So throughout the winter months Dionysos, that god who came from far Asia into Greece, held sway in Delphi. Apollo was gone on his distant mysterious journey to the land of the Hyperboreans, those happy, luxurious folk who live on the farther side of the north wind. Theria felt keenly this absence of her god: more keenly perhaps than she would have felt the absence of any person in the household.
For with Apollo’s going the Oracle was silenced. No pilgrims came to consult it. The pure, ordered songs of Apollo, the throbbing lyre, the announcing trumpets were stilled. Instead sounded the nervous wailing of Dionysos pipes. On quiet evenings Theria could hear them, and Baltè told her of the furious satyr dances in the Precinct. And now the absence of Apollo brought the rains and the cold. Yes, in the winter Theria missed her god.
When, therefore, in the spring Apollo returned, the whole heart of the little girl went forth to him in love. Theria knew well how her god must look. Every vase and kylix in the house bore pictures of Apollo. And long ago her child mind had selected, from among the beautiful youths she had seen come by on pilgrimage, one who seemed to her like the god himself. Always at the word “Apollo” Theria saw again that fresh-hearted happy boy moving, flushed and expectant, toward the Precinct, and on his face that same look of dear surprise, youth’s first response to life.
Apollo always arrived at Delphi on his birthday the seventh of Busious. Then the whole Precinct and the town awoke to greet him with song and festival. In Nikander’s house slaves ran to and fro on busy errands; for of a surety guests would be coming from the ends of the earth. The purples and the woven curtains came forth from Theria’s familiar storeroom, and all the house glowed with the patterns and pictures of tapestries. What joy to the little girl that busyness and commotion.
Past the house on the highroad now came throngs of pilgrims, more of them every day. At these times no forbiddings or punishments could keep Theria away from the window.
Here came men from Corinth, Thebes, Argos, and the islands of the sea. Rich men on horseback with trains of slaves, poor men whose anxious faces showed plain their question to the god. “Even the wolves bring gifts to Delphi,” was the saying; and some of these with their heavy mountain faces and clothes of skin seemed wild and wolf-like to the little girl. Now would pass a delegation from some distant Delphian colony bearing the tithe gift to the mother fane; for Apollo was founder of cities. It was he who had first led the colonists to their distant lands over the misty deep. Sculptors came accompanying their statues; poets brought their songs. Now would pass an Ionian gentleman in long purple cloak, laughing, gesturing; now a quiet young philosopher whose large-eyed vivid face showed his spirit-quest. Philosophers were well known in Delphi and more welcome than kings.
How eagerly the visitors talked as they came along. They had arrived after long journeying to within sight of their goal. The broad Doric speech, the melodious Attic, the barbarous dialects mixed with the speech of Scyths, Sikels, and Gauls, all these she heard.
Among these passers-by were sure to be some who would stop and enter Nikander’s door—guests of the priestly house. Often these were men of high renown, but quite as often they would be poor, in threadbare garments, who had came to the Oracle in bitter need. To these Nikander’s ministry was almost un-Greek in its overflowing sympathy. An inherited skill of kindness was his and his poet quality of insight was of no peculiar race or date. Many a troubled wight came forth from Nikander’s presence, serene to face the god.
In the centre of Nikander’s as in every Greek house there was a fast-closed door. Behind this door lived the women. They might, when only the family was in the house, come through this door, but they had no business or occupation on its outer side. At the appearance of a guest the women must quickly disappear.
This door was at once Theria’s greatest grief and greatest delight. Grief that it must constrain her at all. Delight in that she could steal through it and catch glimpses of her father’s guests. Often though she was punished for this Theria always did it. Who would not take punishment for a glimpse of Æschylus, Kimon, Parmenides, or Pindar!
“Back to your room—quick, Daughter!” Nikander would command whenever he noticed her. But often Nikander would be absorbed in his guest, and the room would be confused with serving-slaves. Nikander would not even see Theria’s little figure crouched by a pillar.
Of all the guests the Theban poet Pindar was the one whom Theria loved best. Indeed all children loved Pindar. Not a child in Delphi but would lift up eager hands to that radiant smile as Pindar passed. There was in him an almost aggressive joy. The same vitality which makes a child leap and run and shout—all this was in his adult nature. It shone out of the clear deeps which were his eyes and trembled on his full Greek lips. He seemed always just to have taken a deep breath as if joying in the very air about him. His rather large mouth and his nose both were well-built for breathing. Splendour was his—splendour of imagination. His whole being exulted in response to spiritual beauty unseen by other men.
All Delphi adored him. They had a strangely spiritual custom concerning him. Wherever Pindar might be in bodily comings or goings, the keeper of the Apollo temple when closing the shining doors at sunset hour was wont to call aloud:
“Let Pindar, the poet, go in to the supper of the god!”
Theria was a very little girl when she first saw Pindar. She was awakened by a sweet commotion of music, and getting up from her bed she trotted down into the front aula. The fateful door had been left open and she stole through, a diminutive figure in her short chiton. She went direct to Pindar.
The poet laid his lyre upon the table and lifted the child to his knee.
“There, there; I awakened you, little one,” he said tenderly.
“No,” she answered, “the music called me.”
“Called you, did it? And so you had to come?”
She did not answer but gazed up at him unwinking, her tiny hands folding and unfolding in her utter joy at being so near to him. She was unaware of the others sitting at the feast.
“Where do you get it?” she asked.
“Get what? The lyre? Oh, of the lyre-maker in Athens.”
She shook her curls.
“No, the song. Does it come out of the air?”
“Perhaps so, little one. Apollo gives it, surely.”
“Oh, will he give one to me?” she asked, her hands clasping suddenly close to her breast. “If I make a prayer to him and a sacrifice—a big, big sacrifice like Father’s? A sheep, and burn it all up with leaping flame till it smells so good—so good?”
Her baby nose sniffed deliciously and all the men laughed.
“And where will you get your big sheep?” teased one.
“Nay, do not spoil her hope,” spoke Pindar quickly. He drew the lyre toward her and instantly her chubby hand reached out to touch the strings, sounding them lovingly, softly.
Pindar watched her, absorbed.
“The god will give you your song, darling. Apollo’s answer is already in your eyes and fingers.”
“Do you think so, Pindar?” asked Nikander, amused. “Yet even so the child must not stop our feast. Medon, will you carry her back to her nurse?”
Nikander expected that she would cry and struggle, but she leaned over and kissed the lyre, then went away with Medon, quite satisfied.
Ever from that time Theria awakened at the first sound of Pindar’s lyre. She would steal down as near as she dared. If the door were shut she would press her ear against it in her eagerness to hear. If it were open she would crouch in its shadow. The slaves passing to and fro with the feast never told. Theria was a favourite with them.
It was Pindar’s habit to bring his songs to Nikander when they were glowing new. Nikander, a poet who had never written himself forth, had the keenest sense of poetic values and Pindar was glad of his judgments. Sometimes an ode would be sung again and again before both pronounced it right. Then Pindar would go out into the Delphic starlight humming the altered, perfected refrain:
“Harken, for once more we plough the field
of Aphrodite of the glancing eyes,”
or
“In anywise to slake my thirst for song,
The ancient glory of thy forefathers summoneth me,”
or he would address his own songs, calling them
“My lords of lute,
My feathered arrows of sweet song,
My golden pillars of sweet song——”
These were the familiars of Theria’s childhood and entered into the fabric of her mind. Pindar, as he strode singing away, little recked of the girl-listener drinking at his fountain and transmuted in all her being by his supreme expression.