Part 10 (1/2)
”As a matter of fact, it was written by Theocritus about the year 266 B.
C. It describes the visit paid by two Syracusan ladies residing in Alexandria to the festival of Adonis. Their manners and talk then must have been very similar to ours of to-day. Listen to the part where they are getting ready to start.
”_Gorgo._ It seems nearly time to go.
”_Praxinoe._ Idlers have always holidays. Eunoe, bring the water, and put it down in the middle of the room, lazy creature that you are!
Cats always like to sleep soft! Come, bustle, bring the water--quicker! I want water first, and how she carries it! Give it me all the same: don't pour out so much, you extravagant thing!
Stupid girl! Why are you wetting my dress? There, stop, I have washed my hands, as heaven would have it! Where is the key of the big chest? Bring it here.
”_Gorgo._ Praxinoe, that full body becomes you wonderfully. Tell me, how much did the stuff cost you just off the loom?
”_Praxinoe._ Don't speak of it, Gorgo! More than eight pounds in good silver money--and the work on it! I nearly slaved my soul out over it.
”_Gorgo._ Well, it is _most_ successful: all you could wish.
”_Praxinoe._ Thanks for the pretty speech. Eunoe, bring my shawl, and set my hat on my head, the fas.h.i.+onable way. No, Zopyrion, I don't mean to take _you_! Boo! Bogies! There's a horse that bites! Cry as much as you please, but I cannot have you lamed. Let us be moving.
Phrygia, take the child, and keep him amused, call in the dog, and shut the street door!”
”It's exactly like anybody going out to-day!” commented Carmel, as Miss Adams came to a pause.
”Why does it seem so modern?” asked Dulcie.
”Because it was written during the zenith of Greece's history, and one great civilization always resembles another. England of to-day is far more in touch with the times of ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece and Rome, than with the Middle Ages. Read Chaucer, and you find his mental outlook is that of a child of seven. In the days of the Plantagenets grown men and women enjoyed stories of a crude simplicity that now only appeals to children. The human race is always progressing in great successive waves of civilization; after each wave breaks, a time of barbarism prevails, till man is again educated to a higher growth. We're living at the top of a wave at present!”
”I remember,” said Carmel, ”when Mother and Daddy took me to Rome, we saw the busts of the Emperors, and of all sorts of clever people, who'd lived in about the first century, and we all said: 'Oh, aren't their faces just like people of to-day?' We amused ourselves with saying one was a lawyer, and another a doctor, and calling some of them after our friends. Then we went afterwards to an exhibition of sixteenth-century portraits; perhaps the artists hadn't learnt to paint well, but at any rate the faces were utterly different from people of to-day. They seemed quite another type altogether--not so intelligent or so interesting. We were tremendously struck with the difference.”
”It marks my point,” said Miss Adams.
”What else do Gorgo and Praxinoe do?” asked Edith.
”They go into Alexandria for the festival, and find the streets so crowded that they are almost frightened to death, and have hard work not to lose Eunoe, the slave girl, whom they have taken with them; she nearly gets squeezed as they pa.s.s in at the door. They go into raptures over an exhibition of embroideries. 'Lady Athene,' says Praxinoe, 'what spinning-women wrought them? What painters designed their drawings, so true they are?' I haven't time to read it all to you now, but I must just give you the little bit where they quarrel with a stranger. It's too absolutely priceless.
”_A Stranger._ You weariful women, do cease your endless cooing talk!
You bore one to death with your eternal broad vowels!
”_Gorgo._ Indeed! And where may this person come from? What is it to you if we _are_ chatterboxes? Give orders to your own servants, sir. Do you pretend to command ladies of Syracuse? If you must know, we are Corinthians by descent, like Bellerophon himself, and we speak Peloponnesian. Dorian women may lawfully speak Doric, I presume?”
”Oh, _do_ let me be Gorgo!” begged Dulcie. ”I love her; she's so smart and sarcastic. Isn't it exactly like somebody talking during a concert, and a person in the row in front objecting, and a friend b.u.t.ting in with rude remarks? That's what generally happens.”
”Did people's accent matter in Greek as much as it does in English?”
asked Prissie.
”Evidently. The Alexandrian gentleman--who sounds a decided fop--did not approve of a Doric p.r.o.nunciation. No doubt broad vowels were out of fas.h.i.+on. I believe I shall give his part to Edith. It's a small one, but it has scope for a good deal of acting.”
”And who is to be Praxinoe, please?”
”I think I must choose Carmel. She ought to act in an idyll by Theocritus, as he was a Sicilian like herself. Would he find Sicily much altered, Carmel, if he came back? Or is it the same after two thousand years?”