by George Moore
Thyonicus, who seemed to be the leader of the company, was of the opinion that there was hardly room enough for a temple on the top of the knoll; moreover, it was within view of the sea and might excite Poseidon’s anger. No site is beyond reproach, Rhesos answered. For days to come we shall walk up and down the valley, considering every hillside, our ears open always to your preferences and objections. We shall meet here often, coming in the end to wise conclusions. The flattered townsfolk murmured approval, and thanking them for their good will the brothers accompanied them towards Aulis. Friends and neighbours stopped to ask Thrasillos when the walls of the temple would begin to appear above ground, and neatherds and shepherds continuing to arrive from the hills and the fields, Rhesos engaged them in discussion regarding Aulis’s need of a temple. But just as he was about to tell of the terrible fate of the towns along the Hellespont, a woman cried: — My hot-pot is boiling away on the hearth whilst I am listening to jabber about Aphrodite and her temple! The crowd laughed and dispersed, convinced that the hot-pot was the more important, and the twain were left to reflect on its good sense. Biote’s hot-pot awaits us, said Rhesos. All living things have the evening meal in mind at this hour. The swallows are striving after it in their last turbulent flights, the geese are waddling home to the pen after a long day spent in the woods. We would do well to follow the example of the swallows and the geese, replied Thrasillos, and uncertain whether their grandfather could be persuaded to allow them a shipment of Scythians to dig the foundations, they entered the town, Rhesos saying: He’ll find some excuse, for he is intent, I know, on a great piece of business — the building of galleys to export Mnasalcas’s wool up and down the Mediterranean; and we shall have something to say about these galley slaves when he bids Timotheus light the lamp and asks father to read aloud a book of Homer. Excellent is thy counsel, O Rhesos! We must not, however, allow the evening meal to be prolonged unduly; to bring it to an end we must show restlessness, silencing our loquacious parents with our silence, shuffling our feet significantly under the table. And not one of these plans having miscarried, Biote rose to her feet and led the way into the courtyard, bidding Timotheus light the lamp.
Thou wouldst hear a book of Homer read, father? she asked. Now is the time! Rhesos said to himself. Mother, before father begins to read may I not ask grandfather how many slaves he can afford to give us from the new fleet he is building? Why not ask him at the end of the reading? He will be sleepy, Rhesos answered, and without waiting for the reproof which he suspected to be on his mother’s lips, he said: Grandfather, if we would escape an earthquake we must build, and build we cannot if we have not slaves to dig the foundations. The cutters should be working in the quarries and the carters bringing enough stone here for the masons to begin laying as soon as the slaves leave the trenches. Plenty of slaves thou shalt have, grandson — Then our temple is safe, and we are safe! cried Rhesos, and Thrasillos clapped his hands for admiration of the skill with which his grandfather had been caught as in a snare. May we expect the slaves to-morrow? he asked. Rhesos interrupted me in the middle of a sentence, Otanes answered. I was about to say that I need a shipload of stout backs and arms to row the galleys I am building for the exportation of Mnasalcas’s wool. Mnasalcas will think he is treated with little consideration if I begin to import slaves to dig the foundations of a temple. Thou speakest, said Biote, as if the news had been kept from thee of earthquakes and the likelihood of one reaching us before long. We have been hoarding all our lives, she continued, and for what end? Plainly not for our children! And being now thoroughly roused, she impugned Otanes’s love of his grandsons till, ignoring the cruel thrust, he answered her that only a certain number of slaves could work at the same time on the foundations, and after the long drought very little progress would be made. But there is much to be done before the digging, said Thrasillos, for as yet there is no road to the site, and without a road we can do nothing. I must have men to fell trees and level the difficult slopes. For no money that I can take out of my treasury, Otanes replied, will our farmers be persuaded to forgo the wheat and olive harvest. If I can get enough slaves to make sure of my road before the autumn, grandfather, the foundations can be dug when the rains have softened the ground. If nothing be done now, I cannot foretell the number of oxen that will die under the strain of dragging the timber and the stone up that steep hillside. But the threat of a heavy toll of oxen barely reached Otanes’s ears, if it reached them at all; he was away in his memories of the years he had known, many a bad year but never such a winter as they had come through. Rain, snow, storms, he said, and it was not till we despaired of ever seeing the sun again that the dry weather came in, dark skies with very little blue in them, a dusty summer-time never known before in Greece, not by the oldest man in Aulis. There are many older than I, who am eighty, and when we meet we say: — In our childhood the summers were very different — hotter days than these, it is true, but however the sun blazed the forest pools were not altogether without water. This year the pools are bone-dry; the neatherds drive their kine farther and farther into the hills; the herons fish no longer — mice from the withered grass are their diet; already the trees have begun to shed their leaves, and the lizards die on cracking walls. We have heard enough, father! cried Biote. Thou remindest me of a pedlar with an open pack telling his goods, goods that are always the same under different names — excuses for stopping thy grandsons from building a temple that will save Aulis from the wrath of Poseidon and Hephaestus, vain excuses truly, for what will it benefit thee to build ships if the sea is to rise up against thee? Mnasalcas’s wool, forsooth! It would seem that thou’rt more concerned with wool than with the glory of Rhesos and Thrasillos. There are always excuses; thy pack is filled with them — Biote, thou’rt inconsiderate; thy mind is blown up; thou’rt all aflame. It is past thy bedtime, Otanes, said Kebren; take my arm. And so the evening that was to have been spent in happiness and pleasant talk ended in discord.
CHAPTER XV
SWEET MOTHER, THOU art the fortune of the temple and wilt get the slaves we need from grandfather. Thou shalt have thy slaves, Rhesos, and when thou gettest them thou’lt give me a hug and a kiss. Both are promised to thee, mother, and given before the deed that earns them.... now release me. And the luck of Rhesos and Thrasillos being in the ascendant, some Scythians who had been brought into Aulis to be trained to row in the galleys were sent instead to build the road that Thrasillos needed. A little later another gang was sent forward to fell trees and to dig the foundations of the dwellings destined for the priestesses. If we had Africans I could promise the temple in a year from now, said Thrasillos; but as we have no Africans we must do the best we can with Scythians. He called for several more teams of oxen, and every day carts arrived from the quarries laden with roughly hewn stones. To be chiselled by masons on the spot to avoid delay; so said Thrasillos, speaking out of his determination that the temple should be finished before next summer. Much time is lost, he continued, going to and from Aulis; and he ordered tents to be raised on the hillside, poles and tarred canvas serving as materials.
Donkeys are numerous, Rhesos remarked one morning, looking about him. He had come up the hillside to see how the work was progressing, and whilst showing him round Thrasillos said: We are dependent on the donkeys for our food; they bring tunny-fish, bread and wine from the wharves, water from the stream. Sure of their meals, our Scythians seldom make for the hills, and we are spared the pain of hunting deserters with dogs. Thou speakest as if the hunting of deserters was distasteful to thee, Thrasillos; but if absconding slaves were not hunted and brought to bay we should soon be without slaves. Thrasillos did not answer, and to turn his brother’s thoughts from yesterday’s hunt he pointed to the hoist whereby the stones would be lifted to their positions in the wall, and leading him round the encampment he called his attention to the masons’ sheds, the carpenters’ shop, and the smithy at which all the metal-work would be made. Stooping under the picket-lines Rhesos made friendly advanc
es to the draught animals, attracted oftener by the donkeys than by the horses. Here is my hut, said Thrasillos: — I sleep here sometimes. Mother would like me to return to Aulis, but to get the men to work one must be on the spot, watching and mingling with them. We often sit round the fires at night in good-fellowship, telling stories, and I have no fear of an evil blow. Why should a slave who is well fed and cared for kill me or injure me? Rather will he lift his hand against an assailant. My fears are others. We are at the end of the summer, and during the autumn the hillside will be barely habitable. We shall have to bring those who have not huts into Aulis; every outhouse and shed will be overcrowded, and there will be troubles in the streets and discontent. Our neighbours will not thank me, and my excuses that for a temple we must have slaves will not satisfy them for the importation of so many, and to pacify them father may ask for the return of twenty or thirty or fifty slaves to row in the galleys. Thou art full of discontent, my Thrasillos! Rain fell heavily last week and we had some yesterday, Thrasillos continued: the long spell of dry weather is breaking, and then — I wish I could help thee, Rhesos answered, and he left Thrasillos watching the clouds gathering.
The rain did not come that night nor the next day, but a downfall was preparing, so Thrasillos said, during which no work would be done on the hillside. No downfall came, however, only heavy showers and bright intervals. If it would only rain for a month, Rhesos, and then stop, I could manage. What breaks my heart is the irregularity of the rain. Yesterday the morning was fair and I hoped for a fine day, but it rained at noon; the evening was fine, and then this morning more rain, and such heavy rain that the slaves had to run for shelter to the trees, bare trees that the storm hath robbed of their leaves. A pitiful sight is the hillside in the rust and sludge of winter. Will it ever cease raining? he asked Rhesos whenever they met. Yes, Thrasillos, it will cease, but none can tell thee when, and it profits thee nothing to look so gloomy. Prophecy is vain, Rhesos; listen to that wind. Sometimes as I lie awake at night it seems to me that the wind is intent on ripping up the hills themselves; it begins far away on a low mutter. There is something uncanny in the mouthing of the wind; like a fierce animal mad with pain it falls upon the town, and then dies away, to come again. I am afraid father will lose many ships at sea this winter. And the imaginations of the two young men were filled with images of splitting ships and planks and oars and castaways struggling in the slough and on the crest of the waves. Our fortune is certainly precarious, said Rhesos, and the brothers parted, to meet again with the same words on their lips, the same hope in their hearts: — A break in the weather! A break in the weather I certainly need, Thrasillos said to himself, but Rhesos can work in rain as well as in shine. Happy Rhesos! And he might have begun to ask himself if his brother were truly happy — for Rhesos had never spoken of the statue he was carving, nor asked him to come to see it, as was his wont — if his thoughts had not been subdued by a long bright ray. The weather is breaking! he cried. There was a heavy shower that evening, but a week later, towards the middle of January, spring began to appear, and all the slaves were at work on the hillside. Every week made a difference to the temple; the walls began to rise, and Thrasillos said one morning to his brother: — I think we shall have our temple this year after all.
No sooner had the words passed his lips than he began to wonder why Rhesos was not in his workshop carving Aphrodite and why he never spoke of his statue, telling of the day’s work, sometimes exalted, sometimes depressed — neither one nor the other, only dark silence. Dear Rhesos, tell me, he said at last, hath the marble proved unworkable, cross-grained? And with an alacrity that surprised him Rhesos answered: I have made many sketches, Thrasillos, I cannot tell thee how many. A new Aphrodite seems to rise up in my mind, one that will please me and might please Phidias, and I work on it feverishly; but in the night I wake, to lie sleepless, and the hours go by remoulding the day’s work in imagination. The same the next day and the next; week in, week out, I strive after shadows, the desire to create active in me always.
But an Aphrodite, Rhesos — Thrasillos, I beseech thee!
I foresee thy words; I have heard them from mother and father, some of them even from grandfather. An Aphrodite may be kneeling or sitting or lying, they say, and to their vain talk I answer that Aphrodite must live in me before I can draw her out of the rebellious clay. Thy name was always on our lips in Athens, said Thrasillos, and thou wert always the example that Phidias bade us admire and model ourselves upon. To work under the master’s eye, Thrasillos, is easy to a workman who knows his business. The lonely workshop, with nothing in it but the lump of clay, is the test; all then comes out of himself, or does not come, as frequently happens. But, Rhesos, thou perceivest only ideas; abstractions do not trouble thee. The day we ran away to Athens together, thou with the two gossiping women in a box — Merely decorative sculpture, Thrasillos, well enough in its way; but it was the intention rather than the result that Phidias liked. He is a decorative sculptor himself, the greatest the world hath ever known, but unconcerned with the art of carving. If the carving were weak he would see it at once, of course, but he is not a marble worker by nature as I am, and finding nothing in my Aphrodite except handicraft, he would turn away, forget it, and talk of something else. The empty brain is my trouble, not thine, Thrasillos, and the day may come when, all my high hopes fallen, I shall have to face the truth that I am no great sculptor, only a clever student who can work under the master. A common lot indeed this is. How many inspired pupils have we not seen working under Phidias, great within, naught without his influence, wretched creatures in a workshop, calling on the Gods to help them; but the Gods do not answer, and the clay remains clay under their hands. We have known many such, Rhesos, but thou’rt not like these; thou’lt outgrow thy fears; months will go by — Thinkest thou, Thrasillos, that I can endure my life of emptiness and despair for months? Not for much longer can I bear with it. The mind breaks like a thread, and then? Death at one-and-twenty, Rhesos! But should thy Aphrodite never come into marble thou’lt accept the image that hath come down to us and carve a statue that will serve till a better inspiration comes to thee? I would do much for thy sake, Thrasillos, but the conventional Goddess I cannot accept; the common vision is as far from me as the seldom. But if, said Thrasillos ——
There is no “if,” Rhesos interjected; there is something within me that cannot come out, and I am tortured by night and day. More than that I cannot tell thee.
Thrasillos watched his brother descend the hillside and was sorry for him, till pity for Rhesos’s agony gave way to the dread that the temple might remain for ever without a statue. If I had not begun to build till Aphrodite was in the marble, even if Rhesos could not abide the sight of her, life would be better than it is at present. Nothing worse could have befallen: a half-built temple and no hope of a statue to fill it, the walls rising day after day, till at last the awful truth becomes known to everybody. I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it! and he burst into tears and cries. But tears and cries, though they may soothe sorrow, do not make an end of it. The temple must go on, he said, and I must share the bitterness of it with Rhesos. An unexpected tide of thought rose up in his mind, and he was about to blame Rhesos’s selfishness; but he checked the words, saying: — He cannot help himself, nor can I. And he watched the slaves hoisting stones and the masons fitting them, his despair deeper, he believed, than his brother’s. He will tell me if he gets the idea he is seeking; to put questions to him will only.... He stopped, remembering that Rhesos had said he would have nothing to live for if sculpture failed him. For Rhesos to put an end to his life will bring death nearer to me; I could not live without Rhesos; and then yielding himself to a belief in the power of the Gods, he added: — Aphrodite will not allow her temple to come to naught; she will help us. But the Goddess obstinately remained away, till at last a thought came to him, and the next time he met Rhesos on the hillside he said: The cause of thy dryness, Rhesos, is hidden from thee, but not from me. Thy s
uffering is Phidias; his genius hath choked thine. I thank thee, Thrasillos; it may be as thou sayest; but what is the remedy? To escape from Phidias thou must go to him, Thrasillos answered. He is a great man and will understand thee better than I can, telling thee things that will restore thee to thyself. Go to him....
I have faith in thee, Thrasillos, Rhesos said at last. Thy counsel is wise, I am sure it is. And in the morning he rode out of Aulis in meditation, his mind bent on the story he would tell Phidias. For everything is in the telling, he said. The poets write twenty different plays on the same subject; everything is in the telling, and I must have a care to gain Phidias’s sympathy before I let him into the secret. It is hard to do sculpture in a Boeotian village twelve leagues from Athens, I might say; village streets do not inspire sculpture as doth a walk round the Parthenon, and there is none in the village who resembles a Goddess. He began another story, and then a third and a fourth, and he continued to remake the story he would tell Phidias till his horse stopped to graze. Thou hast strayed from the road to Athens into the road to Tanagra! he cried, and his hand was on the bridle to turn the horse round. But the animal would not be gainsaid, and remembering that they were within a league of the oracle of Amphiaraos, he dropped the bridle on the horse’s neck, saying: His instinct shall guide me. Should he stop at the gate opening on to the path that leads to the rocky hill out of which the pythoness speaks, I shall take his instinct for a sign and consult the oracle, a simple village oracle without fame, but mayhap in charge of a far-seeing pythoness. So did his thoughts chatter, till a voice cried: Passenger, turn aside and learn what the Fates have in store for thee!
