A Victor of Salamis 22Book II · The Three Hundred—and One
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Literature · Adventure
A Victor of Salamis 22
Book II · The Three Hundred—and One
DavisEnglish
As Glaucon slept he found himself again in Athens. He was on the familiar way from the cool wrestling ground of the Academy and walking toward the city through the suburb of Ceramicus. Just as he came to the three tall pine trees before the gate, after he had passed the tomb of Solon, behold! a fair woman stood in the path and looked on him. She was beyond mortal height and of divine beauty, yet a beauty grave and stern. Her gray eyes cut to his heart like swords. On her right hand hovered a winged Victory, on her shoulder rested an owl, at her feet twined a wise serpent, in her left hand she bore the ægis, the shaggy goat-skin engirt with snakes—emblem of Zeus’s lightnings. Glaucon knew that she was Athena Polias, the Warder of Athens, and lifted his hands to adore her. But she only looked on him in silent anger. Fire seemed leaping from her eyes. The more Glaucon besought, the more she turned away. Fear possessed him. “Woe is me,” he trembled, “I have enraged a terrible immortal.” Then suddenly the woman’s countenance was changed. The ægis, the serpent, the Victory, all vanished; he saw Hermione before him, beautiful as on the day she ran to greet him at Eleusis, yet sad as was his last sight of her the moment he fled from Colonus. Seized with infinite longing, he sprang to her. But lo! she drifted back as into the air. It was even as when Odysseus followed the shade of his mother in the shadowy Land of the Dead.
“Yearned he sorely then to clasp her,
Thrice his arms were opened wide:
From his hands so strong, so loving,
Like a dream she seemed to glide,
And away, away she flitted,
Whilst he grasped the empty space,
And a pain shot through him, maddening,
As he strove for her embrace.”
He pursued, she drifted farther, farther. Her face was inexpressibly sorrowful. And Glaucon knew that she spoke to him.
“I have believed you innocent, though all Athens calls you ‘traitor.’ I have been true to you, though all men rise up against me. In what manner have you kept your innocence? Have you had love for another, caresses for another, kisses for another? How will you prove your loyalty to Athens and return?”
“Hermione!” Glaucon cried, not in his dream, but quite aloud. He awoke with a start. Outside the tent sentry was calling to sentry, changing the watch just before the dawning. It was perfectly plain to him what he must do. His dream had only given shape to the ferment in his brain, a ferment never ceasing while his body slept. He must go instantly to the Greek camp and warn Leonidas. If the Spartan did not trust him, no matter, he had done his duty. If Leonidas slew him on the spot, again no matter, life with an eternally gnawing conscience could be bought on too hard terms. He knew, as though Zeus’s messenger Iris had spoken it, that Hermione had never believed him guilty, that she had been in all things true to him. He could never betray her trust.
His head now was clear and calm. He arose, threw on his cloak, and buckled about his waist a short sword. The Nubian boy that Mardonius had given him for a body-servant awoke on his mat, and asked wonderingly “whither his Lordship was going?” Glaucon informed him he must be at the front before daybreak, and bade him remain behind and disturb no one. But the Athenian was not to execute his design unhindered. As he passed out of the tent and into the night, where the morning stars were burning, and where the first red was creeping upward from the sea, two figures glided forth from the next pavilion. He knew them and shrank from them. They were Artazostra and Roxana.
“You go forth early, dearest Prexaspes,” spoke the Egyptian, throwing back her veil, and even in the starlight he saw the anxious flash of her eyes, “does the battle join so soon that you take so little sleep?”
“It joins early, lady,” spoke Glaucon, his wits wandering. In the intensity of his purpose he had not thought of the partings with the people he must henceforth reckon foes. He was sorely beset, when Roxana drew near and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“Your Greeks will resist terribly,” she spoke. “We women dread the battle more than you. Yours is the fierce gladness of the combat, ours only the waiting, the heavy tidings, the sorrow. Therefore Artazostra and I could not sleep, but have been watching together. You will of course be near Mardonius my brother. You will guard him from all danger. Leonidas will resist fearfully when at bay. Ah! what is this?”
In pressing closer she had discovered the Athenian wore no cuirass.
“You will not risk the battle without armour?” was her cry.
“I shall not need it, lady,” answered he, and only half conscious what he did, stretched forth as if to put her away. Roxana shrank back, grieved and wondering, but Artazostra seized his arm quickly.
“What is this, Prexaspes? All is not well. Your manner is strange!”
He shook her off, almost savagely.
“Call me not Prexaspes,” he cried, not in Persian, but in Greek. “I am Glaucon of Athens; as Glaucon I must live, as Glaucon die. No man—not though he desire it—can disown the land that bore him. And if I dreamed I was a Persian, I wake to find myself a Greek. Therefore forget me forever. I go to my own!”
“Prexaspes, my lover,”—Roxana, strong in fear and passion, clung about his girdle, while again Artazostra seized him,—“last night I was in your arms. Last night you kissed me. Are we not to be happy together? What is this you say?”
He stood one instant silent, then shook himself and put them both aside with a marvellous ease.
“Forget my name,” he commanded. “If I have given you sorrow, I repent it. I go to my own. Go you to yours. My place is with Leonidas—to save him, or more like to die with him! Farewell!”
He sprang away from them. He saw Roxana sink upon the ground. He heard Artazostra calling to the horse-boys and the eunuchs,—perhaps she bade them to pursue. Once he looked back, but never twice. He knew the watchwords, and all the sentries let him pass by freely. With a feverish stride he traced the avenues of sleeping tents. Soon he was at the outposts, where strong divisions of Cissian and Babylonian infantrymen were slumbering under arms, ready for the attack the instant the uproar from the rear of the pass told how Hydarnes had completed his circuit. Eos—“Rosy-Fingered Dawn”—was just shimmering above the mist-hung peak of Mt. Telethrius in Eubœa across the bay when Glaucon came to the last Persian outpost. The pickets saluted with their lances, as he went by them, taking him for a high officer on a reconnoissance before the onset. Next he was on the scene of the former battles. He stumbled over riven shields, shattered spear butts, and many times over ghastlier objects—objects yielding and still warm—dead men, awaiting the crows of the morrow. He walked straight on, while the dawn strengthened and the narrow pass sprang into view, betwixt mountain and morass. Then at last a challenge, not in Persian, but in round clear Doric.
“Halt! Who passes?”
Glaucon held up his right hand, and advanced cautiously. Two men in heavy armour approached, and threatened his breast with their lance points.
“Who are you?”
“A friend, a Hellene—my speech tells that. Take me to Leonidas. I’ve a story worth telling.”
“Euge! Master ‘Friend,’ our general can’t be waked for every deserter. We’ll call our decarch.”
A shout brought the subaltern commanding the Greek outposts. He was a Spartan of less sluggish wits than many of his breed, and presently believed Glaucon when he declared he had reason in asking for Leonidas.
“But your accent is Athenian?” asked the decarch, with wonderment.
“Ay, Athenian,” assented Glaucon.
“Curses on you! I thought no Athenian ever Medized. What business had you in the Persian camp? Who of your countrymen are there save the sons of Hippias?”
“Not many,” rejoined the fugitive, not anxious to have the questions pushed home.
“Well, to Leonidas you shall go, sir Athenian, and state your business. But you are like to get a bearish welcome. Since your pretty Glaucon’s treason, our king has not wasted much love even on repentant traitors.”
With a soldier on either side, the deserter was marched within the barrier wall. Another encampment, vastly smaller and less luxurious than the Persian, but of martial orderliness, spread out along the pass. The Hellenes were just waking. Some were breakfasting from helmets full of cold boiled peas, others buckled on the well-dinted bronze cuirasses and greaves. Men stared at Glaucon as he was led by them.
“A deserter they take to the chief,” ran the whisper, and a little knot of idle Spartans trailed behind, when at last Glaucon’s guides halted him before a brown tent barely larger than the others.
A man sat on a camp chest by the entrance, and was busy with an iron spoon eating “black broth”(9) from a huge kettle. In the dim light Glaucon could just see that he wore a purple cloak flung over his black armour, and that the helmet resting beside him was girt by a wreath of gold foil.
The two guards dropped their spears in salute. The man looked upward.
“A deserter,” reported one of Glaucon’s mentors; “he says he has important news.”
“Wait!” ordered the general, making the iron spoon clack steadily.
“The weal of Hellas rests thereon. Listen!” pleaded the nervous Athenian.
“Wait!” was the unruffled answer, and still the iron spoon went on plying. The Spartan lifted a huge morsel from the pot, chewed it deliberately, then put the vessel by. Next he inspected the newcomer from head to toe, then at last gave his permission.
“Well?”
Glaucon’s words were like a bursting torrent.
“Fly, your Excellency! I’m from Xerxes’s camp. I was at the Persian council. The mountain path is betrayed. Hydarnes and the guard are almost over it. They will fall upon your rear. Fly, or you and all your men are trapped!”
“Well,” observed the Spartan, slowly, motioning for the deserter to cease, but Glaucon’s fears made that impossible.
“I say I was in Xerxes’s own tent. I was interpreter betwixt the king and the traitor. I know all whereof I say. If you do not flee instantly, the blood of these men is on your head.”
Leonidas again scanned the deserter with piercing scrutiny, then flung a question.
“Who are you?”
The blood leaped into the Athenian’s cheeks. The tongue that had wagged so nimbly clove in his mouth. He grew silent.
“Who are you?”
As the question was repeated, the scrutiny grew yet closer. The soldiers were pressing around, one comrade leaning over another’s shoulder. Twenty saw the fugitive’s form straighten as he stood in the morning twilight.
“I am Glaucon of Athens, Isthmionices!”
“Ah!” Leonidas’s jaw dropped for an instant. He showed no other astonishment, but the listening Spartans raised a yell.
“Death! Stone the traitor!”
Leonidas, without a word, smote the man nearest to him with a spear butt. The soldiers were silent instantly. Then the chief turned back to the deserter.
“Why here?”
Glaucon had never prayed for the gifts of Peitho, “Our Lady Persuasion,” more than at that crucial moment. Arguments, supplications, protestations of innocence, curses upon his unknown enemies, rushed to his lips together. He hardly realized what he himself said. Only he knew that at the end the soldiers did not tug at their hilts as before and scowl so threateningly, and Leonidas at last lifted his hand as if to bid him cease.
“Euge!” grunted the chief. “So you wish me to believe you a victim of fate, and trust your story? The pass is turned, you say? Masistes the seer said the libation sputtered on the flame with ill-omen when he sacrificed this morning. Then you come. The thing shall be looked into. Call the captains.”
The locharchs and taxiarchs of the Greeks assembled. It was a brief and gloomy council of war. While Euboulus, commanding the Corinthian contingent, was still questioning whether the deserter was worthy of credence, a scout came running down Mt. Œta confirming the worst. The cowardly Phocians watching the mountain trail had fled at the first arrows of Hydarnes. It was merely a question of time before the Immortals would be at Alpeni, the village in Leonidas’s rear. There was only one thing to say, and the Spartan chief said it.
“You must retreat.”
The taxiarchs of the allied Hellenes under him were already rushing forth to their men to bid them fly for dear life. Only one or two stayed by the tent, marvelling much to observe that Leonidas gave no orders to his Lacedæmonians to join in the flight. On the contrary, Glaucon, as he stood near, saw the general lift the discarded pot of broth and explore it again with the iron spoon.
“O Father Zeus,” cried the incredulous Corinthian leader. “Are you turned mad, Leonidas?”
“Time enough for all things,” returned the unmoved Spartan, continuing his breakfast.
“Time!” shouted Euboulus. “Have we not to flee on wings, or be cut off?”
“Fly, then.”
“But you and your Spartans?”
“We will stay.”
“Stay? A handful against a million? Do I hear aright? What can you do?”
“Die.”
“The gods forbid! Suicide is a fearful end. No man should rush on destruction. What requires you to perish?”
“Honour.”
“Honour! Have you not won glory enough by holding Xerxes’s whole power at bay two days? Is not your life precious to Hellas? What is the gain?”
“Glory to Sparta.”
Then in the red morning half-light, folding his big hands across his mailed chest, Leonidas looked from one to another of the little circle. His voice was still in unemotional gutturals when he delivered the longest speech of his life.
“We of Sparta were ordered to defend this pass. The order shall be obeyed. The rest of you must go away—all save the Thebans, whose loyalty I distrust. Tell Leotychides, my colleague at Sparta, to care for Gorgo my wife and Pleistarchus my young son, and to remember that Themistocles the Athenian loves Hellas and gives sage counsel. Pay Strophius of Epidaurus the three hundred drachmæ I owe him for my horse. Likewise—”
A second breathless scout interrupted with the tidings that Hydarnes was on the last stretches of his road. The chief arose, drew the helmet down across his face, and motioned with his spear.
“Go!” he ordered.
The Corinthian would have seized his hand. He shook him off. At Leonidas’s elbow was standing the trumpeter for his three hundred from Lacedæmon.
“Blow!” commanded the chief.
The keen blast cut the air. The chief deliberately wrapped the purple mantle around himself and adjusted the gold circlet over his helmet, for on the day of battle a Lacedæmonian was wont to wear his best. And even as he waited there came to him out of the midst of the panic-stricken, dissolving camp, one by one, tall men in armour, who took station beside him—the men of Sparta who had abided steadfast while all others prepared to flee, waiting for the word of the chief.
Presently they stood, a long black line, motionless, silent, whilst the other divisions filed in swift fear past. Only the Thespians—let their names not be forgotten—chose to share the Laconians’ glory and their doom and took their stand behind the line of Leonidas. With them stood also the Thebans, but compulsion held them, and they tarried merely to desert and pawn their honour for their lives.
More couriers. Hydarnes’s van was in sight of Alpeni now. The retreat of the Corinthians, Tegeans, and other Hellenes became a run; only once Euboulus and his fellow-captains turned to the silent warrior that stood leaning on his spear.
“Are you resolved on madness, Leonidas?”
“Chaire! Farewell!” was the only answer he gave them. Euboulus sought no more, but faced another figure, hitherto almost forgotten in the confusion of the retreat.
“Haste, Master Deserter, the Barbarians will give you an overwarm welcome, and you are no Spartan; save yourself!”
Glaucon did not stir.
“Do you not see that it is impossible?” he answered, then strode across to Leonidas. “I must stay.”
“Are you also mad? You are young—” The good-hearted Corinthian strove to drag him into the retreating mob.
Glaucon sprang away from him and addressed the silent general.
“Shall not Athens remain by Sparta, if Sparta will accept?”
He could see Leonidas’s cold eyes gleam out through the slits in his helmet. The general reached forth his hand.
“Sparta accepts,” called he; “they have lied concerning your Medizing! And you, Euboulus, do not filch from him his glory.”
“Zeus pity you!” cried Euboulus, running at last. One of the Spartans brought to Glaucon the heavy hoplite’s armour and the ponderous spear and shield. He took his place in the line with the others. Leonidas stalked to the right wing of his scant array, the post of honour and of danger. The Thespians closed up behind. Shield was set to shield. Helmets were drawn low. The lance points projected in a bristling hedge in front. All was ready.
The general made no speech to fire his men. There was no wailing, no crying to the gods, no curses upon the tardy ephors at Lacedæmon who had deferred sending their whole strong levy instead of the pitiful three hundred. Sparta had sent this band to hold the pass. They had gone, knowing she might require the supreme sacrifice. Leonidas had spoken for all his men. “Sparta demanded it.” What more was to be said?
As for Glaucon he could think of nothing save—in the language of his people—“this was a beautiful manner and place in which to die.” “Count no man happy until he meets a happy end,” so had said Solon, and of all ends what could be more fortunate than this? Euboulus would tell in Athens, in all Hellas, how he had remained with Leonidas and maintained Athenian honour when Corinthian and Tegean turned away. From “Glaucon the Traitor” he would be raised to “Glaucon the Hero.” Hermione, Democrates, and all others he loved would flush with pride and no more with shame when men spoke of him. Could a life of a hundred years add to his glory more than he could win this day?
“Blow!” commanded Leonidas again, and again pealed the trumpet. The line moved beyond the wall toward Xerxes’s camp in the open beside the Asopus. Why wait for Hydarnes’s coming? They would meet the king of the Aryans face to face and show him the terrible manner in which the men of Lacedæmon knew how to die.
As they passed from the shadow of the mountain, the sun sprang over the hills of Eubœa, making fire of the bay and bathing earth and heavens with glory. In their rear was already shouting. Hydarnes had reached his goal at Alpeni. All retreat was ended. The thin line swept onward. Before them spread the whole host of the Barbarian as far as the eye could reach,—a tossing sea of golden shields, scarlet surcoats, silver lance-heads,—awaiting with its human billows to engulf them. The Laconians halted just beyond bow shot. The line locked tighter. Instinctively every man pressed closer to his comrade. Then before the eyes of Xerxes’s host, which kept silence, marvelling, the handful broke forth with their pæan. They threw their well-loved charging song of Tyrtæus in the very face of the king.
“Press the charge, O sons of Sparta!
Ye are sons of men born free:
Press the charge; ’tis where the shields lock,
That your sires would have you be!
Honour’s cheaply sold for life,
Press the charge, and join the strife:
Let the coward cling to breath,
Let the base shrink back from death,
Press the charge, let cravens flee!”
Leonidas’s spear pointed to the ivory throne, around which and him that sat thereon in blue and scarlet glittered the Persian grandees.
“Onward!”
Immortal ichor seemed in the veins of every Greek. They burst into one shout.
“The king! The king!”
A roar from countless drums, horns, and atabals answered from the Barbarians, as across the narrow plain-land charged the three hundred—and one.
