A harp was brought to her. To its accompaniment she sang a song based upon the legendary love of Solomon for the Shulammite maiden, his wooing, and her rejection of royal favors through constancy to her shepherd lover. Nicaso's voice was exceedingly rich and flexible. It well represented the gentler sentiments; but was startlingly effective in its deeper tones, which were adapted to the wilder portions of the song, and suggested an untamed element in the singer herself.
"A glorious bit of womanhood," thought Marduk; "but I would rather Manasseh had the responsibility of owning it than I."
He turned to speak to the satrap, but that worthy, overcome by the abundance and mixture of drinks, was fast asleep, if not drunk. It will be well to drop the curtain briefly upon Samaria.
Two hours' ride south of the Phoenician city of Gebal, which the Greeks called Byblus, the river Adonis pours into the sea the water it has gathered from the melting snows and living springs of the Lebanon. Every year the banks of the stream were thronged with multitudes that swarmed out from Tyre and Sidon, Byblus and Sarepta, and all the fishing hamlets and farm villages from Aradus to Joppa. These people were pilgrims to Apheca, the source of the sacred river Adonis.
It was the month of Tammuz, when summer bursts with fecund life upon the land of Syria. The change of the season was thought of by the Syrians under the pleasing myth of Astarte and Tammuz; or, as the Greeks told the story, of Venus and Adonis. When summer yielded to winter, stark and sterile, this was Tammuz, in his strength and beauty, slain by the wild boar. The returning spring-time was the resurrection of the fair divinity under the embraces of the yearning goddess. The water of the river, reddened by the earth that mingled with it, as the melting snows from the Lebanon overflowed the channel of the stream, was it not Tammuz's blood?
Several months had elapsed since the events heretofore related. The ruddy tide of Adonis River had already sent out its annual invitation for the festival. The report had been duly repeated that the star, which was none other than Astarte herself, had been seen to pass over Lebanon and fall into the pool of Apheca, the fountain-head of the river.