“You believe that?” he asked with fresh interest. “I had supposed polytheism to be the unshaken belief of the Greeks.”
“Of the majority that is true,” she replied seriously, “but many of us, while performing the rites due our gods and goddesses, send our prayers to a Deity who is above the petty jealousies of the gods of Olympus. It was a prayer to that Deity which saved me from a tragic fate on the Acropolis!”
He looked at her with a new interest. Not only did he consider her very beautiful, but he was surprised to find her possessing more intellect than was usual among the Persian girls of his acquaintance. He knew too, that the Greek women were educated to be principally home-makers, and that beyond the duties of wives and mothers, their training was somewhat deficient. Therefore he was not a little amazed that this maid of Athens could express her views on religion with the assurance of a man.
“If a prayer to the Deity saved you, can not another such prayer save your ships there at Salamis?” he asked, but so kindly that she did not resent his question.
“Let us go to the shore,” she cried eagerly, “and there I shall pray that success may come to my poor fellow-countrymen who know that their beloved city lies in ashes!”
As they ascended the ravine which intersects the range of Mt. Aegaleos and gazed beyond toward the low hills which lay like purple velvet, fold on fold, it seemed to the man and the maid that hatred and warfare must be altogether odious to a God who had created such beauty. And it seemed to them that man, the crown of his creation, was not fashioned for the murder of his fellows, or to perish on the bloody field of battle. They passed numerous sanctuaries and temples whose white pillars stood like silent ghosts hiding amid the dark foliage of shady groves, or half concealed behind some grassy hillock, but always the great vault of the universal temple impressed upon them their common beliefs. At length from the top of a woody eminence they beheld the silvery sheet of the bay of Salamis, dotted with the Greek triremes.
“Let us take this wooded path to the south,” suggested Zopyrus. “It will take us to the shore at a point considerably north of the Persian forces and out of the danger of meeting any chance pedestrians to Eleusis.”
Persephone had explained that the road which they had traveled up to this point was indeed the Sacred Way which led from Athens to the city of Eleusis where there was a temple dedicated to the worship of Demeter and of Dionysus.
“Many of my friends are now on yonder island,” said Persephone pointing in the direction of the mountains of Salamis which girdled the bay.
“Why were you not with them in this time of peril to your city?” asked the Persian.