CHAPTER XXVII
‘The grete kyng of Trace;Blak was his berd, and manly was his face.The cercles of his eyen in his heedThey gloweden bytwixe yolw and reed,And lyk a griffoun loked he aboute,With kempe herés on his browés stoute,His limés grete, his braunes harde and stronge,His shuldres brode, his armés rounde and longe.* * * *His lange heer was kembd byhynde his bakAs eny ravenes fether it schon for-blak.* * * *An hundred lordes hadde he in his routeArmed ful wel, with hertes sterne and stoute.’Chaucer:Knight’s Tale.
‘The grete kyng of Trace;Blak was his berd, and manly was his face.The cercles of his eyen in his heedThey gloweden bytwixe yolw and reed,And lyk a griffoun loked he aboute,With kempe herés on his browés stoute,His limés grete, his braunes harde and stronge,His shuldres brode, his armés rounde and longe.* * * *His lange heer was kembd byhynde his bakAs eny ravenes fether it schon for-blak.* * * *An hundred lordes hadde he in his routeArmed ful wel, with hertes sterne and stoute.’Chaucer:Knight’s Tale.
‘The grete kyng of Trace;Blak was his berd, and manly was his face.The cercles of his eyen in his heedThey gloweden bytwixe yolw and reed,And lyk a griffoun loked he aboute,With kempe herés on his browés stoute,His limés grete, his braunes harde and stronge,His shuldres brode, his armés rounde and longe.* * * *His lange heer was kembd byhynde his bakAs eny ravenes fether it schon for-blak.* * * *An hundred lordes hadde he in his routeArmed ful wel, with hertes sterne and stoute.’Chaucer:Knight’s Tale.
‘The grete kyng of Trace;Blak was his berd, and manly was his face.The cercles of his eyen in his heedThey gloweden bytwixe yolw and reed,And lyk a griffoun loked he aboute,With kempe herés on his browés stoute,His limés grete, his braunes harde and stronge,His shuldres brode, his armés rounde and longe.* * * *His lange heer was kembd byhynde his bakAs eny ravenes fether it schon for-blak.* * * *An hundred lordes hadde he in his routeArmed ful wel, with hertes sterne and stoute.’Chaucer:Knight’s Tale.
‘The grete kyng of Trace;
Blak was his berd, and manly was his face.
The cercles of his eyen in his heed
They gloweden bytwixe yolw and reed,
And lyk a griffoun loked he aboute,
With kempe herés on his browés stoute,
His limés grete, his braunes harde and stronge,
His shuldres brode, his armés rounde and longe.
* * * *
His lange heer was kembd byhynde his bak
As eny ravenes fether it schon for-blak.
* * * *
An hundred lordes hadde he in his route
Armed ful wel, with hertes sterne and stoute.’
Chaucer:Knight’s Tale.
Toa man of active mind and determined courage it ever seems an unworthy thing to give way for long to sad musings and melancholy retrospections. Wherever Alkibiades was he must be doing something. If Athens would not let him do all he wished to do for her, he would still do what he could in spite of her.
He had before made friends with many of theThrakian chiefs, who were always fighting among themselves. He now organized and trained a band of hardy savage warriors, some of whom had served under him in his last campaign against the Spartans; and before the spring came, while the deep snow was still upon the mountains, he was entreated by the Selymbrians to come to help them against the Kaini, who were menacing their territory. He felt bound to the Selymbrians; they had given way to him when he was in their midst, and had acknowledged the supremacy of Athens. They had, indeed, no particular claim upon him, but they were Greeks. An enterprise of this sort had some charms for him in his present humour; it might bring booty and many things of which he and his wild followers stood in need. He crossed the Holy Mountain, where the cold was so intense that the few Greeks in his band suffered severely and envied the Thrakians with their long fur coats and caps of foxes’ skins covering their heads and ears; and he drove the Kaini back to their savage mountain villages and away from the sea-coast, and protected Selymbria and the other Greek towns along the western shores of the Chersonesos.
Thence he was called back to the south. The Apsinthii, a tribe on the left bank of theHebros, had crossed the river in their boats of wicker-work and skins, and were threatening the Odrysian king and the Grecian colonies in the south. Passing through Apri, he came to Kypaela, on the Hebros, in the territory of the Paeti, where he thought he might find a ford across the river. There was, however, no ford there, nor any bridge, and he had no boats. So he went up the bank of the river northward, and, crossing the Agrianes, a tributary of the Hebros, he reached, by the beginning of April, the main river again, nearly opposite the village where Plotinopolis was afterwards built. While he was engaged in searching for a ford two Thrakian horsemen, in fine costume, rode up, and made signs that they wished a parley with him. Amongst his wild band there were but few who knew much Greek, and the language of the new comers was different to the Thrakian speech to which he was accustomed; but he found at length one who was able, not without some difficulty, to act as an interpreter. The horsemen declared they were sent by Amadokos, king of the Odrysai, who was at his royal village on the other side of the river, a little higher up; they said the king, their master, desired to meet the Athenian general, and begged to invite him to a state banquet that day. They informed him that Amadokos claimedto be of the same race as the Athenians, and would make alliance with him, and give whatever pledges he demanded. They offered to show Alkibiades a ford higher up, where his horses might easily cross, and where he would find the king’s royal barge awaiting him.
The offer was accepted, and Alkibiades promised to meet the king at the ford that afternoon. One of the messengers returned with the answer to his master, the other stayed to act as guide. Great preparations were made in the camp of Alkibiades. The most presentable of his followers were arrayed in all their savage splendour. Their leader himself did not disdain to adorn himself in a dress suitable for the kingly presence, and appeared in his finest armour. Nor did he forget the gifts it was the custom for a guest to bring when dining with so great a personage.
Early in the afternoon they reached the ford. On the other side was the royal cavalcade, with trumpets and drums; and there, amid barbaric splendour, sat the king upon a white stallion with a lion’s skin upon its back. Two Thrakians swam the stream, guiding the horse of Alkibiades. The royal barge, a sort of flat-bottomed punt, was brought across for the leader, and when, not without some dread of submersion, he had takenhis place in it, was pulled and pushed by naked servants of the king across the stream.
Alkibiades mounted his wet horse, and rode to greet Amadokos. Loud blasts from the trumpets sounded as they met. The king was serious and polite, with a high-bred, stately courtesy, mingled with an easy cordiality,—a natural politeness which more civilized people have somewhat managed to forget. He was evidently struck with the commanding appearance of his guest. As the one took the right hand of the other, something told each of them that he could trust the other.
For a king who boasted Athenian descent, or, at least, Athenian relationship, the Odrysian’s Greek was peculiar—certainly not Attik or Sophoklean. There was a strange jumble of Thrakian words mixed up with it; what few Greek verbs were used by him were sometimes declined in a way unheard before by the Athenian. Alkibiades could, however, from what of the Thrakian speech he knew, understand his host, as they rode off together talking of many things.
If the music at the meeting of the two distinguished men was loud, it was nothing compared with that which welcomed them as they were assisted to dismount from their horses, and entered the royal tent, where the banquet was awaitingthem. And a strange banquet it was. At the end of the pavilion, on a raised platform, were set two small three-legged tables, as the place of honour for the king and his chief guest. All down the tent on either side were other smaller tripod tables. There were no couches to recline upon during the feast, but seats in which each guest sat upright at his table, in a manner altogether strange to one accustomed to the Grecian banquets. On every table were piles of baked meats of various kinds—venison, kid, and mutton—and large flat loaves of unleavened bread. When the blowing of trumpets was over, Amadokos, sitting down, invited his guest to be seated. Then, taking a large hunch of bread, and the choicest bits of meat from his table, he handed them to Alkibiades, who, seeing the other Thrakians do the same to their neighbours, handed some bread and the best pieces of meat to the king. The Thrakians then set to work vigorously, and ate their food voraciously, the monarch sending to his more honourable guests pieces from his own table so frequently that he had nothing for himself, except what Alkibiades presented to him.
As soon as they began to eat, young slaves brought in horns full of wine, and presented one to each guest, beginning with the king and Alkibiades.After the king had eaten and drunk a little, he rose, and, with a horn full of wine in his hand, turned towards Alkibiades, who, having learnt something of the customs of his entertainers, also rose with his wine-horn in his hands. They both drank of the fine strong Thrakian wine, but what was left in the king’s horn he poured over the dress of Alkibiades, who, though astonished at this unusual attention, saw it was intended to do him honour, and did the same to his host, pouring the remains of his wine over the garments of Amadokos. This mark of reciprocal goodwill so pleased the Thrakians that they leapt to their feet, and deafened the Greeks with their shouts of delight, but soon sat down again to many other horns of wine, which the slaves continued to supply unstintingly.
Agrestides now entered the tent followed by two Greek servants bearing a splendid Persian carpet which the Selymbrians had given to Alkibiades, and a golden amphora from Chios, chased with figures of Dionysos reclining and boys and girls gathering in the vintage and pressing the grapes. Alkibiades presented these gifts to the king, who received them graciously, while the Thrakians jumped up again, and shouted louder than before.
Musicians then came in, playing on curious shrill pipes and rude harps of seven strings,making amongst them a most strange, pathetic, wailing melody. To the cultured, musical ear of the Athenian the noise of the drums and trumpets of ox-hides had been painful. When a boy, he had utterly refused to learn the flute or flageolet, thinking it unmanly; but his love and knowledge of music were shown when he presented his liturgy at Athens, by the way in which his chorus had been trained under his care, and by the choric songs he had himself arranged. Now this savage music, in the minor mode, of the pipes and harps seemed sadly to recall something of old times long past, and to inspire a tender yearning as for something else unknown, indefinite, indefinable, and brought back thoughts of his own days that were gone by for ever, and sad memories of his wife, and of the friends whom he had lost.
These reflections were stopped by the sudden entrance of a troop of buffoons, whose antics, coarse and not too delicate, roused the loud laugh and noisy acclamation of the revellers, who by this time were getting not a little intoxicated with their wine. Then came a pantomimic show and dance. A warrior, laying aside his arms, represented a poor despised field-labourer, imitating his ploughing and his sowing, ever looking back while he laboured, as if in fear. A band of robbers rushedin, the peasant fought bravely for his plough and oxen, but in the end, amidst the braying of the ox-hide trumpets, he was bound and carried off in triumph. All this was played in time to the music of the pipes, and was meant to show the superiority of the caste of robbers and soldiers to the poor miserable tillers of the earth.
When the feast was over, Amadokos and Alkibiades, almost the only sober ones of the party, retired to the royal private chamber. The king told his guest that he had heard of his valour and invincible arms, and of his having overcome both Spartans and Persians combined at Kyzikos; and informed him that he himself was descended from Tereus, the ancient king of Thrace, who married Prokne, daughter of Pandion, the old king of Athens, and sister of Erechtheus, so that he, by ancestry, was of the same race as his guest. But now, he said, he was hard pressed by several of the neighbouring tribes, who were constantly invading his dominions and carrying off his people and their cattle. He promised Alkibiades that, if he would help him against some of these enemies, he would pay his men whatever was customary, and any booty they might take should belong absolutely to the victor.
Alkibiades agreed to do whatever he couldagainst the Apsinthii, one of the most hostile and dangerous tribes. He promised to return next day and set off at once in pursuit of the dreaded enemy, who were reported to be at this time not far off on the western side of the river. Then, with many expressions of goodwill from the king, he went back to his camp, taking as many of his followers with him as were in a fit state to cross the river—a process which had a salutary effect upon some of them.
Next day Amadokos bade farewell to Alkibiades, who, with a force of nearly five hundred fighting men, two hundred of whom were mounted, again crossed the Hebros, and set out in search of the Apsinthii. After two days’ march he came up with that wild tribe as they were returning towards the river, encumbered with the flocks and herds and other treasure they had taken. He routed them without much difficulty, took their booty from them and some hostages, and drove them back across the Hebros. Some of the treasure and all the hostages he sent to his new ally, king Amadokos. When he was about to return to his fastness in the Chersonesos, an embassy arrived from the Greek colony of Abdera, further west, upon the southern coast, praying him to come to the help of that town against an unknown tribe fromthe north, supposed to be the dreaded Treballi. Abdera was not an Athenian colony, but it had submitted to Thrasyboulos two years before, and Alkibiades could not refuse the summons. With his strange followers, whose love of pillage could be with difficulty restrained, he marched westward through the hill country of the Bistones and the Chorpilli. The marauding tribe from the far north, more ferocious and stronger than any he had yet encountered, were laying waste the territory round Abdera, and threatening the town itself and other Grecian cities along the coast. They withdrew to the neighbouring hills as he approached. It was only after a long and difficult search that he discovered their stronghold, and succeeded in coming to close quarters with them.
He heard that they had made a fortified encampment on the summit of a densely-wooded hill nearly twenty miles to the north of Abdera, which they made use of as a sort of rude basis for their freebooting expeditions. Coming up to the foot of the rising ground, under cover of a dark night, he divided his cavalry into two divisions, posting one on the level plain to the north, the other to the south of the barbarians’ camp. His heavy-armed foot he placed in ambush on the western side where the wood was thickest.
Before daylight, while the savage horde were sleeping off the effects of the last night’s carouse, he, with his light-armed peltasts, or sharp-shooters, stole up the hill on its steepest side, towards the east, and, reaching the rough palisades which the rude warriors had thrown round their camp, suddenly broke in upon them. The barbarians, roused from their sleep by this unexpected assault, finding their fort broken at a point where, from the steepness of the hill, they thought themselves secure, and exaggerating in their fear the number of their assailants, who raised the most fearful shouts and yells as they rushed in, retreated from their high camp, after a faint resistance, and rushed, wherever they could find a way of escape, pell-mell down the hill. Those, the majority, who took the north side, as well as those who in their hurry chose the south, were despatched by the horsemen waiting for them on the plain below. Others, as the day broke, seeing the slaughter of their friends, made for the wood on the west, and were either taken prisoners or slain by the heavy-armed foot, who were there in ambush expecting them.
Alkibiades found a camp deserted by all except the women, who were chiefly those whom they had carried off from the villages round about; though the chiefs had brought a few with them from theirown country. He gave the camp up to pillage, and, gathering the women together, he and Agrestides stood guard over them. His rude soldiers could not understand this. Satiated with the plunder they found, they hoped for a further reward. It was only by the voice and sword of the leader and his faithful friend that the otherwise defenceless prisoners were protected. The women who were natives of the country he sent to their homes with gifts; the women of the chiefs of the invading ruffians he kept as hostages. The prisoners taken were found to be men of gigantic size, and so hardy that no fatigue seemed to affect them. He confessed they would have been indeed formidable foes if they had been well armed and disciplined.
Thus he rescued Abdera from her terrible enemy. He also gave the people of that town some wise advice as to preparations for defending themselves, if others of that ferocious tribe, as was not improbable, should come at some future time upon them when he was not there to help them. This advice the citizens of Abdera remembered when it was too late. A few years afterwards the Treballi poured down again from their mountains in the north, and destroyed the effeminate inhabitants.
In return for what he had done for them, the citizens provided him with pay for his followers,and ships to transport them to the Chersonesos. He arrived at his fortress at the end of the summer, with the spoils of his barbaric enemies and considerable gifts and treasure, the marks of the gratitude of Grecian cities. He now paid off his men, and sent most of them as valuable auxiliaries to his friend Amadokos, who was still at war with his northern enemies, bargaining only that they should return to him whenever he might need their services.
Amadokos entreated him to come himself to lead his forces, but Alkibiades had other objects in view, and higher hopes than perpetual tribal warfare amongst the Thrakians. The king received this important assistance with expressions of eternal gratitude, and promised to come to fight with him against the enemies of Athens, if at any time the Athenians, his relations, might require his aid.