She frowned and gave a little shrug. 'No. Why should I? When I took on the job of being your secretary, I made no claim to being an authority on ancient history.'
'Of course not. But you are a Greek and every Greek I've met so far is incredibly proud of the achievements of his ancestors, so he-'
'And so am I,' she broke in swiftly. 'But somehow, Robbie, I don't think you have known many Greek girls. And girls of any nationality are much more interested in living people than what happened in the past.'
'Then . . . then,' his face showed sudden distress, 'I must have been boring you terribly.'
'No, no; I didn't mean that. You are a living person and I'm interested in you. Besides, anyone who talks about a subject that fills him with enthusiasm makes it interesting. Only it's silly to be surprised that I don't remember everything I learnt at school. Who does? Naturally, when you tell me these stories, lots of them come back to me; but it's years since I've given a thought to the gods and Heroes and what went on thousands of years ago.'
'I see. Yes. I ought to have realized that.'
'I don't see why you should. Lots of Greek girls probably know nearly as much about these things as you do. It just happens that I have been interested in other subjects. But that doesn't prevent my enjoying hearing from you now about the ancients.'
'Do you really mean that?'
'Of course I do. Counting out the dragons and fire-breathing serpents, you make the Immortals sound wonderfully like real people; and I do want to help you with your book. Tell me now why the civilization here at Mycenae was so different from that of Athens.'
'Well, that means going back to Crete. Before Schliemann's discoveries and those of Sir Arthur Evans, it was thought that no civilization at all had arisen in this part of the Mediterranean until the Athenians started theirs about seven or eight hundred b.c. But actually, round about three thousand b.c. the Minoans in Crete were as far advanced as Egypt and Assyria. After some hundreds of years a series of great earthquakes set them back for a long time, but about two thousand b.c. the Minoans got their second wind. They became a great naval power, with an empire extending all over the north-eastern Med. from which they drew tribute.
'Mycenae must have been one of their principal colonies, as from sixteen hundred b.c. a great civilization began to flourish here, too, with very similar art and culture. Some two hundred years later, another series of earthquakes seems to have knocked out the Minoans altogether, and the Mycenaeans took over. Anyhow, round about twelve hundred b.c. this was the capital of an empire that is believed to have extended all over Greece, Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus, and traded as far west as Sicily. That is why Agamemnon was able to get together such a great Armada and a hundred thousand troops for the siege of Troy.
'But shortly after the Trojan War, a terrible calamity overtook all the cities in the eastern Med. It was one of the great movements of barbarians from the east, like that of Atilla's Huns and Genghis Khan's hordes hundreds of years later. A race called the Dorians came down from the north and looted, burned and murdered wherever they went. The Mycenaean civilization was entirely wiped out; so was that of the Hittites in Cappadocia, and Greece and Asia Minor were plunged right back into a Dark Age.
'This Dark Age went on for four hundred years, then the Hellenes gradually began to evolve a new civilization right from the beginning. It blossomed in the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. into the great age of Pericles and the philosophers, but it owed nothing to what had gone before. The extraordinary thing is that the Athenians did not even know about the Empires of the Mycenaeans and the Minoans that had preceded them, and looked on the ruins they had left behind as the buildings of a prehistoric race of giants. In fact, nobody knew about these ancient Empires until less than one hundred years ago, when Schliemann rediscovered Troy, Mycenae and Tiryns; and it wasn't until the beginning of this century that Sir Arthur Evans revealed to the world that Crete had been a powerful and cultural nation as long before Athens flourished as we are now from the birth of Christ.
'So you see, until comparatively recently, everyone believed that the works of Homer were only fairy tales, and that Hero-ditus's history was mainly imagination. But every year, now, with the deciphering of tablets that are being dug up, they are coming more and more into their own as the chroniclers of real events. The accounts of the gods and heroes were passed on from generation to generation by word of mouth, of course, so the hards embellished them with every sort of exaggeration and fantasy; but there can no longer be any doubt that long ago these characters were living chieftains and champions.
'As sure as we are sitting here, about three thousand two hundred years ago one of the most beautiful women the world has ever known did elope with her handsome, unscrupulous lover, and it was from down in the bay there that Agamemnon sailed to take command of the hundred thousand men, the majority of whom died before the walls of Troy in the ten years' war that was waged simply to bring her back to Greece.'
Stephanie smiled at him. 'How could you think, Robbie, that I don't enjoy listening to you when you find your tongue like that and make things sound so glamorous?'
A few minutes later they were on their way again, down into the plain. The road now ran between orchards of orange and lemon trees, and fields of ancient olive trees, or planted with ripening corn. Passing through the dusty, ramshackle town of Argos, they saw no signs of its ancient glory; but a few miles further on the road ran within a few hundred yards of the great fortress palace of Tiryns, perched on a hill from which rose its cyclopean walls. By twelve o'clock they were entering the pleasant little town of Navplion. Driving right through it, they pulled up at the Hotel Amphitryon.
The hotel had been built only a few years before, and was very different from that in which they had stayed in Corinth. It was constructed so that all its rooms faced the sea, and in its central block it had an eighty-foot-long lounge, the whole of the outer wall of which was of glass, giving a splendid panoramic view over the bay. All the first-floor bedrooms opened on to a wide terrace, furnished with garden furniture, so that visitors could have their breakfast out in the sunshine in dressing gowns or bathing things before going down to the swimming pool that lay across the road between the hotel and the beach.
After lunch they rested for a while, then Stephanie took Robbie out for another driving lesson on the flat stretch of road that curved round the segment of the bay between Navplion and Tiryns. There was little traffic but, when a lorry or a coach did pass them, it churned up clouds of dust, so they were glad of a bath before dinner. They had been given adjacent rooms, and when Stephanie had had her bath she called to Robbie to come out on the terrace to see the sunset. Each room enjoyed a strip of terrace divided from its neighbour by a low, wire fence. Separated only by this, they walked side by side to the far rail.
From Navplion, which is situated on the inner side of a cape, the narrow outlet of the gulf to the sea cannot be seen; so from where they stood, facing west, it looked like a great, placid lake ringed by mountains. The air was so clear that, although the range beyond the opposite shore lay many miles away, it gave the illusion that it was almost within pistol shot. Immediately in front of them, and about three-quarters of a mile distant, there rose from the waters of the gulf a small island. The whole of it was occupied by a little castle, with sheer walls rising from the rocks and a central tower. It added a touch of romance to the scene.
Stephanie had come out in a dressing gown and mules. As she stood now beside Robbie without her high heels, the top of her curls only just came up to his shoulder, and she seemed to him more desirable than ever. For ten minutes, they watched the salmon-and-gold glory of the sunset outlining the long range of peaks as though beyond them the whole country was on fire. Slipping her arm through his, she said: