A Victor of Salamis

by William Stearns Davis

So ended the first day after news came of the fighting. The second was like it—only more tense. Hermione never knew that snail called time to creep more slowly. Never had she chafed more against the iron custom which commanded Athenian gentlewomen to keep, tortoise-like, at home in days of distress and tumult. On the evening of the second day came once more the dusty courier. Leonidas was holding the gate of Hellas. The Barbarians had perished by thousands. At Artemisium, Themistocles and the allied Greek admirals were making head against the Persian armadas. But still nothing was decided. Still the Spartan host lingered at the Isthmus, and Leonidas must fight his battle alone. The sun sank that night with tens of thousands wishing his car might stand fast. At gray dawn Athens was awake and watching. Men forgot to eat, forgot to drink. One food would have contented—news!

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It was about noon—“the end of market time,” had there been any market then at Athens—when Hermione knew by instinct that news had come from the battle and that it [pg 262]was evil. She and her mother had sat since dawn by the upper window, craning forth their heads up the street toward the Agora, where they knew all couriers must hasten. Along the street in all the houses other women were peering forth also. When little Phœnix cried in his cradle, his mother for the first time in his life almost angrily bade him be silent. Cleopis, the only one of the fluttering servants who went placidly about the wonted tasks, vainly coaxed her young mistress with figs and a little wine. Hermippus was at the council. The street, save for the leaning heads of the women, was deserted. Then suddenly came a change.

First a man ran toward the Agora, panting,—his himation blew from his shoulders, he never stopped to recover it. Next shouts, scattered in the beginning, then louder, and coming not as a roar but as a wailing, rising, falling like the billows of the howling sea,—as if the thousands in the market-place groaned in sore agony. Shrill and hideous they rose, and a hand of ice fell on the hearts of the listening women. Then more runners, until the street seemed alive by magic, slaves and old men all crowding to the Agora. And still the shout and ever more dreadful. The women leaned from the windows and cried vainly to the trampling crowd below.

“Tell us! In the name of Athena, tell us!” No answer for long, till at last a runner came not toward the Agora but from it. They had hardly need to hear what he was calling.

“Leonidas is slain. Thermopylæ is turned! Xerxes is advancing!”

Hermione staggered back from the lattice. In the cradle Phœnix awoke; seeing his mother bending over him, he crowed cheerily and flung his chubby fists in her face. She caught him up and again could not fight the tears away.

“Glaucon! Glaucon!” she prayed,—for her husband was all but a deity in her sight,—“hear us wherever you are, even if in the blessed land of Rhadamanthus. Take us thither, your child and me, for there is no peace or shelter left on earth!”

Then, seeing her panic-stricken women flying hither and thither like witless birds, her patrician blood asserted itself. She dashed the drops from her eyes and joined her mother in quieting the maids. Whatever there was to hope or fear, their fate would not be lightened by wild moaning. Soon the direful wailing from the Agora ceased. A blue flag waved over the Council House, a sign that the “Five Hundred” had been called in hurried session. Simultaneously a dense column of smoke leaped up from the market-place. The archons had ordered the hucksters’ booths to be burned, as a signal to all Attica that the worst had befallen.

After inexpressibly long waiting Phormio came, then Hermippus, to tell all they knew. Leonidas had perished gloriously. His name was with the immortals, but the mountain wall of Hellas had been unlocked. No Spartan army was in Bœotia. The bravest of Athens were in the fleet. The easy Attic passes of Phyle and Decelea could never be defended. Nothing could save Athens from Xerxes. The calamity had been foreseen, but to foresee is not to realize. That night in Athens no man slept.