The Last of the Wine: A Novel

11

THE WEEKS PASSED BY, bringing winter to the fields and spring to me. As, when great Helios shines upon a frost-bound pool, the birds begin alighting, and at evening the beasts came down to drink, so I, being happy, instead of suitors began to have friends. But my head was too full of Lysis to notice the change, and, when he was busy, I scarcely knew how my time was spent.

One day a despatch came in from Sicily, and was read to the Assembly. We boys who were not of age hung about at the foot of the hill, waiting for news. The men trooped down, long-faced and loud-mouthed, from the Pnyx.

Nikias wrote that Gylippos, the Spartan general, had raised a force on the far side of the island, had trained it, taught it discipline, and marched it to the relief of Syracuse. He had dug in on high ground, penning our Army between him and the town. He had united Sicily against us, and troops were expected from the Spartan confederacy as well. In the upshot, Nikias asked for a second army not less than the first, and a second load of treasure to maintain it, and for a general to relieve him. He was sick in the kidneys, he said, and could not do his work as he would wish. He could hold out over winter, but help must not be delayed beyond the spring; and so he ended.

Lysis told me all this while the crowd still surged around us. Everyone sounded angry; but I don’t remember any foreboding. They were more like people come to a festival, who have been told nothing will be ready for a week, and they must all go home.

Before long the muster-rolls came out, and ended fears which I had kept to myself. Lysis was not going; too few cavalry were left as it was to guard the frontier. When the knights sailed, he had been taken out of his tribal squadron, and made a Phylarch of the Guard in place of an officer who had gone. Though he was young for it, they were glad to find someone who could get himself respected by the youths, and keep them in order. It took him much away from me, and I thought it long till I should be an ephebe myself; for he had promised to ask that I should be enrolled under his command. Finding me eager to improve, though there were many things he enjoyed more than soldiering, he often gave up his leisure to take me practising across country, which Demeas never did.

We used to ride out with buttoned javelins, and he would teach me how one steadies oneself to throw from a gallop; or we would close in and try to drag each other off. I thought he would be afraid of hurting me, but he was often rougher than Demeas. Once when he had unhorsed me in a place full of stones, so that I was grazed and bruised all over, he was really sorry, but said he would rather hurt me himself than see me killed in battle by someone else.

It was seldom now that we could spend many hours at a time with Sokrates; who, however, certainly never wished to keep young men from useful work. But as someone was always falling under his spell, one would find new faces about him, which had come while one was away. Some went, some stayed; but none struck me with such surprise as one I found in Phokas the Silversmith’s, where I overtook the company one morning. On the opposite wall a polished silver mirror was hanging. As I came up behind, it showed me first Sokrates’ face, then the one beside it. I did not believe my eyes at first. The face was Xenophon’s.

Afterwards, when I got him alone, he laughed at my surprise, and said he had been about Sokrates for some weeks, and wondered we had not met before; “but I suppose it’s one man’s work to conduct the most celebrated love-affair in the City, and you’ll be looking up your friends in a few years.” I saw that he was really a little hurt; and it was as difficult to put things right with him, as to tell a deaf man why you went to the theatre.

“But,” I said, “what brought you to Sokrates?”—“He did.”—“How? Through your overhearing his talk?”—“No, he asked me to come.” More than ever surprised, I demanded the story. He said he had been walking down a narrow alley-way, when Sokrates had met him in it. “I had never been so near him, and at the risk of my manners could not keep from looking at his face. ‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘people can laugh; but still, that is a man.’ I dropped my eyes, and was going to pass him; but he put his staff across the way, and stopped me dead. ‘Can you tell me,’ he said, ‘where one can buy good oil?’ I thought it odd he should need telling, but I directed him. Then he asked after flour and cloth. I told him the best places I knew; he said, ‘And where can one get the good and beautiful?’ I must have looked pretty blank; at last I said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, I can’t tell you that.’—‘No?’ he said smiling. ‘Come with me, then, and let us find out.’ So I turned and walked with him, and stayed with him all day. Why, Alexias, didn’t you tell me more about him?”

“What!” I said.

“I thought the sophists spent their lives measuring the moon and stars, and arguing whether matter was one or manifold. You yourself, if you’ll forgive my saying so, are inclined to have your head in the clouds, so I thought that would be just the kind of sophist you would take up with. But now I find he’s the most practical person one could possibly go to for advice. I heard him say myself that no one should presume to read the universe till he has first read and mastered his own soul, else there is nothing to prevent his turning all other knowledge to evil. He says the soul sickens without exercise just like the body, and one can only know the gods by training as hard in goodness as one trains for the Games.”—“Did he say that? I see now why he would never be initiated.”—“But it’s quite untrue, Alexias, that he lacks reverence; I assure you, he is a most religious man.”—“Are you now, Xenophon, defending Sokrates to me?”—“I’m sorry,” he said. “But people’s injustice makes me angry. What do they mean by their accusations? My own father, the best of men, believes this legend of Aristophanes’ that Sokrates teaches young men to despise their parents and deny the gods. Surely among all his friends who write and compose, somebody could put him into a play as he really is? If they would do no more than jot down a few notes of his daily talk, it might get justice done him.”—“You should do it yourself,” I said. He blushed. “Now you’re laughing at me; I only mean that sooner or later someone must.”

There was another who came to Sokrates about this time; I think in the early spring.

I noticed him first one day when we had all walked in from the Agora to talk in the Stoa of Zeus. The youth I am speaking of came up quietly, and stood half-hidden by a column. Sokrates, however, as soon as he saw him turned in welcome. “Good morning, Phaedo; I hoped we might meet today. Come and sit where we can hear each other.” Then the boy came forward, and sat at his feet. Lysis murmured in my ear, “Silenos with a leopard.”

He could scarcely have put it better. The youth had what one often hears of from the lyric poets, but seldom sees; very dark eyes, with hair of the clearest blond. It swung like heavy silk, cut straight across his brows, which were strongly drawn and lifted outward. His mouth was nobly carved, but strange, brooding and secret; his beauty was not of Apollo but of Dionysos. His eyes never left Sokrates’ face. They were deep and subtle; you could see the thoughts running in them like fish in dark water. So it struck me as odd in every way that he should sit without opening his mouth, and that Sokrates seemed to expect nothing better. Just once he said, “This may interest you, Phaedo, if, as I think, it bears on our enquiry of yesterday,” and the lad said something in assent, so that I no longer wondered whether he was dumb. As we were going away I said to Lysis, “Who is he, do you know?”—“No; but he came one day when you were at Demeas’. He walked up quietly, looked the company over, and went away. It was much like today’s, except that Kritias was there.” Nowadays Kritias never came within a spear’s-length of me. I was sorry for the boy. But then all the world, not being the beloved of Lysis, seemed pitiable to me.

Soon after, when he was absent on manoeuvre, I was in one of the public gardens, the small one by the Theatre, where Sokrates was disputing with Aristippos, whether the good is identical with pleasure, or not. They stood in debate, looking each like the image of his cause. Aristippos was about thirty, a good-looking man, but sagging in the face a little, and wearing the price, I should say, of a good riding-mule on his back. Sokrates in his old drab mantle was as brown and firm as a nut. You could believe the story that when he was on campaign in Thrace he stood all a winter’s night in meditation, while the troops were shivering under heaps of skins.

A man’s strength, he was saying, depends on toil to maintain it; his freedom depends on strength to protect it; and without freedom, what pleasure is secure? I don’t think Aristippos found any way of meeting this; but just then I saw Phaedo again, loitering, half hidden by some trees. He drew back when Sokrates glanced his way; but as soon as Aristippos had gone, came forward of his own accord. Sokrates greeted him, and he sat down on the grass close by. I forget the conversation, which I suppose related to what had passed; Phaedo sat silent and attentive, his head close to Sokrates’ knees. Those slopes round the Theatre catch the late sunlight, which shone on the boy’s fair hair, showing its lucid beauty; Sokrates, as he sat talking, put out a hand half absently to touch it, and ran a strand of it through his fingers. It was as a man might touch a flower. But I saw the boy start away, and his face change. His dark eyes looked quick and ugly; he made you think of a half-tamed animal that is going to bite. Sokrates, feeling the movement, glanced down at him; for a moment their eyes met. Suddenly the boy was quiet again. His face grew still, as before; he sat listening, hands clasping knees, and Sokrates stroked his hair.

It had increased my curiosity, which I was determined to satisfy this time. When Sokrates had gone, I began making my way over. But, what was hardly surprising, some man who had been waiting his chance got there before me. One could see he was a stranger, making the usual kind of civil approach. The youth smiled coldly at him, and gave him some answer. I did not hear it; but the man looked shocked, and retired as if struck.

You may be surprised that after this I did not change my mind. But those were days when I thought well of mankind, and had confidence enough for two. At all events, I overtook Phaedo, greeted him, and said something about the debate. At first he barely answered, closed his beautiful sullen mouth, and left everything to me. Yet I had the feeling he was more confused than angry; so I persisted, and at last he began to talk. At once I perceived that in the comparison of our minds I was a child to him. He asked me about a discussion he had heard of, but missed. I retailed it as best I could; once he stopped me, to make a rebuttal which even Kritias had not seen. I could find no way past it; but he, after considering, answered it himself.

I said he was too modest, and ought to let his voice be heard more often. We had been talking without any constraint; but now he shook his head, and grew silent again. At the next corner he said, “Thanks for your company, but I go this way now. Goodbye.” It was clear he did not want me to see where he lived. I thought, “His family has fallen into poverty; perhaps he has even to work at a trade.” He was quite well dressed and I caught from his hair the scent of camomile-flowers; but people will keep up appearances when they can. In any event he seemed to me now an excellent person; and he had not appeared to dislike my company; so seeing we were near the palaestra where I usually exercised, I said, “It’s early yet; come and give me a match.” But he drew back from me, saying quickly, “No, thank you, I must go.”

I could not believe he was afraid of my seeing his style, for he stood and moved like a gentleman. Just then I noticed a deep wound in his leg, as if a spear had gone clean through. I apologised, and asked if it gave him much trouble. He looked at me strangely. “It’s nothing. I never feel it now.” Then he said slowly, “I got it in battle. But we lost.”

The scar was almost white, yet he seemed no older than I. He spoke a Doric Greek, with an accent of the islands. I asked him what battle it was he had fought in. But he stared in silence, his eyes like a winter midnight under his shining hair. I felt troubled and constrained; at last I said, “Where do you come from, Phaedo?”—“You should have asked before, Athenian. I come from Melos.”

I was about to hold out my hand to him, and say the war was over. But the words died upon my tongue. I knew why he could not go into the palaestra. Till now, it had only been a tale to me. It is the victor who can say, “The war is over,” and go home. Only death ends it, for a slave.

He was withdrawing already; I put out my hand to keep him, as bewildered as if I had seen the sun rising in the west. In everything I had found him my superior. I had not believed such things could be in the world. There was no time to think more, for I saw in his face that he suffered. I said, “Can we both be friends of Sokrates, and not of one another? And they say, ‘Fate is the master of all men.’”

His dark eyes paused, dwelling on mine. Young as he was, I felt not pleased by his gratitude, but honoured by his approval. “I am sorry, Alexias,” he said, “that we can’t wrestle; we might have matched up well. They used to say of me too that I was not bad for a runner.” He smiled at me; there is a beauty of the soul that works up through bitterness like a vein of marble through earth. “Be sure,” I exclaimed, “the gods will not suffer this forever.” He looked at me as an old man looks at a child. “I come to Sokrates not in the hope of understanding the gods, but that he may lend me, perhaps, his belief that they are good.”

“Tell me if you will,” I said, “what master do you work for?” His face grew dark. It grieved me to have offended him. I begged his pardon and said it was no matter. He looked up from the ground and said, “It wasn’t there that I met Sokrates.”—“No matter,” I said. “We shall meet tomorrow, or very soon?” He said, “I come when I can.”

I wondered how he got away, and if they would beat him. He was hardly out of my mind all evening. Next day I was setting out to tell Lysis the story, when I met my uncle Strymon in the court. He told me in his weightiest manner that he had something to say to me; adding, when I would have led him to the living-room, that it was no fit matter for my mother’s ears. Now fairly mystified, I took him to the guest-room. After coughing, stroking his beard, and saying he felt responsible to my father, he began, “What you do behind closed doors, Alexias, I cannot control. Yet I am sorry to see debauchery in one so young, who lacks even the excuse of ugliness or deformity, which might have kept you from enjoying the pleasures of love in an honourable way.”

“Debauchery?” I said, staring at him as if he were mad. My last party had been a fortnight ago; Lysis had been there, and wishing to avoid anything that might disgust him, I had gone home nearly sober. “I assure you, sir, you have been misled.”—“Not unless my eyes mislead me; and I may say I have always been noted for excellent sight. To walk the public streets with a boy from Gurgos’s bath-house! Alkibiades himself was rarely so shameless. I assure you, at your age I hardly knew such people existed.”—“What boy?” I asked. But he saw my face change and said, “I see you understand me.”

“A slave does not choose his master,” I said, “and war is war.” I felt angry with the whole world, with Necessity and Fate. He was stroking his beard again, getting something ready. “And what shall we say of a man setting himself up to instruct the youth, who not only resorts to such creatures himself, but admits them among his pupils?” Anger almost choked me; but I mastered it, the better to deal with him. “I am to blame, sir, that as I have only talked philosophy with the youth, I forgot to ask him what he did. But I thank you for the information. How, sir, did you find it out?”

In the street, I daresay; but it did me good to see his face. At least he could see my teacher had sharpened my wits. But Lysis looked serious when I told him, and said that if my uncle thought ill of Sokrates, a pert answer would not make him think better. This was the first time he had ever reproved me. When he saw how I felt it, he soon relented.

He went out of his way after this to greet Phaedo kindly; but the boy grew silent in company, as Sokrates had found. He would talk, when we were alone, but always as across an invisible shield. He was waiting for me to find out what he was and turn against him, and I saw it. You may wonder indeed why I did not feel a distaste in spite of myself. But first love, like the light of dawn, sheds a kind of beauty wherever you look. Besides, though I knew what his life was, I knew it without understanding, as one knows of a country where one has not been. It only gave him a strangeness for me.

One day I met him early in the morning, walking out to the Academy. As we went up the Street of Tombs, we fell to talking of death; and Phaedo said he did not believe the soul survives it, whether in the underworld, or in a new body, or in the air. I replied that since I had loved Lysis, it seemed impossible to me that the soul should be extinguished. “The soul is a surfeit-dream,” he said, “of a man with food and drink in him and his lust fed. Let the body be hungry, or thirsty, or in desire, and what is his soul but the dog’s nose that leads it to flesh? The dog dies, and rots, and its nose smells nothing.” He spoke as if he hated me, and wished to leave me nothing that could give me joy. Yet I remembered I had failed Sokrates once, and Lysis had reproved me; and I paused to think. I said, “If you put a fat old man into the long-race, he will fall down dead. Does that prove it can’t be run? This, Phaedo, is why I think the soul outlives the body: I have seen how the body can be bought and sold, and not only that, but forced to what it hates and would never consent to; yet the soul can be free, and keep its courage, and defy its fate. So I believe in the soul.”

He was silent some time, walking so fast that the limp from his wound appeared. At last he said, “It seemed incredible that you could know.” I said I would never have intruded in the matter, except that the silence was putting a distance between us. “I can’t keep much from Lysis,” I said. “But you can rely on him not to talk, as you can on me.” He laughed shortly and said, “Don’t make a trouble of it. Kritias knows.”

A little later, finding he had never been out of the City, I took him walking in the pine-woods at the foot of Lykabettos. It was there he told me how he had been enslaved. After his city had been some months besieged, his father, who was a strategos, had raised a troop of volunteers to storm the Athenian siege-wall, a desperate enterprise which had almost succeeded. Phaedo, fighting at his father’s side, got a wound there, which did not heal well, because by then they were almost starving. The Athenians sent for more troops, and closed the gap; no food came in at all, and they could only throw themselves on the mercy of the enemy. Phaedo, who could not walk alone, lay on his bed, listening to the clamour as the gates were opened and the Athenians marched in. Presently he heard a great shrieking of women, and the death-cries of men. Soldiers ran in, dragged him from his bed to the Agora, and threw him down among a crowd of young lads and children, who had been herded into the sheep-pound. Just across the square was a pile of corpses newly killed, and still being added to; sticking out of the midst of it was his father’s head. There was an auctioneers’ rostrum in the Agora; here, where he could see well and be out of the dirt and mess, stood Philokrates the Athenian commander, directing the slaughter of the fighting men which the Athenians had ordered. It went on for some time. Phaedo did not come too late to see his lover brought in with bound hands, and run through the throat before his eyes. When it was time to lead off the women to the ships, Philokrates came down from the rostrum to choose a couple for himself. The rest were taken away to be sold. Thus Phaedo saw the last of his mother, a woman not long past thirty, and handsome still.

He had been brought to the Piraeus slave-market very sick with his wound; but Gurgos had taken a risk on him for the sake of his looks, and nursed him well. At first he had not understood what the place was, and thought he was to work as a bathman. When he knew, he refused food and drink, intending to die. “Then,” he said, “in the evening old Gurgos came and left a cup of wine beside me. The wine-jar had just been drawn up from the well, and the cup sweated with coolness. I was faint and thirsty; and I said to myself, ‘For whom am I doing this? I who have neither father nor friend to be dishonoured, who believe neither in men nor in any god? The birds and beasts live from hour to hour, and they live very well.’” He had learned the arts of his calling, and commanded a high price. But on a certain day, feeling his soul sickened and his mind in turmoil, he had locked the door as though someone was with him, and getting out by the window, had wandered about the City. There he had passed Sokrates talking, and had stayed to listen. “Is it true, Alexias, that there is an Athenian who lives in a cave and hates men?”—“Yes: Timon.”—“When I came to Sokrates I was much the same, I mean in my soul. I had taught myself to withdraw my mind from them, as the herdsman sits apart on a rock, to windward of the goats. I did not wish to share my rock with anyone; if one of my beasts aspired toward manhood, I had learned how to keep him in his place.”

I was eager he should meet Lysis; but at first Phaedo always found some reason to be gone. Presently, however, I got them acquainted, and it was plain each thought well of the other. Shortly after, Lysis being about to give a supper for Sokrates and his particular friends, I said, “It’s a pity Phaedo can’t come; Sokrates would like to see him.”—“Why not?” said Lysis at once. “A good thought of yours. I’ll go down beforehand and buy an evening of his time.” I asked to come too, but he said, “Are you serious? Your reputation would never recover from it. When boys of your age go to Gurgos’s, they don’t go to buy but to sell.”

The party went well, and Phaedo seemed to enjoy it. When everyone had gone, and Lysis and I were yawning in the first light but still unwilling to part, I asked him what Gurgos’s place was like.

“Very fashionable. You are received first by Gurgos, who is a fat Phrygian with a dyed beard. He enquires your tastes, rubbing his hands; when you ask for Phaedo he bows himself in two, like a cloth-seller when you order purple. You are directed through the bath, where you find all those bodies that are never seen in the palaestra, and the boys who are free, making themselves useful till they are needed elsewhere. They are mostly slaves, so I suppose they could be worse off, but when a child of nine years or so came up ogling me, the pleasure I would have paid highest for would have been that of throwing Gurgos head first into the cauldron, to rinse his beard for him. The rooms are behind the baths. Phaedo has the apartment of honour; his name is over the door, together with his price. He had a customer when I got there. Phaedo’s clients are treated like gentlemen and not hurried; Gurgos’s strong man is at hand, lest some impatient person should try to break down the door. In due course I knocked, and Phaedo opened. All he had on was the paint on his face. I knew then I shouldn’t have come. The next moment, he slammed to the door. He was almost too quick for me; but being rather stronger I managed to hold it. ‘Next room,’ he said through the crack, ‘I’m engaged.’—‘Wait, Phaedo,’ I began. Suddenly he flung open the door, so that I nearly fell inside. He stood there laughing. He looked like something you might come upon in a dark wood. ‘Come in, Lysis,’ he said. ‘Honour the threshold. Who am I to turn away trade? Ever since Alexias sang me the hymn of your virtues, I’ve been expecting you here. What can I do for you?’ He added one or two remarks, compared with which Gurgos had talked like a schoolmaster. All the same, you can tell he was brought up a gentleman; he knows how to apologise and keep his dignity. It was my fault for going to his room. But I’ve never set foot inside a boys’ house before. I told him anyone who was ready to be angry for your sake was a friend of mine. I only wish I could afford to buy him out; it would be as good a dedication to the gods as one could make in a lifetime. But I had to pay two gold staters for one evening of him. To sell outright, Gurgos would want the price of a racehorse.”

They were good friends after this; but Lysis never spent long alone with Phaedo, who never seemed offended at it. I daresay he felt a compliment to himself, which he was too well-bred to hint at to me; and I daresay he was right. Even I myself felt something of his attraction; for Eros had certainly smiled upon his birth. But to him it had all become such a weariness and disgust as the oar is to the rower. I was as safe with him as with my father.

All his life was in his mind which Sokrates had awakened. I, who had followed the man for love of his nature, seemed to Phaedo only half a friend; he had no mercy on my softness. He would force me to the logic of the negative elenchos, attacking my dearest beliefs till, driven from my last ditch, I would say, “But Phaedo, we know it’s true.”—“Oh, no. We may have a true opinion, perhaps. Do you call that knowledge? We know what we have proved.” Once I lost my temper with him, and trying to hide it walked on in silence. Presently he said, “You look rather the worse for wear today, Alexias; has someone been knocking you about?”—“Of course not,” I said. “Lysis threw me at practise, and I got a few bruises, that’s all.”—“Does he call himself a friend, and treat you like that?” I drew breath for an angry answer; then I understood, and begged his pardon. “No harm done,” he said. “But I daresay I know as well as Lysis what a good guard is worth.”

I never heard him pity himself, or complain of what he was going back to. But in the meantime, a better friend than I had his cause in hand. Sokrates had told his story to Kriton; the man who, in their own youth, had urged him forth from his workshop to take his place among the philosophers. Kriton was rich; he offered at once to buy Phaedo out.

The bargaining took some time. Phaedo’s fame had spread and his price gone up again; Gurgos treated Kriton at first like one who had lost his head over the boy and would pay anything. But he soon found out he was dealing with a businessman; Kriton asked if his boys had drunk of the fountain of youth, offering to come back in a year or two and ask the price again. Gurgos was scared, and closed the deal.

Happy enough at such a change of masters, Phaedo could scarcely be got to understand that he was free. Kriton, finding he wrote a good hand, employed him in his library, copying books, and recommended him to other men of learning, so that he could be studying as he worked. Soon none of us could remember what our circle had been like without him. There was that in his bearing which even the shameless had to respect; you did not find his former customers being familiar in the street. He on his side was strict in not giving them away, saying that every trade has its ethic. But sometimes, when a self-important citizen was holding forth in the Agora, condemning foreign luxury or wondering what young men were coming to, I saw Phaedo watching with irony in his dark eye.