[pg 163]BOOK IITHE COMING OF THE PERSIAN[pg 164][pg 165]CHAPTER XVTHE LOTUS-EATING AT SARDISWhen Glaucon awoke to consciousness, it was with a sense of absolute weakness, at the same moment with a sense of absolute rest. He knew that he was lying on pillows“softer than sleep,”that the air he breathed was laden with perfume, that the golden light which came through his half-closed eyelids was deliciously tempered, that his ears caught a musical murmur, as of a plashing fountain. So he lay for long, too impotent, too contented to ask where he lay, or whence he had departed. Athens, Hermione, all the thousand and one things of his old life, flitted through his brain, but only as vague, far shapes. He was too weak even to long for them. Still the fountain plashed on, and mingling with the tinkling he thought he heard low flutes breathing. Perhaps it was only a phantasy of his flagging brain. Then his eyes opened wider. He lifted his hand. It was a task even to do that little thing,—he was so weak. He looked at the hand! Surely his own, yet how white it was, how thin; the bones were there, the blue veins, but all the strength gone out of them. Was this the hand that had flung great Lycon down? It would be mere sport for a child to master him now. He touched his face. It was covered with a thick beard, as of a long month’s growth. The discovery[pg 166]startled him. He strove to rise on one elbow. Too weak! He sank back upon the cushions and let his eyes rove inquiringly. Never had he seen tapestries the like of those that canopied his bed. Scarlet and purple and embroidered in gold thread with elaborate hunting scenes,—the dogs, the chariots, the slaying of the deer, the bearing home of the game. He knew the choicest looms of Sidon must have wrought them. And the linen, so cool, so grateful, underneath his head—was it not the almost priceless fabric of Borsippa? He stirred a little, his eyes rested on the floor. It was covered with a rug worth an Athenian patrician’s ransom,—a lustrous, variegated sheen, showing a new tint at each change of the light. So much he saw from the bed, and curiosity was wakened. Again he put forth his hand, and touched the hanging curtains. The movement set a score of little silver bells that dangled over the canopy to jingling. As at a signal the flutes grew louder, mingling with them was the clearer note of lyres. Now the strains swelled sweetly, now faded away into dreamy sighing, as if bidding the listener to sink again into the arms of sleep. Another vain effort to rise on his elbow. Again he was helpless. Giving way to the charm of the music, he closed his eyes.“Either I am awaking in Elysium, or the gods send to me pleasant dreams before I die.”He was feebly wondering which was the alternative when a new sound roused him, the sweep and rustle of the dresses of two women as they approached the bed. He gazed forth listlessly, when lo! above his couch stood two strangers,—strangers, but either as fair as Aphrodite arising from the sea. Both were tall, and full of queenly grace, both were dressed in gauzy white, but the hair of the one was of such gold that Glaucon hardly saw the circlet which[pg 167]pressed over it. Her eyes were blue, the lustre of her face was like a white rose. The other’s hair shone like the wing of a raven. A wreath of red poppies covered it, but over the softly tinted forehead there peered forth a golden snake with emerald eyes—the Egyptian uræus, the crown of a princess from the Nile. Her eyes were as black as the other’s were blue, her lips as red as the dye of Tyre, her hands—But before Glaucon looked and wondered more, the first, she of the golden head, laid her hand upon his face,—a warm, comforting hand that seemed to speed back strength and gladness with the touch. Then she spoke. Her Greek was very broken, yet he understood her.“Are you quite awakened, dear Glaucon?”He looked up marvelling, not knowing how to answer; but the golden goddess seemed to expect none from him.“It is now a month since we brought you from Astypalæa. You have wandered close to the Portals of the Dead. We feared you were beloved by Mazda too well, that you would never wake that we might bless you. Night and day have my husband and I prayed to Mithra the Merciful and Hauratât the Health-Giver in your behalf; each sunrise, at our command, the Magians have poured out for you the Haôma, the sacred juice dear to the Beautiful Immortals, and Amenhat, wisest of the physicians of Memphis, has stood by your bedside without rest. Now at last our prayers and his skill have conquered; you awake to life and gladness.”Glaucon lay wondering, not knowing how to reply, and only understanding in half, when the dark-haired goddess spoke, in purer Greek than her companion.“And I, O Glaucon of Athens, would have you suffer me to kiss your feet. For you have given my brother and my sister back to life.”Then drawing near she took his hand in hers, while the two smiling looked down on him.[pg 168]Then at last he found tongue to speak.“O gracious Queens, for such you are, forgive my roving wits. You speak of great service done. But wise Zeus knoweth we are strangers—”The golden goddess tossed her shining head and smiled,—still stroking with her hand.“Dear Glaucon, do you remember the Eastern lad you saved from the Spartans at the Isthmus? Behold him! Recall the bracelet of turquoise,—my first gratitude. Then again you saved me with my husband. For I am the woman you bore through the surf at the island. I am Artazostra, wife of Mardonius, and this is Roxana, his half-sister, whose mother was a princess in Egypt.”Glaucon passed his fingers before his face, beckoning back the past.“It is all far away and strange: the flight, the storm, the wreck, the tossing spar, the battling through the surges. My head is weak. I cannot picture it all.”“Do not try. Lie still. Grow strong and glad, and suffer us to teach you,”commanded Artazostra.“Where do I lie? We are not upon the rocky islet still?”The ladies laughed, not mockingly but so sweetly he wished that they would never cease.“This is Sardis,”spoke Roxana, bending over him;“you lie in the palace of the satrap.”“And Athens—”he said, wandering.“Is far away,”said Artazostra,“with all its griefs and false friends and foul remembrances. The friends about you here will never fail. Therefore lie still and have peace.”“You know my story,”cried he, now truly in amaze.“Mardonius knows all that passes in Athens, in Sparta, in every city of Hellas. Do not try to tell more. We weary you already. See—Amenhat comes to bid us begone.”[pg 169]The curtains parted again. A dark man in a pure white robe, his face and head smooth-shaven, approached the bed. He held out a broad gold cup, the rim whereof glinted with agate and sardonyx. He had no Greek, but Roxana took the cup from him and held it to Glaucon’s lips.“Drink,”she commanded, and he was fain to obey. The Athenian felt the heavily spiced liquor laying hold of him. His eyes closed, despite his wish to gaze longer on the two beautiful women. He felt their hands caressing his cheeks. The music grew ever softer. He thought he was sinking into a kind of euthanasy, that his life was drifting out amid delightful dreams. But not cold Thanatos, but health-bearing Hypnos was the god who visited him now. When next he woke, it was with a clearer vision, a sounder mind.* * * * * * *Sardis the Golden, once capital of the Lydian kings and now of the Persian satraps, had recovered from the devastation by the Ionians in their ill-starred revolt seventeen years preceding. The city spread in the fertile Sardiene, one of the garden plains of Asia Minor. To the south the cloud-crowned heights of Tmolus ever were visible. To the north flowed the noble stream of Hebrus, whilst high above the wealthy town, the busy agora, the giant temple of Lydian Cybele, rose the citadel of Meles, the palace fortress of the kings and the satraps. A frowning castle it was without, within not the golden-tiled palaces of Ecbatana and Susa boasted greater magnificence and luxury than this one-time dwelling of Crœsus. The ceilings of the wide banqueting halls rose on pillars of emerald Egyptian malachite. The walls were cased with onyx. Winged bulls that might have graced Nineveh guarded the portals. The lions upbearing the throne in the hall of audience were of gold. The mirrors in the“House of the Women”were not steel but silver.[pg 170]The gorgeous carpets were sprinkled with rose water. An army of dark Syrian eunuchs and yellow-faced Tartar girls ran at the beck of the palace guests. Only the stealthy entrance of Sickness and Death told the dwellers here they were not yet gods.Artaphernes, satrap of Lydia, had his divan, his viziers, and his audiences,—a court worthy of a king,—but the real lord of Western Asia was the prince who was nominally his guest. Mardonius had his own retinue and wing of the palace. On him fell the enormous task of organizing the masses of troops already pouring into Sardis, and he discharged his duty unwearyingly. The completion of the bridges of boats across the Hellespont, the assembling of the fleet, the collecting of provisions, fell to his province. Daily a courier pricked into Sardis with despatches from the Great King to his trusted general. Mardonius left the great levees and public spectacles to Artaphernes, but his hand was everywhere. His decisions were prompt. He was in constant communication with the Medizing party in Hellas. He had no time for the long dicing and drinking bouts the Persians loved, but he never failed to find each day an hour to spend with Artazostra his wife, with Roxana his half-sister, and with Glaucon his preserver.Slowly through the winter health had returned to the Athenian. For days he had lain dreaming away the hours to the tune of the flutes and the fountains. When the warm spring came, the eunuchs carried him in a sedan-chair through the palace garden, whence he could look forth on the plain, the city, the snow-clad hills, and think he was on Zeus’s Olympian throne, surveying all the earth. Then it was he learned the Persian speech, and easily, for were not his teachers Artazostra and Roxana? He found it no difficult tongue, simple and much akin to Greek, and unlike most[pg 171]of the uncouth tongues the Oriental traders chattered in Sardis. The two women were constantly with him. Few men were admitted to a Persian harem, but Mardonius never grudged the Greek the company of these twain.“Noble Athenian,”said the Prince, the first time he visited Glaucon’s bed,“you are my brother. My house is yours. My friends are yours. Command us all.”* * * * * * *Every day Glaucon was stronger. He tested himself with dumb-bells. Always he could lift a heavier weight. When the summer was at hand, he could ride out with Mardonius to the“Paradise,”the satrap’s hunting park, and be in at the death of the deer. Yet he was no more the“Fortunate Youth”of Athens. Only imperfectly he himself knew how complete was the severance from his old life. The terrible hour at Colonus had made a mark on his spirit which not all Zeus’s power could take away. No doubt all the one-time friends believed him dead. Had Hermione’s confidence in him remained true? Would she not say“guilty”at last with all the rest? Mardonius might have answered, he had constant letters from Greece, but the Prince was dumb when Glaucon strove to ask of things beyond the Ægean.Day by day the subtle influence of the Orient—the lotus-eating,—“tasting the honey-sweet fruit which makes men choose to abide forever, forgetful of the homeward way”—spread its unseen power over the Alcmæonid. Athens, the old pain, even the face of Hermione, would rise before him only dimly. He fought against this enchantment. But it was easier to renew his vow to return to Athens, after wiping out his shame, than to break these bands daily tightening.He heard little Greek, now that he was learning Persian. Even he himself was changed. His hair and beard grew long, after the Persian manner. He wore the loose Median[pg 172]cloak, the tall felt cap of a Persian noble. The elaborate genuflexions of the Asiatics no longer astonished him. He learned to admire the valiant, magnanimous lords of the Persians. And Xerxes, the distant king, the wielder of all this power, was he not truly a god on earth,vicegerentof Lord Zeus himself?“Forget you are a Hellene. We will talk of the Nile, not of the Cephissus,”Artazostra said, whenever he spoke of home. Then she would tell of Babylon and Persepolis, and Mardonius of forays beside the wide Caspian, and Roxana of her girlhood, while Gobryas was satrap of Egypt, spent beside the magic river, of the Pharaohs, the great pyramid, of Isis and Osiris and the world beyond the dead. Before the Athenian was opened the golden East, its glitter, its wonderment, its fascination. He even was silent when his hosts talked boldly of the coming war, how soon the Persian power would rule from the Pillars of Heracles to Ind.Yet once he stood at bay, showing that he was a Hellene still. They were in the garden. Mardonius had come to them where under the pomegranate tree the women spread their green tapestry which their nimble needles covered with a battle scene in scarlet. The Prince told of the capture and crucifixion of the chiefs of a futile revolt in Armenia. Then Artazostra clapped her hands to cry.“Fools! Fools whom Angra-Mainyu the Evil smites blind that he may destroy them!”Glaucon, sitting at her feet, looked up quickly.“Valiant fools, lady; every man must strike for his own country.”Artazostra shook her shining head.“Mazda gives victory to the king of Eran alone. Resisting Xerxes is not rebellion against man, it is rebellion against Heaven.”[pg 173]“Are you sure?”asked the Athenian, his eye lighting ominously.“Are yours the greatest gods?”But Roxana in turn cast down the tapestry and opened her arms with a charming gesture.“Be not angry, Glaucon, for will you not become one with us? I dare to prophesy like a seer from old Chaldea. Assur of Nineveh, Marduk of Babylon, Baal of Tyre, Ammon of Memphis—all have bent the knee to Mazda the Glorious, to Mithra the Fiend-Smiting, and shall the weakdævas, the puny gods of Greece, save their land, when greater than they bow down in sore defeat?”Yet Glaucon still looked on her boldly.“You have your mighty gods, but we have ours. Pray to your Mazda and Mithra, but we will still trust Zeus of the Thunders and Athena of the Gray Eyes, the bulwarks of our fathers. And Fate must answer which can help the best.”The Persians shook their heads. It was time to return to the palace. All that Glaucon had seen of the Barbarian’s might, since awakening in Sardis, told him Xerxes was indeed destined to go forth conquering and to conquer. Then the vision of the Acropolis, the temples, the Guardian Goddess, returned. He banished all disloyal thoughts for the instant. The Prince walked with his wife, Glaucon with Roxana. He had always thought herbeautiful;she had never seemed so beautiful as now. Did he imagine whither Mardonius perhaps was leading him?[pg 174]CHAPTER XVITHE COMING OF XERXES THE GOD-KINGAt last the lotus-eating ended. Repeated messengers told how Xerxes was quitting Babylon, was holding a muster in Cappadocia, and now was crossing Asia Minor toward Sardis. Mardonius and his companions had returned to that capital. Daily the soldiery poured into Sardis by tens of thousands. Glaucon knew now it was not a vain boast that for ten years the East had been arming against Hellas, that the whole power of the twenty satrapies would be flung as one thunderbolt upon devoted Greece.In the plain about Sardis a second city was rising, of wicker booths and gay pavilions. The host grew hourly. Now a band of ebony archers in leopard skins entered from far Ethiopia, now Bactrian battle-axemen, now yellow-faced Tartars from the northeast, now bright-turbaned Arabs upon their swaying camels,—Syrians, Cilicians, black-bearded Assyrians and Babylonians, thick-lipped Egyptians, came, and many a strange race more.But the core of the army were the serried files of Aryan horse and foot,—blond-headed, blue-eyed men, Persians and Medes, veterans of twenty victories. Their muscles were tempered steel. Their unwearying feet had tramped many a long parasang. Some were light infantry with wicker shields and powerful bows, but as many more horsemen in gold-scaled armour and with desert steeds that flew like Pegasus.[pg 175]“The finest cavalry in the world!”Mardonius vaunted, and his guest durst not answer nay.Satrap after satrap came. When at last a foaming Arab galloping to the castle proclaimed,“Next morn the Lord of the World will enter Sardis,”Glaucon could scarce have looked for a greater, though he had expected Cronian Zeus himself.Mardonius, as“bow-bearer to the king,”a semi-regal office, rode forth a stage to meet the sovran. The streets of Sardis were festooned with flowers. Thousands of spearmen held back the crowds. The Athenian stood beside Roxana and Artazostra at the upper window of a Lydian merchant prince, and his eyes missed nothing.Never had the two women seemed lovelier than when their hearts ran out to their approaching king. He felt now the power of personal sovranty, how these children of the East awaited not Xerxes the Master, but Xerxes the Omnipotent, God-Manifest, whose decrees were as the decrees of Heaven. And their awe could not fail to awe the Athenian.At noon the multitude caught the first token of the king. Down the road, through the gate, walked a man, bare-headed, bare-footed, alone,—Artaphernes, despot of all Lydia, going to pay his abject homage. Presently the eunuch priests of Cybele, perched above the gate, clashed their cymbals and raised their hymn of welcome. To the boom of drums the thousand chosen cavalry and as many picked footmen of the Life Guard entered, tall, magnificent soldiers,—caps and spear butts shining with gold. After these a gilded car drawn by the eight sacred horses, each milk-white, and on the car an altar bearing the eternal fire of Mazda. Then, each in his flashing chariot, moved the“Six Princes,”the heads of the great clans of the Achæmenians, then two hundred led desert horses, in splendid trappings, and then—after[pg 176]a long interval, that the host might cast no dust upon its lord, rode a single horseman on a jet-black steed, Artabanus—the king’s uncle and vizier. He beckoned to the people.“Have fear, Lydians, the giver of breath to all the world comes now beneath your gates!”The lines of soldiers flung down their spears and dropped upon their knees. The multitude imitated. A chariot came running behind four of the sacred steeds of Nisæa,—their coats were like new snow, their manes braided with gold thread, bridle, bits, pole, baseboard, shone with gems and the royal metal. The wheel was like the sun. A girl-like youth guided the crimson reins, a second held the tall green parasol. Its shadow did not hide the commanding figure upon the car. Glaucon looked hard. No mistaking—Xerxes was here, the being who could say to millions“Die!”and they perished like worms; in verity“God-Manifest.”For in looks Xerxes, son of Darius, was surely the Great King. A figure of august height was set off nobly by the flowing purple caftan and the purple cap which crowned the curling black hair. The riches of satrapies were in the rubies and topazes on sword sheath and baldric. The head was raised. The face was not regular, but of a proud, aquiline beauty. The skin was olive, the eyes dark, a little pensive. If there were weak lines about the mouth, the curling beard covered them. The king looked straight on, unmoved by the kneeling thousands, but as he came abreast of the balcony, chance made him look upward. Perhaps the sight of the beautiful Greek caused Xerxes to smile winsomely. The smile of a god can intoxicate. Caught away from himself, Glaucon the Alcmæonid joined in the great salvo of cheering.“Victory to Xerxes! Let the king of kings reign forever!”The chariot was gone almost instantly, a vast retinue—[pg 177]cooks, eunuchs, grooms, hunters, and many closed litters bearing the royal concubines—followed, but all these passed before Glaucon shook off the spell the sight of royalty cast on him.* * * * * * *That night in the palace Xerxes gave a feast in honour of the new campaign. The splendours of a royal banquet in the East need no retelling. Silver lamps, carpets of Kerman rugs or of the petals of fresh roses, a thousand lutes and dulcimers, precious Helbon wine flowing like water, cups of Phœnician crystal, tables groaning with wild boars roasted whole, dancing women none too modest,—these were but the incidentals of a gorgeous confusion. To Glaucon, with the chaste loveliness of the Panathenæa before his mind, the scene was one of vast wonderment but scarcely of pleasure. The Persian did nothing by halves. In battle a hero, at his cups he became a satyr. Many of the scenes before the guests emptied the last of the tall silver tankards were indescribable.* * * * * * *On the high dais above the roaring hall sat Xerxes the king,—adored, envied, pitiable.When Spitames, the seneschal, brought him the cup, the bearer bowed his face, not daring to look on his dread lord’s eyes.When Artabanus, the vizier, approached with a message, he first kissed the carpet below the dais.When Hydarnes, commander of the Life Guard, drew near to receive the watchword for the night, he held his mantle before his mouth, lest his breath pollute the world monarch.Yet of all forms of seeming prosperity wherewith Fate can curse a man, the worst was the curse of Xerxes. To be called“god”when one is finite and mortal; to have no friends, but[pg 178]only a hundred million slaves; to be denied the joys of honest wish and desire because there were none left unsatisfied; to have one’s hastiest word proclaimed as an edict of deity; never to be suffered to confess a mistake, cost what the blunder might, that the“king of kings”might seem lifted above all human error; in short, to be the bondsman of one’s own deification,—this was the hard captivity of the lord of the twenty satrapies.For Xerxes the king was a man,—of average instincts, capacities, goodness, wickedness. A god or a genius could have risen above his fearful isolation. Xerxes was neither. The iron ceremonial of the Persian court left him of genuine pleasures almost none. Something novel, a rare sensation, an opportunity to vary the dreary monotony of splendour by an astounding act of generosity or an act of frightful cruelty,—it mattered little which,—was snatched at by the king with childlike eagerness. And this night Xerxes was in an unwontedly gracious mood. At his elbow, as he sat on the throne cased with lapis lazuli and onyx, waited the one man who came nearest to being a friend and not a slave,—Mardonius, son of Gobryas, the bow-bearer,—and therefore more entitled than any other prince of the Persians to stand on terms of intimacy with his lord.While Spitames passed the wine, the king hearkened with condescending and approving nod to the report of the Prince as to his mad adventure in Hellas. Xerxes even reproved his brother-in-law mildly for hazarding his own life and that of his wife among those stiff-necked tribesmen who were so soon to taste the Aryan might.“It was in your service, Omnipotence,”the Prince was rejoining blandly;“what if not I alone, but a thousand others of the noblest of the Persians and the Medes may perish, if only the glory of their king is advanced?”[pg 179]“Nobly said; you are a faithful slave, Mardonius. I will remember you when I have burned Athens.”He even reached forth and stroked the bow-bearer’s hand, a condescension which made the footstool-bearer, parasol-bearer, quiver-bearer, and a dozen great lords more gnaw their lips with envy. Hydarnes, the commander who had waited an auspicious moment, now thought it safe to kneel on the lowest step of the throne.“Omnipotence, I am constrained to tell you that certain miserable Hellenes have been seized in the camp to-night—spies sent to pry out your power. Do you deign to have them impaled, crucified, or cast into the adders’ cage?”The king smiled magnanimously.“They shall not die. Show them the host, and all my power. Then send them home to their fellow-rebels to tell the madness of dreaming to withstand my might.”The smile of Xerxes had spread, like the ripple from a pebble splashing in a pool, over the face of every nobleman in hearing. Now their praises came as a chant.“O Ocean of Clemency and Wisdom! Happy Eran in thy sagacious yet merciful king!”Xerxes, not heeding, turned to Mardonius.“Ah! yes,—you were telling how you corrupted one of the chief Athenians, then had to flee. On the voyage you were shipwrecked?”“So I wrote to Babylon, to your Eternity.”“And a certain Athenian fugitive saved your lives? And you brought him to Sardis?”“I did so, Omnipotence.”“Of course he is at the banquet.”“The king speaks by the promptings of Mazda. I placed him with certain friends and bade them see he did not lack good cheer.”[pg 180]“Send,—I would talk with him.”“Suffer me to warn your Majesty,”ventured Mardonius,“he is an Athenian and glories in being of a stubborn, Persian-hating stock. I fear he will not perform due obeisance to the Great King.”“I can endure his rudeness,”spoke Xerxes, for once in excellent humour;“let the‘supreme usher’bring him with full speed.”The functionary thus commanded bowed himself to the ground and hastened on his errand.But well that Mardonius had deprecated the wrath of the monarch. Glaucon came with his head high, his manner almost arrogant. The mere fact that his boldness might cost him his life made him less bending than ever. He trod firmly upon the particular square of golden carpet at the foot of the dais which none, saving the king, the vizier, and the“Six Princes,”could lawfully tread. He held his hands at his sides, firmly refusing to conceal them in his cloak, as court etiquette demanded. As he stood on the steps of the throne, he gave the glittering monarch the same familiar bow he might have awarded a friend he met in the Agora. Mardonius was troubled. The supreme usher was horrified. The master-of-punishments, ever near his chief, gazed eagerly to see if Xerxes would not touch the audacious Hellene’s girdle—a sign for prompt decapitation. Only the good nature of the king prevented a catastrophe, and Xerxes was moved by two motives, pleasure at meeting a fellow-mortal who could look him in the eye without servility or fear, delight at the beautiful features and figure of the Athenian. For an instant monarch and fugitive looked face to face, then Xerxes stretched out, not his hand, but the gold tip of his ivory baton. Glaucon had wisdom enough to touch it,—a token that he was admitted to audience with the king.[pg 181]“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 Alcmæonidæ.”“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?”[pg 182]“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.[pg 183]“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 Achæmenian, 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 aroseen masseto drink to the man whom the sovran delighted to honour.[pg 184]“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.”[pg 185]“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.
[pg 163]BOOK IITHE COMING OF THE PERSIAN[pg 164][pg 165]CHAPTER XVTHE LOTUS-EATING AT SARDISWhen Glaucon awoke to consciousness, it was with a sense of absolute weakness, at the same moment with a sense of absolute rest. He knew that he was lying on pillows“softer than sleep,”that the air he breathed was laden with perfume, that the golden light which came through his half-closed eyelids was deliciously tempered, that his ears caught a musical murmur, as of a plashing fountain. So he lay for long, too impotent, too contented to ask where he lay, or whence he had departed. Athens, Hermione, all the thousand and one things of his old life, flitted through his brain, but only as vague, far shapes. He was too weak even to long for them. Still the fountain plashed on, and mingling with the tinkling he thought he heard low flutes breathing. Perhaps it was only a phantasy of his flagging brain. Then his eyes opened wider. He lifted his hand. It was a task even to do that little thing,—he was so weak. He looked at the hand! Surely his own, yet how white it was, how thin; the bones were there, the blue veins, but all the strength gone out of them. Was this the hand that had flung great Lycon down? It would be mere sport for a child to master him now. He touched his face. It was covered with a thick beard, as of a long month’s growth. The discovery[pg 166]startled him. He strove to rise on one elbow. Too weak! He sank back upon the cushions and let his eyes rove inquiringly. Never had he seen tapestries the like of those that canopied his bed. Scarlet and purple and embroidered in gold thread with elaborate hunting scenes,—the dogs, the chariots, the slaying of the deer, the bearing home of the game. He knew the choicest looms of Sidon must have wrought them. And the linen, so cool, so grateful, underneath his head—was it not the almost priceless fabric of Borsippa? He stirred a little, his eyes rested on the floor. It was covered with a rug worth an Athenian patrician’s ransom,—a lustrous, variegated sheen, showing a new tint at each change of the light. So much he saw from the bed, and curiosity was wakened. Again he put forth his hand, and touched the hanging curtains. The movement set a score of little silver bells that dangled over the canopy to jingling. As at a signal the flutes grew louder, mingling with them was the clearer note of lyres. Now the strains swelled sweetly, now faded away into dreamy sighing, as if bidding the listener to sink again into the arms of sleep. Another vain effort to rise on his elbow. Again he was helpless. Giving way to the charm of the music, he closed his eyes.“Either I am awaking in Elysium, or the gods send to me pleasant dreams before I die.”He was feebly wondering which was the alternative when a new sound roused him, the sweep and rustle of the dresses of two women as they approached the bed. He gazed forth listlessly, when lo! above his couch stood two strangers,—strangers, but either as fair as Aphrodite arising from the sea. Both were tall, and full of queenly grace, both were dressed in gauzy white, but the hair of the one was of such gold that Glaucon hardly saw the circlet which[pg 167]pressed over it. Her eyes were blue, the lustre of her face was like a white rose. The other’s hair shone like the wing of a raven. A wreath of red poppies covered it, but over the softly tinted forehead there peered forth a golden snake with emerald eyes—the Egyptian uræus, the crown of a princess from the Nile. Her eyes were as black as the other’s were blue, her lips as red as the dye of Tyre, her hands—But before Glaucon looked and wondered more, the first, she of the golden head, laid her hand upon his face,—a warm, comforting hand that seemed to speed back strength and gladness with the touch. Then she spoke. Her Greek was very broken, yet he understood her.“Are you quite awakened, dear Glaucon?”He looked up marvelling, not knowing how to answer; but the golden goddess seemed to expect none from him.“It is now a month since we brought you from Astypalæa. You have wandered close to the Portals of the Dead. We feared you were beloved by Mazda too well, that you would never wake that we might bless you. Night and day have my husband and I prayed to Mithra the Merciful and Hauratât the Health-Giver in your behalf; each sunrise, at our command, the Magians have poured out for you the Haôma, the sacred juice dear to the Beautiful Immortals, and Amenhat, wisest of the physicians of Memphis, has stood by your bedside without rest. Now at last our prayers and his skill have conquered; you awake to life and gladness.”Glaucon lay wondering, not knowing how to reply, and only understanding in half, when the dark-haired goddess spoke, in purer Greek than her companion.“And I, O Glaucon of Athens, would have you suffer me to kiss your feet. For you have given my brother and my sister back to life.”Then drawing near she took his hand in hers, while the two smiling looked down on him.[pg 168]Then at last he found tongue to speak.“O gracious Queens, for such you are, forgive my roving wits. You speak of great service done. But wise Zeus knoweth we are strangers—”The golden goddess tossed her shining head and smiled,—still stroking with her hand.“Dear Glaucon, do you remember the Eastern lad you saved from the Spartans at the Isthmus? Behold him! Recall the bracelet of turquoise,—my first gratitude. Then again you saved me with my husband. For I am the woman you bore through the surf at the island. I am Artazostra, wife of Mardonius, and this is Roxana, his half-sister, whose mother was a princess in Egypt.”Glaucon passed his fingers before his face, beckoning back the past.“It is all far away and strange: the flight, the storm, the wreck, the tossing spar, the battling through the surges. My head is weak. I cannot picture it all.”“Do not try. Lie still. Grow strong and glad, and suffer us to teach you,”commanded Artazostra.“Where do I lie? We are not upon the rocky islet still?”The ladies laughed, not mockingly but so sweetly he wished that they would never cease.“This is Sardis,”spoke Roxana, bending over him;“you lie in the palace of the satrap.”“And Athens—”he said, wandering.“Is far away,”said Artazostra,“with all its griefs and false friends and foul remembrances. The friends about you here will never fail. Therefore lie still and have peace.”“You know my story,”cried he, now truly in amaze.“Mardonius knows all that passes in Athens, in Sparta, in every city of Hellas. Do not try to tell more. We weary you already. See—Amenhat comes to bid us begone.”[pg 169]The curtains parted again. A dark man in a pure white robe, his face and head smooth-shaven, approached the bed. He held out a broad gold cup, the rim whereof glinted with agate and sardonyx. He had no Greek, but Roxana took the cup from him and held it to Glaucon’s lips.“Drink,”she commanded, and he was fain to obey. The Athenian felt the heavily spiced liquor laying hold of him. His eyes closed, despite his wish to gaze longer on the two beautiful women. He felt their hands caressing his cheeks. The music grew ever softer. He thought he was sinking into a kind of euthanasy, that his life was drifting out amid delightful dreams. But not cold Thanatos, but health-bearing Hypnos was the god who visited him now. When next he woke, it was with a clearer vision, a sounder mind.* * * * * * *Sardis the Golden, once capital of the Lydian kings and now of the Persian satraps, had recovered from the devastation by the Ionians in their ill-starred revolt seventeen years preceding. The city spread in the fertile Sardiene, one of the garden plains of Asia Minor. To the south the cloud-crowned heights of Tmolus ever were visible. To the north flowed the noble stream of Hebrus, whilst high above the wealthy town, the busy agora, the giant temple of Lydian Cybele, rose the citadel of Meles, the palace fortress of the kings and the satraps. A frowning castle it was without, within not the golden-tiled palaces of Ecbatana and Susa boasted greater magnificence and luxury than this one-time dwelling of Crœsus. The ceilings of the wide banqueting halls rose on pillars of emerald Egyptian malachite. The walls were cased with onyx. Winged bulls that might have graced Nineveh guarded the portals. The lions upbearing the throne in the hall of audience were of gold. The mirrors in the“House of the Women”were not steel but silver.[pg 170]The gorgeous carpets were sprinkled with rose water. An army of dark Syrian eunuchs and yellow-faced Tartar girls ran at the beck of the palace guests. Only the stealthy entrance of Sickness and Death told the dwellers here they were not yet gods.Artaphernes, satrap of Lydia, had his divan, his viziers, and his audiences,—a court worthy of a king,—but the real lord of Western Asia was the prince who was nominally his guest. Mardonius had his own retinue and wing of the palace. On him fell the enormous task of organizing the masses of troops already pouring into Sardis, and he discharged his duty unwearyingly. The completion of the bridges of boats across the Hellespont, the assembling of the fleet, the collecting of provisions, fell to his province. Daily a courier pricked into Sardis with despatches from the Great King to his trusted general. Mardonius left the great levees and public spectacles to Artaphernes, but his hand was everywhere. His decisions were prompt. He was in constant communication with the Medizing party in Hellas. He had no time for the long dicing and drinking bouts the Persians loved, but he never failed to find each day an hour to spend with Artazostra his wife, with Roxana his half-sister, and with Glaucon his preserver.Slowly through the winter health had returned to the Athenian. For days he had lain dreaming away the hours to the tune of the flutes and the fountains. When the warm spring came, the eunuchs carried him in a sedan-chair through the palace garden, whence he could look forth on the plain, the city, the snow-clad hills, and think he was on Zeus’s Olympian throne, surveying all the earth. Then it was he learned the Persian speech, and easily, for were not his teachers Artazostra and Roxana? He found it no difficult tongue, simple and much akin to Greek, and unlike most[pg 171]of the uncouth tongues the Oriental traders chattered in Sardis. The two women were constantly with him. Few men were admitted to a Persian harem, but Mardonius never grudged the Greek the company of these twain.“Noble Athenian,”said the Prince, the first time he visited Glaucon’s bed,“you are my brother. My house is yours. My friends are yours. Command us all.”* * * * * * *Every day Glaucon was stronger. He tested himself with dumb-bells. Always he could lift a heavier weight. When the summer was at hand, he could ride out with Mardonius to the“Paradise,”the satrap’s hunting park, and be in at the death of the deer. Yet he was no more the“Fortunate Youth”of Athens. Only imperfectly he himself knew how complete was the severance from his old life. The terrible hour at Colonus had made a mark on his spirit which not all Zeus’s power could take away. No doubt all the one-time friends believed him dead. Had Hermione’s confidence in him remained true? Would she not say“guilty”at last with all the rest? Mardonius might have answered, he had constant letters from Greece, but the Prince was dumb when Glaucon strove to ask of things beyond the Ægean.Day by day the subtle influence of the Orient—the lotus-eating,—“tasting the honey-sweet fruit which makes men choose to abide forever, forgetful of the homeward way”—spread its unseen power over the Alcmæonid. Athens, the old pain, even the face of Hermione, would rise before him only dimly. He fought against this enchantment. But it was easier to renew his vow to return to Athens, after wiping out his shame, than to break these bands daily tightening.He heard little Greek, now that he was learning Persian. Even he himself was changed. His hair and beard grew long, after the Persian manner. He wore the loose Median[pg 172]cloak, the tall felt cap of a Persian noble. The elaborate genuflexions of the Asiatics no longer astonished him. He learned to admire the valiant, magnanimous lords of the Persians. And Xerxes, the distant king, the wielder of all this power, was he not truly a god on earth,vicegerentof Lord Zeus himself?“Forget you are a Hellene. We will talk of the Nile, not of the Cephissus,”Artazostra said, whenever he spoke of home. Then she would tell of Babylon and Persepolis, and Mardonius of forays beside the wide Caspian, and Roxana of her girlhood, while Gobryas was satrap of Egypt, spent beside the magic river, of the Pharaohs, the great pyramid, of Isis and Osiris and the world beyond the dead. Before the Athenian was opened the golden East, its glitter, its wonderment, its fascination. He even was silent when his hosts talked boldly of the coming war, how soon the Persian power would rule from the Pillars of Heracles to Ind.Yet once he stood at bay, showing that he was a Hellene still. They were in the garden. Mardonius had come to them where under the pomegranate tree the women spread their green tapestry which their nimble needles covered with a battle scene in scarlet. The Prince told of the capture and crucifixion of the chiefs of a futile revolt in Armenia. Then Artazostra clapped her hands to cry.“Fools! Fools whom Angra-Mainyu the Evil smites blind that he may destroy them!”Glaucon, sitting at her feet, looked up quickly.“Valiant fools, lady; every man must strike for his own country.”Artazostra shook her shining head.“Mazda gives victory to the king of Eran alone. Resisting Xerxes is not rebellion against man, it is rebellion against Heaven.”[pg 173]“Are you sure?”asked the Athenian, his eye lighting ominously.“Are yours the greatest gods?”But Roxana in turn cast down the tapestry and opened her arms with a charming gesture.“Be not angry, Glaucon, for will you not become one with us? I dare to prophesy like a seer from old Chaldea. Assur of Nineveh, Marduk of Babylon, Baal of Tyre, Ammon of Memphis—all have bent the knee to Mazda the Glorious, to Mithra the Fiend-Smiting, and shall the weakdævas, the puny gods of Greece, save their land, when greater than they bow down in sore defeat?”Yet Glaucon still looked on her boldly.“You have your mighty gods, but we have ours. Pray to your Mazda and Mithra, but we will still trust Zeus of the Thunders and Athena of the Gray Eyes, the bulwarks of our fathers. And Fate must answer which can help the best.”The Persians shook their heads. It was time to return to the palace. All that Glaucon had seen of the Barbarian’s might, since awakening in Sardis, told him Xerxes was indeed destined to go forth conquering and to conquer. Then the vision of the Acropolis, the temples, the Guardian Goddess, returned. He banished all disloyal thoughts for the instant. The Prince walked with his wife, Glaucon with Roxana. He had always thought herbeautiful;she had never seemed so beautiful as now. Did he imagine whither Mardonius perhaps was leading him?[pg 174]CHAPTER XVITHE COMING OF XERXES THE GOD-KINGAt last the lotus-eating ended. Repeated messengers told how Xerxes was quitting Babylon, was holding a muster in Cappadocia, and now was crossing Asia Minor toward Sardis. Mardonius and his companions had returned to that capital. Daily the soldiery poured into Sardis by tens of thousands. Glaucon knew now it was not a vain boast that for ten years the East had been arming against Hellas, that the whole power of the twenty satrapies would be flung as one thunderbolt upon devoted Greece.In the plain about Sardis a second city was rising, of wicker booths and gay pavilions. The host grew hourly. Now a band of ebony archers in leopard skins entered from far Ethiopia, now Bactrian battle-axemen, now yellow-faced Tartars from the northeast, now bright-turbaned Arabs upon their swaying camels,—Syrians, Cilicians, black-bearded Assyrians and Babylonians, thick-lipped Egyptians, came, and many a strange race more.But the core of the army were the serried files of Aryan horse and foot,—blond-headed, blue-eyed men, Persians and Medes, veterans of twenty victories. Their muscles were tempered steel. Their unwearying feet had tramped many a long parasang. Some were light infantry with wicker shields and powerful bows, but as many more horsemen in gold-scaled armour and with desert steeds that flew like Pegasus.[pg 175]“The finest cavalry in the world!”Mardonius vaunted, and his guest durst not answer nay.Satrap after satrap came. When at last a foaming Arab galloping to the castle proclaimed,“Next morn the Lord of the World will enter Sardis,”Glaucon could scarce have looked for a greater, though he had expected Cronian Zeus himself.Mardonius, as“bow-bearer to the king,”a semi-regal office, rode forth a stage to meet the sovran. The streets of Sardis were festooned with flowers. Thousands of spearmen held back the crowds. The Athenian stood beside Roxana and Artazostra at the upper window of a Lydian merchant prince, and his eyes missed nothing.Never had the two women seemed lovelier than when their hearts ran out to their approaching king. He felt now the power of personal sovranty, how these children of the East awaited not Xerxes the Master, but Xerxes the Omnipotent, God-Manifest, whose decrees were as the decrees of Heaven. And their awe could not fail to awe the Athenian.At noon the multitude caught the first token of the king. Down the road, through the gate, walked a man, bare-headed, bare-footed, alone,—Artaphernes, despot of all Lydia, going to pay his abject homage. Presently the eunuch priests of Cybele, perched above the gate, clashed their cymbals and raised their hymn of welcome. To the boom of drums the thousand chosen cavalry and as many picked footmen of the Life Guard entered, tall, magnificent soldiers,—caps and spear butts shining with gold. After these a gilded car drawn by the eight sacred horses, each milk-white, and on the car an altar bearing the eternal fire of Mazda. Then, each in his flashing chariot, moved the“Six Princes,”the heads of the great clans of the Achæmenians, then two hundred led desert horses, in splendid trappings, and then—after[pg 176]a long interval, that the host might cast no dust upon its lord, rode a single horseman on a jet-black steed, Artabanus—the king’s uncle and vizier. He beckoned to the people.“Have fear, Lydians, the giver of breath to all the world comes now beneath your gates!”The lines of soldiers flung down their spears and dropped upon their knees. The multitude imitated. A chariot came running behind four of the sacred steeds of Nisæa,—their coats were like new snow, their manes braided with gold thread, bridle, bits, pole, baseboard, shone with gems and the royal metal. The wheel was like the sun. A girl-like youth guided the crimson reins, a second held the tall green parasol. Its shadow did not hide the commanding figure upon the car. Glaucon looked hard. No mistaking—Xerxes was here, the being who could say to millions“Die!”and they perished like worms; in verity“God-Manifest.”For in looks Xerxes, son of Darius, was surely the Great King. A figure of august height was set off nobly by the flowing purple caftan and the purple cap which crowned the curling black hair. The riches of satrapies were in the rubies and topazes on sword sheath and baldric. The head was raised. The face was not regular, but of a proud, aquiline beauty. The skin was olive, the eyes dark, a little pensive. If there were weak lines about the mouth, the curling beard covered them. The king looked straight on, unmoved by the kneeling thousands, but as he came abreast of the balcony, chance made him look upward. Perhaps the sight of the beautiful Greek caused Xerxes to smile winsomely. The smile of a god can intoxicate. Caught away from himself, Glaucon the Alcmæonid joined in the great salvo of cheering.“Victory to Xerxes! Let the king of kings reign forever!”The chariot was gone almost instantly, a vast retinue—[pg 177]cooks, eunuchs, grooms, hunters, and many closed litters bearing the royal concubines—followed, but all these passed before Glaucon shook off the spell the sight of royalty cast on him.* * * * * * *That night in the palace Xerxes gave a feast in honour of the new campaign. The splendours of a royal banquet in the East need no retelling. Silver lamps, carpets of Kerman rugs or of the petals of fresh roses, a thousand lutes and dulcimers, precious Helbon wine flowing like water, cups of Phœnician crystal, tables groaning with wild boars roasted whole, dancing women none too modest,—these were but the incidentals of a gorgeous confusion. To Glaucon, with the chaste loveliness of the Panathenæa before his mind, the scene was one of vast wonderment but scarcely of pleasure. The Persian did nothing by halves. In battle a hero, at his cups he became a satyr. Many of the scenes before the guests emptied the last of the tall silver tankards were indescribable.* * * * * * *On the high dais above the roaring hall sat Xerxes the king,—adored, envied, pitiable.When Spitames, the seneschal, brought him the cup, the bearer bowed his face, not daring to look on his dread lord’s eyes.When Artabanus, the vizier, approached with a message, he first kissed the carpet below the dais.When Hydarnes, commander of the Life Guard, drew near to receive the watchword for the night, he held his mantle before his mouth, lest his breath pollute the world monarch.Yet of all forms of seeming prosperity wherewith Fate can curse a man, the worst was the curse of Xerxes. To be called“god”when one is finite and mortal; to have no friends, but[pg 178]only a hundred million slaves; to be denied the joys of honest wish and desire because there were none left unsatisfied; to have one’s hastiest word proclaimed as an edict of deity; never to be suffered to confess a mistake, cost what the blunder might, that the“king of kings”might seem lifted above all human error; in short, to be the bondsman of one’s own deification,—this was the hard captivity of the lord of the twenty satrapies.For Xerxes the king was a man,—of average instincts, capacities, goodness, wickedness. A god or a genius could have risen above his fearful isolation. Xerxes was neither. The iron ceremonial of the Persian court left him of genuine pleasures almost none. Something novel, a rare sensation, an opportunity to vary the dreary monotony of splendour by an astounding act of generosity or an act of frightful cruelty,—it mattered little which,—was snatched at by the king with childlike eagerness. And this night Xerxes was in an unwontedly gracious mood. At his elbow, as he sat on the throne cased with lapis lazuli and onyx, waited the one man who came nearest to being a friend and not a slave,—Mardonius, son of Gobryas, the bow-bearer,—and therefore more entitled than any other prince of the Persians to stand on terms of intimacy with his lord.While Spitames passed the wine, the king hearkened with condescending and approving nod to the report of the Prince as to his mad adventure in Hellas. Xerxes even reproved his brother-in-law mildly for hazarding his own life and that of his wife among those stiff-necked tribesmen who were so soon to taste the Aryan might.“It was in your service, Omnipotence,”the Prince was rejoining blandly;“what if not I alone, but a thousand others of the noblest of the Persians and the Medes may perish, if only the glory of their king is advanced?”[pg 179]“Nobly said; you are a faithful slave, Mardonius. I will remember you when I have burned Athens.”He even reached forth and stroked the bow-bearer’s hand, a condescension which made the footstool-bearer, parasol-bearer, quiver-bearer, and a dozen great lords more gnaw their lips with envy. Hydarnes, the commander who had waited an auspicious moment, now thought it safe to kneel on the lowest step of the throne.“Omnipotence, I am constrained to tell you that certain miserable Hellenes have been seized in the camp to-night—spies sent to pry out your power. Do you deign to have them impaled, crucified, or cast into the adders’ cage?”The king smiled magnanimously.“They shall not die. Show them the host, and all my power. Then send them home to their fellow-rebels to tell the madness of dreaming to withstand my might.”The smile of Xerxes had spread, like the ripple from a pebble splashing in a pool, over the face of every nobleman in hearing. Now their praises came as a chant.“O Ocean of Clemency and Wisdom! Happy Eran in thy sagacious yet merciful king!”Xerxes, not heeding, turned to Mardonius.“Ah! yes,—you were telling how you corrupted one of the chief Athenians, then had to flee. On the voyage you were shipwrecked?”“So I wrote to Babylon, to your Eternity.”“And a certain Athenian fugitive saved your lives? And you brought him to Sardis?”“I did so, Omnipotence.”“Of course he is at the banquet.”“The king speaks by the promptings of Mazda. I placed him with certain friends and bade them see he did not lack good cheer.”[pg 180]“Send,—I would talk with him.”“Suffer me to warn your Majesty,”ventured Mardonius,“he is an Athenian and glories in being of a stubborn, Persian-hating stock. I fear he will not perform due obeisance to the Great King.”“I can endure his rudeness,”spoke Xerxes, for once in excellent humour;“let the‘supreme usher’bring him with full speed.”The functionary thus commanded bowed himself to the ground and hastened on his errand.But well that Mardonius had deprecated the wrath of the monarch. Glaucon came with his head high, his manner almost arrogant. The mere fact that his boldness might cost him his life made him less bending than ever. He trod firmly upon the particular square of golden carpet at the foot of the dais which none, saving the king, the vizier, and the“Six Princes,”could lawfully tread. He held his hands at his sides, firmly refusing to conceal them in his cloak, as court etiquette demanded. As he stood on the steps of the throne, he gave the glittering monarch the same familiar bow he might have awarded a friend he met in the Agora. Mardonius was troubled. The supreme usher was horrified. The master-of-punishments, ever near his chief, gazed eagerly to see if Xerxes would not touch the audacious Hellene’s girdle—a sign for prompt decapitation. Only the good nature of the king prevented a catastrophe, and Xerxes was moved by two motives, pleasure at meeting a fellow-mortal who could look him in the eye without servility or fear, delight at the beautiful features and figure of the Athenian. For an instant monarch and fugitive looked face to face, then Xerxes stretched out, not his hand, but the gold tip of his ivory baton. Glaucon had wisdom enough to touch it,—a token that he was admitted to audience with the king.[pg 181]“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 Alcmæonidæ.”“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?”[pg 182]“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.[pg 183]“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 Achæmenian, 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 aroseen masseto drink to the man whom the sovran delighted to honour.[pg 184]“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.”[pg 185]“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.
[pg 163]BOOK IITHE COMING OF THE PERSIAN[pg 164][pg 165]CHAPTER XVTHE LOTUS-EATING AT SARDISWhen Glaucon awoke to consciousness, it was with a sense of absolute weakness, at the same moment with a sense of absolute rest. He knew that he was lying on pillows“softer than sleep,”that the air he breathed was laden with perfume, that the golden light which came through his half-closed eyelids was deliciously tempered, that his ears caught a musical murmur, as of a plashing fountain. So he lay for long, too impotent, too contented to ask where he lay, or whence he had departed. Athens, Hermione, all the thousand and one things of his old life, flitted through his brain, but only as vague, far shapes. He was too weak even to long for them. Still the fountain plashed on, and mingling with the tinkling he thought he heard low flutes breathing. Perhaps it was only a phantasy of his flagging brain. Then his eyes opened wider. He lifted his hand. It was a task even to do that little thing,—he was so weak. He looked at the hand! Surely his own, yet how white it was, how thin; the bones were there, the blue veins, but all the strength gone out of them. Was this the hand that had flung great Lycon down? It would be mere sport for a child to master him now. He touched his face. It was covered with a thick beard, as of a long month’s growth. The discovery[pg 166]startled him. He strove to rise on one elbow. Too weak! He sank back upon the cushions and let his eyes rove inquiringly. Never had he seen tapestries the like of those that canopied his bed. Scarlet and purple and embroidered in gold thread with elaborate hunting scenes,—the dogs, the chariots, the slaying of the deer, the bearing home of the game. He knew the choicest looms of Sidon must have wrought them. And the linen, so cool, so grateful, underneath his head—was it not the almost priceless fabric of Borsippa? He stirred a little, his eyes rested on the floor. It was covered with a rug worth an Athenian patrician’s ransom,—a lustrous, variegated sheen, showing a new tint at each change of the light. So much he saw from the bed, and curiosity was wakened. Again he put forth his hand, and touched the hanging curtains. The movement set a score of little silver bells that dangled over the canopy to jingling. As at a signal the flutes grew louder, mingling with them was the clearer note of lyres. Now the strains swelled sweetly, now faded away into dreamy sighing, as if bidding the listener to sink again into the arms of sleep. Another vain effort to rise on his elbow. Again he was helpless. Giving way to the charm of the music, he closed his eyes.“Either I am awaking in Elysium, or the gods send to me pleasant dreams before I die.”He was feebly wondering which was the alternative when a new sound roused him, the sweep and rustle of the dresses of two women as they approached the bed. He gazed forth listlessly, when lo! above his couch stood two strangers,—strangers, but either as fair as Aphrodite arising from the sea. Both were tall, and full of queenly grace, both were dressed in gauzy white, but the hair of the one was of such gold that Glaucon hardly saw the circlet which[pg 167]pressed over it. Her eyes were blue, the lustre of her face was like a white rose. The other’s hair shone like the wing of a raven. A wreath of red poppies covered it, but over the softly tinted forehead there peered forth a golden snake with emerald eyes—the Egyptian uræus, the crown of a princess from the Nile. Her eyes were as black as the other’s were blue, her lips as red as the dye of Tyre, her hands—But before Glaucon looked and wondered more, the first, she of the golden head, laid her hand upon his face,—a warm, comforting hand that seemed to speed back strength and gladness with the touch. Then she spoke. Her Greek was very broken, yet he understood her.“Are you quite awakened, dear Glaucon?”He looked up marvelling, not knowing how to answer; but the golden goddess seemed to expect none from him.“It is now a month since we brought you from Astypalæa. You have wandered close to the Portals of the Dead. We feared you were beloved by Mazda too well, that you would never wake that we might bless you. Night and day have my husband and I prayed to Mithra the Merciful and Hauratât the Health-Giver in your behalf; each sunrise, at our command, the Magians have poured out for you the Haôma, the sacred juice dear to the Beautiful Immortals, and Amenhat, wisest of the physicians of Memphis, has stood by your bedside without rest. Now at last our prayers and his skill have conquered; you awake to life and gladness.”Glaucon lay wondering, not knowing how to reply, and only understanding in half, when the dark-haired goddess spoke, in purer Greek than her companion.“And I, O Glaucon of Athens, would have you suffer me to kiss your feet. For you have given my brother and my sister back to life.”Then drawing near she took his hand in hers, while the two smiling looked down on him.[pg 168]Then at last he found tongue to speak.“O gracious Queens, for such you are, forgive my roving wits. You speak of great service done. But wise Zeus knoweth we are strangers—”The golden goddess tossed her shining head and smiled,—still stroking with her hand.“Dear Glaucon, do you remember the Eastern lad you saved from the Spartans at the Isthmus? Behold him! Recall the bracelet of turquoise,—my first gratitude. Then again you saved me with my husband. For I am the woman you bore through the surf at the island. I am Artazostra, wife of Mardonius, and this is Roxana, his half-sister, whose mother was a princess in Egypt.”Glaucon passed his fingers before his face, beckoning back the past.“It is all far away and strange: the flight, the storm, the wreck, the tossing spar, the battling through the surges. My head is weak. I cannot picture it all.”“Do not try. Lie still. Grow strong and glad, and suffer us to teach you,”commanded Artazostra.“Where do I lie? We are not upon the rocky islet still?”The ladies laughed, not mockingly but so sweetly he wished that they would never cease.“This is Sardis,”spoke Roxana, bending over him;“you lie in the palace of the satrap.”“And Athens—”he said, wandering.“Is far away,”said Artazostra,“with all its griefs and false friends and foul remembrances. The friends about you here will never fail. Therefore lie still and have peace.”“You know my story,”cried he, now truly in amaze.“Mardonius knows all that passes in Athens, in Sparta, in every city of Hellas. Do not try to tell more. We weary you already. See—Amenhat comes to bid us begone.”[pg 169]The curtains parted again. A dark man in a pure white robe, his face and head smooth-shaven, approached the bed. He held out a broad gold cup, the rim whereof glinted with agate and sardonyx. He had no Greek, but Roxana took the cup from him and held it to Glaucon’s lips.“Drink,”she commanded, and he was fain to obey. The Athenian felt the heavily spiced liquor laying hold of him. His eyes closed, despite his wish to gaze longer on the two beautiful women. He felt their hands caressing his cheeks. The music grew ever softer. He thought he was sinking into a kind of euthanasy, that his life was drifting out amid delightful dreams. But not cold Thanatos, but health-bearing Hypnos was the god who visited him now. When next he woke, it was with a clearer vision, a sounder mind.* * * * * * *Sardis the Golden, once capital of the Lydian kings and now of the Persian satraps, had recovered from the devastation by the Ionians in their ill-starred revolt seventeen years preceding. The city spread in the fertile Sardiene, one of the garden plains of Asia Minor. To the south the cloud-crowned heights of Tmolus ever were visible. To the north flowed the noble stream of Hebrus, whilst high above the wealthy town, the busy agora, the giant temple of Lydian Cybele, rose the citadel of Meles, the palace fortress of the kings and the satraps. A frowning castle it was without, within not the golden-tiled palaces of Ecbatana and Susa boasted greater magnificence and luxury than this one-time dwelling of Crœsus. The ceilings of the wide banqueting halls rose on pillars of emerald Egyptian malachite. The walls were cased with onyx. Winged bulls that might have graced Nineveh guarded the portals. The lions upbearing the throne in the hall of audience were of gold. The mirrors in the“House of the Women”were not steel but silver.[pg 170]The gorgeous carpets were sprinkled with rose water. An army of dark Syrian eunuchs and yellow-faced Tartar girls ran at the beck of the palace guests. Only the stealthy entrance of Sickness and Death told the dwellers here they were not yet gods.Artaphernes, satrap of Lydia, had his divan, his viziers, and his audiences,—a court worthy of a king,—but the real lord of Western Asia was the prince who was nominally his guest. Mardonius had his own retinue and wing of the palace. On him fell the enormous task of organizing the masses of troops already pouring into Sardis, and he discharged his duty unwearyingly. The completion of the bridges of boats across the Hellespont, the assembling of the fleet, the collecting of provisions, fell to his province. Daily a courier pricked into Sardis with despatches from the Great King to his trusted general. Mardonius left the great levees and public spectacles to Artaphernes, but his hand was everywhere. His decisions were prompt. He was in constant communication with the Medizing party in Hellas. He had no time for the long dicing and drinking bouts the Persians loved, but he never failed to find each day an hour to spend with Artazostra his wife, with Roxana his half-sister, and with Glaucon his preserver.Slowly through the winter health had returned to the Athenian. For days he had lain dreaming away the hours to the tune of the flutes and the fountains. When the warm spring came, the eunuchs carried him in a sedan-chair through the palace garden, whence he could look forth on the plain, the city, the snow-clad hills, and think he was on Zeus’s Olympian throne, surveying all the earth. Then it was he learned the Persian speech, and easily, for were not his teachers Artazostra and Roxana? He found it no difficult tongue, simple and much akin to Greek, and unlike most[pg 171]of the uncouth tongues the Oriental traders chattered in Sardis. The two women were constantly with him. Few men were admitted to a Persian harem, but Mardonius never grudged the Greek the company of these twain.“Noble Athenian,”said the Prince, the first time he visited Glaucon’s bed,“you are my brother. My house is yours. My friends are yours. Command us all.”* * * * * * *Every day Glaucon was stronger. He tested himself with dumb-bells. Always he could lift a heavier weight. When the summer was at hand, he could ride out with Mardonius to the“Paradise,”the satrap’s hunting park, and be in at the death of the deer. Yet he was no more the“Fortunate Youth”of Athens. Only imperfectly he himself knew how complete was the severance from his old life. The terrible hour at Colonus had made a mark on his spirit which not all Zeus’s power could take away. No doubt all the one-time friends believed him dead. Had Hermione’s confidence in him remained true? Would she not say“guilty”at last with all the rest? Mardonius might have answered, he had constant letters from Greece, but the Prince was dumb when Glaucon strove to ask of things beyond the Ægean.Day by day the subtle influence of the Orient—the lotus-eating,—“tasting the honey-sweet fruit which makes men choose to abide forever, forgetful of the homeward way”—spread its unseen power over the Alcmæonid. Athens, the old pain, even the face of Hermione, would rise before him only dimly. He fought against this enchantment. But it was easier to renew his vow to return to Athens, after wiping out his shame, than to break these bands daily tightening.He heard little Greek, now that he was learning Persian. Even he himself was changed. His hair and beard grew long, after the Persian manner. He wore the loose Median[pg 172]cloak, the tall felt cap of a Persian noble. The elaborate genuflexions of the Asiatics no longer astonished him. He learned to admire the valiant, magnanimous lords of the Persians. And Xerxes, the distant king, the wielder of all this power, was he not truly a god on earth,vicegerentof Lord Zeus himself?“Forget you are a Hellene. We will talk of the Nile, not of the Cephissus,”Artazostra said, whenever he spoke of home. Then she would tell of Babylon and Persepolis, and Mardonius of forays beside the wide Caspian, and Roxana of her girlhood, while Gobryas was satrap of Egypt, spent beside the magic river, of the Pharaohs, the great pyramid, of Isis and Osiris and the world beyond the dead. Before the Athenian was opened the golden East, its glitter, its wonderment, its fascination. He even was silent when his hosts talked boldly of the coming war, how soon the Persian power would rule from the Pillars of Heracles to Ind.Yet once he stood at bay, showing that he was a Hellene still. They were in the garden. Mardonius had come to them where under the pomegranate tree the women spread their green tapestry which their nimble needles covered with a battle scene in scarlet. The Prince told of the capture and crucifixion of the chiefs of a futile revolt in Armenia. Then Artazostra clapped her hands to cry.“Fools! Fools whom Angra-Mainyu the Evil smites blind that he may destroy them!”Glaucon, sitting at her feet, looked up quickly.“Valiant fools, lady; every man must strike for his own country.”Artazostra shook her shining head.“Mazda gives victory to the king of Eran alone. Resisting Xerxes is not rebellion against man, it is rebellion against Heaven.”[pg 173]“Are you sure?”asked the Athenian, his eye lighting ominously.“Are yours the greatest gods?”But Roxana in turn cast down the tapestry and opened her arms with a charming gesture.“Be not angry, Glaucon, for will you not become one with us? I dare to prophesy like a seer from old Chaldea. Assur of Nineveh, Marduk of Babylon, Baal of Tyre, Ammon of Memphis—all have bent the knee to Mazda the Glorious, to Mithra the Fiend-Smiting, and shall the weakdævas, the puny gods of Greece, save their land, when greater than they bow down in sore defeat?”Yet Glaucon still looked on her boldly.“You have your mighty gods, but we have ours. Pray to your Mazda and Mithra, but we will still trust Zeus of the Thunders and Athena of the Gray Eyes, the bulwarks of our fathers. And Fate must answer which can help the best.”The Persians shook their heads. It was time to return to the palace. All that Glaucon had seen of the Barbarian’s might, since awakening in Sardis, told him Xerxes was indeed destined to go forth conquering and to conquer. Then the vision of the Acropolis, the temples, the Guardian Goddess, returned. He banished all disloyal thoughts for the instant. The Prince walked with his wife, Glaucon with Roxana. He had always thought herbeautiful;she had never seemed so beautiful as now. Did he imagine whither Mardonius perhaps was leading him?[pg 174]CHAPTER XVITHE COMING OF XERXES THE GOD-KINGAt last the lotus-eating ended. Repeated messengers told how Xerxes was quitting Babylon, was holding a muster in Cappadocia, and now was crossing Asia Minor toward Sardis. Mardonius and his companions had returned to that capital. Daily the soldiery poured into Sardis by tens of thousands. Glaucon knew now it was not a vain boast that for ten years the East had been arming against Hellas, that the whole power of the twenty satrapies would be flung as one thunderbolt upon devoted Greece.In the plain about Sardis a second city was rising, of wicker booths and gay pavilions. The host grew hourly. Now a band of ebony archers in leopard skins entered from far Ethiopia, now Bactrian battle-axemen, now yellow-faced Tartars from the northeast, now bright-turbaned Arabs upon their swaying camels,—Syrians, Cilicians, black-bearded Assyrians and Babylonians, thick-lipped Egyptians, came, and many a strange race more.But the core of the army were the serried files of Aryan horse and foot,—blond-headed, blue-eyed men, Persians and Medes, veterans of twenty victories. Their muscles were tempered steel. Their unwearying feet had tramped many a long parasang. Some were light infantry with wicker shields and powerful bows, but as many more horsemen in gold-scaled armour and with desert steeds that flew like Pegasus.[pg 175]“The finest cavalry in the world!”Mardonius vaunted, and his guest durst not answer nay.Satrap after satrap came. When at last a foaming Arab galloping to the castle proclaimed,“Next morn the Lord of the World will enter Sardis,”Glaucon could scarce have looked for a greater, though he had expected Cronian Zeus himself.Mardonius, as“bow-bearer to the king,”a semi-regal office, rode forth a stage to meet the sovran. The streets of Sardis were festooned with flowers. Thousands of spearmen held back the crowds. The Athenian stood beside Roxana and Artazostra at the upper window of a Lydian merchant prince, and his eyes missed nothing.Never had the two women seemed lovelier than when their hearts ran out to their approaching king. He felt now the power of personal sovranty, how these children of the East awaited not Xerxes the Master, but Xerxes the Omnipotent, God-Manifest, whose decrees were as the decrees of Heaven. And their awe could not fail to awe the Athenian.At noon the multitude caught the first token of the king. Down the road, through the gate, walked a man, bare-headed, bare-footed, alone,—Artaphernes, despot of all Lydia, going to pay his abject homage. Presently the eunuch priests of Cybele, perched above the gate, clashed their cymbals and raised their hymn of welcome. To the boom of drums the thousand chosen cavalry and as many picked footmen of the Life Guard entered, tall, magnificent soldiers,—caps and spear butts shining with gold. After these a gilded car drawn by the eight sacred horses, each milk-white, and on the car an altar bearing the eternal fire of Mazda. Then, each in his flashing chariot, moved the“Six Princes,”the heads of the great clans of the Achæmenians, then two hundred led desert horses, in splendid trappings, and then—after[pg 176]a long interval, that the host might cast no dust upon its lord, rode a single horseman on a jet-black steed, Artabanus—the king’s uncle and vizier. He beckoned to the people.“Have fear, Lydians, the giver of breath to all the world comes now beneath your gates!”The lines of soldiers flung down their spears and dropped upon their knees. The multitude imitated. A chariot came running behind four of the sacred steeds of Nisæa,—their coats were like new snow, their manes braided with gold thread, bridle, bits, pole, baseboard, shone with gems and the royal metal. The wheel was like the sun. A girl-like youth guided the crimson reins, a second held the tall green parasol. Its shadow did not hide the commanding figure upon the car. Glaucon looked hard. No mistaking—Xerxes was here, the being who could say to millions“Die!”and they perished like worms; in verity“God-Manifest.”For in looks Xerxes, son of Darius, was surely the Great King. A figure of august height was set off nobly by the flowing purple caftan and the purple cap which crowned the curling black hair. The riches of satrapies were in the rubies and topazes on sword sheath and baldric. The head was raised. The face was not regular, but of a proud, aquiline beauty. The skin was olive, the eyes dark, a little pensive. If there were weak lines about the mouth, the curling beard covered them. The king looked straight on, unmoved by the kneeling thousands, but as he came abreast of the balcony, chance made him look upward. Perhaps the sight of the beautiful Greek caused Xerxes to smile winsomely. The smile of a god can intoxicate. Caught away from himself, Glaucon the Alcmæonid joined in the great salvo of cheering.“Victory to Xerxes! Let the king of kings reign forever!”The chariot was gone almost instantly, a vast retinue—[pg 177]cooks, eunuchs, grooms, hunters, and many closed litters bearing the royal concubines—followed, but all these passed before Glaucon shook off the spell the sight of royalty cast on him.* * * * * * *That night in the palace Xerxes gave a feast in honour of the new campaign. The splendours of a royal banquet in the East need no retelling. Silver lamps, carpets of Kerman rugs or of the petals of fresh roses, a thousand lutes and dulcimers, precious Helbon wine flowing like water, cups of Phœnician crystal, tables groaning with wild boars roasted whole, dancing women none too modest,—these were but the incidentals of a gorgeous confusion. To Glaucon, with the chaste loveliness of the Panathenæa before his mind, the scene was one of vast wonderment but scarcely of pleasure. The Persian did nothing by halves. In battle a hero, at his cups he became a satyr. Many of the scenes before the guests emptied the last of the tall silver tankards were indescribable.* * * * * * *On the high dais above the roaring hall sat Xerxes the king,—adored, envied, pitiable.When Spitames, the seneschal, brought him the cup, the bearer bowed his face, not daring to look on his dread lord’s eyes.When Artabanus, the vizier, approached with a message, he first kissed the carpet below the dais.When Hydarnes, commander of the Life Guard, drew near to receive the watchword for the night, he held his mantle before his mouth, lest his breath pollute the world monarch.Yet of all forms of seeming prosperity wherewith Fate can curse a man, the worst was the curse of Xerxes. To be called“god”when one is finite and mortal; to have no friends, but[pg 178]only a hundred million slaves; to be denied the joys of honest wish and desire because there were none left unsatisfied; to have one’s hastiest word proclaimed as an edict of deity; never to be suffered to confess a mistake, cost what the blunder might, that the“king of kings”might seem lifted above all human error; in short, to be the bondsman of one’s own deification,—this was the hard captivity of the lord of the twenty satrapies.For Xerxes the king was a man,—of average instincts, capacities, goodness, wickedness. A god or a genius could have risen above his fearful isolation. Xerxes was neither. The iron ceremonial of the Persian court left him of genuine pleasures almost none. Something novel, a rare sensation, an opportunity to vary the dreary monotony of splendour by an astounding act of generosity or an act of frightful cruelty,—it mattered little which,—was snatched at by the king with childlike eagerness. And this night Xerxes was in an unwontedly gracious mood. At his elbow, as he sat on the throne cased with lapis lazuli and onyx, waited the one man who came nearest to being a friend and not a slave,—Mardonius, son of Gobryas, the bow-bearer,—and therefore more entitled than any other prince of the Persians to stand on terms of intimacy with his lord.While Spitames passed the wine, the king hearkened with condescending and approving nod to the report of the Prince as to his mad adventure in Hellas. Xerxes even reproved his brother-in-law mildly for hazarding his own life and that of his wife among those stiff-necked tribesmen who were so soon to taste the Aryan might.“It was in your service, Omnipotence,”the Prince was rejoining blandly;“what if not I alone, but a thousand others of the noblest of the Persians and the Medes may perish, if only the glory of their king is advanced?”[pg 179]“Nobly said; you are a faithful slave, Mardonius. I will remember you when I have burned Athens.”He even reached forth and stroked the bow-bearer’s hand, a condescension which made the footstool-bearer, parasol-bearer, quiver-bearer, and a dozen great lords more gnaw their lips with envy. Hydarnes, the commander who had waited an auspicious moment, now thought it safe to kneel on the lowest step of the throne.“Omnipotence, I am constrained to tell you that certain miserable Hellenes have been seized in the camp to-night—spies sent to pry out your power. Do you deign to have them impaled, crucified, or cast into the adders’ cage?”The king smiled magnanimously.“They shall not die. Show them the host, and all my power. Then send them home to their fellow-rebels to tell the madness of dreaming to withstand my might.”The smile of Xerxes had spread, like the ripple from a pebble splashing in a pool, over the face of every nobleman in hearing. Now their praises came as a chant.“O Ocean of Clemency and Wisdom! Happy Eran in thy sagacious yet merciful king!”Xerxes, not heeding, turned to Mardonius.“Ah! yes,—you were telling how you corrupted one of the chief Athenians, then had to flee. On the voyage you were shipwrecked?”“So I wrote to Babylon, to your Eternity.”“And a certain Athenian fugitive saved your lives? And you brought him to Sardis?”“I did so, Omnipotence.”“Of course he is at the banquet.”“The king speaks by the promptings of Mazda. I placed him with certain friends and bade them see he did not lack good cheer.”[pg 180]“Send,—I would talk with him.”“Suffer me to warn your Majesty,”ventured Mardonius,“he is an Athenian and glories in being of a stubborn, Persian-hating stock. I fear he will not perform due obeisance to the Great King.”“I can endure his rudeness,”spoke Xerxes, for once in excellent humour;“let the‘supreme usher’bring him with full speed.”The functionary thus commanded bowed himself to the ground and hastened on his errand.But well that Mardonius had deprecated the wrath of the monarch. Glaucon came with his head high, his manner almost arrogant. The mere fact that his boldness might cost him his life made him less bending than ever. He trod firmly upon the particular square of golden carpet at the foot of the dais which none, saving the king, the vizier, and the“Six Princes,”could lawfully tread. He held his hands at his sides, firmly refusing to conceal them in his cloak, as court etiquette demanded. As he stood on the steps of the throne, he gave the glittering monarch the same familiar bow he might have awarded a friend he met in the Agora. Mardonius was troubled. The supreme usher was horrified. The master-of-punishments, ever near his chief, gazed eagerly to see if Xerxes would not touch the audacious Hellene’s girdle—a sign for prompt decapitation. Only the good nature of the king prevented a catastrophe, and Xerxes was moved by two motives, pleasure at meeting a fellow-mortal who could look him in the eye without servility or fear, delight at the beautiful features and figure of the Athenian. For an instant monarch and fugitive looked face to face, then Xerxes stretched out, not his hand, but the gold tip of his ivory baton. Glaucon had wisdom enough to touch it,—a token that he was admitted to audience with the king.[pg 181]“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 Alcmæonidæ.”“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?”[pg 182]“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.[pg 183]“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 Achæmenian, 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 aroseen masseto drink to the man whom the sovran delighted to honour.[pg 184]“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.”[pg 185]“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.
[pg 165]CHAPTER XVTHE LOTUS-EATING AT SARDISWhen Glaucon awoke to consciousness, it was with a sense of absolute weakness, at the same moment with a sense of absolute rest. He knew that he was lying on pillows“softer than sleep,”that the air he breathed was laden with perfume, that the golden light which came through his half-closed eyelids was deliciously tempered, that his ears caught a musical murmur, as of a plashing fountain. So he lay for long, too impotent, too contented to ask where he lay, or whence he had departed. Athens, Hermione, all the thousand and one things of his old life, flitted through his brain, but only as vague, far shapes. He was too weak even to long for them. Still the fountain plashed on, and mingling with the tinkling he thought he heard low flutes breathing. Perhaps it was only a phantasy of his flagging brain. Then his eyes opened wider. He lifted his hand. It was a task even to do that little thing,—he was so weak. He looked at the hand! Surely his own, yet how white it was, how thin; the bones were there, the blue veins, but all the strength gone out of them. Was this the hand that had flung great Lycon down? It would be mere sport for a child to master him now. He touched his face. It was covered with a thick beard, as of a long month’s growth. The discovery[pg 166]startled him. He strove to rise on one elbow. Too weak! He sank back upon the cushions and let his eyes rove inquiringly. Never had he seen tapestries the like of those that canopied his bed. Scarlet and purple and embroidered in gold thread with elaborate hunting scenes,—the dogs, the chariots, the slaying of the deer, the bearing home of the game. He knew the choicest looms of Sidon must have wrought them. And the linen, so cool, so grateful, underneath his head—was it not the almost priceless fabric of Borsippa? He stirred a little, his eyes rested on the floor. It was covered with a rug worth an Athenian patrician’s ransom,—a lustrous, variegated sheen, showing a new tint at each change of the light. So much he saw from the bed, and curiosity was wakened. Again he put forth his hand, and touched the hanging curtains. The movement set a score of little silver bells that dangled over the canopy to jingling. As at a signal the flutes grew louder, mingling with them was the clearer note of lyres. Now the strains swelled sweetly, now faded away into dreamy sighing, as if bidding the listener to sink again into the arms of sleep. Another vain effort to rise on his elbow. Again he was helpless. Giving way to the charm of the music, he closed his eyes.“Either I am awaking in Elysium, or the gods send to me pleasant dreams before I die.”He was feebly wondering which was the alternative when a new sound roused him, the sweep and rustle of the dresses of two women as they approached the bed. He gazed forth listlessly, when lo! above his couch stood two strangers,—strangers, but either as fair as Aphrodite arising from the sea. Both were tall, and full of queenly grace, both were dressed in gauzy white, but the hair of the one was of such gold that Glaucon hardly saw the circlet which[pg 167]pressed over it. Her eyes were blue, the lustre of her face was like a white rose. The other’s hair shone like the wing of a raven. A wreath of red poppies covered it, but over the softly tinted forehead there peered forth a golden snake with emerald eyes—the Egyptian uræus, the crown of a princess from the Nile. Her eyes were as black as the other’s were blue, her lips as red as the dye of Tyre, her hands—But before Glaucon looked and wondered more, the first, she of the golden head, laid her hand upon his face,—a warm, comforting hand that seemed to speed back strength and gladness with the touch. Then she spoke. Her Greek was very broken, yet he understood her.“Are you quite awakened, dear Glaucon?”He looked up marvelling, not knowing how to answer; but the golden goddess seemed to expect none from him.“It is now a month since we brought you from Astypalæa. You have wandered close to the Portals of the Dead. We feared you were beloved by Mazda too well, that you would never wake that we might bless you. Night and day have my husband and I prayed to Mithra the Merciful and Hauratât the Health-Giver in your behalf; each sunrise, at our command, the Magians have poured out for you the Haôma, the sacred juice dear to the Beautiful Immortals, and Amenhat, wisest of the physicians of Memphis, has stood by your bedside without rest. Now at last our prayers and his skill have conquered; you awake to life and gladness.”Glaucon lay wondering, not knowing how to reply, and only understanding in half, when the dark-haired goddess spoke, in purer Greek than her companion.“And I, O Glaucon of Athens, would have you suffer me to kiss your feet. For you have given my brother and my sister back to life.”Then drawing near she took his hand in hers, while the two smiling looked down on him.[pg 168]Then at last he found tongue to speak.“O gracious Queens, for such you are, forgive my roving wits. You speak of great service done. But wise Zeus knoweth we are strangers—”The golden goddess tossed her shining head and smiled,—still stroking with her hand.“Dear Glaucon, do you remember the Eastern lad you saved from the Spartans at the Isthmus? Behold him! Recall the bracelet of turquoise,—my first gratitude. Then again you saved me with my husband. For I am the woman you bore through the surf at the island. I am Artazostra, wife of Mardonius, and this is Roxana, his half-sister, whose mother was a princess in Egypt.”Glaucon passed his fingers before his face, beckoning back the past.“It is all far away and strange: the flight, the storm, the wreck, the tossing spar, the battling through the surges. My head is weak. I cannot picture it all.”“Do not try. Lie still. Grow strong and glad, and suffer us to teach you,”commanded Artazostra.“Where do I lie? We are not upon the rocky islet still?”The ladies laughed, not mockingly but so sweetly he wished that they would never cease.“This is Sardis,”spoke Roxana, bending over him;“you lie in the palace of the satrap.”“And Athens—”he said, wandering.“Is far away,”said Artazostra,“with all its griefs and false friends and foul remembrances. The friends about you here will never fail. Therefore lie still and have peace.”“You know my story,”cried he, now truly in amaze.“Mardonius knows all that passes in Athens, in Sparta, in every city of Hellas. Do not try to tell more. We weary you already. See—Amenhat comes to bid us begone.”[pg 169]The curtains parted again. A dark man in a pure white robe, his face and head smooth-shaven, approached the bed. He held out a broad gold cup, the rim whereof glinted with agate and sardonyx. He had no Greek, but Roxana took the cup from him and held it to Glaucon’s lips.“Drink,”she commanded, and he was fain to obey. The Athenian felt the heavily spiced liquor laying hold of him. His eyes closed, despite his wish to gaze longer on the two beautiful women. He felt their hands caressing his cheeks. The music grew ever softer. He thought he was sinking into a kind of euthanasy, that his life was drifting out amid delightful dreams. But not cold Thanatos, but health-bearing Hypnos was the god who visited him now. When next he woke, it was with a clearer vision, a sounder mind.* * * * * * *Sardis the Golden, once capital of the Lydian kings and now of the Persian satraps, had recovered from the devastation by the Ionians in their ill-starred revolt seventeen years preceding. The city spread in the fertile Sardiene, one of the garden plains of Asia Minor. To the south the cloud-crowned heights of Tmolus ever were visible. To the north flowed the noble stream of Hebrus, whilst high above the wealthy town, the busy agora, the giant temple of Lydian Cybele, rose the citadel of Meles, the palace fortress of the kings and the satraps. A frowning castle it was without, within not the golden-tiled palaces of Ecbatana and Susa boasted greater magnificence and luxury than this one-time dwelling of Crœsus. The ceilings of the wide banqueting halls rose on pillars of emerald Egyptian malachite. The walls were cased with onyx. Winged bulls that might have graced Nineveh guarded the portals. The lions upbearing the throne in the hall of audience were of gold. The mirrors in the“House of the Women”were not steel but silver.[pg 170]The gorgeous carpets were sprinkled with rose water. An army of dark Syrian eunuchs and yellow-faced Tartar girls ran at the beck of the palace guests. Only the stealthy entrance of Sickness and Death told the dwellers here they were not yet gods.Artaphernes, satrap of Lydia, had his divan, his viziers, and his audiences,—a court worthy of a king,—but the real lord of Western Asia was the prince who was nominally his guest. Mardonius had his own retinue and wing of the palace. On him fell the enormous task of organizing the masses of troops already pouring into Sardis, and he discharged his duty unwearyingly. The completion of the bridges of boats across the Hellespont, the assembling of the fleet, the collecting of provisions, fell to his province. Daily a courier pricked into Sardis with despatches from the Great King to his trusted general. Mardonius left the great levees and public spectacles to Artaphernes, but his hand was everywhere. His decisions were prompt. He was in constant communication with the Medizing party in Hellas. He had no time for the long dicing and drinking bouts the Persians loved, but he never failed to find each day an hour to spend with Artazostra his wife, with Roxana his half-sister, and with Glaucon his preserver.Slowly through the winter health had returned to the Athenian. For days he had lain dreaming away the hours to the tune of the flutes and the fountains. When the warm spring came, the eunuchs carried him in a sedan-chair through the palace garden, whence he could look forth on the plain, the city, the snow-clad hills, and think he was on Zeus’s Olympian throne, surveying all the earth. Then it was he learned the Persian speech, and easily, for were not his teachers Artazostra and Roxana? He found it no difficult tongue, simple and much akin to Greek, and unlike most[pg 171]of the uncouth tongues the Oriental traders chattered in Sardis. The two women were constantly with him. Few men were admitted to a Persian harem, but Mardonius never grudged the Greek the company of these twain.“Noble Athenian,”said the Prince, the first time he visited Glaucon’s bed,“you are my brother. My house is yours. My friends are yours. Command us all.”* * * * * * *Every day Glaucon was stronger. He tested himself with dumb-bells. Always he could lift a heavier weight. When the summer was at hand, he could ride out with Mardonius to the“Paradise,”the satrap’s hunting park, and be in at the death of the deer. Yet he was no more the“Fortunate Youth”of Athens. Only imperfectly he himself knew how complete was the severance from his old life. The terrible hour at Colonus had made a mark on his spirit which not all Zeus’s power could take away. No doubt all the one-time friends believed him dead. Had Hermione’s confidence in him remained true? Would she not say“guilty”at last with all the rest? Mardonius might have answered, he had constant letters from Greece, but the Prince was dumb when Glaucon strove to ask of things beyond the Ægean.Day by day the subtle influence of the Orient—the lotus-eating,—“tasting the honey-sweet fruit which makes men choose to abide forever, forgetful of the homeward way”—spread its unseen power over the Alcmæonid. Athens, the old pain, even the face of Hermione, would rise before him only dimly. He fought against this enchantment. But it was easier to renew his vow to return to Athens, after wiping out his shame, than to break these bands daily tightening.He heard little Greek, now that he was learning Persian. Even he himself was changed. His hair and beard grew long, after the Persian manner. He wore the loose Median[pg 172]cloak, the tall felt cap of a Persian noble. The elaborate genuflexions of the Asiatics no longer astonished him. He learned to admire the valiant, magnanimous lords of the Persians. And Xerxes, the distant king, the wielder of all this power, was he not truly a god on earth,vicegerentof Lord Zeus himself?“Forget you are a Hellene. We will talk of the Nile, not of the Cephissus,”Artazostra said, whenever he spoke of home. Then she would tell of Babylon and Persepolis, and Mardonius of forays beside the wide Caspian, and Roxana of her girlhood, while Gobryas was satrap of Egypt, spent beside the magic river, of the Pharaohs, the great pyramid, of Isis and Osiris and the world beyond the dead. Before the Athenian was opened the golden East, its glitter, its wonderment, its fascination. He even was silent when his hosts talked boldly of the coming war, how soon the Persian power would rule from the Pillars of Heracles to Ind.Yet once he stood at bay, showing that he was a Hellene still. They were in the garden. Mardonius had come to them where under the pomegranate tree the women spread their green tapestry which their nimble needles covered with a battle scene in scarlet. The Prince told of the capture and crucifixion of the chiefs of a futile revolt in Armenia. Then Artazostra clapped her hands to cry.“Fools! Fools whom Angra-Mainyu the Evil smites blind that he may destroy them!”Glaucon, sitting at her feet, looked up quickly.“Valiant fools, lady; every man must strike for his own country.”Artazostra shook her shining head.“Mazda gives victory to the king of Eran alone. Resisting Xerxes is not rebellion against man, it is rebellion against Heaven.”[pg 173]“Are you sure?”asked the Athenian, his eye lighting ominously.“Are yours the greatest gods?”But Roxana in turn cast down the tapestry and opened her arms with a charming gesture.“Be not angry, Glaucon, for will you not become one with us? I dare to prophesy like a seer from old Chaldea. Assur of Nineveh, Marduk of Babylon, Baal of Tyre, Ammon of Memphis—all have bent the knee to Mazda the Glorious, to Mithra the Fiend-Smiting, and shall the weakdævas, the puny gods of Greece, save their land, when greater than they bow down in sore defeat?”Yet Glaucon still looked on her boldly.“You have your mighty gods, but we have ours. Pray to your Mazda and Mithra, but we will still trust Zeus of the Thunders and Athena of the Gray Eyes, the bulwarks of our fathers. And Fate must answer which can help the best.”The Persians shook their heads. It was time to return to the palace. All that Glaucon had seen of the Barbarian’s might, since awakening in Sardis, told him Xerxes was indeed destined to go forth conquering and to conquer. Then the vision of the Acropolis, the temples, the Guardian Goddess, returned. He banished all disloyal thoughts for the instant. The Prince walked with his wife, Glaucon with Roxana. He had always thought herbeautiful;she had never seemed so beautiful as now. Did he imagine whither Mardonius perhaps was leading him?
When Glaucon awoke to consciousness, it was with a sense of absolute weakness, at the same moment with a sense of absolute rest. He knew that he was lying on pillows“softer than sleep,”that the air he breathed was laden with perfume, that the golden light which came through his half-closed eyelids was deliciously tempered, that his ears caught a musical murmur, as of a plashing fountain. So he lay for long, too impotent, too contented to ask where he lay, or whence he had departed. Athens, Hermione, all the thousand and one things of his old life, flitted through his brain, but only as vague, far shapes. He was too weak even to long for them. Still the fountain plashed on, and mingling with the tinkling he thought he heard low flutes breathing. Perhaps it was only a phantasy of his flagging brain. Then his eyes opened wider. He lifted his hand. It was a task even to do that little thing,—he was so weak. He looked at the hand! Surely his own, yet how white it was, how thin; the bones were there, the blue veins, but all the strength gone out of them. Was this the hand that had flung great Lycon down? It would be mere sport for a child to master him now. He touched his face. It was covered with a thick beard, as of a long month’s growth. The discovery[pg 166]startled him. He strove to rise on one elbow. Too weak! He sank back upon the cushions and let his eyes rove inquiringly. Never had he seen tapestries the like of those that canopied his bed. Scarlet and purple and embroidered in gold thread with elaborate hunting scenes,—the dogs, the chariots, the slaying of the deer, the bearing home of the game. He knew the choicest looms of Sidon must have wrought them. And the linen, so cool, so grateful, underneath his head—was it not the almost priceless fabric of Borsippa? He stirred a little, his eyes rested on the floor. It was covered with a rug worth an Athenian patrician’s ransom,—a lustrous, variegated sheen, showing a new tint at each change of the light. So much he saw from the bed, and curiosity was wakened. Again he put forth his hand, and touched the hanging curtains. The movement set a score of little silver bells that dangled over the canopy to jingling. As at a signal the flutes grew louder, mingling with them was the clearer note of lyres. Now the strains swelled sweetly, now faded away into dreamy sighing, as if bidding the listener to sink again into the arms of sleep. Another vain effort to rise on his elbow. Again he was helpless. Giving way to the charm of the music, he closed his eyes.
“Either I am awaking in Elysium, or the gods send to me pleasant dreams before I die.”
He was feebly wondering which was the alternative when a new sound roused him, the sweep and rustle of the dresses of two women as they approached the bed. He gazed forth listlessly, when lo! above his couch stood two strangers,—strangers, but either as fair as Aphrodite arising from the sea. Both were tall, and full of queenly grace, both were dressed in gauzy white, but the hair of the one was of such gold that Glaucon hardly saw the circlet which[pg 167]pressed over it. Her eyes were blue, the lustre of her face was like a white rose. The other’s hair shone like the wing of a raven. A wreath of red poppies covered it, but over the softly tinted forehead there peered forth a golden snake with emerald eyes—the Egyptian uræus, the crown of a princess from the Nile. Her eyes were as black as the other’s were blue, her lips as red as the dye of Tyre, her hands—But before Glaucon looked and wondered more, the first, she of the golden head, laid her hand upon his face,—a warm, comforting hand that seemed to speed back strength and gladness with the touch. Then she spoke. Her Greek was very broken, yet he understood her.
“Are you quite awakened, dear Glaucon?”
He looked up marvelling, not knowing how to answer; but the golden goddess seemed to expect none from him.
“It is now a month since we brought you from Astypalæa. You have wandered close to the Portals of the Dead. We feared you were beloved by Mazda too well, that you would never wake that we might bless you. Night and day have my husband and I prayed to Mithra the Merciful and Hauratât the Health-Giver in your behalf; each sunrise, at our command, the Magians have poured out for you the Haôma, the sacred juice dear to the Beautiful Immortals, and Amenhat, wisest of the physicians of Memphis, has stood by your bedside without rest. Now at last our prayers and his skill have conquered; you awake to life and gladness.”
Glaucon lay wondering, not knowing how to reply, and only understanding in half, when the dark-haired goddess spoke, in purer Greek than her companion.
“And I, O Glaucon of Athens, would have you suffer me to kiss your feet. For you have given my brother and my sister back to life.”Then drawing near she took his hand in hers, while the two smiling looked down on him.
Then at last he found tongue to speak.“O gracious Queens, for such you are, forgive my roving wits. You speak of great service done. But wise Zeus knoweth we are strangers—”
The golden goddess tossed her shining head and smiled,—still stroking with her hand.
“Dear Glaucon, do you remember the Eastern lad you saved from the Spartans at the Isthmus? Behold him! Recall the bracelet of turquoise,—my first gratitude. Then again you saved me with my husband. For I am the woman you bore through the surf at the island. I am Artazostra, wife of Mardonius, and this is Roxana, his half-sister, whose mother was a princess in Egypt.”
Glaucon passed his fingers before his face, beckoning back the past.
“It is all far away and strange: the flight, the storm, the wreck, the tossing spar, the battling through the surges. My head is weak. I cannot picture it all.”
“Do not try. Lie still. Grow strong and glad, and suffer us to teach you,”commanded Artazostra.
“Where do I lie? We are not upon the rocky islet still?”
The ladies laughed, not mockingly but so sweetly he wished that they would never cease.
“This is Sardis,”spoke Roxana, bending over him;“you lie in the palace of the satrap.”
“And Athens—”he said, wandering.
“Is far away,”said Artazostra,“with all its griefs and false friends and foul remembrances. The friends about you here will never fail. Therefore lie still and have peace.”
“You know my story,”cried he, now truly in amaze.
“Mardonius knows all that passes in Athens, in Sparta, in every city of Hellas. Do not try to tell more. We weary you already. See—Amenhat comes to bid us begone.”
The curtains parted again. A dark man in a pure white robe, his face and head smooth-shaven, approached the bed. He held out a broad gold cup, the rim whereof glinted with agate and sardonyx. He had no Greek, but Roxana took the cup from him and held it to Glaucon’s lips.
“Drink,”she commanded, and he was fain to obey. The Athenian felt the heavily spiced liquor laying hold of him. His eyes closed, despite his wish to gaze longer on the two beautiful women. He felt their hands caressing his cheeks. The music grew ever softer. He thought he was sinking into a kind of euthanasy, that his life was drifting out amid delightful dreams. But not cold Thanatos, but health-bearing Hypnos was the god who visited him now. When next he woke, it was with a clearer vision, a sounder mind.
* * * * * * *
Sardis the Golden, once capital of the Lydian kings and now of the Persian satraps, had recovered from the devastation by the Ionians in their ill-starred revolt seventeen years preceding. The city spread in the fertile Sardiene, one of the garden plains of Asia Minor. To the south the cloud-crowned heights of Tmolus ever were visible. To the north flowed the noble stream of Hebrus, whilst high above the wealthy town, the busy agora, the giant temple of Lydian Cybele, rose the citadel of Meles, the palace fortress of the kings and the satraps. A frowning castle it was without, within not the golden-tiled palaces of Ecbatana and Susa boasted greater magnificence and luxury than this one-time dwelling of Crœsus. The ceilings of the wide banqueting halls rose on pillars of emerald Egyptian malachite. The walls were cased with onyx. Winged bulls that might have graced Nineveh guarded the portals. The lions upbearing the throne in the hall of audience were of gold. The mirrors in the“House of the Women”were not steel but silver.[pg 170]The gorgeous carpets were sprinkled with rose water. An army of dark Syrian eunuchs and yellow-faced Tartar girls ran at the beck of the palace guests. Only the stealthy entrance of Sickness and Death told the dwellers here they were not yet gods.
Artaphernes, satrap of Lydia, had his divan, his viziers, and his audiences,—a court worthy of a king,—but the real lord of Western Asia was the prince who was nominally his guest. Mardonius had his own retinue and wing of the palace. On him fell the enormous task of organizing the masses of troops already pouring into Sardis, and he discharged his duty unwearyingly. The completion of the bridges of boats across the Hellespont, the assembling of the fleet, the collecting of provisions, fell to his province. Daily a courier pricked into Sardis with despatches from the Great King to his trusted general. Mardonius left the great levees and public spectacles to Artaphernes, but his hand was everywhere. His decisions were prompt. He was in constant communication with the Medizing party in Hellas. He had no time for the long dicing and drinking bouts the Persians loved, but he never failed to find each day an hour to spend with Artazostra his wife, with Roxana his half-sister, and with Glaucon his preserver.
Slowly through the winter health had returned to the Athenian. For days he had lain dreaming away the hours to the tune of the flutes and the fountains. When the warm spring came, the eunuchs carried him in a sedan-chair through the palace garden, whence he could look forth on the plain, the city, the snow-clad hills, and think he was on Zeus’s Olympian throne, surveying all the earth. Then it was he learned the Persian speech, and easily, for were not his teachers Artazostra and Roxana? He found it no difficult tongue, simple and much akin to Greek, and unlike most[pg 171]of the uncouth tongues the Oriental traders chattered in Sardis. The two women were constantly with him. Few men were admitted to a Persian harem, but Mardonius never grudged the Greek the company of these twain.
“Noble Athenian,”said the Prince, the first time he visited Glaucon’s bed,“you are my brother. My house is yours. My friends are yours. Command us all.”
* * * * * * *
Every day Glaucon was stronger. He tested himself with dumb-bells. Always he could lift a heavier weight. When the summer was at hand, he could ride out with Mardonius to the“Paradise,”the satrap’s hunting park, and be in at the death of the deer. Yet he was no more the“Fortunate Youth”of Athens. Only imperfectly he himself knew how complete was the severance from his old life. The terrible hour at Colonus had made a mark on his spirit which not all Zeus’s power could take away. No doubt all the one-time friends believed him dead. Had Hermione’s confidence in him remained true? Would she not say“guilty”at last with all the rest? Mardonius might have answered, he had constant letters from Greece, but the Prince was dumb when Glaucon strove to ask of things beyond the Ægean.
Day by day the subtle influence of the Orient—the lotus-eating,—“tasting the honey-sweet fruit which makes men choose to abide forever, forgetful of the homeward way”—spread its unseen power over the Alcmæonid. Athens, the old pain, even the face of Hermione, would rise before him only dimly. He fought against this enchantment. But it was easier to renew his vow to return to Athens, after wiping out his shame, than to break these bands daily tightening.
He heard little Greek, now that he was learning Persian. Even he himself was changed. His hair and beard grew long, after the Persian manner. He wore the loose Median[pg 172]cloak, the tall felt cap of a Persian noble. The elaborate genuflexions of the Asiatics no longer astonished him. He learned to admire the valiant, magnanimous lords of the Persians. And Xerxes, the distant king, the wielder of all this power, was he not truly a god on earth,vicegerentof Lord Zeus himself?
“Forget you are a Hellene. We will talk of the Nile, not of the Cephissus,”Artazostra said, whenever he spoke of home. Then she would tell of Babylon and Persepolis, and Mardonius of forays beside the wide Caspian, and Roxana of her girlhood, while Gobryas was satrap of Egypt, spent beside the magic river, of the Pharaohs, the great pyramid, of Isis and Osiris and the world beyond the dead. Before the Athenian was opened the golden East, its glitter, its wonderment, its fascination. He even was silent when his hosts talked boldly of the coming war, how soon the Persian power would rule from the Pillars of Heracles to Ind.
Yet once he stood at bay, showing that he was a Hellene still. They were in the garden. Mardonius had come to them where under the pomegranate tree the women spread their green tapestry which their nimble needles covered with a battle scene in scarlet. The Prince told of the capture and crucifixion of the chiefs of a futile revolt in Armenia. Then Artazostra clapped her hands to cry.
“Fools! Fools whom Angra-Mainyu the Evil smites blind that he may destroy them!”
Glaucon, sitting at her feet, looked up quickly.“Valiant fools, lady; every man must strike for his own country.”
Artazostra shook her shining head.
“Mazda gives victory to the king of Eran alone. Resisting Xerxes is not rebellion against man, it is rebellion against Heaven.”
“Are you sure?”asked the Athenian, his eye lighting ominously.“Are yours the greatest gods?”
But Roxana in turn cast down the tapestry and opened her arms with a charming gesture.
“Be not angry, Glaucon, for will you not become one with us? I dare to prophesy like a seer from old Chaldea. Assur of Nineveh, Marduk of Babylon, Baal of Tyre, Ammon of Memphis—all have bent the knee to Mazda the Glorious, to Mithra the Fiend-Smiting, and shall the weakdævas, the puny gods of Greece, save their land, when greater than they bow down in sore defeat?”
Yet Glaucon still looked on her boldly.
“You have your mighty gods, but we have ours. Pray to your Mazda and Mithra, but we will still trust Zeus of the Thunders and Athena of the Gray Eyes, the bulwarks of our fathers. And Fate must answer which can help the best.”
The Persians shook their heads. It was time to return to the palace. All that Glaucon had seen of the Barbarian’s might, since awakening in Sardis, told him Xerxes was indeed destined to go forth conquering and to conquer. Then the vision of the Acropolis, the temples, the Guardian Goddess, returned. He banished all disloyal thoughts for the instant. The Prince walked with his wife, Glaucon with Roxana. He had always thought herbeautiful;she had never seemed so beautiful as now. Did he imagine whither Mardonius perhaps was leading him?
[pg 174]CHAPTER XVITHE COMING OF XERXES THE GOD-KINGAt last the lotus-eating ended. Repeated messengers told how Xerxes was quitting Babylon, was holding a muster in Cappadocia, and now was crossing Asia Minor toward Sardis. Mardonius and his companions had returned to that capital. Daily the soldiery poured into Sardis by tens of thousands. Glaucon knew now it was not a vain boast that for ten years the East had been arming against Hellas, that the whole power of the twenty satrapies would be flung as one thunderbolt upon devoted Greece.In the plain about Sardis a second city was rising, of wicker booths and gay pavilions. The host grew hourly. Now a band of ebony archers in leopard skins entered from far Ethiopia, now Bactrian battle-axemen, now yellow-faced Tartars from the northeast, now bright-turbaned Arabs upon their swaying camels,—Syrians, Cilicians, black-bearded Assyrians and Babylonians, thick-lipped Egyptians, came, and many a strange race more.But the core of the army were the serried files of Aryan horse and foot,—blond-headed, blue-eyed men, Persians and Medes, veterans of twenty victories. Their muscles were tempered steel. Their unwearying feet had tramped many a long parasang. Some were light infantry with wicker shields and powerful bows, but as many more horsemen in gold-scaled armour and with desert steeds that flew like Pegasus.[pg 175]“The finest cavalry in the world!”Mardonius vaunted, and his guest durst not answer nay.Satrap after satrap came. When at last a foaming Arab galloping to the castle proclaimed,“Next morn the Lord of the World will enter Sardis,”Glaucon could scarce have looked for a greater, though he had expected Cronian Zeus himself.Mardonius, as“bow-bearer to the king,”a semi-regal office, rode forth a stage to meet the sovran. The streets of Sardis were festooned with flowers. Thousands of spearmen held back the crowds. The Athenian stood beside Roxana and Artazostra at the upper window of a Lydian merchant prince, and his eyes missed nothing.Never had the two women seemed lovelier than when their hearts ran out to their approaching king. He felt now the power of personal sovranty, how these children of the East awaited not Xerxes the Master, but Xerxes the Omnipotent, God-Manifest, whose decrees were as the decrees of Heaven. And their awe could not fail to awe the Athenian.At noon the multitude caught the first token of the king. Down the road, through the gate, walked a man, bare-headed, bare-footed, alone,—Artaphernes, despot of all Lydia, going to pay his abject homage. Presently the eunuch priests of Cybele, perched above the gate, clashed their cymbals and raised their hymn of welcome. To the boom of drums the thousand chosen cavalry and as many picked footmen of the Life Guard entered, tall, magnificent soldiers,—caps and spear butts shining with gold. After these a gilded car drawn by the eight sacred horses, each milk-white, and on the car an altar bearing the eternal fire of Mazda. Then, each in his flashing chariot, moved the“Six Princes,”the heads of the great clans of the Achæmenians, then two hundred led desert horses, in splendid trappings, and then—after[pg 176]a long interval, that the host might cast no dust upon its lord, rode a single horseman on a jet-black steed, Artabanus—the king’s uncle and vizier. He beckoned to the people.“Have fear, Lydians, the giver of breath to all the world comes now beneath your gates!”The lines of soldiers flung down their spears and dropped upon their knees. The multitude imitated. A chariot came running behind four of the sacred steeds of Nisæa,—their coats were like new snow, their manes braided with gold thread, bridle, bits, pole, baseboard, shone with gems and the royal metal. The wheel was like the sun. A girl-like youth guided the crimson reins, a second held the tall green parasol. Its shadow did not hide the commanding figure upon the car. Glaucon looked hard. No mistaking—Xerxes was here, the being who could say to millions“Die!”and they perished like worms; in verity“God-Manifest.”For in looks Xerxes, son of Darius, was surely the Great King. A figure of august height was set off nobly by the flowing purple caftan and the purple cap which crowned the curling black hair. The riches of satrapies were in the rubies and topazes on sword sheath and baldric. The head was raised. The face was not regular, but of a proud, aquiline beauty. The skin was olive, the eyes dark, a little pensive. If there were weak lines about the mouth, the curling beard covered them. The king looked straight on, unmoved by the kneeling thousands, but as he came abreast of the balcony, chance made him look upward. Perhaps the sight of the beautiful Greek caused Xerxes to smile winsomely. The smile of a god can intoxicate. Caught away from himself, Glaucon the Alcmæonid joined in the great salvo of cheering.“Victory to Xerxes! Let the king of kings reign forever!”The chariot was gone almost instantly, a vast retinue—[pg 177]cooks, eunuchs, grooms, hunters, and many closed litters bearing the royal concubines—followed, but all these passed before Glaucon shook off the spell the sight of royalty cast on him.* * * * * * *That night in the palace Xerxes gave a feast in honour of the new campaign. The splendours of a royal banquet in the East need no retelling. Silver lamps, carpets of Kerman rugs or of the petals of fresh roses, a thousand lutes and dulcimers, precious Helbon wine flowing like water, cups of Phœnician crystal, tables groaning with wild boars roasted whole, dancing women none too modest,—these were but the incidentals of a gorgeous confusion. To Glaucon, with the chaste loveliness of the Panathenæa before his mind, the scene was one of vast wonderment but scarcely of pleasure. The Persian did nothing by halves. In battle a hero, at his cups he became a satyr. Many of the scenes before the guests emptied the last of the tall silver tankards were indescribable.* * * * * * *On the high dais above the roaring hall sat Xerxes the king,—adored, envied, pitiable.When Spitames, the seneschal, brought him the cup, the bearer bowed his face, not daring to look on his dread lord’s eyes.When Artabanus, the vizier, approached with a message, he first kissed the carpet below the dais.When Hydarnes, commander of the Life Guard, drew near to receive the watchword for the night, he held his mantle before his mouth, lest his breath pollute the world monarch.Yet of all forms of seeming prosperity wherewith Fate can curse a man, the worst was the curse of Xerxes. To be called“god”when one is finite and mortal; to have no friends, but[pg 178]only a hundred million slaves; to be denied the joys of honest wish and desire because there were none left unsatisfied; to have one’s hastiest word proclaimed as an edict of deity; never to be suffered to confess a mistake, cost what the blunder might, that the“king of kings”might seem lifted above all human error; in short, to be the bondsman of one’s own deification,—this was the hard captivity of the lord of the twenty satrapies.For Xerxes the king was a man,—of average instincts, capacities, goodness, wickedness. A god or a genius could have risen above his fearful isolation. Xerxes was neither. The iron ceremonial of the Persian court left him of genuine pleasures almost none. Something novel, a rare sensation, an opportunity to vary the dreary monotony of splendour by an astounding act of generosity or an act of frightful cruelty,—it mattered little which,—was snatched at by the king with childlike eagerness. And this night Xerxes was in an unwontedly gracious mood. At his elbow, as he sat on the throne cased with lapis lazuli and onyx, waited the one man who came nearest to being a friend and not a slave,—Mardonius, son of Gobryas, the bow-bearer,—and therefore more entitled than any other prince of the Persians to stand on terms of intimacy with his lord.While Spitames passed the wine, the king hearkened with condescending and approving nod to the report of the Prince as to his mad adventure in Hellas. Xerxes even reproved his brother-in-law mildly for hazarding his own life and that of his wife among those stiff-necked tribesmen who were so soon to taste the Aryan might.“It was in your service, Omnipotence,”the Prince was rejoining blandly;“what if not I alone, but a thousand others of the noblest of the Persians and the Medes may perish, if only the glory of their king is advanced?”[pg 179]“Nobly said; you are a faithful slave, Mardonius. I will remember you when I have burned Athens.”He even reached forth and stroked the bow-bearer’s hand, a condescension which made the footstool-bearer, parasol-bearer, quiver-bearer, and a dozen great lords more gnaw their lips with envy. Hydarnes, the commander who had waited an auspicious moment, now thought it safe to kneel on the lowest step of the throne.“Omnipotence, I am constrained to tell you that certain miserable Hellenes have been seized in the camp to-night—spies sent to pry out your power. Do you deign to have them impaled, crucified, or cast into the adders’ cage?”The king smiled magnanimously.“They shall not die. Show them the host, and all my power. Then send them home to their fellow-rebels to tell the madness of dreaming to withstand my might.”The smile of Xerxes had spread, like the ripple from a pebble splashing in a pool, over the face of every nobleman in hearing. Now their praises came as a chant.“O Ocean of Clemency and Wisdom! Happy Eran in thy sagacious yet merciful king!”Xerxes, not heeding, turned to Mardonius.“Ah! yes,—you were telling how you corrupted one of the chief Athenians, then had to flee. On the voyage you were shipwrecked?”“So I wrote to Babylon, to your Eternity.”“And a certain Athenian fugitive saved your lives? And you brought him to Sardis?”“I did so, Omnipotence.”“Of course he is at the banquet.”“The king speaks by the promptings of Mazda. I placed him with certain friends and bade them see he did not lack good cheer.”[pg 180]“Send,—I would talk with him.”“Suffer me to warn your Majesty,”ventured Mardonius,“he is an Athenian and glories in being of a stubborn, Persian-hating stock. I fear he will not perform due obeisance to the Great King.”“I can endure his rudeness,”spoke Xerxes, for once in excellent humour;“let the‘supreme usher’bring him with full speed.”The functionary thus commanded bowed himself to the ground and hastened on his errand.But well that Mardonius had deprecated the wrath of the monarch. Glaucon came with his head high, his manner almost arrogant. The mere fact that his boldness might cost him his life made him less bending than ever. He trod firmly upon the particular square of golden carpet at the foot of the dais which none, saving the king, the vizier, and the“Six Princes,”could lawfully tread. He held his hands at his sides, firmly refusing to conceal them in his cloak, as court etiquette demanded. As he stood on the steps of the throne, he gave the glittering monarch the same familiar bow he might have awarded a friend he met in the Agora. Mardonius was troubled. The supreme usher was horrified. The master-of-punishments, ever near his chief, gazed eagerly to see if Xerxes would not touch the audacious Hellene’s girdle—a sign for prompt decapitation. Only the good nature of the king prevented a catastrophe, and Xerxes was moved by two motives, pleasure at meeting a fellow-mortal who could look him in the eye without servility or fear, delight at the beautiful features and figure of the Athenian. For an instant monarch and fugitive looked face to face, then Xerxes stretched out, not his hand, but the gold tip of his ivory baton. Glaucon had wisdom enough to touch it,—a token that he was admitted to audience with the king.[pg 181]“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 Alcmæonidæ.”“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?”[pg 182]“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.[pg 183]“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 Achæmenian, 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 aroseen masseto drink to the man whom the sovran delighted to honour.[pg 184]“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.”[pg 185]“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.
At last the lotus-eating ended. Repeated messengers told how Xerxes was quitting Babylon, was holding a muster in Cappadocia, and now was crossing Asia Minor toward Sardis. Mardonius and his companions had returned to that capital. Daily the soldiery poured into Sardis by tens of thousands. Glaucon knew now it was not a vain boast that for ten years the East had been arming against Hellas, that the whole power of the twenty satrapies would be flung as one thunderbolt upon devoted Greece.
In the plain about Sardis a second city was rising, of wicker booths and gay pavilions. The host grew hourly. Now a band of ebony archers in leopard skins entered from far Ethiopia, now Bactrian battle-axemen, now yellow-faced Tartars from the northeast, now bright-turbaned Arabs upon their swaying camels,—Syrians, Cilicians, black-bearded Assyrians and Babylonians, thick-lipped Egyptians, came, and many a strange race more.
But the core of the army were the serried files of Aryan horse and foot,—blond-headed, blue-eyed men, Persians and Medes, veterans of twenty victories. Their muscles were tempered steel. Their unwearying feet had tramped many a long parasang. Some were light infantry with wicker shields and powerful bows, but as many more horsemen in gold-scaled armour and with desert steeds that flew like Pegasus.
“The finest cavalry in the world!”Mardonius vaunted, and his guest durst not answer nay.
Satrap after satrap came. When at last a foaming Arab galloping to the castle proclaimed,“Next morn the Lord of the World will enter Sardis,”Glaucon could scarce have looked for a greater, though he had expected Cronian Zeus himself.
Mardonius, as“bow-bearer to the king,”a semi-regal office, rode forth a stage to meet the sovran. The streets of Sardis were festooned with flowers. Thousands of spearmen held back the crowds. The Athenian stood beside Roxana and Artazostra at the upper window of a Lydian merchant prince, and his eyes missed nothing.
Never had the two women seemed lovelier than when their hearts ran out to their approaching king. He felt now the power of personal sovranty, how these children of the East awaited not Xerxes the Master, but Xerxes the Omnipotent, God-Manifest, whose decrees were as the decrees of Heaven. And their awe could not fail to awe the Athenian.
At noon the multitude caught the first token of the king. Down the road, through the gate, walked a man, bare-headed, bare-footed, alone,—Artaphernes, despot of all Lydia, going to pay his abject homage. Presently the eunuch priests of Cybele, perched above the gate, clashed their cymbals and raised their hymn of welcome. To the boom of drums the thousand chosen cavalry and as many picked footmen of the Life Guard entered, tall, magnificent soldiers,—caps and spear butts shining with gold. After these a gilded car drawn by the eight sacred horses, each milk-white, and on the car an altar bearing the eternal fire of Mazda. Then, each in his flashing chariot, moved the“Six Princes,”the heads of the great clans of the Achæmenians, then two hundred led desert horses, in splendid trappings, and then—after[pg 176]a long interval, that the host might cast no dust upon its lord, rode a single horseman on a jet-black steed, Artabanus—the king’s uncle and vizier. He beckoned to the people.
“Have fear, Lydians, the giver of breath to all the world comes now beneath your gates!”
The lines of soldiers flung down their spears and dropped upon their knees. The multitude imitated. A chariot came running behind four of the sacred steeds of Nisæa,—their coats were like new snow, their manes braided with gold thread, bridle, bits, pole, baseboard, shone with gems and the royal metal. The wheel was like the sun. A girl-like youth guided the crimson reins, a second held the tall green parasol. Its shadow did not hide the commanding figure upon the car. Glaucon looked hard. No mistaking—Xerxes was here, the being who could say to millions“Die!”and they perished like worms; in verity“God-Manifest.”
For in looks Xerxes, son of Darius, was surely the Great King. A figure of august height was set off nobly by the flowing purple caftan and the purple cap which crowned the curling black hair. The riches of satrapies were in the rubies and topazes on sword sheath and baldric. The head was raised. The face was not regular, but of a proud, aquiline beauty. The skin was olive, the eyes dark, a little pensive. If there were weak lines about the mouth, the curling beard covered them. The king looked straight on, unmoved by the kneeling thousands, but as he came abreast of the balcony, chance made him look upward. Perhaps the sight of the beautiful Greek caused Xerxes to smile winsomely. The smile of a god can intoxicate. Caught away from himself, Glaucon the Alcmæonid joined in the great salvo of cheering.
“Victory to Xerxes! Let the king of kings reign forever!”
The chariot was gone almost instantly, a vast retinue—[pg 177]cooks, eunuchs, grooms, hunters, and many closed litters bearing the royal concubines—followed, but all these passed before Glaucon shook off the spell the sight of royalty cast on him.
* * * * * * *
That night in the palace Xerxes gave a feast in honour of the new campaign. The splendours of a royal banquet in the East need no retelling. Silver lamps, carpets of Kerman rugs or of the petals of fresh roses, a thousand lutes and dulcimers, precious Helbon wine flowing like water, cups of Phœnician crystal, tables groaning with wild boars roasted whole, dancing women none too modest,—these were but the incidentals of a gorgeous confusion. To Glaucon, with the chaste loveliness of the Panathenæa before his mind, the scene was one of vast wonderment but scarcely of pleasure. The Persian did nothing by halves. In battle a hero, at his cups he became a satyr. Many of the scenes before the guests emptied the last of the tall silver tankards were indescribable.
* * * * * * *
On the high dais above the roaring hall sat Xerxes the king,—adored, envied, pitiable.
When Spitames, the seneschal, brought him the cup, the bearer bowed his face, not daring to look on his dread lord’s eyes.
When Artabanus, the vizier, approached with a message, he first kissed the carpet below the dais.
When Hydarnes, commander of the Life Guard, drew near to receive the watchword for the night, he held his mantle before his mouth, lest his breath pollute the world monarch.
Yet of all forms of seeming prosperity wherewith Fate can curse a man, the worst was the curse of Xerxes. To be called“god”when one is finite and mortal; to have no friends, but[pg 178]only a hundred million slaves; to be denied the joys of honest wish and desire because there were none left unsatisfied; to have one’s hastiest word proclaimed as an edict of deity; never to be suffered to confess a mistake, cost what the blunder might, that the“king of kings”might seem lifted above all human error; in short, to be the bondsman of one’s own deification,—this was the hard captivity of the lord of the twenty satrapies.
For Xerxes the king was a man,—of average instincts, capacities, goodness, wickedness. A god or a genius could have risen above his fearful isolation. Xerxes was neither. The iron ceremonial of the Persian court left him of genuine pleasures almost none. Something novel, a rare sensation, an opportunity to vary the dreary monotony of splendour by an astounding act of generosity or an act of frightful cruelty,—it mattered little which,—was snatched at by the king with childlike eagerness. And this night Xerxes was in an unwontedly gracious mood. At his elbow, as he sat on the throne cased with lapis lazuli and onyx, waited the one man who came nearest to being a friend and not a slave,—Mardonius, son of Gobryas, the bow-bearer,—and therefore more entitled than any other prince of the Persians to stand on terms of intimacy with his lord.
While Spitames passed the wine, the king hearkened with condescending and approving nod to the report of the Prince as to his mad adventure in Hellas. Xerxes even reproved his brother-in-law mildly for hazarding his own life and that of his wife among those stiff-necked tribesmen who were so soon to taste the Aryan might.
“It was in your service, Omnipotence,”the Prince was rejoining blandly;“what if not I alone, but a thousand others of the noblest of the Persians and the Medes may perish, if only the glory of their king is advanced?”
“Nobly said; you are a faithful slave, Mardonius. I will remember you when I have burned Athens.”
He even reached forth and stroked the bow-bearer’s hand, a condescension which made the footstool-bearer, parasol-bearer, quiver-bearer, and a dozen great lords more gnaw their lips with envy. Hydarnes, the commander who had waited an auspicious moment, now thought it safe to kneel on the lowest step of the throne.
“Omnipotence, I am constrained to tell you that certain miserable Hellenes have been seized in the camp to-night—spies sent to pry out your power. Do you deign to have them impaled, crucified, or cast into the adders’ cage?”
The king smiled magnanimously.
“They shall not die. Show them the host, and all my power. Then send them home to their fellow-rebels to tell the madness of dreaming to withstand my might.”
The smile of Xerxes had spread, like the ripple from a pebble splashing in a pool, over the face of every nobleman in hearing. Now their praises came as a chant.
“O Ocean of Clemency and Wisdom! Happy Eran in thy sagacious yet merciful king!”
Xerxes, not heeding, turned to Mardonius.
“Ah! yes,—you were telling how you corrupted one of the chief Athenians, then had to flee. On the voyage you were shipwrecked?”
“So I wrote to Babylon, to your Eternity.”
“And a certain Athenian fugitive saved your lives? And you brought him to Sardis?”
“I did so, Omnipotence.”
“Of course he is at the banquet.”
“The king speaks by the promptings of Mazda. I placed him with certain friends and bade them see he did not lack good cheer.”
“Send,—I would talk with him.”
“Suffer me to warn your Majesty,”ventured Mardonius,“he is an Athenian and glories in being of a stubborn, Persian-hating stock. I fear he will not perform due obeisance to the Great King.”
“I can endure his rudeness,”spoke Xerxes, for once in excellent humour;“let the‘supreme usher’bring him with full speed.”
The functionary thus commanded bowed himself to the ground and hastened on his errand.
But well that Mardonius had deprecated the wrath of the monarch. Glaucon came with his head high, his manner almost arrogant. The mere fact that his boldness might cost him his life made him less bending than ever. He trod firmly upon the particular square of golden carpet at the foot of the dais which none, saving the king, the vizier, and the“Six Princes,”could lawfully tread. He held his hands at his sides, firmly refusing to conceal them in his cloak, as court etiquette demanded. As he stood on the steps of the throne, he gave the glittering monarch the same familiar bow he might have awarded a friend he met in the Agora. Mardonius was troubled. The supreme usher was horrified. The master-of-punishments, ever near his chief, gazed eagerly to see if Xerxes would not touch the audacious Hellene’s girdle—a sign for prompt decapitation. Only the good nature of the king prevented a catastrophe, and Xerxes was moved by two motives, pleasure at meeting a fellow-mortal who could look him in the eye without servility or fear, delight at the beautiful features and figure of the Athenian. For an instant monarch and fugitive looked face to face, then Xerxes stretched out, not his hand, but the gold tip of his ivory baton. Glaucon had wisdom enough to touch it,—a token that he was admitted to audience with the king.
“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 Alcmæonidæ.”
“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 Achæmenian, 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 aroseen masseto 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.