by George Moore
A covered passage took them into a second courtyard, and seeing a tiled roof projecting from the walls, supported by pillars, Kebren thought of the pleasant shelter it doubtless afforded in times of sun and rain. He admired the River-God spouting in the centre of the court, and the moment seeming to demand words of eulogy he sought them. But his brain was tired, and he spoke instead of his long walk, whereupon Otanes called to a slave, saying: Timotheus, conduct my guest to the bath and give him a change of clothing.... Art glad, father, we did not leave him at the inn? Otanes held up a warning hand, and when Kebren was out of hearing the pleasant evening that awaited them, listening to the story of the Iliad — If, said Biote, he be not too tired to read — was discussed round the fountain till he returned to them an hour later. I see thy recovery is complete! said Otanes, smiling, and leaving the courtyard they walked through an open doorway into a hall hung with tapestries, Otanes telling that these were woven by his wife, now dead, aided by her handmaidens, to whom she had taught her craft, in which she surpassed all weavers outside of Attica. Biote, though only a child when her mother died — Do not speak, father, of my work; mother guided my hands. Biote’s work is second only to her mother’s, Otanes continued, as they advanced up the hall, and when the three were seated on the dais the rest of the company came trooping in, to find their places at a lower table under the headship of the steward.
Amongst the women Kebren noted one whom he thought might be Biote’s old nurse; the others he judged to be clerks and apprentices from the counting-house; and during the meal the eyes of these were frequently directed towards the dais. Wondering what great personage I may be, Kebren said to himself, for the master to place me with so much ceremony at his right hand! And with a view to showing his knowledge, and also because he felt that it would not be manners to drink the wine that was poured into his goblet without speaking of its quality, he said: — A great vintage truly! Many have praised the vintage without asking whence came the goblet, Otanes replied, and to exalt himself he told how one of his agents had obtained the goblet from the workshop of Douris himself. One anecdote led to another, and feeling his weariness passing from him, Kebren would have liked the meal prolonged for another hour; but Otanes, anxious to hear him tell of the Iliad, led the way into the courtyard, saying: — I have a little Hermes in a niche opposite the fountain, and on the bench of olive-wood beneath him thou shalt sit to-night to expound, and to read, perchance, if thou wouldst enforce thine argument by quotation. The air is so still that a lamp will burn without a flicker. He called for one to be brought, and finding after many changes the position in which the light would best fall upon the page, he sent the slave that had brought the lamp to tell the women in the outer courtyard to chatter elsewhere till the lecture was finished. And Kebren began:
Somewhat clouded, like Olympus itself, the Iliad began to emerge from a great mass of literature several hundred years ago. How many we know not, only this: that the fall of Troy provided the rhapsodists, rough and ready poets, with a subject, a poetic quarrel in which each might discover a story, an episode that amused his mind; and telling it over to himself the rhapsodist walked, reciting it from memory, changing it often, introducing new episodes and relinquishing episodes that had failed to please. As he journeyed from one king’s court to another, from one wedding feast to the next, he met other rhapsodists, each with a destination and a narrative, and drinking together at the inns they borrowed ideas from each other, here and there a phrase. Many beautiful stories were told about Troy, and how its fall came to pass, and many of these were for a long time believed to be by Homer. Whilst preaching and talking to the folk come from the town to take the air by the river bank, I shall be asked when Homer flourished, and to this I will make answer that I do not know. I shall have to rely on the mists of the years, and when the caviller hath granted me these, and is silent, I shall continue to tell that a great many of the poems written after the fall of Troy and once deemed worthy of Homer were later cast out of the canon as unworthy of him. Was Homer a myth, then? the caviller will ask, and I shall answer: — A great poet lived, but we do not know when he lived. Out of the great mass of poems written he retained what pleased him and cast out what displeased him, transforming whatever he took over from the rhapsodists — if he took anything over, which I do not believe, so completely is the Iliad of one mind in conception and detail, in the choice of episodes and the placing thereof; and of all, the genius, the beauty of the mind, is revealed in the versification, which is always of the same perfection, and as easily distinguishable from the crude poems formerly attributed to Homer as the songs of nightingales from the croaking of rooks. The tradition that Homer was a blind poet I have often been tempted to regard as a mere figure of speech, with no other meaning in the beginning than that Homer was a great visionary, receiving his inspiration direct from Olympus, the Gods needing a human chronicler; and of this belief I find confirmation in the poem itself, there being more eyesight in the Iliad than in any other poem. I am afraid that those who cling to the belief that Homer was a blind man who chanted the Iliad to a lyre accompaniment will answer me that tradition does not say that Homer was born blind; he was deprived of his sight, they will aver, by the Gods themselves, and for good reason: that their chosen chronicler, relieved of the distraction of the visible world, might relate the invisible with more than natural intensity.
I shall have somewhat to say about the composition of the book, of the art displayed in it, but for the moment I would speak to you of the central figure, Helen. Helen was of divine birth, fairest daughter of the Cloud-Compeller, who ravished Leda, Helen’s mother, in the form of a swan, whilst she was bathing in a river the name of which hath unfortunately passed out of my mind; it will come to me presently. But what is more important than the name of the river is the fact that Zeus transformed himself into a swan. The prosaic-minded will conclude that he chose the swan as a disguise because Leda was bathing in a river. Others who would acquit Zeus of a brutal lust will be led to conclude that being minded to give the most beautiful thing in the world to Greece, he disguised himself as a swan. And to make my idea that Helen was a premeditated gift to Greece from Zeus himself easy of acceptance, I will remind you that Helen from her earliest girlhood was looked upon as the most beautiful thing ever born into the world. All the kings of Greece sought her in marriage, and when she wedded Menelaus they formed a league to protect her against the stranger, the thought being in them all that somebody would come to carry her away. And not only was Helen’s marriage fraught with significance; her rape by Paris was hardly less so; for Eris, or Strife, at a great feast of the Gods to which she was not invited, threw a golden apple among the guests with the words: To the Fairest! inscribed upon it. Hera, Athene and Aphrodite were each convinced that the apple came to her by right, and quarrelling began, which to soothe and settle the Lord of the Clouds bade them repair to Mount Ida, where they would meet a beautiful youth named Paris who would present the apple to one of them. Each in turn tried to tempt Paris with gifts, Hera offering him the empire of Asia and untold wealth, Athene great glory and renown, but Aphrodite whispered in his ear that if he gave the apple to her, she would give him in return Helen, fairest of women, wife of the King of Sparta.
It is strange (or maybe not strange at all — so much common, ephemeral stuff having gone into the making of man) that the glory of Croton’s wife, who runs away from her husband’s counter, should be preferred to the Helen we meet in the Iliad, full of grief for the mischief she hath caused, saying that the fault is not hers but the will of the Gods; and the words given to the old men who watch her coming towards the Scaean gates: Small wonder that the Trojans and Achæans should endure so much and so long for the sake of a woman so marvellously and divinely lovely! are true and significant that Helen hath always been looked upon by the Greeks as more than mortal. Brief are her visitations; in sadness and mystery she comes towards us, inspiring every poet differently. In the poems until lately attributed to Homer we
read that Paris did not take Helen to Troy but to Egypt, where he enjoyed her without weariness, and that the Helen of Troy who set Greek against Greek was but a wraith, a mischief. A warrant this story seems to me to be that the story-teller regarded Helen as one conceived and born for more than mortal purpose, and I look forward to telling such audiences as may collect round me that there are two Helens in the Iliad.
The first, a gift from the Gods sent to earth on a spiritual errand, will be the admiration of the few; the second, a truant wife restored to her husband, will be the satisfaction of the many. And the world being always divided between the few and the many, the many will not trouble to distinguish between our war and the wars that preceded it, wars that the barbarians waged for tribute, extensions of territory, or slaves. Only the few will recognise our war as a war for an idea....
Kebren stopped speaking, and waited for Otanes to ask him how it was that he had come upon this interpretation of the Iliad. But Otanes put no questions to him, and to break a silence that seemed to reflect upon the interest of the story he had told, he said: A sacred gift to Greece was stolen from Greece — Not altogether from Greece, Otanes interjected, for Paris was a Greek, though not of the mainland. I have often wondered, said Biote, why we hear of the son of Priam as a shepherd on the heights of Mount Ida. He was exposed on Mount Ida, Kebren answered, because — but thoughts and words alike fail me. And he was helped by Timotheus from the hall, Otanes much concerned, saying: — Unclothe him, or he’ll fall asleep in his clothes, getting but a restless sleep in them. He is half asleep in my arms, master; I am overburdened, Timotheus answered. Otanes went to his help, and together they laid Kebren in his bed. He will sleep for hours without moving, said Otanes. A man sleeps ill, master, with the ache of twelve leagues or more in his limbs. And it was not long afterwards that dreams began to rise and fade, leaving Kebren wearier than before.
He was playing the part of Agamemnon, and when he came to the celebrated passages, on which his fate with the audience depended, a dog began to bark. Nobody heard the dog except himself, and certain he was not mistaken he hunted the dog through the theatre and out of the theatre, finding himself at last on the heights above Dekeleia, waiting for a goatherd who had promised to bring him food and wine. But there was neither in the goatherd’s basket when he returned; he had eaten all that his wife had put into it and drunk the flagon dry, and Kebren being without money to pay was threatened by the goatherd’s wife and by another goatherd. An old man appeared, crying: — Follow me! and they ran on together seeking a cleft from which they might defend themselves; but no sooner had they found one than the two goatherds and the woman began to build them into it with stones. Kebren looked for the old man, and saw him through a chink among his murderers; he heard laughter and awoke, saying: — A dream, only a dream! And not daring to lay his head on the pillow lest the dream should return, he sat watching the window pass from darkness into light. The dawn hath come, he said, and fell back, to dream that he was walking in the woods above Dekeleia, where he came upon a great bird shaped like an eagle, of many varying colours, with a hooked beak, talking to himself on the wall of things to come. Wilt tell me what will befall me in Aulis? he asked, bowing low to the bird, and he would have heard the course his life would take if a child had not come carrying a long pole on which there was a perch. On seeing the perch the bird flew from the wall on to it, and by some strange trick in the pole the child was able to swing the bird round and round, until bewildered by the motion he dashed himself against the wall.
As he began to bewail the bird’s death the door opened and Timotheus entered, and he cried out: Why did the child kill the bird? The bird? Timotheus asked. A dream, only a dream! Kebren muttered, and his mind clearing a little, he began to tell his dream, saying: A mad dream, a strange dream, yet signifying something. Canst find any hidden meaning in it? I am no interpreter of dreams, sir, but there is at Tanagra an oracle of good repute. At Tanagra? Kebren repeated. I met a wayfarer by the river Asopos who had been all over Greece seeking an interpretation of a strange dream. He was on his way to Lebadea, frightened he would not be able to bear the tests that would be put to him. Perhaps the wayfarer passed his dream on to thee, sir. Kebren did not answer, and with a faint smile about his lips he wondered if a dream could pass from one dreamer to the next. If thou wouldst bathe, sir, I will conduct thee to the bath. There is a great stiffness in my limbs, Timotheus. A bottle of vinegar in the water is a help, sir; and half-an-hour passed, Timotheus waiting with warm linen over his arm into which he enfolded Kebren, drying him all over, asking for his feet in turn. Art relieved? he asked, and Kebren answered that his limbs seemed as lithe as they were when he set out from Athens. More than one bath is needed, sir, to restore litheness after a walk of a dozen leagues across a rough country — This is not my shirt, Timotheus! Thy shirt is being washed, the slave replied; the master hath lent thee one of his. And whilst pulling the shirt over his head Kebren heard that Timotheus had shaken and brushed his clothes, freeing them from the dust of the long walk from Athens. Thy sandal straps have galled thy feet, sir; thou’lt walk easier in these loose slippers. I thank thee, Timotheus. By the master’s orders, sir. In the hall thou’lt find a repast laid for thee, and should there be something lacking that appeals to thy poor appetite (appetites need coaxing after a long journey) thou hast but to name it and search shall be made for it in the offices.... Here are plovers’ eggs from the marshes round Lake Kopais, where the birds breed freely; two or three of these will lead thine appetite to a chine of young kid, and cold kid and Chian are agreeably related. From this ornamental dish (moulded at Tanagra for spiced meats and such like) I will help thee. Quails! See, one of these I lift out of its jelly. A quail then let it be to follow the plovers’ eggs, Timotheus; but wine is what I need most. A wine that brings a new access of appetite, Timotheus answered, and Kebren asked for another quail, finding a finer relish in the second bird than in the first.
As he rose from table Timotheus’s words were that the master had been called to his counting-house to attend to some important business, but would return when at liberty. I will await him in the courtyard by the fountain, Kebren called back, and sitting under the statue of Hermes he wondered if the end of his adventure would be a return to Athens on foot or a free passage to Cnidus in one of Otanes’s ships. One or the other, he said, and his thoughts reverted suddenly to the moment overnight when Biote had asked him why Paris, the son of Priam, followed a flock on the heights of Mount Ida Had my senses not failed me I would have told her, and after she had heard of Hekabe I could have picked up the thread of my lecture. Otanes would have liked to hear that Homer, by omitting the first nine years of the war, established the principle of unity which Æschylus follows in the shaping of his tragedies, and Iktinos and Kallikrates in their designs for the Parthenon and the Erechtheium; I might even have been asked to read passages from Homer. But things have fallen out differently, and I may have to return to Athens on foot when my shirt is dry.
CHAPTER III
I WOULD HAVE come to thy bedside this morning, said Otanes, if Timotheus had not assured me that thou wert still sleeping. I thank thee, sir, for the shirt. Thou’rt at thine ease in it? I would be, Kebren answered, if I were sure that thou didst not already rue our meeting on the wharf. Why should I rue it, Kebren? Our lives here, Biote’s and mine, are not so eventful that we can afford to turn aside from a visitor. Her face often tells me plainly that she would welcome an event, and it is strange that I should have left the house yesterday in the expectation of an event. The galley would bring me news, good or bad, of that I felt sure. But it was the road from Athens that brought thee, and I was in the humour to leave the unloading of the galley to my head clerk and go with thee in search of a lodging. I might easily have left thee at the door of “The Golden Fell,” and thy presence here is owing to Biote’s quickness of thought. He speaks kindly, Kebren said to himself, and when I tell him of my stiffness he’ll not refuse to allow me to prolong my
visit for some hours, perhaps for a day or two; and wishing to have this point settled, he spoke of his breakdown of overnight, saying that it had come at the most inopportune moment — Just as I was going to tell that the principle of unity we admire in our dramatists and in our architects was first mooted in the Iliad.
The barbarians have art, but they have not unity — Yes, yes, Otanes interjected. That point was not omitted from thy lecture; I was much struck by it. And the wish to understand each other better being mutual, Otanes proposed that they should sit on the bench of olive-wood under the statue, saying: There are many fine manuscripts in this house, but none finer than the one I saw upon thy knees last night. A present it was from my father, sir, before he turned me adrift, saying there was no fishmonger in me, which was true. So thy father was a fishmonger? Yes, and once on a time the most successful in Athens. Once on a time, Kebren, is a bitter story. Once on a time is every man’s story, so the poets tell us in the theatre, Kebren answered, and he was about to illustrate his meaning with quotations from the poets when Otanes said: We are not thinking now of the poets but of thyself. And thereby encouraged, Kebren continued:
My grandfather was in the shop before my father. An excellent fishmonger he was, and very proud of his son, in whom he saw a man that would develop the business, which my father did skilfully. And just as my grandfather had looked forward to begetting a good fishmonger, my father bethought himself of another fishmonger in me, and I was sent to the market with a slave very learned in fish, who taught me how to distinguish between the fresh and the doubtful. He could tell at a glance; no monger could deceive him; and as long as he was with me I brought fish to the shop that pleased everybody, and my father said: — Kebren, thou’rt a fish monger as thy grandfather was and as thy father is. Thou canst dispense with thine instructor; go to the market thyself. But, alas, that errand was a disastrous one! The fish I brought back were tainted, and my father told me that I could not have looked at them. I answered that I had, and he said: — Then thou hast no eyes to see, though thou mightest have smelt them. Or maybe thou hast no nostrils, or wert busy repeating odds and ends of Homer, making friends with anybody who knew a piece and would babble it in thine ear till thou hadst it by heart! I was put under the charge of another slave, who was very skilful in gutting and chopping fish, and I could do what I was told to do; but when he was taken away from me I chopped and gutted so badly that my father put me to a further employment, that of displaying the fish on a marble slab in a manner that would attract customers, and when my displays failed to attract the passers-by, my father would mutter to himself and rearrange the fish, saying: This is how they should be! And then I could only appraise the fish artlessly, so artlessly that the customer often went away with a scowl on his face; and another fault, worse than this in my father’s eyes, was that I kept customers waiting. Seeking me all over the shop, and finding me in a corner reading, he could barely control himself, and this happening once too often, he said: — I have tried thee in every branch of the trade and thou’rt a failure in all. There’s no fishmonger in thee, nothing of thy grandfather, not to speak of myself. Wherefore get thee to thy fancy. And my fancy being poetry, I presented myself at the theatre, and because I was tall and thin and looked like a shepherd and could talk like one, I was engaged to play messengers. And thou hadst no liking for messengers? Otanes asked. There are messengers that lend themselves to interpretation, Kebren answered, and there are other messengers that the poet hath not been at pains to humanise — And with these the actor can do nothing! Otanes interjected, bringing a smile to Kebren’s face. At what art thou smiling? At the quick perception of one that hath never walked the boards, sir. I have read many plays, Kebren, and had I the casting of one I would select thee for a king. Thy head and shoulders — Ah, speak not of them! They have been my undoing in the theatre. How is that, asked Otanes, since we all look to find a fine head and shoulders in a king? Yes, yes, Kebren replied, and being unwilling to bring charges of jealousy against his comrades of yesterday, he was puzzled to know how to continue his story. His hesitations put the thought into Otanes’s mind that his guest was not so candid as he had judged him to be, and he plied Kebren with questions that Kebren could not answer without admitting, which he did very innocently, that a few days after his engagement as an actor he had talked recklessly of his father’s wealth and of his ambition to play the part of Agamemnon. —
