The Last of the Wine: A Novel

23

SOON AFTERWARDS, OUR RABBLE of generals got back to Athens; all but two who, making use of their skill in avoiding dirty weather, ran away to Ionia and never came home.

Not since the day of the Herm-breaking had I seen such anger in the City. As it happened, the Feast of Families fell just before the trial. Instead of the usual garlands and best clothes, you saw everywhere the drowned men’s kindred, dressed in mourning, their heads shorn, reminding friends and neighbours not to forget the dead.

Presently came the day of the trial. I walked to the Assembly with my father; when I had been civil to his friends, I slipped off to find Lysis, but got caught instead in a knot of citizens, kinsmen and friends of the drowned, who begged my account of the battle. I think it was only now, with strangers about me, that I really knew my own bitterness. I told them everything, both what I had seen, and anything I had heard from others.

It was the same all over the Pnyx; people jostled to get near one of the survivors, for we were few. The herald could hardly get quiet when the speeches began.

Nobody felt inclined by now to waste much time on these fellows. When the prosecution proposed that one hearing would do for all six of them, I cheered with the best. I felt warmed with the anger round me; everyone seemed my friend. Then the defence jumped up and made a fuss. It was true there was something in the constitution against collective trials on a capital charge, proper enough, in the ordinary way, to protect decent people; but we all felt this was different. There was a good deal of noise. Just when the defence had made itself heard again, there was a commotion near the rostrum, and a sailor ran up. You could tell at a glance what his trade was, and there was a pause.

“You’ll excuse me, friends,” he said, using a sort of hail, I suppose the only way he knew to make his voice carry, “for putting myself forward; but I took my oath. I was bosun’s mate on the old Eleutheria. All I’ve got to say is, when she went down, I caught hold of a meal-bin, and it kept floating. There was a lot of my mates in the sea all about, and some of the marines, wounded mostly, and knew they couldn’t last long. I heard someone shout out, ‘Antandros,’ that’s my name, ‘Antandros, if you get home, tell them we did right by the City.’ And another says, ‘And tell them what we got for it. Drowned like dogs. You tell them, Antandros.’ And I took my oath, which a man ought to abide by. So you’ll pardon the liberty. Thank you.”

He went running down from the rostrum; there was a moment’s silence, then a roar you could have heard at Eleusis. Someone shouted out that anyone who opposed the will of the people ought to be tried himself, along with the generals. We cheered our throats dry. It felt like giving the paean, or being drunk at the Dionysia, or like the last lap of the race when the crowd wants you to win. But not quite like.

So it was put to the presiding senators, whether the trial was in order, and there could not be much doubt of what their verdict would be, if only for their health’s sake. But they seemed to be a long time about it; people began to whistle and call; till at length the crier stood up, and gave out that they could not agree.

Where I was, we could not see them; but we made ourselves heard; especially when word was passed along that only one old man was standing out. We were asking only one life each from these cowards, who bore the guilt of hundreds; and they would die in more comfort than our friends in the rough autumn sea. People were asking each other who was this senile quibbler to set himself up a little jack-in-office chosen by lot for the day. “Has he ever carried a shield?” someone shouted; and I said, “I suppose he has no sons.”—“Who is it?” we called to those who were nearer. A voice shouted back, “Old crackpot Sokrates, son of Sophroniskos the sculptor.”

As the shock of an icy stream to the drunkard stumbling and singing; as the alarm of battle to a man sweating in the bed of lust; so these words came to me. The noise and heat died in me, leaving me naked under the sky. I had been many, but now I was one; and to me, myself, grey-eyed Athene spoke from the High City, saying, “Alexias, son of Myron, I am justice, whom you have made a whore and a slave.”

When I came back from the silence within me, and heard the noise going on just as before, I could not believe it. I had felt that everyone’s eyes must have been opened in the same moment as mine. I looked about me, but the faces were all as before, shouting with their mouths open, all alike, like a sounder of hogs.

I turned to the man beside me. He looked like a person of some schooling, a merchant perhaps. “We are wrong,” I said. “We ought not to overthrow the law.” He turned round and snapped at me, “What do you know about it, young man?”—“I was there,” I said. “My ship was sunk in the battle.”—“All the more shame to you,” he said, “for taking the fellow’s part. Have you no feeling for your shipmates?” Soon afterwards, the crier gave out that since only one senator opposed the motion, the others had passed it without him.

I dropped a white pebble in the urn, and, as it left my hand, tried to think that it made me clean.

Lysis overtook me on the slope below the Pnyx. Always my example in courage, it was he who spoke first.

“You know,” he said, “how the wind comes down in those parts, from the hills of Ionia; blowing a gale, when a mile away it’s no more than a capful. It might even be true that the storm prevented them.” I said, “Alkibiades would have come.”—“Yes, if he had a pilot. The truth is, Alexias, our navigation’s not what it once was. Even in my few years I’ve seen a change. Alkibiades knew, and Antiochos. These new men are about the common run of captains now. One of them was wrecked himself. We have killed them as a child kicks the bench it bruised its shin on. What has become of us?”

“I have done injustice,” I said. We were shouldered as we walked by men disputing, and justifying themselves; but some were laughing, and betting on a cockfight. After being a long time silent, he said, “Madness is sacred to the gods. They give it us at the proper season to purge our souls, as they give us strong herbs to clean out our bodies. At the Dionysia we are a little mad; but it leaves us clean, because we dedicated it to a god. This we offered to ourselves, and it had defiled us.”

“Don’t talk so, Lysis. I’m sure you kept your head much better than I did.” He smiled, and quoted a certain phrase, recalling a personal matter between us. Then he said, “Am I getting old, to find myself always thinking, ‘Last year was better’?”—“Sometimes it seems to me, Lysis, that nothing has been the same since the Games.”—“We think so, my dear, because that was our concern. If you asked that potter over there, or that old soldier, or Kallippides the actor, each would name his own Isthmia, I daresay … It has been a long war, Alexias. Twenty-four years now. Even Troy was only ten.”

We were crossing the Agora just then; he pointed to some women at a stall and said, “When that child there was born, it had lasted already as long as Troy, and now she is almost a woman.” His voice must have carried more than he meant, for the maiden looked up, and stared at him. He smiled at her, and she parted her lips in answer, her face lightening for a moment; she was in mourning, and looked peaked and pale. The woman with her, who did not seem like her mother, spoke sharply to her, though one could see she had only thought as a child does. I said to Lysis, “She must have lost her father in the battle.” He looked after her, over the heads of the crowd, and said, “Yes, and the last of her brothers too. There were three.”—“You knew them, then?”—“Oh, yes. I even know the child herself. She almost spoke to me, till she was reminded she is older now. She is Timasion’s daughter, who was trierarch of the Demokratia.”

Meanwhile the child was being led away through the market. You could tell from their backs that the woman was scolding her still. Lysis said, “What will become of her, I wonder? That sour-faced bitch is the eldest son’s widow, I suppose. It’s a hard time of life to make such a change. She had a slapdash kind of upbringing; the mother, who is dead now, was usually sick, and little Thalia seemed to be always with her father or the young men. Up to last year, even, they no more thought of sending her out when I came than a hand-reared pup; you know how it is sometimes with a late-born child. One son was killed at Byzantium, and one here in Attica in a raid. Then Timasion and the last boy went out just now with the Athenian flotilla. That finished the family, except for this poor little remnant.”

He walked on in thought. When presently I spoke to him he did not hear. “She was quite pretty,” he said, “before this happened; at least, she had a good little face. That woman will get her off her hands to the first offer, I suppose, no matter whom … They were good stock, Timasion and his sons. I knew them all.”

“Lysis!” I said, staring at him. “What are you thinking of? She doesn’t look more than twelve years old.” He reckoned on his fingers. “Well, she was born three Olympics ago, the year Alkibiades won the chariot-race; so she must be rising thirteen, at any rate.” Then he laughed and said, “Why not? One can have patience in a good cause; there are plenty of women meanwhile. Look how much better a horse is, if you have him from a colt.” After a moment I said, “Well, then, why not, Lysis, if you think so?” I recalled all my anticipations, so different from this; and yet, as soon as one thought, it was exactly like him.

“She will have a small portion, I suppose,” he said, “so that neither of us will be too much beholden to the other. My sister Niko will teach her the things she has probably not learned at home. I shall take a small house, not scrape to live in the big one. If things improve later, so much the better, it makes a woman respect one more than the other way.” He went running on like this; you would have thought he had had it in mind for weeks. “What month are we in?” he said. “I suppose we might as well have the wedding in Gamelion, like everyone else.”

“You don’t mean,” I said staring, “this next Gamelion, do you?”—“How not? She can have everything ready in three months, surely?”—“I thought you meant just to get contracted to her now. She’s quite a baby.”—“Oh, I shall have to marry her at once, I can see that. It will be the only way of doing anything with her. As she is, whatever defects her upbringing had, she has got its virtues. They taught her good manners, courage, and to speak the truth, if they didn’t teach her embroidery. Why turn her over for a year to that pinch-lipped vixen, who will make her sly and prudish and mealy-mouthed, and full of old midwives’ nastiness? I wonder if Gamelion is soon enough.”

Recalling the scene in the Agora, I saw what he meant. He said, “I could tell just how she felt when she saw me, as if she had come on a bit of furniture, or a dog, that brought back her home to her. I told her the story of Perseus when she was six years old.”—“What are you waiting for?” I said. “Get your winged boots, and unchain her before the dragon arrives.” He laughed and took my arm and said, “Bless you, Alexias, I think I will. I suppose today has set me thinking. Since this war began we have spent more than silver; more than blood even; something of our souls. Last time I went up to the High City, I thought even the Maiden herself looked tired. It’s time to think of making a son, to start out fresh for the next lap … I must get Niko to call.”

Two days later he gave me his sister’s report. She had quite taken, he said, to the little Thalia, and did not think her really backward for her age. It was the shock of her loss, and homesickness, Niko said, that had driven her in upon her childhood. Niko reported the sister-in-law not quite such a shrew as Lysis called her; pointing out with some justice that no decent person in charge of a young girl would let her smile at men in the market. But she was a silly woman, set in her ways, and without much feeling, and trying to give the girl three years’ training in a month, had made her so nervous she could not pick up a distaff without breaking the thread. “She thinks the world of you, Lysis, and was going to repeat to me all the kind things she had heard her father say of you, only to give me pleasure, for she has a natural sweetness one feels at once. But she was called to order, and shown her own forwardness. I felt so sorry for the poor child; it hadn’t crossed her mind till then that my call concerned her, and not one word more could I get from her, you can be sure.”

The head of the household was an ancient grandfather, deaf and so nearly blind that he took Lysis for a youth, because he had no beard. But at last things were settled, the dowry agreed on, and he went with his sister to see the girl.

“At first,” he said, “I couldn’t get her to look at me. Poor little creature, I never saw such a change. One used to hear her from the courtyard, singing about the house. But clever Niko got her sister-in-law upon the iniquities of slaves, which gave me a little time. I told her how well her father did in the battle; she can follow anything you like of that kind. Then I reminded her of our old acquaintance, and said she would find my house a little more like home. She started to look rather less wretched; but I could see that bitch had been at her, putting her in a panic; so I said, ‘Now you must listen to me, for you’ve known me longer than any of them. The snatching-up and running at the feast is a game we shall play to amuse the guests, who think it is the best part of a wedding. But the rest can wait,’ I said, ‘till we’ve time to make friends. That’s our first secret; now we’ll see how you keep it.’ She looked much better when we left, almost as I remember her.” Niko persuaded him, however, to wait for the turn of the year, and marry in Gamelion, as he had first planned. She said, sensibly enough, that Thalia would be turned fourteen by then, which was really the earliest he could take such a young girl to his house without people talking.

He told me he did not mean to look for another ship; it would be a long time in any case before the fleet was up to strength. He would drill with his tribal regiment (which was mine too), settle down, and farm his land when the Spartans would let him.

I too felt that my place was in the City. My father was not well; a tertian fever he had brought from Sicily often troubled him; when the bout was on he could not do business, or attend to the farm. Not only duty but inclination drew me; for I had been long out of the City; my wits were getting rusty with the sea, and smoked from the watchfire, and the schoolboys of yesterday were young men, making their voices heard in the colonnades.

So I came back to philosophy, but differently; feeling it in myself, and in those I met in talk, a fever of the blood. I had come to it as a boy from wonder at the visible world; to know the causes of things; and to feel the sinews of my mind, as one feels one’s muscles in the palaestra. But now we searched the nature of the universe, and our own souls, more like physicians in time of sickness.

It was not that we were in love with the past. We were of an age to feel the present our own, and to suppose it would never outstrip us. In painting and sculpture and verse, the names we grew passionate over looked to us as big as those of Perikles’ day, and it still half surprises me when I find them unknown to my sons. But we seldom stood to enjoy good work, as one stands before a fine view or a flower, in simple gladness that it is. As we hailed each new artist we grew angry with the former ones, as with false guides we had caught out; we hastened, though we knew not where. To freedom, we said; the sculptors no longer proportioned their forms by the Golden Number of Pythagoras, as Pheidias and Polykleitos did; and art would do great things, we said, now it had cast off its chains.

Euripides was dead; he would suffer with our doubts no more, nor grieve with our losses. And Agathon had gone to Macedon, as the guest of the rich King, who dreamed of civilising his wild hillmen. For months we used to wonder, laughing, how our sweet singer was getting on up north, and picture him seeking among the rude youth for one whose conversation was not quite confined to women, horses and war. Then one day a traveller brought news that he was dead. It is ill to fall sick among barbarians. After he was gone, even Aristophanes had a kind word for him.

Only Sokrates was unchanged, unless he looked a little younger. His rough-tongued Xanthippe, tamed by kindness or mellowed with time, now that she drew near the end of childbearing had borne him two more sons. This, if it was more than he had bargained for, he took very cheerfully. He was as ready as the youngest of us to question fixed opinions, and the youths growing up came to him just as we had done, and worried at logic like puppies, tearing things up in the search for truth.

The north had taken Agathon, the gentle singer, but it had given us something back. Kritias had returned from Thessaly to the City.

He had fled there some time after the Four Hundred were overthrown, when some of his doings came to light. In Thessaly the landowners are like little kings, always at petty war. He found good fishing in this muddy water. Presently he learned that there was some discontent among the serfs, for the law in Thessaly does not take much account of poor men. So he intrigued with their leader and got them arms and plotted a rising to suit his plans. It was put down, I believe, with a good deal of bloodshed; but Kritias got safe away. I am sure that in the beginning he was an inspiration to them, and made them feel themselves the darlings of Zeus. Sokrates used to teach us that the human images of the gods contain the shadows of truth, but the lover of philosophy must look through and beyond. From this, I think, Kritias, following his nature, had inferred that religion and law are good for fools, but the superior man is above them. However, I do not pretend that in Kritias’ case I am capable of justice.

He passed me about this time in the street, and half-remembering me I suppose in some connection not pleasant to him, gazed, trying to place me. I don’t know whether he succeeded; but even the Spartans I had met in battle, seeing only my eyes through my helmet-slits, had looked at me more as man looks at man.

But having pronounced all these opinions, I ought to confess they are worth as much as if a man with fever were to judge of wine. On my last visit to the City, I had caught a sickness I had thought was cured. Now, the cause being near again, I learned it had been sleeping and growing in its sleep.

In this the god was kind to me, that from the start he never tormented me with hope. Nor did he poison his arrows; for what seemed at first sight to be beautiful and good, seems so to me until this day. Being now turned seventeen, he had left Mikkos’ school, and was often with Sokrates. There I avoided him, for many reasons; but where music was, he would not be far away. So my memories are set to the kithera, the syrinx, or to a concert of flutes, or clear voices singing; even now sometimes a chord or a descant can make me smell scented oil and bay-leaves, or grass and burning pitch, and torchlight flickers on the stillness of his listening eyes.

Only once I was in danger. In a night of early winter I had walked out on Lykabettos, when the peak stood black against thick-sown stars. Pausing for breath, a little below the summit, I saw on the terrace of the shrine his shape with lifted head, scanning the heaven. For he had the bent towards mathematics and astronomy, that one often finds in musicians. The belt of Orion was above him, and at his shoulder the sword.

I stood on the rocky pathway, between my will and my soul. I had taken the first step, and the second, upon the path, when I saw he was not alone. I was barefoot, so they had not heard me; I was able to get down into the woods again, where a few lamps shine between the pine-boughs, and a few stars. All in all, it is clear that the god took good care of me; and to show I am not ungrateful, on a certain day each year I bring him a pair of doves.

Lysis’ marriage was itself a good to me; for nothing could have given me any escape from myself just then, except the serious concerns of someone so dear. I could not intrude a grief he must have put down, if he had noticed it, to a kind of jealousy unworthy of a friend or a man. Being forced to lay it by, I could forget it sometimes and share his happiness. For he was just as happy, it seemed, as a man looking forward to a proper wedding night. I helped him find a little house in the Inner Kerameikos, not far from ours, and furnish it with some of his father’s things. He sold a bronze by Alkamenes to buy music and garlands for the feast. “I should like her to enjoy it,” he said. “After all, I daresay it’s the only wedding she’ll have.”

Xenophon confided to me his hearty approval of the match. “When I marry myself,” he said, “that is just about the age I shall look for; before they get their heads full of notions, and while there is still time to train them in orderly ways. I can’t endure things higgledy-piggledy, and nothing in its place. Order is the first half of a decent life.”

Then it seemed that one moment we were all saying, “Only a week, Lysis,” and the next it was the wedding morning.

There had been snow in the night. It lay on the roof-tops, under a bright pure sky, thin, hard and glistening; whiter than marble of Paros, whiter than our wedding robes. The lion-head rain spouts on the temple roofs had beards of crystal a cubit long; the red of baked clay looked dark and warm, and white plaster like curded cream. Helios shone far off and high, giving no heat from the pale heaven, only the flash of his silver hair. When we led the bridegroom to the house of the bride, the lyre-strings snapped with the cold, and the flutes went flat; but we covered it with our singing. Our breath rose in the frosty air in little clouds, in time with the song.

I can’t remember ever to have seen Lysis look better. His wedding mantle of white Milesian wool was trimmed with a border two spans deep of pure gold bullion, which his father and grandfather had been married in before him. We had brought him ribbons, of red, blue and gold, and crowned him with myrtle, and with the violets one finds by their scent in new-fallen snow. He strode up to the bride’s house, laughing and glowing with the cold. His tunic was pinned at the shoulder with a great brooch of antique goldwork from Mycenae, a gift to some ancestor from Agamemnon, as the story ran. His hair and his garland, and the ribbons on his arm, sparkled with snow-dust blown off the roofs. When we came into the guest-room, where the bride was sitting at the old man’s side, you could see her little face, framed in its veil of saffron, turn as you watched all into great eyes.

The women swept her up for kisses and whispers. She had good manners, as Lysis had said; but at every pause, as if her eyes had been let out of school they went slipping across. Once he saw it, and smiled straight across at her, and the women all sighed and murmured, “Charming!” Only the sister-in-law leaned forward, to hiss in her ear. She blushed crimson, and shrank up like a rose trying to grow backwards and fold itself away. I think there were tears in her eyes. For a moment I saw in Lysis’ face a look of such anger that I thought he was going to make a fool of himself and embarrass everyone. I twitched his mantle, to remind him where he was.

Then the feast was called, and they sat down together between the women and the men. He spoke to her smiling, but she answered in a dying whisper, and pushed her food about her plate. He mixed her wine for her and she drank when he told her to, like a child at the doctor’s; and, indeed, the medicine seemed to do her good.

The steward signalled me at the door; I went out and found the bridal car waiting. Everything was in order, the horns of the oxen, gilded, the wreaths and ribbons properly put on, and the canopy fixed. It was snowing again; not like meal as before, but like large feathers. They played us out, and shouted their nonsense; I clambered aboard, Lysis lifted up the bride to me and got in. We started off, he and I, and the girl between us. She shivered as the cold struck her; he pulled the sheepskins higher, and put his arm with a fold of his cloak about her shoulders. I felt a sudden rush of the past upon me; for a moment grief pierced me like a winter night; yet it came to me like an old grief, I had suffered it long since and now it was behind me. Everything is change; and you cannot step twice into the same river.

The cold was sweet and mild, not like the cold of the morning; it would thaw before dawn. Lysis said, “Well, Thalia, you were a very good girl, and I was proud of you.” She looked up at him. I could not see her face. He said, “This is my best friend Alexias.” Instead of murmuring a greeting into her lap, in the proper way, she lifted her veil, and smiled. Her eyes and her cheeks were bright in the torchlight. I had wondered before if it was wise of Lysis to give her a second cup of wine. “Oh, yes, Lysis,” she said, “you were right, he is more beautiful than Kleanor.”

It was the fresh air, I suppose, after the warmth inside. I saw Lysis blink for a moment; then he said cheerfully, “Yes, I always said so, didn’t I?” He caught my eye, asking me to be kind. I laughed and said, “Between you you’ll make me vain.”

She said to me, in the voice I suppose she had heard her mother use to visiting ladies, “I have heard Lysis speak of you often. Even before he went to sea, while I was still quite young. Whenever he called, my brother Neon would always ask how you were. Lysis would say, ‘How is Kleanor?’ or whoever his best friend was just then. But Neon always said to Lysis, ‘How is beautiful Alexias?’ and Lysis would say, ‘Still beautiful.’”

“Well,” said Lysis, “now you see him. Here he is. But you must talk to me now, or we shall be falling out.” She turned round, not a moment too soon. It was lucky we had the canopy; hardly anyone had seen. “Oh, no! You must never quarrel with Alexias, after so long.”

We went jolting on through the wheel-ploughed slush, while in the glow of the torches the snow floated like great flakes of fire. People in the street bawled out the age-old jokes about the month of long nights and so forth; and from time to time I stood up in the car and shouted back the age-old answers. When we got near the house he leaned over, and whispered to her not to be afraid. She nodded, and whispered back, “Melitta said I must scream.” Then she added firmly, “But I told her no.”—“I should say not indeed. What a vulgar notion.”—“And besides, I said to her, I am a soldier’s daughter.”—“And a soldier’s wife.”—“Oh, yes, Lysis. Yes, I know.”

When the time came, and he picked her up at the end of the bride-song, she put up her arms smiling, and caught him round the neck. As I ran after to keep the door for them, I heard a couple of old hens by the wall clicking their tongues, and censuring her shamelessness.

Next day I called to see him. There seemed no reason why I should wait till the late hour custom prescribes, so I got there quite early, before market-time, to be ahead of the rest. After some delay he came in, half-awake, the perfect picture of a bridegroom next morning. When I apologised for disturbing him, he said, “Oh, it’s time I was up. But I was talking to Thalia till all hours. I had no notion, Alexias, how much sense she has, and grace of mind. She’ll make a woman in ten thousand. Don’t speak too loud, she’s still asleep.”

“Shouldn’t she be about her work,” I said, “at this hour?” Seeing me look at him, he laughed a little shamefacedly. “Well, she was awake fairly late. She looked such a child, I sat down by her to talk her to sleep, thinking she might be scared alone; but I must have dropped off first in the end, for when I woke, I found she had got a new blanket out of her bridal chest, and laid it over me.”

I said nothing, since it was no business of mine. He said smiling, “Oh, yes, I can hold my horses till starting-time. With me it takes two to celebrate the rite of Aphrodite; I’d as soon lie with Athene of the Vanguard, shield and all, as a woman I don’t please. I know what the child needs of me just now, better than she knows herself. I daresay it won’t be for long.”

Certainly as time passed he looked well and happy; and one day later in the year, when he had asked me to sup, as I stood in the little porch I heard from within the sound of a young voice singing in time to some work or other, like water tinkling in the shade. Lysis said, “You must forgive the child. I know a modest woman shouldn’t tell her whereabouts to the guests; but when I see her happy, I can’t bear to trouble her with such things. She had enough of that from her brother’s wife; I gave her a good present, the bitch, and forbade her the house. There’s plenty of time. Her modesty is in her soul. We’ll attend to the outside later.”

It was a beautiful golden evening. The small supper-room just held four couches, but looked better with two. There were garlands laid out, of vine-shoots and roses. “Thalia made them,” he said. “She sulks if I buy made-up stuff in the market.” It was dressed sword-fish for supper. I was not very hungry, but I did my best because I could see he was proud of it. We talked about the war, which was largely at a standstill. The Spartans had given Lysander another year in command, against their custom, and he was getting money from Cyrus again.

“Don’t you care for the fish?” he asked. “She said I must ask you if the sauce was sharp enough.”—“I never tasted better. I heard some news on the way that spoiled my hunger. Those two triremes the Samian fleet took the other day; do you know what became of the rowers? They pitched them off a cliff into the sea. That will teach them to work for a side that can afford to pay them.”

He stared at me silent; then said, “Zeus! And when one thinks what was said at the start of the war, when the Spartans did it … I suppose you don’t remember. We’re improving daily; the last proposal was that enemy rowers we caught should have their right hands cut off, or was it both thumbs? I got some black looks in Assembly for voting against it. I’m glad we’re out of the Navy, Alexias. Everything one hears from Samos sounds bad.”

The fleet had done nothing for months. The generals did not trust each other, and the men did not trust the generals; rumours were always drifting home that one or other was taking bribes, the kind of talk that had made trouble among the Spartans at Miletos. There was poison in the mere knowledge that the gold was there. “Konon is sound,” I said.—“One man in a dozen. I wonder what Alkibiades thinks in that hill-fort of his. They say it looks over half the Hellespont. He must laugh sometimes from the top of his walls.”

“It’s Salamis Day,” I said. “Seventy-five years today since the battle. Don’t you remember how he used to give out a wine-issue? It was on Salamis Day he told that story about the Persian eunuch.” We laughed, and then fell silent together. In the pause I heard again the singing in the house, but softly now; she must have remembered there was company.

“You’re not drinking,” he said. The slave-boy had cleared the tables, and gone.—“No more for a while, Lysis. I’m as merry now as wine will make me.” I found him looking at me. “It’s a deep sadness,” he said, “that goes in fear of wine.”—“Are you coming to the race tomorrow? Kallias says the bay will win.”—“It’s the way of the world, it seems. If there’s a man one would sooner do a good turn to than any other, that’s the man one will see eating his heart out for what one can’t give.”—“Have you known long?” I asked.—“No matter. No one else knows. Can’t you find a woman again, like the one you had in Samos?”—“I’ll look one day soon. Don’t think of it, Lysis. It’s a madness. It will pass.”—“You should marry, Alexias. Yes, I know advice is cheap, but don’t be angry with me. If a man …” His voice ceased. We both put our wine-cups down, and got up from our couches, and ran to the door. The street was empty. But the noise drew nearer, streaming like smoke, blowing in great gusts upon the wind.

It was not a wail, nor was it a groan, nor the keening women make for the dead. Yet all these had part in it. Zeus gives good and evil things to men, but mostly evil; and the sound of sorrow is nothing new. But this was not the grief of one or two, or of a household. It was the voice of the City, crying despair.

We looked at each other. Lysis said, “I must speak to the child. Ask someone what it is.” I stood in the porch, but no one passed. Inside the house he was talking quietly. As he left I heard him say, “Finish your supper, keep busy, and wait for me.” She answered steadily, “Yes, Lysis. I’ll wait.”

A man shouted something far up the street. I said to Lysis, “I couldn’t make sense of it. ‘Everything lost,’ he said; and something about Goat’s Creek.”—“Goat’s Creek? We beached there once, when we sprang a plank. Half-way up the Hellespont, just north of Sestos. A village of clay huts, and a sandy shore. Goat’s Creek? You must have heard wrong. There’s nothing there.”

In the streets we saw no one, except a woman sometimes, peering from a door. One, forgetting her decency in her fear, called out to us, “What is it, oh, what is it?” We shook our heads and went on. The noise was from the Agora, like an army in rout. An echo seemed to go on beyond, into the distance. It was the sound of crying upon the Long Walls, throbbing between the City and Piraeus like pain along a limb.

A man met us in the street, coming from the Agora. He was beating his breast as he ran. When I caught him by the arm he stared like a trapped beast. “What is it?” we said. “What news?” He shook his head, as if we had not spoken Greek. “I was at Melos,” he said. “Oh, Zeus, I was at Melos. Now we shall see it here.” He plucked his arm free, and ran on towards his home.

Where the street ran into the Agora, it was plugged at the neck with men trying to shoulder through. As we joined the press, a man coming the other way squeezed out towards us. He stood for a moment, staggered and fell down. “What news?” we shouted at him. He leaned over and vomited stale wine. Then his head lolled round at us. “Long life to you, trierarch. Is this the street for the women?” Lysis said, “This man’s a rower off the Paralos.” He shouted in the fellow’s ear, “Answer me, curse you,” and shook him to and fro.

The man reeled to his feet, muttering, “Aye, aye, sir.”—“What news?” we asked. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and said, “The Spartans are coming,” and spewed again. When it seemed that all his drink was out of him, we dragged him over to a public water-tap in the street, and drenched his head. He sat on the slab of the fountain, his arms hanging. “I was drunk,” he said. “I spent my last obol, and now you’ve sobered me.” With his face in his hands he wept.

Presently he came partly to himself and said, “I’m sorry, sir. We’ve been at the oar three days, with this ahead of us, bringing the news. The fleet’s destroyed, sir. Someone sold us to Lysander, by our reckoning. Caught on the beach at Goat’s Creek; no help, no cover, nothing. Rubbed out, finished, rolled up like a book.”

“But what were you doing there?” said Lysis. “It’s two good miles from Sestos; there’s no harbour and no supplies. Were you driven aground?”—“No, the fleet made camp there.”—“At Goat’s Creek? Made camp? Are you drunk still?”—“I wish I was, sir. But it’s true.”

He rinsed his face in the fountain, wrung the water from his beard, and said, “We got word Lysander had taken Lampsakos. We followed him up the Hellespont, past Sestos to the narrows. Then we camped at Goat’s Creek. You can see Lampsakos from there.”—“Great Poseidon!” said Lysis. “And Lampsakos can see you.”

“We put out in the morning in battle order, to meet Lysander. But the old fox kept to earth. Next day the same. Then rations ran out. We had to walk over to Sestos market, after we’d beached the ships. Four days this went on. The fourth evening we’d just beached again, when we heard a hail. There was a man riding down from the hills; not a country fellow; a good horse, and a knight’s seat on it. The sun was setting behind him, but I thought, ‘I’ve seen you before.’ There was some young officers looking; all of a sudden they went running as if they were mad, up the road to meet him, shouting out, ‘It’s Alkibiades!’

“They caught on to his feet, his horse, anything they could lay hold of. One or two, I thought they were going to break down and cry. Well, it was always meat and drink to him to be made much of. He asked after this man’s father and that man’s friend; you know, sir, how he never forgot a face; and then he said, ‘Who’s in command?’

“They told him the generals’ names. ‘Where are they?’ he says. ‘Take me to them. They must get off this beach tonight. Has the fleet run mad? Four days now,’ he says, ‘I’ve watched you stick out your arse for Lysander’s toe, and I can’t stand it longer. What a station, by the Dog, to take in face of the enemy. What a camp, look at it; not a guard posted, not a ditch. Look at the men, straggled from here to Sestos. You’d think it was Games Week at Olympia.’

“Someone took his horse, and he went to the generals’ tents. They came out to see what the noise was. They didn’t look as pleased as the young men, not by half. Hardly gave him good evening, and didn’t as much as offer him a drink. Do you know, sir, what it was that shook me first? It was hearing him so civil to them. He was never a man to bear being made light of; he could always give better than he got. He put the case to them about the camp, very quiet and serious. ‘Didn’t you see today,’ he says, ‘the Spartan picket-boats watching your beach? Lysander mans his ships each morning, and keeps them manned till dusk. If he’s waited till now it’s because he can’t believe it. He’s afraid of a trap. When he gets word the men don’t keep camp at night, do you think he’ll wait longer? Not he; I know the man. Every minute you sit here now, you’re staking the fleet and the City with it. Come, gentlemen, you could be in Sestos tonight.’

“They’d kept him standing outside, so there were plenty to listen. I heard General Konon say into his beard, ‘Just what I told them.’ Then Tydeus, one of the new generals, steps out. ‘Thank you kindly, Alkibiades,’ he says, ‘for teaching us our business. You’re the man to do that, we all know. Perhaps you’d like to take the fleet over; or perhaps there’s another of your cup-companions you’d care to leave it to, while you run about Ionia chasing women. What were the Athenians thinking of, I wonder, when they put us in command instead of you? Still, they did it. You’ve had your kick at the ball. Now it’s our turn, so a very good day to you.’

“His colour came up then; but for all that, he kept his head. Cool and slow he spoke, with that drawl of his. ‘I’ve wasted my time,’ he says, ‘and yours too, I can see. Two things I respect Lysander for: he knows how to raise money, and where to spend it.’ Then he turned his back and walked off, before they found their tongues to answer.

“You could hardly get near for the crowd seeing him off. When they brought up his horse, he said, ‘There’s no more I can do, and if I could, I’d see them to Hades first. They’re the losers,’ he said. ‘I’ve still a friend or two across the straits. I could have given Lysander troubles of his own in Lampsakos. I’d only to sound the trumpet on my keep, to have raised three thousand Thracians. They called no man master before, but they fight for me. I’m king in these parts,’ he said. ‘King in all but the name.’

“He sat on his horse, looking out over the water with those wide-open blue eyes of his; then he wheeled and rode off into the hills, where his castle was.

“That night our Old Man on the Paralos stopped all shore leave. So did General Konon, on his eight ships. But the rest went on the same as they’d done before. And the next night, the Spartans came.”

While our minds limped like spent runners behind the tale, he told us of the battle, or the slaughter rather: Lysander’s fleet with its crack rowers racing across at dusk; Konon, keeping alone of the generals his head and his honour, trying to be everywhere at once; ships with half their troops and no rowers; ships with one bank of rowers and no troops. Konon saw the certain end, and got away his little squadron with the Paralos; anything from a wreck is gain, the old sea-tag says. The Spartans did not trouble to follow him. They were content with their harvest: one hundred and eighty sail, all the sea-strength of the Athenians, standing on the beach at Goat’s Creek as barley stands for the sickle.

At last the tale was done; the man talked on, as men do at such times, but it seemed a silence had fallen. Presently Lysis said, “I am sorry I drove your wine out of you. Take this and start again.”

Side by side we walked through the streets, silent, between houses that wept and whispered. Night was falling. I raised my eyes to the High City. The temples stood black and lampless, fading into the darkness of the sky. Their sacristans had forgotten them. It was as if the gods themselves were dying.

Lysis touched my shoulder, saying, “The Medes took it, and wasted it with fire. But next day Athene’s olive had sprouted green.” So we joined hands together, in token that we were men, knowing that the time had come to suffer. Then we parted, he to his wife and I to my father, for it is proper for a man to be with his household at such a time. All night in the streets you could see lighted windows, where those who were sleepless had rekindled the lamps: but on the High City night only, and silence, and the slow turning of the stars.