CHAPTER XXX.
THE CONDITION OF EXILE.
The story that Callias had heard of the last days of his Master, and heard, of course, with many details which it is now impossible to reproduce, made, it need hardly be said, a profound impression on him. First and foremost—and this was what the dead man himself would have been most rejoiced to see—was the profound conviction that this teaching, inspired, as it was, with a faith which the immediate prospect of death had not been able to shake, was absolutely true. The young man can hardly be said to have had any feeling of religion in the sense in which we understand that word. To believe in the fables, grotesque or even immoral, which made up the popular theology, in gods who were only exaggerated men, stronger, indeed, but more cruel, treacherous, and lustful, was an impossibility. The poets’ tales of the Elysian plain and of the abyss of Tartarus had in no wise helped towards producing any emotions of the spiritual kind, any wish to dwell in an invisible world. The most sacred of these poets in his description of that world as another earth in which everything was feebler, paler, less satisfying than it is here, had certainly repelled rather than attracted him. Now this want had been supplied; the lofty teaching of duty, duty owed to country, kinsfolk, friends, fellow-citizens, fellow-men, that he had heard from the Master was now supplemented and sanctioned by this clear enunciation of a doctrine of immortality. The young man felt that he could face the world, whether it brought him prosperity or adversity, joy or sorrow, life or death, with a more equable soul or more assured spirit than he had ever dreamed could be possible.
His immediate duty, however, was less clear. When his country lay under the heel of the Spartan conqueror, Hermione had pointed out to him—not without sacrifice of herself, as he sometimes could not help feeling, what he owed to the city that had given him birth. But now, how did the case stand? Athens had suffered a second, a more fatal fall. She might repair her losses; she might retrieve defeat. But when she had definitely broken with right and truth, had deliberately chosen the worse rather than the better, what hope, what remedy was there? And what was the obligation on himself? Could he aspire to a career in a State which was so false to all the principles of life and government?
The two or three days that followed the conversation related in my last chapter were spent by the young Athenian in debating with himself the question: What am I to do? But the more he thought over the problem, the more complex and intricate did it seem to become. Just when he was beginning to despair, a solution, rude and peremptory, but satisfactory in so far as it admitted of no questioning, was forced upon him.
He had just risen on the morning of the fourth day, when a visitor was announced. It was Xenophon, looking, as Callias thought, serious, but not depressed.
“And what have you been doing these three days?” cried the newcomer.
“Thinking,” replied Callias.
“That is exactly what I have been doing myself, and I would wager my chance of being Archon next year, a very serious stake indeed, that we have had the same subject for our thoughts. You have been debating with yourself what you are to do?”
“Exactly so; and I am no nearer a conclusion than I was when I began.”