“Even so, wise Myrmex.”
TOO HAPPY.
THIRD YEAR OF THE 98TH OLYMPIAD (386 B.C.)
TOO HAPPY.
One beautiful summer day in the month Metageitnion a large ship sailed past the eastern point of Crete and steered with its two shovel-shaped rudders into the Ægean Sea. A fresh east wind fluttered the purple flag and made the white sail, strengthened by a network of cordage, swell above the waves.
The ship was called a Samian, and its deeply-arched bow showed that it was built to contain a large cargo. Although nearly a quarter of a stadium long—or about as large as the largest war-vessel of those days—she was evidently a peaceful trader; for below the protecting figure-head—a Doris, daughter of Oceanus—with which the curve of the prow was adorned and whose name the ship bore, one would have vainly looked for the weapons peculiar to a ship’s armament, the projecting iron-shod embolus or beak. On the stern was the statue of the goddess Athene, the familiar “Attic sign,” which showed that the vessel was an Athenian ship. To strengthen the joining of the planks the hull, from stem to stem, was surrounded with numerous belts of thick ropes which, like the hull itself, were smeared with a mixture of pitch and wax. Along the vessel’s sides appeared a row of semi-circular air-holes, and through the openings made for the rudders ran the hawsers wound about a capstan. Outside, just below the figure-head, two huge eyes were painted—probably to indicate that the ship understood how to find her way over the sea.
At the curve of the prow, the highest part of the Samian, where the bearded steersman managed the double helm, stood a little group of travellers talking gaily with each other. They were Lydian and Phoenician merchants, availing themselves of the opportunity to go to Athens, as the merchantman, after having visited the most important ports in Asia Minor, would return home fully laden to the Piræeus for repairs.
The sailors who had gathered in the bow sang their monotonous songs or fell asleep, stretched in the shade behind the sail, in the very act of chewing onions, while some young slaves, busied in making preparations for an approaching meal, moved to and fro among them.
At the foot of the mast was a red and white striped tent, low enough not to interfere with the movements of the sail. This tent was closed by a curtain, though not so completely that those within could not keep an eye upon a little white-robed boy four or five years old, who was riding up and down on a speckled hobby-horse. The space for play was very small and he sometimes ran among a pile of chests and boxes, where he tripped, stumbled, and almost fell. Whenever this happened, a woman’s voice inside the pavilion said: