CHAPTER XLVIIITOWN MAKERS
Howeagerly the colonists heard the story. How impatiently they hurried up to the place themselves.
Some were at first not satisfied with the site—those who had always lived directly upon the seashore. But in the council which met under the trees the Delphian mountain dwellers prevailed.
Next day all began to carry their goods to Theria’s hill and started their work.
First must come the wall. All laboured at this, slave and free; for the thing was of moment. Huts and shelters of branches must serve the people for this first while.
Then the temple of Apollo was begun at once and of marble. In this work Eëtíon was perfectly happy. He it was who selected the temple-site. With true Greek instinct he made the temple the focus of the landscape, the place toward which everything centred, hill and vale and reverent climbing path.
It was Eëtíon who later modelled the sculptures of the pediment and the bronze image of the youthful Apollo which was to stand within.
Indeed the town was a place of youth. No grey heads anywhere, no blasted hopes nor pent-up desires. And when these are absent no one can believe that they ever will come!
So well did the sequestered situation serve them that their enemy, the Catanan neighbours, found them not until months had passed. And when they did find them, the new colonists drove them off in a quick fight.
Theria’s hours were full. Those hours which at home used to drag in hated vacancy. The colonists themselves were Theria’s constant care. To one she gave ardent praise, to another, merited rebuke.
The choosing of laws, the unexpected setting aside of old laws which in this new land were found to be ill-fitted, the keeping of the council high purposed and pure. These were her duties. Theria did not sit with the council, but her advice was paramount. As former priestess of Apollo and seer of a vision, she exercised a power which as mere woman she could never have attained.
And strangely enough, her poet quality did not suffer in this public activity, but, as is frequent with the Greek, rather thrived and flowered in it.
Late in the winter her first child was born. The colonists thought it was misfortune that the child should be a girl. But Eëtíon took this dispensation of the gods with good heart. He lifted the darling creature in his arms, gazing into the tiny face which, from its first hour, knew how to smile.
Then, smiling himself, he draped the little thing in a long, old-fashioned string of pearls and laid her softly beside her mother.
“But what is this?” asked Theria. “In what strange fashion have you decked my child?”
He laughed with happiness. “Do you not recognize them, dear Theria? The jewels of my freedom which your eldest daughter must wear. Did I not purchasethem from Apollo and bring them over seas in hope of her?”
And Theria realized how Eëtíon loved his little girl.
In the second spring came a shipload of Athenians to join the colony. They gave the town a new impress from the first moment of arrival. For who should arrive with them but Nikander himself.
Theria was sitting crooning happily to her child when he stepped over her high threshold as casually and unannounced as though he had come from next door. Theria came near fainting at such unlooked-for joy. Absence in those days was deathlike in its completeness and disconnection. It seemed to Theria as though her dear father had come from the dead.
Then with what happy tears and soft laughter did she lift up the baby Theria to show him. With what pride did she lead her father out into her town.
Eëtíon met them at the doorway. Then with what seriousness and pride did the two lead Nikander about the new streets, to the market place, to their pure Castalian spring, to their Akropolis. Here was the temple, Eëtíon’s own. It stood unfinished, without cella or roof, with distant Ætna and the violet horizon of sea glimpsing between the white new columns. It seemed a spirit thing, not yet quite of this earth. Indeed it was never to be other than a heavenly, unbelievable beauty.
In Eëtíon’s workshop stood his clay Apollo watching as with wistful, marvelling eyes while the craftsmen brought him to life in bronze. Beside it was another model at sight of which Nikander exclaimed aloud with pleasure.
“It is a Victory,” explained Eëtíon, “which I made after our battle with the Catanans.”
It was a slender elastic figure, winged, the accepted victory form. Like the Ladas model she was moving strongly forward, moving as it seemed into the wind which swept back her long draperies in lovely, free, yet simple lines. She held her victory trumpet but had forgotten to sound it. Her dreamy face seemed looking through some parting of the mists and she was walking straight into her vision. She had forgotten present victory in victories to be. The figure, the countenance, the clean-shaped, filleted head were Theria’s own.
“How did you ever capture her?” cried Nikander. “The very spirit of my Theria.”
“She stood so at the prow of the ship,” said Eëtíon happily. “Day after day, questioning, questioning always and so full of joy. I did not put my hand to the clay until she was complete in my mind.”
“Ah,” laughed Theria, “so that is the reason you looked at me so strangely and sometimes did not answer me. I thought it was because you loved me.”
“And was it not?” Eëtíon retorted, kissing her.
“This statue,” said Nikander, “shall be put at once into marble. And I require it as your first city-gift to Delphi.”
Centuries afterward a sculptor of the Island of Samothrace turned to this pure statue of the earlier day for the type of his Winged Victory. In his later hands the draperies were more boisterous in the breeze, the figure more robust, the skill of handling more complete. But he never caught the far, sweet dreaminess of the face which Eëtíon knew.
Nikander’s visit to the colony gave the citizens great courage and conviction. His praise was ardent, his criticism unsparing. Thus no doubt many a time hadmen of the mother city helped and inspired the little cities beyond the misty deep. Communication between Delphi and the colonies was astonishingly constant.
As years went by Eëtíon and Theria journeyed back and forth over the sea carrying the city gifts to Delphi, bringing back Delphi’s encouragement and advice.
Upon these journeys they took their children, the glorious children of whom Nikander had prophesied long before. During the first of these journeys, Theria longed with almost painful intensity for the arrival in Delphi. But once there, though she loved her “Place of Golden Tripods” more deeply than ever, she chafed at old restrictions, and, the sojourn over, she turned her face toward her western home feeling that it was home indeed.
In this western home life was simple but very rich. From here the young victors went forth to the Pythian and Olympic games. It was of such western boys mainly that Pindar sang. Many such a boy was brought back to the little mountain place by his townsmen and celebrated almost as a god. Of these, three in succession were Theria’s own sons. It was easy to worship such youths not merely for their strength and outward beauty, but for their nimble wit and their delicate, fine-trained imagination. They were gentle seeming but strong as tempered steel.
In this little hill town of Inessa poets and hymn makers were born, and one of those early scientists who amaze us by what they fathomed without instruments or scientific gear. Several young philosophers who were claimed as being from the more famous towns and schools were here born and bred.
The city flourished. Its modesty kept it for manyyears from being drawn into the terrible wars which wrecked Sicily. It tilled the fertile plain below its Akropolis, and rebuilt the old town on the shore for a port. But farther than this it did not go. Theria and her colonists had the Delphic tradition which was neither conquest nor dominion, but an intensive perfecting of the life within the town.
And after the passing of the original builders, the town was, for many generations, the same.
For it is curiously true that a town will retain for hundreds of years the spirit of its founders. Men may flock in and overwhelm it in numbers, but the original subtile spirit, be it good or bad, absorbs the newcomers. In this lies the immortal glory of the pioneer.
All is silent now. The hillock lies as ever beholding the infinite glory of the smoking mountain, the violet vivid sea, the far-flung island coast where headland after headland sweeps outward in majestic successive distances, and between are sheltered bays, sickle-shaped, untenanted and pure.
Anemones and violets nod in the sea winds growing in the very cella of the temple. Sheep polish the marble pillars with their fleeces as they pass, or leave white woolly wisps upon the brambles in the market place for birds to gather for their nests.
But who knows whether the godlike young Sicilians who here still tend their flocks may not show us, shadowed and dulled with ignorance, some gesture of Eëtíon’s beauty, some glow of Eleutheria’s grace?
THE END