CHAPTER VI
ATHENS
In Athens! Shall one mount the Acropolis or enter the market place? Worship in the temple of the Virgin Athena, or descend to the Agora and the roar of its getters and spenders? For Athens has two faces—toward the ideal, toward the commonplace. Who can regard both at once? Let the Acropolis, its sculptures, its landscape, wait. It has waited for men three thousand years. And so to the Agora.
“Full market time.” The Agora was a beehive. From the round Tholus at the south to the long portico at the north all was babel and traffic. Donkeys raised their wheezing protest against too heavy loads of farm produce. Megarian swine squealed and tugged at their leg-cords. An Asiatic sailor clamoured at the money-changer’s stall for another obol in change for a Persian daric. “Buy my oil!” bawled the huckster from his wicker booth beside the line of Hermes-busts in the midst of the square. “Buy my charcoal!” roared back a companion, whilst past both was haled a grinning negro with a crier who bade every gentleman to “mark his chance” for a fashionable servant. Phocian the quack was hawking his toothache salve from the steps of the Temple of Apollo. Deira, the comely flower girl, held out crowns of rose, violet, and narcissus to the dozen young dandies who pressed about her. Around the Hermes-busts idle crowds were reading the legal notices plastered on the base of each statue. A file of mules and wagons was plough[pg 63]ing through the multitude with marble for some new building. Every instant the noise grew. Pandora’s box had opened, and every clamour had flitted out.
At the northern end, where the porticos and the long Dromos street ran off toward the Dipylon gate, stood the shop of Clearchus the potter. A low counter was covered with the owner’s wares,—tall amphoræ for wine, flat beakers, water-pots, and basins. Behind, two apprentices whirled the wheel, another glazed on the black varnish and painted the jars with little red loves and dancing girls. Clearchus sat on the counter with three friends,—come not to trade but to barter the latest gossip from the barber-shops: Agis the sharp, knavish cockpit and gaming-house keeper, Crito the fat mine-contractor, and finally Polus, gray and pursy, who “devoted his talents to the public weal,” in other words was a perpetual juryman and likewise busybody.
The latest rumour about Xerxes having been duly chewed, conversation began to lag.
“An idle day for you, my Polus,” threw out Clearchus.
“Idle indeed! No jury sits to-day in the King Archon’s Porch or the ‘Red Court’; I can’t vote to condemn that Heraclius who’s exported wheat contrary to the law.”