Читать книгу The Golden Hope: A Story of the Time of King Alexander the Great - Fuller Robert Higginson - Страница 4

In the Theatre of Dionysus the citizens of Athens were gathering for the purpose of deciding whether to break their treaty with Macedon and by one stroke revenge upon Alexander the wrongs and humiliations that his father had made them suffer. Ariston walked through the spacious Agora, surrounded by colonnades and embellished by the statues of heroes and the Gods. The shopkeepers and merchants were closing their places of business and joining in the human tide that was setting all in the same direction.

Everywhere Ariston heard repeated the assertion that Alexander was dead. The news was announced in tones of joy, and invariably it was accompanied by an expression of desire for war while the enemy was still unprepared. There seemed to be only one opinion among the people. It was manifested in the clamor of gay and careless confusion that betrayed the nervous tension of the throng.

Ariston's face became more thoughtful as he proceeded. He had no doubt of what the Assembly would do if unchecked, and he foresaw the downfall of his plans. A declaration of war with Macedon would be fatal. Whatever the issue of such a conflict might be, it would certainly delay Alexander's invasion of Persia and keep Clearchus at home. He must be rid of Clearchus at all hazards, and without violence.

Moreover, he knew that the report of Alexander's death was false. It was impossible that any person in Athens should have been able to obtain information later than that which had been brought to him. He felt assured that the young king was fighting his way out of Illyria, with every prospect of escape, and that the report of his death had been started by Demosthenes as a stratagem to dispose the minds of the people to war. By preventing the success of this plan, he reflected, he would not only be serving his own ends, but also performing a public service. Such a coincidence had happened rarely enough in his career.

But he knew it would be useless to attempt any contradiction of the report at that moment. He was too thoroughly acquainted with the characteristics of his countrymen to think of it. They wished to believe and they would not allow that wish to be thwarted. He must watch and wait.

Pushing through the chattering crowd, he entered the Theatre. Before him, in a great semicircle, hewn partly out of the solid rock of the southeastern pitch of the Acropolis, he saw row on row and tier above tier of his fellow-citizens, – the brilliant, unstable, cowardly, heroic, passionate, generous, cruel democracy of Athens. Above them towered the crag which they had crowned with triumphs of art and architecture beyond the power of the world to equal, guarded by the wonderful Athene, whose creator they had sent to die in prison. On the left the great temple of Olympian Zeus raised its massive fluted columns. In the Theatre where they sat their fathers had hissed or applauded the masterpieces of tragedy and comedy. The babel of talk and of light-hearted laughter, the shifting of many-hued garments under the intense blue arch of the sky, reminded Ariston of the fickle sunlit waves of the Ægean.

The cloud that for years had overshadowed Athens had been removed. Philip, the tenacious, subtle, resourceful monarch of barbarous Macedon, had fallen under the dagger of Pausanias, who had doubtless been inspired by the Gods to punish him for his crimes against the Athenians. Little by little, with a purpose that never swerved, he had made himself master of their fairest possessions. Time and again they had sought to shake him off with brief outbursts of restless fury; but he held what he had won, and in the lull that followed the storm he had never failed to creep nearer to their citadel. His advance seemed to them as inevitable as fate.

Now he was gone, resigning his power and his ambitions to his son, Alexander, a boy of twenty years, whom all Athens knew as a foolish and rash youth. After laying claim to the honors that his father had forced the states of Hellas to bestow upon him, he had marched into the unknown wilderness of the north with his army and there had perished. His fate had been told only in rumors at first, but had not Demosthenes talked with a fugitive from the Macedonian camp, who had seen him fall beneath a stone? Every Athenian felt that the time had come to place the name of his city once more at the head of the civilized world. Already the Thebans, aided by their subsidies, had risen against the barbarian garrison and had shut the Macedonians in the Cadmea. The reverses of the past had been forgotten and the lively imaginations of the Athenians had carried them halfway to the goal of their hopes.

Ariston gazed about him at the shifting throng as though in search of some one. The priests of Ceres, Athene, and Zeus stood talking in groups with the officials of the city, or had already taken their places in the cushioned marble arm-chairs, with curved backs, that formed the first row of seats. Presently the old man caught sight of Clearchus, and his friends, Chares and Leonidas. With them sat a young man of singular appearance whom Ariston did not recognize. He wore a splendid mantle of purple, embroidered with gold, a profusion of rings flashed upon his fingers, and the odor of costly perfumes hung about him like a cloud. It seemed as though he sought in his costume to make up for the deficiencies of nature, for in figure he was short and stout, with legs and arms of disproportionate slenderness, and his narrow eyes were set beneath a square forehead from the top of which the hair had been shaved.

"Greeting, uncle," Clearchus said cordially, as the old man forced his way toward them.

Ariston sat down on the broad marble step in the space that Clearchus made for him. He found himself between his nephew and the stranger.

"This is Aristotle of Stagira, but more recently of Pella," Clearchus said. "He can talk to you by the hour, if he chooses, about Alexander, whom you so much admire."

"Is he really dead, as they say he is?" Ariston asked doubtfully.

"I do not know," lisped Aristotle. "It is his habit always to expose himself in battle."

"Can he make himself master of Hellas?" Ariston asked again.

"Only the Gods can answer that," Aristotle replied. "It is safe to say that what human ambition can accomplish, he will do. He was my pupil, and there are those who maintain that he knows more than his master!"

Although the philosopher spoke with a smile, there was a trace of irony in his tone that did not escape the alert Athenian.

"You hear that?" he cried, turning to Clearchus. "Here is a boy who begins by conquering his instructor. Where will he end?"

"They say he has ended already, up there among the savages," Chares said lazily.

"I'll lay you a box of Assyrian ointment that Alexander is still alive," Aristotle said.

"It's a wager," the Theban cried. "And the box shall be of gold."

"There goes Callicles. Hi, there, old Twenty Per Cent!" cried a youth who was sitting in front of them.

"By the Styx, I wish I had what I owe him!" Chares remarked fervently.

A young man with oiled and curled ringlets, wearing a long silken robe, and carrying a cane inlaid with mother-of-pearl, pushed toward them, followed by a slave laden with cushions for him to sit upon.

"Do you know what Phocus has done now?" he asked in an affected voice.

"No," said Chares, coldly.

"He happened to go to the Lyceum the other day, and he overheard Theodorus, the atheist, say that if it was praiseworthy to ransom a friend from the enemy, it would also be commendable to rescue a sweetheart from bondage. What does he do but buy Tryphonia her freedom from old Mnemon. He vows that he will marry her."

Having imparted this bit of gossip, the youth lounged away to repeat it.

"Who is that young man with the red chiton?" Leonidas asked.

"He is Ctesippus, son of Chabrias," Clearchus replied. "He has spent twenty thousand talents of gold since his father died – he and Phocus together. He thinks he knows more about war than his father knew. He drives poor Phocion almost distracted with his advice whenever there is a campaign; and Phocion endures it because he is his father's son."

Throughout the Theatre rose the hum of gossip and malicious small talk. Chares listened with indolent contempt. Leonidas studied the faces of the men who had won distinction in war, such as Diopethes, Menestheus, and Leosthenes, whom Clearchus pointed out to him. Aristotle continued to lisp to Ariston concerning Macedon. The attention of the crowd was diverted by the arrival of the Lexiarchs with their scarlet cords. Stretching them across the narrow streets, they had been driving the stragglers into the Assembly like sheep. The laggard whose garments showed a trace of the dye with which the cords were covered was forced to pay a fine.

"Look; there's Phaon with the red stripe on his back!" Chares cried, standing up to get a better view.

A roar of laughter greeted the victim as he entered and his name was repeated from all sides.

"Were you asleep, Phaon? Did your wife keep you at home? You should drink less wine in the morning!" shouted his acquaintances.

Another unfortunate came to divert attention from Phaon, and still others, until all the citizens were accounted for. The tumult was succeeded by a hush as the white-robed priests solemnly advanced into the open space in the middle of the semicircle, carrying a bleating lamb. After an invocation to Athene, they cut the animal's throat before the altar and sprinkled its blood in every direction upon the pavement. The oldest of the priests then stood forth, raised his hands, and looking upward, cried the accustomed formula: – "May the Gods pursue to destruction, with all his race, that man who shall act, speak, or plot anything against this State!"

The priests then slowly withdrew, and a herald mounted the bema to announce, on behalf of the Proedri, the occasion of the Assembly. He declared the question to be whether the treaty with Macedon should be maintained or set aside, and he added that the Senate of the Areopagus had referred the matter to the decision of the people without expressing its opinion.

He was followed by a second herald, representing the Epistate, who, with a loud voice, called upon any citizen above the age of fifty years to speak his mind, others to follow in accordance with their ages. As he ceased and descended, all eyes were turned toward a portion of the Theatre where sat a gray-haired man, with shoulders slightly stooped, a sloping forehead, and a retreating chin, partly hidden by a close-cropped beard.

"Demosthenes! Demosthenes!" came from every part of the horseshoe.

The man to whom Athens turned in this crisis of her affairs sat unmoved and apparently oblivious to the demand of the crowd. Accustomed as they were to the oratorical combats of the Theatre, the citizens understood that Demosthenes had determined to reserve to himself the advantage of speaking last. They turned, therefore, to his chief opponent and called upon Æschines.

With an affectation of carelessness, Æschines ascended the bema and plunged at once into his argument, like a man who speaks what first occurs to his mind. The burden of his contention was that Athens was bound by her oath to observe her treaty with Macedon. To break it, he declared, would be to sink to the depth of dishonor and to make the name of the city a byword throughout the world. As he elaborated point after point in his reasoning, all tending to confirm and enforce his conclusions, it was plain that he was making an impression in spite of the fact that all who heard him knew that he had been in Philip's pay. He painted in dark colors the cost and danger of the war that would follow the violation of the treaty and closed with a florid appeal for constancy and forbearance, which he called the first of virtues.

He was succeeded by the dandy, Demades, whose robes of embroidered linen trailed upon the ground, but who sustained the argument against war with sledge-hammer blows of rhetoric. Glaucippus, Eubulus, Aristophon, and other orators, less famous, sat nodding their heads among their pupils and admirers, who clustered about them criticising or commending each period that fell from the lips of the speakers.

Watching the effect of the speeches, the partisans of Demosthenes, fearful that it might be disastrous to permit his opponents to hold the attention of the people any longer, renewed their shouts for him. The Assembly joined them. It had heard enough of the peace party, and it was eager to know how Demosthenes would answer.

There had been hardly any cessation of the talk and laughter. Many persons even moved about through the audience, chatting with their friends, and the Scythians, whose duty it was to maintain order, did not venture to interfere with them. Everywhere there was talk of the advantages of peace. The fever for war had cooled before the logic of oratory. Ariston, keenly attentive to all that was passing, was among those who left his place and wandered about the amphitheatre, pausing here and there to exchange a few words with an acquaintance. Behind him, like a ripple on the surface of a lake, there spread through the crowd the news that the story of Alexander's death was a falsehood contrived by the friends of Macedon to entrap the republic into war.

Before the old man had returned to his seat, the contradiction had reached Demosthenes, elaborated into every semblance of truth. He saw that it was believed and that he had been robbed of the main theme of his speech; for he could not prove that Alexander was dead. In response to the cries of the multitude, he rose, and there was no pretence in the reluctance with which he walked with head bent toward the benia, considering what he should say. As he ascended, the shouting died away, and for the first time there was absolute stillness in the Theatre.

"Athenians!" he began, in a voice of moderate pitch, but of a resonant tone that carried it to all parts of the circle, "by all means we should agree with those who so strenuously advise an exact adherence to our oaths and treaties – if they really believe what they say. For nothing is more in accord with the character of democracy than the maintenance of justice and honesty. But let not the men who urge us to be honest, embarrass us and our deliberations by harangues which their own actions contradict."

Ariston glanced about him with alarm, which was intensified as the orator, with consummate skill, built up the argument that, having bound himself by the treaty to maintain the liberties of Greece, Alexander had violated his oath by reinstating the tyrants of Messene and by disregarding other specific clauses. Artfully exaggerating the Macedonian aggressiveness, recalling by flattering allusions the great days of Athens, raising the hope of victory if war should be declared, Demosthenes presented the situation to the Assembly in such a light as to make it seem that Athens not only had a right to take up arms against Macedon, but that it was her plain duty to begin the attack. This impression grew out of his words without apparent effort to convey it. There was nothing in his speech to indicate that he was a special pleader presenting only one side of the case. He seemed the personification of candor and fairness. As his voice and gestures became more animated, and the flood of his marvellous eloquence swept over them, it appeared to his fellow-citizens that the men who had given expression to the desire for peace must be charlatans or worse, who had been bribed by Macedonian gold, as in fact many of them had been, to betray them into the hands of the enemy. In words that none but he knew how to choose, he raised the spectre that had been laid by the death of Philip and made it more threatening than it had ever been before.

Under the magic spell of his voice old thoughts and feelings stirred and woke in the hearts of the Athenians. For an hour they became once more the men of Platæa and Salamis and of the hundred bloody fields upon which they had measured their strength with that of their ancient foes from the Peloponnesus. Their former greatness of soul flamed up like a flash from a dying fire.

While Demosthenes spoke, not a word was uttered in the group around Clearchus. The young man sat with flushed cheeks and shining eyes, tingling with a desire to sacrifice life itself, if need there were, to revenge the wrongs of Athens and crush the insolent Macedonian. Leonidas listened with hands clenched and with every nerve at tension, like a hound of pure race straining at his leash toward the quarry. Aristotle was gravely attentive, and even Chares, though he could not be aroused from his lazy pose, followed the oration with evident enjoyment.

When Demosthenes ended and came down from the bema, the Assembly drew a long breath, and instantly each man fell to discussing with his neighbor what was best to be decided. Suddenly they realized with astonishment that Demosthenes had failed to propose any decree and that they had nothing before them upon which they might vote.

"I thought he was going to tell us how Alexander died!" Demades sneered.

"What has become of his witness of whom we have heard so much?" a leather-dealer asked.

"He is afraid to propose war! He has offered no decree!" another citizen cried.

These questions and a hundred others were discussed on every side with a violence that swept away all semblance of dignity or restraint. The factions quarrelled like children, and more than once came to blows in their eagerness, making it necessary for the Scythians of the public guard to separate them. At last the herald of the Epistate demanded in due form whether the Assembly desired any decree to be proposed. Far less than the required number of six thousand hands were raised in the affirmative, and the gathering was dissolved, eddying out of the enclosure in turbulent disorder.

"Is that all?" asked Chares, rising and stretching himself with a yawn.

"That is all," Clearchus replied sadly.

"With a phalanx of ten thousand brave men I could take your Acropolis," Leonidas remarked, measuring the height above his head.

"Yes, but where could you find them?" Aristotle said.

"Who knows? Perhaps in the camp of Alexander," the Spartan replied.

Ariston had slipped away into the crowd.