Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE SPARTAN TWINS By Lucy Fitch Perkins 1918 CONTENTS LIST OF CHARACTERS I. COMPANY AT THE FARM II. THE STRANGER'S STORY III. THE SHEPHERDS IV. SOWING AND REAPING V. THE TWINS GO TO ATHENS VI. THE FESTIVAL OF ATHENA VII. HOME AGAIN THE SPARTAN TWINS _The Characters in this Story are_:-- MELAS, a Spartan living on the Island of Salamis, just off the coast of Greece. He is Overseer on the Farm of Pericles, Archon of Athens. LYDIA, Wife of Melas, and Mother of Dion and Daphne. DION and DAPHNE, Twin Son and Daughter of Melas and Lydia. CHLOE, a young slave girl, belonging to Melas and Lydia. She had been abandoned by her parents when she was a baby, and left by the roadside to die of neglect or be picked up by some passer-by. She was found by Lydia and brought up in her household as a slave. ANAXAGORAS, "the Stranger," a Philosopher,--friend of Pericles. PERICLES, Chief Archon of Athens. LAMPON, a Priest. A Priest of the Erechtheum. DROMAS, LYCIAS, and Others, Slaves on the Farm of Pericles. Time: About the middle of the Fifth Century B.C. [Illustration: Plan of home of the Spartan Twins] I COMPANY AT THE FARM One lovely spring morning long years ago in Hellas, Lydia, wife of Melas the Spartan, sat upon a stool in the court of her house, with her wool-basket beside her, spinning. She was a tall, strong-looking young woman with golden hair and blue eyes, and as she twirled her distaff and twisted the white wool between her fingers she sang a little song to herself that sounded like the humming of bees in a garden. The little court of the house where she sat was open to the sky, and the afternoon sun came pouring over the wall which surrounded it, and made a brilliant patch of light upon the earthen floor. The little stones which were embedded in the earth to form a sort of pavement glistened in the sun and seemed to play at hide and seek with the moving shadow of Lydia's distaff as she spun. On the thatch which covered the arcade around three sides of the court pigeons crooned and preened their feathers, and from a room in the second story of the house, which opened upon a little gallery enclosing the fourth side of the court, came the _clack clack_ of a loom. As she spun, the shadow of Lydia's distaff grew longer and longer across the floor until at last the sunlight disappeared behind the wall, leaving the whole court in gray shadow.