l
context it does not refer to her, yet exquisitely conveys her influence
on these two works. "Rosy Balaustion": she is that, as well as "superb,
statuesque," in the admiring apostrophes from Aristophanes, during the
long, close argument of the _Apology_. In that piece, the Bald Bard
himself is made to show her to us; and though it follows, not precedes,
the _Adventure_, I shall steal from him at once, presenting in his lyric
phrases our queen before we crown her.

He comes to her home in Athens on the night when Balaustion learns that
her adored Euripides is dead. She and her husband, Euthukles, are
"sitting silent in the house, yet cheerless hardly," musing on the
tidings, when suddenly there come torch-light and knocking at the door,
and cries and laughter: "Open, open, Bacchos[94:1] bids!"--and, heralded
by his chorus and the dancers, flute-boys, all the "banquet-band," there
enters, "stands in person, Aristophanes." Balaustion had never seen him
till that moment, nor he her:

"Forward he stepped: I rose and fronted him";

and as thus for the first time they meet, he breaks into a paean of
admiration:

"'You, lady? What, the Rhodian? Form and face,
Victory's self upsoaring to receive
The poet? Right they named you . . . some rich name,
Vowel-buds thorned about with consonants,
Fragrant, felicitous, rose-glow enriched
By the Isle's unguent: some diminished end
In _ion_' . . ."

and trying to recall that name "in _ion_," he guesses two or three at
random, seizing thus the occasion to express her effect on him:

"'Phibalion, for the mouth split red-fig-wise,
Korakinidion, for the coal-black hair,
Nettarion, Phabion, for the darlingness?'"

But none of these is right; "it was some fruit-flower"; and at last it
comes: _Balaustion_, Wild-Pomegranate-Bloom, and he exclaims in ecstasy,
"Thanks, Rhodes!"--for her fellow-countrymen had found this name for
her, so apt in every way that her real name was forgotten, and as
Balaustion she shall live and die.

"Nettarion, Phabion, for the darlingness"; and for all her intellect and
ardour, it is greatly _this_ that makes Balaustion queen--the lovely
eager sweetness, the tenderness, the "darlingness": Aristophanes guessed
almost right!

+ + + + +

How did she win the name of Wild-Pomegranate-Flower? We learn it from
herself in the _Adventure_. Let us hear: let us feign ourselves mem