Free your wives, free your children, free the fanes
O' the Gods, your fathers founded,—sepulchres
They sleep in! Or save all, or all be lost.'
The crew, impassioned by the girl, answered the song, and drove the boat on, "churning the black water white," till the land shone clear, and the wide town and the harbour, and lo, 'twas not Crete, but Syracuse, luckless fate! Out came a galley from the port. "Who are you; Sparta's friend or foe?" "Of Rhodes are we, Rhodes that has forsaken Athens!"
"How, then, that song we heard? All Athens was in that Æschylus. Your boat is full of Athenians—back to the pirate; we want no Athenians here.... Yet, stay, that song was Æschylus; every one knows it—how about Euripides? Might you know any of his verses?" For nothing helped the poor Athenians so much if any of them had his mouth stored with
Old glory, great plays that had long ago
Made themselves wings to fly about the world,—
But most of all those were cherished who could recite Euripides to Syracuse, so mighty was poetry in the ancient days to make enemies into friends, to build, beyond the wars and jealousies of the world, a land where all nations are one.
At this the captain cried: "Praise the God, we have here the very girl who will fill you with Euripides," and the passage brings Balaustion into full light.
Therefore, at mention of Euripides,