Sónnica. Vicente Blasco Ibanez
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held in his right hand, and in his left a white staff which he waved rhythmically, marking the swing of the rowers. Near the mast stood men in strange costumes, and motionless women wrapped in flowing mantles.
The ship glided into the port like an enormous crustacean, parting the dead and silent waters with her prow, which but recently had been fretting the waters of the gulf.
As she cast anchor near the mole and threw out her gang-plank, the rowers were forced to club back the multitude which crowded forward eager to board the ship.
The pilot gave orders from the poop; his red robe moved from place to place like a flame kindled by the setting sun.
"Eh! Polyanthus! Welcome, navigator! What cargo do you bring?"
The pilot saw two young horsemen on the bank. The one who addressed him was wrapped in a white mantle; one of its corners covered his head, leaving exposed his beard done into curls and lustrous with pomatum. The other clung to the back of his steed with his strong bare legs; he wore the sagum of the Celtiberians, a short wool tunic over which the broadsword hung from his shoulder, and his hair, as thick and dishevelled as his beard, outlined a brown and manly countenance.
"Greeting, Lachares! Greeting, Alorcus!" replied the pilot with an expression of respect. "Shall you see Sónnica, my mistress?"
"This very night," answered Lachares. "We sup at her country-seat. What bring you?"
"Tell her that I have argentiferous lead from New Carthage, and wool from Bætica. Excellent voyage!"
The two youths tugged at their horses' reins.
"Ah! Wait a moment," added Polyanthus. "Tell her that I have not forgotten her instructions. I am bringing what you so greatly desire, the dancing girls from Gades."
"We are all grateful to you," said Lachares, laughing. "Hail, Polyanthus; may Neptune favor you!"
The two riders set off at a gallop, becoming lost to view among the hovels grouped around the base of the temple of Aphrodite.
Meanwhile one of the ship's passengers landed, making his way through the crowd. He was a Greek. All knew his origin by the pilos which covered his head, a conical leather helmet, after the fashion of that worn by Ulysses in Greek paintings. He was clad in a short, dark tunic, adjusted around his waist by a leather belt, from which hung a pouch. His chlamys, which did not reach his knees, was fastened at the right shoulder by a copper brooch; worn and dusty laced shoes covered his stockingless feet, and his sinewy arms, carefully freed from hair, rested on a great dart which was almost a lance. His hair, short and arranged in thick curls, hung beneath the pilos, forming a hollow crown around his head. It was black, but silvery threads shone in it and also in his broad short beard. His upper lip was carefully shaved in the Athenian style.
He was a strong and agile man, in the prime of life, healthy and vigorous. His eyes had an ironic glance, and in them sparkled something of that fire which reveals men born for warfare and for contact with the world. He walked at ease about the unfamiliar port, like a traveler accustomed to all manner of contrasts and surprises.
The sun began to sink, and work at the port had ceased. The crowd which had swarmed on the wharf was gradually scattering. Bands of slaves stretching their aching limbs and wiping off the sweat, passed near the stranger. Controlled by the clubs of their guards, they were about to be locked up until the next morning in caves in the nearby hill, or in the oil mills situated beyond the mariners' taverns, the inns, and the brothels, with their mud walls and broad roofs, which as a complement to the port were grouped at the foot of the hill of Aphrodite.
The merchants also left in search of their horses and chariots to ride to the city. They passed in groups, looking over the records on their tablets, and discussing the operations of the day. Their diverse types, dress, and bearing, showed a great mixture of races in Zacynthus, a commercial city to which in ancient times flocked the vessels of the Mediterranean, and whose traffic was in rivalry with that of Emporion and Massilia. The Asiatic or African merchants who imported ivory, ostrich feathers, spices, and perfumes for the rich of the city, were distinguished by their majestic step, their tunics with flowers and birds embroidered in gold, their green buskins, their tall embroidered tiaras, and their beards falling over their breasts, curled so as to lie in horizontal waves. The Greeks laughed and talked incessantly, jesting over their business affairs, and overwhelming with volubility the grave, bearded, diffident Iberian exporters dressed in coarse wool, who, with their silence seemed to protest against the stream of useless words.
The wharves were deserted one after another, the life of the place flowing along the road toward the city. Horses galloped, raising clouds of dust, chariots rolled along, and little African donkeys passed with a short trot, bearing on their backs some corpulent citizen or other, seated like a woman.
The Greek walked slowly along the mole behind two men clad in short tunics, wearing buskins and little conical hats with drooping brims, like those of the Hellenic shepherds. They were two artisans from the city. They had spent the day fishing, and were returning to their houses, gazing with ill dissimulated pride at their baskets in which writhed and wriggled barbels and eels. They were talking in Iberian, frequently mixing Greek and Latin words in their conversation. It was a not unusual dialect in that ancient colony, which was in continual contact through commerce with the principal peoples of the earth. The Greek, as he followed them down the wharf listened to their conversation with the curiosity of a stranger.
"You will come in my cart," said one of them. "My donkey awaits me at Abiliana's inn. The beast as you know is the envy of all my neighbors. We shall yet reach the city before the gates are closed."
"I thank you, neighbor. It is not prudent to travel alone when the country is swarming with adventurers whom we take as hirelings for the wars with the Turdetani, and all the people who fled from the city after the last revolt. Day before yesterday, as you know, the dead body of Acteio, the barber of the Forum, was found in the road. He was assassinated and robbed as he was returning from his little country-house at night-fall."
"They say that we shall live more tranquilly now since the Roman intervention. The legates from Rome have ordered a few heads cut off; and they affirm that after this we shall have peace."
The two men stopped a moment and turned their heads to look at the Roman liburna, which could barely be distinguished near the tower in the port, wrapped in the shadows of evening. Then they walked slowly onward, as if in deep thought.
"You know," continued one of them, "that I am only a shoemaker who has his shop near the Forum and has been able to save a sack of silver victoriati in order to live at ease in his old age, and to spend the afternoons at the port, rod in hand. I do not know as much as those rhetoricians who stroll up and down outside the city wall disputing and shouting like Furies, nor do I worry my brain as do the philosophers who gather on the porticos of the Forum to quarrel amid the jests of the merchants as to whether this or that one of the men who occupy themselves there in Athens with such matters is in the right. But, with all my ignorance, I ask myself, neighbor, why this strife between us men who live in the same city who should deal with one another like good brothers? Why?"
The shoemaker's comrade replied with vigorous nods of assent.
"I understand," continued the artisan, "that from time to time we shall be at war with our neighbors the Turdetani. Sometimes on account of a question of irrigation, again on account of pasture-grounds, but mainly because of boundary lines, and to keep them from enjoying this beautiful port, I understand that the citizens take up arms and seek battle, going out to destroy their fields and burn their huts. But those people are not of our race, and that is how a great city makes itself respected. Besides, war yields slaves, which often are scarce, and what would we men, we citizens, do without slaves?"
"I am poorer than you, neighbor," said the other fisherman. "I do not earn as much making saddles as you do making shoes; but in spite of my poverty I can afford to have a Turdetan slave, who helps me very much, and I desire war, because it brings in considerably more work."
"War with our neighbors—that is welcome. The young men are restless, and seek ways of distinguishing themselves, the Republic acquires importance in consequence,