Pausanias, the Spartan by Lord Lytton
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Lord Lytton >> Pausanias, the Spartan
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"Moreover," quoth Gelon, "the ocean is a terrible element. What can
valour do against a storm? We may lose more men by adverse weather
than a century can repair. Let who will have the seas. Sparta has her
rocks and defiles."
"Men and peers," said Pausanias, ill repressing his scorn, "ye little
dream what arms ye place in the hands of the Athenians. I have done.
Take only this prophecy. You are now the head of Greece. You surrender
your sceptre to Athens, and become a second-rate power."
"Never second rate when Greece shall demand armed men," said Cleomenes
proudly.
"Armed men, armed men!" cried the more profound Pausanias. "Do you
suppose that commerce--that trade--that maritime energy--that fleets
which ransack the shores of the world, will not obtain a power greater
than mere brute-like valour? But as ye will, as ye will."
"As we speak our forefathers thought," said Gelon.
"And, Pausanias," said Cleomenes gravely, "as we speak, so think the
Ephors."
Pausanias fixed his dark eye on Cleomenes, and, after a brief pause,
saluted the Equals and withdrew. "Sparta," he muttered as he regained
his chamber, "Sparta, thou refusest to be great; but greatness is
necessary to thy son. Ah, their iron laws would constrain my soul! but
it shall wear them as a warrior wears his armour and adapts it to his
body. Thou shalt be queen of all Hellas despite thyself, thine Ephors,
and thy laws. Then only will I forgive thee."
CHAPTER IV.
Diagoras was sitting outside his door and giving various instructions
to the slaves employed on his farm, when, through an arcade thickly
covered with the vine, the light form of Antagoras came slowly in
sight.
"Hail to thee, Diagoras," said the Chian, "thou art the only wise man
I meet with. Thou art tranquil while all else are disturbed; and,
worshipping the great Mother, thou carest nought, methinks, for the
Persian who invades, or the Spartan who professes to defend."
"Tut," said Diagoras, in a whisper, "thou knowest the contrary: thou
knowest that if the Persian comes I am ruined; and, by the gods, I am
on a bed of thorns as long as the Spartan stays."
"Dismiss thy slaves," exclaimed Antagoras, in the same undertone; "I
would speak with thee on grave matters that concern us both."
After hastily finishing his instructions and dismissing his slaves,
Diagoras turned to the impatient Chian, and said:
"Now, young warrior, I am all ears for thy speech."
"Truly," said Antagoras, "if thou wert aware of what I am about to
utter, thou wouldst not have postponed consideration for thy daughter,
to thy care for a few jars of beggarly olives."
"Hem!" said Diagoras, peevishly. "Olives are not to be despised; oil
to the limbs makes them supple; to the stomach it gives gladness. Oil,
moreover, bringeth money when sold. But a daughter is the plague of
a man's life. First, one has to keep away lovers; and next to find
a husband; and when all is done, one has to put one's hand in one's
chest, and pay a tall fellow like thee for robbing one of one's own
child. That custom of dowries is abominable. In the good old times a
bridegroom, as was meet and proper, paid for his bride; now we poor
fathers pay him for taking her. Well, well, never bite thy forefinger,
and curl up thy brows. What thou hast to say, say."
"Diagoras, I know that thy heart is better than thy speech, and that,
much as thou covetest money, thou lovest thy child more. Know, then,
that Pausanias--a curse light on him!--brings shame upon Cleonice.
Know that already her name hath grown the talk of the camp. Know that
his visit to her the night before last was proclaimed in the Council
of the Captains as a theme for jest and rude laughter. By the head
of Zeus, how thinkest thou to profit by the stealthy wooings of this
black-browed Spartan? Knowest thou not that his laws forbid him to
marry Cleonice? Wouldst thou have him dishonour her? Speak out to him
as thou speakest to men, and tell him that the maidens of Byzantium
are not in the control of the General of the Greeks."
"Youth, youth," cried Diagoras, greatly agitated, "wouldst thou bring
my grey hairs to a bloody grave? wouldst thou see my daughter reft
from me by force--and--"
"How darest thou speak thus, old man?" interrupted the indignant
Chian. "If Pausanias wronged a virgin, all Hellas would rise against
him."
"Yes, but not till the ill were done, till my throat were cut, and my
child dishonoured. Listen. At first indeed, when, as ill-luck would
have it, Pausanias, lodging a few days under my roof, saw and admired
Cleonice, I did venture to remonstrate, and how think you he took it?
'Never,' quoth he, with his stern quivering lip, 'never did conquest
forego its best right to the smiles of beauty. The legends of
Hercules, my ancestor, tell thee that to him who labours for men,
the gods grant the love of women. Fear not that I should wrong thy
daughter--to woo her is not to wrong. But close thy door on me; immure
Cleonice from my sight; and nor armed slaves, nor bolts, nor bars
shall keep love from the loved one,' Therewith he turned on his heel
and left me. But the next day came a Lydian in his train, with a
goodly pannier of rich stuffs and a short Spartan sword. On the
pannier was written '_Friendship_,' on the sword '_Wrath_,' and Alcman
gave me a scrap of parchment, whereon, with the cursed brief wit of a
Spartan, was inscribed '_Choose_!' Who could doubt which to take? who,
by the Gods, would prefer three inches of Spartan iron in his stomach
to a basketful of rich stuffs for his shoulders? Wherefore, from that
hour, Pausanias comes as he lists. But Cleonice humours him not, let
tongues wag as they may. Easier to take three cities than that child's
heart."
"Is it so indeed?" exclaimed the Chian, joyfully; "Cleonice loves him
not?"
"Laughs at him to his beard: that is, would laugh if he wore one."
"O Diagoras!" cried Antagoras, "hear me, hear me. I need not remind
thee that our families are united by the hospitable ties; that amongst
thy treasures thou wilt find the gifts of my ancestors for five
generations; that when, a year since, my affairs brought me to
Byzantium, I came to thee with the symbols of my right to claim thy
hospitable cares. On leaving thee we broke the sacred die. I have one
half, thou the other. In that visit I saw and loved Cleonice. Fain
would I have told my love, but then my father lived, and I feared lest
he should oppose my suit; therefore, as became me, I was silent. On
my return home, my fears were confirmed; my father desired that I, a
Chian, should wed a Chian. Since I have been with the fleet, news has
reached me that the urn holds my father's ashes." Here the young Chian
paused. "Alas, alas!" he murmured, smiting his breast, "and I was not
at hand to fix over thy doors the sacred branch, to give thee the
parting kiss, and receive into my lips thy latest breath. May Hermes,
O father, have led thee to pleasant groves!"
Diagoras, who had listened attentively to the young Chian, was touched
by his grief, and said pityingly:
"I know thou art a good son, and thy father was a worthy man, though
harsh. It is a comfort to think that all does not die with the dead.
His money at least survives him."
"But," resumed Antagoras, not heeding this consolation,--"but now I
am free: and ere this, so soon as my mourning garment had been lain
aside, I had asked thee to bless me with Cleonice, but that I feared
her love was gone--gone to the haughty Spartan. Thou reassurest me;
and in so doing, thou confirmest the fair omens with which Aphrodite
has received my offerings. Therefore, I speak out. No dowry ask I with
Cleonice, save such, more in name than amount, as may distinguish the
wife from the concubine, and assure her an honoured place amongst my
kinsmen. Thou knowest I am rich; thou knowest that my birth dates
from the oldest citizens of Chios. Give me thy child, and deliver her
thyself at once from the Spartan's power. Once mine, all the fleets of
Hellas are her protection, and our marriage torches are the swords of
a Grecian army. O Diagoras, I clasp thy knees; put thy right hand in
mine. Give me thy child as wife!"
The Byzantine was strongly affected. The suitor was one who, in birth
and possessions, was all that he could desire for his daughter; and at
Byzantium there did not exist that feeling against intermarriages with
the foreigner which prevailed in towns more purely Greek, though in
many of them, too, that antique prejudice had worn away. On the other
hand, by transferring to Antagoras his anxious charge, he felt that he
should take the best course to preserve it untarnished from the fierce
love of Pausanias, and there was truth in the Chian's suggestion. The
daughter of a Byzantine might be unprotected; the wife of an Ionian
captain was safe, even from the power of Pausanias. As these
reflexions occurred to him, he placed his right hand in the Chian's,
and said:
"Be it as thou wilt; I consent to betroth thee to Cleonice. Follow me;
thou art free to woo her."
So saying, he rose, and, as if in fear of his own second thoughts, he
traversed the hall with hasty strides to the interior of the mansion.
He ascended a flight of steps, and, drawing aside a curtain suspended
between two columns, Antagoras, who followed timidly behind, beheld
Cleonice.
As was the wont in the domestic life of all Grecian states, her
handmaids were around the noble virgin. Two were engaged on
embroidery, one in spinning, a fourth was reading aloud to Cleonice,
and that at least was a rare diversion to women, for few had the
education of the fair Byzantine. Cleonice herself was half reclined
upon a bench inlaid with ivory and covered with cushions; before her
stood a small tripod table on which she leant the arm, the hand of
which supported her cheek, and she seemed listening to the lecture
of the slave with earnest and absorbed attention, so earnest, so
absorbed, that she did not for some moments perceive the entrance of
Diagoras and the Chian.
"Child," said the former--and Cleonice started to her feet, and stood
modestly before her father, her eyes downcast, her arms crossed upon
her bosom--"child, I bid thee welcome my guest-friend, Antagoras of
Chios. Slaves, ye may withdraw."
Cleonice bowed her head; and an unquiet, anxious change came over her
countenance.
As soon as the slaves were gone, Diagoras resumed--
"Daughter, I present to thee a suitor for thy hand; receive him as I
have done, and he shall have my leave to carve thy name on every tree
in the garden, with the lover's epithet of 'Beautiful,' attached to
it. Antagoras, look up, then, and speak for thyself."
But Antagoras was silent; and a fear unknown to his frank hardy nature
came over him. With an arch smile, Diagoras, deeming his presence no
longer necessary or expedient, lifted the curtain, and lover and maid
were left alone.
Then, with an effort, and still with hesitating accents, the Chian
spoke--
"Fair virgin,--not in the groves of Byzantium will thy name be first
written by the hand of Antagoras. In my native Chios the myrtle trees
are already eloquent of thee. Since I first saw thee, I loved. Maiden,
wilt thou be my wife?"
Thrice moved the lips of Cleonice, and thrice her voice seemed to fail
her. At length she said,--"Chian thou art a stranger, and the laws of
the Grecian cities dishonour the stranger whom the free citizen stoops
to marry."
"Nay," cried Antagoras, "such cruel laws are obsolete in Chios. Nature
and custom, and love's almighty goddess, long since have set them
aside. Fear not, the haughtiest matron of my native state will not be
more honoured than the Byzantine bride of Antagoras."
"Is it in Sparta only that such laws exist?" said Cleonice, half
unconsciously, and to the sigh with which she spoke a deep blush
succeeded.
"Sparta!" exclaimed Antagoras, with a fierce and jealous pang--"Ah,
are thy thoughts then upon the son of Sparta? Were Pausanias a Chian,
wouldst thou turn from him scornfully as thou now dost from me?"
"Not scornfully, Antagoras," answered Cleonice (who had indeed averted
her face, at his reproachful question; but now turned it full
upon him, with an expression of sad and pathetic sweetness), "not
scornfully do I turn from thee, though with pain; for what worthier
homage canst thou render to woman, than honourable love? Gratefully do
I hearken to the suit that comes from thee; but gratitude is not the
return thou wouldst ask, Antagoras. My hand is my father's; my heart,
alas, is mine. Thou mayst claim from him the one; the other, neither
he can give, nor thou receive."
"Say not so, Cleonice," cried the Chian; "say not, that thou canst not
love me, if so I am to interpret thy words. Love brings love with the
young. How canst thou yet know thine own heart? Tarry till thou hast
listened to mine. As the fire on the altar spreads from offering to
offering, so spreads love; its flame envelops all that are near to it.
Thy heart will catch the heavenly spark from mine."
"Chian," said Cleonice, gently withdrawing the hand that he sought to
clasp, "when as my father's guest-friend thou wert a sojourner within
these walls, oft have I heard thee speak, and all thy words spoke the
thoughts of a noble soul. Were it otherwise, not thus would I now
address thee. Didst thou love gold, and wooed in me but the child of
the rich Diagoras, or wert thou one of those who would treat for
a wife, as a trader for a slave, invoking Here, but disdaining
Aphrodite, I should bow my head to my doom. But thou, Antagoras,
askest love for love; this I cannot give thee. Spare me, O generous
Chian. Let not my father enforce his right to my obedience."
"Answer me but one question," interrupted Antagoras in a low voice,
though with compressed lips: "Dost thou then love another?"
The blood mounted to the virgin's cheeks, it suffused her brow,
her neck, with burning blushes, and then receding, left her face
colourless as a statue. Then with tones low and constrained as his
own, she pressed her hand on her heart, and replied, "Thou sayest it;
I love another."
"And that other is Pausanias? Alas, thy silence, thy trembling, answer
me."
Antagoras groaned aloud and covered his face with his hands; but after
a short pause, he exclaimed with great emotion, "No, no--say not that
thou lovest Pausanias; say not that Aphrodite hath so accurst thee:
for to love Pausanias is to love dishonour."
"Hold, Chian! Not so: for my love has no hope. Our hearts are not our
own, but our actions are."
Antagoras gazed on her with suspense and awe; for as she spoke her
slight form dilated, her lip curled, her cheek glowed again, but
with the blush less of love than of pride. In her countenance, her
attitude, there was something divine and holy, such as would have
beseemed a priestess of Diana.
"Yes," she resumed, raising her eyes, and with a still and mournful
sweetness in her upraised features. "What I love is not Pausanias, it
is the glory of which he is the symbol, it is the Greece of which he
has been the Saviour. Let him depart, as soon he must--let these eyes
behold him no more; still there exists for me all that exists now--a
name, a renown, a dream. Never for me may the nuptial hymn resound, or
the marriage torch be illumined. O goddess of the silver bow, O
chaste and venerable Artemis! receive, protect thy servant; and ye,
O funereal gods, lead me soon, lead the virgin unreluctant to the
shades."
A superstitious fear, a dread as if his earthly love would violate
something sacred, chilled the ardour of the young Chian; and for
several moments both were silent.
At length, Antagoras, kissing the hem of her robe, said,--
"Maiden of Byzantium,--like thee then, I will love, though without
hope. I will not, I dare not, profane thy presence by prayers which
pain thee, and seem to me, having heard thee, almost guilty, as
if proffered to some nymph circling in choral dance the moonlit
mountain-tops of Delos. But ere I depart, and tell thy father that my
suit is over, O place at least thy right hand in mine, and swear to
me, not the bride's vow of faith and troth, but that vow which a
virgin sister may pledge to a brother, mindful to protect and to
avenge her. Swear to me, that if this haughty Spartan, contemning
alike men, laws, and the household gods, should seek to constrain thy
purity to his will; if thou shouldst have cause to tremble at power
and force; and fierce desire should demand what gentle love would but
reverently implore,--then, Cleonice, seeing how little thy father can
defend thee, wilt thou remember Antagoras, and through him, summon
around thee all the majesty of Hellas? Grant me but this prayer, and I
leave thee, if in sorrow, yet not with terror."
"Generous and noble Chian," returned Cleonice as her tears fell upon
the hand he extended to her,--"why, why do I so ill repay thee? Thy
love is indeed that which ennobles the heart that yields it, and her
who shall one day recompense thee for the loss of me. Fear not the
power of Pausanias: dream not that I shall need a defender, while
above us reign the gods, and below us lies the grave. Yet, to appease
thee, take my right hand, and hear my oath. If the hour comes when
I have need of man's honour against man's wrong, I will call on
Antagoras as a brother."
Their hands closed in each other; and not trusting himself to speech,
Antagoras turned away his face, and left the room.
CHAPTER V.
For some days, an appearance at least of harmony was restored to the
contending factions in the Byzantine camp.
Pausanias did not dismiss Gongylus from the government of the
city; but he sent one by one for the more important of the Ionian
complainants, listened to their grievances, and promised redress. He
adopted a more popular and gracious demeanour, and seemed, with a
noble grace, to submit to the policy of conciliating the allies.
But discontent arose from causes beyond his power, had he genuinely
exerted it, to remove. For it was a discontent that lay in the
hostility of race to race. Though the Spartan Equals had preached
courtesy to the Ionians, the ordinary manner of the Spartan warriors
was invariably offensive to the vain and susceptible confederates of
a more polished race. A Spartan, wherever he might be placed,
unconsciously assumed superiority. The levity of an Ionian was ever
displeasing to him. Out of the actual battle-field, they could have no
topics in common, none which did not provoke irritation and dispute.
On the other hand, most of the Ionians could ill conceal their
disaffection, mingled with something of just contempt at the notorious
and confessed incapacity of the Spartans for maritime affairs, while a
Spartan was yet the commander of the fleet. And many of them, wearied
with inaction, and anxious to return home, were willing to seize any
reasonable pretext for desertion. In this last motive lay the real
strength and safety of Pausanias. And to this end his previous policy
of arrogance was not so idle as it had seemed to the Greeks, and
appears still in the page of history. For a Spartan really anxious to
preserve the preeminence of his country, and to prevent the sceptre of
the seas passing to Athens, could have devised no plan of action more
sagacious and profound than one which would disperse the Ionians, and
the Athenians themselves, and reduce the operations of the Grecian
force to that land warfare in which the Spartan pre-eminence was
equally indisputable and undisputed. And still Pausanias, even in his
change of manner, plotted and intrigued and hoped for this end. Could
he once sever from the encampment the Athenians and the Ionian allies,
and yet remain with his own force at Byzantium until the Persian army
could collect on the Phrygian frontier, the way seemed clear to his
ambition. Under ordinary circumstances, in this object he might easily
have succeeded. But it chanced that all his schemes were met with
invincible mistrust by those in whose interest they were conceived,
and on whose co-operation they depended for success. The means adopted
by Pausanias in pursuit of his policy were too distasteful to the
national prejudices of the Spartan government, to enable him to elicit
from the national ambition of that government sufficient sympathy
with the object of it. The more he felt himself uncomprehended and
mistrusted by his countrymen, the more personal became the character,
and the more unscrupulous the course, of his ambition. Unhappily for
Pausanias moreover, the circumstances which chafed his pride, also
thwarted the satisfaction of his affections and his criminal ambition
was stimulated by that less guilty passion which shared with it the
mastery of a singularly turbulent and impetuous soul. Not his the love
of sleek, gallant, and wanton youth; it was the love of man in his
mature years, but of man to whom love till then had been unknown. In
that large and dark and stormy nature all passions once admitted took
the growth of Titans. He loved as those long lonely at heart alone can
love; he loved as love the unhappy when the unfamiliar bliss of the
sweet human emotion descends like dew upon the desert. To him Cleonice
was a creature wholly out of the range of experience. Differing in
every shade of her versatile humour from the only women he had known,
the simple, sturdy, uneducated maids and matrons of Sparta, her
softness enthralled him, her anger awed. In his dreams of future
power, of an absolute throne and unlimited dominion, Pausanias beheld
the fair Byzantine crowned by his side. Fiercely as he loved, and
little as the _sentiment_ of love mingled with his _passion_, he yet
thought not to dishonour a victim, but to elevate a bride. What though
the laws of Sparta were against such nuptials, was not the hour
approaching when these laws should be trampled under his armed heel?
Since the contract with the Persians, which Gongylus assured him
Xerxes would joyously and promptly fulfil, Pausanias already felt, in
a soul whose arrogance arose from the consciousness of powers that had
not yet found their field, as if he were not the subject of Sparta,
but her lord and king. In his interviews with Cleonice, his language
took a tone of promise and of hope that at times lulled her fears, and
communicated its sanguine colourings of the future to her own dreams.
With the elasticity of youth, her spirits rose from the solemn
despondency with which she had replied to the reproaches of Antagoras.
For though Pausanias spoke not openly of his schemes, though his
words were mysterious, and his replies to her questions ambiguous
and equivocal, still it seemed to her, seeing in him the hero of all
Hellas, so natural that he could make the laws of Sparta yield to the
weight of his authority, or relax in homage to his renown, that she
indulged the belief that his influence would set aside the iron
customs of his country. Was it too extravagant a reward to the
conqueror of the Mede to suffer him to select at least the partner of
his hearth? No, Hope was not dead in that young breast. Still might
she be the bride of him whose glory had dazzled her noble and
sensitive nature, till the faults that darkened it were lost in the
blaze. Thus insensibly to herself her tones became softer to her stern
lover, and her heart betrayed itself more in her gentle looks. Yet
again were there times when doubt and alarm returned with more than
their earlier force--times when, wrapt in his lurid and absorbing
ambition, Pausanias escaped from his usual suppressed reserve--times
when she recalled that night in which she had witnessed his interview
with the strangers of the East, and had trembled lest the altar should
be kindled upon the ruins of his fame. For Cleonice was wholly,
ardently, sublimely Greek, filled in each crevice of her soul with
its lovely poetry, its beautiful superstition, its heroic freedom. As
Greek, she had loved Pausanias, seeing in him the lofty incarnation of
Greece itself. The descendant of the demigod, the champion of
Plataea, the saviour of Hellas--theme for song till song should be no
more--these attributes were what she beheld and loved; and not to have
reigned by his side over a world would she have welcomed one object
of that evil ambition which renounced the loyalty of a Greek for the
supremacy of a king.
Meanwhile, though Antagoras had, with no mean degree of generosity,
relinquished his suit to Cleonice, he detected with a jealous
vigilance the continued visits of Pausanias, and burned with
increasing hatred against his favoured and powerful rival. Though,
in common with all the Greeks out of the Peloponnesus, he was very
imperfectly acquainted with the Spartan constitution, he could not be
blinded, like Cleonice, into the belief that a law so fundamental in
Sparta, and so general in all the primitive States of Greece, as that
which forbade intermarriage with a foreigner, could be cancelled for
the Regent of Sparta, and in favour of an obscure maiden of Byzantium.
Every visit Pausanias paid to Cleonice but served, in his eyes, as a
prelude to her ultimate dishonour. He lent himself, therefore, with
all the zeal of his vivacious and ardent character, to the design
of removing Pausanias himself from Byzantium. He plotted with the
implacable Uliades and the other Ionian captains to send to Sparta a
formal mission stating their grievances against the Regent, and urging
his recall. But the altered manner of Pausanias deprived them of their
just pretext; and the Ionians, more and more under the influence of
the Athenian chief, were disinclined to so extreme a measure without
the consent of Aristides and Cimon. These two chiefs were not passive
spectators of affairs so critical to their ambition for Athens--they
penetrated into the motives of Pausanias in the novel courtesy of
demeanour that he adopted, and they foresaw that if he could succeed
in wearing away the patience of the allies and dispersing the fleet,
yet without giving occasion for his own recall, the golden opportunity
of securing to Athens the maritime ascendancy would be lost. They
resolved, therefore, to make the occasion which the wiles of the
Regent had delayed; and towards this object Antagoras, moved by his
own jealous hate against Pausanias, worked incessantly. Fearless and
vigilant, he was ever on the watch for some new charge against the
Spartan chief ever relentless in stimulating suspicion, aggravating
discontent, inflaming the fierce, and arguing with the timid. His less
exalted station allowed him to mix more familiarly with the various
Ionian officers than would have become the high-born Cimon, and the
dignified repute of Aristides. Seeking to distract his mind from the
haunting thought of Cleonice, he flung himself with the ardour of his
Greek temperament into the social pleasures, which took a zest from
the design that he carried into them all. In the banquets, in the
sports, he was ever seeking to increase the enemies of his rival,
and where he charmed a gay companion, there he often enlisted a bold
conspirator.
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