Them I escaped to be drowned in the harbour of Scarphe.
Vain is their fame.
Pray, if you will, for a fair voyaging homeward, but say:
Here in his tomb Aristagoras knows of the sea and its way—
Ever the same.”
It requires no great stretch of the imagination to reproduce the thrill of pride and delight with which the Attic demesman, whether sailor or soldier, fisherman or merchant, returning from abroad sighted the heights of Akte and the Munychia acropolis and sailed up to the beautiful, dignified city built around its strong, fortified harbours. Even after independent Athens had been incorporated in the Macedonian empire, Menander could record this patriotic delight. In a fragment from his “Fishers” a sailor, returning perhaps to Piræus, falls down and kisses the earth, exclaiming:—
“Greeting, O dear my country, long the time gone by
Till now I see and kiss thee. Not to every land
Would I do this, but only when I see my own,
The land that bred me is a goddess in my eyes.”