Part 38 (2/2)
booths were silent, but little groups of white-headed men sat in the shaded porticos and watched eagerly for the appearing of the archon before the government house to read the last despatch of the progress of Xerxes.
The Pnyx was deserted. The gymnasia were closed. The more superst.i.tious scanned the heavens for a lucky or unlucky flight of hawks. The priestesses sang litanies all day and all night on the Acropolis where the great altar to Athena smoked with victims continually. At last, after the days of uncertainty and wavering rumour, came surer tidings of battles.
”Leonidas is fighting at Thermopylae. The fleets are fighting at Artemisium, off Euba. The first onsets of the Barbarians have failed, but nothing is decided.”
This was the substance, and tantalizingly meagre. And the strong army of Sparta and her allies still tarried at the Isthmus instead of hasting to aid the pitiful handful at Thermopylae. Therefore the old men wagged their heads, the altars were loaded with victims, and the women wept over their children.
So ended the first day after news came of the fighting. The second was like it-only more tense. Hermione never knew that snail called time to creep more slowly. Never had she chafed more against the iron custom which commanded Athenian gentlewomen to keep, tortoise-like, at home in days of distress and tumult. On the evening of the second day came once more the dusty courier. Leonidas was holding the gate of h.e.l.las. The Barbarians had perished by thousands. At Artemisium, Themistocles and the allied Greek admirals were making head against the Persian armadas. But still nothing was decided. Still the Spartan host lingered at the Isthmus, and Leonidas must fight his battle alone. The sun sank that night with tens of thousands wis.h.i.+ng his car might stand fast. At gray dawn Athens was awake and watching. Men forgot to eat, forgot to drink. One food would have contented-news!
It was about noon-”the end of market time,” had there been any market then at Athens-when Hermione knew by instinct that news had come from the battle and that it was evil. She and her mother had sat since dawn by the upper window, craning forth their heads up the street toward the Agora, where they knew all couriers must hasten. Along the street in all the houses other women were peering forth also. When little Phnix cried in his cradle, his mother for the first time in his life almost angrily bade him be silent. Cleopis, the only one of the fluttering servants who went placidly about the wonted tasks, vainly coaxed her young mistress with figs and a little wine. Hermippus was at the council. The street, save for the leaning heads of the women, was deserted. Then suddenly came a change.
First a man ran toward the Agora, panting,-his himation blew from his shoulders, he never stopped to recover it. Next shouts, scattered in the beginning, then louder, and coming not as a roar but as a wailing, rising, falling like the billows of the howling sea,-as if the thousands in the market-place groaned in sore agony. Shrill and hideous they rose, and a hand of ice fell on the hearts of the listening women. Then more runners, until the street seemed alive by magic, slaves and old men all crowding to the Agora. And still the shout and ever more dreadful. The women leaned from the windows and cried vainly to the trampling crowd below.
”Tell us! In the name of Athena, tell us!” No answer for long, till at last a runner came not toward the Agora but from it. They had hardly need to hear what he was calling.
”Leonidas is slain. Thermopylae is turned! Xerxes is advancing!”
Hermione staggered back from the lattice. In the cradle Phnix awoke; seeing his mother bending over him, he crowed cheerily and flung his chubby fists in her face. She caught him up and again could not fight the tears away.
”Glaucon! Glaucon!” she prayed,-for her husband was all but a deity in her sight,-”hear us wherever you are, even if in the blessed land of Rhadamanthus. Take us thither, your child and me, for there is no peace or shelter left on earth!”
Then, seeing her panic-stricken women flying hither and thither like witless birds, her patrician blood a.s.serted itself. She dashed the drops from her eyes and joined her mother in quieting the maids. Whatever there was to hope or fear, their fate would not be lightened by wild moaning.
Soon the direful wailing from the Agora ceased. A blue flag waved over the Council House, a sign that the ”Five Hundred” had been called in hurried session. Simultaneously a dense column of smoke leaped up from the market-place. The archons had ordered the hucksters' booths to be burned, as a signal to all Attica that the worst had befallen.
After inexpressibly long waiting Phormio came, then Hermippus, to tell all they knew. Leonidas had perished gloriously. His name was with the immortals, but the mountain wall of h.e.l.las had been unlocked. No Spartan army was in Botia. The bravest of Athens were in the fleet. The easy Attic pa.s.ses of Phyle and Decelea could never be defended. Nothing could save Athens from Xerxes. The calamity had been foreseen, but to foresee is not to realize. That night in Athens no man slept.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE EVACUATION OF ATHENS
It had come at last,-the hour wise men had dreaded, fools had scoffed at, cowards had dared not face. The Barbarian was within five days' march of Attica. The Athenians must bow the knee to the world monarch or go forth exiles from their country.
In the morning after the night of terror came another courier, not this time from Thermopylae. He bore a letter from Themistocles, who was returning from Euba with the whole allied Grecian fleet. The reading of the letter in the Agora was the first rift in the cloud above the city.
”Be strong, prove yourselves sons of Athens. Do what a year ago you so boldly voted. Prepare to evacuate Attica. All is not lost. In three days I will be with you.”
There was no time for an a.s.sembly at the Pnyx, but the Five Hundred and the Areopagus council acted for the people. It was ordered to remove the entire population of Attica, with all their movable goods, across the bay to Salamis or to the friendly Peloponnesus, and that same noon the heralds went over the land to bear the direful summons.
To Hermione, who in the calm after-years looked back on all this year of agony and stress as on an unreal thing, one time always was stamped on memory as no dream, but vivid, unforgetable,-these days of the great evacuation. Up and down the pleasant plain country of the Mesogia to southward, to the rolling highlands beyond Pentelicus and Parnes, to the slumbering villages by Marathon, to the fertile farm-land by Eleusis, went the proclaimers of ill-tidings.
”Quit your homes, hasten to Athens, take with you what you can, but hasten, or stay as Xerxes's slaves.”
For the next two days a piteous mult.i.tude was pa.s.sing through the city. A country of four hundred thousand inhabitants was to be swept clean and left naked and profitless to the invader. Under Hermione's window, as she gazed up and down the street, jostled the army of fugitives, women old and young, shrinking from the bustle and uproar, grandsires on their staves, boys driving the bleating goats or the patient donkeys piled high with pots and panniers, little girls tearfully hugging a pet puppy or hen. But few strong men were seen, for the fleet had not yet rounded Sunium to bear the people away.
The well-loved villas and farmsteads were tenantless. They left the standing grain, the ripening orchards, the groves of the sacred olives.
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