“We shall see.”
“No doubt Xerxes will find his fleet untrustworthy. The Egyptian sailors hate the Phœnicians. Therefore we can risk a sea fight.”
“No rashness, Themistocles.”
“Yes—it is dicing against the Fates, and the stake is the freedom of Hellas. Still a battle must be risked. If we quit ourselves bravely, our names shall be remembered as long as Agamemnon’s.”
“Or Priam’s?—his Troy was sacked.”
“And you, my dear king of Sparta, will of course move heaven and earth to have your Ephors and Council somewhat more forward than of late in preparing for war? We all count on you.”
“I will try.”
“Who can ask more? But now make an end to statecraft. We were speaking about the pentathlon and the chances of—”
Here the same brawling voices that had arrested Simonides broke upon Themistocles and Leonidas also. The cry “A fight!” was producing its inevitable result. Scores of men, and those not the most aristocratic, were running pell-mell whither so many had thronged already. In the confusion scant reverence was paid the king of Sparta and the first statesman of Athens, who were thrust unceremoniously aside and were barely witnesses of what followed.
The outcry was begun, after-report had it, by a Sicyonian bronze-dealer finding a small but valuable lamp missing from the table whereon he showed his wares. Among the dozen odd persons pressing about the booth his eye singled out a slight, handsome boy in Oriental dress; and since Syrian serving-lads were proverbially light-fingered, the Sicyonian jumped quickly at his conclusion.