er
creation.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XV

_BALAUSTION_

Among the women whom Browning made, Balaustion is the crown. So vivid is
her presentation that she seems with us in our daily life. And she also
fills the historical imagination.

One would easily fall in love with her, like those sensitive princes in
the _Arabian Nights_, who, hearing only of the charms of a princess, set
forth to find her over the world. Of all Browning's women, she is the
most luminous, the most at unity with herself. She has the Greek
gladness and life, the Greek intelligence and passion, and the Greek
harmony. All that was common, prattling, coarse, sensual and spluttering
in the Greek, (and we know from Aristophanes how strong these lower
elements were in the Athenian people), never shows a trace of its
influence in Balaustion. Made of the finest clay, exquisite and delicate
in grain, she is yet strong, when the days of trouble come, to meet them
nobly and to change their sorrows into spiritual powers.

And the _mise-en-scene_ in which she is placed exalts her into a
heroine, and adds to her the light, colour and humanity of Greek
romance. Born at Rhodes, but of an Athenian mother, she is fourteen
when the news arrives that the Athenian fleet under Nikias, sent to
subdue Syracuse, has been destroyed, and the captive Athenians driven to
labour in the quarries. All Rhodes, then in alliance with Athens, now
cries, "Desert Athens, side with Sparta against Athens." Balaustion
alone resists the traitorous cry. "What, throw off Athens, be disloyal
to the source of art and intelligence--

to the life and light
Of the whole world worth calling world at all!"

And she spoke so well that her kinsfolk and others joined her and took
ship for Athens. Now, a wind drove them off their course, and behind
them came a pirate ship, and in front of them loomed the land. "Is it
Crete?" they thought; "Crete, perhaps, and safety." But the oars flagged
in the hands of the weary men, and the pirate gained. Then Balaustion,
springing to the altar by the mast, white, rosy, and uplifted, sang on
high that song of AEschylus which saved at Salamis--

'O sons of Greeks, go, set your country free,
Free your wives, free your children, free the fanes
O' the Gods, your fathers founded,--sepulchres
They sleep in! Or save all, or all be lost.'

The crew, impassioned by the girl, answered the song,