* * * * *
You shall find food, drink, odour all at once."
He called upon her to save their little band by singing a strophe. But she could do better than that—she could recite a whole play:
"That strangest, saddest, sweetest song of his,
Alkestis!"
Only that very year had it reached "Our Isle o' the Rose"; she had seen it, at Kameiros, played just as it was played at Athens, and had learnt by heart "the perfect piece." Now, quick and subtle for all her enthusiasm, she remembers to tell the Sicilians how, besides "its beauty and the way it makes you weep," it does much honour to their own loved deity:
"Herakles, whom you house i' the city here
Nobly, the Temple wide Greece talks about;
I come a suppliant to your Herakles!
Take me and put me on his temple-steps
To tell you his achievement as I may."
"Then," she continues, in a passage which rings out again in the Apology:
"Then, because Greeks are Greeks, and hearts are hearts,
And poetry is power—they all outbroke
In a great joyous laughter with much love:
'Thank Herakles for the good holiday!
Make for the harbour! Row, and let voice ring:
In we row bringing in Euripides!'"
So did the Rhodians land at Syracuse. And the whole city, hearing the cry "In we row," which was taken up by the crowd around the harbour-quays, came rushing out to meet them, and Balaustion, standing on the topmost step of the Temple of Herakles, told the play:
"Told it, and, two days more, repeated it,
Until they sent us on our way again
With good words and great wishes."