CHAPTER V
THE TRADITIONS OF THE HOUSE
So Theria’s world was bounded by the house. Fortunate was it then that the house was rich in memories. Rich otherwise it was not. No earnest Greek beautified his own house when he could beautify instead the house and temple of his deathless gods. So the walls of Nikander’s house were of plain stucco, its floors, worn flags.
To be sure the furniture, handed down from olden days, was beautiful. The bedsteads were chastely carved, their coverings were of home-made purple, and Melantho’s chair in which she sat to spin was of exquisite shape and balance. The tables in the men’s aula, where Nikander feasted his guests, were of teak-wood brought from afar by some travelled merchant to the Pythian feast. The vases in every room and put to all possible uses were of a grace and workmanship which only the Greeks knew. They were of the ordinary make, which everyone afforded, from the Delphi pottery below the hill. Upon them were painted pictures of the heroes and the gods—Theria’s charming picture books which sometimes told whole stories.
The plain old house had been built upon, lived in, and loved by a dozen generations of Nikanders. It had absorbed within itself the beauty of their daily life and seemed to give it forth again—a sort of fragrance to be sensed the moment you crossed the threshold. The Nikanders were one of those quiet families of exceeding excellence and highmindedness which always exist in great numbers in the background of an age of genius.
Time had harmonized the house. The lines of wall and ceiling were no longer plumb and level. The grey stucco had been stained lavender, yellow, faint rose by lichen growths. No threshold in the house but was worn deep by the tread of feet now passed beyond. In front of the little altar to Hestia the stone floor was hollowed like a bowl, where father and son, father and son had stood to offer reverent sacrifice to the goddess of the hearth.
Into this atmosphere Theria had been born and in it her spirit grew, keeping itself alive within the straitened, prescribed round.
But through the house were also wafted deep draughts of life from the Oracle—that mysterious shrine which seems to us like some myth, but which to the Greek was business-real.
The manner of divination at Delphi was peculiar in that it gave the priests an opportunity to mould the divine answer without at the same time losing faith in its divineness. The Priestess or Pythoness was a simple girl comprehending nothing of the knowledge which she must impart. In preparation for the day of oracle she was subjected to three days of rite. She fasted, drank of the sacred spring, walked through laurel smoke; and with her perfect faith in these rites, she must often have been in the ecstatic state before mounting the tripod.
Then in the shadowy adytum beneath the temple she was placed upon the golden tripod, the “High Perilous Seat” as it was called. The cold wind blew out of the cleft below her and in ecstasy she spoke words she knew not. It is undoubted that in her state of suspended consciousness she often reflected as in a mirror the knowledge and judgments of the priests. Her marvellous answers often filled priests and questioners alike with awe. The priests afterward were allowed to recast the answers into verse and to remould them. But in spite of the liberty which they occasionally felt obliged to use in the recasting the priests sincerely believed that the responses were genuinely from the god.
It was this mingling of faith and liberty which gave Delphi her power, a power which was for the most part grandly used. At the dawn of Hellas, from this eerie mountain glen the authority began to be exercised. It continued down through all the glory of Hellas and for centuries after her decline. Strong and real indeed must have been the religious impetus which could outlast the race.
This was the Oracle which Theria’s kin had served with singleness of heart. Her father, Nikander, served it now. Priest, yes, but priest in the joyous, free fashion of the Greek. In performance of his priestly duties to the Oracle Nikander had travelled far, studying the coasts of the Ægean, Mediterranean, and Euxine seas, wherever lay the colonies of Delphi’s founding. He had mingled with the barbarians or un-hellenic peoples and had even learned some of their languages—a sort of knowledge unknown in Greece. In Thrace he had sojourned with the rude tent dwellers, in Egypt he had visited the stately temples of Isis and Osiris and had seen the great Sphynx which so grimly faced the desert. In Persia he had visited the court of Xerxes and despised its luxury. He had returned to Delphi broadened and sweetened by his experiences.
Among the narrow one-city men of Greece the Delphian was not provincial.
Nikander was a member of that Council, presided over by Delphi, called “Amphyction,” which for hundreds of years had upheld the only international law that Hellas recognized. The Amphyctiony earnestly tried to keep peace between the passionate cities which were its members. Nikander personally had great influence in this Council and used that influence for the constant uplifting of the policy of the Oracle.
Nikander brought with him into his home the very breath of the Oracle. He spent little time at home, but when he did come his children ran to him, for no one could tell such wonder stories as Nikander—stories of shipwreck on savage coasts, of mountains that flamed and smoked, of the great statue Memnon which stood in Egypt and sang when the sun rose. But for the most part Nikander’s tales were tales of Delphi. Delphi was so rich in tradition that Nikander needed never to go far afield for his stories.
It was from her father that Theria heard of the beautiful coming of her own ancestors to Delphi, men brought by Apollo himself to be his worshippers.
“They were in a ship on a trading voyage,” Nikander would relate, “those ancestors of ours, bold young men, unafraid of the sea, for they were Cretan islanders. When suddenly there leaped out of the waves a Dolphin, golden and bright, and lay on their deck. At once the wind changed, speeding them toward the west. They tried to shift their sails but not one whit could they shift their course. The men were sore afraid for they knew they were in the hands of a god.”
“The Dolphin god,” Theria would murmur with Wide eyes.
“Yes, the Delphian,” her father made the age-old pun. “And they saw the immortal creature shimmer with rainbow colours never ceasing. So the strong wind blew them against their will first westward then northward into our own lovely gulf and to our port of Krissa. Here the ship stopped, held by immortal hands.
“Then at once the Dolphin disappeared and in his stead stood a young man strong and beautiful with golden locks out-sprayed upon the winds and eyes whose light was as the dawn of day.”
Theria would clap her hands softly, saying, “And he leaped upon the shore, our dear Apollo, and beckoned the men with his hand.” She knew the tale by heart.
Nikander would continue, smiling:
“And Apollo, lightly stepping, playing upon his heavenly lyre, led the Cretans hither, right by the place where our house now stands and up to the ‘place of golden tripods’ yonder.
“‘This is to be yours,’ he told the Cretans. ‘Here shall ye serve my oracle.’
“Then the Cretans looked about them. They saw the sterile cliffs and rocky hillsides on which nothing would grow. And they asked in apprehension:
“‘How can we live in this place, O Lord Apollo? Here will no grain grow, no cattle find fodder. Here we cannot fish.’”
The children laughed at this.
“Fish! O foolish, foolish Cretans!”
“Yes, foolish Cretans. So Apollo called them. ‘Do ye so love to delve in the earth, and sweat? Do ye so love to be buffeted by salt water and bitter winds? A secret I will tell you! Sit ye here, attend my worship, and all the nations of the earth shall bring you gifts. My altars shall smoke with the fat of lambs, my temples glow with golden things. But your duty shall be to guard my temple and to receive kindly in my name the tribes of men who gather here.
“‘But if any of you ill-treat the stranger, if ye do violence or speak harsh words, then shall others be your masters and make you slaves for ever.’”
“But we will never be slaves?” Theria would inquire anxiously. “We will never do those wicked deeds and be slaved?”
“No, never.” Nikander would kiss the child who cuddled so close in his arms and then with yet more fondness kiss his son Dryas.
Such was the ennobling tradition which the little girl Theria treasured in her heart. But she knew, too, that the Delphi god had not always been master of his shrine. Story upon story, faith upon faith went back into the misty past where the chaste belief in Apollo was underlaid with grotesque stories of Gaia—Mother Earth—and dragons.
It was from her nurse Baltè that she heard these older tales though they were sternly and fearfully believed by all Delphians.
Baltè one afternoon found the little girl sitting by Nikander’s front window gazing outward in silence. It was a place of wide prospect. The house was one of the few which stood above the main road, and so steep was the incline that the roofs across the way seemed but little higher than the road itself. Theria could look over them and over other roofs in sharp downward succession into the violet depth of Pleistos gorge and then up to the fir-clad mountain beyond.
A storm of clear-edged cloud was sweeping along that slope with flashes and mutterings. She watched wistfully its swiftness and its strength.
Baltè came from behind and kissed her.
“Now an’ why aren’t ye down in the aula playin’ with Clitè an’ Nerea? It’s always I find ye by yourself at the window. It isn’t right for little girls to be seen from the street.”
But Theria was full of questions. “Baltè, what does the glen find when it goes down into the shadows? It always seems to stoop down and down.”
“The river, do ye mean, darlin’?”
“But I can’t see the river, I’ve tried so many days.”
“No, the glen is too deep to see the Pleistos.”
“Baltè, did you ever go across the river to the other mountain—far, far over where Father Zeus has driven his clouds?”
“No, child, not I. What ever would I be doin’ there?”
“I’d like to go,” said the child.
“Don’t ye never! Do ye see that little rift-like all black on the mountainside among the firs?”
“Yes, Baltè.”
“Well, down in that rift is the cave o’ Lamia—a woman the upper part of her, but all the rest a snake. In the olden time she did come hitherward and ravaged the country.”
“What’s ravid?”
“Oh, knockin’ down the houses and eatin’ the folk. So at last to quiet her they did take a boy—oh, a nice likely young boy of the village—and leave him for her in that cave.”
“What for?”
“To eat! Every day a boy!”
By this time Theria’s eyes were wide, and she reached furtively and caught Baltè’s skirt.
“But then there came the hero Eurymalos an’ he walked right into the cave, he did. An’ he caught Lamia and pulled her out, and cast her down the cliff. Then she fell down, down, a-bumpin’ and bangin’ her head all the way—right into the river Pleistos.”
“Paian be praised!” breathed the little girl.
“Yes, but them kind don’t stay killed,” said Baltè uncomfortingly. “Look at the other one, the Python now. Apollo killed her long since. But every fourth year the Sacred Boy has to go up there in the Precinct an’ kill her again.”
“But, Baltè, that’s only a play to make a holy memory to the god.” Theria felt sure of this, for not long ago her cousin had been the Sacred Boy in the play and she had heard Mother say that if Dryas continued to do so well in school, and if he grew graceful and fair, he, too, might some day be the “Boy of The Strepterion Drama.” She somehow felt sure that Dryas could not kill a real Python.
But Baltè shook her head.
“Don’t tell me!” she said stoutly. “Ye haven’t seen her. I have. I’ve seen the switch o’ the Python’s tail, an’ heard her teeth grind, the while she dies. An’ when she is dead, don’t they perform all the purifications just as when old mistress died in the house? She’s real, I tell ye!”
Theria was more than half convinced.
Yet even the Python and the boy-eating Lamia did not so strike terror to the childish Theria as did the strange rites which through winter months occupied the Delphians. These were no tales of the past but rites of Dionysos which Theria herself could see.
In the winter came Dionysos, a powerful god, to take possession of the Precinct while Apollo should be away in the north. Then Theban women—a large company—arrived in Delphi to greet him. Theria saw them pass and knew that a like company from Athens was arriving at the other end of the village.
A society of Delphian ladies never else seen publicly came crowding out of their houses into the highway. From her favoured window Theria saw these also, her own kinswomen whom she knew well, no longer sedate and kind and neat, but with hair disordered, clad in strange spotted fawn skins over their chitons. They came leaping, shouting, whirling around in a sort of frenzy as though unable to wait for the rites which they were about to perform. They were no longer themselves, they were possessed by the strange god Dionysos. They were no longer called women, but Bacchantes. They were being swept along by a terrible joy from which the child shrank in shame though she could not understand.
On one such evening Theria watched them, saw the chill, dusky street aflare with their torches, saw how the eyes of the Bacchantes caught the light, staring like the eyes of panthers. Then in a frenzied, noisy rout they rushed away.
Theria sat by her window quivering while the cold yellow light died out on glen and mountain. Then quickly she left the window and stole down to the aula where she sat close to the Hestia fire. One of those first evenings of frost it was when instinctively men draw near to their hearth and wish to have about them the home faces and the comfortable voices of home. Yet the little girl knew that her Aunt Eunomia, her pretty cousin Clodora, and the rest, were speeding half-naked up Parnassos, there in the bitter uplands and the wild to rage madly to and fro at the will of the god.
Lycophron burst into the room, rosy with the cold, rude as fourteen years could make him.
“Did you see the women?” he shouted. “By the gods, I could hardly get home for them. Free at last—that’s what they are, havin’ the time of their lives. Dionysos is only an excuse. Hey, Theria, you are always wanting to get out. Why don’t you join?”
Lycophron did not see his father who had just come down the stair.
“Lycophron,” said the father sternly, “how do you dare such insolence? Let me never hear such from you again.”
And Lycophron disappeared more suddenly than he had come.
Nikander drew near the fire, absently warming his hands. Even at this early time he was disturbed over his eldest son.
“Are they gone?” queried the little girl.
“The Bacchantes? Yes, my child. As I came up the street I saw far up on the mountain their Bacchic fires gleaming through the dusk. It is cold for the night of Bromios.”
Theria knew of what he was thinking—a little great-great-aunt of hers who had died on a night like this, in the cold of the Parnassian rocks. A tiny room next to Theria’s own had belonged to her and she was said to visit it on Bromios night, a white, chattering figure trying in vain to warm herself amid the purple covering of the couch.
Theria stole to her father’s side, slipped her hand In his, and drew him down to whisper:
“Father, must I be a Bacchante some day?”
“God forbid,” spoke Nikander, then added piously, “unless the god demand you, Theria.”
“But he will not demand me. Oh, Father, he will not?”
Again she was in the hollow of his arm and again felt safe even from the god Dionysos himself.
“No, my daughter,” he said, looking into the sane little face. “I do not believe he will.”