“I submit,” said Callias, willing, perhaps, to have the question that had been puzzling him settled for him. “But tell me, if I have to follow you, whither you are bound.”
“We are going to the house of Euctemon, where there will be something, I know, worth seeing and hearing.”
“But I am a stranger,” said Callias.
“A stranger!” cried Ctesiphon, “you are no such thing. The man who brings good news to Athens is the friend of everybody. Besides Euctemon is my first cousin, and he is always pleased to see my friends. You should have been at his dinner, but that there was no room on his couches for more guests. But now when the tables are removed[30] we shall easily find places. But come along or we shall lose something.”
There was no want of heartiness in Euctemon’s greeting to his new guests. To Callias he was especially polite, making room for him on his own couch. When the new arrivals were settled in their places, the host clapped his hands. A white-haired freedman, who acted as major-domo, appeared.
“We are ready for Stephanos,” said Euctemon.
A few minutes afterwards a figure appeared, so curiously like the traditional representations of Homer that every one was startled. Stephanos was a rhapsodist, or professional writer, and he had made it one of the aims of his life to imitate as closely as he could the most distinguished member that his profession could boast. In early life he had been a school master, and an accident, if we may so describe a blow from the staff of a haughty young aristocrat, whom he had ventured to chastise, had deprived him of sight. His professional education had included the knowledge of the authors whom the Greeks looked upon as classics, Homer holding the first place among them, and he was glad to turn this knowledge to account, when he was no longer able to teach. In this occupation too his blindness could be utilized. It had its usual effect of strengthening the memory, and it helped him to look the part, which, as has been said, he aspired to play.
The blind minstrel was guided to the seat which had been reserved for him in the middle of the company by an attendant, who also carried his harp.
“What shall we have, gentlemen?” asked the host. “You will hardly find anything worth learning that Stephanos does not know.”
The guests had various tastes, so various that it seemed very difficult to make a choice. One wanted the story of the Cyclops, another the tale as told by Demodocus to Alcinous and the Phæacian princes, of the loves of Ares and Aphrodite. A third, of a more sober turn of mind, called for one of the didactic poems of Solon, and a fourth would have one of the martial elegies with which the old Athenian bard Tyrtaeus stirred, as was said, the spirits of the Spartan warriors.