Old Myrmex shook his head.
“May all this give you happiness!” he murmured.
III.
The master and slave continued their way towards the Cerameicus.
The district through which they were walking was the most rugged part of Athens, and the eye everywhere met the proud outlines of steep mountains. A few hundred paces on the right towered the Acropolis; a little farther away at the left lay the Museium, and five hundred paces in front the broad Pnyx and steep Areopagus rose into the air. Most of these heights were considerable cliffs and the two nearest, the Acropolis and the Museium, towered hundreds of ells above the stony ground where the road lay.
It was a bright, clear evening in the month Boedromion. The wind was dying away; but every time a faint breeze swept by it bore a peculiar spicy odor from the wild thyme that grew on Mt. Hymettus. The crescent moon was high in the heavens. The Acropolis, with the temple on its summit, appeared like a huge, shadowy mass, against which the greyish flanks of the Museium lay bathed in moonlight, so that one could count the little white houses.
Suddenly from the distance a loud shriek of pain echoed through the evening stillness and repose. A man’s deep voice moaned as if some one were suffering a torturing death-agony. More than twenty times the: Oi moi! Oi moi! (Woe is me! Woe is me!) was repeated. Every syllable, every intonation was borne through the soft air with peculiar distinctness. A little later the sound became fainter till at last it died away in a dull, breathless silence.
Hipyllos started, though he had heard piteous wails in this place before.
The cries came from a part of the height where there were no houses. The interior of the cliff was doubtless inhabited, for about twenty yards above the place where the road wound light shone through twenty or thirty small holes in the mass of rock. These holes, ranged in two rows, may be seen at the present day, and inside of them lay—and still remain—some ancient cliff-chambers, whose origin mocks human speculation, since even that period—nearly twenty-three centuries ago—possessed no knowledge of whose hands had formed them or—if they were tombs—whose bones had mouldered there. At that time these rooms were used for prisons, and many a criminal sentenced to death was here—where no escape was possible—compelled to drain the poisoned cup.
Hearing the wails reminded Hipyllos that “the eleven” were in the habit of going at sundown to the prison to loose the chains of the condemned criminal and inform him that his last hour had come. The hapless man then took a bath, and was afterwards compelled to drink a goblet of hemlock juice and pace up and down the narrow room until his limbs grew cold under him. Then he was obliged to lie down on the couch, cover his face, and await death. It was during this torturing expectation that even the strongest man uttered lamentations.