Callias: A Tale of the Fall of Athens Part 18

"But tell me the story," said the young man.

"Well, it happened in this way. My master had gone up to see Pharnabazus, the Satrap, who had promised to aid him on his way up to Susa to see the Great King. There were six of us with him; his secretary, myself and four slaves. There was Timandra, also, whom he used to call his wife; but his real wife was an Athenian lady, Hipparete, I have heard say."

"Yes," interrupted Callias, "I knew her; a cousin of my own; a most unhappy marriage. But go on."

"Well, Pharnabazus received him most hospitably. There was no good house in the village, so we had three cottages. Alcibiades had one; the secretary and I another, and the slaves, a third. Every day the satrap sent a handsome supply of provisions for us; dishes and wine from his own table for my master, and for us all that we could want for ourselves. I never fared better in my life. And my master had long talks with him and seemed in excellent spirits. Everything was going on as well as possible. Then there came a change. I never could find out whether my master had heard anything to make him suspicious. If he had, he certainly told the secretary nothing about it. But he was very much depressed. First he sent Timandra away. She was very unwilling to go, poor lady, for she did love my master very much, though, as I say, she was not really his wife. But my master insisted on it, so she went away to stay with some friends. After that his spirits grew worse and worse.

He used to tell his secretary the dreams he had. Once he dreamt he was dressed in Timandra's clothes, and that she was putting rouge and powder on his face. At another time he seemed to see himself laid on a funeral pyre and the people standing round ready to set it on fire. The very night after he had that dream we were awakened by a tremendous uproar; the secretary and I got up and looked out. The master's cottage, which was about a stadium[58] away from ours was on fire, and there were a number of Persians, about fifty or sixty, standing round it, shouting out and cursing him. The next moment we saw the door of the cottage open, and the master ran out with a cloak round his head, to keep himself from being choked by the smoke, and with a sword in his hand. As soon as he was clear of the burning cottage he threw down the cloak and rushed straight at the nearest Persian. The man turned and ran. There was not one of them that dared stand for a moment. But they shot at him with arrows. They had fastened the gates of the enclosure in which the cottages stood, you must understand, so that he could not escape. In fact he was climbing over one of them when he was killed."

"And you; what did you do?"

"Ah! sir," cried the man, "we were helpless, we had not a sword between us. We hid ourselves, and the next morning took our master's body and carried it to Timandra. She made a great funeral, spending upon it, poor thing, nearly every drachma she had. When we had seen the last of my dear master, the secretary said that he had friends at Tarsus, and set out to go there. I thought that I had best make my way to Smyrna. Thanks to your goodness, I shall now be able to get there, but I was very nearly dying of starvation. But what, if I may ask, are you thinking of doing?"

"That I can't tell," replied the Athenian; "as I told you, I was on my way to Alcibiades."

"Well, sir, I can tell you this," rejoined the stranger, "no friends of my master's will be safe here. Pharnabazus, I feel sure, had no great love for him, notwithstanding all his politeness; as for the Spartans, they hated him; and I did hear that the people who are now in power at Athens had sent to say that peace could not last unless he were put out of the way. Yes, sir, if anyone recognizes that you are my master's friend, you are a dead man."

"Why," said Callias, "I have made no secret of it. In Smyrna I spoke about him to the people with whom I was staying. No one said a word against him."

"Very likely not," replied the man, "for they thought that he was alive, and no one liked to have my master for an enemy. He had a wonderful way of making friends to have the upper hand and contriving that his adversaries should have the worst of it. But now that he is dead you will find things very different."

"What is to be done?" asked the young Athenian.

"Can you trust your guide?"

"I know nothing of the man. I simply hired him because I was told that he was a fairly honest fellow, knew the country very well, and would not run away if a robber made his appearance."

"Well, then get rid of him."

"But how?"

"Tell him that you have a headache, and that you will come on after him when you have rested a little and the sun is not so hot, and that he had better go on, get quarters at the next stage and have everything ready for you when you shall arrive. As soon as he is gone, get back as fast as you can to Smyrna. The news will hardly have reached that place yet, indeed we may be sure that it has not, or you would have heard of it before you started. Go down to the docks, and take your pa.s.sage in any ship that you can find ready to start. Even if it is going to Athens never mind; you will be able to leave it on the way. Anyhow, get out of Asia at any risk."

"And you?"

"Oh, no one will care about me. I am a very insignificant person. But, as a matter of fact, I shall try to get to Syracuse. I was born there."

"Syracuse will do as well for me as any other place. Why not come with me if it can be managed? I was able to do you a little service, and you have done me a great one. Let us go together."

The plan was carried out with the greatest success. Callias made the best of his way to Smyrna, and left his horse at an inn, not, of course, the one from which he had started. As he had plenty of money for immediate wants, besides letters of credit from Hippocles, he thought it safer not to attempt to sell the animal. He then provided himself with different clothes, purchasing at the same time a suit for his new acquaintance. These he ordered to be sent to a small house of entertainment near the docks which they had arranged should be the place of meeting. Shortly before sunset the man appeared. Meanwhile Callias had arranged for a pa.s.sage for himself and his servant in a ship bound for Corinth. They would not venture into Corinth itself, but would transfer themselves at the port of Cenchreae into some ship bound for Sicily.

Before the morning of the next day the two were on their way westward.

Everything went well. At Cenchreae they found a Syracusan merchantman just about to start, shipped on board her and after a prosperous voyage found themselves in the chief city of Sicily.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] A stadium was nearly a furlong; to be exact, 202 yards.

CHAPTER XX.

DIONYSIUS.

It was with no common emotion that the young Athenian entered the great harbor of Syracuse. It was here that the really fatal blow had been struck from which his country had never recovered. She had struggled gallantly on for nearly ten years after she had lost the most magnificent armament that she had ever sent forth, but the wound had been mortal. Thenceforward she had been as a man of whose life-blood a half had been drained away. Callias had read, shortly before leaving Athens for the last time, the magnificent pa.s.sage, then recently published, in which the great historian of Athens had described the decisive battle in the harbor.[59] The sight of the place now enabled him to realize it to himself in the most vivid way. He seemed to see the hostile fleets crowded together in a way for which there was no precedent, two hundred war galleys in a s.p.a.ce so narrow that manoeuvre was impossible, and nothing availed but sheer fighting and hard blows; while the sh.o.r.es seemed alive again as they had been on that eventful day with a crowd of eager spectators, the armies of the two contending powers, who looked on with pa.s.sionate cries and gestures at such a spectacle as human eyes had scarcely witnessed before, a mighty war-game in which their own liberties and lives were the stake. The heights that ran above the harbor were scarcely less significant. There, its remains still visible, had been the Athenian line of investment. If only a few yards more had been completed, the young man thought to himself, the whole course of history might have been changed.[60] Not far away was the spot where the st.u.r.dy infantry of Thebes had withstood the fiery shock of his own countrymen, and so, not for the first time, wrested from them the empire that seemed almost within their grasp.[61]

And somewhere--no one knew where--his own father had fallen, one of the thousands of n.o.ble victims who had been sacrificed to the greed and ambition of a restless democracy.

The n.o.ble house of which Callias was the representative had, of course, its hereditary guest-friend at Syracuse. Naturally there had been very little intercourse between citizens of the two states in late years; but the old tie remained unbroken, and Medon, for that was the Syracusan's name, was as ready to give a hospitable welcome to the young Athenian, as if he had been a citizen of one of his country's allies, a merchant prince of Corinth, or a scion of one of the two royal houses of Sparta.

He insisted upon his guest taking up his quarters in his house, and exerted himself to the utmost to supply and even antic.i.p.ate every want.

"Now you have seen something of the outside of our city," said Medon to his friend as they sat together after the evening meal on the third day after his arrival, "you should know something of its politics. But first let me make sure that we are alone."

The dining chamber in which the two were sitting had an ante-room. The door of this the Syracusan proceeded to bolt.

"Now," he said, "we shall have no eavesdroppers. Any inquisitive friend may listen at that other door, with all this s.p.a.ce between us and him, without getting much idea of what we are talking about. All the other walls are outer walls, as you know, and unless a certain great personage has the birds of the air in his pay, we may talk without reserve. You look surprised. Well, you will understand things a little better when you have heard what I have to tell you. You know something, I suppose, of what has been happening here of late years. The fact is we have been going through an awful time. No sooner were we free of the danger that you put us in--you must pardon me for alluding to it--than we were confronted with another which was every whit as formidable. Another wretched quarrel between two towns in the island--curiously enough the very same two that were concerned in your expedition against us[62]--brought in a foreign invader. This time it was the Carthaginians. They had had settlements in the island for many years, had always coveted the dominion of the whole, and more than once had been very near getting it. They were not far from success this time.

First they took Selinus and ma.s.sacred every creature in it; then they took Acragas;[63] then they utterly destroyed Himera. Something made them hold their hands, and we had a short breathing s.p.a.ce. Four years afterwards they came back in greater force than ever. Acragas was besieged; it held out bravely, but at last the population had to leave it; only Syracuse was left. Again when in the full tide of victory, the Carthaginians held their hand. Do you ask me why? I cannot tell you. But listen to the fourth article of the treaty of peace." In spite of the precautions that he had taken against being overheard, Medon, at this point lowered his voice. "Syracuse is to be under the rule of Dionysius.

Yes; the secret is there; it was he that made it worth their while to go; and you may be sure that it was worth his while to buy them off. I must allow that he was the only man who showed a grain of sense or courage in the whole matter; the other generals as they were called were hopelessly imbecile. Well, they went, and Dionysius became, shall we call it, 'commander-in-chief,' or perhaps as we are quite alone, 'tyrant?' He had not an easy time of it at first; I don't suppose that he will ever have an easy time, tyrants seldom do. The n.o.bles and the heads of the democratic party leagued together against him, and drove him out. That did not last long. Of course the conquerors used their victory most brutally. They were furious that Dionysius had slipped out of their hands, and wreaked their vengeance on his poor wife. I can't tell you the horrible way in which they killed her. She was the daughter, too, of Hermocrates, one of the very best and n.o.blest men that Syracuse ever had. Equally of course they quarrelled over the spoils. Naturally, before long they had nothing left to quarrel over.

Dionysius hired a force of Campanian mercenaries, the hardest hitters, by the way, that I ever saw, and drove them out of the city. Now, I fancy, he is pretty firmly seated. The people like him; they were never as fit, you must know, for popular government as yours are. He gives them plenty of employment and amus.e.m.e.nts, wrings the money out of us with a tight hand, and scatters it among them with an open one. Of course a dagger may reach him, and there are not a few that are kept ready sharpened for the chance. Barring that, he is likely to be master here as long as he lives. And to tell you the truth, though personally I hate the idea, as any n.o.ble must--it is the n.o.bles that always hate a tyrant most--yet I do not see that anything could be better for Syracuse. The Carthaginian danger is not over yet, and Dionysius is the very ablest soldier and administrator that we have. Of course the pinch will come later. A ruler of this sort always becomes harder, more cruel, more suspicious as he grows older. And if he has a son, brought up in the bad atmosphere of tyranny, the country has a terrible time of it.

Happily the son is generally a fool, and brings the whole thing down with a crash. But all this is far off. Dionysius is still a young man, not more than twenty-six years old, I fancy. However, you shall see him--we are very good friends in public--and judge for yourself."

Callias, who had the hereditary abhorrence of his race for anything like tyranny,[64] demurred at the proposed introduction to the despot.

Medon was very urgent in overruling his objection. "Don't mistake Sicily for Greece," he said; "we are half barbarous, and what would be monstrous with you is quite in its right place here. I grant you that an honest man should have no dealings with a tyrant who should set himself up at Thebes, or Corinth, or Argos. But it is different here. I am sure that the man governs us better than we should be governed by the people, or, for the matter of that, by the n.o.bles either."

At last the Athenian consented. "Very good," cried Medon, "you will go.

Then we will lose no time about it. Depend upon it, Dionysius knows all about you; and if you do not pay your respects to him without loss of time he will be suspicious. Suspicion is the bane of his situation.

Servant, friend, wife; he trusts n.o.body."

The next day Medon and his guest presented themselves at the palace. The Athenian had half turned back when he found that he must be searched. No one was admitted into the presence until that precaution had been taken, and his freeman's pride revolted. Medon simply shrugged his shoulders.

"He is quite right," he whispered to his indignant friend, "he would not live a month if he did not do it."

Dionysius was, or pretended to be, busy with his studies, when the two visitors were announced. A slave was reading to him from a roll, and he was taking notes on a wax tablet. He welcomed the newcomers with much cordiality.

"So, Medon, you have brought your Athenian friend at last. I hope that you have not been slandering me to him."

"My lord," answered Medon with a courtly bow, "I have told him the history of the last five years, and have taken him to see Syracuse. That is not the way to slander you."

"Good," said Dionysius, "I shall have you a courtier yet."

He then turned to the Athenian, asked him a few questions, all with the nicest tact, about his movements, and finally named a time when he should be at leisure to have some real conversation with him.

"Believe me," he said, "I honor the Athenians more than any other people in Greece; a strange thing you may think for a Syracusan to say, but it is true."

Certainly when Callias presented himself at the appointed time, everything that his royal host had said seemed to bear out this a.s.surance. "After to-day," he said, "politics shall be banished from our talk. Don't suppose for a moment that if I had been a citizen of Athens, I should have attempted, that I should even have wished, to be what I am here. But Syracuse is not capable of being what Athens is. Even you find liberty a little hard to manage sometimes. Here it is a farce, only a very b.l.o.o.d.y farce. Listen to what happened to my father-in-law, Hermocrates. There never was an abler man in the country. If it had not been for him, I verily believe that you would have conquered us. He saved the city; and then, a little time afterwards, because he did not do what ten years before no one would have dreamt of doing, that is, conquer you Athenians in a sea-fight, they banished him. Can you imagine such ingrat.i.tude, such folly? Well; he was not disposed to put up with it; he saw what I see, that the Syracusans are not fit to govern themselves, and if it had not been for an accident, perhaps I ought rather to say his own reckless courage, he would have been in my place now.[65] What he intended to do I have done. I saved Syracuse as he saved her from Athens; and I dare say that in a year or two my grateful countrymen would have banished me as they banished him. Only I have been beforehand with them. So much for politics; now let us talk of something more pleasant and more profitable."

"Tell me now, do you know one Socrates in your city, a very wise man they tell me?"

"Yes, I know him well."