Istar of Babylon: A Phantasy

A hot April sun shone full over the waters to the pencilled line of the southern horizon, where a long circle divided the misty, shimmering dove-color of the Mediterranean from the richer blue of the swelling sky. A path of sun-strewn ripples, broadening as the afternoon advanced, ended at that distant line, and found its starting-point at the rocky base of the Selinuntian acropolis, on the southwestern coast of Sicily. The day was warm, and the air rich with the perfume of sweet alyssum, beneath which delicate flower the whole island lay buried. A light breeze feathered the sea, occasionally sweeping away enough powdered sunshine to disclose the rich sapphire depths of the under-waters. Nevertheless more perfect skies had been, and generally were, at this season of the year; for to-day half the west was hidden by a curtain of short, thick clouds that threatened to hide the usual evening glory of wine-tinted waters and crimson-flooded skies.

Upon the height of the cliff that terminates the broad Selinuntian plain, Selinous, white, Doric city, with her groups of many-columned temples and her well-built walls, sent forth the usual droning murmur of life. White-robed men and women were wont to move in unhurried dignity in their citadels in those days when Æneas was not yet a myth, before Syracuse knew Gelon, when the first Aahmes ruled in Egypt, when Crœsus of Lydia and Astyages of Media were paying bitter tribute to the great Elamite just retired from Babylonian plains to his far Rhagæ in the Eastern hills; and here, on the Sicilian coast, the Greek city lay in placid beauty upon her two hills, divided by the philosophically drained valley, bounded upon the right hand by her shining river, while far to the left, in the direction of Acragas, a line of rugged hills rose into the blue. The four bright temples of the acropolis were mirrored in the sea below. On the east hill, at some distance from where the gigantic new sanctuary to Apollo was building, and directly in front of the old temple of Hera, on the very edge of the cliff, drowsing in the sunlight, lay Charmides, a shepherd, surrounded by his flock.

The life of a shepherd in the flood-time of a Sicilian spring was not an arduous one. If it had been, Theron's son would not, in all probability, have followed that calling through the few years that he was required to spend at ordinary labor. For, as his family realized and his appearance too markedly proclaimed, this child of the Spartans did not partake of the spirit of his race. Rarely, singularly beautiful he was, and fair as an Athenian. Apollo himself might have turned envious at sight of this disciple of his as he slept on a drift of wild daisies, his short, white tunic stained with green, the thong that served him for a girdle loosely tied, much-worn sandals bound upon his feet, and a wreath of gray olive-leaves woven into the rumpled hair that fell upon his neck in rings of living gold. Charmides' eyes had the color of the sea. His brows were fine and straight; his mouth not altogether lacking in strength, yet perfect as a woman's. As he slept, one of the youth's sunburned hands grasped a tuft of herbs that grew upon the edge of the slope, while the other, even in his unconsciousness, drew a fleeting harmony from the lyre that lay beside him.

This dalliance with the honored instrument, taken with his unathletic physique, was evidence enough of the chosen profession of the temporary shepherd. Four years ago, at the age of eighteen, Charmides had elected to enter the ranks of that band of rhapsodists known to us now only as the predecessors of fire-winged Pindar and his glorious brethren. Never was the shepherd seen following his flock over the fields without lyre or flute in his hands; and no holiday or festival was quite complete without some lyric chanted in his clear tenor to the accompaniment of those sweet, primitive chords that so fittingly clothed the syllables of the most melodious of all tongues. Charmides' poems, however, were always of one type. Natural beauty, the evening wind, the perfume of a flower, the red of dawn, the silver of moonlight, he would reproduce so perfectly in words that he was left unrivalled in his peculiar field. But greater themes, battle-hymns of Mars and Nike, or idyls of Cythera and the dove-drawn chariot, had not apparently occurred to him as desirable subjects for his art. Either Charmides was what his athlete brother declared him—a woman dressed in too short a tunic—or his true nature was sleeping far beyond its natural period.