CHAPTER XI
WHY NOT BE THE PYTHIA?
In times of war we picture every corner of a warring land torn with passion, dark with fear, dyed with blood. But this is not so. In Nikander’s household the four meals a day were served by quiet slaves, the washing was done down in the Pleistos River as the good housewife Melantho required it. Eleutheria received her daily lesson in spinning and weaving and damaged more good wool than any maid of all the generations of Nikanders. This indeed was Dame Melantho’s chief grief, despite the fact that her little land was cowering under the heaviest cloud of war that ever threatened a devoted country.
At every festival came crowding news of the great Persian king across the sea preparing his army to invade and devour. Into every port came sailors telling of the fleets of Phœnicians, Cyprians, Lykians, Dorians of Asia, etc., all of which fleets were making ready to pounce upon Greece. Then arrived the actual ambassadors of the King, demanding earth and water. Which was to say: “Consent to slavery and the Persians will leave you out of the fight.” Many cities gave these tokens immediately.
“Who, then, will resist?” “What will happen if any should resist?” “Will the gods help?” “Have the gods forgotten their beloved Hellas?”
Such were the questions which poured into Delphi. These days Nikander might be seen pacing to and fro in some lesche or near the Council House, seeing naught before him, blind to the beauty of hills and far-glimpsed vale. Then perhaps in desperation he would stride down the hill and along the road toward home.
In the women’s aula Melantho would greet him with the small worries of the day. A slave child was ill and she knew not what to do for it. She must have more grain to store away in the storeroom or Nikander would have to go without his special cake next winter.
“And will you have a cake now?” she asked. “And a little wine? Do, now; you look tired.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
And so she went out to make the slaves do all in order.
Meanwhile, Theria came in and sat upon a stool near by. She spoke no word but tried to untangle a thread from her distaff, parting wisp from wisp with slender fingers, and watched her father with keen, quiet eyes. Melantho returned chattering and Nikander ate his cake in silence, and still Theria watched.
She knew that the Amphictyonic Council, that famous council of many states, was meeting to-day in its house west of the town. Why was it meeting now? This was not the season. She knew that her father had been with it. He was one of the Amphictyons. There had been hot dispute, she could see that in his face. But had he won? And what was the strife about? She knew something of the danger which threatened the land. This she knew in spite of the fact that Nikander had been strict in keeping the news away from the household. He hated the aspects of fear: these would come soon enough.
Bitterly Theria longed to ask questions. She knew that there was no use. She knew that her father had come home for peace, for a respite.
After a while Melantho was called away, and Theria moved over beside her father on the bench and slipped her hand into his. He sighed restfully as she did so. Then care again settled like closing wings upon him. Theria decided that he had not won in the Council—at least not for to-day. She also decided that the controversy had been serious. She could not guess that it had to do with the whole policy of the Oracle in the face of the Persian attack. In that Council Nikander and one friend stood alone for the defence of Greece. All the others stood for surrender.
Theria’s first instinct was the woman’s, to mend her father’s disappointment by some diversion.
“Father,” she said, “I have been thinking all day of the birds that Homer tells of on the Scamandrian plain.”
He frowned and came out of his dream. “What is Homer to you, child?” he said impatiently.
“Nothing, Father; but I often think of those things. I love the birds,” she added quietly. “They are so merry and move so swift, so swift. They are kind, too.”
“Kind! What do you mean?”
“They come to me when I go to the window—oh, just a few moments at the window, Father, to breathe the air. Then I call them their own calls and they fly down out of the air, very timid at first. I put out my hand and hold it still and talk to them. Finally, one of them is sure to flutter near and sit on my finger with its little sharp claws. They watch me with clever quick turnings of the head and chirp to make me laugh.”
She leaned forward—very child in this childish pleasure. “Father, tell me what Homer says about the birds.”
“I am in no mood for Homer’s lines.” And indeed he was not. But presently he began to say them—
“As the many tribes of feathered birds,
Wild geese and long-necked swans
On the Asian mead by Kystrios stream
Fly hither and thither joying in their plumage
And with loud cries settle ever onward——”
“What a picture!” he commented. “I never realized before how fine it is.”
Did his nearness to the ardent Theria bring this realization? Who can tell how mind may leap toward mind?
So they were sitting when Olen, the slave boy, came and stood beside them.
“Master, a consultant,” he announced, “at the street door. He will not come in.”
Nikander rose from the bench, strangely refreshed, and went to the outer aula. As Olen was following, Theria made him an imperious gesture and the slave reluctantly left ajar the dividing door. Then Theria moved to sit where she could command the outer room.
She saw enter a man with white, wrecked face.
“But I must not come in,” he objected. “O priest, I might bring it upon your house.”
“My house is not afraid,” said Nikander. He sat down, indicating the bench beside him, and the man sat down fearfully, like one unclean, at the farther end.
“It is a curse, O priest,” he said. “I am under a curse.”
Very skilfully Nikander quieted him, urging upon him kindness and wisdom of the Oracle, persuading him to speak. It was a terrible tale of this man Corobios and his friend Pythias—one of those Greek friendships so seriously considered that marriage was not allowed between the children of the two.
“We were on a journey,” said Corobios. “Five robbers leaped from ambush upon Pythias. It was him they were after, not me. I whipped out my sword and struck at one of them. And just at that moment Pythias was thrown in the struggle straight under my blade. It cut him to the bone. Oh, if he had only lived to exculpate me! If he had only spoken some word. But there was no time. I saw only his eyes raised to me in agony, in reproach. O priest—in terrible reproach. Ah, I see them now! Wherever I go I see them! The Eumenides are coming upon me. To my children’s children will the curse run unless Apollo will clean me.”
How Theria loved her father as he leaned toward the man laying his hand upon the shaking shoulder, fearless of the terrible curse which could run so quickly from man to man.
“The Son of Leto will hear you,” Nikander said. “Our god is pitiful of those whose hearts are clean. Do not fear. To-morrow you shall consult the god. I shall see that you go in first of them all to the Oracle. Your case is needy.”
The interview was long. For as the man grew quieter, Nikander did not fail to sound him as to his attitude in the coming war. Every pilgrim was so tested by Nikander. Thus Nikander learned the public mind.
At Corobios’s departure Nikander wandered back to where Theria sat. He was quite unaware that he was seeking his daughter again.
Theria ran toward him with overflowing eyes.
“Oh the poor man, the poor man! Father, surely the Oracle will help him—it must help him!”
“The poor man, hey! What do you know about the poor man? Theria, I will not have you listening from corners—do you heed me?”
“But why did the dying Pythias reproach him? Couldn’t he see that Corobios didn’t mean to hurt him? Couldn’t he trust his friend that much?”
“Probably Pythias didn’t blame Corobios at all. The eyes were in death-agony, already unconscious.”
“But will the Pythia tell him that? After all, how can the Pythia help him? Corobios is a murderer—poor man! poor man!”
“Corobios is not a murderer, Theria. Murder is of the heart’s intention, not the hand’s mistake. Nay, his hands are clean; cannot you see that?”
Nikander was forgetting the proper reproaches for Theria’s eavesdropping. The question of blood-guilt was a burning one at Delphi. It concerned a brand-new policy of the Oracle: that sin was a thing of the heart and not of outward accident. This moral advance is, in every age, the most important and most difficult for the human mind to achieve. Nikander was fighting more battles than the defence against the Persian.
“I wish,” said Nikander, “the people could see that the curse does not come that way—without fault of the accursed. Corobios is not under a curse.”
“Not under a curse?” repeated Theria. “Will the god tell him that?”
“How do I know what the god will tell him?” answered Nikander piously.
“Oh, if I were the Pythia I would pray the dear Son of Leto till he gave me that answer.”
“But you are not the Pythia.”
On a sudden the wish of many moons sprang to Theria’s lips.
“Father, let me be the Pythia, the next Pythian priestess. Oh, Father, you do not know how I can pray to the god and—and how——”
“Nonsense; the Pythian priestess is a stupid girl. You would never do.”
“But the Pythia need not be a stupid girl,” Theria was talking now breathlessly. “Father, when I pray, Apollo answers me. He does.”
Nikander took her chin in his hand, lifting her pleading face.
“What a queer child it is,” he mused. “What do you mean by Apollo answering you?”
“I don’t know, Father; but he does. Oh, with the coming down upon me of something out of the air like wings—no, not like wings—but I know it is the god.”
Her eyes grew mystic with a curious inner seeing.
“You strange Theria,” said her father. “If you saw all the visions of the gods it would not make you a good Pythia. You know perfectly well that the Pythia is a girl of empty mind. The mind must be vacant for the god to speak through it. She is but the mouthpiece of the god. Besides all this, she writhes in agony when the oracle comes upon her. Sometimes it kills her.”
“I wouldn’t mind if it killed me, just so I were Pythia,” Theria urged solemnly. “Just so I could speak for the god.”
“Well, you’re not going to be Pythia, my child. This whole question is nonsense. It grows out of nothing but your eternal desire to be doing something.”
Nikander was right. It was Theria’s burning desire to use the power that was in her which kept her constantly urging. Her face turned tragic and Nikander’s anger sharpened. He was under great stress.
“Now, no passion, mind. Theria, I have enough burdens in these terrible days without your foolish notions. Pythia—faugh! I’d be disgraced to have you Pythia. Silly girl!”
So he strode out of the house.
Theria ran to her room. She expected to cry but she did nothing of the sort.
“I will be Pythia,” she said, throwing her long arms above her head and clasping her hands.
“I will be Pythia—no matter what——”
The springs of poet inspiration are hidden and very strange. Could it be this opposition which drove Theria to make her song—the prize song of Dryas? The next day after these events that song came across Theria’s mind like the flash. Anger was part of its origin. Longing for outlet was another part. Strongest of all was the damming back of the birth-right power within her until it welled higher than its nature and broke over into song.
It was the following week that she showed her song to Dryas, and a yet further week when Dryas sang the song at the Pythian festival and Theria snatched it back again. The result was disastrous, as we have seen.
And after her father’s whipping, Theria strangely knew that she would soon do something to deserve another whipping.