uppliant to your Herakles!
Take me and put me on his temple-steps
To tell you his achievement as I may."

"Then," she continues, in a passage which rings out again in the
_Apology_:

"Then, because Greeks are Greeks, and hearts are hearts,
And poetry is power--they all outbroke
In a great joyous laughter with much love:
'Thank Herakles for the good holiday!
Make for the harbour! Row, and let voice ring:
_In we row bringing in Euripides!_'"

So did the Rhodians land at Syracuse. And the whole city, hearing the
cry "In we row," which was taken up by the crowd around the
harbour-quays, came rushing out to meet them, and Balaustion, standing
on the topmost step of the Temple of Herakles, told the play:

"Told it, and, two days more, repeated it,
Until they sent us on our way again
With good words and great wishes."

That was her Adventure. Three things happened in it "for herself": a
rich Syracusan brought her a whole talent as a gift, and she left it on
the tripod as thank-offering to Herakles; a band of the captives--"whom
their lords grew kinder to, Because they called the poet
countryman"--sent her a crown of wild-pomegranate-flower; and the third
thing . . . Petale, Phullis, Charope, Chrusion, hear of this also--of
the youth who, all the three days that she spoke the play, was found in
the gazing, listening audience; and who, when they sailed away, was
found in the ship too, "having a hunger to see Athens"; and when they
reached Piraeus, once again was found, as Balaustion landed, beside her.
February's moon is just a-bud when she tells her comrades of this youth;
and when that moon rounds full:

"We are to marry. O Euripides!"

* * * * *

Everyone who speaks of _Balaustion's Adventure_ will quote to you that
ringing line, for it sums up the high, ardent girl who, even in the
exultation of her love, must call upon the worshipped Master. It is this
passion for intellectual beauty which sets Balaustion so apart, which
makes her so complete and stimulating. She has a mind as well as a heart
and soul; she is priestess as well as goddess--Euthukles will have a
wife indeed! Every word she speaks is stamped with the Browning marks of
gaiety, courage, trust, and with how many others also: those of
high-heartedness, deep-heartedness, the true patriotism that cherishes
most closely the soul of its country; and then generos