Chamai, ever full of interest in Chryseis, expressed his pleasure at hearing that she was about to go amongst a people kindred to herself, and was inquiring whether they were a martial race, when Chryseis interposed, and with Hanno's assistance explained that the Dorians, like the Ionians of the Isles, and the Achaians on the mainland, were renowned warriors, and that the fame of their conquests had spread far and wide.
"How large, how vast the world must be!" exclaimed Hannibal; "here is a people, famed in war, whose very name I scarcely know. But is it not from Crete that we get our Chalcidian swords?"
Smiling at his mistake, I made him understand that Chalcidian swords were made of copper from the island of Chalcis, and that the Phœnicians could not elsewhere procure copper that would take so fine a temper.
Hannibal went on to ask Hanno to inquire of Chryseis what were the military tactics of the Ionians, and how they paid their soldiers.
"Do you expect us women to know such things as these?" asked Abigail, with a merry laugh; "a woman knows well enough that her countrymen can fight, and she knows how to prize the spoils they bring her from the battle-field; but what can she know of the art of war?"
Chryseis seemed amused at her maid's vivacity, and proceeded to enumerate the most illustrious military leaders of her land. I heard her name Achilles, and Ajax, and a certain king called Agamemnon; and I understood her to relate that two kings in her country, named Jason and Ulysses, were renowned for the voyages they had made.
"Voyages!" cried Himilco, scornfully; "I can guess what their voyages were: creeping along and hugging the shore; making perhaps a stadium a day; never looking at a star. And then, what ships they had! I am glad I haven't to trust myself in one of them from Sidon to Chittim."
Chryseis owned that, as to ships, she had never seen anything in her own country that could be compared to the ships of the Phœnicians, adding that she thought that the mariners of Phœnicia must be true sea-gods.
"And you must be their goddess," said Hanno, with enthusiasm.