me was a nightmare. Further, the Great King gave orders that
the body of Atta should be embalmed and carried with the army, and that
his name and kin should be sought out and duly honoured. This latter
was a task too hard for the staff, and no more was heard of it till
months later, when the King, in full flight after Salamis, bethought
him of the one man who had not played him false. Finding that his
lieutenants had nothing to tell him, he eased five of them of their
heads.

As it happened, the deed was not quite forgotten. An islander, a
Lesbian and a cautious man, had fought at Therrnopylae in the Persian
ranks, and had heard Atta's singing and seen how he fell. Long
afterwards some errand took this man to Lemnos, and in the evening,
speaking with the Elders, he told his tale and repeated something of
the song. There was that in the words which gave the Lemnians a clue,
the mention, I think, of the olive-wood Hermes and the snows of
Samothrace. So Atta came to great honour among his own people, and his
memory and his words were handed down to the generations. The song
became a favourite island lay, and for centuries throughout the Aegean
seafaring men sang it when they turned their prows to wild seas. Nay,
it travelled farther, for you will find part of it stolen by Euripides
and put in a chorus of the Andromache. There are echoes of it in some
of the epigrams of the Anthology; and, though the old days have gone,
the simple fisher-folk still sing snatches in their barbarous dialect.
The Klephts used to make a catch of it at night round their fires in
the hills, and only the other day I met a man in Scyros who had
collected a dozen variants, and was publishing them in a dull book on
island folklore.

In the centuries which followed the great fight, the sea fell away from
the roots of the cliffs and left a mile of marshland. About fifty
years ago a peasant, digging in a rice-field, found the cup which Atta
bad given to Poseidon. There was much talk about the discovery, and
scholars debated hotly about its origin. To-day it is in the Berlin
Museum, and according to the new fashion in archaeology it is labelled
"Minoan," and kept in the Cretan Section. But any one who looks
carefully will see behind the rim a neat little carving of a dolphin;
and I happen to know that that was the private badge of Atta's house.

ATTA'S SONG

(Roughly translated.)

I will sing of thee, Great Sea-Mother,
Whose