“Alcibiades is great! Now I go to the general, and this evening we march.”
“Go, King! Alcibiades follows.”
The King went, but Alcibiades did not follow, for behind the curtains of the women’s apartment stood the Queen, and waited. When the King had gone, she rushed in.
“Hail! Alcibiades, my king!”
“Queen, why do you call your servant ‘king’?”
“Because Sparta has done homage to you, because I love you, and because you are a descendant of heroes.”
“King Aegis the Second lives.”
“Not too long! Win your first battle, and Aegis is dead.”
“Now life begins to smile on the hardly-tried exile. If you knew my childhood with its sorrows, my youth with its privations! The vine had not grown for me, woman had not been made for me; Bacchus knew me not; Aphrodite was not my goddess. The chaste Artemis and the wise Pallas guided me past the devious ways of youth to the goal of knowledge, wisdom, and glory. But when I first saw you, Timia, my queen....”
“Hush!”