CHAPTER II.

TELESIPPE.

Pericles had spent many a wakeful night, since the meeting of the critics in Phidias’ house. His mind was occupied with the treasure of Delos, with which a new era of power and splendor had come to the Athenians; the echo of the conversation held in the sculptor’s studio constantly resounded in his brain, and if to escape this whirl of thought he closed his eyes, a half-waking, fleeting dream recalled the charming image of the Milesian, and the dewy, Aphrodite-like lustre of her bewitching eyes illumined the depths of his soul.

Various plans, which he had long been considering, were seething in his mind. Vacillating thoughts gradually strengthened, and resolutions sprang up in a night, as buds develop into roses.

One morning, while seated in his room, absorbed in thought, his friend Anaxagoras came to visit him. Intimate with the wise Clazomenian from early youth, Pericles had spent many a morning hour in receiving, with the open, ardent nature of the Greeks, the new revelations, which bold thinkers, especially Anaxagoras himself, rising above the childish opinions of their forefathers, were beginning to draw from the depths of their own minds.

But to-day the philosopher instantly perceived that his friend was engrossed by totally different thoughts. He found Pericles, usually so calm and dignified, much excited, his eyes glowing with the dull fire that betrays a night spent in meditation.

“Is the populace summoned to-day to an important meeting on the Pnyx?” asked the old man, gazing at the Olympian. “I never remember to have found you so thoughtful, save on such an occasion.”

“The people will assemble to-day,” said Pericles, “and I have intended to urge important matters there. I am anxious as to whether I shall prevail—.”

“You are a strategus,” [1] replied Anaxagoras, “you are the administrator of the public revenues, the superintendent of the public buildings, the director of the public festivals—the gods alone know the names of the offices and dignities, conferring ordinary and extraordinary powers, with which the Athenians are constantly loading you. No matter, you are—what is the important, and in a free state the principal thing—you are the great orator, whom they call the ‘Olympian,’ because a sort of sovereignty is allied with the thunder of your words, as with the thunder of Zeus. And you are anxious?”

“Ay,” replied Pericles, “and I assure you that I never ascend the platform of the Pnyx, without secretly imploring the gods to suffer my lips to utter no heedless words, and never allow me to forget that I am speaking to Athenians. You know how impatient the people grew at last, when I constantly called upon them for more money to build the long central wall and repair the Piræeus. And now Phidias has overpersuaded me, infected me with his grand new plans. The eager longing felt by him and his associates must no longer be restrained, our Athens must be adorned and glorified before all the rest of Hellas by the long-considered works of these men. You know I am one of those, who adopt new ideas only after due reflection, but hold firmly to what I have once grasped and urge it with ardent zeal. So I at first gave this matter long deliberation; but now am perhaps secretly more eager in its behalf than even Phidias and his followers.”

“Is not the Athenian nation enthusiastic and fond of art?” said Anaxagoras. “And has not the rich treasure of Delos arrived?”

“I fear the distrust sown by open and secret enemies,” replied Pericles. “The party of the oligarchs is not wholly subdued. You know, too, that there are friends of the Laconians and others, who are averse to light and everything that is bright and beautiful. You have learned this yourself, since you first stood forth between the columns of the Agora, to announce to us Athenians the message of the pure, free, soul-born truth. However, I shall to-day play a trump, which will make the multitude thoroughly indebted to me. There are poor citizens, who live from hand to mouth, and must starve to-morrow, if they stop work to-day and go to the assembly, in order not to neglect their duty as citizens. Why shouldn’t they be paid with a few obols out of the public treasury? I pity, too, the poor fellows, who would be glad to witness the public plays, but can’t procure the money for admittance. They should be permitted to go at the public expense, to be unconsciously cultivated and ennobled by the works of the poets, while supposing they are merely pursuing their own pleasure. And the worthy old fellows, chosen by thousands out of the people and allotted to the numerous courts of justice, ought not in future to lose the whole day without compensation, while settling the quarrels of their fellow-citizens in the sweat of their brows. Athens is rich, fresh fountains of wealth are springing up around us and pouring into our public treasury from the countries of our allies. There is a large surplus now remaining. I have asked myself: should it be kept as a treasure for the future, or used for the benefit of the present time. I believe the present has a better right to it. The people must enjoy the fruit of their victories and aspirations, they must be free and happy; a beautiful, enviable, dignified existence must be established in our Athens, so favored by the gods.”

“I have often seen the grave Pericles give utterance to his noble ardor,” observed Anaxagoras, “but to-day’s emotion seems to be stronger than all former ebullitions of feeling.”

“I thank the gods,” replied Pericles, “for having given me, in addition to calmness in reflection, the hasty fire of resolve and tenacious courage in execution. Are you dissatisfied with me in any way? Do I seem to go too far in my plans, or my regard for the always uncertain and sometimes ungrateful people?”

“Let me frankly confess that I do not meddle with politics,” answered the old man. “I am no Athenian, perhaps not even a Hellene, but a cosmopolitan, a philosopher. My native land is the infinite realm of the world.”

“But you are wise,” said Pericles, “and can judge the acts of statesmen, whether they will result in good or evil.”

“I shall beware of that!” cried Anaxagoras. “Not only poets, but statesmen ignorantly follow a sign from the gods, are possessed by a demon, that animates them and almost unconsciously urges them to what for the moment is really necessary and useful. Ordinary human understanding often judges prematurely and errs, when the point in question relates to the deeds of divinely inspired statesmen. I have gone far into the depths of nature, and everywhere found a mind pervading her. But the mind is more infallible, more mighty in creating and toiling than in judging—.”

The two men were thus conversing familiarly in Pericles’ room; but at this moment a slave entered, sent by Telesippe, the wife of Pericles.

The message brought from the mistress of the house was a singular one. The steward of Pericles’ country estate had come in that morning and brought a young ram, born on the said estate, which instead of two horns, had only one, and that grew in the middle of its forehead. This animal, the steward, not without many anxious doubts, had just shown his mistress. Telesippe, a woman of pious mind, hastily sent for the prophet Lampon, that he might instantly interpret the miracle, and now summoned her husband to see the strange creature and listen with her to the opinion of the seer.

Pericles heard the slave’s story and then said good-humoredly, turning to his friend:

“Let us obey Telesippe’s wish and go to look at the one-horned ram.”

Anaxagoras rose and willingly followed Pericles.

They went out into the peristyle of the house.

Pericles’ residence was a very plain dwelling, neither larger nor more richly ornamented than that of any other Athenian citizen of moderate means. It was as simple as its owner’s mode of life. In a republic the most influential man must live simply, if he wishes to protect himself from the distrust of his fellow-citizens. But even without calculation and design, a man who constantly devotes himself to the public, will always neglect his own household a little. The peristyle of Pericles’ house was also simple and unadorned, yet it did not lack the familiar charm everywhere associated with this singular, but most pleasant part of the house, this tiny, hall-like courtyard surrounded by pillars. Here people were in the house and under the open sky at the same time, secluded from all the bustle of the outside world, and yet in communion with the fresh breezes of heaven that blew in from above, with the sun, moon and stars that cast their beams unimpeded into the marble hall. The swallows flew twittering in and out, and built their nests on the capitals of the pillars and the cornices. The dwelling-house offered no inviting exterior, like the temples, but as if repelling the public, turned its decoration of pillars within, to create the open, yet cosy and pleasant family room. Here the inmates sat, walked, and received their visitors. Here too sometimes the meals were served. Here also sacrifices to the household gods were offered, here was the real fireside of the house, the altar of the hearth-protecting Zeus.

Behind the colonnade that enclosed all four sides of the peristyle, were the various rooms in Pericles’ house. The doors all opened upon it. Tasteful ornaments adorned the door-posts; the openings were artistically draped with colored hangings. The women’s apartment was at the back of the peristyle, and behind it the small, carefully-kept garden.

On entering the house from the street, a passage which ran through the front room, led directly to the peristyle. The porticos extended on the side of the entrance itself, as well as on the right and left of the apartments opening on the square; but opposite to the entrance a pair of columns marked a central space, which deepening within, formed a sort of anteroom, open towards the peristyle, but enclosed by walls on the three remaining sides.

In this anteroom stood Telesippe, the wife of Pericles, surrounded by several male and female slaves. Beside her was the steward, who had come in from the country, holding the one-horned ram in his arms.

Telesippe was a tall woman, with stern, not unlovely, but somewhat coarse features. Her figure was stately and corpulent, but her flesh no longer possessed the bloom of youth. Her cheeks and bosom were flabby, and her garments hung about her limbs in a negligent, ungraceful fashion. Her hair, still disordered, was twisted in a large roll behind. Her face was pale, for she had not yet rouged that morning. This woman, the wife of the great Pericles, had formerly been wedded to the wealthy Hipponicus. The latter was divorced from her, and she obtained Pericles for a husband. At that time, she was still youthful in appearance, and her blooming cheeks made amends for her cold, stern eyes.

When Telesippe, standing in the anteroom opening upon the peristyle, saw her husband approaching accompanied by Anaxagoras, she made a movement, as custom required, to withdraw from the stranger’s presence into the women’s apartment. Pericles signed to her to stay, and she remained, but without vouchsafing the old man another glance. Telesippe thought she had reason to dislike her husband’s grey-haired friend and counsellor.

“I have sent for the prophet Lampon,” she said, gazing at the ram with a timid look, “I am afraid this is an evil omen.”

At this moment the porter opened the outer door and admitted the prophet, who instantly approached through the long passage from the entrance. The prophet Lampon was the priest of a small temple of Dionysus, which did not yield much revenue. He therefore devoted himself to the art of divination, and with excellent success, enjoying much reputation among the devout. By way of external announcement of his calling, he wore the priestly fillet on his brow, surmounted by the laurel of Apollo. For the rest, after the custom of men of his stamp, he endeavored by negligent dress, tangled beard, dishevelled hair, and a wandering, abstracted glance, to indicate the rapt transports of the prophet-soul.

“This wonderful animal,” said Telesippe, “was born on our estate in the country and brought to Athens this morning. You are one of the most skilful interpreters of omens; tell us whether we are to regard this miracle as favorable or dangerous.”

Lampon ordered the ram to be laid on the altar of Zeus.

A coal chanced to be still glimmering on the altar. Lampon pulled a hair from the ram’s forehead, and threw it on the ember.

“The omen is favorable,” said he, “for the hair burned without loud crackling.”

Then he looked at Pericles and noticed the position he occupied towards the ram. He chanced to be standing on the right of the animal. “The omen is favorable to Pericles,” said the prophet with an important look, then following the customs of diviners, put a laurel leaf in his mouth and chewed it, in order, by eating the plant consecrated to the god of seers, to enter the state of divine rapture, in which, with clear, divinely inspired gaze he might find the true words of prophecy.

Lampon’s eyes began to twitch convulsively. Suddenly the ram turned its head aside, the horn on its forehead pointed directly at Pericles and it uttered a peculiar sound.

“Hail to thee, Alcmæonid,” he cried; “hail, son of Xanthippus, conqueror of the Persians at Mycale, noble scion of the race of Buzygen, the sacred guardian of Pallas. Hail, victor of Thracia, Phocis and Eubœa! The ram of Athens formerly possessed two horns: Thucidydes, leader of the Oligarchs, and Pericles, head of the popular party. But henceforward the ram will bear but one horn on its forehead: the Oligarchist party will be wholly conquered, and Pericles alone guide, with wisdom and magnanimity, the destiny of the Athenians.”

Anaxagoras smiled. Pericles drew his friend aside and whispered:

“The man is cunning; he expects to be included among the interpreters of omens, who will accompany me at the public expense in the next campaign.”

“But what shall be done with the ram?” asked Telesippe.

“He must be fed until he is as fat as possible, and then offered to Dionysus,” replied Lampon. “Bucks are specially suited for offerings to this god, on account of the injury they do the vines; especially he-goats—but a buck is a buck, and for lack of a he-goat, a ram like this is not displeasing to the god.”

Such was the prophet’s information. He received three obols in payment for his divination, bent his head, from which hung a mass of tangled locks and left the house.

“Mistress Telesippe,” said Anaxagoras, “how dearly wisdom is paid for now-a-days! Three obols given for the oracle of a buck, that appears with a single horn to tell us, what all the owls in Athens are hooting in their holes without compensation.”

Telesippe cast an angry glance at the speaker, who received it with the philosopher’s calm repose.

She was preparing to follow the wrathful glance with a sharp remark, when some one knocked at the outer door. The porter opened it and a lady glided in, accompanied by a female slave, who remained at the entrance. This lady’s countenance had the ruddiness, but also the wrinkles of an old apple, shrivelled by lying away. A slight down of short dark hair shaded her upper lip.

“Elpinice, Cimon’s sister!” whispered Pericles to Anaxagoras. “Let us go to the Agora; for we can’t hold our ground in the house against these two women.”

So saying, Pericles drew his friend aside into the colonnade, and after passing Elpinice, hastily went out with him into the street.

Elpinice, Cimon’s sister, was a very singular woman. She was the daughter of the famous hero Miltiades, the sister of the no less famous general, Cimon, and the friend of the most admirable Greek painter of those days, Polygnotus. She had once been rosy and beautiful, beautiful enough to captivate a sculptor, but must have irritated Aphrodite, for through some malicious whim of the goddess, no tender feeling save love for her brother, was implanted in her soul. No longing for conjugal happiness existed in her half masculine breast; she only desired to be permitted to remain near her brother all her life. But it happened that Cimon, through the death of his father Miltiades, was placed in a position of sore distress. Miltiades had been arraigned by the thankless Athenians and sentenced to pay a fine of fifty talents, and as he died soon after, without having paid the sum, the debt, by the hard provisions of the law, passed to his son Cimon. So long as Cimon did not pay the fifty talents, he was held a dishonorable citizen. Out of love for her brother, Elpinice had remained unwedded; out of love for her brother she now married. For the prize of her hand, a certain Callias defrayed Cimon’s debt. After some time this Callias died, and Elpinice immediately returned to her brother’s house.

From the siege and conquest of Thasos, Cimon brought to Athens the artist Polygnotus, a native of the island. He had perceived the youth’s talent, become attached to him, and wished to open a wider and more worthy field for his art. Through Cimon’s mediation, Polygnotus received from the Athenians the commission to adorn the temple of Theseus with pictures; he also painted in the great hall of the Agora, which from this very decoration was called the “gay-colored” or the “painted,” scenes from the conquest of Troy. Constantly passing in and out of the house of his friend and patron Cimon, the youth fell in love with Elpinice, and when the picture of the Greek heroes judging Ajax’s deed of violence was completed, the fairest of the captive Trojan women, Laodice, Priam’s daughter, bore the features of Cimon’s sister. Elpinice was not ungrateful for this homage. True, she refused the artist her heart and hand, but gave him her friendship. Many, many years had passed since then, but the bond between these two still endured, after Cimon died and Elpinice, like Polygnotus, had grown old.

Yes, Elpinice had grown old, and without being aware of it.

Wedded only for a short portion of her life, and against her will, and engrossed during the remainder of her days by the fruitless enthusiasm of a sisterly love, she had, although a widow, developed the singular trait which distinguishes old maids. It is a peculiar characteristic of spinsters, that growing children do not serve them as landmarks of advancing time, mile-stones of their life pilgrimage, so that old age approaches them unobserved. They always feel young. This blending of inward youth and external age impresses upon them, in the eyes of the world, at first lightly, but gradually more and more strongly, the stamp of absurdity.

Thus Elpinice too had grown old without perceiving it. The high price Callias had paid for her hand, the homage the artist offered, and other things of this kind, had made her vain of her beauty. She still remained so, long after the charms that aroused the feeling had vanished. She thought herself the same as when Polygnotus painted her as the fairest of Priam’s daughters; for she was unmarried, she had no husband, to say: “you are old!” Gentle, quiet, reverential Polygnotus neither could nor would tell her so. He had remained a bachelor, and offered a bachelor’s somewhat stiff, but well-meant homage, to the former beloved of his heart.

Her brother Cimon had been exiled by the Athenians some time before his death. His adherents strove to obtain permission for him to return, but feared the influence of the youthful Pericles, whose star was rising, and who could derive nothing but advantage from the absence of his older rival.

Elpinice, adventurous as she had always been, resolved upon a bold plan to again secure her brother’s deliverance. She rouged and perfumed herself, donned a magnificent robe, and went to Pericles. She knew that the great statesman was not indifferent to feminine beauty. She would appear before him with all the charms of a figure that had enraptured Callias, entranced Polygnotus, heightened by art. She went to Pericles, to induce him to withhold the Olympic thunder of his words in the popular assembly, when the proposal to recall Cimon was made.

When Pericles saw the fantastic, gaudily-decked, perfumed woman standing before him, with a look of conscious victory on her face, he perceived that this was a design upon the susceptibility of his heart. He knew that he had the reputation of such susceptibility, and the idea annoyed him. He was vexed that such a character should be ascribed to him, in spite of his grave, dignified demeanor, and now came this elderly Elpinice, presuming to seek to ensnare him with the scanty remnants of her beauty.

Pericles was gentle by nature, but the idea that this bedizened woman, with down on her lip, should think it so easy a matter to captivate the friend of beauty, made the kindly man for the moment a tyrant. He gazed at the intercessor for a time in silence, scanned her dress, then her face, and at last said very quietly:

“You have grown old, Elpinice.”

He uttered these words in the gentlest tone,—yet they were malicious. They are the sole instance of ill-nature, that tradition reports of Pericles, the Olympian.

A secret shiver ran through his own frame, as he spoke the fatal word. He suspected it was one of those, whose consequences Clio has a stylus to record.

The sentence: “you have grown old, Elpinice,” might cause a change in the fate of Pericles, Athens, nay all Hellas—civil war, a Persian invasion, blood, sorrow, tears, woe of every kind, the ruin of the Hellenic nation might spring from these words. What may not a woman do, who has been told: you are old?

And the most kindly of all the Greeks had uttered this harshest of all words.

Elpinice started, cast an angry glance at Pericles, and left him.

But what did it avail Pericles’ good repute, that he had treated the coquettish Elpinice with so little courtesy? Did not the kind-hearted Olympian spoil all, by shuddering at the harsh words which had escaped his lips, regretting them, and trying to make amends on the Pnyx? When the people had assembled and the motion for the recall of Cimon was made, all looked at Pericles, expecting that he would vehemently oppose it; but he sat silent, gazing into vacancy as if the matter was no concern of his, so that Cimon’s adherents won their cause, the Athenians laughed, and one whispered to another with a significant wink: “There is the elderly Elpinice’s work again! She went to Pericles in her finery, and the lover of the fair sex bit eagerly—bit at the rancid bait.”

Poor Pericles!

After Cimon’s death Elpinice was angry with the world, because she was obliged to live on without him. Now she hated Pericles and the new times still more.

Her conversation was always spiced with such sayings as: “My brother Cimon used to say,” or, “my brother Cimon used to do this or that,” or, “my brother Cimon would have done so or so in this case.”

Cimon had been a friend of Laconia, a man who concealed his sympathy for Sparta so little, that he gave one of his sons the name of Lacedæmonius, and whose whole character bore far more resemblance to a Spartan soldier, than a cultured, refined and volatile Athenian, so no one could wonder that his masculine sister carried this friendship for the Laconians to the verge of caricature. She served the party that was opposed to every free and joyous aspiration of the Attic nature, by the zeal with which she watched the family life of its foes. She was on the most intimate terms with the very women, whose husbands she hated. This was the case with Telesippe, the wife of Pericles.

Yet this walking memento of the good old days, this spinster friend of the secretly dissatisfied bachelor Polygnotus, did not possess a thoroughly ungracious and repulsive nature. She was at once malicious and well-meaning, spiteful and faithful, grave and variable, ridiculous and worthy of reverence.

Such was the woman, before whom Pericles and his friend, the wise Anaxagoras, fled so hastily, when she came to visit Telesippe.

Telesippe helped Cimon’s sister to release her thin body from the folds of the cloak-like himation, in which Elpinice, as beseemed a chaste Athenian woman, always wrapped not merely the upper portion of her body, but even her head—with the exception of her mouth and eyes—whenever she went into the street. Then Telesippe drew out a chair, laid a cushion on it, and invited her friend to sit down. Elpinice was dressed very neatly, with a sort of old-fashioned care, and her hair was no less daintily arranged. Her head-dress corresponded admirably with its wearer’s character. The locks at the back of the head were covered by a handkerchief, twisted below and knotted coquettishly above the so-called “saccus,” while the front was adorned with the metal plate already mentioned, which, somewhat resembling a diadem, rose to a point above the brow. Large round ear-rings of antique pattern dangled on both sides of the venerable Elpinice’s face.

“Telesippe,” cried the visitor, “you look paler than usual to-day. What does this mean?”

“It may be the result of anxiety,” replied Telesippe. “We had a miracle in the house.”

“What do you say?” cried Elpinice. “Has oil or wine been spilled while pouring it out? Or have the beams creaked without cause? Or did a strange black dog run into the house?”

“The steward brought to the city this morning a ram born on our country estate, which had only one horn, that grew directly in the middle of its forehead.”

“A ram with a single horn?” cried Elpinice. “By Artemis! I’m not surprised that signs and marvels happen. A huge meteoric stone is said to have fallen from the sky at Brilessus the night before last. Some say that they saw a comet in the shape of a burning beam. Some of the statues of the gods are reported to have begun to perspire or bleed. A short time ago a raven perched on the gilded statue of Pallas at Delphi, and pecked with its beak the fruits of the brazen palm on which it stands. But best of all—just imagine. The priestess of the Eumenides at Orchomenus is said to have grown a long thick beard! Have you sent for an interpreter of omens?”

“Lampon,” replied Telesippe.

“Lampon is excellent,” said Elpinice, nodding approvingly. “He is the best of them all. Anybody can slaughter an animal and make predictions from its entrails. But one should see and hear Lampon, when he holds an egg over the fire and draws his omens from its sweating or bursting, or when he forms whole letters and words from grains of corn he lays on the ground, then lets in the hens and notices which they pick up, and which not. He knows, too, how to prophecy from the hand, and even from clear water, or anything one wishes, as nobody else can do. Lampon is clever and reliable; you can believe what he says, as if the priestess had uttered it on the tripod at Delphi. But you don’t tell me how he interpreted the marvel.”

“He interpreted the single horn to mean Pericles’ dominion over Athens,” replied Telesippe.

Elpinice turned up her nose, and said no more in praise of Lampon. “My brother Cimon,” said she, “revered the omens of the gods as much as any one, and once ordered a ram to be slaughtered for twelve days in succession, until the entrails were favorable. Then he attacked the enemy. But whenever he went into the field, he always said to the interpreters, who accompanied him at the public expense. ‘Soothsayers, do the duties of your office, but don’t flatter me! Don’t falsify the signs of the gods to please me.’ Modern statesmen, on the contrary, have quite different wishes. The seers know very well, who desires to hear the truth and who does not. People who allow themselves to be flattered, may enjoy a fleeting success; but the real blessing of the gods never attends those who do not revere the Olympians.”

“Do you suppose that Pericles showed himself particularly grateful to Lampon for his prediction,” replied Telesippe. “No, he merely smiled, and his friend, that old, half-starved Anaxagoras, even ventured to make sneering remarks.”

“Since my brother Cimon’s death,” cried Elpinice, “we have received into the country those despisers of the gods, the Sophists.”

“And these people,” said Telesippe, “undermine not only reverence for the gods and good morals in the state, but destroy the happiness and prosperity of the family. I was the wife of the wealthy Hipponicus, and might have married the Archon Basileus, whose wife really occupies the highest position in the nation, because, according to ancient custom, she shares her husband’s most sacred priestly functions. But I allowed myself to be won first by the wealthy Hipponicus, then by Pericles’ dignified, yet gentle, flattering manner. Now, what am I, a woman accustomed to so much better things, compelled to undergo! To what a household have I descended from that of Hipponicus! And things have gone constantly from bad to worse. Pericles neglects his home. If I go to consult him about the most important domestic affairs, he has no time for them. I scarcely venture to enter his room in the morning. He fairly shows me to the door. ‘My dear Telesippe,’ he says, ‘don’t trouble me in the morning with such matters, or at least don’t come unwashed and uncombed, so that you offend my ears and eyes at the same time.’ I have been the wife of the wealthy Hipponicus, and he permitted me to live in splendor; yet never did he address such words to me. Here, on the contrary, in Pericles’ house, where instead of luxury and magnificence sordidness and poverty surround me, here I must only appear before the stern master, bathed and perfumed and crowned with garlands. How I resisted, when he took it into his head to lease his estates, and trust all his money to his slave Euangelos. He is now purse-bearer and steward in the house, and I, its mistress, am condemned to take money from the hand of a slave. Do you know from whom Pericles learned this fine way of housekeeping, who leads him to it by his example? No other than his beloved Anaxagoras. Before this malicious idler left his house in Clazomenæ, to wander here to Athens, his relatives reproached him, asking why he did not manage the estates inherited from his father. He answered: ‘Do it yourselves, if you choose!’ At last he went away, leaving everything he possessed just as it stood, and told the Clazomenians they might turn the goats of the community into his fields and meadows. Such men are the friends and advisers of Pericles!”

Telesippe’s complaint was interrupted by a slave, who approached to ask her orders about some domestic matter. Other male and female slaves returned from the market, bringing the provisions they had purchased. Telesippe tried the odor or taste of the various articles, but allowed Elpinice to give her opinion about the freshness of a pike, and issued certain orders to the cook. She also distributed to the slave-women flax, linen, and other woven materials for the daily task of spinning, weaving, and sewing in the house.

Then she turned back to her friend, to continue the interrupted conversation.

“I haven’t yet told you the worst!” she said. “Formerly this was a poor, yet a peaceful household. But everything has changed since the time Pericles, in his thoughtless good-nature, brought home his ward, the boy Alcibiades, the orphaned son of Cleinias, to be educated with his own children. I say out of good-nature; but in doing so he only showed himself kind to his relative, while utterly regardless of me and his own flesh and blood. You know how well-behaved my two boys, Xanthippus and Paralus, have always been, and under what control I have kept them. They sat quietly in a corner all day long, and the pedagogue actually fell asleep, they gave him so little to do. Pericles never called them anything but ‘humbugs,’ and scolded them for their want of activity. But they were really well-behaved children, such as all fathers would desire. They had learned to obey at a sign, and did nothing except what they were told to do. They sat or walked, eat and slept, whenever people desired. If one said: ‘Paralus, don’t put your hand in your mouth!’ or ‘Xanthippus, don’t touch your nose!’ Paralus took his fist out of his mouth, and Xanthippus his finger out of his nose. If either of them ever made a wry face, we need only say: ‘Mormo is coming,’ or ‘Empusa,’ or ‘Acco,’ or ‘the wolf is there,’ or ‘the horse will bite,’ and they turned pale and became as gentle as lambs. And now? You wouldn’t know the boys, since that good-for-nothing Alcibiades came into the house. With him, noise and shouting and misbehavior of every kind has been brought into the nursery. The first thing he did was to throw into one corner the rattles and tops, which have always afforded Xanthippus and Paralus the utmost pleasure, and call for wooden horses and carts. Pericles gave him what he wanted, and then he banged noisily around the peristyle as if he were in the race-course at Olympia. Soon the wooden horses no longer satisfied him, and he harnessed Paralus and Xanthippus, and at last, even the pedagogue, before his ‘Olympic chariot of victory,’ as he called it. By way of a change, he caught swallows in the peristyle and either clipped their wings or let them fly as far as long strings would allow them.

“At first the two boys watched their new companion’s conduct with a sort of timid amazement. Gradually they became accustomed to it, approached when he was playing some mischievous prank, and watched him gravely and eagerly. Afterwards they helped, and at last began to imitate like monkeys everything the fellow did. But the better nature, innate in them, showed itself in the fact that they never originated any naughty idea. They only faithfully did whatever Alcibiades ordered. If I began to say anything about Mormo, Empusa, Acco, the wolf or the biting horse, Alcibiades laughed. When Xanthippus and Paralus saw him, and perceived that Mormo, Empusa, the wolf and the horse allowed it, they laughed too. So I lost all power over the boys. They no longer obey me. The pedagogue is an old man, a slave grown grey in the service of the family, who fell from an olive-tree and broke his leg, and whom Pericles therefore, again out of good-nature, that he might have no more hard work to do, has made the boys’ overseer. Now the very fire on the hearth isn’t safe from the rascals; they destroy and break everything that can be destroyed and broken, climb wherever they can, and fall down wherever it is possible to fail. The slave-women in the house are teased and pinched, the men scoffed at and beaten. If I attempt to interfere, and chase the boys angrily with my sandal in my hand, Xanthippus and Paralus creep like a flash of lightning under tables and couches, Alcibiades swings himself like a squirrel up the pillars of the peristyle to the cornice. And Pericles? If I complain to him, he smiles and takes the ringleader Alcibiades under his protection against the humbugs—”

At this moment Telesippe was interrupted by little Paralus, who came running in, crying bitterly.

The other lads followed close at his heels.

“We were playing the furious Ajax,” said Alcibiades, “the furious Ajax, who killed so many cattle when he was mad, because he thought them Achæans, and who is the ancestor of our family, my father Cleinias told me. I was Ajax, Paralus and Xanthippus were the cattle. But I didn’t strike them hard.”

“Inhuman boy!” cried Telesippe, in an outburst of anger, and beckoning to Paralus and Xanthippus, caressed them to soothe their grief.

Meantime Elpinice was gazing intently at little Alcibiades.

“Yet he is a charming lad!” she said. “These sparkling black eyes—this dazzlingly white forehead—these magnificent floating curls.”

“He’s a good-for-nothing scamp!” cried Telesippe, irritated by the words of admiration her friend seemed to be lavishing on the boy. Then she called the pedagogue. The old man came limping up. “Why did you allow Alcibiades to abuse the two lads?” she exclaimed.

“He was in the game himself,” said Alcibiades; “he stood ready to be the Trojan horse, with which I intended to enter Ilium.”

Telesippe looked at the pedagogue in astonishment.

“Mistress Telesippe,” replied the latter, “this isn’t the first time I have been obliged to aid this wild fellow’s pranks. Yesterday he bit my hand like a young dog—”

“Fie! Say like a young lion!” exclaimed little Alcibiades indignantly.

“O, Zeus and Apollo!” cried Elpinice, with a merry gesture. Then drawing the boy towards her, she continued coaxingly: “You are certainly a brave lad, and if you had lived under my brother, the great Cimon, would have helped him fight the Persians. But in those times, my child, boys behaved differently from the lads of the present day. They were not nimble-tongued, saucy and forward, and they despised perfumes and warm baths. At table they sat properly, without crossing their legs or taking even a tiny stalk of a vegetable in their own hands. In the morning they were seen in thin garments, even when it stormed and blew, on their way to the music teacher, where they learned substantial old songs like, ‘Pallas, ruler of the city,’ or ‘Shorn, good ram,’ by Simonides, not the effeminate love ditties that are now the fashion, with turns and flourishes, which anybody ought to be well beaten for applauding. Remember, son of Cleinias, you, too, will soon be sent with your playmates to the teacher’s house, you will study grammar and gymnastics, playing the lute and blowing the flute—”

“No,” interrupted little Alcibiades; “I don’t want to play the flute—it makes one look ugly—puffs out the cheeks—so.” He puffed out his cheeks as far as he could.

“Oh, how vain!” cried Elpinice, trying to kiss him.

But old maids have little luck with children. To escape the kiss Cimon’s sister offered, Alcibiades, with boyish impudence, blew full into her face the breath he had been holding in his cheeks, and then ran away laughing saucily.

Elpinice was furious, and started from her seat to leave the house at once. Taking her himation, she threw one end of the broad side of the long piece of cloth over her left shoulder, holding it firmly with her left arm, than drew the material across her back to the right side, in such a way that it not only covered this part of her body, but also her head with the exception of her face. Finally she passed it under her chin, and again threw it over her left shoulder, so that the point hung on her back.

“You see what a fate I endure,” said Telesippe, holding her friend’s hand to detain her. “This is the way I live here, tormented by troublesome children, by the side of a careless husband, joyless, vexed, slighted, I who might have been the wife of the Archon Basileus—the sharer of the most sacred offices of the service of the Athenian gods.”

“My brother Cimon used to say,” replied Elpinice: “New times are evil times. The world goes on its course, and ambitious men urge it forward. But we women are here too. Give heed, Telesippe, and let what I say to you be enough for to-day! if we women hold together and cling to the wheels, they won’t succeed speedily in turning this earth completely out of the old grooves.”