King Candaules | Page 4

Egyptian priest Thoutmosis, who knows so many
wondrous secrets, has given her the mysterious stone which is found in
the heads of dragons, and whose property, as every one knows, renders
all shadows and the most opaque bodies transparent to the eyes of those
who possess it. Nyssia always carries this stone in her girdle, or else set
into her bracelet, and in that may be found the secret of her
clairvoyance.'
The citizen's explanation seemed the most natural one to those of the
group whose conversation we are endeavouring to reproduce, and the
opinions of Lamia and the patrician were abandoned as improbable.
'At all events,' returned the lover of Theano, 'we are going to have an
opportunity of judging for ourselves, for it seems to me that I hear the
clarions sounding in the distance, and though Nyssia is still invisible, I
can see the herald yonder approaching with palm branches in his hands,
to announce the arrival of the nuptial cortége, and make the crowd fall
back.'
At this news, which spread rapidly through the crowd, the strong men
elbowed their way toward the front ranks; the agile boys, embracing the
shafts of the columns, sought to climb up to the capitals and there seat
themselves; others, not without having skinned their knees against the
bark, succeeded in perching themselves comfortably enough in the Y of
some tree-branch. The women lifted their little children upon their
shoulders, warning them to hold tightly to their necks. Those who had
the good fortune to dwell on the street along which Candaules and
Nyssia were about to pass, leaned over from the summit of their roofs,
or, rising on their elbows, abandoned for a time the cushions upon

which they had been reclining.
A murmur of satisfaction and gratified expectation ran through the
crowd, which had already been waiting many long hours, for the arrows
of the midday sun were commencing to sting.
The heavy-armed warriors, with cuirasses of bull's-hide covered with
overlapping plates of metal, helmets adorned with plumes of horse-hair
dyed red, knemides or greaves faced with tin, baldrics studded with
nails, emblazoned bucklers, and swords of brass, rode behind a line of
trumpeters who blew with might and main upon their long tubes, which
gleamed under the sunlight. The horses of these warriors were all white
as the feet of Thetis, and might have served, by reason of their noble
paces and purity of breeds, as models for those which Phidias at a later
day sculptured upon the metopes of the Parthenon.
At the head of this troop rode Gyges, the well-named, for his name in
the Lydian tongue signifies beautiful. His features, of the most
exquisite regularity, seemed chiselled in marble, owing to his intense
pallor, for he had just discovered in Nyssia, although she was veiled
with the veil of a young bride, the same woman whose face had been
betrayed to his gaze by the treachery of Boreas under the walls of
Bactria.
'Handsome Gyges looks very sad,' said the young maidens. 'What
proud beauty could have secured his love, or what forsaken one has
caused some Thessalian witch to cast a spell on him? Has that
cabalistic ring (which he is said to have found hidden within the flanks
of a brazen horse in the midst of some forest) lost its virtue, and
suddenly ceasing to render its owner invisible, betrayed him to the
astonished eyes of some innocent husband, who had deemed himself
alone in his conjugal chamber?'
'Perhaps he has been wasting his talents and his drachmas at the game
of Palamedes, or else it may be that he is disappointed at not having
won the prize at the Olympian games. He had great faith in his horse
Hyperion.'

No one of these conjectures was true. A fact is never guessed.
After the battalion commanded by Gyges, there came young boys
crowned with myrtle-wreaths, and singing epithalamic hymns after the
Lydian manner, accompanying themselves upon lyres of ivory, which
they played with bows. All were clad in rose-coloured tunics
ornamented with a silver Greek border, and their long hair flowed
down over their shoulders in thick curls.
They preceded the gift-bearers, strong slaves whose half-nude bodies
exposed to view such interlacements of muscle as the stoutest athletes
might have envied.
Upon brancards, supported by two or four men or more, according to
the weight of the objects borne, were placed enormous brazen cratera,
chiselled by the most famous artists; vases of gold and silver whose
sides were adorned with bas-reliefs and whose hands were elegantly
worked into chimeras, foliage, and nude women; magnificent ewers to
be used in washing the feet of illustrious guests; flagons encrusted with
precious stones and containing the rarest perfumes; myrrh from Arabia,
cinnamon from the Indies, spikenard from