‘’Tis only till to-morrow,’ said Alkibiades, introducing his friends. Eumanthes begged they would stay longer.
‘Our partridges are good, and our wine thought not the worst in Italy.’
‘So have I often heard, and, indeed, I know it from my own experience,’ said the leader, who wore his most gorgeous purple robe, and looked ready to enjoy a long symposium after all the rough labours of his recent voyages.
And a fine symposium it was. Eumanthes, after a little private talk with his old friend, had summoned the wisest of the Thurians to meet him. All the sage philosophers of Thurii came. Their philosophy did not prevent them doing justice to the feast. The daintiest fish of Thurii, cooked, some in boiling olive-oil, others in the white wine of the country, others stuffed with olives and wild thyme and baked—all were delicious.
Boiled turkeys, each with a hundred of the famed Thurian oysters in them, and a boar’s head, with freshly discovered truffles, were followed by pheasants and young partridges, roasted and stewed in many ways, which made the chief guest declare that his own head cook Hymettos must come to Thurii to improve his art. But the snails, collected that afternoon from the vineyard of white grapes, made them, for a moment, forget all the rest; until a salad, with cray-fish, straight from the cool mountain streams, made them almost forget the snails. To the sound of silver flutes boys came in, bearing upon golden dishes the plump quails of Egypt, wrapped in the last young leaves of the maturing vines, and offered them upon bended knee to each guest, the virginal vine-leaves giving a new flavour to the Egyptian birds, which were sufficiently appetizing of themselves.
The custom of the luxurious Thurians was to drink wine while the feast was being served, and not to wait till after the various dishes had been cleared away, as was the manner in the older country. Each course was served up with wines which had lain pining for the sunlight for more than twenty years. Cold white wine, which gave forth an aroma as of early summer mignonette when the tall, pointed amphoræ were opened, came with the fish and disappeared again until the salad. Red wine, clear and delicate, gentle as a maiden, gave flavour to the roasted venison. Red wines of bolder nature, larger-hearted, with perfume like the flower of the beech-tree on hot summer nights, added a fresh charm to partridges and pheasants. But all these wines were vanquished by their king of exquisitely fine bouquet, and of a vintage which the host admitted he had not seen himself since he was a youth in his dear old father’s lifetime. This monarch of all wine came with the fruit—figs bursting with ripe lusciousness, walnuts, and large bloomy grapes, with the warmth still on them of the setting sun.
The philosophers and the learned men of Thurii, notwithstanding all the heat they were wont to show in nightly arguments with one another, and in discussing the latest works of every sophist writer, were quiet and subdued before the renowned Athenian. Then did he look more radiant and beautiful than ever. Seldom did he show such condescension or concern himself more courteously to instruct and gratify his company. He spoke of many things—of patriotism, of the love of country. When was man obliged to die for his home? How far, if ever, was he bound to save his fatherland, if he must appear an enemy while doing it? Or was it not nobler to die to save her than to live to teach her, and dying, leave a fame behind which some day all would recognise, so that his name would never die, and he would become indeed ‘Athanatos’?
The companions of his voyage rose from their couches one by one, and stole out unnoticed by the grave philosophers, overcome by the eloquence they had listened to and the good wine they had drunk. At length Alkibiades bade them good-night, and his host got rid of them. Eumanthes, after a few more words with his guest, went down to the wharf to watch the movements of the Salaminia. He found the captain still superintending the provisioning of the state ship, and invited him to come and stay a day or two with him. Kryptos declined, as he sailed for Athens the next morning.
When Eumanthes returned he found that his guest, who in the meantime had changed his dress for one more suitable to the work before him, was gone. He had reason to suppose his Athenian friends were by this time beyond the shrine of Dionysos. There Alkibiades and his companions had found Diôtes, a faithful servant of Eumanthes, with arms and horses and some provisions, awaiting them. They mounted, and, led by Diôtes, went along a narrow pathway in single file up the mountain by the side of the stream whence the cray-fish had come which formed the chief part of the wondrous salad.
It was a dark night, and not without some danger did they make their way to higher ground. Biôtides was better at sea than on horseback. In his anxiety to show his skill as a horseman, his steed, unaccustomed to such a rider, got rid of him. He was picked up near a precipice not much the worse, but it was thought wiser to make him exchange horses with Agrestides, who was riding a milder animal. They went along merrily enough, considering their new circumstances. Only Alkibiades was silent and thoughtful. Before daybreak they reached a small villa, nearly thirty miles from Thurii, belonging to Eumanthes. Here they rested.