Part 11

“We really _don’t_ know anything about them,” said Rachel, apologetically. “You see we live in a different country, and—well, in a different time.”

She couldn’t help adding this, in her desire to defend herself from the charge of ignorance, but the boy took no notice of the last remark.

“Come with me, and by degrees it may be I shall enlighten you,” he said, still in a mocking voice.

He turned quickly, and Rachel and Diana, after one backward glance at the snow-white temple adorned with its perfect sculpture, followed him meekly down the hill. In a few moments they found themselves threading their way through the narrow streets of the city of Athens. These streets were bounded on either side by blank walls, broken here and there by a door.

“But where are the houses?” enquired Diana presently.

“These doors lead to our houses,” returned the boy, tapping one of them as he passed.

“There aren’t any windows!” objected Rachel.

“Would you have windows upon the street?” said Agis. “An idea comic indeed, O maidens!”

The children were too occupied with the strangeness of everything around them to reply to this. Every now and then they emerged from narrow roads between walls into a great square, and here the surrounding buildings were magnificent. There were long colonnades where people, dressed more or less in the same fashion as Agis, lounged or walked, and often in the midst of the square they saw beautiful statues.

“Look!” said Diana presently, pointing to a garland of leaves hung upon the knocker of a door. “Why is that wreath put there?” They had turned into another narrow street by this time.

“A new-born child is in the house without doubt,” returned Agis carelessly. “A boy.”

“How do you know?” asked Rachel.

“If it had been a girl, there would be a wreath of wool, instead of olive leaves. You may see such a one over there,” replied Agis, nodding in the direction of another door further on, where a twisted loop of violet wool hung from a knocker.

The children were much interested.

“It’s awfully nice to know like that about the babies,” declared Diana.... “Where are we going, Agis? What is this place?” she added curiously, as the boy ran on in front of them up a broad flight of steps leading to an imposing building.

“This is the gymnasium, and unless we hasten, I shall be late, and my instructor will be angered.” Agis looked over his shoulder to say this. “Follow me, and pay no heed to anyone, for no one will pay heed to you. Sheshà has put you under my guidance—I know not why. But I know that, except to me, you are invisible. Go boldly into yonder courtyard and watch. I must first leave my garments in the corridor.” He ran quickly down a passage to the right, and the children, full of wonder, walked on into a sunny square, enclosed by high walls, where little boys were going through all sorts of exercises.

“Oh, don’t they look pretty without their clothes!” was Diana’s first exclamation. For all the boys were naked, and as they ran and leapt, and the sunshine fell upon their little white bodies, they did indeed look beautiful.

“He said it was a _gymnasium_,” said Rachel. “But there aren’t any rings and poles and things, like there are in our gymnasiums. I suppose this was the _first_ sort of gymnasium, and ours are named after it?” she went on suddenly, as the idea struck her.

“There’s Agis!” cried Diana, as the now naked boy appeared. “Doesn’t he look like a statue come to life? Oh, look, Rachel! What is he going to do? That man—I suppose he’s the master?—is rubbing him all over with something. It’s oil, isn’t it? and those other boys are being rubbed with it too.”

“It’s to make them move their bodies easily, I expect,” said Rachel. “You know how oil makes stiff things like rusty locks quite smooth and easy. I suppose it’s the same with people’s joints.”

“Now they’re throwing sand over one another!” Diana exclaimed. “What’s that for, I wonder? Oh! they’re going to wrestle. Agis and that dark boy together. Do you see?”

“That’s why they put sand on themselves then,” suggested Rachel. “They’d be too slippery to hold one another without. Oh, _do_ look! Isn’t it jolly to see them? Agis is winning! I’m sure he’s winning.”

With breathless interest the children watched the boys as they turned and twisted—all their movements swift and graceful as the movements of beautiful wild forest animals. After the wrestling they saw several races between companies of boys, and then looked on at exercises in throwing a round object something like a quoit made in lead.

It was all wonderful to see. To sit in the sunshine, to hear the voices and laughter of the boys, to watch their graceful movements, and yet to know that the scene before them was really far away—back two thousand years and more into the Past, indeed, was a strange-enough experience. Every now and then, when they realised this, it made both of the children very quiet, and even a little sad.

They forgot this impression however when, at last, the training over, Agis beckoned to them to follow him out of the gymnasium.

In a few moments he was dressed again, and as the children walked on either side of him, through squares and streets, they kept up a fire of eager questions.

“This is the last day of our training,” explained Agis. “To-morrow we start on our journey, and in three days begin the great games in Olympia. May the gods grant me patience to live till then!” he went on excitedly.

“But you haven’t yet told us what Olympia _is_,” urged Diana.

“Strange that you are ignorant of the Olympic Games which are renowned throughout the world,” sighed Agis. “Yet do I remember that Sheshà bade me have patience to tell you everything.

“Know then, as all the world but you, O maidens, are aware, that every five years, at Olympia, which is in a part of Greece called Elis, games are held at which it is the highest honour in the world to compete. For the four years between the great year of the games, all youths who are Grecian by birth are trained at schools called gymnasia—one of which you have lately beheld.

“Towards the end of the fourth year, in every part of our country, those who have best acquitted themselves in the training are chosen to go to Olympia and contend for the prizes.”

“Then _you_ are chosen,” said Rachel joyfully.

“I to my great content am to run in the first race, and my elder brother, Phidolas, is also among the athletes. _He_ is to compete in the horse race, for he is a skilled rider, and has the most perfect mare that was ever bred,” he added enthusiastically. “Her name is Aura, and presently, if it please you, we will see her.”

“Oh, we _love_ horses!” exclaimed Diana. “Do tell us some more about the games. Who began them? How long have they been going on?”

“For a thousand years and more. Zeus, father of all the gods, first commanded them to take place, to celebrate his victory over the giants who, before him, ruled the world. Since then, they have been held, as I have already said, every four years, for the honour and glory of heroes.”

“_Zeus_ is the same as Jupiter, I think,” whispered Diana to Rachel. “Yes. I remember. Father told me so.”

By this time Agis had stopped at one of the doors set in the blank wall of a narrow street, and he lifted and let fall the knocker with a resounding clang.

“This is my home. I must set some repast before you, for indeed you must need it, O strange and ignorant maidens,” he added, with his teasing schoolboy smile.

The door was opened at the moment by an old man whom the children at once guessed to be a servant.

“Or a _slave_, I expect,” said Rachel, as Agis hurried on in front. “They had slaves in Greece, didn’t they?”

“Now we shall see the inside of a Greek house as it was thousands of years ago,” returned Diana eagerly.... “Isn’t this a _splendid_ adventure?”

They found themselves in a passage which led into a square courtyard roofed by the blue sky. A colonnade ran the length of the four sides of this courtyard, and from it on the side away from the open space, they saw various rooms. Agis pushed back a door, and called to the children to follow him.

“It is past noon,” he said, “and our meal is already served. Enter and eat with us.”

Full of curiosity, Rachel and Diana followed the boy into a room whose walls were covered with large black panels upon which were painted figures in brilliant colours. Surrounding each panel there was a rich border of painted flowers. In the midst of the room, placed on trestles, was a table, at which the men of the family were already seated. The father, a middle-aged man, dressed very much in the same fashion as Agis, except that he wore a saffron-coloured instead of a white cloak, looked up and smiled as the boy entered. But he took no notice of the two little girls, and they felt quite sure he neither saw nor heard them.

Seated near to him was a very handsome young man who looked about nineteen or twenty. Except that his curly hair was dark and his eyes brown, instead of grey, he was so like Agis that the children knew he must be the brother Phidolas, of whom he had spoken.

Agis swung himself into his place at the table, which was spread with dishes containing olives, figs, a sort of cream cheese, and flasks of wine, and passed some of these things to his invisible guests.

“Phidolas and I are, as a matter of course, in training for the games,” he said. “Therefore we must eat only of such diet as this. But it may be that simple food pleases you? Eat and drink, and fear no questions from my father and brother. The magic of Sheshà protects you, and they are ignorant of your presence.”

Rachel and Diana were too interested to care much for food, though the ripe figs they tasted were delicious. They cast quick glances about a room so strange to them, and noticed that it contained scarcely any furniture. Except for the simple trestle table, and the chairs round it which were of a beautiful shape and had curved arms, there were only two tripods, each holding an elegant vase, placed in corners against the walls. The door opened upon the colonnade, and beyond it they saw the courtyard with its roof of wonderful blue sky.

“To-morrow at this hour we shall be upon the journey!” exclaimed Agis, addressing his brother. “And at this hour three days hence thou wilt without doubt be in the midst of the race, Phidolas!”

“The gods grant thee victory, my sons,” said the father gravely. “I pray to them for their favour and protection.”

Before long the three were in animated talk about the games, and the children listened eagerly to discussions as to which of the candidates from Athens had the best chances of victory.

“All goes well with thy mare, I trust?” asked Agis, presently, turning to his brother.

“With Aura all is well,” returned Phidolas cheerfully. “Let us now go to her stable and see that she is fed.”

The boys rose, and at the moment two slaves entered, who, taking the dishes from the table, removed the board and the trestles, thus in less than two minutes leaving the room practically empty.

“_Our_ dinners take much longer to clear,” murmured Rachel. She looked at Agis. “Haven’t you any mother? Or any sisters?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” said the boy. “My mother lives, and I have two sisters. But they are not with us, of course.”

“Why not?” demanded Diana.

Agis stared. “Always I forget you are strangers!” he declared, laughing. “They are in the women’s part of the house, where they live. They do not pass their time with us. In our country such is not the custom. Look yonder!” He took them out into the courtyard and pointed to where, through a passage, they saw another open space surrounded by a colonnade.

“That is the women’s quarter,” he explained, carelessly. “There my mother and sisters live and do their work.”

“What sort of work?” asked Rachel.

Agis shrugged his shoulders. “The usual work of women. They and the female slaves spin wool for our garments and cook our meals and prepare medicines and cordials in case of illness.... But come, follow me, and you shall behold Aura, who is well worthy of your regard.”

“I shouldn’t like to have been a Greek girl in Athens long ago, would you?” whispered Rachel to Diana. “It must have been horribly dull!”

“I wonder what Agis thinks of _us_,” chuckled Diana. “He’s never met girls like us before. You can see that. Sheshà seems to be able to do anything he likes in any country. No wonder everyone calls him ‘greatest of magicians.’”

They were following Agis and Phidolas all this time, and presently through a door that led from the covered colonnade came to a yard, in which stood a stable built of rough stones. Aura, the mare of which they had heard so much, was looking over its low door, and, at the sight of her, both children cried out in delight.

“She’s almost prettier than Bucephalus,” Rachel declared. “Look at her lovely brown satin coat, and her sweet beautiful eyes!”

“And doesn’t she simply _love_ Phidolas?” exclaimed Diana. “Look at her now.” The beautiful creature was rubbing her head against the young man’s shoulder while he talked to her, as though she were a human being.

“Thou wilt win me the race, is it not so, my lovely one?” he murmured in her ear, while Agis, after patting her shining neck, went to fetch a handful of corn.

“Oh, Rachel, if _only_ we could go to Olympia and see the games!” sighed Diana. “But you heard what Agis said. The journey will take about three days, so of course we couldn’t——”

* * * * *

She broke off in the midst of the sentence to rub her eyes. Rachel was rubbing hers also.

“Where are we?” she began incoherently, gazing about her.

“We were looking at Aura—and now—oh, Rachel, I do believe it’s _Olympia_!” the last words were uttered with a gasp of excitement.

“It _is_. I’m sure it is,” Rachel agreed.

“Then we must have passed over three days in just that second while we stood by the stable. How could we possibly have done that?”

“Sheshà says Time is a magic thing,” returned Rachel, dreamily. “And it isn’t, anyhow, more wonderful than all the other things that have happened.... Just see how lovely everything looks, Diana. Don’t let’s bother about how we got here.”

“The sun is just going to rise, isn’t it?” whispered Diana, still bewildered and rather awed by the suddenness of this change of scene.

They were standing on a rocky spur of mountain looking down upon a huge circular space, enclosed by tier above tier of empty seats.

On the left, through a gap in the hills, they saw the calm blue sea, stretching away to where above the horizon the sun, like a shield of fire, was just rising. In front of them, and overshadowing part of the enclosed space (which at once reminded the children of a huge circus ring) there lay a thick wood.

Everything was very still. Not a sound broke the silence, and there was something in the appearance of the vast empty ring with the empty seats about it, and the mountains and the sea as background, which for a moment was rather terrifying.

Diana drew closer to Rachel.

“I wish someone would come,” she murmured.

It was just then that a well-known voice made the children turn with joyful relief to see Sheshà. They knew him at once, though he was dressed in the Grecian costume to which they were now growing accustomed.

“Oh, we’re so glad you’ve come!” sighed Rachel. “It was getting lonely here. This is Olympia, isn’t it? But where is Agis?”

“And Phidolas?” put in Diana.

“This is Olympia, on the western shores of Greece. Here, when the sun has fully risen on this the first day of the games, will be held those contests renowned throughout the world. From every part of Greece the competitors have already arrived, Agis and Phidolas among them. The youths are lodged in yonder town; and in all the villages near, other athletes, as they are called, have found lodging. Ere long they will begin to assemble.”

“And you will tell us all about it!” exclaimed Diana. “Better than Agis, because _you_ know who we are, and he can’t understand—lots of things. But he’s awfully nice,” she added hastily.

Sheshà smiled.

“Come with me, and, before the games begin, I will show you what I can. First shall you see the temple which encloses one of the Wonders of the World.”

“One of the Seven Wonders?” asked Rachel.

“One of the Seven Wonders,” repeated Sheshà.

In another second, and without knowing how they reached it, the children found themselves standing near a temple in front of which stretched the wood they had seen from the mountain side.

“This is the famous temple of Zeus or—to give him the name more familiar to your ears—of Jupiter Olympius. He it was who, according to the Greeks, first commanded these games—the Olympic Games—to be held. Later you shall behold the great statue it contains. For the moment let us wander a little through this wood, sacred to Jupiter.”

“These are oak trees. It’s an oak wood,” said Rachel, who was wise in knowledge of the country and its trees and flowers.

“Yes, because the oak is the special tree of Jupiter—his sacred tree. Therefore, very rightly, an oak wood stretches before his temple.”

“Oh, there’s a statue!” exclaimed Diana suddenly, pointing to where, between the trees, she had caught sight of a gleam of white.

“There’s a whole line of them,” she went on. “Do let us go and look.”

“Patience,” counselled Sheshà. “We shall pass them on our way. These,” he said, when in a moment or two they had reached the marble figures, “these are the statues representing those youths who, as victors in the Olympic Games, claimed the right to have their statues set up in the sacred wood. Some of them, as you behold, are already ancient, for it is long, long ago since these contests first began.”

“Where are we exactly—in the ‘Past,’ I mean?” asked Rachel. “Has Alexander the Great conquered Greece yet?”

Sheshà shook his head. “Alexander is as yet unborn. The games you will behold to-day are full a hundred years before his time. Greece, though declining from the height of her glory, is still free.”

“Oh, look! There’s quite a little boy here,” cried Diana, who was carefully examining the statues. “Anyhow, he doesn’t look any older than Agis. But _he_ must have won a prize, I suppose, or his statue wouldn’t be here?”

“It has sometimes happened that young children have been victors,” said Sheshà. “That child was one of them.”

Rachel and Diana gazed admiringly at the slim graceful figure of the boy.

“How pleased he must have been!” exclaimed Diana. “Oh, wouldn’t it be joyful if Agis should win to-day?”

“The funny part of it is,” began Rachel, slowly, “that it’s settled—one way or the other. We shall be seeing all over again something that’s already happened, you know. It’s awfully uncanny when you come to think of it, isn’t it?”

Sheshà smiled, and gently smoothed her hair.

“All new ideas appear ‘uncanny’ at first, little maid. Yet the familiar is really quite as marvellous as the little known.... Come now, it is time we returned, for the sun is mounting higher, and the competitors will be arriving. We will return to this sacred wood, and to the temple, at the end of the day. Then shall you behold the great statue of Zeus, the Seventh Wonder of the World.”

Almost before he had finished speaking, the children found themselves back again in the huge “circus-ring” with its background of mountains! But now it was no longer empty. An enormous multitude of people filled the seats surrounding the hollow space, and from the crowd there rose a murmur like the hum of thousands of bees.

Rachel and Diana, seated on either side of Sheshà, in “the best places of all,” as Diana excitedly whispered, looked round them with amazed curiosity. First they let their eyes wander over the rows of spectators, clad in the Greek dress that was still strange to the sight of little English girls. The general colour of the crowd was white, varied by patches of the crimson and green and blue of many of the cloaks.

Overhead was the glorious blue sky, and the sun’s rays, warm but not as yet too hot, streamed over and lighted up the wonderful scene, which every moment grew more interesting and animated.

“That,” said Sheshà, pointing to the clear space below, “is the place of combat, called the _stadium_. And, now, behold the judges are just about to take their places.”

There was a raised platform or daïs in the middle of the stadium, and towards this the children saw several stately figures advancing. In a few moments these men, seated in chairs of a shape like those they had already seen in the home of Agis, had taken up their position on the daïs, each one holding on his knee a crown of olive leaves, and in his hand a palm branch.

“What are those for?” Rachel asked.

“To crown the victors. They are the only prizes, and are more eagerly coveted than gold or precious stones. To win those simple crowns the youths of Greece train strenuously for years. You have already in Athens seen a gymnasium. That to which Agis belongs, is only one of hundreds, as such training schools exist all over Greece, for the teaching of these physical exercises which have made the Greek nation the most beautiful in the world.... Here come some of the competitors—the _athletes_, to give them the right name. Behold them!”

“Oh, look! look, Diana!” shouted Rachel, pointing to where a procession of boys on horseback came riding into the stadium.

“What does it remind you of?” asked Diana quickly.

“Why, it’s exactly like that marble picture of boys riding we saw—where was it? Why, on the Parthenon temple, of course!”

“But we saw it first in the British Museum,” Diana reminded her.

“Where it rests now, having been torn from one of the noblest temples in the world,” said Sheshà, sadly. “The sculptor who made that frieze, the great Phidias, must have many times seen processions like to this,” he added, pointing to the beautiful boys who, mounted on no less beautiful horses, were now cantering round the stadium while the crowd applauded loudly.

“Yes! Yes! It’s just as though those marble boys had come to life,” declared Diana, excitedly.

“Oh, look!” interrupted Rachel, still more thrilled. “There’s Phidolas riding upon his lovely horse! Oh, don’t they look splendid together?”

“And there’s Agis!” cried Diana, jumping up and clapping her hands. “Do you see? With a crowd of other boys, just coming in. Oh, this is simply _frightfully_ exciting!”

Sheshà laughed. “Listen to the heralds,” he counselled. “The games are just about to begin.”

A silence all at once fell upon the vast swaying crowd, while several men with trumpets, advancing from the centre of the stadium and addressing the people, cried out the names of the competitors, and the cities from which they came.

Rachel and Diana exchanged delighted glances when the name of Agis of Athens was announced among the rest, and, after the last notes of the trumpets had died away, they saw the athletes being arranged for the first race.

“That’s the umpire, I suppose?” whispered Rachel, pointing to a man who was marshalling the boys.

Sheshà nodded, and, a second later, Diana asked eagerly: “What are they doing now?” For one of the umpires was reciting something in a loud voice, to which all the competitors replied with a shout of assent.

“The athletes are taking the oath to observe all the rules of the games, and to gain no advantage by means unfair and dishonourable,” explained Sheshà.

“Look! Look! They’re off,” cried Rachel, as she pranced up and down, quite unable to keep still.