The Last of the Wine: A Novel

26

THERE ARE DRAUGHTS THAT do not yield their taste with the first sip; but drink them, and their bitterness wrings the mouth.

The stones still crashed from the Long Walls after the flutes were silent, and the victors who had helped for sport had wearied of the game. The Athenians, half-starved, wearied much sooner; but Lysander used to watch the work, a big man, square-jawed and blond, with a mouth of iron.

Meanwhile, in the public places one saw the exiled oligarchs, making themselves at home. Some had entered as soon as the gates were opened; they had been with King Agis’ army, sitting before the walls.

Presently the Spartans invited the oligarch clubs of Athens to choose five Ephors, as they called them, to draw up proposals for a government. My father attended these consultations. The upshot was that Theramenes was one of the five, and Kritias another. I believe my father voted for both. But I did not hold it against him. Regarding Theramenes, though he ate while we starved, I daresay it cost us nothing. If he had come back and owned to failure, the people would have been angry with him. It was said that he had employed the time in plotting with Lysander to put his friends in power; but this was gossip and guesswork. Of Kritias my father said to me, “I can’t think what makes you so prejudiced against him. One of our ablest men; a true orator, untainted with demagogy, from whom one can be sure of scholarship and logic. And in his writings, no one sets a higher moral tone.” He had been good to me when I was sick; so I swallowed my answer.

Plato asked me to supper about this time. I went doubtfully, knowing I could not say to him what a friend should. But he singled me out for kindness, even to sharing his supper-couch, though there were others with more claim to the compliment. Whether Euthydemos had gossiped to anyone, no doubt I shall never know.

He was always a graceful host, if rather a formal one; if his mind went wandering, he was quick to cover it. While the rest were talking of events, he said to me, “I believe this success will be just the thing for my uncle Kritias.”

I had long given up arguing politics with Plato. His mind was the master of mine; and his motives were pure. It was not in him to despise a man for poverty or low birth. But he despised fools wherever he found them, horse or foot; and finding more of them than of the wise and just, he thought that rule by the people must debase the City. Lysis used to say that government was an exercise ennobling to the base, as good soldiering makes cowards brave. Plato, when I quoted this, praised its magnanimity, and disagreed. As for Kritias, the man was his kinsman, and he was my host.

“Till now,” Plato said, “he has never filled an office worthy of his gifts. Sometimes I have feared it would make him bitter. I can’t tell you half his kindness during the siege. I shall not forget it easily; not only on my own behalf, but … but that is over.”

I answered, “It is said, ‘If Fate were moved by tears, men would offer gold to buy them.’”

“‘… Yet grief still puts them forth, as the tree puts forth its leaves.’ Speaking of my uncle, Charmides and I called to congratulate him; Charmides, you know, takes his career seriously, since Sokrates rebuked his idleness. Kritias urged both of us to come forward in the City’s service. Unless, he said, the better sort of people are prepared to do what they can to remedy democracy’s abuses, the City will fall into an apathy, or the dissipations of defeat, and lose the memory of her greatness. Though my ambitions till now have lain elsewhere, I confess he moved me.”

I told him, in sincerity, that men of his kind were needed. He had begun, I think, by seeking an escape from his grief, but ambition was stirring in him. I said to myself, “I am prejudiced. The enmities of youth lack proportion. Perhaps Kritias might have seemed to me a gentleman, if I had met Chremon first.”

One heard Chremon’s name everywhere that week. Pasion, the banker, had just bought for a great price his latest work. Half the City trooped into Pasion’s courtyard to see it, and brought back the news that the marble breathed, or at least seemed scarcely to have ceased breathing.

For three days I avoided meeting Lysis. On the third he called. He was walking quite well now, hardly using his stick. We talked for a little; but he would fall silent, and look at me. I sought words at random; in my heart I thought, “I should have fallen on my sword. Once I would not have waited for this.” I could find no more talk, and was silent also. Presently Lysis said, “I have been to the High City, to sacrifice to Eros.”—“Yes? Well, he is a powerful god.”—“And cruel, it is said. But to me, noblest of all the Immortals; ‘the best soldier, comrade, and saviour’ as poor Agathon used to say. It was time to give thanks to him.”

Soon afterwards the new Ephors, having consulted together, called an Assembly, and Kritias addressed it. He spoke as usual very well. His voice was elegantly trained, pitched to carry, without any of those mannerisms that make a man tiresome and human. He had the voice of knowledge advising honest simplicity without despising it. It was a voice to set you at ease, if you liked your thinking done for you.

He proposed a Council of Thirty, to draw up a constitution upon the ancient code, and govern meanwhile. When he read the list, starting with the five Ephors themselves, the people listened at first as children to a teacher. Then there was a murmur; then a roar. The Assembly had awakened, and heard the names. The core of the Four Hundred, the traitors from Dekeleia, every extreme oligarch who hated the people as boar hates dog. The Pnyx echoed with the outcry. Kritias listened, it seemed unmoved; then he turned, and made a gesture, and stepped aside. The shouting died like a gust of wind. Lysander stood on the rostrum, in his armour. His eyes swept slowly over the hill. There was a dead hush.

His speech was short. The breach in the Walls, he said, was two stadia short of the mile; the time-limit was up. If he did not declare the treaty void, and wipe out the City, it was an act of mercy. We had best deserve it.

So the people slunk down from the Pnyx like slaves caught stealing by the master. Our tongues were getting, now, the taste of defeat.

But the new government was quick to get the public services in order, and people spoke well of it. On the day they appointed a Senate, people met me in the street with congratulations; my father, it appeared, had been named a Senator.

I wished him well. Considering his views, no one could suspect him of time-serving. His work as envoy had brought him into the public eye, and Theramenes had not forgotten him. It was something that they were choosing Senators even as moderate as he.

At first he used to come home full of affairs. You could almost tell in the street which men held office in the new administration, however small. They looked like people who are getting the right food. When men have shared in the City’s business since they put on a long mantle, it comes strange to cease. You can watch something wither in them, like a fettered limb. One evening he said over supper, “Well, I think we shall hand over the City a little cleaner than we found it. In confidence, a rat-hunt is on for tomorrow, and high time too.”—“Rats, Father?”—“Those creatures who live off their betters, and bring filth in exchange. How else describe an informer?”

I congratulated him willingly. In the last year, when things were going badly and the people had war-fever, the informers had been a shame to the City. It was only with poor men that they simply laid information and took the reward. If he had a little, they took a bribe to keep quiet, and often informed in the end when he had nothing left. Some worked for themselves, some for rich blackmailers who made a business of it. “Good hunting, Father,” I said. “But they’re slippery game; they know every crack in the law, they always get away.”—“Not this time. Since the constitution is still upon the stocks, for once we can cut the law to their measure.”

He laughed as he spoke. I looked up, the sound taking me back to another City; I saw again Hyperbolos falling open-mouthed. “With the Four Hundred too,” I said, “that was how it began.”

“Nonsense,” he said; and I saw in his face the annoyance of a man who has been disturbed when he was at ease. “You will do far better, Alexias, to forget you were mixed up in that Samos affair. I don’t say it was any shame to you; too much discretion is unlovely in a youth of good blood; but the rough-and-ready faction fights of an overseas naval base are not understood here in the City. Keep that in mind, or you will do a great deal of harm, both to yourself and me.”—“Yes, Father. What trial are you giving these men?”—“A collective one, and too good for them.”—“Perhaps; but as a precedent?”—“That we have already, since the trial of the generals who left you to drown.”

The informers were rounded up next day, and condemned to death, no one dissenting. My father assured me afterwards that he had not seen a man in the dock whose name did not stink throughout the City. The week after, there was another arrest of informers. When I asked him how the trial had gone, he said, “There will be some delay. One or two cases were more than doubtful. We voted to try them separately.” He cleared his throat and added, “There was some attempt to influence the Senate against it. But for an interim government, that was going too far.”

There were no more mass trials, and the City was quiet some weeks. Then one morning a Spartan regiment was sighted on the Sacred Way. The Dipylon guard sent a runner to ask what should be done; and the Council sent back word to open.

They marched up to the gate with their tread of iron, between the tombs of our fathers. They crossed the Kerameikos, and the Agora, and marched on. People stood in the market, staring upward, while they climbed the ramp to the High City, and marched through the Porch into the precinct of the Maiden. There they stacked arms, and pitched their tents. At the feet of Athene of the Vanguard, and about the Great Altar, they lit their campfires and stewed their black broth.

In the courtyard I met my father, looking ill. I fancy he had hoped to avoid me. I said, “I think, sir, you did not know of this.”

“I have come from Theramenes. It appears the Council had word of a conspiracy to seize the citadel, and put the leading citizens to death.”—“I see, sir. Did he give you any names?”—“They will be published after the arrests are made.” We looked at each other, as father and son can, needing no words. He meant, “Don’t be troublesome if you want me to keep my temper; I have troubles enough,” and I meant, “You cannot face me and you know it. I could forgive you if you would own the truth.” I was about to turn from him when he said, “Theramenes can be trusted to watch events; he has always set his face against extremes. Remember, I expect discretion.” With that he went indoors.

Kallibios, the Spartan general, was undersized for one of his race. His eyes were bitter; you could see in them the beatings of his boyhood, and a black insolence, full of hatred. Beside it one remembered the insolence of Alkibiades like a child’s laughter. The Thirty fawned on him, and received him in their homes.

One got used to the sight of Spartans in the streets, staring open-mouthed at the shops, or walking in pairs looking scornfully before them. Some of the younger ones, I admit, seemed modest and mannerly. I saw one such, a fine tall youth, at Pistias’ doorway, watching the work, and talking armour with a friend. They looked less dour than most of their fellows; I even heard them laugh. As I passed, the second man turned round and said, “Good day, Alexias.” I stared, and saw Xenophon.

Turning my face from him I walked away; not so much concerned to affront him, as to believe that my eyes had lied. Next time I met him he was alone. He put out his hand to stop me, with his open smile. “Why are you angry with me, friend? What ails you?”—“Only what ails you too,” I said.

He looked at me gravely, like one who has a right to feel hurt, but will set it by. “See things as they are, Alexias. The City has to be policed; it is a measure against the mob, not people like ourselves. The Spartans respect a soldier and a gentleman, even if he has carried a spear against them. Young Arakos, whom you saw me with, is a splendid fellow. He and I nearly killed each other once in the hills near Phyle. If we don’t bear malice, who else should? One must gain by the company of a man of honour, whatever his City. Virtue comes first; hasn’t Sokrates always taught us so?” His clear grey eyes looked straight into mine; he spoke from his soul.

I was silent, thinking of schooldays, and the puppy-fights in the washroom. It had seemed hardly more than backing different chariots at the Games. He was looking at me, and I saw the thought in his eyes: “Do you do well to reproach me? Have I found a worse friend than Chremon?” But there are things a gentleman does not say. “There must be order,” he said, “in the City. Without order, how are men better than the beasts?”

Lysis and I spoke little of events. We knew the rawness in one another’s minds, and saw no sense in rubbing salt. We met to talk, or to be quiet, or to hear Sokrates, who was living just as usual, pursuing his enquiries into the nature of man’s soul, justice and truth. As always, he took no part in politics, he only followed logic where it led. If some of the statements lately given the people did not stand up to logic, that was by the way.

Plato came less often than he had. When he entered upon politics, Sokrates’ only advice to him had been to study law. “No man expects to throw a clay water-jar, without first serving an apprenticeship. Do you think the art of governing men is easier?” When he came to Sokrates, he seldom spoke; he listened, or withdrew into himself. He was like a sick man at a feast, who helps himself only to what he can keep down. I had not the folly to measure his grief by mine, the scar of a meteor’s passage, printed on the sky by brightness and the act of flight.

Samos had fallen. Without a fleet they had never had any hope. Lysander had left the democrats their lives, and the clothes on their backs to carry into exile, and given the City to the oligarchs we had overthrown. So his work being done, he sailed home in triumph to Lakonia, with his trophies of war, and a shipload of treasure, of which not a drachma, they say, ever stuck to his fingers. He was a man not greedy of anything but power. But with every Spartan who handled the stuff it was not the same; and there are great changes, I am told, since gold came into Lakonia.

Kallibios’ troops stayed on the High City, and every Athenian who wanted to sacrifice had to ask their leave. And now, the Council of Thirty used to make their arrests with a Spartan guard. They began with the metics. I myself saw Polymarchos the Shieldmaker led through the streets. I knew him, a man of culture who entertained philosophers. I turned to a bystander, and asked what was the charge.

“Ah,” said the man, “they’ve caught him out at last, it seems.” He was a seedy fellow; the whites of his eyes were like the whites of bad eggs. “Sold some poor soldier thin bronze with filling, I suppose, and got him killed. That’s the way these foreigners make their money, underselling honest men.”—“Well, we shall see when he’s tried if he’s guilty or not.”—“Guilty? Of course he is. He’s the brother of Lysias the Speech-maker, who defended these dirty informers and got them off. Their house is full of atheists and anarchists, like that Sokrates, who teaches young men to mock the gods and beat their fathers.” I looked at him. You could as well bring logic to a dog scratching for fleas. “That is a lie,” I said. “Your mind stinks like your body.” Then I went away and was ashamed. “It is a sickness,” I thought, “and I have it like the rest.”

Polymarchos was never tried. It was given out that he had been found guilty of treason, for sufficient reasons, and given hemlock in prison. His brother Lysias slipping out at a back door had got away from Piraeus with his life. Their fortune was confiscated; to the state, the notice said. But the bronzes from their house were seen in the house of one of the Thirty. Afterwards others of them did much the same. Those who had profited already urged on the rest, so that they should all be in it alike. But Theramenes, it was noticed, refrained. He was looking ill, and when he supped at our house dieted himself, saying his stomach troubled him.

Before long, the City got quite used to the sight of people being put away without trial. They were only metics, after all. Then the Thirty began arresting democrats. And from this time on, there began to be two nations in the City. For it was no longer enough that a man, to be safe, should guard his tongue. It was necessary to surrender the soul; and many surrendered it.

One morning my father stopped me as I was going out. After some time beating about the point, at last it came. “… So, all things considered, it might be well, while matters are so delicate, not to be seen in public with Lysis son of Demokrates.”

The sunlight grew dark before my eyes. I felt sick. “Father,” I said, “in the name of my mother, tell me. Is Lysis in danger?” He looked at me with impatience. “Tut, not that I know of. But he has no discretion. He gets himself talked about.” I paused to command myself before I spoke. “For ten years now, sir, when Lysis has been talked about I have had a share of his honour. What shall I sell it for? A bowl of black soup? A kiss from Kritias? How much?”—“You are offensive. I speak of common prudence. There are matters which cannot be opened to loose-tongued young men; but we may hope the present state of things will not last to the end of time. Meanwhile, I expect in this house the manners you learned from me, not those Sokrates teaches.”

I saw deep lines about his eyes; lately he often looked tired. “I was insolent, Father. I am sorry. But would you do yourself what you ask of me?” He said after a moment, “However, remember I only have one son.”

I set out at once to call on Lysis. On the way, I saw ahead of me a back I knew by its breadth. Autolykos was making his way homeward from the palaestra.

As athletes went nowadays, he was considered notable for good looks and grace. He did not fight at much above the weight he had been at the Isthmus; having held his own against far heavier men, he had now the name of a classic fighter, a type of the golden age. Compared with what one saw now at every Games, I myself had come, little by little, to think him beautiful. At the last Games of Athene he had been crowned again.

I was thinking to overtake him for a word, when I saw at the head of the street Kallibios coming the other way, with two Spartan guards behind him. The middle of the road was mucky, but it was dry by the walls. Kallibios and Autolykos met, and stopped, and looked at one another, neither making way. People in the street about them stopped still where they were.

Kallibios said in his harsh Doric, “Out of my way, lout.” He need not have shouted to be heard. I saw Autolykos’ back, steady as an oak; and then Kallibios’ eyes, as his stick flew out.

Autolykos stooped, moving easily, like a grown man playing with boys. As he straightened, above his shoulder appeared the face of Kallibios, rising in the air. His hands beat at Autolykos’ shoulders; then he was tossed backward as lightly as a faggot, to land face down in the wet midden. Autolykos, without a glance to see where he had fallen, hitched his mantle and walked on, keeping the wall.

The whole street cheered, except those who were near enough to see Kallibios scraping muck from his face, and they were laughing. At the corner of the street Autolykos before he turned out of sight made the gesture by which a well-bred victor acknowledges applause on his way back to the dressing-room.

The two guards had been rather slow off the mark, getting no orders; now, when they sprinted after, they found their path full of impediments: laden donkeys, scuffling lads, even a group of women. But they soon overtook their man, since they were running and he was not. I think he considered taking them both on, with Kallibios as makeweight; then he saw the crowd following, and smiled, and went quietly. They did not dare to bind him. With every street we passed the crowd swelled, and grew noisier as people took courage from each other. When we reached the road to the High City we must have been near two hundred.

I had started near the front and managed to stay there. As we neared the Porch, I saw a man standing alone between the great pillars of Perikles. Even in that place, he still looked tall. Since his triumph in Sparta, it was Lysander’s habit to come and go unheralded. He was a law unto himself.

Autolykos mounted the last few steps, between his guards. Lysander waited, in his scarlet tunic, unarmed, three paces ahead of his men. He was hated for many things, but not for cowardice. He and Autolykos were pretty nearly of a height. Their eyes met, measuring one another; and the voice of Kallibios, spluttering out his charge, grew quick and shrill. Neither of them looked at him.

Spartans do not practise the pankration as we know it. The law of the Games requires the loser to lift his hand in surrender; and no Spartan having done that is expected to show himself in Lakonia alive. So it is an event they do not enter for; but they like watching it as much as anyone. Lysander in particular was very fond of attending the Games, and being acclaimed there.

Autolykos stood in the Porch, calm as marble; I had seen him look so in the temple, waiting to be crowned. Lysander frowned; but could not keep the cold approval out of his hard blue eyes. Kallibios, smeared with mud to the hair, looked at the two big men feeling each other’s strength; if he had had the power to turn everyone in sight to stone, he would have begun with Lysander. Everyone saw it, and Lysander, turning, saw it too.

His face told nothing. “You are Autolykos the wrestler. Is this charge true?”—“He talks too fast,” said Autolykos. “I daresay it is.”

Lysander said, “Let the accused hear the charge, Kallibios. Did you say he assaulted you? What did he do?” Kallibios stammered. Some of us in the crowd gave our evidence unasked. Lysander shouted for silence. “Well, Kallibios? Repeat the charge.”

So Kallibios related again how he had been tossed in the midden; and the crowd cheered. Lysander said, “How did he do it, Kallibios? I want a statement. Did he cross-buttock you, or what?” Kallibios stood chewing his lips. Autolykos said, “No, it was just a thigh-hold, and a straight lift.” Lysander nodded. “Is it true as these men say, that he took a stick to you?” Autolykos in silence raised his hand to his forehead, where blood was trickling from his short thick curls. “Charge dismissed,” said Lysander. “You are not working your farm with your Helots now, Kallibios. You had better learn how to govern free men.”

The City was quiet for a day or two. Then a notice was put up, cut in marble, that Thrasybulos and Alkibiades had been proclaimed exiles.

Thrasybulos had fled to Thebes a week before. It was said to have been Theramenes who had warned him of what was planned for him. His sentence caused anger rather than surprise. But, as always, it was enough to set Alkibiades’ name up in the Agora, to make people talk all day. What was he up to, that had scared the Thirty? He had left Thrace, it was said, and crossed to Ionia, and asked for safe-conduct to Artaxerxes the new King. Something was behind it. Some said he would never forgive the City for disgracing him unjustly a second time; others, that what he might not do for love of us, he would do from hatred of King Agis. Even after the battle at Goat’s Creek, where he had been driven off with insults by the generals, fugitives came back whom he had sheltered in his hilltop castle, and saved their lives. “Insolent he may be; but there is no meanness in him. That, from a boy, he never had.” And people said, “There is hope for the City, while Alkibiades lives.” The news of his banishment seemed a promise of his return. It was said openly in the streets that the Thirty were only in office to frame a new constitution; it was time they presented their draft, and made way for others.

Soon after this, there was a roll-call of the troops; a parade without arms, to re-group the units. On the Academy parade-ground I chatted with some old friends; then, having missed Lysis in the crowd, called to see him. As I got to his house, I heard weeping within, and Lysis saying in the smothered voice of a man distracted, “Here, dry your eyes. Never mind it. Be quiet now; I must go.”

He came flinging out, nearly knocking me down upon the threshold. He was half-dazed, and shaking with anger. Grabbing hold of me, as if I might walk off, he said, “Alexias. Those sons of whores have taken my armour.” I said, “What? Who have taken it?”—“The Thirty. While I was at roll-call. My spear, my shield; even my sword.”

I stared at him like a fool. “But it can’t have been the Thirty. My arms are there; I’ve just come from home.”—“Listen.” The street was beginning to roar with angry voices, and men were running from house to house. “Your father is a Senator,” he said.

There are evils one does not imagine, till one sees them done. As my father had been fond of saying, this was supposed to be a gentlemen’s government. A gentleman, and a citizen, was reckoned to be a man who could defend the City in arms.

“Command yourself, Alexias,” Lysis was saying. “What is this? I have had enough to do already with tears.”—“I am not weeping. I am angry.” My face burned, and my throat felt bursting. “Let them take my arms too; what honour is left in bearing them?”—“Don’t be a fool. Arms are for use first, and for honour after. If you have arms, take good care of them. Lock them up.”

Next day we learned that three thousand knights and hoplites had been left their weapons. My father was one, and they had mistaken my arms for his. These only had citizenship, and the right to judicial trial. Over all others, the Thirty claimed power of life and death.

People went about the City like walking dead. There was nowhere to turn. We ourselves had been the source, once, of justice and democracy in Hellas. We were drained by war; ringed with victorious enemies; beyond were the lands of the barbarians, where even men’s minds are enslaved. What is there that will season salt?

My father said to me, “Don’t talk so wildly, Alexias. Few or many, a government that does well is good. Kritias is an intelligent man; responsibility will make him careful.”—“Will you make a drunkard temperate with more wine?”—“Between ourselves, Theramenes thinks three thousand too few. That is within these walls. But the principle is sound, that of an aristocracy.”—“Plato believes too in the rule of the best. When he heard Lysis had lost his arms, he could not speak for shame.”—“Don’t quote Plato to me,” my father said, “as if he were some philosopher. I have heard enough of your scent-shop friends.”

Work had still to go on; I rode out to the farm next day on a hired mule, and stayed overnight. Working stripped in the sun of early autumn, binding the vines, I was happy in spite of myself; the earth, and her fruitful gods, seemed all that was real, the rest as shadows of dreams. Coming home the day after, I went round by way of Dipylon, to return my mule; then, as I walked through the Street of Tombs, I felt a strangeness, and a fear, and knew not why. It seemed colder; the colours had altered on the hills; and looking on the ground, where the sunlight fell in bright rounds through the leaves, I saw that all these had changed their shape, and become as sickles. The heavens seemed turning to lead, and sinking on the earth. And lifting my eyes to the sun, I saw it so altered that I dared look no longer, lest the god strike me blind.

Among the tombs, in the gloom of the eclipse, it was as one supposes the Underworld to be. The hair crept on my neck. Anaxagoras said it is only the dark shape of the moon crossing the sun. I can believe it any bright morning, walking in the colonnade.

Then in the chill, and the livid shadow, I saw a funeral coming on the Sacred Way. It was a long one, as if of some notable person; it came slowly, in the deep silence of people oppressed both with grief and fear. Only behind the bier a young wife, blind with her own weeping, tore at her hair and cried aloud.

I waited for the bier to pass me. It bore a heavy corpse; for six big men carried it, and yet their shoulders bent. Then, as they came nearer, I knew them all. For each was an Olympic victor, a wrestler, a boxer or a pankratiast. And on the bier, upon the brow of the dead, was an olive crown.

I stood and gazed my last on the stern face of Autolykos, whom one seldom saw in life without a smile. Now he looked like some ancient hero, come back to judge us. The gloom thickened, till I could scarcely see his olive wreath and his mouth of stone. Behind him a catafalque was heaped with his trophies and his ribboned crowns. When this too had passed, I joined the mourners, and said to the man who walked next me, “I have been in the country. How did he die?” In the dusk he peered at me, with eyes of distrust and fear. “He was walking about yesterday. That’s all I know.” He looked aside.

The darkness had reached its deepest. Birds were silent; a dog howled in fear; the woman’s weeping seemed to fill the earth and reach to the low heaven. I thought, “Lysander pardoned him. Nor did Kallibios do it; for Spartans, even where they hate, obey. It was a present to Kallibios, to get his favour. Athenians did this.”

Then I said in my heart, “Come, then, Lord Apollo, healer and destroyer, in your black anger, as you came to the tents at Troy, striding down from the crags of Olympos like the fall of night. I hear the quiver at your shoulder shake with your footfall, and its arrows rattle with the dry sound of death. Shoot, Lord of the Bow, and do not pause upon your aim; for wherever you strike the City, you will find a man for whom it is better to die than live.”

But the shadow passed from the face of the sun, and when we laid Autolykos in his tomb, already the birds were singing.

It seemed to me then that the soul of Athens lay prone now in the dust, and could fall no lower. But a few days later, I called at the house of Phaedo. He was out; but he had some new books, so I read and waited. At last his shadow fell on the doorway, and I rose to greet him.

He looked at me in passing, as if trying to remember who I was; then he walked on, and back again, up and down the room. His hands were clenched; I saw, for the first time in many years, the halt from his old wound catching his stride. After he had taken two or three turns, he began to speak. On the benches of a war-trireme I have heard nothing like it. While he was working at Gurgos’s, I don’t remember hearing him use any phrase that would not have passed at a decent supper-party. Now there came pouring out of him the silt and filth of the stews, till I thought he would never stop. After a time I did not listen, not because it offended me, but for fear of the news that was coming when he ceased. At last I put out my hand and stopped him in his walking, and said, “Who is dead, Phaedo?”—“The City is,” he said, “and stinking. But corpse-loving Kritias keeps his mother above ground. They have passed a law forbidding logic to be taught.”

“Logic?” I said. “Logic?” It made no sense to me; as if he had said there was a law against men. “Who can forbid logic? Logic is.”

“Look in the Agora. There is a notice in marble, making it a crime to teach the art of words.” He burst out laughing; like a face in a dark wood, as Lysis had once said. “Oh, yes, it’s true. Did I teach you anything new, Alexias, just now? Learn it, write it down, it is the speech of a slave. I am starting a school in Athens; be my first pupil, and I’ll take you free.” His laughter cracked; he threw himself down upon his work-bench at the table, and laid his head in his arms among the pens and scrolls.

Presently he sat up and said, “I am sorry to make a show of myself. In the siege, when one felt one’s strength drain out a little every day, one had more fortitude of soul. It seems the want of hope unmans one more than the want of food.”

I half forgot his news in his pain, for he was dear to me. “Why, Phaedo, should you grieve so much? If the gods have cursed us, what is it to you? We shed the blood of your kindred; and to you we did the greatest of all wrongs.” But he answered, “It was the City of my mind.”

“Go back to Melos,” I said, “and claim your father’s land from the Spartans. You will find more freedom there then here.”—“Yes,” he said, “I will go, why not? Not to Melos; nothing would bring me to see it again. To Megara perhaps, to study mathematics, and then to some Doric city to teach.” He stood up, and began sweeping his books together on the table. Then he smiled, and said, “Why do I talk? You know I shall never leave Athens while Sokrates is alive.”

I smiled back at him; and then, in the same moment, the same thought came to both of us, and our smiles stiffened on our lips.

When I called at Sokrates’ house, he was out; it was to be expected so late in the morning, yet I was afraid. As I turned away, Xenophon met me, and I saw my own fear in his eyes. We forgot the constraint of our last meeting. He drew me into a porch; even he had learned at last to drop his voice in the street. “This Government will never be worthy of itself, Alexias, while Kritias is in it. I voted against his election, I may say.”—“I don’t suppose he got many votes from Sokrates’ friends.”—“Except from Plato. One thing is certain, Kritias has never forgiven Sokrates in the matter of Euthydemos. This law is framed against Sokrates, personally. Any fool can see it.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “It is against the freedom of men’s minds, as Phaedo says. No tyranny is safe while men can reason.”—“Tyranny is not a word I care for,” he said stiffly. “I would rather say a principle is being misapplied.” And then looking suddenly as I had known him since boyhood, “If you don’t remember Kritias’ face that day, I do.”

At first it seemed absurd to me. I had seen the fair Euthydemos only lately; he had been drinking to the birth of his second son. It was natural that where Phaedo saw thought in chains, Xenophon should see one man’s revenge; he had the more personal mind; yet there are times when feeling sees more than intellect. I said, “You may well be right.” We looked at each other, not wanting to say, like fools or women, “What shall we do?”

“Phaedo tells me,” said I, “that a saying of Sokrates’ is running around the Agora: When hiring a herdsman, do we pay him to increase the flock, or make it fewer every day?”—“We shall delude ourselves, Alexias, if we expect him to study his safety before his argument.”—“Do we even desire it? He is Sokrates. And yet …”—“In a word,” said Xenophon, “we love him, and are only men.” We were silent again. Presently I said, “I’m sorry I was uncivil last time we met. You have done nothing contrary to your honour.”—“I don’t reproach you, since Autolykos died. I myself …” Then we saw Sokrates coming towards us.

In our joy at seeing him alive, we both went running, so that people stared, and he asked us what the matter was. “Nothing, Sokrates,” said Xenophon, “except that we are glad to see you well.” He looked just as always, cheerful and composed. “Why, Xenophon,” he said, “what a physician we have lost in you! One glance can tell you not only that my flesh and bones and organs are sound, but my immortal part too.” He was smiling, in his usual teasing way; yet my heart sank, and I thought, “He is preparing us to bear his death.”

Hiding my fear, I asked if he had seen the notice in the Agora. “No,” he said. “I have been spared the pains of reading it by a friend, who, lest I should offend through ignorance, was kind enough to send for me, and recite it to me himself. I think I may rely on his memory of it, since he is the man who drew it up.”

A dark flush rose from Xenophon’s beard to his brow; from a child he had been made to control his features, but this he had never overcome. “Are you telling us, Sokrates, that Kritias sent for you to threaten you?”—“Not everyone is privileged to have a law expounded to him by the lawgiver himself. It gave me the opportunity to ask him whether the art of words was being banned in so far as it produced false statements, or true. For if the latter, we must all refrain from speaking correctly, that is clear.”

His little bulging eyes laughed at us. Often he would recount to us blow by blow a set-to he had had in the palaestra or the shops with some opinionated passerby. Now he described to us this colloquy, in which ten to one he had talked his life away, in just the same style. “By the way, how old are you, Xenophon? And you, Alexias?”—“Twenty-six,” we both said.—“By the Dog, what has become of my memory? I must be getting old. For I have only just now been forbidden to converse with anyone under the age of thirty.” This was too much; we burst into wild and angry laughter. “That, at the end of our conversation, was how Kritias interpreted his new law to me. I am the subject of a special amendment; a singular honour.”

Afterwards, going back through the Agora, we heard one householder say to another, “One thing we can say for the Government, it has taken some abuses in hand. It is time someone put down these Sophists, who trip a man up and twist him round till he can’t tell right from wrong, and give young fellows a back answer to anything you say.” When we had passed, Xenophon said to me, “Those, Alexias, are the people you want to be governed by.”—“The many rub off one another’s extremes,” I said, “like pebbles on a beach. Would you rather have Kritias?” But we parted friends. Even today, when we meet, it is much the same with us.

From that time, Sokrates’ friends were bound in a conspiracy. Someone would arrive at his house very early each morning, bringing some question for advice. While he talked, and put off going out, others would turn up, and get a full discussion going. We kept an eye on the street; there was a back way out, at need, over the roof-tops. Usually we managed to keep him in at least while the Agora was full.

I remember the little whitewashed room full of people; the first-comer sitting on the foot of Sokrates’ bed; the next perched on the window-sill; most of us on the floor; and Xanthippe grumbling loudly inside that she had no chance to sweep house. Plato would come in, silently, and sit down in the darkest corner. For he came now every day; no more was heard of his legal studies. His absent fits were over; you could see him following every word and running ahead; but he seldom spoke. His soul was in strife, and we all pitied him, as far as men can pity a mind much stronger than their own. I except Xenophon: for he knew, I think, that Plato was wrestling with matters he himself did not wish to question; and it made him uneasy.

Those of us who were going used to gather at the shop of Euphronios the Perfumer. It was not so fashionable that everyone went there, so not full of strangers who might be informers for all one knew. We would arrive and go through the civilities a scentmaker expects, sniffing the latest oil he was compounding, pronouncing it too heavy or too light or too musky, or sometimes, to keep him sweet, praising and buying. Sokrates when we got to his house used to wrinkle his snub nose, and tell us a good reputation smelt better.

But one morning, the man who had gone early met us in the doorway (it was Kriton’s son, Kritobulos) and said, “He’s not at home.”

In the silence, Euphronios was heard saying, “Just try this, sir. Real Persian rose attar. The flask’s Egyptian glasswork. For a special gift …”—“I’ve been everywhere,” Kritobulos said, “about the City. Yes, send me two, Euphronios.”—“Two, sir? That comes to …” Kritobulos came over and dropped his voice. “Someone said he went to the Painted Porch.”

Young people who go now to see the picture gallery will scarcely imagine it as a place where men walked in by daylight and came out at night feet first. The Thirty questioned suspects there. They used it, of course, for other business too; but the graceful columns, the painted capitals and the goldwork, stank of death like the warren of the Minotaur.

“Someone always says that,” said Lysis presently. “People who would sooner run about with bad news than none. He may have got up early to sacrifice.”—“Father is trying to find out. If we learn anything, I’ll come back.”

Men in a common trouble draw naturally together; yet for a moment, each sat stricken in a grief that seemed all his own. Xenophon, hands upon knees, stared at the wall. He always looked out of place at Euphronios’. If he was offered a free sample, he would say, “Not for me. Have you something for a girl?” Apollodoros was twisting his big red hands till the knuckles cracked. He had joined us lately, and was something of a trial to us, being so simple that his company had the inconvenience of a child’s without its charm; he was ugly too, with a bald brow and wide ears. Some of us had amused ourselves at his expense at first, till Sokrates had taken us aside and made us ashamed. It was true, indeed, that the young man had no false conceit of knowledge, but came with modesty seeking the good he knew not how, as cattle go seeking salt. However, having no self-command, he had now got Euphronios uneasy. Serious gatherings were unwelcome at that time in any shop. Lysis and I, who had had our training in Samos, managed to cover him, pretending he was distraught with some love affair.

Euphronios cheered up, and began setting out his new stock. Presently he looked round. “Why, Aristokles, sir, you came in so quietly I never heard you. And I’ve good news for you. That oil of rosemary you used to order last year, at last it’s in again. The very same pressing, sweet and dry, I’m sure you recall it.” He smeared a bit of linen and held it out. Plato after a moment’s silence said, “Thank you, Euphronios, but not today.”—“I assure you, sir, you’ll find it equal to last year’s in every way.”—“No, thank you, Euphronios.” He strode to the door and said, “Shall we go?” Phaedo came over to him and said quietly, “Not yet, Plato. Sokrates isn’t in.”—“Not in?” said Plato slowly. He drew his brows together, as a man does whose head is aching, if you ask him to think.

Phaedo was beginning, “Kritobulos says …” when he himself appeared in the doorway, coming in from the colonnade. He was a handsome young man, dressed to make the most of it. His mantle had embroidered borders, his sandals were studded with coral and turquoise, and his face was the colour of bleached hemp. “They did send for Sokrates. They were making up a posse for an arrest. For Leon of Salamis, people say. They sent for Sokrates to join it.”

We turned towards the door, to hide our faces from Euphronios and his slaves. I saw Xenophon’s lips move silently, cursing or praying. This was the Thirty’s newest method, with anyone known to be critical: to force him into sharing one of their crimes, so that shame might silence him. Those who refused did not live very long.

Kritobulos said, “Sokrates went to the Porch, when he was summoned, and asked what the charge was. When they wouldn’t tell him, he said, ‘No,’ and went home.”

The silence was broken by Apollodoros, who gave a loud sob. Xenophon took him by the shoulders, and marched him outside. I turned to Plato. He stood still in the shop doorway, staring straight before him at a hetaira who had come buying scent. She pulled her silk dress tight across her buttocks and smiled over her shoulder; then, as his eyes did not move, went shrugging off. I had been going to speak to him; but there are doors at which one does not knock.

At last he turned, and touched Phaedo’s arm, and said, “Don’t wait for me.” Phaedo paused, and looked at his face, and said, “Go with God.” I was surprised, but too disturbed to feel it much. Just then Apollodoros running forward cried out, “Oh, Plato, if you are going to Sokrates, do let me come with you.” At this moment his clumsiness was too much; two or three of us exclaimed in anger. But Plato took hold of him and said, gently and clearly, “Don’t go to Sokrates now, Apollodoros. He will be settling his affairs, perhaps, and speaking to his wife and children. I am not going to Sokrates; I am going to Kritias.”

He walked off along the colonnade. Watching him go, I recalled how the old Attic dynasty had ended; when King Kodros rode out alone to challenge the Dorians, because the omens had promised victory if the king were slain. They thought it impious to give him a successor; they set a priest on his throne, and dedicated it to the gods. I thought, “A man may leave sons behind him, and yet not live long enough to see his heir.”

What passed that day between Plato and his kinsman, none of us ever knew. If you ask how a man of twenty-four could put shame into one of five-and-forty, when Sokrates himself could not, I have nothing to say, except that Sokrates defied the Thirty, and lived. It was a saying of his, which all his young men knew by heart, that when you assume the show of any virtue, you open a credit account, which one day you will have to meet or go broke. It may be that what Kritias had seemed to his nephew was worth something to him. No man is all of a piece. If I had myself to choose someone who should find me out in a lie, Plato would come very low upon my list.

Nowadays, as in my boyhood, I went much to Piraeus, but for a different cause. One breathed the air of the sea there; and the quiet was not the quiet of the City above. They were quiet like seamen who have got a bad captain, and are all of one mind. One day the yard will fall from the block, or a hawser be stretched ankle-high on a dirty night.

Lysis and I were walking there, to a certain tavern where one could talk freely. As we passed through Spice Street, where some of the women have their houses, we saw one of them come out in a mourning veil, and lock up her door, and walk away with her head bowed, on which two others, who were gossiping in the street, turned and laughed at her. Lysis stopped when he saw it, and said to them. “Come, girls, don’t mock at grief. The gods don’t like it. Tomorrow it might be our turn.” One of them tossed her head at him. “May they send me nothing worse than what she suffers! A man who, if he had ever seen her again, wouldn’t have known her from a Hyperborean, you may be sure. Such airs and graces. She to mourn for Alkibiades!”

We stared, and stopped in our tracks, and said, “For whom?”—“Oh, hasn’t the news reached the Upper City? The Chian trader brought it. Dead in Phrygia, so they say; but like as not it’s another of his tricks. Never mind him; come in, tall darling, and take some wine with us. My sister will look after your friend.”

We hurried to the tavern, and found pilots and captains vowing and swearing Alkibiades was not dead. He was at Artaxerxes’ court, making alliance with him; or raising an army of Thracians to free the City. There was even a rumour that he was in hiding in Piraeus. But in the City, Xenophon said to me, “Sokrates believes it, and has gone away to meditate. If it were false, his daimon would have told him.”

Next day we met some Chians from the ship, and questioned them. One said, “He was killed over a woman. How else would Alkibiades die?” And another, “He had her in his house, and the men of her family came after him. Six to one they were, but it seems no one cared to be first. They threw torches at the thatch while he was sleeping. He woke up, and choked down the fire with the bedding, while he got out with the girl; then he ran at them naked, with only his sword, and his cloak round his arm for a shield. None of them would stand up to him; so they shot him full of arrows at twenty paces, by the light of the fire. And that was the end of him.”

Often, on campaign, he would come and sit at our watch-fire, to scrape and oil. He was vain of his body, fair-haired and glossy brown, clean as good food; the only marks he had were an old white spear-wound, and, sometimes, a love-bite from a woman. I saw his eyes, drowsy and blue, in the light of the crumbling embers. “Who’ll give us a song, before we turn in? You sing, Alexias. ‘I loved you, Atthis, I loved you long ago.’ Sing us that.”

Lysis said to the Chian, “What girl was this?”—“I don’t know her City. A girl called Timandra.”—“But he had her in Samos. She was a hetaira.”—“She buried him,” said the Chian, “whoever she was. Wrapped him in her own dress, and sold her bracelets to put him down in style. Well, fortune’s a wheel, sure enough. Brought up by Perikles; raced seven chariots at Olympia; and buried by a whore.”

Afterwards Lysis said to me, “If that girl had father and brothers, it’s long since they went seeking her. And men revenging their honour show a little more spirit, or they stay at home. But hired killers aren’t paid to shed their own blood. In Phrygia … yes, he must have been going to Artaxerxes. I wonder if King Agis ordered it, or someone nearer home.”

All over Piraeus, and up in the City, you could hear people declaring in the street that Alkibiades was not dead. In some of the poor quarters, more than a year after they were saying it still. But the Thirty went about cheerfully, like men who have shed a fear.

One day I came home from the farm, where we were getting our first small harvest in. The olives had put out strong shoots again; one, which had been only half scorched, was even bearing. I had brought home the crop, and came in calling, “Father, look here!” His voice from within said, “What is it?” At the sound, I put down the panier, and came in quietly. He was at his desk, his papers before him. “Sit down, Alexias. I have things to say to you.” I came and sat down by him, looking at his face.

“These,” he said, “are the deeds of the farm. Here are the deeds of the Euboean land; waste paper today, but the future no man knows. I have no debts. Hermokrates still owes us a quarter’s rent, and can now afford to pay it.”

I looked at the paper on the desk, and saw what it was. “Father,” I said.—“Don’t interrupt, Alexias. Kydilla, after her long service, ought to have been bequeathed her freedom. I have put nothing in writing, but express to you as my wish that when the estate can run to it, you will find her if you can, and buy her out. The time I leave to your honour and common-sense. Don’t give your sister Charis in marriage before she is fifteen years old. Alkiphron of Acharnai has a likely son, and the lands march; but times are uncertain, so that too I must leave in your hands.”

I heard him till he had done. “You know, Father, I will do all you ask; God keep it far from us. What has happened?”—“Have you not heard, then, that Theramenes died today?”

“Theramenes?” Even of Alkibiades I could believe it sooner: he was an acrobat, as Kritias once had said; one knew that some day the rope would break, or the sword slip. But Theramenes was shrewd like a mountain fox, who does nothing for show, and digs no earth without a second door. “Murdered,” my father said, “by the Council, under the form of law.” He tipped a loose tile in a corner, set so well that I had never seen it, and put the will in the hole. “If when you come for this you find other papers, burn them, but read them first. I should wish you to know you are the son of a man who did not consent to tyranny.”

“I never supposed it, Father. Through my own fault you do not know me.” And I tried to tell him what I had been doing. But he was displeased to hear I had made connections in Piraeus. “I had sooner you spent your time with flute-girls. I thought no good would come of your going to sea, and mixing with riff-raff.”—“Father, we will talk of that later. What happened today?”

“Kritias indicted Theramenes on a charge of treason. In his defence before the Senate, he did not deny that he opposed the Council, as its aims are now. He accused Kritias boldly in turn, of having betrayed the principles of the aristocracy, and set up a tyranny instead. I have no time to give you his speech, but I never heard an abler. The whole of the Senate, except the notorious extremists, acclaimed him at the end. About our verdict there could be no doubt, nor the sequel; he had put Kritias in the dock in his room. But meantime, a rabble of young louts had crowded in upon the public floor. Before the verdict could be voted on, they began shouting, and waving knives: men of no city, metics out of work, soldiers broke for cowardice, such men as take to the trade of hired bully for money or from choice. These, Kritias said, had come to make known to us the people’s will. Well, some of us who had faced a Spartan battle-line had seen bigger men. We pressed for a vote. Then Kritias reminded us that only the Three Thousand have right of trial; and holding up the list, he crossed the name of Theramenes off it.”

I marvelled that no one had thought before of something so simple. My father went on, “He was condemned out of hand, by order of the Thirty, and was dragged off from the very altar of the Sacred Hearth, crying on gods and men for justice … He was good to you, Alexias, when you were a boy, so I daresay you will be glad to hear that he died creditably. When they gave him the hemlock, he drank it straight off, all but the lees; those he tossed down, and called, ‘This for Kritias the Beautiful.’ Even the guards laughed at it.”

He paused. I said, staring at him, “But, Father, how do you know that?”—“I was with him,” my father said. “He has been my friend these thirty years. When we were lads, we served in the Guard together. There was a notion, in the beginning, that the City was going to be governed by gentlemen. Because Kritias has forgotten it, we need not all do so, I suppose.”

He glanced at the tile where the will was buried, and tapped it down with his foot. “Over Apollo’s sanctuary,” he said, “at Delphi, the navel of the earth, is written ‘Nothing too much.’ Extremes breed one another. I have tried to give you a decent education; yet you, too, instead of learning from the sight of tyranny to fear all extremes, can only fly from one to its opposite. And a man like Theramenes, who has risked his life often, and given it at last, in the cause of moderation, gets nothing for it but a vulgar nickname. There is some reason, I suppose. Well, he is dead. The Council made no difficulty when I asked to attend him in the prison. Kritias said they were glad to know who his friends were.”

I opened my mouth, to say I know not what; but I could see he thought me a fool, and it made my tongue heavy. “You must be out of the City, Father, before the night. I will go and hire the mule I go to the farm on; no one will notice that. Will you go to Thebes?”—“I shall go to my land,” he said. “It will take a better man than Kritias to send me chasing over the border like a slave on the run. A hundred years and more before we owned any house in Athens, the farm was our home. It is a pity we left it. Men are better watching the seasons, and putting good into the earth, than running together in cities, where they listen all day to each other’s noises and forget the gods. Acharnai is quite far enough.”

“I doubt it, sir. I beg you to go to Thebes. The Thebans hate Lysander now more than they ever hated us; they have sworn not to give an Athenian up to him. Some of our best men are there.” I was going to name Thrasybulos, but remembered in time. “I should have gone myself, if it had not been for the harvest. Leave the farm to me; I will see to that.” At length he said unwillingly that he would go to Thebes. “Take your sister,” he said, “to the house of Krokinos. Though only a cousin he has family feeling; he offered to take her of his own accord. I have arranged for her keep.”

At the fall of dusk I led round the mule. As he mounted, I saw he was shivering. “It’s this accursed fever,” he said. “I knew I was in for a turn. It’s nothing; I have taken the draught for it. The air is better in the hills.”—“Give me your blessing, sir, before you go.” He blessed me, adding immediately after, “Don’t fill the house while I am gone with drunken sailors, or those young nincompoops from the scent-shop. Perform the sacrifices on the proper days, and keep some decency in the place.”

Afterwards I led Charis to our cousin’s house. “Please,” she said, “can’t I stay with Thalia and Lysis? I liked being there.”—“You shall go again, when Father comes home. Just now Lysis might have to go away too, and Thalia would be at his sister’s then.” She did not ask where our father had gone, or why. I never knew a child of her age with so few questions. A year or two before, she had been full of them.

Krokinos’ house was overflowing with women to the doors. A good fellow, as unlike as possible to his father Strymon, he and his wife had taken in the womenfolk of their remotest kindred, if they were exiled or had to fly. Strymon himself, after getting through the siege without losing any flesh to speak of, had died a month afterwards of a chill on the belly.

Next day early, I packed a bag and set out for the farm, on an ass I had hired outside the walls. On Lysis’ advice, I meant to stay there for a week or two. There was plenty to do, and no sense in being about the City when my father was missed. Lysis had promised to come often and bring me news.

It was a beautiful fresh morning when I rode into the hills. Everywhere the wasted farms had started to bear again. In one they were treading the grapes. A little bare boy, driving goats, gave me a smile of milk-teeth and holes. The birds were singing; the cool westward-leaning shadows were the colour of Athene’s eyes. I rode up to the farm, humming to myself The King’s Wife of Sparta. Then I saw that the door stood open.

I thought the place must have been broken into, and ran inside. Nothing seemed disturbed, except one of the beds, which had a blanket on it. But as I walked about, I found my foot was leaving a stain on the floor. Going back to the door, I saw what I had trodden in.

I followed the blood-trail down the path, and across the farmyard. As first there were footsteps, then the marks of hands in the dust, and of a body dragging itself along. Up on the hillside, a mule was cropping the scrub.

I found him at the well, lying on the stone of the well-head, his head hanging over the shaft. I thought he was hours dead; but he said, in a voice like dry grass brushed with the foot, “Draw me some water, Alexias.”

I laid him down, and drew water, and gave it him. He had been stabbed in the back, and again in front when he turned to fight. I don’t know how he had lived so long. When he had drunk, I bent to raise him, and carry him to the house; but he said, “Let me alone. If you move me I shall die; I must speak first.”

I knelt beside him, and dipped my cloak in the water, and cooled his face with it, and waited. “Kritias,” he said. I answered, “I shall remember.” He sunk back into himself, being near his death, and his mind lost in shadows. Presently he said, “Who is it?” I answered, and he came to himself a little.

“Alexias,” he said, “I gave you life. Twice over I gave it.” I said, “Yes, Father,” thinking he wandered. Then he said, “An untimely birth. Sickly and small. One could foresee no credit in you. A man has a right over his own stock. But your mother …” He paused; not as before, but with his eyes on me, seeking strength to speak. I said, “Yes, Father; I owe you a debt.”

He muttered to himself; I heard a few words: “Sokrates” and “Sophists” and “young men today.” His eyes widened, and he pressed his clenched hands back upon the earth; and lifting his voice, as one might lift a heavy stone, he said, “Avenge my blood.” Then he shut his eyes, and turned his head away, and muttered again.

I took his hand, and grasped it hard, till his eyes turned towards me. “Father,” I said, “since I was seventeen I have borne arms for the City. I have not run off any field, though I was fighting strangers only, who had done me no wrong. Am I so base of soul as to forgive my enemies? Believe, Father, that you begot a man.”

His eyes met mine; then his lips parted. I thought he was grimacing in pain, but perceived presently that he was trying to smile. His hand closed on mine, so that his nails pierced my flesh; then it slackened, and I saw that his soul was gone.

Soon after, the hired men, who had fled from the murderers, came back ashamed. I did not reproach them, for they had no arms, but set them to dig a grave for him. At first I had meant to burn his body, and bring back his ashes to the City; but remembering his own words, I buried him in the old plot of our ancestors, which they used long ago before we lived in town. It is a little way up the hill, above the vineyards, where the earth is too poor to farm; but you can see a long way from it, and pick out, when the sun is right, the flash from the High City, when it strikes Athene’s spear. I set the offerings on the grave, and poured the libations. As I sheared my hair for him, I recalled that it was the second time; and yet, I thought, the first time too it was not unfitting.

I laid it on the grave; then heard behind me a movement, and turned swiftly, my knife in my hand. But it was Lysis standing there. I perceived he had been some time waiting, in silence, while I finished the rites. He came forward and took the knife from me and cut off a lock of his hair in token of respect, and laid it on the grave. Then he held out his hand to me, and, when I took it, said, “Come, my dear, get together what you have. We are going to Thebes.”

“No, Lysis. I must go back to the City. I have a matter to settle there.”—“From Thebes it can be settled better. So Thrasybulos writes. I should have come out tomorrow to talk of it; but I had word they were coming for me tonight.” He smiled and said, “Two men warned me, neither knowing of the other. Manhood may be sleeping in the City, but it lives. It has slept in me too, Alexias. I should have gone long since, and tried to do what Thrasybulos has been doing. Weakness held me. It is hard to watch over the green shoot, and then when the flower opens to go away.”

We set forth within the hour upon the mountain road, going on foot, for we had sent back our hired mounts to the City. At first we were silent; he because the parting he had come from was a wound that still bled in him, I because I seemed only now to know myself, when what had pressed my soul into its mould was gone. But in a few hours, with the good air and clear light, and the movement of walking, and seeing places all about where we had fought in the Guard, sorrow lifted from us; and Lysis told me about the force Thrasybulos was raising to free the City. The road climbed high; the air grew sweet and thin; we saw the stone fort of Phyle on its steep hill watching the pass, and left the road lest the guard come out to challenge us. We had a hard scramble over the mountain, but made good going after, and were out of Attica by fall of dark.

So we turned aside, and in sheltered place between rocks we made a little fire, and ate what we had. It was like the days on campaign; we sat recalling old fights and old comrades, till sleep made us heavy. Then we fell to disputing, as we had years back, whether the thicker of our cloaks should be spread to lie on, or above to keep out the cold. When one, which of us I can’t remember, had given way grumbling to the other’s view, we came to spread them, and found there was not a bit to choose between them for thickness; so we laughed, and lay down to sleep.

We were tired, and slept late. I opened my eyes to find a blush of dawn already on the peaks; then I heard a voice say, softly, “One of them is awake.”

I touched Lysis to rouse him without noise, and felt for my dagger. Then I turned my head; and saw two youths, or boys rather, sitting on their heels and smiling. They were dressed for hunting, in leather tunics and belts and shin-guards; one was sturdy and fair, the other long-limbed, and dark. The fair one said, “Good morning, guests of the land. Can you eat a hunter’s breakfast?”

We greeted them, and they led us off to the place where their horses were. There was a fire, and a hare wrapped in clay and leaves baking in the embers. The lads got it out, burning their fingers and swearing and laughing, and cut it up, and handed us choice pieces on the points of their knives.

After they had asked the latest news from the City, “Tell me pray,” said the dark one, “how a man can converse with another whom he doesn’t see or hear?” Something in the way he put his question told me he studied philosophy; so I said smiling, “Enlighten my ignorance, best of men.”—“He can now if he’s a Theban; for our new law is that when we meet you Athenians crossing the hills to take up arms against the tyrants, we don’t see you or hear you; and quite right too.”—“However,” the fair one said, “coming on you asleep, we forgot for a moment you were invisible, and said, ‘These two like us are old friends, and for friendship’s sake we ought to entertain them.’ Kebes and I took the vow of Iolaos, you see, a year ago today. My name is Simmias.”

We introduced ourselves, with compliments on their long association. You could not have told which was the elder, except that Kebes, the dark one, had his boy’s hair still. The sun rose as we ate, round and red above the valley mists. Simmias said, “Our teacher, Philolaos, the Pythagorean, considers the sun to be a great round mirror, reflecting back the central fire of the universe, like a polished shield. But why the fire grows red at sunrise, and white at noon, we cannot determine to our satisfaction; can we, Kebes? How do the Athenian philosophers explain the sun?”—“In nearly as many ways,” said Lysis, “as there are philosophers. But our teacher says that the nature of Helios is a secret of the god; and that a man’s first business is to know himself, and seek the source of light in his own soul. We don’t eat everything we see, but have to learn what our bodies can turn to good. So with the mind.”

“That is reasonable,” said the dark Kebes. “Man’s intellectual soul is a chord struck from all his parts, as the music of the spheres is the chord of the heavenly bodies. If the intervals have no measure, it can make no more sense of anything than a lyre untuned. So Philolaos taught us.”—“But,” Simmias said, “he is soon going back to Italy, and then we shall have no teacher, for we can’t be satisfied with any of the others here. But our fathers won’t let us go to Athens while the tyrants are in power there; so you see we have our own reasons for wanting them gone. Tell us more about this teacher you go to. Has he anything new to say upon the nature of the soul?”

In the end they put our knapsacks on their horses, and walked with us, talking, all the way to Thebes. That night we slept on supper-couches in the guestroom of Simmias’ father. He was putting up two or three other Athenians, and the house of Kebes’ father was already full. Everywhere one met with friendship; it was hard to believe in the bitterness of former days. They had seen enough, they said, of Lysander’s oligarchies, the worst men ruling by the worst means for the worst ends; the friends of liberty were not Thebans and Athenians now, but Hellenes all alike.

Next day the lads wanted to carry us off to hear Philolaos; but we excused ourselves till we had seen Thrasybulos first. It was like old times to go into a plain little wine-shop, and see him pull in his long legs from under the table and come striding over, his brown eyes warm and straight in his lean dark face. “Samian men!” he said. “The best news today.”

It was about a week after this that we left Seven-Gated Thebes; but not alone.

We set forth in the red light of sunset, a band of seventy men. Our shields were covered, our armour brazed, and smeared with dark oil. We were all heavy-armed, however we had come from Attica; the Thebans had armed us. Crossing the border we made an altar, and sacrificed victims to Pallas Athene, and to Zeus the King. The omens were good.

The sun sank, but a little moon was up, enough to save our necks on the hills. It would set later, which was well. By its dipping light, we came to the place where the pass hugs the side of the mountain; opposite is a hollow and a rise, and on the rise the stone fort of Phyle, backed against the drop of a great gorge, its face to the Theban road.

We dropped into the valley, going single file by a little path; at the bottom is a stream, from a source in the hill above, very clean and good to drink. There we waited, while a scout stole up under the walls. He had been stationed there, and knew it like his home. He was back within the hour. They were only a peacetime garrison, glad to be easy now the Spartans had gone. They had given each other the countersign, he said, as loud as a good-day in the Agora.

We crept up to the main gate, just before the guard was due to change again. The moon was down. Someone gave the countersign; when the gate opened, we held it while others thrust in. By good luck, the postern over the gorge, where the rubbish is thrown out, had been left unguarded; the drop is steep, but some of our mountain men climbed in there.

I never saw a garrison so confounded. They hardly resisted, once they understood who and what we were. The officer in charge, thinking of his reputation, put up a fight; but Thrasybulos took him on, and, holding him off without wounding him, asked him across their shields why he was concerned to maintain his honour before rulers who had none themselves, when he might be earning himself a liberator’s undying fame. In the end not only he, but half the garrison took the oath with us, and looked, I thought, five years younger and gayer. The rest we held in bonds till it was light, and we could see where they went; then keeping their arms we let them go.

Later Lysis and I, standing the morning watch upon the walls, saw the sunrise. It came red and purple, for winter drew on, and up there one felt already the nip of frost. Then gold touched the heights; but below us the great cleft of Phyle, which they call the Swallower of Chariots, was a river of unfathomed mist. Light spread; the mist dispersed; far out through the gorge we saw the Acharnian Plain, threaded with a little road; and at the road’s end, dimly shining, the walls and roofs of Athens. In the midst the High City, like an altar, lifted her offerings to the gods. For a long time we gazed in silence; then Lysis said to me, “I think we are seeing the dawn indeed.”