"I feel your pain with you, my child, but it makes my hand clench with rage instead of filling my eyes with tears. That gentle boy whom you loved, that little girl who now sits weeping in the dark dungeon, shall both be revenged. Trust me; before the Nile has risen again, a powerful army will have entered Egypt, to demand satisfaction for this murder."
"Oh, dearest, how your eyes are glowing! I never saw you look so beautiful before. Yes, yes, the boy must be avenged, and none but you must be his avenger."
"My gentle Sappho is becoming warlike too."
"Yes, women must feel warlike when wickedness is so triumphant; women rejoice too when such crimes are punished. Tell me has war been declared already?"
"Not yet; but hosts on hosts are marching to the valley of the Euphrates to join our main army."
"My courage sinks as quickly as it rose. I tremble at the word, the mere word, war. How many childless mothers Ares makes, how many young fair heads must wear the widow's veil, how many pillows are wet through with tears when Pallas takes her shield."
"But a man developes in war; his heart expands, his arm grows strong. And none rejoice more than you when he returns a conqueror from the field. The wife of a Persian, especially, ought to rejoice in the thought of battle, for her husband's honor and fame are dearer to her than his life."
"Go to the war. I shall pray for you there."
"And victory will be with the right. First we will conquer Pharaoh's host, then release Phanes' little daughter..."
"And then Aristomachus, the brave old man who succeeded Phanes when he fled. He has vanished, no one knows whither, but people say that the crown-prince has either imprisoned him in a dismal dungeon on account of his having uttered threats of retaliating the cruelty shown to Phanes' children, or--what would be worse--has had him dragged off to some distant quarry. The poor old man was exiled from his home, not for his own fault, but by the malice of his enemies, and the very day on which we lost sight of him an embassy arrived here from the Spartan people recalling Aristomachus to the Eurotas with all the honors Greece could bestow, because his sons had brought great glory to their country. A ship wreathed with flowers was sent to fetch the honored old man, and at the head of the deputation was his own brave, strong son, now crowned with glory and fame."