| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| [BOOK I] At the Pythian Festival | ||
| I. | Dryas Wins the Prize | [1] |
| II. | Parental Justice | [10] |
| [BOOK II] A Childhood in Delphi | ||
| III. | Theria, Seven Years Old | [19] |
| IV. | Eleutheria Looks out of a Window | [26] |
| V. | The Traditions of the House | [34] |
| VI. | The Guests | [45] |
| VII. | What Gifts the Guests Brought | [51] |
| VIII. | Dryas Takes a Robber | [57] |
| IX. | Laurel From Tempè | [62] |
| X. | A Boy Called Sophocles | [69] |
| XI. | Why Not Be the Pythia? | [78] |
| [BOOK III] Within the Oracle | ||
| XII. | “The Place of Golden Tripods” | [89] |
| XIII. | In Pleistos Woods | [101] |
| XIV. | The Poor Slave | [105] |
| XV. | The Shattered Cup | [113] |
| XVI. | Gathering the Threads | [117] |
| XVII. | The Youth under the Window | [122] |
| XVIII. | Gathering more Threads | [127] |
| XIX. | The Song Re-sung | [133] |
| XX. | Love in the Lane | [142] |
| XXI. | A Procession of Sacrifice | [152] |
| XXII. | In the Pythia House | [156] |
| XXIII. | The Child Priestess | [159] |
| XXIV. | The High, Perilous Seat | [164] |
| XXV. | Bitter Consequences | [170] |
| XXVI. | “Pray to the Winds” | [177] |
| XXVII. | The Messengers | [182] |
| XXVIII. | Outcast on Parnassos | [191] |
| XXIX. | Eëtíon Pursues | [196] |
| XXX. | Shepherd Wisdom | [201] |
| XXXI. | Nikander’s Nearest of Kin | [210] |
| XXXII. | Terrible News from Thermopylæ | [215] |
| XXXIII. | At Eëtíon’s Call | [221] |
| XXXIV. | Eëtíon and Nikander | [226] |
| XXXV. | Theria Tells Her Vision | [229] |
| XXXVI. | Refuge in the Precinct | [233] |
| [BOOK IV] “The God Will Care for His Own” | ||
| XXXVII. | The Persian Comes | [239] |
| XXXVIII. | Thankfulness | [247] |
| XXXIX. | Nikander Pleads for His Daughter | [252] |
| XL. | Again Home | [257] |
| XLI. | A Sculptor’s Respectability | [261] |
| XLII. | The Unwilling Colonist | [267] |
| XLIII. | The Bird in the Cage | [ 278] |
| XLIV. | The Metic | [289] |
| XLV. | The Marriage | [293] |
| XLVI. | The Door of Escape | [297] |
| XLVII. | Alien Meadows | [302] |
| XLVIII. | Town Makers | [309] |
BOOK I
AT THE PYTHIAN FESTIVAL
CHAPTER I
DRYAS WINS THE PRIZE
Dryas, the young Delphian, finished his song. As he did so he leaped impulsively to the sheer edge of the temple platform, leaning forward in the very attitude of the Archer God. The song was to Apollo. For a moment he seemed to be the young Apollo himself.
The final note was scarce heard for the surge of applause which met it. The people pelted the boy with flowers—snatched off their own garlands to throw to him—until he stood ankle deep in the bloom. He was blushing, shy, now that his song was finished. Awestruck, too, for he heard everywhere the shout:
“The Prize! The Prize!”
Thus ended the first day of the Pythian festival at Delphi. The crowds poured down through the Precinct, a very tumult of colour and motion. White-robed priests, purple-cloaked kings, Sybarites in cloth of gold, young athletes beautiful as the sunlight in which they moved; and upon every man’s head, rich or poor, his crown of flowers.
How freely they talked, how happily gave themselves to laughter! The truce of God was upon them—that peace which Apollo imposed upon the passionate, warring Greeks at festival time. Delphi itself, forbidding amid its beetling cliffs, seemed to lose sternness at this festival. Out on the far-seen hillsides were the booths and bright-coloured tents of the visitors, the flash and glitter of things brought for sale. Even yet crowds of pilgrims were arriving, swarming up the steep winding roads as the bees were fabled of old to have swarmed thither to build the first temple in Delphi.
Dryas, his father, Nikander, and his brother, Lycophron, came down through the stirring Precinct, perhaps the happiest hearts of all the multitude.