Callias: A Tale of the Fall of Athens

by Alfred John Church

“There is nothing that I should desire better. But you do not tell me, sir, what you yourself wish. Have I your consent and your good wishes?”

“Yes,” said Hippocles, “you have. I have thought over the difficulties, for I foresaw that you would some day speak to me on this subject. As far as I am concerned I am ready to waive them. But then, they do not concern me in the first place.”

The two men sat in silence for some time after this conversation had passed between them, buried each of them in his own thoughts. At last Hippocles rose from his seat.

“It is time to sleep,” he said; “I will speak to my daughter to-morrow; you shall not want my good word, but I can do nothing more. You must speak to her yourself. That is, I think, what few fathers in Greece would tell a suitor to do. But then Hermione is not as other maidens.”

Callias passed a restless night, and was glad to make his way into the open air when the first streaks of dawn appeared on the Eubœan hills, which were in full view from the house. He shrank from meeting Hermione till he could meet her alone, and ask the momentous question which was occupying his whole mind. Partly to employ the time, partly to banish thought, if it might be done by severe bodily exercise, he started to climb the height of Pentelicus, which rose on the southern side of the Marathonian plain. The excursion occupied him the whole morning. On his way back he traversed the hills which skirted the western side of the plain, and, following what was evidently a well-beaten track, came at last in view of the mound under which reposed the Athenian dead who had fallen in that great battle. His quick eye soon perceived a familiar figure, conspicuous in its white garments among the monuments which stood on the top of the mound. Hippocles had fulfilled his promise, and had said all that he could to Hermione in favor of her suitor. He had dwelt upon his noble birth, the reputation as a soldier which he had already won, his culture and taste for philosophy, and his blameless life. “As for wealth,” he ended by saying, “that is of little account where my daughter is concerned. Yet a man should be independent of his wife, and I may tell you as one who knows—and I have had charge of his property for some years past—that Callias is one of the richest men in Athens. That will not weigh with you I know, but I would have you know all the circumstances.”

Hermione said nothing; she took her father’s hand and kissed it. A tear dropped on it as she raised it to her lips. As she turned away, Hippocles noticed that she was shaken by a sob.

An instinct in the girl’s heart told her that it was on the mound that her lover would speak to her, and it was here that she wished to give her answer to him. It was not the first time that she had visited it. Indeed there was not a woman, and not many men in Athens who knew so much about its records.

On the top of this tumulus, which still rises thirty feet above the surrounding plain, and which was then, it is probable, considerably higher, there stood in those days eleven stone columns inscribed with the names of those who had fallen in the great battle. Each of the ten Athenian tribes had its own peculiar column, while the eleventh commemorated the gallant men of Plataea, Plataea, which alone among the cities of Greece, had sent her sons on that day to stand shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers of Athens.

Hermione was apparently engrossed in the task of deciphering the names, now grown somewhat obliterated by time, which were engraved on one of the columns. So intent was she on this occupation that she did not notice the young man’s approach. Turning suddenly round, she faced him. At that moment, though she had expected him to come, his actual coming was a surprise, and the hot blood crimsoned her face and neck.

“Hermione,” he said, “I have spoken to your father, and he bids me speak to you. You can hardly have failed to read my heart, and if I have not spoken to you before, it has been because I have not presumed. You know all that needs be known about me, and though I do not think myself worthy of you, I need not be ashamed of my fathers or of myself.”