The Spartan Twins by Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
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Lucy (Fitch) Perkins >> The Spartan Twins
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THE SPARTAN TWINS
By Lucy Fitch Perkins
1918
CONTENTS
LIST OF CHARACTERS
I. COMPANY AT THE FARM
II. THE STRANGER'S STORY
III. THE SHEPHERDS
IV. SOWING AND REAPING
V. THE TWINS GO TO ATHENS
VI. THE FESTIVAL OF ATHENA
VII. HOME AGAIN
THE SPARTAN TWINS
_The Characters in this Story are_:--
MELAS, a Spartan living on the Island of Salamis, just off the coast of
Greece. He is Overseer on the Farm of Pericles, Archon of Athens.
LYDIA, Wife of Melas, and Mother of Dion and Daphne.
DION and DAPHNE, Twin Son and Daughter of Melas and Lydia.
CHLOE, a young slave girl, belonging to Melas and Lydia. She had been
abandoned by her parents when she was a baby, and left by the roadside to
die of neglect or be picked up by some passer-by. She was found by Lydia
and brought up in her household as a slave.
ANAXAGORAS, "the Stranger," a Philosopher,--friend of Pericles.
PERICLES, Chief Archon of Athens.
LAMPON, a Priest.
A Priest of the Erechtheum.
DROMAS, LYCIAS, and Others, Slaves on the Farm of Pericles.
Time: About the middle of the Fifth Century B.C.
[Illustration: Plan of home of the Spartan Twins]
I
COMPANY AT THE FARM
One lovely spring morning long years ago in Hellas, Lydia, wife of
Melas the Spartan, sat upon a stool in the court of her house, with her
wool-basket beside her, spinning. She was a tall, strong-looking young
woman with golden hair and blue eyes, and as she twirled her distaff and
twisted the white wool between her fingers she sang a little song to
herself that sounded like the humming of bees in a garden.
The little court of the house where she sat was open to the sky, and the
afternoon sun came pouring over the wall which surrounded it, and made a
brilliant patch of light upon the earthen floor. The little stones which
were embedded in the earth to form a sort of pavement glistened in the
sun and seemed to play at hide and seek with the moving shadow of Lydia's
distaff as she spun. On the thatch which covered the arcade around
three sides of the court pigeons crooned and preened their feathers, and
from a room in the second story of the house, which opened upon a little
gallery enclosing the fourth side of the court, came the _clack clack_ of
a loom.
As she spun, the shadow of Lydia's distaff grew longer and longer across
the floor until at last the sunlight disappeared behind the wall, leaving
the whole court in gray shadow.
Under the gallery a large room opened into the court. The embers of a
fire glowed dully upon a stone hearth in the center of this room, and
beyond, through an open door, fowls could be seen wandering about the
farm-yard. Suddenly the quiet of the late afternoon was broken by a
medley of sounds. There were the bleating of sheep, and the tinkle of
their bells, the lowing of cattle and the barking of a dog, the soft
patter of bare feet and the voices of children.
Then there was a sudden squawking among the hens in the farm-yard,
and through the back door, past the glowing hearth and into the court,
rushed two children, followed by a huge shepherd dog. The children were
blue-eyed and golden-haired, like their Mother, and looked so big and
strong that they might easily have passed for twelve years of age, though
they really were but ten. They were so exactly alike that their Mother
herself could hardly tell which was Dion and which was Daphne, and, as
for their Father, he didn't even try. He simply said whichever name came
first to his lips, feeling quite sure that the children would always be
able to tell themselves apart, at any rate. Daphne, to be sure, wore
her chiton a little longer than Dion wore his, but when they were running
or playing games she often pulled it up shorter through her girdle, so
even that was not a sure sign.
Lydia looked from one of them to the other as the children came bounding
into the court, with Argos, the dog, barking and leaping about them, and
smiled with pride.
"Where have you been, you wild creatures?" she said to the twins, "I
haven't seen you since noon," and "Down, Argos, down," she cried to the
dog, who had put his great paws in her lap and was trying to kiss her on
the nose.
"We've been down in the field by the spring with Father," Dion shouted,
"and Father is bringing a man home to supper!"
"Company!" gasped Lydia, throwing up her hands. "Whoever can it be at
this time of the day and in such an out of the way place as this? And
nothing but black broth ready for supper! I might have had a roast
fowl at least if only I had known. Where are they now?"
"They are coming down the road," said Dion. "They stopped to see the
sheep and cattle driven into the farm-yard. They'll be here soon."
Lydia thrust her distaff into the wool-basket by her side and rose
hastily from her stool. "There's no time to lose," she said. "The
Stranger will not wish to linger here if he expects to reach Ambelaca
to-night. It is a good two miles to the village, and he'll not find a
boat crossing to the mainland after dark. I am sure of that,
unlessperhaps he has one waiting for him there."
As she spoke, Lydia drew her skirt shorter through her girdle and started
for the hearth-fire in the room beyond. "Shoo," she cried to the hens,
which had followed the children into the house and were searching
hopefully for something to eat among the ashes, "you'll burn your toes as
like as not! Begone, unless you want to be put at once into the pot! Go
for them, Argos! Dion, you feed them. They'll be under foot until they've
had their supper, and it's time they were on the roost this minute!
Daphne, your face is dirty; go wash it, while I get the fire started and
see if I can't find something to eat more fitting to set before a guest."
While the children ran to carry out their Mother's orders, Lydia herself
seized the bellows and blew upon the embers of the fire. "By all the
Gods!" she cried, "there's not a stick of wood in the house." She dropped
the bellows and ran into the court. From the room above still came the
_clack clack_ of the loom. Lydia looked up at the gallery of the second
story and clapped her hands.
"Chloe, Chloe," she called. The clacking suddenly stopped, and a young
girl with black hair and eyes and red cheeks came out of the upper room
and leaned over the balcony rail.
"Did you want me?" she asked.
"Indeed I want you!" answered her mistress. "Company is coming to supper
and there is nothing in the house fit to set before him! Hurry and bring
some wood. There's not even a fire!"
There was a sound of hasty footsteps on the stair, and Chloe disappeared
into the farm-yard. In a moment she was back again with a basket of wood,
which she placed beside the hearth. Lydia knelt on the floor and laid the
wood upon the coals. Then she blew upon them energetically with the
bellows. Chloe knelt beside her and blew too, but not with bellows. The
ashes flew in every direction.
"Mercy!" cried Lydia, "you've a breath like the blasts of winter! You
will blow the sparks clear across the court and set fire to the thatch if
you keep on! Come! Get out the oven and start a charcoal fire! We can
bake barley-cakes, at least, and there are sausages in the store-room.
See if there is fresh water in the water-jar."
"There isn't a drop, I know," said Daphne. "I took the last to wash my
face."
"Was there ever anything like it?" cried Lydia. "Fresh water first of
all! Run at once to the spring, Chloe. I '11 get the oven myself. Daphne,
you take the small water-jar and go with Chloe."
As Chloe and Daphne, with their water-jars on their shoulders, started
out of the back door for the spring, the door at the front of the court
opened, and Melas entered with a tall, bearded man wearing a long cloak.
The moment she heard the door move on its hinges, Lydia stood up straight
and tall beside her hearth-fire, and, at a sign from her husband, came
forward to greet the Stranger.
"You are welcome," she said, "to such entertainment as our plain house
affords. I could wish it were better for your sake."
"I shall be honored by your hospitality," said the Stranger politely,
"and what is good enough for a farmer is surely good enough for a
philosopher, if I may call myself one."
"Though you are a philosopher, you are also, no doubt, an Athenian,"
replied Lydia, "and it is known to all the world that the feast of the
Spartan is but common fare for those who live delicately as the Athenians
do."
"I bring an appetite that would make a feast of bread alone," answered
the Stranger.
Melas, a tall brown-faced man with a brown beard, now spoke for the first
time.
"There is no haste, wife," he said. "The Stranger will spend the night
under our roof. It is not yet late. While you get supper, we will rest
beneath the olive trees and watch the sun go down behind the hills."
"Until I can better serve you, then," Lydia replied; and the two men went
out again through the open door, and sat down upon a wooden bench which
commanded a view of the little valley and the hills beyond.
Meanwhile, within doors, Lydia dropped the stately dignity of her company
manners and became once more the busy housewife. When Chloe and Daphne
returned from the spring, she had barley-cakes baking in the oven, and
sausages were roasting before the hearth-fire. A kettle of broth steamed
beside it.
"How good it smells!" cried Dion, when he came in with Argos from the
farm-yard. "I could eat a whole pig myself. Do cook a lot of sausages,
Mother. I am as hungry as a wolf."
"And you a Spartan boy!" said his Mother reprovingly. "You should think
less of what you put in your stomach! Plain fare makes the strongest men.
It is only polite to give a guest the best you have, but that's no excuse
for being greedy and wanting to stuff yourself every day."
"Well, then," said Dion, "I wish Hermes, if he is the god who guides
travelers, would bring them this way oftener. I'd like to be a strong
man, but I like good things to eat, too, and when we have company, we
have a feast."
His Mother did not answer him; she was too busy.
She sent Chloe to the closet for a jar of wine, and some goat's-milk
cheese, and she herself went upstairs to get some dried figs from the
store-room. Daphne followed Chloe to the closet, and for a moment there
was no one beside the hearth-fire but Dion and Argos, and the sausages
smelled very good indeed.
"I wonder if she counted them," thought Dion to himself, as he looked
longingly at them. And then almost before he knew it himself he had
snatched one of the sausages from the fire and had bitten a piece off the
end! It was so very hot that it burned both his fingers and his tongue
like everything, and when he tried to lick his fingers, he let go of the
sausage, and Argos snapped it up and swallowed it whole. It burned all
the way down to his stomach, and Argos gave a dreadful howl of pain and
dashed through the door out into the farm-yard. Dion heard his Mother's
footsteps coming down the stair. He thought perhaps he'd better join
Argos.
When Lydia reached the hearth-fire once more, only Daphne was in the
room. She set down the basket of figs and knelt to turn the sausages. She
had counted them and she saw at once that one was missing. She was
shocked and surprised, but she guessed what had become of it. Mothers
are just like that. She rose from her knees and looked around for the
culprit. She saw Daphne.
"You naughty boy!" she said sternly to Daphne. "What have you done with
that sausage?"
"I didn't do anything with it; I never even saw it," cried poor Daphne.
"And, besides that, I'm not a naughty boy. I'm not a boy at all! I'm
Daphne!"
"Where's Dion, then?" demanded Lydia.
"I don't know where he is," said Daphne. "I didn't see him either, but I
heard Argos howl as if some one had stepped on his tail. Maybe he took
the sausage."
Lydia went to the door and looked out into the farm-yard. Away off in the
farthest corner by the sheep-pen she saw two dark shadows.
"Come here at once," she called.
Dion and Argos both obeyed, but they came very slowly, and Argos had his
tail between his legs. Lydia pointed to the fire.
"Where is the other sausage?" she inquired, with stern emphasis.
"Argos ate it," said Dion.
"Open your mouth," said his Mother. She looked at Dion's tongue. It was
all red where it was burned.
"I suppose Argos took it off the fire and made you bite it when it was
hot," said Lydia grimly. "Very well, he is a bad dog and cannot have any
sausage with his supper. And a boy that hasn't any more manners than a
dog can't have any either. And neither one can be trusted in the kitchen
where things are cooking. Go sit on the wood-pile until I call you."
She put both Dion and Argos out of doors and turned to her cooking again.
"Supper is nearly ready," she called at last to Chloe. "You and Daphne
may bring out the couch and get the table ready."
Under the arcade in the court there was a small wooden table. Chloe and
Daphne lifted it and brought it near the fire. Then they brought a plain
wooden bench that also stood under the thatch and placed it beside the
table. They arranged cushions of lamb's wool upon the bench, and near the
foot set a low stool. Daphne brought the dishes, and when everything was
ready, Lydia sent Chloe to call her husband and the Stranger, while she
herself went out to the farm-yard. She found Dion and Argos sitting side
by side on the wood-pile in dejected silence.
"Come in and wash your hands," she said to Dion. "If you get yourself
clean, wrists and all, you may have your supper with us, but remember, no
sausage. You have had your fingers with your food." This is what mothers
used to say to their children in those days, because there were no knives
or forks, and often not even spoons, to eat with.
Lydia didn't invite Argos in, but he came anyway, and lay down beside the
fire with his nose on his paws, just where people would be most likely to
stumble over him.
When Melas and the Stranger came in, they sat down side by side on the
couch. Chloe knelt before them, took off their sandals, and bathed their
feet. Then the Stranger loosened his long, cloak-like garment, and he and
Melas reclined side by side upon the couch, their left elbows resting
on the lamb's-wool cushions. Chloe moved the little table within easy
reach of their hands, and Lydia took her place on the stool beside the
couch. It was now quite dark except for the light of the hearth-fire.
The Twins had been brought up to be seen and not heard, especially when
there was company, and as Dion was not anxious to call attention to
himself just then, the two children slipped quietly into their places on
the floor by the hearth-fire just as Melas and the Stranger dipped their
bread into their broth and began to eat.
It must be confessed that Melas seemed to enjoy the black broth much
more than his guest did, but the stranger ate it nevertheless, and when
the last drop was gone, the men both wiped their fingers on scraps of
bread and threw them to Argos, who snapped them up as greedily as if his
tongue had never been burned at all. Then Chloe brought the sausages hot
from the fire, and barley-cakes from the oven. When she had served the
men and had explained that these cakes were really not so good as her
barley-cakes usually were, Lydia gave the Twins each one, and she gave
Daphne a sausage. She just looked at Dion without a single word.
He knew perfectly well what she meant. He munched his barley-cake in
mournful silence, and I suppose no sausage ever smelled quite so good to
any little boy in the whole world as Daphne's did to Dion just then.
However, there were plenty of barley-cakes, and his mother let him have
honey to eat with them, which comforted Dion so much that when the
Stranger began to talk to Melas, he forgot his troubles entirely. He
forgot his manners too, and listened with his eyes and mouth both wide
open until the honey ran off the barley-cake and down between his
fingers. Then he licked his fingers!
No one saw him do it, not even his Mother, because she too was watching
the the inhabitants of the little farm. They lived so far from the sea,
and so far from highways of travel on the island, that the Twins in all
their lives had seen but few persons besides their own family and the
slaves who worked on the farm. The Stranger was to them a visitor from
another world--the great outside world which lay beyond the shining blue
waters of the bay. They had seen that distant world sometimes from a
hill-top on a clear day, but they had never been farther from home
than the little seaport of Ambelaca two miles away.
"How is it," the Stranger was saying to Melas, "that you, a Spartan, live
here, so far from your native soil, and so near to Athens? The Spartans
have but little love for the Athenians as a rule, nor for farming either,
I am told."
"We love the Athenians quite as well as they love us," answered Melas;
"and as for my being here, I have my father to thank for that. He was a
soldier of the Persian Wars and settled here after the Battle of Salamis.
I grew up on the island, and thought myself fortunate when I had a chance
to become overseer on this farm."
"Who is the owner of the farm?" asked the Stranger.
"Pericles, Chief Archon of Athens," answered Melas.
"You are indeed fortunate to be in his service," said the Stranger. "He
is the greatest man in Athens, and consequently the greatest man in the
world, as any Athenian would tell you!"
"Do you know him?" asked Dion, quite forgetting in his interest that
children should be seen and not heard.
Lydia shook her head at Dion, but the Stranger answered just as politely
as if Dion were forty years old instead of ten.
"Yes," he said, "I know Pericles well. I went with him only yesterday to
see the new temple he is having built upon the great hill of the
Acropolis in Athens. You have seen it, of course," he said, turning to
Melas.
"No," answered Melas. "I sell most of my produce in the markets of the
Piraeus, and go to Athens itself only when necessary to take fruit and
vegetables to the city home of Pericles. There is no occasion to
go in the winter, and the season for planting is only just begun. Perhaps
later in the summer I shall go."
"When you do," said the Stranger, "do not fail to see the new building on
the sacred hill. It is worth a longer journey than from here to Athens, I
assure you. People will come from the ends of the earth to see it some
day, or I am no true prophet."
"Oh," murmured Daphne to Dion, "don't you wish we could go too?"
"You can't go. You're a girl!" Dion whispered back. "Girls can't do such
things, but I'm going to get Father to take me with him the very next
time he goes."
Daphne turned up her nose at Dion. "I don't care if I am a girl," she
whispered back. "I'm no Athenian sissy that never puts her nose out of
doors, I can do everything you can do here on the farm, and I guess I
could in Athens too. Besides, no one would know I'm a girl; I look just
as much like a boy as you do. I look just like you."
"You do not," said Dion resentfully. "You can't look like a boy."
"Ail right," answered Daphne, "then you must look just like a girl, for
you know very well Father can't tell us apart, so there now."
Dion opened his mouth to reply, but just then his Mother shook her head
at them, and at the same moment Chloe, coming in with the wine-jar,
stumbled over Argos and nearly fell on the table. Argos yelped, and
Dion and Daphne both laughed. Lydia was dreadfully ashamed because Chloe
had been so awkward, and ashamed of the Twins for laughing. She
apologized to the Stranger.
"Oh, well," said the Stranger, and he laughed a little too, even if he
was a philosopher, "boys will be boys, and those seem two fine strong
little fellows of yours. One of these days they'll be competing in the
Olympian games, I suppose, and how proud you will be if they should bring
home the wreath of victors!"
"They are as strong as the young Hercules, both of them," Melas answered,
"but one is a girl, so we can hope to have but one victor in the family
at best."
"Perhaps two would make you over proud," said the Stranger, smiling, "so
it may be just as well that one is a girl, after all."
Dion sat up very straight at these words, but Daphne hung her head. "I do
wish I were a boy too," she said, "they can do so many things a girl is
not allowed to do. They get the best of everything."
"That must be as the Gods will," said the Stranger kindly. "And Spartan
women have always been considered just as brave as men, even if they
aren't quite as big. Anyway, some of us have to be women because we can't
get along without women in the world."
Two bright spots glowed in Lydia's cheeks, and she twirled her distaff
faster than ever. "I should think not, indeed," she said. "Men aren't
much more fit to take care of themselves than children!"
Melas and the Stranger laughed, and the Stranger turned to Daphne.
"Don't you remember, my little maid, how glad Epimetheus was to welcome
Pandora, even if she did bring trouble into the world with her?" he
asked.
"No," said Daphne, "I don't know about Pandora. Please tell us about
her!"
Lydia rose and glanced up at the stars. "It's getting near bed-time," she
said to the Twins; and to the Stranger she added, "You must excuse the
boldness of my children. They are brought up so far out of the world they
scarcely understand the reverence due men like yourself. You must not
permit them to impose upon your kindness."
"I will gladly tell them about Pandora if you are willing," said the
Stranger. "The fine old tales of Hellas should be the birthright of every
child. They will live so long as there are children in the world to hear
them and old fellows like myself to tell them."
"If you will be so gracious then," said Lydia, "but first let us prepare
ourselves to listen."
She signed to Chloe, who immediately brought a basin and towel to the
Stranger and Melas. When they had washed their hands, she carried away
the basin and swept the crumbs into the fire, while Lydia filled cups
with wine and water and set them before her husband and his guest. Then
wood was piled upon the fire, and Lydia seated herself beside it once
more with her distaff and wool-basket, while Chloe crept into the shadow
behind her mistress's chair, and the Twins drew nearer to her footstool.
When everything was quiet once more, the Stranger lifted his wine-cup.
"Since we are in the country," he said, "we will make our libation to
Demeter, the Goddess of the fields. May yours be fruitful, with her
blessing." He poured a little wine on the earthen floor as he spoke.
There was a moment of reverent silence. Then while the flames of the
hearth danced upward toward the sky and the stars winked down from above,
the Stranger began his story.
II
THE STRANGER'S STORY
"Long, long ago, when the earth was young and the Gods mingled more
freely with men than they do to-day, there lived in Hellas a beautiful
youth named Epimetheus. I am not quite sure that he was the very first
man that ever lived, but at any rate he was one of the first, and he was
very lonely. The world was then more beautiful than I can say. The sun
shone every day in the year, flowers bloomed everywhere, and the earth
brought forth abundantly all that he needed for food, but still
Epimetheus was not happy. The Gods saw how lonely he was and they felt
sorry for him.
"'Let us give him a companion,' said Zeus, the father of all the Gods.
'Even sun-crowned Olympus would be a desolate place to me if I had to
live all alone.' So the Gods all fell to hunting for just the right
companion to send to poor lonely Epimetheus, and soon they found a lovely
maiden whose name was Pandora. 'She's just the right one,' said
Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. 'See how beautiful she is.' 'Yes,'
said Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, 'but she will need more than beauty
or Epimetheus will tire of her. One cannot love an empty head forever,
even if it is a beautiful one. I will give her learning and wisdom.'
"'I will give her a sweet voice for singing,' said Apollo. In this way
each one of the Gods gave to Pandora some wonderful gift, and when the
time came for her departure from Olympus, where the Gods dwell, these
gifts were packed away in a marriage-chest of curious workmanship,
and were taken with her to the home of Epimetheus.
"You can imagine how glad Epimetheus was to receive a bride so nobly
endowed, and for a time everything went very happily upon the earth. At
last, one sad day, a dreadful thing happened.
"Pandora had been told by the Gods that she must not open the box, lest
she lose all the blessings it contained.
"But she was curious. She wished to see with her own eyes what was in it,
and one day, when Epimetheus was away from home, she lifted the corner of
the lid! Out flew the gifts of the Gods! She tried her best to close the
lid again, but before she could do so, the blessings had flown away in a
bright cloud.