The Last of the Wine: A Novel

28

A YEAR LATER, ON a warm day in spring, I went up to the High City, to receive an olive crown.

It was only one of seventy, which the City had voted to Thrasybulos, and the men who went with him to Phyle. The civil war was over, and the tyranny crushed for good; for Lysander had over-reached himself in Sparta, intriguing for a kingship; King Pausanias had got wind of it, and moved to set him down. Seeking to sap his power everywhere, and thinking it policy besides, the kings had given us leave to set up a democracy again. So the City gave thanks to Zeus, and pledged itself to a rule of perfect justice between man and man.

It was strange to stand again in the Maiden Temple, and feel the olive-twigs prick my brow. Many times in my youth I had prayed that Lysis and I might be crowned together; and he, I daresay, had prayed it too. Now it was I who received his wreath for him, and brought it home. I accepted it for Thalia, it being now my place to act for her in this and in all other things. But the mother of my sons has deserved better of me, these five and twenty years, than to be talked of at large, and already I have set down more than I ought.

Afterwards there were speeches, praising the liberators, honouring the dead, and hailing the fair prospect before the City; for though we had lost empire, they said, we had found justice, the greatest gift of Zeus to man. Then there was a choral contest, a race in armour for men, and, as evening fell, a torch-race for the boys.

I sat in the stadium, in the pause between the contests, thinking I would go down presently to see the lads I had trained for the race, and encourage those who might need it. But there was time yet. The water-sellers and the wine-sellers were busy, for the evening was warm and the runners had kicked up the dust. As you find at such times, friends saw each other from their seats (for it was hardly dusk) and came across, and others made room for them to sit together. Xenophon waved to me, and made his way over. We greeted each other warmly. The amnesty had given both of us a welcome excuse to heal our friendship. I said I had missed him lately in the City, and asked where he had been.

“To Delphi,” he said, “to consult Apollo, how I should sacrifice before a journey I mean to make.” I asked if he was going far. “A good way,” he said. “To Persia, to fight for Cyrus.”

I stared at him, too much surprised to speak. He said, “Proxenos, my Theban friend, has written to me from Sardis. He is in Cyrus’ service already, and tells me he has never met a finer soldier and gentleman. And Proxenos is a judge of such things. A force is needed, it seems, to clean some bandits out of the mountains; and Cyrus is open-handed, which is something to a man whose estate is encumbered like mine.”

“It sounds like an odd business to me. Hire an army of Hellenes to clean out bandits? You can’t trust a Mede’s word; you might be in for anything. Didn’t you ask the oracle, while you were about it, whether you should go at all?” He laughed rather shamefacedly. “That’s what Sokrates said. Well, I admit I didn’t want to change my mind. But I suppose if Apollo had been much against it, he would have given me a hint.”

I felt more concerned for him than I liked to say. Even in peacetime, he would do himself great harm at home by hiring his sword to the patron of Lysander. But he must know it; he was a soldier and no fool. And I thought to ask him why he was leaving the City, just when things were on their feet again; but I did not ask. For though he held himself still like a knight and an officer of horse, yet there had been something dimmed and quenched about him since the amnesty; he had looked like a man without a future. All through the troubles he had gone, as he saw it, step by step with his honour; in the end he had abhorred the tyrants as much as anyone; but his eyes had opened late; and it was true that the City had little use, at present, for men who had ever been loyal to the Thirty.

“Any man,” he said, “wants to leave his name on record somewhere about the earth. Even a boy feels it, who carves a tree. I have dreamed sometimes of founding a city; but that is with the gods.” The wine-seller came round, and he stood me a cup; the usual rough stuff they sell at the games. “Besides,” he said, “I want to study Cyrus. They call him a man born to rule, and I want to know how such a man is made. One hears a great deal from this faction or that, how they are fit to govern, rather than anyone else. As Sokrates always says, a mason, or a smith, can tell you clearly how he qualifies for a job; but no one has defined the qualifications of a ruler; or, rather, no two agree on the definition. Trouble always comes of not defining your terms; but more trouble than most, it seems, of not defining this one.”

“Good luck, then,” I said, “with your definition. But bring it back here, for your friends to share.” I looked at him, tipping down the coarse wine like a man who expects to put up with worse. I felt I was looking my last at the lad I still remembered. I was right. When I saw him again, it was five years later, and not in Athens. He was tanned like the thong of a javelin, and as tough as the shaft, a soldier who looked to have been cradled in a shield; but the oddest change, I think, was to see in one always so mindful of convention that careless outlandishness you find in irregular troops of great renown; men who seem to say, “Take it or leave it, you who never went where we have been. We are the only judges of one another.”

He went off to some other friends; and I, seeing someone sign to me, stood up, and recognized Phaedo, and went over. Plato was with him, and, a few benches lower, Sokrates in talk with his old friend Chairophon, who was back from his exile with the democrats. They did not see me, coming behind; but Plato made me sit beside him. When we meet in public places, he has never ceased to show me courtesy. But he does not ask me to his house. Though I never came forward as the killer of Kritias (no man will boast of what he has bought too dear) yet it was known to a few; and no doubt it will be a bad day for the City, when men are so lost to piety that they play host to the shedder of a kinsman’s blood.

We talked of indifferent things, and watched the juggler who was tossing torches in the Stadium, for twilight was falling. On the bench just below ours, Anytos was talking with some friends. He too had been crowned that day for his work in the resistance, and no one had deserved it better. He had laboured in exile almost as hard as Thrasybulos, and fought well at Piraeus though no longer young. He was a man who had never done anything by halves. Long before, when all the City was in love with Alkibiades, Anytos’ passion had been notorious above all the rest, thriving on scorn and even on public insult. He had given a banquet once, it was said, to which the youth had refused to come. But Anytos did not cease his importunities, begging him almost on his knees to come on any terms. Alkibiades went off laughing; when the guests arrived, he was not there; but halfway through he appeared, standing in the doorway. Entreated to come in, he said nothing, but sent his servant to pick up the silver wine-cups on the table, and walked away with them, still without a word. This happened in the days when he was running after Sokrates; who, never asking anything for himself, I daresay had made the youth more contemptuous than before of his troops of slaves.

Nowadays, however, Anytos was being hailed everywhere as a saviour of democracy; and had become the very type and pattern of a democrat. He made it a pride to go about with his right shoulder bared, like a workman, instead of the left; this though he was very well off, and employed in his tannery both freemen and slaves. He was making a name for himself in politics; this evening one saw him interrupted by many greetings, as he conversed with his friends.

“Well,” he was saying, “we fought for this, and now we see it. Here sit the people, come into their own; the simple folk, met in brotherhood to proclaim their triumph, to honour the old virtues, to share their pride and feel their happiness. A day of scorn for the half-hearted, the triflers and equivocators, and any who did not feel their struggle as his own. Theirs is the future; this is their day.”

His friends applauded. But Plato turned impatiently to Phaedo, saying, “What does the man mean, with all these booming words? Who are these people? Which persons? Who are the simple—Phaedo, what about you? Do you feel your happiness, Alexias? … Forgive me. You are free to ask me the same.”

I said, “It’s a figure, I suppose.” His voice was always high and clear; I thought, from Anytos’ back, that he had overheard.

“A bad one then; for it is a figure of what is not. There is no People here. There are twenty thousand bodies, imprisoning each a soul, the centre of a cosmos no other sees. Here they pause, and in each other’s company trifle a little time away, before each takes up again the labour of his solitude, by which alone his soul will live or die, his long journey home to God. Who can do good, without knowing what it is? And how will he find it, except in thought, or prayer, or in talk with a few truth-seeking friends, or with the teacher God has sent him? Nor will it come in some catch-phrase that can be shouted in the Agora, meaning the same to all who hear; but by long learning of the self, and of the causes of error, by bridling desire, and breaking it like a hard-mouthed horse, and coming in submission to the truth again, only at last by long labour it will be refined like gold. None of these things will happen in a crowd; but rather bending like a reed before the wind of wrath, or fear, or ignorant prejudice, catching by infection a false conceit of knowledge, or at the best a true opinion, not weighed and sifted out. What is the People, that we should worship it? Shall we worship the beast in man before the god?”

I saw Anytos look round, and almost speak. He was now very clearly angry; but seeing me he held his peace, thinking, no doubt, that I was a proper person to deal with the matter.

“But,” I said, “men must come together to make laws, and for war, and to honour the gods; they must learn to act for the common good. For such proper purposes, they must feel themselves a Demos, surely, as seamen feel themselves a crew.”

“Yes; but let them beware of the lie in the soul. Men worship such words; and then, feeling themselves a part of what can do no wrong, swell up in hubris, thinking only how much higher they are than another set of men, not how much lower than the gods. What is the Demos but as a wave of the sea, that changes substance a thousand times between shore and shore? What is its archetype? Let us allow that the divine mind may contain, as well as the ideas of justice, holiness, and truth, an idea of Man embodying them all, in every proportion perfectly tuned and true, as Zeus the Creator first conceived us. You may say that a man so made would be nearer to a god; still, there is room in the Order of the universe for such a concept. But how can there be an idea of People? Who can conceive it, let alone love? Were you in love with it, Alexias, when you went to Phyle? No. You were in love with liberty, and have logic enough to know that what you love would perish in your sole embrace. May I speak of Lysis, since today we have remembered him? He loved justice, being a true child of Zeus; and wished to share it, as he would have shared any good thing he had. Why should he love the Demos, he who was great enough of heart to love men? Even if Zeus the All-knowing were to put on earth this perfect man we have postulated, would he love the Demos? I think not. He would love knight and commoner, slave and free, Hellene and barbarian, even perhaps the wicked, for they too are the prisons of God-born souls. And the Demos would join with the tyrants, to demand that he be crucified.”

There was a sound of music in the Stadium below, and a troop of lads came in, with helmets and shields, some holding spears in their hands and others torches, to dance for Zeus. Phaedo got up and said, “Finish the argument between you; but before the race begins, I want a word with Sokrates.”

“Let us all go,” said Plato. But as we were rising, Anytos, who had turned right round this time, said, “I thought as much!”

“Sir?” said Plato pausing. Anytos said, “So you are a pupil of Sokrates, are you?”—“No, sir,” said Plato, lifting his brows and bringing them down hard. “I am proud to be his friend. Excuse me.” He walked away after Phaedo, who had not heard.

I was following, when Anytos reached out and plucked my mantle. He had a way of grasping, and slapping, and tapping those he conversed with, being an enemy of all aloofness and reserve, which smelt to him of oligarchy. I felt the respect that was due to his record; so out of civility I sat down again.

“I wonder at you, Alexias,” he said, “you who have been crowned this very day and honoured by the Demos as a friend, that you can listen to this reactionary stuff and keep your temper. I thought you at least would have ceased to be fooled by Sokrates, now you are a man.”—“Why, Anytos, I have fought as a democrat, here and in Samos, only because Sokrates taught me to think for myself. And Plato forsook the tyrants, though some were his kin, for Sokrates’ sake. He sets each man seeking the truth that is in him.”

I could see him waiting for me to cease, to say what he had ready to say, exactly as if I had not spoken. I had felt easy with him, liking the way he treated every man as an equal; but it is strange to speak with someone one’s thoughts do not reach. Of a sudden it was as if a great desert surrounded me; I even felt the fear of Pan, driver of herds, as one does in lonely places.

“That man,” said Anytos, “ever since I remember, has been seen about with rich young idlers, flaunting their privilege of leisure, and frittering away their best years when they might have been mastering an honest trade. Can you deny that Kritias was his pupil? Or perhaps you would rather say his friend? What is more, ever since the democracy was restored, he has mocked at it, and undermined it.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Indeed I don’t know what you mean, unless that Sokrates thinks it foolish to choose archons and judges by lot. He says no man chooses a doctor by lot, when his son is sick. Would you?”

His face darkened, and I saw I had stirred some thought that vexed him. “Take my advice,” he said, “and don’t stay till he corrupts your mind, and leaves you without principle or religion or reverence for anything, as he has other young men.”—“Corrupts me? Before I talked with Sokrates, I did not know what religion meant. It would be late to leave him now, Anytos. Since I was a child he has been as a father to me, and much more.” I saw a vein swell in his forehead; and when he spoke again, I perceived he had passed beyond logic, and was delivered up entirely to himself. “More than a father! You have said it. There is the root of the evil. Who can guide a lad better than his own father, I should like to know?”—“It depends,” I said. “A pilot might, don’t you think, if he were at sea? Or a physician, if he had fever? The City seems to think even I can do it better, when the boy is learning to run.” And I began to speak of those who were competing in the torch-race, thinking to calm him. But he was angrier than before.

“Quibbles!” he said. “Everlasting quibbling, eating away the decent principles every man’s instinct should tell him are true. How does he get this hold over young men? By flattering them, of course; making them think they have a mission in life to be something out of the way, like that head-in-air young fellow who was sneering at the Demos just now; teaching them that to work at a good trade, where they could learn the meaning of true democracy in give-and-take with their mates, is a waste of their precious souls; that unless they can dawdle about with him all day in the colonnades, talking away everything sacred, they will turn to clods—just like their poor fathers, who have only sweated blood that they might live as citizens and not as slaves.”—“He was brought up to a trade himself, and is proud of it. All the City knows that.”—“Don’t speak to me of Sokrates. If young men don’t pay for his lessons, by the Dog, their fathers pay.”

I followed his eyes, knowing beforehand, now, what I should see. His son, Anthemion, a youth of about eighteen, was sitting a little way further on, in a group of tradesmen’s sons, who were gazing at him admiringly. From the sound of their laughter, he had just told a very dirty tale; and as I looked, he beckoned back the wine-seller, as I had seen him do already two or three times. Crude as the stuff was, he was drinking it unmixed, as men do who cannot be without it, a youth with pale hair and brows, a flushed quick-moving face, and desperate eyes.

“He is taking more than is good for him,” I said. “All his friends are sorry for it. In the days when he was coming to Sokrates, I never saw him drink at all. I don’t think he is happy. Not, I am sure, from thinking himself too good to work in your tanyard, but perhaps because it keeps him from using something in himself, as it might be with a bird, if you caged it when its wings were growing”—“Twaddle!” he said. “What does he think he is? He will serve his apprenticeship like anyone else. I fought for equality between man and man. No one shall say of me that I brought up my son to be better than his fellow citizens.”

“Must we forsake the love of excellence, then, till every citizen feels it alike? I did not fight, Anytos, to be crowned where I have not run; but for a City where I can know who my equals really are, and my betters, to do them honour; where a man’s daily life is his own business; and where no one will force a lie on me because it is expedient, or some other man’s will.”

The words seemed, as I spoke, to be my own thoughts that I owed to no one, only to some memory in my soul; but when I looked beyond the Stadium, to where they were kindling the lights on the High City in the falling dark, I saw the lamps of Samos shine through a doorway, and the wine-cup standing on the table of scoured wood. Then the pain of loss leaped out on me, like a knife in the night when one has been on one’s guard all day. The world grew hollow, a place of shadows; yet none would hold out the cup of Lethe to let me drink.

“No,” I thought, “I would not drink it. For here he lives in the thing we made: the boys down there, dancing for Zeus; people watching in freedom, their thoughts upon their faces; this silly old man speaking his mind, such as it is, with none to threaten him; and Sokrates saying among his friends, ‘We shall either find what we are seeking, or free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.’”

I looked down the benches, and saw him in conversation with the wine-seller, from whom Chairophon was buying a round. The flambeaux had been kindled ready for the race, showing me his old Silenos mask, and Plato and Phaedo laughing. I touched the ring on my finger, saying within me, “Sleep quietly, Lysis. All is well.”

The voice of Anytos, some while unheeded, came back into my ear. “He taught you a new religion, too, you say. I can believe it. Even the holy Olympians are not good enough for him. He must have his own deity to give him oracles, and sets it above the gods of the City. He is impious; he is anti-democratic; in a word, he is un-Athenian. I am not the only one who has had enough of it. Only influence in high places has kept him from getting his deserts long since. But this is a democracy.”

I turned to look at him, and saw his eyes. Then I knew what it was in his voice that had caught my ear. It was the feel of power. A cold wind blew up the stream of the Dissos, and swept along the Stadium. It flattened the flame of the torches, and the black night leaned down.

Someone reached from above and touched my shoulder. “Aren’t you coming, Alexias? Your boys are looking for you. It is getting near starting-time; the dance is over already, and they are going to sing the hymn.”

As he spoke, the choregos raised his wand, and the young boys’ chorus rose into the fading sky, like a flight of bright birds, invoking Zeus the King, the All-Knowing, giver of wisdom, and of justice between man and man. I rose to my feet, the voice of Anytos running on beside me; and before me in the torchlight Sokrates talking to Phaedo, with the cup in his hand.

This book I found among the papers of my father Myron, which came to me at his death. It must be, as I suppose, the work of my grandfather Alexias, who died suddenly in the hunting-field, I being then a young. child, and he about fifty-five years old. I have bound it up as it was, being able to find no more of it. Whether my grandfather had finished the book, I do not know.

ALEXIAS, son of Myron, Phylarch of the Athenian horse to the divine Alexander, King of Macedon, Leader Supreme of all the Hellenes.