“The ugly lame god. By heaven, Eëtíon, you are no Hephæstos.” Everybody laughed. “The beautiful Eëtíon himself with the limping, grizzled one!”
“I am serious,” insisted Nikander; “you must explain this thing. Who taught you?”
“Ageladas,” answered Eëtíon, “but of course my father never knew.”
“Ah, no wonder you model well,” said Nikander, for Ageladas, the Argive, was the greatest teacher of sculpture in Greece.
“My pedagogos was Ageladas’s friend,” went on Eëtíon, “and he used to stop with me at Ageladas’s workshop on our way from school. I—well, I played with the clay as I do now and Ageladas saw and praised me. But oh, it was not the praise, it was the love of making beautiful gods and men which possessed me. All through my school hours I forgot my Homer, longing to be at work with Ageladas. I bribed my pedagogos again and again to bring me there. Myron was in the workshop, too, and I learned at his side. Then one day Ageladas told me he would exhibit one of my statues as his own.” Eëtíon laughed softly and tears came into his eyes.
“Ah, never shall I forget my father stopping by my own statue. ‘This is most beautiful of all,’ he said. ‘This youth pouring the libation. See how he worships, how shyly he supplicates before his god?’ Then such happiness welled up within me that I could not speak. Dear Father, he never guessed that the statue was mine.”
Nikander took Eëtíon’s hand.
“But now, Eëtíon, now that you are a Delphian, a son of my house, surely you will not do this curious thing, which no well-born citizen would do? Delphi will give you large activities.”
“No, dear Nikander,” answered Eëtíon gently. “No.”