He walked almost an hour, keeping ever before him the red mountain with the city at its base, and on its summit the innumerable constructions of the Acropolis. At a turn of the road he saw the people stop before a shrine—a long altar of stone, upon which an enormous serpent of blue marble extended its scaly rings. The rustics deposited flowers and earthen cups of milk before the motionless reptile, which with head lifted and venomous jaws open seemed to threaten them. In this place the unfortunate Zacynthus had been bitten by the serpent as he was returning to Greece with the red cattle stolen from Geryon. His body was burned on the Acropolis, and the city grew around the spot. The simple people worshipped the reptile as one of the founders of their patria, and with affectionate words they surrounded it with offerings, which mysteriously disappeared, causing many to believe that it came to life in the dark, and they imagined that they heard its frightful hissing for great distances on stormy nights.
As Actæon drew nearer to Saguntum he saw the tombs which rose on both sides of the road, attracting the attention of the traveler by their inscriptions. Behind these extended gardens enclosed by thick hedges over which peeped the branches of fruit trees belonging to the country-houses of the rich. Some slave women were watching nude children of pronounced Grecian type who played and wrestled. A corpulent old man, wrapped in a purple chlamys, stood in a garden gateway observing the passing of the flood of wretched people with the cold arrogance of a merchant newly risen to affluence. On the terrace of a villa Actæon fancied that he saw a gold-dyed coiffure in Athenian style interlaced with red ribbons, and near it a waving fan of multicolored feathers of Asiatic birds. These were the villas of the rich patricians of Saguntum who had retired from business.
Upon nearing the river, the Bætis-Perkes, which divided the city from the champaign, the Greek noticed that he was walking beside a girl, almost a child, driving a flock of goats before her. Slender, well-formed, with spare limbs, her skin a brown and velvety color, she would have looked like a boy had it not been that her short tunic, open on the left side, afforded glimpses of her slightly rounded breast, with a gentle cup-like curve, as it were a bud beginning to expand with the vigor of youth. Her black eyes, moist and large, seemed to fill her whole face, bathing it with a mysterious effulgence, and through her lips, dry and cracked by the wind, shone her white teeth, strong and regular. Her hair knotted behind her neck she had adorned with a garland of poppies plucked in the wheat. She carried over her shoulder with masculine ease a heavy net filled with white cheeses as round as loaves of bread, fresh, and still oozing whey. With her disengaged hand she was caressing the white fleece of a straight-horned goat, her favorite, which rubbed against her limbs, ringing a little copper bell worn on its neck.
Actæon was charmed contemplating her girlish figure, so sturdy for labor, in which the freshness of youth triumphed over fatigue. Her slenderness, with lines erect and harmonious, reminded him of the elegance of the Tanagra figurines on the tables of the hetæræ of Athens; of the imperious virility of the canephoræ painted in black around Greek vases.
The girl cast furtive glances at him, and then smiled, showing her teeth with juvenile confidence on feeling herself admired.
"You are a Greek, are you not?"
She spoke like the people of the port, in that strange idiom of a maritime city open to all peoples, a mixture of Celtiberian, Greek, and Latin.
"I am from Athens. And you—who are you?"
"I am called Rhanto, and my mistress is Sónnica the rich. Have you not heard of her? Her ships are in every port, she has slaves by the hundred, and she drinks from cups of gold. Do you see above those olive trees, on the side toward the sea, that small rose-colored tower? It is the villa where she lives as soon as the passing of winter allows her to leave the city. I belong at the villa, and I am in her service during the open season. My father has charge of her flocks, and she often comes down to our stables to play with the goats."
Actæon was surprised at the frequency with which he had heard of Sónnica since setting foot on Saguntine soil. The name of that opulent woman, whom some called "the rich," and others "the courtesan," was in every mouth. The shepherdess, who evinced a certain attraction toward the stranger, continued: