BY S. SCOVILLE, JUN.
Thronged to the gates is the little town of Elis on this the night before the Olympic Games. Here are present not only men of every Grecian city and province, but strange wanderers from the uttermost corners of the world have assembled to view the games that honor the Ruler of the Gods.
Far away across the plain—so far that the many-voiced tumult of the crowded city is but an echo—in dark silence stand the sacred olive groves. Against the grayish-green foliage gleam the white tents of the athletes, chosen from all Greece, who are to compete on the morrow. Close to where towers the vast temple of Olympian Zeus, the world-wonder that Lidon made, is a little group of tents that shelter the men of Croton, famed for the might of her athletes. One of all the competitors lies wakeful. Dion, the son of Glaucus, gazes from his couch with wide-open eyes out into the night, sees the glimmer of the stars through the flickering leaves, listens to the whisper of the boughs overhead, and sleeps not. On the morrow he, a youth of eighteen, is to run in the dolichos, the hardest race of the games. His breath comes in gasps and the blood drums in the boy's ears as for the hundredth time in fancy he runs his race. The horrible waiting, the strain of suspense, have unnerved many an athlete more seasoned than Dion. A short hour before, Hippomaches, the grizzled old trainer of Croton, had made a final visit to see that all was well with his charges. Close on his departure came Glaucus, the boy's father, a man well past three score, yet with massive frame seemingly untouched by time as when, forty-four years ago, the mighty Milo of Syracuse had fallen before him under such a deadly cestus-stroke that the "blow of Glaucus" passed into a proverb. Dion, who had inherited the slighter frame and almost girlish beauty of a Thessalian mother, has always felt more of awe than affection for his silent Lacedæmonian father, little knowing what a wealth of love for his latest-born the grim old Spartan concealed under his impassive coldness.
To-night Glaucus stands for long without speaking, gazing down at his son, while the stern, unflinching eyes become very soft. Then, to the amazement of Dion, the hand that for nine Olympiads had won the wreath from the world's mightiest rests on his yellow hair, tenderly as a woman's.
"Dion, my son," and the deep voice trembles a little, "thou knowest how that our blood has ever brought glory to Croton. That the statues of thy grandfather, thy father, and thy two brothers all stand in this grove among the winners of Olympiads. Now thy turn hath come. Oh, my son, my son, for the love thy father bears thee, for the honor of city and blood, win the wreath to-morrow!"—and Glaucus is gone.
Through the black tree-trunks steals a wavering glow from where the lone priestess of Hestia tends the eternal flame that forever burns on the Prytaneum. From either side of Dion's tent he hears the deep, regular breathing of his twin brothers, men of tremendous strength and stature like to their father, who have won fame almost equal to his—one as a wrestler, the other as a boxer. Veterans are they in many a hard-fought contest at the great games—Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian—and, certain of success, rest untroubled by any feverish imaginings.
Dion's thoughts go back to that Olympiad in which his brothers scored a double victory for Croton. Before the silent multitude that day Glaucus blessed his sons for the glory they had brought him.
Every honor was heaped on the winners that Greece had to bestow. World poets and singers gave of their genius to adorn the names of the sons of Glaucus. Phidias himself made them immortal in snowy marble. The journey homeward was one long series of triumphs; and when at last the Olympiad-winners reached distant Croton, a breach was made through the solid masonry of the city wall for their entry, no mere gateway sufficing. Met by the assembled Council of Croton, they were formally installed in the Prytaneum as guests of the city for life.
And Dion, still thrilling at the remembrance of that day, falls asleep.
In the gray hour just before dawn Hippomaches rouses the boy from an uneasy slumber, and then with the clear oil rubs out every trace of stiffness from the lithe polished limbs of his charge. The nude youth stands in his manly beauty like a statue to Speed carved in ivory, his white skin crimson-tinged where the friction has brought the warm blood to the surface, while the coiling muscles ripple with every movement across the slim sinewy frame, from which years of training have taken away every ounce of useless fat.