CHAPTER XI
‘Each by each was thought
The man who did the deed, but no man’s guilt
Was proved, for each denied it.’
Antigone.
The fleet was to have been ready to sail by the beginning of the following June. In the meantime each Athenian tried to outdo his neighbour in his eagerness to make the undertaking glorious. The citizens, whether bound to serve or not, pressed in to be enrolled as soldiers. The rich men emulated one another in the strength and size of the great ships they offered. Ambassadors were sent to all allies demanding aid for the important conquest—aid in men, in money, and provisions. The generals were allowed a free hand in their expenditure.
By the time appointed everything was ready, but by an unfortunate coincidence the date fixed for the departure of the fleet fell on the Adônia, the days when the Athenian women kept their yearly mourning for the lamentable death of the beautiful youth, beloved of Aphrodite, and then celebrated their rejoicing at the glad festival of his happy resurrection. Clearly the fleet must not put to sea at such a time.
Other unforeseen delays postponed the sailing till the first of August. Before that day arrived a horrid and unspeakable event occurred at Athens. The religious custom of the time had placed in every street a stone image of the divine champion Hermes, and a rough statue of this god, so dearly loved and reverently worshipped, stood at all the cross-roads, before every temple, and many of the private houses. These images were more than sacred: they were objects of peculiar devotion, for Hermes was not only messenger of Zeus, he was protector of the state and Constitution. To do offence to him was to offend the state, and tempt the potent deity to desert the city.
Some days before the fleet was to have sailed, when everyone was up and about betimes, and full of eager preparation, it was discovered by someone who had gone first abroad that one and then another of these statues had been shamefully cut and disfigured. Dismayed and horrified, those who first heard of it spread the dreadful news about the town. Then, by degrees, the fact was realized that not one or two, but almost every image of the god before the temples and the houses, as well as at the cross-roads, had been treated in the same disgraceful, sacrilegious manner, and in many instances reduced to a mere shapeless block of stone.