CHAPTER XIV
‘Laudo manentem; si celeres quatitPennas, resigno quæ; dedit ...... probamquePauperiem sine dote quæro.’Horatius:Od., iii. 29.‘I sing her praises should she stay,But an she shake her lightsome wings,I give her back the things she gave,And seek an upright life in poverty.’
‘Laudo manentem; si celeres quatitPennas, resigno quæ; dedit ...... probamquePauperiem sine dote quæro.’Horatius:Od., iii. 29.‘I sing her praises should she stay,But an she shake her lightsome wings,I give her back the things she gave,And seek an upright life in poverty.’
‘Laudo manentem; si celeres quatitPennas, resigno quæ; dedit ...... probamquePauperiem sine dote quæro.’Horatius:Od., iii. 29.‘I sing her praises should she stay,But an she shake her lightsome wings,I give her back the things she gave,And seek an upright life in poverty.’
‘Laudo manentem; si celeres quatitPennas, resigno quæ; dedit ...... probamquePauperiem sine dote quæro.’Horatius:Od., iii. 29.
‘Laudo manentem; si celeres quatit
Pennas, resigno quæ; dedit ...
... probamque
Pauperiem sine dote quæro.’
Horatius:Od., iii. 29.
‘I sing her praises should she stay,But an she shake her lightsome wings,I give her back the things she gave,And seek an upright life in poverty.’
‘I sing her praises should she stay,
But an she shake her lightsome wings,
I give her back the things she gave,
And seek an upright life in poverty.’
Itwas early in the afternoon of September the twenty-fifth by our reckoning when theEros, following theSalaminia, got up to Thurii, an Athenian colony near the site of the old-renowned soft Sybaris. The fallen strategos landed with his friends. Kryptos, approaching, told the ex-general he proposed staying there that night, and starting again early next morning. Alkibiades bowed, saying it was his part to receive orders now, not to give them.
The people of Thurii, most of whom had come upon the wharf to see the two great Athenianvessels, were indeed surprised when they recognised the well-known face of Alkibiades. He had lately called there, when, at the head of his division of the fleet, he was on his way to Rhegion. Eumanthes quickly heard the news, and came down at once to welcome his friend and benefactor, and invited him and his companions to his country house, and begged they would make it theirs as long as they might stay at Thurii.
‘’Tis only till to-morrow,’ said Alkibiades, introducing his friends. Eumanthes begged they would stay longer.
‘Our partridges are good, and our wine thought not the worst in Italy.’
‘So have I often heard, and, indeed, I know it from my own experience,’ said the leader, who wore his most gorgeous purple robe, and looked ready to enjoy a long symposium after all the rough labours of his recent voyages.
And a fine symposium it was. Eumanthes, after a little private talk with his old friend, had summoned the wisest of the Thurians to meet him. All the sage philosophers of Thurii came. Their philosophy did not prevent them doing justice to the feast. The daintiest fish of Thurii, cooked, some in boiling olive-oil, others in the white wine of the country, others stuffed witholives and wild thyme and baked—all were delicious.
Boiled turkeys, each with a hundred of the famed Thurian oysters in them, and a boar’s head, with freshly discovered truffles, were followed by pheasants and young partridges, roasted and stewed in many ways, which made the chief guest declare that his own head cook Hymettos must come to Thurii to improve his art. But the snails, collected that afternoon from the vineyard of white grapes, made them, for a moment, forget all the rest; until a salad, with cray-fish, straight from the cool mountain streams, made them almost forget the snails. To the sound of silver flutes boys came in, bearing upon golden dishes the plump quails of Egypt, wrapped in the last young leaves of the maturing vines, and offered them upon bended knee to each guest, the virginal vine-leaves giving a new flavour to the Egyptian birds, which were sufficiently appetizing of themselves.
The custom of the luxurious Thurians was to drink wine while the feast was being served, and not to wait till after the various dishes had been cleared away, as was the manner in the older country. Each course was served up with wines which had lain pining for the sunlightfor more than twenty years. Cold white wine, which gave forth an aroma as of early summer mignonette when the tall, pointed amphoræ were opened, came with the fish and disappeared again until the salad. Red wine, clear and delicate, gentle as a maiden, gave flavour to the roasted venison. Red wines of bolder nature, larger-hearted, with perfume like the flower of the beech-tree on hot summer nights, added a fresh charm to partridges and pheasants. But all these wines were vanquished by their king of exquisitely fine bouquet, and of a vintage which the host admitted he had not seen himself since he was a youth in his dear old father’s lifetime. This monarch of all wine came with the fruit—figs bursting with ripe lusciousness, walnuts, and large bloomy grapes, with the warmth still on them of the setting sun.
The philosophers and the learned men of Thurii, notwithstanding all the heat they were wont to show in nightly arguments with one another, and in discussing the latest works of every sophist writer, were quiet and subdued before the renowned Athenian. Then did he look more radiant and beautiful than ever. Seldom did he show such condescension or concern himself more courteously to instruct and gratify his company. He spoke of many things—of patriotism, of thelove of country. When was man obliged to die for his home? How far, if ever, was he bound to save his fatherland, if he must appear an enemy while doing it? Or was it not nobler to die to save her than to live to teach her, and dying, leave a fame behind which some day all would recognise, so that his name would never die, and he would become indeed ‘Athanatos’?
The companions of his voyage rose from their couches one by one, and stole out unnoticed by the grave philosophers, overcome by the eloquence they had listened to and the good wine they had drunk. At length Alkibiades bade them good-night, and his host got rid of them. Eumanthes, after a few more words with his guest, went down to the wharf to watch the movements of theSalaminia. He found the captain still superintending the provisioning of the state ship, and invited him to come and stay a day or two with him. Kryptos declined, as he sailed for Athens the next morning.
When Eumanthes returned he found that his guest, who in the meantime had changed his dress for one more suitable to the work before him, was gone. He had reason to suppose his Athenian friends were by this time beyond the shrine of Dionysos. There Alkibiades and his companionshad found Diôtes, a faithful servant of Eumanthes, with arms and horses and some provisions, awaiting them. They mounted, and, led by Diôtes, went along a narrow pathway in single file up the mountain by the side of the stream whence the cray-fish had come which formed the chief part of the wondrous salad.
It was a dark night, and not without some danger did they make their way to higher ground. Biôtides was better at sea than on horseback. In his anxiety to show his skill as a horseman, his steed, unaccustomed to such a rider, got rid of him. He was picked up near a precipice not much the worse, but it was thought wiser to make him exchange horses with Agrestides, who was riding a milder animal. They went along merrily enough, considering their new circumstances. Only Alkibiades was silent and thoughtful. Before daybreak they reached a small villa, nearly thirty miles from Thurii, belonging to Eumanthes. Here they rested.
They were not sorry to lie down, though their couches, all except one, were on the ground, and made up of skins. What was that to sailors after a long ride through the night? The day was far advanced when Diôtes awoke them. He had prepared a repast of goat’s milk and venison,with some cheese and fruit. After that they set out again on their journey, along a spur of the lower Apennines for some three hours more, at as quick a pace as Biôtides could keep up. Then they descended into a broad valley, with a clear stream running through it. At the end of this valley, shut in on both sides by the hills, was a goatherd’s hut. For this they made. Here Diôtes put before them the remainder of the provisions he had brought with him, and left them in charge of Hermas, the goatherd, telling them that he or some other of the servants of Eumanthes would come as soon as possible with news and more provisions.
The lodging was rougher than that of the night before, but the spirits of all were high; those of Alkibiades were now highest of them all. There was something adventurous about this, and the change from soft beds and silken coverlets, such as were prepared for him on board theEros, and from the luxurious living he was accustomed to, brought out a latent hardihood he was soon to find an opportunity to show. His was a character which could fit itself to any change of circumstances, to any country, to any mode of life; but wherever he might be he would be first, the most beloved, often the most envied of mankind.
Next morning they were up betimes. The supplies Diôtes promised had not come, nor were they wanted. The stream was full of trout, and no party of schoolboys out on a holiday ever abandoned themselves to greater frolic and enjoyment. Alkibiades constructed a net to catch the fish, and invented a new way of cooking them. By the time they were spread out smoking on platters made of leaves on the rich turf, the appetites of the party would have made most fish delectable. So what of this, the finest flavoured that the streams of earth afford, and cooked by Alkibiades? Hermas provided bread, coarse, perhaps, and somewhat hard; but his cheese was excellent; and he produced a basketful of those cray-fish we have heard of twice before. He had caught and cooked them while the others were fishing for the trout.
‘Stop,’ said Alkibiades; ‘I see a herb will make a noble salad;’ and so it did with oil of which Hermas had a store, made from the olives in the groves through which they had passed two days before. There was no wine there, and they wanted none. The fresh mountain air in which they took their breakfast,—a breakfast caught and cooked by themselves, for the first time in the lives of most of them,—made up for that. Alkibiades drank from the mountain stream as it flowed by themclear and icy cold. ‘After all,’ said he, ‘water is not so bad to drink—sometimes.’
They had a mid-day slumber on the goatherd’s skins, under the late September sun, and were aroused by the arrival of two horsemen, whom they recognised as servants of Eumanthes. They brought a scroll on which was written: ‘Kryptos and his band are searching; keep quiet and on guard.’ They also brought two panniers filled with such succulent viands as only a Eumanthes could imagine. At the evening meal this pampering food seemed out of place in their surroundings, and yet,—and yet, they eat it.
Next morning Diôtes came. Kryptos was still looking for them, but on the wrong side. So all that day, and for many others after it, the band of fugitives enjoyed the sunshine and the mountain air, and the good things the gods provided. And then news came that Kryptos, giving up his search at last, had set sail for Athens. The fugitives started on their journey back. They bade farewell to Hermas and his quiet valley; and oftentimes in after-years, amidst the splendours of the East, and all his luxuries, his troubles and his triumphs, the wandering Alkibiades looked back to that sweet spot, and wondered which was happier, he or Hermas.