CHAPTER VII.
THE LAST OF THE GREEKS.
Most of Cleanor's fellow-passengers on board the _Nereid_--for this wasthe name of the singularly un-nymphlike trading vessel that carried himto Corinth--were a curious medley of races and occupations. Corinth wasthe mart of the western world, and was frequented, for business or forpleasure, by all its races. There were soothsayers from Egypt, who foundtheir customers all the more credulous because they boasted that theybelieved in nothing; Syrian conjurors; Hebrew slave-dealers; a mixedtroop of commercial travellers; and a couple of grave-looking,long-bearded men who, in spite of their philosophers' cloaks, wereperhaps the greediest, the most venal of all.
One passenger, however, was of a very different class. He was aSyracusan noble, erect and vigorous notwithstanding his seventy years,whose dignified bearing and refined features spoke plainly enough ofhigh breeding and culture. He was a descendant of Archias, theCorinthian emigrant, who, some six centuries before, had founded thecolony of Syracuse, and he was coming, as he told Cleanor, in whom hehad discovered a congenial companion, on a religious mission. The tiethat bound a Greek colony to the mother city had a certain sanctityabout it. Sentiment there was, and the bond of mutual advantage; butthere was more, a feeling of filial reverence and duty, which wasexpressed by appropriate solemnities.
"I am bringing," said Archias--he bore the same name as his far-awayancestor--"the yearly offering from Syracuse the daughter to Corinth themother. I have done it now more than thirty times. But I feel a certainforeboding that I shall not come on the same errand again. If that meansonly that my own time is near, it is nothing. I have had my share oflife. The gods have dealt bountifully with me, and if they call me Ishall go without grumbling. But I can't help feeling that it issomething more than the trifle of my own life that is concerned, thatsome evil is impending either over Syracuse or over Corinth. As for myown city, I don't see where the trouble is to come from. We have longsince bowed our necks to the yoke, and we bear it without wincing. Forbearable it is, though it is heavy. But for Corinth I own that I havemany fears. She is restless, she is vain; she has ambitions to whichshe is not equal. The gods help her and save her, or take me away beforemy eyes see her ruin!"
As they were drawing near their journey's end Archias warmly invited hisyoung friend to make his home with him during his stay in Corinth.
"I have an apartment," he said, "reserved for me in the home of theguest-friend of Syracuse. The city rents it for me, and makes me anallowance for the expenses of my journey. I feel bound to accept it,though, without at all wishing to boast of my wealth, I may say that Idon't need it. You must not think that you are burdening a poorman--that is all. I can introduce you to everybody that is worth knowingin Corinth, and, if you have any business on hand, shall doubtless beable to help you. And it will be a pleasure, I assure you, to have acompanion who is not wearied with an old man's complaints of the newtimes."
Cleanor thankfully accepted the invitation. When the _Nereid_ reachedthe port of Corinth he found that the Syracusan's arrival had beenexpected. A chariot was in waiting at the quay to convey them to thecity. At the apartment all preparations for the comfort of the guestswere complete--it was a standing order that a provision sufficient fortwo should be made. First there was the bath,--more than usuallywelcome after the somewhat squalid conditions of life on board themerchantman,--and after the bath a meal, excellently cooked andelegantly served.
The meal ended, Cleanor felt moved to become more confidential with hisnew friend than he had hitherto been. Naturally he had been veryreserved, giving no reason for Archias to suppose that he had otherobjects in his travels than amusement or instruction. But he felt thatit would be somewhat ungracious to maintain this attitude while he wasenjoying so kind and generous an hospitality. In a conversation that wasprolonged far into the night he opened up his mind with considerablefreedom. His precise schemes he did not mention; they were scarcely hisown secret; and he said nothing about Hasdrubal, feeling--for he hadstudied history with intelligence and sympathy--that a Syracusan noblewould scarcely look with favour on anything that came from Carthage, theoldest and bitterest enemy of his country. But he gave a generaldescription of his hope and aim, a common union of the world under theleadership of the Greek race against the domination with which Rome wasthreatening it.
The Syracusan listened with profound attention. "It has done me good,"he said, "to hear you. I did not know that such enthusiasm was to befound nowadays. The very word has gone out of fashion, I may say falleninto disrepute. It used to mean inspiration, now it means madness. Ouryoung men care for nothing but sport, and even their sport has to bedone for them by others. They have chariots, but they hire men to drivethem; the cestus[13] and the wrestling ring are left to professionalathletes. The only game which they are not too languid to practise withtheir own hands is the _kottabos_, and the _kottabos_[14] is not exactlythat for which our fathers valued all these things, a preparation forwar. I hate to discourage you, but I should be sorry to see you ruiningyour life in some hopeless cause."
"But, if I may say so much with all respect, isn't this exactly what hasbeen said time after time? May there not be something better than youthink, than anybody would think, in these frivolous young fellows? Whowould have thought Alcibiades anything but a foolish fop, and yet what asoldier he was when the time came!"
"Well, I hope that you are right," replied the old man; "only yourAlcibiades must make haste to show himself, or else it will be too late.But it is not only this, the folly and frivolity of the youth, thatdiscourages me; it is the hopeless meanness and jealousy of the variousstates. If I could raise from the dead the very best leader a Greek cityever had, I should still despair. Now listen to the story that I haveto tell you. Don't think that I am a mere grumbler, who does his best todiscourage thoughts that are too high for him to understand; I speakfrom a bitter experience. But you shall hear.
"I am just old enough to remember the storm and sack of my native cityby the Romans. I was but five years old, but even a child of five doesnot forget when he sees, as I saw, his father and his elder brotherkilled before his eyes. I should have been killed myself--for thesoldiers, who had suffered terribly in the siege, spared no one--but forMarcellus himself.[15] He let the slave who waited on me carry me off tohis own hut. That worthy slave and his good wife kept me for five yearsout of their scanty wages--he was a workman in the stone-quarries, andshe sold cakes to schoolboys in the streets--till I was ten years old.Then interest was made with the Senate at Rome, and part of the familyproperty was given back to me. You will understand that I was veryrestless at Syracuse, but I could not move till I was twenty-five, formy father's will had fixed this age for my becoming my own master. It isa custom in our family, and I was too dutiful to think of breaking it.But the moment I became my own master I made haste to carry out a planwhich I had been long thinking of. The famous soldier of the time wasPhilopoemen, the Arcadian. It was a privilege to serve under him as avolunteer, and there were always ten times more applications than therewere places to fill. However, by great good luck, and partly, I may say,through my having had the good fortune to win the foot-race at Olympia,I was chosen. I landed here--it is more than forty-five years ago--andmade my way to his home in Arcadia. He had himself just come back fromSparta, which he had brought over to the cause of Greece. Sparta, as Idare say you know, has always cared much for herself, and very littlefor anything or anybody else. I shall never forget what happened a fewdays after my arrival. The Spartans, or, I should rather say, thereforming party among the Spartans--for there never was a Greek city yetbut had two parties in it at the very least--felt greatly obliged to himfor what he had done, and determined to make him a present. Well, theysent three of their chief citizens to offer it to him. They came, andPhilopoemen entertained them. Of course he knew nothing about theobject of their coming, and they said nothing about it. They seemed illat ease--that I could not help observing--though their host was all thatwas courteous and agreeabl
e; but speak they couldn't. There wassomething about the man which positively forbade their mentioning sucha matter. The next day they went away, leaving their offer unspoken. Butas they could hardly go back to Sparta with this story, they put thematter into the hands of an old friend to carry out.
"It seems an easy thing to get rid of a pocketful of gold, but this mandidn't find it so. Everything about Philopoemen was so simple, sofrugal, he seemed so absolutely above things of the kind, that it wasimpossible to offer him money. The man went away without sayinganything. He came a second time, and it was the same thing all overagain. I don't say but what Philopoemen had now some inkling of whatwas on hand. There was a twinkle in his eye, as if he was enjoying somejoke greatly. As for me, I was completely mystified. Then the threeSpartans came back again, and this time they forced themselves to speak,and, of course, did it in the clumsiest, most brutal fashion. It was alarge sum, too, a hundred and twenty talents,[16] if I remember right.
"Philopoemen smiled. 'My friends,' he said, 'you would have laid outthis money very badly if I were to take it. Don't buy your friends; youhave them already. Buy your enemies.'
"And a good friend he showed himself. He wasn't in office then, and thePresident of the League, having a difference with the Spartans in somematter of no great importance, was all for using force.
"'Pray,' said Philopoemen to him, 'don't do anything of the kind. Itis sheer madness to quarrel with a great Greek state, when the Romansare on the watch to take advantage of our divisions.'
"And when he found that speaking was of no use, he mounted his horse androde straight to Sparta--I was with him--to warn them of what was goingto be done. Sure enough, in the course of ten days or so, the Presidentcomes with some five thousand men of his own and half a Roman legion;but Sparta was ready. They had to go back again without doing any harm.Some two months afterwards he was chosen President--for the eighth timeit was--very much against his will, for he had passed his seventiethyear, and was hoping to spend the rest of his days in peace. But it wasnot to be. There was a revolution in Messene, one of the endless changeswhich tempt one to think, against one's own conscience, that the steady,fixed rule of an able, honest tyrant is the best kind of government thata state can have. The Messenians, accordingly, renounced the League.This might have been endured; but it was another matter when theyproceeded to seize a strong place outside their own borders.Philopoemen was lying sick with fever at the time in Argos, but heleft his bed immediately, and was on horseback in less than an hour. Iwas with him; indeed, I never left him of my own free will. Beforenightfall we had reached his home in Arcadia, four hundred furlongs wasthe distance, and the roads about as rough and steep as you will findanywhere in Greece. The next day he sent round the city calling forvolunteers. Some three hundred joined him--gentlemen, all of them, whofurnished their own arms, and rode their own horses. We had a smartbrush with the enemy, and got the better of them. But they were stronglyreinforced, and as we were now heavily overmatched, Philopoemen gavethe signal to fall back. His one thought now was to save the volunteers.
"'They are the heart's blood of the city,' he said to me, 'and they mustnot be wasted.'
"He placed himself with a few troopers, who formed his body-guard, inthe rear, and protected their retreat. He was a famous swordsman, youmust know, and old as he was, there were very few who cared to come toclose quarters with him. But of course they had their darts, and he wassoon wounded in several places, as, indeed, we all were. And then onsome very rough ground his horse stumbled and threw him. He was an oldman, you see, and he had had two days of hard riding, and the feverfit--which was of the ague kind, caught some years before when he wascampaigning in Crete--was coming upon him.
"'Save yourselves,' he said to us; 'your country will want you for manyyears yet, but I am an old man.'
"However, he gave me leave to stay; the others he commanded on theirobedience to go. When the enemy came up he had fainted. They thought hewas dead, and began to strip him of his arms, but before they hadfinished he came to himself. My blood boils to this day when I think howthey treated him. They bound his hands behind his back, and drove himbefore them on foot as he was, half-dead with fatigue and sickness.
"That night we bivouacked in the open. Some of the troopers had afeeling of pity or shame. One lent him his cloak to keep the cold off,though he had to go without one himself; another shared his ration ofbread, dried meat, and rough wine with him. On the evening of the nextday we came to Messene town, and I must do the townsfolk the justice tosay that the sight was not at all to their liking. I heard many of themcursing the man--Deinocrates was his name, and he was as ill-conditioneda scoundrel as there was in Greece--who had given the orders for it tobe done. Still, no one had the courage to interfere, and Deinocratesdetermined to finish matters before he was hindered; for he knewperfectly well that the League would spare nothing to get back theirpresident.
He thrust him, therefore, into a dungeon that was called the Treasury,a dreadful hole without a window or door, but having the entrance to itblocked by a huge stone. "Deinocrates then held a hurried council withsome of his own party. They voted with one accord for death. Whatfollowed I heard from the executioner himself, who was one ofDeinocrates' slaves. His story was this:
"'My master said to me, 'Take this cup'--I guessed from the look and thesmell that it was hemlock--'to the prisoner, and don't leave him till hedrinks it.' I went in--it wanted but a little time to midnight--andfound Philopoemen awake. 'Ah!' he said, when he saw me, 'your masteris a generous man, and sends me, I doubt not, a draught of one of hisrichest vintages. But before I drink it, answer me, if you can, onequestion. Have any prisoners been brought in?' I said that I had notheard of any. 'None of the young horsemen that were with me?' I saidthat I had not seen them. He smiled and said, 'You bring good tidings.Things have not gone altogether ill with me.' Then he took the cup anddrank it up without another word. This done he lay down again. I watchedby him, but though I heard him breathing heavily he never moved. Justbefore cock-crow I judged that he died, for it was then that breathingceased, and when I put my hand on his heart I could feel nothing.'
"That was the end of Philopoemen, 'the last of the Greeks', as I heardan enemy, a Roman, call him. And what, my dear young friend, can Greecedo without Greeks?"
FOOTNOTES:
13: The ancient boxing-glove, a formidable construction fitted to the hand, of leather thongs heavily loaded with lead.
14: This consisted in throwing wine out of a cup into a bowl placed at some distance. The game was played in various ways.
15: Marcellus was the Roman general in command.
16: £27,000 in our money, reckoning by weight at five shillings per ounce for silver. This would mean a great deal more in purchasing power, not less than £100,000.
Lords of the World: A story of the fall of Carthage and Corinth Page 9
