"That night we bivouacked in the open. Some of the troopers had a feeling of pity or shame. One lent him his cloak to keep the cold off, though he had to go without one himself; another shared his ration of bread, dried meat, and rough wine with him. On the evening of the next day we came to Messene town, and I must do the townsfolk the justice to say that the sight was not at all to their liking. I heard many of them cursing the man—Deinocrates was his name, and he was as ill-conditioned a scoundrel as there was in Greece—who had given the orders for it to be done. Still, no one had the courage to interfere, and Deinocrates determined to finish matters before he was hindered; for he knew perfectly well that the League would spare nothing to get back their president.
He thrust him, therefore, into a dungeon that was called the Treasury, a dreadful hole without a window or door, but having the entrance to it blocked by a huge stone. "Deinocrates then held a hurried council with some of his own party. They voted with one accord for death. What followed I heard from the executioner himself, who was one of Deinocrates' slaves. His story was this:
"'My master said to me, 'Take this cup'—I guessed from the look and the smell that it was hemlock—'to the prisoner, and don't leave him till he drinks it.' I went in—it wanted but a little time to midnight—and found Philopœmen awake. 'Ah!' he said, when he saw me, 'your master is a generous man, and sends me, I doubt not, a draught of one of his richest vintages. But before I drink it, answer me, if you can, one question. Have any prisoners been brought in?' I said that I had not heard of any. 'None of the young horsemen that were with me?' I said that I had not seen them. He smiled and said, 'You bring good tidings. Things have not gone altogether ill with me.' Then he took the cup and drank it up without another word. This done he lay down again. I watched by him, but though I heard him breathing heavily he never moved. Just before cock-crow I judged that he died, for it was then that breathing ceased, and when I put my hand on his heart I could feel nothing.'
"That was the end of Philopœmen, 'the last of the Greeks', as I heard an enemy, a Roman, call him. And what, my dear young friend, can Greece do without Greeks?"
[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE CORINTHIAN ASSEMBLY.
CLEANOR was of far too sanguine a temperament to allow himself to be daunted by the gloomy reminiscences of his friend. "Things", he said to himself, "are altered since then. Rome is more manifestly formidable, for she has rid herself of more than one rival. The mere instinct of self-preservation must make those that are left unite."
Still, he could not hide from himself various discouraging facts that forced themselves upon his notice. In the first place Corinth, or, rather, the Corinthian people, disappointed him. The place itself was intensely interesting; he did not know whether to admire more the splendid remains of the past that it had to show, or the evidences of a prosperous present with which it abounded.
At one time he would make his way to the highest point of the citadel, the Acro-Corinthus, and look down upon the city, crowded as it was with temples, public halls, mansions, on which the wealth of centuries had been lavished. At another he would spend long hours in wandering about the docks, that one which brought to the "City of the Two Seas" the commerce of the West, or that other which was filled with the merchandise of the East.
There were vessels of all sizes and of every kind of rig, manned with seamen of every nationality, and bringing the merchandise of every country, from the Atlantic shores on the west to remote regions of the east of which no European knew except by repute. Blocks of tin and strings of amber from far-off islands of the north, ivory and precious stones from the African coasts far to the south of the Pillars of Hercules, iron from Elba, cattle and fruit from the Balearic Isles, wines from Sicily and the shores of the Adriatic, were among the most common articles in the western harbour; to the eastern harbour came silks from China, metal work from India,—then as now famous for the skill of its handicraftsmen,—dried fruits from Lesser Asia, salt and pickled fish from the Black Sea, wheat from Egypt, and wines, some of them the finest vintages in the world, from the islands of the Ægean. Corinth, then, was interesting enough, making the impression upon a stranger of being one of the busiest and wealthiest places in the world.