know how certain bright eyes in the seraglio can make the son of Darius play the fool. There is nothing more dangerous than women. It will take all your courage to master them. A hard task lies before you. I have given you one wife, but you know our good Persian custom—five, ten, or twenty. Take the score, I order you. Then in twelve years you'll be receiving the prize a Persian king bestows every summer on the father of the most children!"

And following this broad hint, the king held his sides with laughter again, a mirth which it is needless to say was echoed and reechoed till it seemed it could not cease. Only a few ventured to mutter under breath: "The Hellene will have a subsatrapy in the East before the season is over and a treasure of five thousand talents! Mithra wither the upstart!"

* * * * * * *

The summer was waning when the host moved southward from Larissa, for mere numbers had made progress slow, and despite Mardonius's providence the question of commissariat sometimes became difficult. Now at last, leaving behind Thrace and Macedonia, the army began to enter Greece itself. As it fared across the teeming plains of Thessaly, it met only welcome from the inhabitants and submissions from fresh embassies. Report came from the fleet—keeping pace with the land army along the coasts—that nowhere had the weak squadrons of the Greeks adventured a stand. Daily the smile of the Lord of the World grew more complacent, as his "table-companions" told him: "The rumour of your Eternity's advent stupefies the miserable Hellenes. Like Atar, the Angel of Fire, your splendour glitters afar. You will enter Athens and Sparta, and no sword leave its sheath, no bow its wrapper."

Every day Mardonius asked of Glaucon, "Will your Hellenes fight?" and the answer was ever more doubting, "I do not know."

Long since Glaucon had given up hope of the defeat of the Persian. Now he prayed devoutly there might be no useless shedding of blood. If only he could turn back and not behold the humiliation of Athens! Of the fate of the old-time friends—Democrates, Cimon, Hermione—he tried not to think. No doubt Hermione was the wife of Democrates. More than a year had sped since the flight from Colonus. Hermione had put off her mourning for the yellow veil of a bride. Glaucon prayed the war might bring her no new sorrow, though Democrates, of course, would resist Persia to the end. As for himself he would never darken their eyes again. He was betrothed to Roxana. With her he would seek one of those valleys in Bactria which she had praised, the remoter the better, and there perhaps was peace.

Thus the host wound through Thessaly, till before them rose, peak on peak, the jagged mountain wall of Othrys and OEta, fading away in violet distance, the bulwark of central Hellas. Then the king's smile became a frown, for the Hellenes, undismayed despite his might, were assembling their fleet at northern Euboea, and at the same time a tempest had shattered a large part of the royal navy. The Magi offered sacrifice to appease Tishtrya, the Prince of the Wind-ruling Stars, but the king's frown grew blacker at each message. Glaucon was near him when at last the monarch's thunders broke forth.

A hot, sultry day. The king's chariot had just crossed the mountain stream of the Sphercus, when a captain of a hundred came galloping, dismounted, and prostrated himself in the dust.

"Your tidings?" demanded Xerxes, sharply.

"Be gracious, Fountain of Mercy,"—the captain evidently disliked his mission,—"I am sent from the van. We came to a place where the mountains thrust down upon the sea and leave but a narrow road by the ocean. Your slaves found certain Hellenes, rebels against your benignant government, holding a wall and barring all passage to your army."

"And did you not forthwith seize these impudent wretches and drag them hither to be judged by me?"

"Compassion, Omnipotence,"—the messenger trembled,—"they seemed sturdy, well-armed rogues, and the way was narrow and steep where a score can face a thousand. Therefore, your slave came straight with his tidings to the ever gracious king."

"Dog! Coward!" Xerxes plucked the whip from the charioteer's hand and lashed it over the wretch's shoulders. "By the fravashi, the soul of Darius my father, no man shall bring so foul a word to me and live!"

"Compassion, Omnipotence, compassion!" groaned the man, writhing like a worm. Already the master-of-punishments was approaching to cover his face with a towel, preparatory to the bow-string, but the royal anger spent itself just enough to avert a tragedy.

"Your life is forfeit, but I am all too merciful! Take then three hundred stripes on the soles of your feet and live to be braver in the future."

"A thousand blessings on your benignity," cried the captain, as they led him away, "I congratulate myself that insignificant as I am the king yet deigns to notice my existence even to recompense my shortcomings."

"Off," ordered the bristling monarch, "or you die the death yet. And do you, Mardonius, take Prexaspes, who somewhat knows this country, spur forward, and discover who are the madmen thus earning their destruction."

The command was obeyed. Glaucon galloped beside the Prince, overtaking the marching army, until as they cantered into the little mud-walled city of Heraclea a second messenger from the van met them with further details.

"The pass is held by seven thousand Grecian men-at-arms. There are no Athenians. There are three hundred come from Sparta."

"And their chief?" asked Glaucon, leaning eagerly.

"Is Leonidas of Lacedaemon."

"Then, O Mardonius," spoke the Athenian, with a throb in his voice not there an hour ago. "There will be battle."

So, whether wise men or mad, the Hellenes were not to lay down their arms without one struggle, and Glaucon knew not whether to be sorry or to be proud.



CHAPTER XX

THERMOPYLAE

A rugged mountain, an inaccessible morass, and beyond that morass the sea: the mountain thrusting so close upon the morass as barely to leave space for a narrow wagon road. This was the western gate of Thermopylae. Behind the narrow defile the mountain and swamp-land drew asunder; in the still scanty opening hot springs gushed forth, sacred to Heracles, then again on the eastern side Mt. OEta and the impenetrable swamp drew together, forming the second of the "Hot Gates,"—the gates which Xerxes must unlock if he would continue his march to Athens.

The Great King's couriers reported that the stubborn Hellenes had cast a wall across the entrance, and that so far from showing terror at the advent of majesty, were carelessly diverting themselves by athletic games, and by combing and adorning their hair, a fact which the "Lord Prexaspes" at least comprehended to mean that Leonidas and his Spartans were preparing for desperate battle. Nevertheless, it was hard to persuade the king that at last he confronted men who would resist him to his face. Glaucon said it. Demaratus, the outlawed Spartan, said it. Xerxes, however, remained angry and incredulous. Four long days he and his army sat before the pass, "because," announced his couriers, "he wishes in his benignity to give these madmen a chance to flee away and shun destruction;" "because," spoke those nearest to Mardonius, the brain of the army, "there is hot fighting ahead, and the general is resolved to bring up the picked troops in the rear before risking a battle."

Then on the fifth day either Xerxes's patience was exhausted or Mardonius felt ready. Strong regiments of Median infantry were ordered to charge Leonidas's position, Xerxes not failing to command that they slay as few of the wretches as possible, but drag them prisoners before his outraged presence.

A noble charge. A terrible repulse. For the first time those Asiatics who had forgotten Marathon discovered the overwhelming superiority that the sheathing of heavy armour gave the Greek hoplites over the lighter armed Median spearmen. The short lances and wooden targets of the attackers were pitifully futile against the long spears and brazen shields of the Hellenes. In the narrow pass the vast numbers of Barbarians went for nothing. They could not use their archers, they could not charge with their magnificent cavalry. The dead lay in heaps. The Medes attacked again and again. At last an end came to their courage. The captains laid the lash over their mutinous troops. The men bore the whips in sullen silence. They would not charge again upon those devouring spears.

White with anger, Xerxes turned to Hydarnes and his "Immortals," the infantry of the Life Guard. The general needed no second bidding. The charge was driven home with magnificent spirit. But what the vassal Medes could not accomplish, neither could the lordly Persians. The repulse was bloody. If once Leonidas's line broke and the Persians rushed on with howls of triumph, it was only to see the Hellenes' files close in a twinkling and return to the onset with their foes in confusion. Hydarnes led back his men at last. The king sat on the ivory throne just out of arrow shot, watching the ebb and flow of the battle. Hydarnes approached and prostrated himself.

"Omnipotence, I the least of your slaves put my life at your bidding. Command that I forfeit my head, but my men can do no more. I have lost hundreds. The pass is not to be stormed."

Only the murmur of assent from all the well-tried generals about the throne saved Hydarnes from paying the last penalty. The king's rage was fearful; men trembled to look on him. His words came so thick, the rest could never follow all his curses and commands. Only Mardonius was bold enough to stand up before his face.

"Your Eternity, this is an unlucky day. Is it not sacred to Angra-Mainyu the Evil? The arch-Magian says the holy fire gives forth sparks of ill-omen. Wait, then, till to-morrow. Verethraghna, the Angel of Victory, will then return to your servants."

The bow-bearer led his trembling master to the royal tent, and naught more of Xerxes was seen till the morning. All that night Mardonius never slept, but went unceasingly the round of the host preparing for battle. Glaucon saw little of him. The Athenian himself had been posted among the guard of nobles directly about the person of the king, and he was glad he was set nowhere else, otherwise he might have been ordered to join in the attack. Like every other in the host, he slept under arms, and never returned to Mardonius's pavilion. His heart had been in his eyes all that day. He had believed Leonidas would be swept from the pass at the first onset. Even he had underrated the Spartan prowess. The repulse of the Medes had astonished him. When Hydarnes reeled back, he could hardly conceal his joy. The Hellenes were fighting! The Hellenes were conquering! He forgot he stood almost at Xerxes's side when the last charge failed; and barely in time did he save himself from joining in the shout of triumph raised by the defenders when the decimated Immortals slunk away. He had grown intensely proud of his countrymen, and when he heard the startled Persian lords muttering dark forbodings of the morrow, he all but laughed his gladness in their faces.

So the night passed for him: the hard earth for a bed, a water cruse wrapped in a cloak for a pillow. And just as the first red blush stole over the green Malian bay and the mist-hung hills of Euboea beyond, he woke with all the army. Mardonius had used the night well. Chosen contingents from every corps were ready. Cavalrymen had been dismounted. Heavy masses of Assyrian archers and Arabian slingers were advanced to prepare for the attack by overwhelming volleys. The Persian noblemen, stung to madness by their king's reproaches and their own sense of shame, bound themselves by fearful oaths never to draw from the onset until victorious or dead. The attack itself was led by princes of the blood, royal half-brothers of the king. Xerxes sat again on the ivory throne, assured by every obsequious tongue that the sacred fire gave fair omens, that to-day was the day of victory.

The attack was magnificent. For an instant its fury seemed to carry the Hellenes back. Where a Persian fell two stepped over him. The defenders were swept against their wall. The Barbarians appeared to be storming it. Then like the tide the battle turned. The hoplites, locking shields, presented an impenetrable spear hedge. The charge spent itself in empty promise. Mardonius, who had been in the thickest, nevertheless drew off his men skilfully and prepared to renew the combat.

In the interval Glaucon, standing by the king, could see a short, firm figure in black armour going in and out among the Hellenes, ordering their array—Leonidas—he needed no bird to tell him. And as the Athenian stood and watched, saw the Persians mass their files for another battering charge, saw the Great King twist his beard whilst his gleaming eyes followed the fate of his army, an impulse nigh irresistible came over him to run one short bow-shot to that opposite array, and cry in his own Greek tongue:—

"I am a Hellene, too! Look on me come to join you, to live and die with you, with my face against the Barbarian!"

Cruel the fate that set him here, impotent, when on that band of countrymen Queen Nike was shedding bright glory!

But he was "Glaucon the Traitor" still, to be awarded the traitor's doom by Leonidas. Therefore the "Lord Prexaspes" must stand at his post, guarding the king of the Aryans.

The second charge was as the first, the third was as the second. Mardonius was full of recourses. By repeated attacks he strove to wear the stubborn Hellenes down. The Persians proved their courage seven times. Ten of them died gladly, if their deaths bought that of a single foe. But few as were Leonidas's numbers, they were not so few as to fail to relieve one another at the front of the press,—which front was fearfully narrow. And three times, as his men drifted back in defeat, Xerxes the king "leaped from the throne whereon he sat, in anguish for his army."

At noon new contingents from the rear took the place of the exhausted attackers. The sun beat down with unpitying heat. The wounded lay sweltering in their agony whilst the battle roared over them. Mardonius never stopped to count his dead. Then at last came nightfall. Man could do no more. As the shadows from OEta grew long over the close scene of combat, even the proudest Persians turned away. They had lost thousands. Their defeat was absolute. Before them and to westward and far away ranged the jagged mountains, report had it, unthreaded by a single pass. To the eastward was only the sea,—the sea closed to them by the Greek fleet at the unseen haven of Artemisium. Was the triumph march of the Lord of the World to end in this?

Xerxes spoke no word when they took him to his tent that night, a sign of indescribable anger. Fear, humiliation, rage—all these seemed driving him mad. His chamberlains and eunuchs feared to approach to take off his golden armour. Mardonius came to the royal tent; the king, with curses he had never hurled against the bow-bearer before, refused to see him. The battle was ended. No one was hardy enough to talk of a fresh attack on the morrow. Every captain had to report the loss of scores of his best. As Glaucon rode back to Mardonius's tents, he overheard two infantry officers:—

"A fearful day—the bow-bearer is likely to pay for it. I hope his Majesty confines his anger only to him."

"Yes—Mardonius will walk the Chinvat bridge to-morrow. The king is turning against him. Megabyzus is the bow-bearer's enemy, and already is gone to his Majesty to say that it is Mardonius's blunders that have brought the army to such a plight. The king will catch at that readily."

At the tents Glaucon found Artazostra and Roxana. They were both pale. The news of the great defeat had been brought by a dozen messengers. Mardonius had not arrived. He was not slain, that was certain, but Artazostra feared the worst. The proud daughter of Darius found it hard to bear up.

"My husband has many enemies. Hitherto the king's favour has allowed him to mock them. But if my brother deserts him, his ruin is speedy. Ah! Ahura-Mazda, why hast Thou suffered us to see this day?"

Glaucon said what he could of comfort, which was little. Roxana wept piteously; he was fain to soothe her by his caress,—something he had never ventured before. Artazostra was on the point of calling her eunuchs and setting forth for Xerxes's tent to plead for the life of her husband, when suddenly Pharnuches, Mardonius's body-servant, came with news that dispelled at least the fears of the women.

"I am bidden to tell your Ladyships that my master has silenced the tongues of his enemies and is restored to the king's good favor. And I am bidden also to command the Lord Prexaspes to come to the royal tent. His Majesty has need of him."

Glaucon went, questioning much as to the service to be required. He did not soon forget the scene that followed. The great pavilion was lit by a score of resinous flambeaux. The red light shook over the green and purple hangings, the silver plating of the tent-poles. At one end rose the golden throne of the king; before it in a semicircle the stools of a dozen or more princes and commanders. In the centre stood Mardonius questioning a coarse-featured, ill-favoured fellow, who by his sheepskin dress and leggings Glaucon instantly recognized as a peasant of this Malian country. The king beckoned the Athenian into the midst and was clearly too eager to stand on ceremony.

"Your Greek is better than Mardonius's, good Prexaspes. In a matter like this we dare not trust too many interpreters. This man speaks the rough dialect of his country, and few can understand him. Can you interpret?"

"I am passing familiar with the Locrian and Malian dialect, your Majesty."

"Question this man further as to what he will do for us. We have understood him but lamely."

Glaucon proceeded to comply. The man, who was exceeding awkward and ill at ease in such august company, spoke an outrageous shepherd's jargon which even the Athenian understood with effort. But his business came out speedily. He was Ephialtes, the son of one Eurydemus, a Malian, a dull-witted grazier of the country, brought to Mardonius by hope of reward. The general, partly understanding his purpose, had brought him to the king. In brief, he was prepared, for due compensation, to lead the Persians by an almost unknown mountain path over the ridge of OEta and to the rear of Leonidas's position at Thermopylae, where the Hellenes, assailed front and rear, would inevitably be destroyed.

As Glaucon interpreted, the shout of relieved gladness from the Persian grandees made the tent-cloths shake. Xerxes's eyes kindled. He clapped his hands.

"Reward? He shall have ten talents! But where? How?"

The man asserted that the path was easy and practicable for a large body of troops. He had often been over it with his sheep and goats. If the Persians would start a force at once—it was already quite dark—they could fall upon Leonidas at dawn. The Spartan would be completely trapped, or forced to open the defile without another spear thrust.

"A care, fellow," warned Mardonius, regarding the man sharply; "you speak glibly, but if this is a trick to lead a band of the king's servants to destruction, understand you play with deadly dice. If the troops march, you shall have your hands knotted together and a soldier walking behind to cut your throat at the first sign of treachery."

Glaucon interpreted the threat. The man did not wince.

"There is no trap. I will guide you."

That was all they could get him to say.

"And do not the Hellenes know of this mountain path and guard it?" persisted the bow-bearer.

Ephialtes thought not; at least if they had, they had not told off any efficient detachment to guard it. Hydarnes cut the matter short by rising from his stool and casting himself before the king.

"A boon, your Eternity, a boon!"

"What is it?" asked the monarch.

"The Immortals have been disgraced. Twice they have been repulsed with ignominy. The shame burns hot in their breasts. Suffer them to redeem their honour. Suffer me to take this man and all the infantry of the Life Guard, and at dawn the Lord of the World shall see his desire over his miserable enemies."

"The words of Hydarnes are good," added Mardonius, incisively, and Xerxes beamed and nodded assent.

"Go, scale the mountain with the Immortals and tell this Ephialtes there await him ten talents and a girdle of honour if the thing goes well; if ill, let him be flayed alive and his skin be made the head of a kettledrum."

The stolid peasant did not blench even at this. Glaucon remained in the tent, translating and hearing all the details: how Hydarnes was to press the attack from the rear at early dawn, how Mardonius was to conduct another onset from the front. At last the general of the guard knelt before the king for the last time.

"Thus I go forth, Omnipotence, and to-morrow, behold your will upon your enemies, or behold me never more."

"I have faithful slaves," said Xerxes, rising and smiling benignantly upon the general and the bow-bearer. "Let us disperse, but first let command be given the Magians to cry all night to Mithra and Tishtrya, and to sacrifice to them a white horse."

"Your Majesty always enlists the blessings of heaven for your servants," bowed Mardonius, as the company broke up and the king went away to his inner tent and his concubines. Glaucon lingered until most of the grandees had gone forth, then the bow-bearer went to him.

"Go back to my tents," ordered Mardonius; "tell Artazostra and Roxana that all is well, that Ahura has delivered me from a great strait and restored me to the king's favour, and that to-morrow the gate of Hellas will be opened."

"You are still bloody and dusty. You have watched all last night and been in the thick all day," expostulated the Athenian; "come to the tents with me and rest."

The bow-bearer shook his head.

"No rest until to-morrow, and then the rest of victory or a longer one. Now go; the women are consuming with their care."

Glaucon wandered back through the long avenues of pavilions. The lights of innumerable camp-fires, the hum of thousands of voices, the snorting of horses, the grumbling of camels, the groans of men wounded—all these and all other sights and sounds from the countless host were lost to him. He walked on by a kind of animal instinct that took him to Mardonius's encampment through the mazes of the canvas city. It was dawning on him with a terrible clearness that he was become a traitor to Hellas in very deed. It was one thing to be a passive onlooker of a battle, another to be a participant in a plot for the ruin of Leonidas. Unless warned betimes the Spartan king and all who followed him infallibly would be captured or slaughtered to a man. And he had heard all—the traitor, the discussion, the design—had even, if without his choice, been partner and helper in the same. The blood of Leonidas and his men would be on his head. Every curse the Athenians had heaped on him once unjustly, he would deserve. Now truly he would be, even in his own mind's eyes, "Glaucon the Traitor, partner to the betrayal of Thermopylae." The doltish peasant, lured by the great reward, he might forgive,—himself, the high-born Alcmaeonid, never.

From this revery he was shaken by finding himself at the entrance to the tents of Mardonius. Artazostra and Roxana came to meet him. When he told of the deliverance of the bow-bearer, he had joy by the light in their eyes. Roxana had never shone in greater beauty. He spoke of the heat of the sun, of his throbbing head. The women bathed his forehead with lavender-water, touching him with their own soft hands. Roxana sang again to him, a low, crooning song of the fragrant Nile, the lotus bells, the nodding palms, the perfumed breeze from the desert. Whilst he watched her through half-closed eyes, the visions of that day of battles left him. He sat wrapped in a dream world, far from stern realities of men and arms. So for a while, as he lounged on the divans, following the play of the torch-light on the face of Roxana as her long fingers plied the strings. What was it to him if Leonidas fought a losing battle? Was not his happiness secure—be it in Hellas, or Egypt, or Bactria? He tried to persuade himself thus. At the end, when he and Roxana stood face to face for the parting, he violated all Oriental custom, yet he knew her brother would not be angry. He took her in his arms and gave her kiss for kiss.

Then he went to his own tent to seek rest. But Hypnos did not come for a long time with his poppies. Once out of the Egyptian's presence the haunting terror had returned, "Glaucon the Traitor!" Those three words were always uppermost. At last, indeed, sleep came and as he slept he dreamed.



CHAPTER XXI

THE THREE HUNDRED—AND ONE

As Glaucon slept he found himself again in Athens. He was on the familiar way from the cool wrestling ground of the Academy and walking toward the city through the suburb of Ceramicus. Just as he came to the three tall pine trees before the gate, after he had passed the tomb of Solon, behold! a fair woman stood in the path and looked on him. She was beyond mortal height and of divine beauty, yet a beauty grave and stern. Her gray eyes cut to his heart like swords. On her right hand hovered a winged Victory, on her shoulder rested an owl, at her feet twined a wise serpent, in her left hand she bore the aegis, the shaggy goat-skin engirt with snakes—emblem of Zeus's lightnings. Glaucon knew that she was Athena Polias, the Warder of Athens, and lifted his hands to adore her. But she only looked on him in silent anger. Fire seemed leaping from her eyes. The more Glaucon besought, the more she turned away. Fear possessed him. "Woe is me," he trembled, "I have enraged a terrible immortal." Then suddenly the woman's countenance was changed. The aegis, the serpent, the Victory, all vanished; he saw Hermione before him, beautiful as on the day she ran to greet him at Eleusis, yet sad as was his last sight of her the moment he fled from Colonus. Seized with infinite longing, he sprang to her. But lo! she drifted back as into the air. It was even as when Odysseus followed the shade of his mother in the shadowy Land of the Dead.

"Yearned he sorely then to clasp her, Thrice his arms were opened wide: From his hands so strong, so loving, Like a dream she seemed to glide, And away, away she flitted, Whilst he grasped the empty space, And a pain shot through him, maddening, As he strove for her embrace."

He pursued, she drifted farther, farther. Her face was inexpressibly sorrowful. And Glaucon knew that she spoke to him.

"I have believed you innocent, though all Athens calls you 'traitor.' I have been true to you, though all men rise up against me. In what manner have you kept your innocence? Have you had love for another, caresses for another, kisses for another? How will you prove your loyalty to Athens and return?"

"Hermione!" Glaucon cried, not in his dream, but quite aloud. He awoke with a start. Outside the tent sentry was calling to sentry, changing the watch just before the dawning. It was perfectly plain to him what he must do. His dream had only given shape to the ferment in his brain, a ferment never ceasing while his body slept. He must go instantly to the Greek camp and warn Leonidas. If the Spartan did not trust him, no matter, he had done his duty. If Leonidas slew him on the spot, again no matter, life with an eternally gnawing conscience could be bought on too hard terms. He knew, as though Zeus's messenger Iris had spoken it, that Hermione had never believed him guilty, that she had been in all things true to him. He could never betray her trust.

His head now was clear and calm. He arose, threw on his cloak, and buckled about his waist a short sword. The Nubian boy that Mardonius had given him for a body-servant awoke on his mat, and asked wonderingly "whither his Lordship was going?" Glaucon informed him he must be at the front before daybreak, and bade him remain behind and disturb no one. But the Athenian was not to execute his design unhindered. As he passed out of the tent and into the night, where the morning stars were burning, and where the first red was creeping upward from the sea, two figures glided forth from the next pavilion. He knew them and shrank from them. They were Artazostra and Roxana.

"You go forth early, dearest Prexaspes," spoke the Egyptian, throwing back her veil, and even in the starlight he saw the anxious flash of her eyes, "does the battle join so soon that you take so little sleep?"

"It joins early, lady," spoke Glaucon, his wits wandering. In the intensity of his purpose he had not thought of the partings with the people he must henceforth reckon foes. He was sorely beset, when Roxana drew near and laid her hand upon his shoulder.

"Your Greeks will resist terribly," she spoke. "We women dread the battle more than you. Yours is the fierce gladness of the combat, ours only the waiting, the heavy tidings, the sorrow. Therefore Artazostra and I could not sleep, but have been watching together. You will of course be near Mardonius my brother. You will guard him from all danger. Leonidas will resist fearfully when at bay. Ah! what is this?"

In pressing closer she had discovered the Athenian wore no cuirass.

"You will not risk the battle without armour?" was her cry.

"I shall not need it, lady," answered he, and only half conscious what he did, stretched forth as if to put her away. Roxana shrank back, grieved and wondering, but Artazostra seized his arm quickly.

"What is this, Prexaspes? All is not well. Your manner is strange!"

He shook her off, almost savagely.

"Call me not Prexaspes," he cried, not in Persian, but in Greek. "I am Glaucon of Athens; as Glaucon I must live, as Glaucon die. No man—not though he desire it—can disown the land that bore him. And if I dreamed I was a Persian, I wake to find myself a Greek. Therefore forget me forever. I go to my own!"

"Prexaspes, my lover,"—Roxana, strong in fear and passion, clung about his girdle, while again Artazostra seized him,—"last night I was in your arms. Last night you kissed me. Are we not to be happy together? What is this you say?"

He stood one instant silent, then shook himself and put them both aside with a marvellous ease.

"Forget my name," he commanded. "If I have given you sorrow, I repent it. I go to my own. Go you to yours. My place is with Leonidas—to save him, or more like to die with him! Farewell!"

He sprang away from them. He saw Roxana sink upon the ground. He heard Artazostra calling to the horse-boys and the eunuchs,—perhaps she bade them to pursue. Once he looked back, but never twice. He knew the watchwords, and all the sentries let him pass by freely. With a feverish stride he traced the avenues of sleeping tents. Soon he was at the outposts, where strong divisions of Cissian and Babylonian infantrymen were slumbering under arms, ready for the attack the instant the uproar from the rear of the pass told how Hydarnes had completed his circuit. Eos—"Rosy-Fingered Dawn"—was just shimmering above the mist-hung peak of Mt. Telethrius in Euboea across the bay when Glaucon came to the last Persian outpost. The pickets saluted with their lances, as he went by them, taking him for a high officer on a reconnoissance before the onset. Next he was on the scene of the former battles. He stumbled over riven shields, shattered spear butts, and many times over ghastlier objects—objects yielding and still warm—dead men, awaiting the crows of the morrow. He walked straight on, while the dawn strengthened and the narrow pass sprang into view, betwixt mountain and morass. Then at last a challenge, not in Persian, but in round clear Doric.

"Halt! Who passes?"

Glaucon held up his right hand, and advanced cautiously. Two men in heavy armour approached, and threatened his breast with their lance points.

"Who are you?"

"A friend, a Hellene—my speech tells that. Take me to Leonidas. I've a story worth telling."

"Euge! Master 'Friend,' our general can't be waked for every deserter. We'll call our decarch."

A shout brought the subaltern commanding the Greek outposts. He was a Spartan of less sluggish wits than many of his breed, and presently believed Glaucon when he declared he had reason in asking for Leonidas.

"But your accent is Athenian?" asked the decarch, with wonderment.

"Ay, Athenian," assented Glaucon.

"Curses on you! I thought no Athenian ever Medized. What business had you in the Persian camp? Who of your countrymen are there save the sons of Hippias?"

"Not many," rejoined the fugitive, not anxious to have the questions pushed home.

"Well, to Leonidas you shall go, sir Athenian, and state your business. But you are like to get a bearish welcome. Since your pretty Glaucon's treason, our king has not wasted much love even on repentant traitors."

With a soldier on either side, the deserter was marched within the barrier wall. Another encampment, vastly smaller and less luxurious than the Persian, but of martial orderliness, spread out along the pass. The Hellenes were just waking. Some were breakfasting from helmets full of cold boiled peas, others buckled on the well-dinted bronze cuirasses and greaves. Men stared at Glaucon as he was led by them.

"A deserter they take to the chief," ran the whisper, and a little knot of idle Spartans trailed behind, when at last Glaucon's guides halted him before a brown tent barely larger than the others.

A man sat on a camp chest by the entrance, and was busy with an iron spoon eating "black broth"(9) from a huge kettle. In the dim light Glaucon could just see that he wore a purple cloak flung over his black armour, and that the helmet resting beside him was girt by a wreath of gold foil.

The two guards dropped their spears in salute. The man looked upward.

"A deserter," reported one of Glaucon's mentors; "he says he has important news."

"Wait!" ordered the general, making the iron spoon clack steadily.

"The weal of Hellas rests thereon. Listen!" pleaded the nervous Athenian.

"Wait!" was the unruffled answer, and still the iron spoon went on plying. The Spartan lifted a huge morsel from the pot, chewed it deliberately, then put the vessel by. Next he inspected the newcomer from head to toe, then at last gave his permission.

"Well?"

Glaucon's words were like a bursting torrent.

"Fly, your Excellency! I'm from Xerxes's camp. I was at the Persian council. The mountain path is betrayed. Hydarnes and the guard are almost over it. They will fall upon your rear. Fly, or you and all your men are trapped!"

"Well," observed the Spartan, slowly, motioning for the deserter to cease, but Glaucon's fears made that impossible.

"I say I was in Xerxes's own tent. I was interpreter betwixt the king and the traitor. I know all whereof I say. If you do not flee instantly, the blood of these men is on your head."

Leonidas again scanned the deserter with piercing scrutiny, then flung a question.

"Who are you?"

The blood leaped into the Athenian's cheeks. The tongue that had wagged so nimbly clove in his mouth. He grew silent.

"Who are you?"

As the question was repeated, the scrutiny grew yet closer. The soldiers were pressing around, one comrade leaning over another's shoulder. Twenty saw the fugitive's form straighten as he stood in the morning twilight.

"I am Glaucon of Athens, Isthmionices!"

"Ah!" Leonidas's jaw dropped for an instant. He showed no other astonishment, but the listening Spartans raised a yell.

"Death! Stone the traitor!"

Leonidas, without a word, smote the man nearest to him with a spear butt. The soldiers were silent instantly. Then the chief turned back to the deserter.

"Why here?"

Glaucon had never prayed for the gifts of Peitho, "Our Lady Persuasion," more than at that crucial moment. Arguments, supplications, protestations of innocence, curses upon his unknown enemies, rushed to his lips together. He hardly realized what he himself said. Only he knew that at the end the soldiers did not tug at their hilts as before and scowl so threateningly, and Leonidas at last lifted his hand as if to bid him cease.

"Euge!" grunted the chief. "So you wish me to believe you a victim of fate, and trust your story? The pass is turned, you say? Masistes the seer said the libation sputtered on the flame with ill-omen when he sacrificed this morning. Then you come. The thing shall be looked into. Call the captains."

* * * * * * *

The locharchs and taxiarchs of the Greeks assembled. It was a brief and gloomy council of war. While Euboulus, commanding the Corinthian contingent, was still questioning whether the deserter was worthy of credence, a scout came running down Mt. OEta confirming the worst. The cowardly Phocians watching the mountain trail had fled at the first arrows of Hydarnes. It was merely a question of time before the Immortals would be at Alpeni, the village in Leonidas's rear. There was only one thing to say, and the Spartan chief said it.

"You must retreat."

The taxiarchs of the allied Hellenes under him were already rushing forth to their men to bid them fly for dear life. Only one or two stayed by the tent, marvelling much to observe that Leonidas gave no orders to his Lacedaemonians to join in the flight. On the contrary, Glaucon, as he stood near, saw the general lift the discarded pot of broth and explore it again with the iron spoon.

"O Father Zeus," cried the incredulous Corinthian leader. "Are you turned mad, Leonidas?"

"Time enough for all things," returned the unmoved Spartan, continuing his breakfast.

"Time!" shouted Euboulus. "Have we not to flee on wings, or be cut off?"

"Fly, then."

"But you and your Spartans?"

"We will stay."

"Stay? A handful against a million? Do I hear aright? What can you do?"

"Die."

"The gods forbid! Suicide is a fearful end. No man should rush on destruction. What requires you to perish?"

"Honour."

"Honour! Have you not won glory enough by holding Xerxes's whole power at bay two days? Is not your life precious to Hellas? What is the gain?"

"Glory to Sparta."

Then in the red morning half-light, folding his big hands across his mailed chest, Leonidas looked from one to another of the little circle. His voice was still in unemotional gutturals when he delivered the longest speech of his life.

"We of Sparta were ordered to defend this pass. The order shall be obeyed. The rest of you must go away—all save the Thebans, whose loyalty I distrust. Tell Leotychides, my colleague at Sparta, to care for Gorgo my wife and Pleistarchus my young son, and to remember that Themistocles the Athenian loves Hellas and gives sage counsel. Pay Strophius of Epidaurus the three hundred drachmae I owe him for my horse. Likewise—"

A second breathless scout interrupted with the tidings that Hydarnes was on the last stretches of his road. The chief arose, drew the helmet down across his face, and motioned with his spear.

"Go!" he ordered.

The Corinthian would have seized his hand. He shook him off. At Leonidas's elbow was standing the trumpeter for his three hundred from Lacedaemon.

"Blow!" commanded the chief.

The keen blast cut the air. The chief deliberately wrapped the purple mantle around himself and adjusted the gold circlet over his helmet, for on the day of battle a Lacedaemonian was wont to wear his best. And even as he waited there came to him out of the midst of the panic-stricken, dissolving camp, one by one, tall men in armour, who took station beside him—the men of Sparta who had abided steadfast while all others prepared to flee, waiting for the word of the chief.

Presently they stood, a long black line, motionless, silent, whilst the other divisions filed in swift fear past. Only the Thespians—let their names not be forgotten—chose to share the Laconians' glory and their doom and took their stand behind the line of Leonidas. With them stood also the Thebans, but compulsion held them, and they tarried merely to desert and pawn their honour for their lives.