“... How beautiful,

Sublimely beautiful, thou hoverest

High in the vacant air! Thou seemest uplifted

From all of earth, and like an island floating

Away in heaven. How pure are the eternal snows

That crown thee!”

James Gates Percival.

Ever since Zopyrus had seen again the girl whom he had rescued from the Persian soldiery, he could think of little else. She filled his conscious thoughts and at night he dreamed of her, but he had made up his mind with stern resolution that he would be true to his promise to Eumetis who seemed to love him devotedly. The wedding had been postponed from the end of the Mystery celebrations to the third night of the full moon.

An idea came to Zopyrus while he was in the library copying manuscripts for Pasicles the afternoon following his eavesdropping near the Acropolis. If the marriage ceremonies were celebrated one night before, that is on the second night of the full moon, Corinna could not go to Naxos with the stranger, for she would be obliged to attend the nuptials of her sister. The idea had just impressed him as the best way to save Corinna, when Pasicles entered the library and placed in Zopyrus’ hands a missive, bearing upon its exterior the stamp of Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse.
168

“Do you know,” cried the young man with delight, “this letter is from Aeschylus! Will you not seat yourself and hear it?”

“Not now,” replied Pasicles, “I came only to deliver the letter into your hands and to tell you that the writing of an ode for the recent victor of the Nemean games, takes me immediately to Argolis and I can not possibly be back until the day of yours and Eumetis’ marriage.”

“Oh,” cried Zopyrus with unconcealed dismay, “can you not come the day before, as I wish to put the date one day ahead.”

Pasicles attributed Zopyrus’ disappointment to impatience for the approaching marriage to take place, and laying a fatherly hand on his shoulder smiled as he said: “One day is short compared to eternity, my boy, and I shall have to hasten back to get here on the third night of the full moon. Farewell and give my regards to my brother poet when you write.”

“One day!” thought Zopyrus, “yes, it is short compared to eternity, but sometimes one day will determine how we spend eternity!”

He fingered absent-mindedly the parchment which Pasicles had brought him, then broke the seal and read:

“To Zopyrus at the house of the poet Pasicles in Athens, greetings from Aeschylus at the court of Hiero at Syracuse:
169

“You have been in my thoughts much of the time since I left our fair land. I have wondered how you fared at the Mysteries and if in the joys and sorrows of Ceres and Persephone, you recognized life’s pleasures and tragedies. Happy is he who has seen these things and then goes beneath the earth, for he knows the end of life and its God-given beginning. Remember, my son, that death is no ill for mortals, but rather a good. Ceres, Persephone, Ares, Athena, Aphrodite, Hera, Hermes and all the others are merely personifications of the various aspects of divine truth and goodness which are in reality embodied in one supreme Being of whom every star of heaven, every wave of ocean, every leaf of the forest, every blade in the meadow, every rock on the shore, every grain of sand in the desert, is a manifestation. But I will not bore you with a rehearsal of my beliefs, for we shall have glorious opportunities when I return to Greece to discuss these things at length.
170

“In company with the most noble Pindar whose lofty and dignified odes have won him considerable fame, and the venerable poet, Phrynichus and Simonides, whose poem exalting the battle of Marathon took first place over mine, and the nephew of Simonides, Bacchylides and others, I crossed the Isthmus of Corinth where a merchant vessel awaited us in the gulf. There was little to break the monotony of our trip through the gulf of Corinth. We skirted the northern coast of Achaia, stopping at Patræ[6] for more food. At noon of the third day we passed between the islands of Cephallenia and Zacynthus, and from then on for many days only the vault of the heavens and the blue expanse of the Ionian Sea met our gaze. Imagine then with what delight we first beheld the misty contours of land! It was not Sicily which lay before us, but the Southern end of the Italian peninsula. We got no nearer than to behold it as a long line of purple clouds, but bore on to the southward until in the glow of a magnificent sunset, Mt. Ætna like a giant clad in crimson and gold seemed to guard the glorious panorama before us. Never, my friend, have I been so impressed with the ............