Later she heard that several of the Scythians had been killed, but that the Chief, Berris Der, and a couple of others were prisoners. As soon as they were arranged, Eurydice would send the ransoms. There was a certain amount of misunderstanding about this, and one letter went astray, but it would be got together and sent off. In the meantime Tarrik was practically unwounded and none of the others were much hurt. Berris had been stunned by a falling stone and had a nasty couple of days, but now he was all right.
Eurydice was trying to make a plan to ransom Tarrik without Berris; that was natural enough. She felt languid and yet very much alive during this very hot weather at the end of the summer. There was no wind to stir the warm air between the baked, golden brown mountains on either side of the plain of Sparta. A man was making love to her, a Rhodian merchant, younger than she was, with sliding dark eyes. She knew it was mostly, even perhaps wholly, for her money, but she did not care. She watched them bringing in the harvest, and he sat at her feet and sang and played on a very sweet-toned small harp which she had given him; the ivory of its base was engraved with the judgment of Paris. She asked him to advise her about the ransom; she was only a woman with no kind, strong man to help her!
In the meantime things happened with a certain rapidity in Sparta. Megistonous had been ransomed quickly without bargaining; he was an influence among the older people and Kleomenes wanted his help. Agiatis had terrible, vivid memories of young Agis preparing for his new laws and changes fifteen years ago. She prayed at his tomb, asking his spirit to help them, and made vows. Philylla, knowing what it was the Queen wanted, made vows too. The feeling of something about to happen grew very strong; those of the Queen’s maids who were with her in heart watched and listened and whispered; the others either laughed at them or were frightened. Philylla and one of her friends invented a secret password and a kind of sign language which made it even more exciting. Yet when it really happened, they only heard hours later, for the plan the King had made was quite quiet, as well as being quite effective.
The King had been marching up and down, harassing Aratos and the League at one point or another, and bringing up provisions to the further garrisons. His army was tired out and thankful when at last he let them settle down in camp, a day’s march north of Sparta. Then he himself with those he could trust and the best of the mercenaries, went south to Sparta, and had four of the five ephors secretly and quickly killed while they were at supper. Phoebis, who was a lawless man, did this, and with him Therykion, who felt that, having gone this far with the King, he must seal himself in blood to go further. The next day every one in the city went about very quietly or stayed at home. The King and Sphaeros had drawn up a list of eighty men who were against them and had power enough to show it. He gave them till nightfall to get beyond the boundaries of the State; they went at once. Then in the evening he called a meeting of the citizens, and at the same time sent Panteus and Therykion back to tell the army that the thing was accomplished and they must accept it.
Kleomenes was standing on the raised plinth underneath the bronze Apollo that had been in the market-place at Sparta so long that people had ceased to notice it. He himself stood in the same sort of attitude as the statue, drawn up to a tensity that must bring violent disaster on someone, and as he looked at them his shut mouth grinned with a beginning of triumph, and for a moment it looked alarmingly like that other very early metal smile. When the crowd was quite quiet he began talking to them, no louder than would just carry to the edges. Between sentences he slowed himself down, remembering how Sphaeros had again, for the twentieth time, warned him against speaking too fast. He tried to fix his eyes on some one man among the crowd, but that was not at all easy. It was so intensely important for him to get not only one, but all.
Kleomenes had taken weeks of thought about this speech to the citizens; it was to be the supreme justification of his way of action. It was a terrible thing to kill the ephors, the magistrates and representatives of his State; he did not try to say it was not. But desperate times need desperate remedies. In the old days Lycurgus had made his revolution without bloodshed. But now he, Kleomenes, was doctor to a State far worse diseased than the Sparta of Lycurgus. The time-old and native ill was there: riches and poverty together in one body, a hot and a cold fever. But now there were ills come from foreign countries, with names that should not be known in Sparta, luxury, usury and debt. For these he must be surgeon as well as physician. As for the ephors: he and his advisers (and here many who were listening knew that he meant the Stoic Sphaeros), wanting to understand certain things that had seemed to them very strange, and strange perhaps to many others as well, had searched through the store of tradition and law and memory handed down from father to son, which was the history of their State; and it had come to them that the ephors had gradually taken more and more power both from the State and from the kings. So long as all had gone well the ephors were their own excuse. But he asked the citizens to think back to fifteen years ago. He said that and stayed silent for a moment, trying to pierce through into the crowd in front of him, the citizens of Sparta and a good many others who were not truly citizens, but wished to be and were going to be. The man he had fixed his eyes on at first seemed very much excited, but the crowd was on the whole orderly, and it was still not convinced. It looked him in the eyes and frowned.
He turned a little and Agiatis his Queen came from beside the statue and stood by him, all in the dead white which the sun shadowed into a queer, hollow blue. She was very white herself and not altogether like an ordinary woman. She held their son, Nikomedes, by the hand; she was the past and he the future. But did the crowd know that? Kleomenes said: ‘There is something so strange and sacred about the Kingship of Sparta that, whoever holds it, he has so much of sacredness about him that even his enemies in battle fear to be his death. But the ephors, out of their pride, thought otherwise. They banished one king, my cousin Kleombrotos, husband of my sister Chilonis. He died in exile—their doing. His children have been brought up by exiles. They killed another king. They killed Agis, the gentlest and best the gods have ever given you, murdered him without hearing his defence, because he tried to let you have back your oldest and most nearly divine way of government. I am not ignorant that my father Leonidas was one of the contrivers of this murder. He is dead. I take the best way to purge his spirit of the murder by avenging the murdered man. Yet I say this: that if Agis were alive now he would be very willing to die again for the sake of his laws, and he would say that if, because of his death, his laws were made real in Sparta—and they shall be made real, through his death and now through the death of the ephors whom I have killed to make the circle full—then we should be happy, and on his death day there must not be lamentation but gladness and remembrance and praise! I say this for him, as he would say it for all!’
Panting, Kleomenes took her by the hand, Agiatis the merry-minded, the mourner for Agis. She had made no movement either of sorrow or gladness, for she was a Spartan woman, but now she stood beside the King and she looked very beautiful. Kleomenes thought that the crowd in front of him was larger. There were more all about its edges. He had lost sight of his first man, but he thought they were all catching fire a little, and suddenly he took a glance up and saw from below Apollo’s thin, terrific grin, and knew the god of old Sparta was shooting arrows for him. He went on: ‘I will do all that Agis would have done, and because I am older than he was, I will do more. I will build up a Sparta that shall not only be secure in the goodness of a good State, but shall through that be the standard and leader of Hellas. Now the first thing towards this is that the land shall from now on belong to every one, and not be the slave of a single owner. Then debtors shall be made free of all their debts. Then all those with brave and free hearts, whatever they may be now, shall be made citizens, and it is they who will save the city. Then those of us who love our State with action as well as words will give her all we own. We will do nothing by halves, the time for that is past. Citizens, it
is my privilege and honour as your King to be first to do this!’
He called by name on ten of the oldest and most respected citizens and asked them to check off the money and promises as they were given in to the common stock. He gave his own partly in coined gold and partly in written deeds. Every one looked on in the kind of hush that is made up of intense whispering. Then Megistonous, his stepfather, did the same. He had lent a certain amount of money, and had the bonds for it. Kleomenes bade light a fire and Megistonous threw in his bonds. Then one after another his friends came with their money and bonds and deeds and promises. The stock and farm implements would go with the land and be divided up with it. Then there was a little pause. And then the thing happened which the King had waited for. The crowd moved, and one after another men came forward, nervous or stolid or wildly excited, and gave away all their possessions to the State, most by promise before witnesses, but some going home to their houses to get the actual money and deeds. And now there were bursts of a glad noise, the shouting of men suddenly full of a great hope.
All night this went on. The women joined in. Agiatis threw into the common lot the golden bracelets and necklaces which Kleomenes had given her when they were first married. Fifteen years ago when Agis had done the same thing she had thrown in his love gifts too, for she knew he wished it, but she had cried about them for nights afterwards. This time she knew she would not regret them at all. Kratesikleia threw in hers too. From her own people and from Leonidas she had necklaces so heavy that she could scarcely wear them now, chains dangling gold acorns and leaves and lily buds, valued by their weight alone, and snakes with ruby eyes and twenty different precious stones along their backs, double and treble bracelets with sun-rayed knobs sticking out of them, and crescent ear-rings or ear-rings of gorgons’ heads dripping pearls from their grinning mouths. She had liked them well enough as a young woman; they were less becoming now.
Word went back to the King’s house; they were all waiting for it. Philylla stood twisting her hands, wondering what her father Themisteas was doing, longing for him to have been persuaded but hardly daring to hope he had been. Suddenly she said: ‘We must go out and give our things!’ and she ran to the chest where she kept her dresses and jewels. Half the other girls ran too—they had to do something! It was difficult; they did like their pretties. Could they be sure that all the other girls would do the same? It was all very well for grown-up married women; yes, and it was all very well for Philylla, when every one knew the Queen was going to give her Panteus. The ones who had fewest things loved them better, but also this would level up and stop the ones who used to have more from crowing over them. Some of them understood and were glad for their things to be consecrate, though it was to a strange god. Others just had to shut their eyes and gasp and grab. But that, for the younger ones at least, made it all the more marvellous. Philylla and most of her friends weren’t old enough to be ashamed of feeling like a band of heroines. They ran out of the King’s house, the Spartan girls, and into the market-place, with gold and silver and ivory and precious stones in the skirts of their dresses. The crowd parted for them. They came and heaped their things under the eyes of the King and Queen. It was like a dance.
At the end Philylla looked up, a little dazed, and saw her father quite close to her. She ran to him and threw her arm round his neck. ‘Oh, father!’ she said, and then again in another voice: ‘Oh, father!’—for she thought she saw—
‘I’ve done it, my dear,’ said Themisteas. ‘I’m most likely a fool, but I’m not a coward and I can’t see a brave thing tried and not be in it myself! I don’t know what your mother will say, but we’ve got to give the King his chance. It’s a good job you’re pleased, my lass, anyway!’ And he kissed her.
‘Have you given up everything, father,’ she whispered, ‘everything?’
‘They seem to have taken my land,’ he said, ‘so I may as well finish it off. Besides, by God, if this means that we get an army that’s some use, then it’s worth it! I’m giving him all my horses for his cavalry. But don’t blame me, Philylla, if you ask me for a dowry some day and don’t get it.’
‘I won’t, father,’ she said, very seriously.
After that she stayed by the Queen and watched. It was all tremendously exciting, though nothing so much so as her own giving up. She saw the King’s friends all about and suddenly asked the Queen if Panteus was there. But Agiatis said that he had been sent to tell the army. So he had not seen her and her friends come out of the King’s house and throw in their things. All at once she felt a little tired. It was late; everything was going on by torchlight. The Queen and her maids went back and then to bed. The New Times had come.
But the thing went on steadily. Kleomenes never let it slack off nor allowed for a moment that the most difficult part was not still to come. The raw material was under his hand, waiting to be put into form. He and his friends, and Sphaeros most of all, had the plan of it almost worked out. Every one had to work, the men in defence and government of their State, the women in its maintenance. Much of the old life was brought back with a fresh violence. Beginning at the beginning they started the classes again. Nikomedes was eight. He went, as kings’ children had always gone in time past, out of his mother’s hands to learn hardness and discipline; he was shy and terribly excited; he went for a long walk with Philylla and told her about it. He was longing already for the adventure of making friends.
The eating-together was insisted on for all citizens, and no foreign cooking or hot spices to make the black broth go down. The new citizens were chosen and enfranchised, men of all classes, even the poorest. Later on there might be still more enfranchisement. Men went off to see to their lots of the divided-up land. Even those who had been banished were given their lots, for Kleomenes was set on having them back as soon as things were running well; he was not going to waste any Spartan blood. Very often an arrangement was come to with the old owner, about the standing crops at least, and it made a difference what sort of reputation he had got in the old days for his dealing with the under-folk.
Everywhere there was great activity and with it a curious order and decency of life, for no one had much time to spare from this absorbing and fascinating work of renovating and making beautiful their state. Many of those who had at first been most reluctant became interested, and by and bye enthusiastic. Men were making new contacts and friendships with others who had looked on the same life from a very different place. There was less bitterness and gossip and jealousy because they had stepped into a wider and more generous world. Perhaps they might get tired of it sooner or later, but at first most of the young ones, anyhow, were all for the King and his times.
Kleomenes had remade the whole of his army, letting all except the best of the mercenaries go, and training his new brigades to use the great Macedonian pike and be less hampered by their shields. They drilled and played war-games in the fields about Sparta, and the King encouraged the daughters and sisters of the new citizens to go out and see them, for he was working for the next generation as well. There was plenty of singing and laughter, and catchwords going about. The young men who had been most subtle and agile-minded and had invented the oddest amusements for themselves in old days, were angry and bored with it at first, but then found they wanted to be among the leaders, too, and turned their minds to that. Philosophy was fashionable enough in the Spartan army, and the poorer men, for whom it had been a luxury which they had never been able to afford, put a new liveliness and sense of reality into the old philosophic tricks and games and set dialogues.
The King was constantly busy. His friends all had their hands full. Sometimes he did not see Panteus for days at a time. Agiatis saw less of him, too, but she was busy among the women: they took longer to be talked over and persuaded—the good for them was much less obvious. But she was so glad that he was getting his heart’s desire at last that she minded very little, and tried not to miss the nights when he had been desperately unhappy and depressed, and had given her
the joy of calming him and making him hopeful again. It was early autumn and there had been no rain for months. In dust and sun the New Times went on.
Chapter Six
REVOLUTIONS ARE always awkward for foreigners who happen to find themselves there. Eurydice fled over the hills into Messenia and her Rhodian merchant fled too. There was a ship of his at Pharae, and he urged her to come. But Tarrik was still in prison, and she had not yet been able to arrange what she wanted: to ransom him without Berris. However, she had managed to stop any of the other Marob people from doing anything on their own; it was certainly her place to act. She had in the meantime sent a smaller sum, which would allow the prisoners to make the necessary arrangements for any small comforts or extra food which they would be sure to need. So she settled down again in Messenia. Her house had a vineyard behind it and now the grapes were ripe, the solid, unpruned bunches of wine grapes that were like single fruits to hold in the hand and that bled warm red juice on to face and neck as one bit into them.
The Corn King and the Spring Queen Page 20
