Old Myrmex did not care for the sea-breeze. He was suffering from lumbago and, at the first puff of the damp air, he took his torch into his left hand and rubbed his side with the right—an act in which he was not impeded by his clothing, which consisted of a dark exomis, the usual garment worn by slaves, and which, to give freedom of motion, left the right arm, shoulder, and side bare.
About the middle of the street the way led close by a side-building, doubtless the women’s apartment of a stately house that apparently belonged to a wealthy citizen. From one of the sparsely scattered thyrides, a kind of air-hole, the light of a lamp streamed into the darkness. Hipyllos paused. This light must have had some peculiar charm for him, he could not turn his eyes from it.
As if in the mood when some secret joy renders men communicative he suddenly patted the old man on the shoulder, saying:
“Myrmex, do you know whence that light shines?” And, without waiting for an answer, he added: “From the room occupied by Clytie, the fairest of all Athenian maidens.”
Myrmex stared at Hipyllos with his mouth wide open in amazement.
“Master, master!” he stammered, “what have you taken into your head?”
Hipyllos did not hear. But Myrmex feared his master was in the act of committing some hasty deed, and he knew that when a citizen was guilty of a crime, but denied his offence, it was ordained that he should have one of his slaves tortured. The law was based on the belief that the slave would testify against his master and, if he did not, the master’s innocence was proved.
As this did not seem to be one of the women who led a dissolute life, but a citizen’s daughter, a closely-guarded maiden, Myrmex in imagination already felt himself stretched on the rack, whipped with brushes and scourges, tortured with thumb-screws, laden with tile-stones on his stomach, and half-choked by vinegar in both nostrils. So he repeated in a still louder tone.
“Master, master, what have you taken into your head?”
Hipyllos picked up a pebble, but just as he was flinging it against the wall, as though in obedience to a preconcerted signal, he saw two shadows on the red curtain inside of the loop-hole.