The Last of the Wine: A Novel

21

“WELCOME HOME, ALEXIAS,” SAID a young man in the Agora, who was quite strange to me. “Do you know you are staring about you like a colonist? Indeed you have been away too long, and it is good to see you.”

“Three years,” I said. “I know your face well, but …”—“My name,” he said smiling, “is what you may know better, for I’ve grown my beard since last we met. Euthydemos.”

We exclaimed, and laughed, and sat to talk on a bench outside a shop. He had grown into an excellent fellow, sound without his old solemnity; Sokrates always knew where to dig for gold. “I am keeping you,” he said, “from all your friends, but I must hear your news before the crowd sweeps you away. Alkibiades’ men all walk the City dusted with his glory; and so they should. How does it feel, to be hung so thick with crowns of victory?”—“It feels,” I said, “like having a good commander.”

He raised his brows, half smiling. “What, Alexias! Even you! You who distrusted vulgar idolatries, and disapproved of him, as I remember?” I laughed, and shrugged. The truth was, there was not a man of us in Samos but thought the sun rose in his eyes.

“No one knows him,” I said, “who hasn’t fought under him in war. He puts a shine on it. Here in the City they didn’t understand him as we in Samos do. He trusts us and we trust him, and that’s the secret of it.” At this Euthydemos laughed aloud, and said, “Great Zeus! He must have given you a philtre.”

I felt myself getting angry, which was absurd. “I’m not a politician, only a lieutenant of marines. I speak as I find. I’ve never seen him leave ship or man in the lurch in any action. Men who fight for him don’t die for nothing. He sees what each man is good for, and lets him know he has put a stake on it. There was a black squall, and night coming on, when he led out the fleet to take Byzantium; but we all set off singing against the thunder. No one stops to ask questions when he gives an order. He thinks fast. I was with him when he took Selymbria with thirty men.”

I told him the story. It is on the Propontis, and lies on low hills near the sea. We had sat down before it, and beached the ships, and at the time of lamplighting were at supper round the fires. The marines of the Siren, and of another ship, thirty all told, were on outpost between the camp and the town to guard against surprise; so we were eating with our armour on, and weapons beside us. We had just begun when Alkibiades came out through the tamarisks with his long light stride. “Good evening, Lysis. Can you spare me a place at the fire? Here’s something towards supper.” His slave put down a Chian wine-jar, and he settled himself among us. He was the best of company at such times; any troop he visited would be quoting him all next day; but tonight he was brisk, and told us no one was to turn in, but we must be ready to advance at midnight. He had got in touch with some democrats in the town, who had agreed to open the gates to him. The army was to steal up in the dark, ready to rush in, the signal being a torch held up on the wall.

“I’ve posted the Thracians over the hill,” he said. “We can do this business without them. Neither god nor man can hold a Thracian in a taken town; and I passed my word, if the City paid tribute, to shed no blood.” In necessity he killed without softness; but he killed without lust, and seemed always well pleased to get what he wanted without it. Whatever had moved him against Melos (I suppose he saw what the Athenians wanted) that one day, it seems, lasted him a lifetime.

We finished supper, and were mixing the last round of wine. Below us the fires twinkled on the shore; a stade or so away, just out of bowshot, were the dark walls of the town. Night was falling. Of a sudden Lysis pointed and said, “Did you say midnight, Alkibiades? What’s that?”

The torch burned red above the gate-tower. We leaped to our feet dismayed. The army was half a mile away; most of them naked by this time, oiling and scraping-down, or mending their armour before the action. Our eyes all turned to Alkibiades. The prize was dangling, while he watched helpless with only thirty men in arms. I for one was simply waiting to hear him curse. I had heard great accounts of it.

He stood with his large blue eyes fixed upon the torch, and his brows lifted. “These colonials,” he said. “People who turn up to a party while one is still dressing. Someone has gone white-livered, I suppose, and the rest daren’t wait. Pollis, run back to camp, fall in the men, and bring them up at the double. Company, stand to arms. Well, friends, there’s the signal, and here we go. Forward!”

He ran into the darkness towards the town, and we ran with him, as if it were the most reasonable thing in life. As we got to the gates they swung open; we went through into a street, where the leader of the plot ran breathless by Alkibiades, explaining the untimely call. I could just see the man bobbing up and down, and Alkibiades looking about, not listening. Just as we got to the Agora, with a great noise and clatter and calling to arms, the Selymbrians came tumbling out around us.

Lysis moved up to me and set his shield against my side. I wondered if the gates were shut behind us, and thought, “If we fall, Alkibiades will see we are buried together”; for he was not forgetful of such things. But I prickled with life, as a cat sparks in thunder; it is the man half dead who fears death. Then Alkibiades’ voice, as cool as if we were at exercise, said, “Herald, sound for a proclamation.” Our herald sounded the call. There was a pause in the dark streets, with much buzzing and muttering. “Give this out, Herald. “The people of Selymbria must not resist the Athenians. I will spare them on that condition.’”

He stood forth and proclaimed it. Silence followed. We did not breathe. Then a voice, shaken but still consequential, said, “So you say, General; but let us hear your terms first” Alkibiades said, “Then show me your spokesmen.”

His impudence had succeeded. They supposed us masters of the town already; and he held them in talk long enough to make it true. We used to say of him, in Samos, that he was a young man’s general.

At the end of the story, Euthydemos said, “So you and Lysis are still together?”—“How not? I left him at the dock, seeing the fitters. There’s no better trierarch in the fleet; if you think me partial, ask some of the others.”—“Indeed, you never praised him, Alexias, beyond his desert. I looked for you both when the squadron came into Piraeus; but the crowds were so thick to greet Alkibiades, that I saw nothing myself but garlands and myrtle-sprays flying through the air towards the crest of his helmet.”—“It’s a pity,” I said, “that some of this fortune that’s gone on festoons and choruses wasn’t handed him for ship-money instead. He’s been kept short for years. If he didn’t work a miracle every month, you’d have no Navy at all. Half our battles are fought for tribute; we’ve had to squeeze it out where it hurt sometimes, but what could we do?”—“Well,” he said, “I think the City is taxed to the limit as it is; let’s speak of something pleasanter. I see you have lost no time in getting to the bookshops, and have bought Agathon’s latest play.”

“He came into the shop,” I said, “and I got him to sign it. Not that I set much store myself by such trimmings; it’s to take back to Samos, as a present for my girl.”

Out of affection for her, I called her a girl even when she was not there. Euphro never made any great secret of her age, or of having been the mother of a son who had turned sixteen when he died. Indeed, I had met her first in the graveyard outside the city, where she had come with an offering-basket to set upon his tomb. She drew her veil on seeing me near her, out of a sense of fitness for the occasion; and this making her tread carelessly, as she leaned forward her foot slipped, and the basket spilled at my feet.

Like any man who goes much to sea, I was observant of omens; I did not care to have flung to me, in a manner of speaking, a gift meant for the dead. But when she begged my pardon, it seemed to me that her voice had a gentleness beyond the art of her calling; her dark eyes looked clear above her veil, and her brow was fair and white. I bent to pick up the oil-vase for her, and found that it had broken. It came into my mind to buy her another; so I followed her some way off, and learned where she lived. When I brought my gift, she came to the door unveiled and greeted me; not boldly, but as with an expected friend. I had never made love before with a woman who knew, or cared, what manner of man I was. I saw I had been like a man who dispraises wine, never having tasted anything but the lees.

Lysis was glad for my sake, when I told him I had found a woman to please me. When later he saw how often I went back, and how much I conversed with her, I don’t think it was quite so welcome to him. His own girl was pretty, but without any accomplishments save one; when he had thoughts to share, he came to me. He was much too generous to show any jealousy; but when I quoted any opinion of Euphro’s on tragedy or music he would often find occasion to disagree. With his usual goodness, he agreed to my proposal that we should entertain both our companions at a supper-room in the city; but I can’t pretend this party was a great success. Lysis, though Euphro was older than he cared for himself, was pleased with her mind, and quite ready to talk politics and poetry with her, if inclined, I felt, to be a little severe. But the girl cared nothing for such things, and being besotted on him saw rivals everywhere. Upon her interrupting a story of Euphro’s and saying those were days she was too young to remember, I could not forbear remarking that I, who was younger, could recall them very well. When Lysis and I met again after taking home the women, we were a little constrained at first and sat thinking it over; till suddenly we caught each other’s eyes, and started to laugh.

Now, back in Athens, while the City feted Alkibiades, we had time to meet friends, and see our homes again.

My father I found looking younger and better than when I left; and pleased, in the way of fathers, that I had got myself attached to a not inglorious corps. He for his part, having come forth boldly with Theramenes against the tyrants, and helped with his own hands to tear their traitors’ gatehouse down, was enjoying some deserved consequence in the City. My mother, on the other hand, had aged more than I expected. She had miscarried of a child not long before. But since it was another girl, one could not but feel it was for the best.

Sokrates I found in the Agora, standing in Zeus’ porch. His beard had more white in it, for he was past sixty now; but except that he wanted to know all that had happened to me, I might never have been away. Within a few minutes, I was neck-deep in the argument that had been going on before I got there: whether the holy is whatever the gods love, or if they love it because it is holy; whether a thing can be holy that is sacred to one god and hateful to another, or only if all the gods love it alike; what things they all love, and why. Before the end some orthodox person, who had inspired the conversation, went away scandalised, muttering to himself; which was a relief to everyone, for he was one of those who only want to prove themselves right. As for me, it was wonderful to hear again Sokrates saying, “Either we shall find what we are seeking, or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.”

I found, as you might expect after so long, some new faces about him, and one half-familiar one that puzzled me at first. It belonged to a young man of, I thought, about my age, broad and strong-looking, with intent deep-set eyes in a powerful face. I was sure he was strange to me, yet something stirred my memory; I wondered if I could have met some kinsman who resembled him. As soon as he saw me looking, he smiled at me; I returned it, but still could not place him. In stillness he had a somewhat chilling dignity; his smile however was modest, almost shy. He did not often intervene in the debate, but whenever he did, he changed the course of it; and I was struck with Sokrates’ manner at such times. Not that he seemed to make much of the young man, nor treated him with that tenderness he used to show Phaedo; but he seemed to grow more than ever himself. Perhaps it was because he found his thought so quickly followed; they had to go back sometimes to let others catch up with them. While I was still puzzling my memory, he said, “Yes, I know, Plato; but if you always take the steps in threes, one day you will miss a cracked one.”

As soon as Sokrates had gone, he strode over and grasped my hand, asking how I was and if Lysis was with me. “I’ve scarcely seen you, Plato,” I said, “since the Games. But I can see I ought to say Aristokles now.”—“None of my friends do. If you were not still one, Alexias, I should be very sorry.”

We walked off together talking. The old-time formality which had sat on him oddly as a boy, now fitted him like good armour. I use the comparison purposely; he is a man, I think, easily wounded, but very unwilling to have it known. People meeting him first in manhood seldom suspect it, for he is very well able now to give blow for blow. You would have taken him for at least as old as I; I had seen that most of the young men about Sokrates were afraid of him.

I asked if he was still wrestling. He said, “No, except for a friendly bout. The Isthmus cured me of that ambition. One exercises to be a whole man, not a creature bred like a plough-ox to do one thing.” He had grown much taller, and this with the change of exercise had greatly improved him; he was big, but not out of balance for his build. It was one reason for my not having known him. “In any case,” he said, “the Twins claim one now oftener than the palaestra.” On his arm was a spear-thrust hardly healed; since Euboea fell, the raids had got worse again.

I did not ask him how he came to Sokrates: it seemed as silly as asking an eagle how it came to fly. It was he who opened the matter to me. “At Corinth,” he said, “you listened so kindly to my youthful nonsense, that I probably told you I had notions of myself as a poet, and was writing a tragedy.”—“Yes, of course; upon Hippolytos. Did you finish it?”—“Indeed I did, and revised it again last year. I showed it to my uncle, who has often been generous in putting his good judgement at my service; he approved of it, and other friends were kind, so on their advice I decided to enter it for the Dionysia. I was so zealous about it that I got there before the bureau was opened for competitors, and stood waiting in the portico of the theatre, with my roll in my hand. Sokrates was standing there too; not in impatience, as I was, but lost in thought. I had heard of him from my uncle, who saw him often at one time, but parted company with him, I understand, upon a point of philosophy. I am speaking of course of my uncle Kritias.”

Recollecting myself, I said, “Of course. But what about Sokrates?”

“Seeing him there, oblivious of my presence, I took the occasion to look at him. What he was meditating on, I have never asked him. But as I gazed on his face, a strange, indeed a painful quickening seized me, like a child before the birth-cry. While I was still trying to understand myself, he came out of his meditation, and looked straight at me. He walked over, and asked me if I was entering a tragedy, and what the subject was. Then he asked me to read him some. You may be sure I obliged him very willingly. At the end I paused for praise, which I had not so far been disappointed in; and, indeed, he praised it highly. Then he asked me the meaning of a simile. I had thought it clear to any lettered person, for one does not write for fools; but as I began to explain, I became aware all at once that I had meant very little by it, and the little was not very true. He asked, in the gentlest way, to hear some more; this time he said he was in full agreement, and told me why. But much more than his irony, his praise revealed me to myself; he had seen in the passage something so much beyond my own conception, that the whole work, thus regarded, fell to pieces in my hands. I had not the shamelessness to accept his praise. I told him he had opened my eyes; that I could not be satisfied with the work as it was, but should take it home and re-write it. We had now gone down from the portico and were walking together, and had come to the central meaning round which the play was framed: the dealing, I mean, of Theseus and Hippolytos with the gods, and the gods with one another. All morning we talked, and at the time of the noonday meal I went home. In the afternoon I read my tragedy again, and my other verse. Some of the lines were not unhappy, and the choruses did not limp in the foot. What would you say, Alexias, of an embroidered mantle made to clothe a god, whose image was still unshaped in the marble, scarcely the drill-holes made? I saw that to take pleasure in this stuff was to load my soul with chains, when wings had been offered me. So I called for a brazier, and burned it all.” Whatever it was I said to him, he did not seem put out by it; so I suppose it was without offence. There met and wrestled in me love and envy of an excellence beyond my reach. For a moment, I think, I was a child at the music-class again, and jealous as a child. But presently I remembered some of the lessons Sokrates had taught me, and that I was a man. So I asked Plato if he remembered any of his burned play.

I saw him hesitate. He was a poet after all, and not much above twenty. At last he said, “Well, there was one passage he seemed not to think unsound. You must suppose Hippolytos has just died; the young men’s chorus invokes Aphrodite, the author of his fate.”

He repeated it. I was long silent, my soul freed of its folly, humble before the Immortals. At last, afraid I had seemed uncivil, I spoke, but could only say, “You burned this, and you kept no copy?”

“When one offers to the gods, one brings a whole beast to the altar. If it was an image of what is not, then it was false and ought to be destroyed; and if of what is, then a little fire will not destroy it. It is nearly noon; won’t you come home and eat with me?”

I was about to accept, when just as in old days the trumpet-call shuddered across the City. “They are getting insolent,” he said. “Forgive me, Alexias; I shall look forward to it another day.” He went off to arm himself, but not without pausing to say that the troops in Ionia had long taken the brunt of the war. His manners were always good, and I suppose he knew I had no horse now.

I had other friends to see about the City. Phaedo, when I called on him, ran up and embraced me. I was glad of this not for my sake alone. Ever since he left Gurgos’, I had never known him touch anyone of his own accord; I inferred some later happiness to have been his physician. But his chief love, I found, was still philosophy. It was evident his mind had increased in power and keenness; and, after a little talk, I learned that its whetstone had been Plato. Antagonism of ideas, mixed with respect, had drawn these two together. Perhaps in the real substance of their souls, they were not so very unlike. The higher the dream betrayed, the deeper the bitterness; if the man survives, he will be on guard against dreams as a shepherd watches for wolves. Phaedo said, “He tells me that if I don’t take care, I shall spend my life clearing the ground, and never come to build. I say, of course, that he’s one to start building before the foundations have settled. He’s certainly nimble at meeting an objection; still, I think he’ll admit to you that I’ve cracked his logic here and there.”

My next visit was to Xenophon. He was as much changed as anyone, yet more than ever the same. It was as if I had been acquainted before with an outline sketch of him, which the artist was now filling in as he had always intended. He was every inch the old-style Athenian knight; soldierly, well-bred, the sort of cavalryman who breeds his own horse, schools and doctors it; who prides himself on being quick in war, and in talk at the supper-table, but says he has no time for politics, meaning that his politics are set and that’s the end of it. Not being one to run after new fashions, he had grown his beard. It was a curly chestnut one, as dark as his hair; smartly clipped, with the upper lip shaved after the Spartan manner. He was quite as handsome a man as he had been a boy.

He was pleased to see me, and congratulated me on having seen so much action. He himself was not long back in the City, the poorer for his ransom-money; he had been taken prisoner by the Thebans, and kept some time in chains. When I commiserated with him, he said it would have been much worse but for a friend he had made there, a young Theban knight called Proxenos. Learning that they had both studied with Gorgias, this young man visited him in prison, talked philosophy with him, went surety for striking off his fetters, and did everything possible to ease his captivity. Since he had been ransomed, they still exchanged letters when they could. He spoke so warmly of Proxenos, that with almost anyone else I should have thought they were lovers; but you would be very rash to assume such a thing of Xenophon.

Our talk turning to Sokrates and his friends, I soon came naturally to speak of Plato. But I noticed at once a touch of frost upon the air. When I had time to observe and consider, I did not find this very hard to understand.

I am sure it was not mere envy. Man or boy, I have never found in Xenophon anything mean or base. He was always a practical man, honourable, religious, with a set of fixed ethics, not wrong but circumscribed. Point out to such a man a clear and simple good, and he will follow it over the roughest country you like to show him. Sokrates had taken him as he found him, loving his good heart, and not teasing his mind with formal logic beyond what one needs to detect a lie, nor with sublimities he could not soar to. He loved Sokrates: and, loving too to be settled in his mind, he liked to think the Sokrates he knew was all the man. But within Sokrates’ soul, I think, was a temple in a solitude, where no one had visited him from youth to age, save his daimon who warned him of evil, and the god he prayed to. Now a foot was on the threshold. Xenophon had decided long since that Sokrates thought divine speculations better let alone; when he found he had deceived himself, it grieved him.

As for Plato, he was the last man to be insensible of dislike, or to turn it off easily. When Xenophon was there, he withdrew into his citadel, which looked like arrogance and partly was. I don’t think his friendship with Phaedo went to help matters. Xenophon had always shown Phaedo courtesy, but that was as far as it went. His sense of propriety was strong; he could never quite get Phaedo’s past out of his mind, nor feel quite easy in his presence. But Plato swept all this aside with the largeness of his royal blood; he preferred the aristocracy of minds. Moreover, as if these things were not enough, one never saw Xenophon paying court to a youth, nor Plato to a woman; and such extremes of nature tend naturally to discord.

As the days passed, I saw my father was a happier man than before. Here and there I heard hard things said of Theramenes; that he had consented to a good deal of tyranny and violence in the beginning, and broke away to be on the winning side when he felt the turn of the wind. Some malicious person had nicknamed him Old Sock, meaning that he would fit on either foot. I knew from his table-talk that he valued his own shrewdness; but he had been good to me, and I did not believe his detractors. Of course the oligarch leaders had called him a traitor; but since these persons were mostly skulking at Dekeleia, joining the Spartan raids into Attica, their censure was nearly as good as praise.

Lysis got out to his farm whenever he could. It was years since he had seen it, and the bailiff, though fairly honest, had had his own way too much. My father liked to see himself to what was left of ours. So I had time to walk with Sokrates, and to go about the City seeing what was new.

One day I turned into the colonnade at Mikkos’s palaestra to see if my old trainer was still there. But as I entered I heard cymbals, flute and lyre, and found the boys instead of exercising were practising a dance in honour of Apollo. It was nearing the time when the sacred ship goes to Delos to celebrate his birth. Having once danced for him myself, I stayed to watch. The senior boys seemed, as one always finds, much younger than those of my day. They had just come forward to rehearse their part of the dance, some of them carrying baskets, water-pitchers and so forth to represent the sacred objects, others green branches to wave as laurel boughs.

Upon a clash of cymbals the first line fell back, and through it leaped the second line to lead the dance in turn; and in the centre, hidden from me till then, I saw a boy. So one begins, when one means to describe someone: but while I have looked at the paper, making ready to write, the shadow has moved upon the wall. For the sake of saying something, I will note his eyes, which were of a blue more like the night sky than the day, and his clear wide brows. Mention ought also to be made of a defect he had, that his hair was grey, almost to whiteness. Some fever he had suffered had left it so; this I learned later, I forget from whom.

It was, as it seemed, a late rehearsal; for instead of the gymnasium flute-player they had the real musicians who would play for them before the god. As I looked at the face of the boy dancing, I saw it filled with the music. He was, perhaps, himself a player of some instrument, or a singer. One saw the other boys taking their time from him, for he was never off the beat, and when they danced in single file he was set to lead them. He was not, however, given any solo to perform, being perhaps not counted perfect enough in his body to please Apollo, because of his hair. But then, I thought, they should have kept him altogether away; for he being there, what god, or what man, could have eyes for any other?

The small boys next came on and the elder ones stood back; but on the face of this lad I saw the same look, calm yet sparkling, as when he had been dancing himself. I think they had not rehearsed with the music before, and the dance came to him as a picture seen by daylight, after the light of lamps. When one of the others spoke to him, he did not hear at first; then he answered smiling, without moving his eyes, watching the dance.

I stood gazing, leaning upon a column, I do not know how long, time having grown still for me, like a pool deeper than it is wide. Then during a pause for rest, one of the musicians moved as if to go; I awoke to the flux of things, knowing the practice must end soon and the boy be gone. Now for the first time I looked about the colonnade, in search of someone I knew; and, a short way along from me, I saw Plato standing alone. I greeted him, and talked a little about the dance. Then, as easily as I could, I asked him the name of this boy or that, starting with those who had danced the solos. He told me, where he knew; presently I said, “And the grey-haired lad, the file-leader there, do you know his name?” He answered, “His name is Aster.”

His voice was quite low; yet the boy, who all this while had not once glanced my way, lifted his head upon his name, and turned towards us his sea-dark eyes. Upon this moment my memory hangs transfixed; I do not know if they smiled at one another. As, while the lightning leaps between sky and sea, the shape of cloud or wave is indistinguishable, so with their joy.

Walking away through the City, I saw I had been foolish not to watch the dance through to the end, and have the memory. For one can bear more than one supposes; and in Thrace once, when an arrow broke in me and they cut down for the barb, from having fixed my eyes on a mere bird in a tree I can see every feather still. But I had walked too far to turn back. As the pines that girdle Lykabettos touched me with their shade, I wondered what had brought me there. Then, a little higher up the mountain, where the rock feeds nothing but a few small flowers, a voice in me said, “Know yourself.” And I perceived the truth, that one does not feel such grief for the loss of what one never had, however excellent; I grieved rather for what had once been mine. So I did not sit down upon the rocks as I had meant to do, but climbed to the peak of the mountain, where the little shrine stands against the sky. There, remembering what is due to the gods and to the soul through whose truth we know them, I lifted my hand to Zeus the Father, and vowed him an offering, because he had given Sokrates in due time his sons.

After a while I thought I would go to the City and find him; he seemed always to know when one was fit to listen and not to speak. Then I saw from the mountain the road to Lysis’ farm. He had not asked me for help; yet he was short-handed, and perhaps he had only thought I would rather see friends in the City. There was always the chance, too, of a stray band of Spartans getting through the Guard. I was ashamed that I had let him go alone. So I went down, and borrowed a horse from Xenophon, and rode out to do what he might need.