a long story, it begins before you were born, King.’
‘At supper, then. Oh, I shall get Berris!’
At first Berris refused to come to supper, with all sorts of excuses; but in the end, of course, there he was, with his eyes fixed on the Hellene. They sat round, more or less Greek fashion, Eurydice in a high-backed chair, waited on by her own maids; Tarrik half lying, half sitting, always very restless, on a big throne with red cushions; Erif Der beside him with her proper crown, five spikes of silver, lightly engraved with stags and lions that had star sapphires for eyes, and a heavy patterned dress that fell over her feet. Sphaeros was on Tarrik’s other side, head propped in hands, lying along a couch of cedar lattice, with small cushions, and Berris beyond him on another couch, but sitting half up, clasping his knees, eating by fits and starts. They had a long and large supper, with quantities of meat, stewed and boiled and roasted, and fish, and raisin pies, some good wine and much bad, wheaten cakes and run honey and cream.
Eurydice only spoke when she had something to say which appeared to her to be really noble—or witty—or revealing a heart which yearned for Hellas; this made her conversation rather fitful. Tarrik kept on thinking, quite rightly, that she was at her best when alone with him. He talked rather little, because he was hungry and at the same time happier than he had been for months. Sphaeros was naturally rather silent, and tonight he was tired too, but knew he must tell his story well enough to convince the Chief. So, during supper, Erif and Berris Der talked at one another most of the time, across the others, sparring like two pretty game-cocks. They talked Greek out of politeness, and hers was bad, but fluent and very funny, whether on purpose or not. They ended by throwing bread balls at one another and Eurydice disapproved; but Tarrik joined in, and then Sphaeros, not out of any sense of compliment to his barbarian hosts, but in all pleasantness and seriousness. Only then in the middle of it, Tarrik suddenly took up a half-loaf and threw it at his cup-bearer and shouted to them to clear the food and bring more wine. He pledged them all in a skull cup, one of the chiefs of the Red Riders that he had shot himself as a boy ten years before. ‘And now the story,’ said Erif.
Sphaeros sat up on his couch, so as to be able to face them all, and shifted his head bandage where the edge was catching his ear. ‘The beginning of the story is away back,’ he said, ‘in the time when the Spartans did something that no one else had ever done with their eyes open—or ever will, I think. They turned their backs on the beauty that was ripening in Hellas, in their own hearts too. They said: “We will not build temples, nor make statues or paintings or music, we will have no poets here. We will make life hard and bitter so that only the strongest can bear it, and these shall be our citizens.”’
He stopped for a moment, just long enough for Berris to ask ‘Why?’ The others were all quiet.
‘Why?’ said Sphaeros, half to himself. ‘Because Sparta is a hot green valley, a garden where flowers blossom too much and die; they had to climb out of it, to live on the peaks in the cold winds. They made themselves the strangest State in the world; strong and free and caring not at all for death, no man for himself but all for the others, for Sparta. By casting out the beauty we know, they made a beauty of their own.’
Tarrik began to fidget and frown. ‘Sparta is not like that. I have been to Hellas—I know for myself: no traveller’s tales, my Sphaeros. I tell you, if there was any luxury, anything rare and precious and sought after, they had it in Sparta.’
‘Yes,’ said Sphaeros, ‘but that came afterwards. It seems that no man and no State can live on the heights for ever. Sparta became too powerful, and the doom of the conqueror fell on her: gold and silver flowed down into hollow Lacedaemon and rotted the very roots of their greatness. These things, rather than the riches of the spirit, came to be what they cared for in Sparta; men strove for them only. In that moment the Good Life left them and was gone. Now gold follows after gold, and with it land and power, houses and cattle and slaves; more and more of the lands and riches came into the hands of a few men; and those of the citizens who dropped behind in the gold race must needs take to trade or farming to get their bread, and so they lost the good Life, and had no more leisure for the Training, the Eating-together, and all those matters without which no one can have citizenship of Sparta. A time came when all the riches in the State belonged to scarcely more than a hundred families, and of these many were unbelievably rich, though some had mortgaged their land and were deep in debt, and had nothing but the appearance of riches. The rest of the people worked for them, and were humble and slavish through debt and anxiety and poverty, and there was no happiness.’
Tarrik was listening quietly now, and so were the others, more or less. Only Eurydice was bending over a piece of fine embroidery, and seemed at least as much interested in it as in the story; her hands were Still very white and beautiful, and they moved over the sewing like big moths. It was rather dark in the hall, in spite of the torches all round in rings on the wall, but one of the maids knelt beside Eurydice, holding a lamp just so high that it shone round and softly on those hands of hers. Berris kept on looking at them, and for a little while Sphaeros found them a certain interruption in the thread of his ideas. But by and bye the room faded, and he was away in another country, among the dead that he had known and loved.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘the story comes nearer: to fifteen years ago. Sparta has always had two kings, and in the days I am telling you about, one of the kings was called Leonidas. He was an oldish man and he had lived much in Syria with King Seleucus and the great lords there: there was no luxury or pride that he did not know or practise. He had a daughter, called Chilonis, and two young sons; they had only to ask for a thing to get it. I know his house well; it was all plastered with gold. He was the sort of man who could not bear a straight line or a plain wall; everything must be twisted and tangled and gilt and coloured till one’s eyes ached. Every corner was crammed with statues and fat gold vases like old men’s bellies and life-size pottery peacocks painted and glazed, and goggling black slaves he’d brought from Antioch, smelling of fat and scent; and everywhere there were soft carpets and lamps running over with sweet oil, and food and drink enough for an army. And there he was in the middle, this old Leonidas, always grabbing and hungry for more, never satisfied, never happy, as rough as any peasant with it all. His wife was a tall, proud Spartan, who kept herself away from him, and the daughter was married to her cousin Kleombrotos, a decent enough young man; she, woman-like, hated all this violence and luxury of her father’s and would tell her little brothers stories of Sparta in the time of the Good Life; and they listened to her. Leonidas loved her, perhaps because she was so different, and it was she who persuaded her father to ask me to come from Athens and teach the two young boys, Kleomenes and Eukleidas. So for a time I went and lived in his house, among all those vain riches.
‘But the other king of Sparta was called Agis. He was not wise, and never free from desire. And yet—if I could have loved any man—’ He stopped again, with a little gasp, so vividly had Agis come into his mind. But two of them at once said: ‘Go on.’ He moved a little sideways on his couch and went on. ‘Well, it is all a long time ago, and the world goes on still. Agis was young—little older than Berris here—and gentle and kind-hearted as a girl. He had been brought up with all tenderness and no sparing of money or love, by his mother and grandmother, and early married to a wife who was as beautiful as she was good, Agiatis the merry-minded, only daughter of the richest man in Sparta. He had these three women always by him, giving him of their best.
‘Agis grew restless in the heat of summer and went up into the mountains of Sparta, and he stayed there alone for two nights. Then he came down and looked with new eyes at his country, and he saw how evil the times were, and he knew so clearly that there was no doubting it that he must bring Sparta back to the Good Life. So he cast away all pleasures and softness, all the graces and sweetness of his young life, and followed the old rules. The three women loved him so much that they did not try to hinder him. And gradually the rich young men of Sparta began to give up their pleasures too, and do as he did. But King Leonidas thought him a fool and said so to me; I kept my thoughts to myself,
