"Are you coming too?" I asked Vardanas. "I should love for you and Nirouphar to put up your horses at my home, but you're a free man."
"Of course I shall come," he said. "Philosophy is fine, but a friend like you is of greater value. Besides, I must pass through Thessalia on my way to Pella to seek a commission from Antipatros. I only beseech that I be not asked to sleep with your pet serpent."
I threw my arms about him. "Thank the gods for that! A congenial companion on the road, they say, is as good as a carriage."
To Aristoteles I said: "O sage, this may be farewell, as we shall ride northward when we go. Suffer me to say how much these months of study with you have meant to me—"
"Oh, rubbish, boy!" he snapped. "Consider the formal farewells all said, and get along with you. If you can return thafely, do so; if not, my thanks for the data. Now, where were we? Ah yes. Today we shall discuth the methods by which tyrants retain their illegal power. There are, in general, two courses of action by which the tyrant can keep his position ..."
We tore ourselves away from the lecture, embraced Siladites (who burst into tears), patted Aias' trunk, and departed. And thus it came to pass that, as late in the afternoon a wreath-crowned Harpalos made a triumphal entrance into Athens through the Sacred Gate, Leon, Vardanas, Nirouphar, and their two menservants rode through the Dipylon Gate and galloped at reckless speed along the Sacred Way towards Eleusis and Thebes.
By pressing on after dark, we reached Thria that night. For want of other quarters, we slept on the benches and floor of the inn, which had but few beds and those occupied.
Next morn we were on the road ere the dawn of a cold, wet, windy day. We galloped across the Thriasian Plain with the wind whipping our mantles and fluttering the horses' streaming manes. We broke our fast at Oea and followed the winding western Kephisos through the Parnes range. There was little traffic, as most of the peddlers had packed away their stocks for the winter.
We climbed the pine-covered slopes of Kithairon, where Aktaion was changed to a stag and Pentheus was screeded by the Bacchantes, to the pass of Dryoskephalai. Here a border patrol of epheboi stopped us, but a flourish of my papers got us through. The folk the militia were seeking were runaway slaves, and we were patently not these unfortunates.
At the crest of the pass, we entered Boiotia. Down the long slope on the north flank of Kithairon we rode, where Oidipous of Thebes was exposed as an infant, whilst a wan winter sun cast long shadows through the oaks. And thus a day of hard riding brought us at dusk to Boiotian Thebes.
Ah, woe! No more did proud Thebes of the Seven Gates overlook the Ismenian Plain, for Alexander had razed the city ten years before. I had heard he left standing only the temples and the house of Pindaros. The descendants of the poet who dwelt in this house were almost the only Thebans neither slain nor sold.
Now, however, quite a few houses stood among the ruins besides the temples. Some were dwellings that the soldiers had not utterly demolished and which had been patched up again. Others were hovels which squatters had put up. Life stirred in Thebes, but there was no sign of welcome for travelers.
I knocked on a door. A great barking arose. The door opened a crack, and a voice said in broad Boiotian: "Who be you?"
"Travelers. We wondered—"
"Ain't got no room. Don't like strangers nohow."
"Then could you tell me——"
"Ain't no other place, neither."
"Do you ken the house of Pindaros?"
"Never heard of it. Now get, or I'll set the dogs on you!"
I turned away, saying: "If the Thebans be all such churls, no wonder the Alexander destroyed them!"
We found shelter in the half-ruined temple of Herakles, south of the Kadmea. The temple, I think, had been left standing at the time of the sack, but, with the desolation of Thebes, not enough offerings had come in to keep it up. So the priests abandoned it. Now a part of one side wall had crumbled away.
Having been softened by our months of comfort in Athens, we found sleep on cold limestone hard to come by. Towards midnight I got up to stretch my legs and found Nirouphar also awake. She was leaning against the edge of the gap in the wall and looking out at the setting moon, which cast black shadows of the slender columns outside across the floor of the temple.
"Rhe—Leon," she said, "I am frightened."
I put my arm around her. "Fear not the Boiotians, dear one."
"It is not they, but your family I fear."
"By the! What's amiss with my folk? They dinna devour the neighbors' bairns for dinner!"
"Of course not, darling. But they are the first real Greek family I shall have visited, for Syloson and his wife scarcely count. I fear to offend unwittingly by my ignorance of your ways and manners."
"If a Hellene can visit a Persian family without disaster, the reverse should be easy. You Persians have far more formal manners than we. All I ask is that you curb your ribald jests. They bother me not, but I'm a soldier; my people feel differently about such things."
"I will. Now tell me more about your people, for I am not sure I remember all their names and relationships."
I went through the roster again, adding a little about our position in the district: how we were the only branch of the Aleuadai in the Atrax district not slain or driven out when the Perraiboi rose against their Larissan overlords, following King Philip's conquest of Thessalia, because we had intermarried with the Perraiboi and were three quarters of their blood.
"It sounds like us and the Houzans," she said, "though, thanks to Auramasdas, they have not attacked us. If that befall, we can make no plea of Houzan blood. We are pure Persian, as you have heard."
"That I have, all too oft. But, with Alexander mixing up the whole world, purity of lineage may cease to be a virtue. Suppose, likein, I were to wed a well-born Persian lass?"
"You would have a true and loving wife, albeit more spirited than these poor downtrodden Greek girls."
She turned her face up to me, and the next instant we were embracing, kissing, murmuring foolishness, and acting as lovers have since the gods first molded men.
There is no telling whither our ardor might have swept us (or rather, it were a simple telling) had not a cough made us turn. There stood Vardanas, fists clenched in the moonlight, and still blinking the sleep from his eyes.
"Leon," said he in a heavy voice, "how far has this gone?"
"No further than you've seen. We did but discover our love the now."
Nirouphar said: "You must see reason, Vardanas. With Alexander mixing up the world, purity of descent no longer matters.. And the wise Pyrron told us that such prejudices are unworthy of a truly civilized—"
"Silence, wench," said Vardanas. "My friend, have you forgotten all the obstacles to such a union?"
"For the moment I'd forgotten all but your sister's nearness," I said, still holding her. "But surely these obstacles can be overcome, with resolution and ingenuity."
"Well, I am no world-thinker like Aristoteles, but even I see that the walls of custom between nations are mighty barriers that change but slowly, century by century."
"Let's be plain, Vardanas. Do you deny me the lass, now and forever?"
A tear glistened on the Persian's face in the moonlight. "Were it not for these, obstacles, there is no man I had rather give her to than you. But, until she can wed with the honor due our house, I must refuse."
"What mean you, wed with honor? I would not use her otherwise, either. What can I do to gain your blessing?"
"Let us take the first obstacle first: your family. Do you gain their approval and then come to me again; otherwise I will not yield a finger of my opposition."
I saw that my friend, though in some ways light-minded, was deadly serious in this matter. In the end we all three wept and embraced each other and swore eternal loyalty, whatever betided. Then I tried, quite in vain, to go back to sleep.