Worlds That Weren't

Simon the shoemaker’s shop stood close to the southwestern corner of the Athenian agora, near the boundary stone marking the edge of the market square and across a narrow dirt lane from the Tholos, the round building where the executive committee of the Boule met. Inside the shop, Simon pounded iron hobnails into the sole of a sandal. His son worked with an awl, shaping bone eyelets through which rawhide laces would go. Two grandsons cut leather for more shoes.

Outside, in the shade of an olive tree, a man in his mid-fifties strode back and forth, arguing with a knot of younger men and youths. He was engagingly ugly: bald, heavy-browed, snub-nosed, with a gray beard that should have been more neatly trimmed. “And so you see, my friends,” he was saying, “my daimon has told me that this choice does indeed come from the gods, and that something great may spring from it. Thus, though I love you and honor you, I shall obey the spirit inside me rather than you.”

“But, Sokrates, you have already given Athens all she could want of you,” exclaimed Kritias, far and away the most prominent of the men gathered there and, next to Sokrates, the eldest. “You fought at Potidaia and Delion and Amphipolis. But the last of those battles was seven years ago. You are neither so young nor so strong as you used to be. You need not go to Sicily. Stay here in the polis. Your wisdom is worth more to the city than your spear ever could be.”

The others dipped their heads in agreement. A youth whose first beard was just beginning to darken his cheeks said, “He speaks for all of us, Sokrates. We need you here more than the expedition ever could.”

“How can one man speak for another, Xenophon?” Sokrates asked. Then he held up a hand. “Let that be a question for another time. The question for now is, why should I be any less willing to fight for my polis than, say, he is?”

He pointed to a hoplite tramping past in front of Simon’s shop. The infantryman wore his crested bronze helm pushed back on his head, so the cheekpieces and noseguard did not hide his face. He rested the shaft of his long thrusting spear on his shoulder; a shortsword swung from his hip. Behind him, a slave carried his corselet and greaves and round, bronze-faced shield.

Kritias abandoned the philosophic calm he usually kept up in Sokrates’ company. “To the crows with Alkibiades!” he burst out. “He didn’t ask you to sail with him to Sicily for the sake of your strong right arm. He just wants you for the sake of your conversation, the same way as he’ll probably bring along a hetaira to keep his bed warm. You’re going for the sake of his cursed vanity: no other reason.”

“No.” Sokrates tossed his head. “I am going because it is important that I go. So my daimon tells me. I have listened to it all my life, and it has never led me astray.”

“We’re not going to change his mind now,” one of the young men whispered to another. “When he gets that look in his eye, he’s stubborn as a donkey.”

Sokrates glanced toward the herm in front of Simon’s shop: a stone pillar with a crude carving of Hermes’ face at the top and the god’s genitals halfway down. “Guard me well, patron of travelers,” he murmured.

“Be careful you don’t get your nose or your prong knocked off, Sokrates, the way a lot of the herms did last year,” somebody said.

“Yes, and people say Alkibiades was hip-deep in that sacrilege, too,” Kritias added. A considerable silence followed. Kritias was hardly the one to speak of sacrilege. He was at least as scornful of the gods as Alkibiades; he’d once claimed priests had invented them to keep ordinary people in line.

But, instead of rising to that, Sokrates only said, “Have we not seen, O best one, that we should not accept what is said without first attempting to learn how much truth it holds?” Kritias went red, then turned away in anger. If Sokrates noticed, he gave no sign.

I am the golden one.

Alkibiades looked at the triremes and transports in Athens’ harbor, Peiraieus. All sixty triremes and forty transport ships about to sail for Sicily were as magnificent as their captains could make them. The eyes painted at their bows seemed to look eagerly toward the west. The ships were long and low and sleek, lean almost as eels. Some skippers had polished the three-finned, bronze-faced rams at their bows so they were a gleaming, coppery red rather than the usual green that almost matched the sea. Paint and even gilding ornamented curved stemposts and sternposts with fanlike ends.

Hoplites boarded the transports, which were triremes with the fittings for their two lower banks of oars removed to make more room for the foot soldiers. Now and then, before going up the gangplanks and into the ships, the men would pause to embrace kinsmen or youths who were dear to them or even hetairai or wives who, veiled against the public eye, had ventured forth for this farewell.

A hundred ships. More than five thousand hoplites. More than twelve thousand rowers. Mine. Every bit of it mine, Alkibiades thought.

He stood at the stern of his own ship, the Thraseia. Even thinking of the name made him smile. What else would he call his ship but Boldness? If any one trait distinguished him, that was it.

Every so often, a soldier on the way to a transport would wave to him. He always smiled and waved back. Admiration was as essential to him as the air he breathed. And I deserve every bit I get, too.

He was thirty-five, the picture of what a man-or perhaps a god-should look like. He’d been the most beauti ful boy in Athens, the one all the men wanted. He threw back his head and laughed, remembering the pranks he’d played on some of the rich fools who wanted to be his lover. A lot of boys lost their looks when they came into manhood. Not me, he thought complacently. He remained every bit as splendid, if in a different way-still the target of every man’s eye…and every woman’s.

A hoplite trudged by, helmet on his head: a sturdy, wide-shouldered fellow with a gray beard. He carried his own armor and weapons, and didn’t seem to be bringing a slave along to attend to him while on campaign. Even though Sokrates had pushed back the helm, as a man did when not wearing it into battle, it made Alkibiades need an extra heartbeat or two to recognize him.

“Hail, O best one!” Alkibiades called.

Sokrates stopped and dipped his head in polite acknowledgment. “Hail.”

“Where are you bound?”

“Why, to Sicily: so the Assembly voted, and so we shall go.”

Alkibiades snorted. Sokrates could be most annoying when he was most literal, as the younger man had found out studying with him. “No, my dear. That’s not what I meant. Where are you bound now?”

“To a transport. How else shall I go to Sicily? I cannot swim so far, and I doubt a dolphin would bear me up, as one did for Arion long ago.”

“How else shall you go?” Alkibiades said grandly. “Why, here aboard the Thraseia with me, of course. I’ve had the decking cut away to make the ship lighter and faster-and to give more breeze below it. And I’ve slung a hammock down there, and I can easily sling another for you, my dear. No need to bed down on hard planking.”

Sokrates stood there and started to think. When he did that, nothing and no one could reach him till he finished. The fleet might sail without him, and he would never notice. He’d thought through a day and a night up at Potidaia years before, not moving or speaking. Here, though, only a couple of minutes went by before he came out of his trance. “Which other hoplites will go aboard your trireme?” he asked.

“Why, no others-only rowers and marines and officers,” Alkibiades answered with a laugh. “We can, if you like, sleep under one blanket, as we did up in the north.” He batted his eyes with an alluring smile.

Most Athenians would have sailed with him forever after an offer like that. Sokrates might not even have heard it. “And how many hoplites will be aboard the other triremes of the fleet?” he inquired.

“None I know of,” Alkibiades said.

“Then does it not seem to you, O marvelous one, that the proper place for rowers and marines is aboard the triremes, while the proper place for hoplites is aboard the transports?” Having solved the problem to his own satisfaction, Sokrates walked on toward the transports. Alkibiades stared after him. After a moment, he shook his head and laughed again.

Once the Athenians sneaked a few soldiers into Katane by breaking down a poorly built gate, the handful of men in it who supported Syracuse panicked and fled south toward the city they favored. That amused Alkibiades, for he hadn’t got enough men into the Sicilian polis to seize it in the face of a determined resistance. Boldness, he thought again. Always boldness. With the pro-Syracusans gone, Katane promptly opened its gates to the Athenian expeditionary force.

The polis lay about two thirds of the way down from Messane at the northern corner of Sicily to Syracuse. Mount Aetna dominated the northwestern horizon, a great cone shouldering its way up into the sky. Even with spring well along, snow still clung to the upper slopes of the volcano. Here and there, smoke issued from vents in the flanks and at the top. Every so often, lava would gush from them. When it flowed in the wrong direction, it destroyed the Katanians’ fields and olive groves and vineyards. If it flowed in exactly the wrong direction, it would destroy their town.

Alkibiades felt like the volcano himself after another fight with Nikias. The Athenians had sent Nikias along with the expedition to serve as an anchor for Alkibiades. He knew it, knew it and hated it. He didn’t particularly hate Nikias himself; he just found him laughable, to say nothing of irrelevant. Nikias was twenty years older than he, and those twenty years might just as well have been a thousand.

Nikias dithered and worried and fretted. Alkibiades thrust home. Nikias gave reverence to the gods with obsessive piety, and did nothing without checking the omens first. Alkibiades laughed at the gods when he didn’t ignore them. Nikias had opposed this expedition to Sicily. It had been Alkibiades’ idea.

“We were lucky ever to take this place,” Nikias had grumbled. He kept fooling with his beard, as if he had lice. For all Alkibiades knew, he did.

“Yes, my dear,” Alkibiades had said with such patience as he could muster. “Luck favors us. We should-we had better-take advantage of it. Ask Lamakhos. He’ll tell you the same.” Lamakhos was the other leading officer in the force. Alkibiades didn’t despise him. He wasn’t worth despising. He was just… dull.

“I don’t care what Lamakhos thinks,” Nikias had said testily. “I think we ought to thank the gods we’ve come this far safely. We ought to thank them, and then go home.”

“And make Athens the laughingstock of Hellas?” And make me the laughingstock of Hellas? “Not likely!”

“We cannot do what we came to Sicily to do,” Nikias had insisted.

“You were the one who told the Assembly we needed such a great force. Now we have it, and you still aren’t happy with it?”

“I never dreamt they would be mad enough actually to send so much.”

Alkibiades hadn’t hit him then. He might have, but he’d been interrupted. A commotion outside made both men hurry out of Alkibiades’ tent. “What is it?” Alkibiades called to a man running his way. “Is the Syracusan fleet coming up to fight us?” It had stayed in the harbor when an Athenian reconnaissance squadron sailed south a couple of weeks before. Maybe the Syracusans hoped to catch the Athenian triremes beached and burn or wreck them. If they did, they would get a nasty surprise.

But the Athenian tossed his head. “It’s not the polluted Syracusans,” he answered. “It’s the Salaminia. She’s just come into the harbor here.”

“The Salaminia?” Alkibiades and Nikias spoke together, and in identical astonishment. The Salaminia was Athens’ official state trireme, and wouldn’t venture far from home except on most important business. Sure enough, peering toward the harbor, Alkibiades could see her crew dragging her out of the sea and up onto the yellow sand of the beach. “What’s she doing here?” he asked.

Nikias eyed him with an expression compounded of equal parts loathing and gloating. “I’ll bet I know,” the older man said. “I’ll bet they found someone who told the citizens of Athens the real story, the true story, of how the herms all through the polis were profaned.”

“I had nothing to do with that,” Alkibiades said. He’d said the same thing ever since the mutilations happened. “And besides,” he added, “just about as many of the citizens of Athens are here in Sicily as are back at the polis.”

“You can’t evade like that,” Nikias said. “You remind me of your dear teacher Sokrates, using bad logic to beat down good.”

Alkibiades stared at him as if he’d found him squashed on the sole of his sandal. “What you say about Sokrates would be a lie even if you’d thought of it yourself. But it comes from Aristophanes’ Clouds, and you croak it out like a raven trained to speak but without the wit to understand its words.”

Nikias’ cheeks flamed red as hot iron beaten on the anvil. Alkibiades would have liked to beat him. Instead, he contemptuously turned his back. But that pointed his gaze toward the Salaminia again. Athenians down there on the shore were pointing up to the high ground on which he stood. A pair of men whose gold wreaths declared they were on official business made their way toward him.

He hurried to meet them. That was always his style. He wanted to make things happen, not have them happen to him. Nikias followed. “Hail, friends!” Alkibiades called, tasting the lie. “Are you looking for me? I am here.”

“Alkibiades son of Kleinias?” one of the newcomers asked formally.

“You know who I am, Herakleides,” Alkibiades said. “What do you want?”

“I think, son of Kleinias, that you know what I want,” Herakleides replied. “You are ordered by the people of Athens to return to the polis to defend yourself against serious charges that have been raised against you.”

More and more hoplites and rowers gathered around Alkibiades and the men newly come from Athens. This was an armed camp, not a peaceful city; many of them carried spears or wore swords on their hips. Alkibiades smiled to see them, for he knew they were well inclined toward him. In a loud voice, he asked, “Am I under arrest?”

Herakleides and his wreathed comrade licked their lips. The mere word made soldiers growl and heft their spears; several of them drew their swords. Gathering himself, Herakleides answered, “No, you are not under arrest. But you are summoned to defend yourself, as I said. How can a man with such charges hanging over his head hope to hold an important position of public trust?”

“Yes-how indeed?” Nikias murmured.

Again, Alkibiades gave him a look full of withering scorn. Then he forgot about him. Herakleides and his friend were more important at the moment. So were the soldiers and sailors-much more important. With a smile and a mocking bow, Alkibiades said, “How can any man hope to hold an important position of public trust when a lying fool can trump up such charges and hang them over his head?”

“That’s the truth,” a hoplite growled, right in Herakleides’ ear. He was a big, burly fellow with a thick black beard-a man built like a wrestler or a pankratiast. Alkibiades wouldn’t have wanted a man like that growling in his ear and clenching a spearshaft till his knuckles whitened.

By the involuntary step back Herakleides took, he didn’t care for it, either. His voice quavered as he said, “You deny the charges, then?”

“Of course I do,” Alkibiades answered. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Sokrates pushing through the crowd toward the front. A lot of men were pushing forward, but somehow Sokrates, despite his years, made more progress than most. Maybe the avid curiosity on his face helped propel him forward. Or maybe not; he almost always seemed that curious. But Sokrates would have to wait now, too. Alkibiades went on, “I say they’re nothing but a pack of lies put forward by scavenger dogs who, unable to do anything great themselves, want to pull down those who can.”

Snarls of agreement rose from the soldiers and sailors. Herakleides licked his lips again. He must have known recalling Alkibiades wouldn’t be easy before the Salaminia sailed. Had he known it would be this hard? Alkibiades had his doubts. With something like a sigh, Herakleides said, “At the motion of Thettalos son of Kimon, it has seemed good to the people of Athens to summon you home. Will you obey the democratic will of the Assembly, or will you not?”

Alkibiades grimaced. He had no use for the democracy of Athens, and had never bothered hiding that. As a result, the demagogues who loved to hear themselves talk in the Assembly hated him. He said, “I have no hope of getting a fair hearing in Athens. My enemies have poisoned the people of the polis against me.”

Herakleides frowned portentously. “Would you refuse the Assembly’s summons?”

“I don’t know what I’ll do right now.” Alkibiades clenched his fists. What he wanted to do was pound the smugness out of the plump, prosperous fool in front of him. But no. It would not do. Here, though, even he, normally so quick and decisive, had trouble figuring out what would do. “Let me have time to think, O marvelous one,” he said, and watched Herakleides redden at the sarcasm. “I will give you my answer tomorrow.”

“Do you want to be declared a rebel against the people of Athens?” Herakleides’ frown got deeper and darker.

“No, but I don’t care to go home and be ordered to guzzle hemlock no matter what I say or do, either,” Alkibiades answered. “Were it your life, Herakleides, such as that is, would you not want time to plan out what to do?”

That such as that is made the man just come from Athens redden again. But soldiers and sailors jostled forward, getting louder by the minute in support of their general. Herakleides yielded with such grace as he could: “Let it be as you say, most noble one.” He turned the title of respect into one of reproach. “I will hear your answer tomorrow. For now…hail.” He turned and walked back toward the Salaminia. The sun glinted dazzlingly off his gold wreath.

Sokrates stood in line to get his evening rations. Talk of Alkibiades and the herms and the profanation of the sacred mysteries was on everyone’s lips. Some men thought he’d done what he was accused of doing. Others insisted the charges against him were invented to discredit him.

“Wait,” Sokrates told a man who’d been talking about unholy deeds and how the gods despised them. “Say that again, Euthyphron, if you please. I don’t follow your thought, which is surely much too wise for a simple fellow like me.”

“I’d be glad to, Sokrates,” the other hoplite said, and he did.

“I’m sorry, best one. I really must be dense,” Sokrates said when he’d finished. “I still do not quite see. Do you say deeds are unholy because the gods hate them, or do you say the gods hate them because they are unholy?”

“I certainly do,” Euthyphron answered.

“No, wait. I see what Sokrates means,” another soldier broke in. “You can’t have that both ways. It’s one or the other. Which do you say it is?”

Euthyphron tried to have it both ways. Sokrates’ questions wouldn’t let him. Some of the other Athenians jeered at him. Others showed more sympathy for him, even in his confusion, than they did for Sokrates. “Do you have to be a gadfly all the time?” a hoplite asked him after Euthyphron, very red in the face, bolted out of the line without getting his supper.

“I can only be what I am,” Sokrates answered. “Am I wrong for trying to find the truth in everything I do?”

The other man shrugged. “I don’t know whether you’re right or wrong. What I do know is, you’re cursed annoying.”

When Sokrates blinked his big round eyes in surprise, he looked uncommonly like a frog. “Why should the search for truth be annoying? Would you not think preventing that search to be a greater annoyance for mankind?”

But the hoplite threw up his hands. “Oh, no, you don’t. I won’t play. You’re not going to twist me up in knots, the way you did with poor Euthyphron.”

“Euthyphron’s thinking was not straight before I ever said a word to him. All I did was show him his inconsistencies. Now maybe he will try to root them out.”

The other soldier tossed his head. But he still refused to argue. Sighing, Sokrates snaked forward with the rest of the line. A bored-looking cook handed him a small loaf of dark bread, a chunk of cheese, and an onion. The man filled his cup with watered wine and poured olive oil for the bread into a little cruet he held out.

“I thank you,” Sokrates said. The cook looked surprised. Soldiers and sailors were likelier to grumble about the fare than thank him for it.

Men clustered in little knots of friends to eat and to go on hashing over the coming of the Salaminia and what it was liable to mean. Sokrates had no usual group to join. Part of the reason there was that he was at least twenty years older than most of the other Athenians who’d traveled west to Sicily. But his age was only part of the reason, and he knew it. He sighed. He didn’t want to make people uncomfortable. He didn’t want to, but he’d never been able to avoid it.

He walked back to his tent to eat his supper. When he was done, he went outside and stared up at Mount Aetna. Why, he wondered, did it stay cold enough for snow to linger on the mountain’s upper slopes even on this sweltering midsummer evening?

He was no closer to finding the answer when someone called his name. He got the idea this wasn’t the first time the man had called. Sure enough, when he turned, there stood Alkibiades with a sardonic grin on his face. “Hail, O wisest of all,” the younger man said. “Good to see you with us again.”

“If I am wisest-which I doubt, no matter what the gods may say-it is because I know how ignorant I am, where other men are ignorant even of that,” Sokrates replied.

Alkibiades’ grin grew impudent. “Other men don’t know how ignorant you are?” he suggested slyly. Sokrates laughed. But Alkibiades’ grin slipped. “Ignorant or not, will you walk with me?”

“If you like,” Sokrates said. “You know I never could resist your beauty.” He imitated the little lisp for which Alkibiades was famous, and sighed like a lover gazing upon his beloved.

“Oh, go howl!” Alkibiades said. “Even when we slept under the same blanket, we only slept. You did your best to ruin my reputation.”

“I cannot ruin your reputation.” Sokrates’ voice grew sharp. “Only you can do that.”

Alkibiades made a face at him. “Come along, best one, if you’d be so kind.” They walked away from the Athenian encampment on a winding dirt track that led up toward Aetna. Alkibiades wore a chiton with purple edging and shoes with golden clasps. Sokrates’ tunic was threadbare and raggedy; he went barefoot the way he usually did, as if he were a sailor.

The sight of the most and least elegant men in the Athenian expedition walking along together would have been plenty to draw eyes even if the Salaminia hadn’t just come to Katane. As things were, they had to tramp along for several stadia before shaking off the last of the curious. Sokrates ignored the men who followed hoping to eavesdrop. Alkibiades glowered at them till they finally gave up.

“Vultures,” he muttered. “Now I know how Prometheus must have felt.” He put a hand over his liver.

“Is that what you wanted to talk about?” Sokrates asked.

“You know what I want to talk about. You were there when those idiots in gold wreaths summoned me back to Athens,” Alkibiades answered. Sokrates looked over at him, his face showing nothing but gentle interest. Alkibiades snorted. “And don’t pretend you don’t, either, if you please. I haven’t the time for it.”

“I am only the most ignorant of men-” Sokrates began. Alkibiades cursed him, as vilely as he knew how. Sokrates gave back a mild smile in return. That made Alkibiades curse harder yet. Sokrates went on as if he hadn’t spoken: “So you will have to tell me what it is you want, I fear.”

“All right. All right.” Alkibiades kicked at a pebble. It spun into the brush by the track. “I’ll play your polluted game. What am I supposed to do about the Salaminia and the summons?”

“Why, that which is best, of course.”

“Thank you so much, O most noble one,” Alkibiades snarled. He kicked another pebble, a bigger one this time. “ Oimoi! That hurt!” He hopped a couple of times before hurrying to catch up with Sokrates, who’d never slowed.

Sokrates eyed him with honest perplexity. “What else can a man who knows what the good is do but that which is best?”

“What is the good here?” Alkibiades demanded.

“Why ask me, when I am so ignorant?” Sokrates replied. Alkibiades started to kick yet another pebble, thought better of it, and cursed again instead. Sokrates waited till he’d finished, then inquired, “What do you think the good is here?”

“Games,” Alkibiades muttered. He breathed heavily, mastering himself. Then he laughed, and seemed to take himself by surprise. “I’ll pretend I’m an ephebe again, eighteen years old and curious as a puppy. By the gods, I wish I were. The good here is that which is best for me and that which is best for Athens.”

He paused, waiting to see what Sokrates would say to that. Sokrates, as was his way, asked another question: “And what will happen if you return to Athens on the Salaminia?”

“My enemies there will murder me under form of law,” Alkibiades answered. After another couple of strides, he seemed to remember he was supposed to think of Athens, too. “And Nikias will find some way to botch this expedition. For one thing, he’s a fool. For another, he doesn’t want to be here in the first place. He doesn’t think we can win. With him in command, he’s likely right.”

“Is this best for you and best for Athens, then?” Sokrates asked.

Alkibiades gave him a mocking bow. “It would seem not, O best one,” he answered, as if he were chopping logic in front of Simon the shoemaker’s.

“All right, then. What other possibilities exist?” Sokrates asked.

“I could make as if to go back to Athens, then escape somewhere and live my own life,” Alkibiades said. “That’s what I’m thinking of doing now, to tell you the truth.”

“I see,” Sokrates said. “And is this best for you?”

A wild wolf would have envied Alkibiades’ smile. “I think so. It would give me the chance to avenge myself on all my enemies. And I would, too. Oh, wouldn’t I just?”

“I believe you,” Sokrates said, and he did. Alkibiades was a great many things, but no one had ever reckoned him less than able. “Now, what of Athens if you do this?”

“As for the expedition, the same as in the first case. As for the polis, to the crows with it,” Alkibiades said savagely. “It is my enemy, and I its.”

“And is this that which is best for Athens, which you said you sought?” Sokrates asked. Yes, Alkibiades would make a formidable enemy.

“A man should do his friends good and his enemies harm,” he said now. “If the city made me flee her, she would be my enemy, not my friend. Up till now, I have done her as much good as I could. I would do the same in respect to harm.”

A wall lizard stared at Sokrates from a boulder sticking up out of the scrubby brush by the side of the track. He took one step closer to it. It scrambled off the boulder and away. For a moment, he could hear it skittering through dry weeds. Then it must have found a hole, for silence returned. He wondered how it knew to run when something that might be danger approached. But that riddle would have to wait for another time. He gave his attention back to Alkibiades, who was watching him with an expression of wry amusement, and asked, “If you go back with the Salaminia to Athens, then, you say, you will suffer?”

“That is what I say, yes.” Alkibiades dipped his head in agreement.

“And if you do not accompany the Salaminia all the way back to Athens, you say that the polis will be the one to suffer?”

“Certainly. I say that also,” Alkibiades replied with a wry chuckle. “See how much I sound like any of the other poor fools you question?”

Sokrates waved away the gibe. “Do you say that either of these things is best for you and best for Athens?”

Now Alkibiades tossed his head. “It would seem not, O best one. But what else can I do? The Assembly is back at the city. It voted what it voted. I don’t see how I could change its mind unless…” His voice trailed away. He suddenly laughed out loud, laughed out loud and sprang forward to kiss Sokrates on the mouth. “Thank you, my dear! You have given me the answer.”

“Nonsense!” Sokrates pushed him away hard enough to make him stumble back a couple of paces; those stonecutter’s shoulders still held a good deal of strength. “I only ask questions. If you found an answer, it came from inside you.”

“Your questions shone light on it.”

“But it was there all along, or I could not have illuminated it. And as for the kiss, if you lured me out into this barren land to seduce me, I am afraid you will find yourself disappointed despite your beauty.”

“Ah, Sokrates, if you hadn’t put in that last I think you would have broken my heart forever.” Alkibiades made as if to kiss the older man again. Sokrates made as if to pick up a rock and clout him with it. Laughing, they turned and walked back toward the Athenians’ encampment.

Herakleides threw up shocked hands. “This is illegal!” he exclaimed.

Nikias wagged a finger in Alkibiades’ face. “This is unprecedented!” he cried. By the way he said it, that was worse than anything merely illegal could ever be.

Alkibiades bowed to each of them in turn. “Ordering me home when I wasn’t in Athens to defend myself is illegal,” he said. “Recalling a commander in the middle of such an important campaign is unprecedented. We have plenty of Athenians here. Let’s see what they think about it.”

He looked across the square in Katane. He’d spoken here to the Assembly of the locals not long before, while Athenian soldiers filtered into the polis and brought it under their control. Now Athenian hoplites and rowers and marines filled the square. They made an Assembly of their own. It probably was illegal. It certainly was unprecedented. Alkibiades didn’t care. It just as certainly was his only chance.

He took a couple of steps forward, right to the edge of the speakers’ platform. Sokrates was out there somewhere. Alkibiades couldn’t pick him out, though. He shrugged. He was on his own anyhow. Sokrates might have given him some of the tools he used, but he had to use them. He was fighting for his life.

“Here me, men of Athens! Here me, people of Athens!” he said. The soldiers and sailors leaned forward, intent on his every word. The people of Athens had sent them forth to Sicily. The idea that they might be the people of Athens as well as its representatives here in the west was new to them. They had to believe it. Alkibiades had to make them believe it. If they didn’t, he was doomed.

“Back in the polis, the Assembly there”-he wouldn’t call that the people of Athens — “has ordered me home so they can condemn me and kill me without most of my friends-without you — there to protect me. They say I desecrated the herms in the city. They say I profaned the sacred mysteries of Eleusis. One of their so-called witnesses claims I broke the herms by moonlight, when everyone knows it was done in the last days of the month, when there was no moonlight. These are the sorts of people my enemies produce against me.”

He never said he hadn’t mutilated the herms. He never said he hadn’t burlesqued the mysteries. He said the witnesses his opponents produced lied-and they did.

He went on, “Even if I went back to Athens, my enemies’ witnesses would say one thing, my few friends and I another. No matter how the jury finally voted, no one would ever be sure of the truth. And so I say to you, men of Athens, people of Athens, let us not rely on lies and jurymen who can be swayed by lies. Let us rest my fate on the laps of the gods.”

Nikias started. Alkibiades almost laughed out loud. Didn’t expect that, did you, you omen-mongering fool?

Aloud, he continued, “If we triumph here in Sicily under my command, will that not prove I have done no wrong in the eyes of heaven? If we triumph-as triumph we can, as triumph we shall — then I shall return to Athens with you, and let these stupid charges against me be forgotten forevermore. But if we fail here…If we fail here, I swear to you I shall not leave Sicily alive, but will be the offering to repay the gods for whatever sins they reckon me to have committed. That is my offer, to you and to the gods. Time will show what they say of it. But what say you, men of Athens? What say you, people of Athens?”

He waited for the decision of the Assembly he’d convened. He didn’t have to wait long. Cries of, “Yes!” rang out, and, “We accept!” and, “Alkibiades!” A few men tossed their heads and yelled things like, “No!” and, “Let the decision of the Assembly in Athens stand!” But they were only a few, overwhelmed and outshouted by Alkibiades’ backers.

Turning to Herakleides and Nikias, Alkibiades bowed once more. They’d thought they would be able to address the Athenian soldiers and sailors after he finished. But the decision was already made. Herakleides looked stunned, Nikias dyspeptic.

With another bow, Alkibiades said to Herakleides, “You will take my answer and the true choice of the people of Athens back to the polis?”

The other man needed two or three tries before he managed to stammer out, “Y-Yes.”

“Good.” Alkibiades smiled. “Tell the polis also, I hope to be back there myself before too long.”

Sokrates settled his helmet on his head. The bronze and the glued-in padded lining would, with luck, keep some Syracusan from smashing in his skull. The walls of Syracuse loomed ahead. The Athenians were building their own wall around the city, to cut it off from the countryside and starve it into submission. Now the Syracusans had started a counterwall, thrust out from the fortifications of the polis. If it blocked the one the Athenians were building, Syracuse might stand. If the hoplites Alkibiades led could stop that counterwall…A man didn’t need to be a general to see what would happen then.

Sweat streamed down Sokrates’ face. Summer in Sicily was hotter than it ever got back home in Attica. He had a skin full of watered wine, and squirted some into his mouth. Swallowing felt good. A little of the wine splashed his face. That felt good, too.

“Pheu!” said another hoplite close by. “Only thing left of me’ll be my shadow by the time we’re done here.”

Sokrates smiled. “I like that.” He tilted back his helmet so he could drag a hairy forearm across his sweaty forehead, then let the helm fall down into place again. He tapped the nodding crimson-dyed horsehair plume with a forefinger. “This makes me seem fiercer than I am. But since all hoplites wear crested helms, and all therefore seem fiercer than they are, is it not true that the intended effect of the crest is wasted?”

Laughing, the other hoplite said, “You come up with some of the strangest things, Sokrates, Furies take me if you don’t.”

“How can the search for truth be strange?” Sokrates asked. “Do you say the truth is somehow alien to mankind, and that he has no knowledge of it from birth?”

Instead of answering, the other Athenian pointed to one of the rough little forts in which the Syracusans working on their counterwall sheltered. “Look! They’re coming out.” So they were, laborers in short chitons or loincloths, with armored hoplites to protect them while they piled stone on stone. “Doesn’t look like they’ve got very many guards out today, does it?”

“Certainly not,” Sokrates answered. “The next question to be asked is, why have they sent forth so few?”

Horns blared in the Athenian camp. “I don’t think our captain cares why,” the other hoplite said, pulling down his helmet so the cheekpieces and nasal protected his face. “Whatever the reason is, he’s going to make them sorry for being so stupid.”

“But do you not agree that why is always the most important question?” Sokrates asked. Instead of answering, the other hoplite turned to take his place in line. The horns cried out again. Sokrates picked up his shield and his spear and also joined the building phalanx. In the face of battle, all questions had to wait. Sometimes the fighting answered them without words.

The Athenian captain pointed toward the Syracusans a couple of stadia away. “They’ve goofed, boys. Let’s make ’em pay. We’ll beat their hoplites, run their workers off or else kill ’em, and we’ll tear down some of that wall they’re trying to build. We can do it. It’ll be easy. Give the war cry good and loud so they know we’re coming. That’ll scare the shit out of ’em, just like on the comic stage.”

“How about the comic stage?” the hoplite next to Sokrates asked. “You were up there, in Aristophanes’ Clouds.”

“I wasn’t there in person, though the mask the actor wore looked so much like me, I stood up in the audience to show the resemblance,” Sokrates answered. “And it’s the Syracusans we want to do the shitting, not ourselves.”

“Forward!” the captain shouted, and pointed at the Syracusans with his spear.

Sokrates shouted, “Eleleu! Eleleu!” with the rest of the Athenians as they advanced on their foes. It wasn’t a wild charge at top speed. A phalanx, even a small one like this, would fall to pieces and lose much of its force in such a charge. What made the formation strong was each soldier protecting his neighbor’s right as well as his own left with his shield, and two or three serried ranks of spearheads projecting out beyond the front line of hoplites. No soldiers in the world could match Hellenic hoplites. The Great Kings of Persia knew as much, and hired Hellenes by the thousands as mercenaries.

The Athenians might have made short work of Persians or other barbarians. The Syracusans, though, were just as much Hellenes as they were. Though outnumbered, the soldiers guarding the men building the counterwall shouted back and forth in their drawling Doric dialect and then also formed a phalanx-only four or five rows deep, for they were short of men-and hurried to block the Athenians’ descent on the laborers. They too cried, “Eleleu!”

As a man will do on the battlefield, Sokrates tried to spot the soldier he would likely have to fight. He knew that was a foolish exercise. He marched in the third row of the Athenians, and the enemy he picked might go down or shift position before they met. But, with the universal human longing to find patterns whether they really existed or not, he did it anyway.

“Eleleu! Elel-” Crash! Both sides’ war cries were lost in what sounded like a disaster in a madman’s smithy as the two front lines collided. Spearpoints clattered off bronze corselets and bronze-faced shields. Those shields smacked together, men from each side trying to force their foes to danger. Some spearpoints struck flesh instead of bronze. Shrieks and curses rang through the metallic clangor.

Where the man on whom Sokrates had fixed went, he never knew. He thrust underhanded at another Syracusan, a young fellow with reddish streaks in his black beard. The spearpoint bit into the enemy’s thigh, below the bronze-studded leather strips he wore over his kilt and above the top of his greave. Blood spurted, red as the feathers of a spotted woodpecker’s crest. The Syracusan’s mouth opened enormously wide in a great wail of anguish. He toppled, doing his best to pull his shield over himself so he wouldn’t be trampled.

Relying on weight of numbers, the Athenians bulled their way forward, forcing their foes to give ground and spearing them down one after another. Most of the laborers the Syracusans had protected ran back toward the fort from which they’d come. Some, though, hovered on the outskirts of the battle and flung stones at the Athenians. One banged off Sokrates’ shield.

And if it had hit me in the face? he wondered. The answer to that was obvious enough, though not one even a lover of wisdom cared to contemplate.

A Syracusan thrust a spear at Sokrates. He turned it aside with his shield, then quickly stepped forward, using the shield as a battering ram. The enemy soldier gave ground. He was younger than Sokrates-what hoplite wasn’t? — but on the scrawny side. Broad-shouldered and thick through the chest and belly, Sokrates made the most of his weight. The Syracusan tripped over a stone and went down, arms flailing, with a cry of despair. The Athenian behind Sokrates drove a spear into the fallen man’s throat. His blood splashed Sokrates’ greaves.

Athenians went down, too, in almost equal numbers, but they still had the advantage. Before long, their foes wouldn’t be able to hold their line together. Once the Syracusans fled, all running as individuals instead of fighting together in a single unit, they would fall like barley before the scythe.

But then, only moments before that would surely happen, horns blared from the walls of Syracuse. A gate opened. Out poured more Syracusans, rank upon rank of them, the sun gleaming ruddy from their bronzen armor and reflecting in silvery sparkles off countless iron spearheads. “Eleleu!” they roared, and thundered down on the Athenians like a landslide.

“A trap!” groaned a hoplite near Sokrates. “They used those few fellows as bait to lure us in, and now they’re going to bugger us.”

“They have to have twice the men we do,” another man agreed.

“Then we shall have to fight twice as hard,” Sokrates said. “For is it not true that a man who shows he is anything but easy meat will often come out of danger safe, where one who breaks and runs is surely lost? I have seen both victory and defeat, and so it seems to me.”

The more worried he was himself, the more he wanted to keep his comrades steady. The Syracusans out here by the counterwall had hung together well, waiting for their rescuers. Now the Athenians had to do the same. Sokrates looked around. He saw no rescuers. He shrugged inside his corselet. If the Syracusans wanted him, they would have to drag him down.

“Eleleu!” they cried. “Eleleu!”

Screaming like men gone mad, Athenian officers swung their men to face the new onslaught. Nothing was more hopeless, more defenseless, than a phalanx struck in the flank. This way, at least, they would make the enemy earn whatever he got. “Come on, boys!” a captain shouted. “They’re only Syracusans. We can beat them.”

Sokrates wanted to ask him how he knew. No chance for that. The two phalanxes smashed together. Now it was the Athenians who were outnumbered. They fought to keep from being driven back, and to keep the Syracusans from breaking through or sliding around their front. As men in the first few ranks went down, others shoved forward to take their places.

He found himself facing a Syracusan whose spear had broken. The enemy hoplite had thrown away the shaft and drawn his sword-a good enough emergency weapon, but only an emergency weapon when facing a man with a pike. Sokrates could reach him, but he had no chance to reach Sokrates.

He had no chance, that is, till he hacked at Sokrates’ spearshaft just below the head and watched the iron point fly free and thump down on the ground. “Papai!” Sokrates exclaimed in dismay. The Syracusan let out a triumphant whoop. A sword might not be much against a spear, but against a spearshaft…

A sword proved not so much. In the front line, Sokrates had more room to wield what was left of his weapon than he would have farther back. He swung the beheaded shaft as if it were a club. It thudded against the Syracusan’s shield. The next blow would have caved in his skull, helm or no helm, if he hadn’t brought the shield up in a hurry. And the third stroke smacked into the side of his knee-he hadn’t got the shield down again fast enough. No greave could protect him against a blow like that. Down he went, clutching his leg. In a scene straight from the Iliad, the hoplite behind him sprang forward to ward him with shield and armored body till comrades farther back could drag him out of the fight.

Sokrates used the moment’s respite to throw down the ruined spear and snatch up one that somebody else had dropped. He dipped his head to the Syracusan across from him. “Bravely done, my friend.”

“Same to you, old man,” the other soldier answered. “A lot of hoplites would have cut and run when they lost their pikes.” He gathered himself. “Brave or not, though, Athenian, I’ll kill you if I can.” Fast as a striking snake, his spearhead darted for Sokrates’ face.

Ducking away from the thrust, Sokrates answered with one of his own. The Syracusan turned it on his shield. They both stepped forward to struggle shield to shield. The Syracusan kept up a steady stream of curses. Panting, winded, Sokrates needed all his breath to fight.

He drew back a couple of paces, not because the enemy hoplite was getting the better of him but because the rest of the Athenians had had to retreat. “Should have stayed, old man,” the Syracusan jeered. “I’d have had you then, or my pals would if I didn’t.”

“If you want me, come and fight me,” Sokrates said. “You won’t kill me with words.” I might fall dead over of my own accord, though. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so worn. Maybe-probably-he’d never been so worn before. Maybe my friends back in Athens were right, and I should have stayed in the city. War is a young man’s sport. Am I young? He laughed. The Syracusan hoplite who’d been trying to kill him knew the answer to that.

“What’s funny, old man?” the Syracusan demanded.

“What’s funny, young man? That you are what I wish I were,” Sokrates replied.

In the shadowed space between his nasal and cheekpieces, the other man’s eyes widened slightly. “You talk like a sophist.”

“So my enemies have always-Ha!” Sokrates fended off a sudden spearthrust with his shield. “Thought you’d take me unawares, did you?”

“I am your enemy. I-” Now the Syracusan was the one who broke off. He turned his head this way and that to look about. With his helmet on, a hoplite couldn’t move only his eyes. Sokrates looked, too, with quick, wary flicks of the head. He saw nothing. For a moment, he also heard nothing. Then his ears- an old man’s ears, sure enough, he thought-caught the trumpet notes the Syracusan hoplite must have heard a few heartbeats sooner.

Sokrates looked around again. This time, when he looked…he saw. Over the crest of a nearby hill came men on horseback, peltasts-light-armed foot soldiers-and a solid column of hoplites. No possible way to doubt which side they belonged to, either. At the head of the column rode Alkibiades, his bright hair shining in the sun, a chiton all of purple-an outrageous, and outrageously expensive, garment-marking him out from every other man.

Shouting out their war cry, the Athenian newcomers roared down on the Syracusans. “We are undone!” one of the Syracusan hoplites cried. They broke ranks and ran back toward their polis. Some of them threw away spears and even shields to flee the faster.

Other Syracusans-perhaps a quarter of their number-tried to go on against the Athenian phalanx they’d been fighting. One of those was the hoplite who’d tussled so long against Sokrates. “Yield,” Sokrates urged. “Yield to me, and I will see to it that you suffer no evil.”

“I serve my polis no less than you serve yours, Athenian,” the man answered, and hurled himself at Sokrates once more. Now, though, with the Syracusan line melting away like rotting ice, he fought not Sokrates alone but three or four Athenians. He fought bravely, but he didn’t last long.

“Forward!” an Athenian officer cried. “Forward, and they break. Eleleu! ”

Forward the Athenians went. Hoplites in a body had a chance, often a good chance, against peltasts and horsemen, even if they moved more slowly than their foes. Peltasts could only use their bows and slings and fling javelins from a distance. Likewise, cavalry had trouble closing because the riders would pop off over their horses’ tails if they drove home a charge with the lance. But the panicked, running Syracusans, also hard-pressed by the Athenian hoplites, went down like trees under carpenters’ axes.

Alkibiades at their head, the Athenian horsemen got in among the Syracusans. They speared some and felled others with slashes from their long cavalrymen’s swords. The peltasts tormented the foe with arrows and leaden sling bullets and javelins. And, now roaring, “Eleleu!” like men seized by Furies, the Athenian hoplites rolled over the slower and more stubborn Syracusans.

The whole enemy host might have fallen there in front of their polis. But the defenders on the walls saw what was happening to them. The gate from which the Syracusan phalanx had marched forth flew open again. The Syracusans ran for their salvation. The Athenians ran after them-and with them.

Like a lot of veterans, Sokrates saw what that might mean. No matter how winded, no matter how parched, he was, he shouted, “As fast as we can now, men of Athens! If we get into Syracuse among them, the city is ours!” He made his stubby legs twinkle over the ground.

Up ahead, Alkibiades heard his voice. He waved and made his horse rear, clinging to the animal with his knees and with one hand clutching its mane. Then he too pointed toward that open gate. The horse came down onto all fours. It galloped forward, bounding past the Syracusans on foot. Other riders saw what was toward and followed.

The first Syracusan hoplites were already inside the polis. In stormed the horsemen. They turned on the gate crew, killing some and scattering others. Some of the Syracusan hoplites tried to haul the gates closed. The cavalrymen fought them, delayed them. Athenian peltasts rushed up to the horsemen’s aid. Madness reigned around the gate.

What is madness, Sokrates thought, save the absence of order? Still in good order, the Athenian phalanx hammered its way through the chaos-through the chaos, through the gate, and into Syracuse. The Syracusan women and children and old men wailed in horror. The Athenian hoplites roared in triumph.

Sokrates roared with the rest: “Syracuse is ours!”

Women wept. Wounded men moaned. The stinks of smoke and blood and spilled guts filled the air. A drunk Athenian peltast danced the kordax, howling out filthy words to go with the filthy dance. His pecker flipped up to smack against his stomach at every prancing step. It was all bread and fine fish and wine-especially wine-to Alkibiades. He stood in front of-appropriately enough-the temple of Athena, watching chained Syracusan captives shamble past.

Nikias came up to him, looking slightly-no, more than slightly-dazed. Alkibiades gave his fellow general his prettiest bow. “Hail,” he said, and then, as if Nikias couldn’t see it for himself, “We have Syracuse.”

“Er-yes.” Nikias might see it, but he seemed hardly able to credit it. “We do.”

“Do you believe, then, that the gods have shown I’m innocent of sacrilege?” Alkibiades asked. He wasn’t sure he believed that himself; some of the things Sokrates and Kritias had said about the gods made him have even more questions than he would have had otherwise. But it was important that prominent, conservative Nikias should believe it.

And the older man dipped his head. “Why, yes, son of Kleinias, I do. I must. I don’t see how any man could doubt it, considering what has happened here in Sicily.”

I have to make sure he never talks to Sokrates, Alkibiades thought. He’d find out exactly how a man could doubt it. Sokrates was a great one for making anybody doubt anything. But there wasn’t much risk that he and Nikias would put their heads together. Sokrates would talk with anyone. Nikias, on the other hand, was a born snob. With another bow, carefully controlled so it didn’t seem mocking, Alkibiades asked, “What did you expect to happen on this campaign?”

Nikias’ eyes got big and round. “I feared…disaster,” he said hoarsely. “I feared our men failing when they tried to wall off Syracuse. I feared our fleet trapped and beaten by the Syracusans. I feared our brave soldiers worsted and worked to death in the mines. I had…dreams.” His voice wobbled.

Grinning, Alkibiades clapped him on the shoulder. “And they were all moonshine, weren’t they? These amateurs made a mistake, and we made them pay for it. We’ll put the people we want into power here-you can always find men who will do what you want-and then, before the sailing season ends, we’ll go back and see what we can do about giving the Spartans a clout in the teeth.”

At that, Nikias’ eyes got bigger and rounder than ever. But he said, “We shall have to be careful here. The men we establish may turn against us, or others may rise up and overthrow them.”

He was right. Naivete and superstition sometimes made him a fool; never stupidity. Alkibiades said, “True enough, O best one. Still, once we’re done here, Syracuse will be years getting her strength back, even if she does turn against us. And that’s what we came west for, isn’t it? To weaken her, I mean. We’ve done it.”

“We have,” Nikias agreed wonderingly. “With the help of the gods, we have.”

Alkibiades’ grin got wider. “Then let’s enjoy it, shall we? If we don’t enjoy ourselves while we’re here on earth, when are we going to do it?”

Nikias sent him a severe frown, the frown a pedagogue might have sent a boy who, on the way to school, paused to stare at the naked women in a brothel. “Is that why you staged a komos last night?”

“I didn’t stage the drinking bout. It just happened,” Alkibiades answered. After a night of revelry like that, his head should have ached as if a smith’s hammer were falling on it. It should have, but it didn’t. Victory made a better anodyne than poppy juice. He went on, “But if you think I didn’t enjoy it, you’re wrong. And if you think I didn’t deserve it, you’re wrong about that, too. If I can’t celebrate after taking Syracuse when nobody thought I could”-he didn’t say the other general had thought that, though he knew Nikias had-“when am I entitled to, by the dog of Egypt?”

Nikias muttered at the oath, which Alkibiades had picked up from Sokrates. But he had no answer. Alkibiades hadn’t thought he would.

The Peloponnesos is shaped like a hand, narrow wrist by Corinth in the northeast, thumb and three short, stubby fingers of land pointing south (the little island of Kythera lies off the easternmost finger like a detached nail). Sparta sits in the palm, not far from the base of the middle finger. Having rowed through the night, the Athenian fleet beached itself between the little towns of Abia and Pherai, in the indentation between the middle and westernmost fingers, just as dawn was breaking.

Alkibiades ran from one ship to another like a man possessed. “Move! Move! Move!” he shouted as the hoplites and peltasts and the small force of cavalry emerged from the transports. “No time to wait! No time to waste! Sparta’s only a day’s march ahead of us. If we strike hard enough and fast enough, we get there before the Spartans can pull enough men together to stop us. They’ve been ravaging Attica for years. Now it’s our turn on their home ground.”

To the east, the Taygetos Mountains sawbacked the horizon. But the pass that led to Sparta was visible even from the beach. Alkibiades vaulted onto his horse’s back, disdaining a leg up. Like any horseman, he wished there were some better way to mount and to stay on a beast’s back. But there wasn’t, or nobody had ever found one, and so, like any horseman, he made the best of things.

“Come on!” he called, trotting out ahead of the hoplites. “All of us against not all of them! How can we help but whip ’em?”

They hadn’t gone far before they came across a farmer looking up at the not yet ripe olives on his trees. He wasn’t a Spartan, of course; he was a Messenian, a helot-next thing to a slave. His eyes bugged out of his head. He took off running, and he might have beaten the man who’d won the sprint at the last games at Olympia.

“Pity we can’t cut down their olive groves, the way they’ve done to ours in Attica,” Alkibiades said to Nikias, who rode not far away.

“No time for that,” Nikias answered.

Alkibiades dipped his head. “We’ll do what we can with fire,” he said. But olives were tough. The trees soon recovered from burning alone; really harming them required long, hard axework.

The ground rose beneath the Athenians’ feet. Sweat rivered off the hoplites marching in armor. Alkibiades had made every man carry a jug full of heavily watered wine. Every so often, one of them would pause to swig. Most of the streambeds were dry at this season of the year, and would be till the rain came in winter. When the army found one with a trickle of water in it, men fell out to drink.

“They say the Persian host drank steams dry on the way to Hellas,” Alkibiades remarked. “Now we can do the same.”

“I do not care to be like the Persians in any way,” Nikias said stiffly.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Alkibiades said. “I wouldn’t mind having the Great King’s wealth. No, I wouldn’t mind that a bit. By the dog, I’d use it better than he has.”

Except for the track that led up toward the pass, the country around the Athenians got wilder and wilder. Oaks and brush gave way to dark, frowning pines. A bear lumbered across the track in front of Alkibiades. His horse snorted and tried to rear. He fought it down.

“Good hunting in these woods,” Nikias said. “Bear, as you saw. Wild boar, too, and goat and deer.”

If I’d gone back toward Athens and then fled as I first planned to do, I suppose I would have ended up in Sparta, Alkibiades thought. I would have wanted to harm Athens all I could for casting me out, and Sparta would have been the place to do it. I might have hunted through these mountains myself if I hadn’t hashed things out with Sokrates. The world would have been a different place.

He laughed. I’m still hunting through these mountains. Not bear or boar, though. Not goat or deer. I’m hunting Spartans-better game still.

No forts blocked the crown of the pass. The Spartans weren’t in the habit of defending themselves with forts. They used men instead. This time, by Zeus, some men are going to use them. Laughing, Alkibiades called, “All downhill from now on, boys.” The Athenians raised a cheer.

A hoplite near Sokrates pointed ahead. “That’s it?” he said in disbelief. “ That’s the place we’ve been fighting all these years? That miserable dump? It looks like a bunch of villages, and not rich ones, either.”

“You can’t always tell by looking,” Sokrates said. “If Sparta were to become a ruin, no one would believe how powerful the Spartans really are. They don’t go in for fancy temples or walls. This looks more like a collection of villages, as you say, not a proper polis. If Athens were to be deserted, visitors to the ruins would reckon us twice as strong as we really are. And yet, have the Spartans shown they can stand against us for the mastery of Hellas, or have they not?”

“They have,” the other hoplite replied. “Up till now.”

Now, everything in the valley of the Eurotas that would burn burned: olive groves, fields, houses, the barracks where the full Spartan citizens ate, the relative handful of shops that supported the Spartans and the perioikoi — those who lived among them, the second-class citizens on whose labor the Spartans proper depended. A great cloud of smoke rose into the heavens. Sokrates remembered seeing the smudges on the horizon that meant the Spartans were burning the cropland of Attica. Those had been as nothing next to this.

Down through the smoke spiraled the carrion birds-vultures and ravens and hooded crows and even jackdaws. They had not known a feast like this for long and long and long. Most of the dead were those who lived here. The folk of Sparta had tried to attack the Athenians whenever and wherever they could. Not just the men had come at them, but also the Spartan women, the women who were used to exercising naked like men and to throwing the javelin.

No, they’d shown no lack of courage. But the Athenians had stayed in a single compact body, and the Spartans, taken by surprise, had attacked them by ones and twos, by tens and twenties. The only way to beat a phalanx in the open field was with another phalanx. With most of their full citizens, their hoplites, not close enough to their home polis, the Spartans didn’t, couldn’t, assemble one. And they paid. Oh, how they paid.

Through the roar of the flames, an officer shouted, “We take back no prisoners. None, do you hear me? Nothing to slow us down on the march back to the fleet. If you want these Spartan women to bear half-Athenian children, do it here, do it now!”

The other hoplite said, “A woman like that, you drag her into the dirt, she’s liable to try and stab you while you’re on top.”

“I’m too old to find rape much of a sport,” Sokrates replied.

An officer called, “Come on, lend a hand on the ropes, you two! We’ve got to pull down this barracks hall before we set it afire!”

Sokrates and the other Athenian set down their shields and spears and went to haul on the ropes. The Athenians had guards standing close by, so Sokrates didn’t worry about losing his weapons. He pulled with all his might. The corner post crashed down. Half the barracks collapsed. The Athenians cheered. A man with a torch held it to a beam till the flames took hold. When they did, another cheer rose to the heavens with the smoke.

Wearily, Sokrates strode back to pick up his equipment. A little Spartan boy-he couldn’t have been more than ten-darted in like a fox to try to grab the shield and spear first. The boy had just bent to snatch them up when a peltast’s javelin caught him in the small of the back. He shrieked and fell, writhing in torment. Laughing, the peltast pulled out the throwing spear. “He’ll take a while to die,” he said.

“That is an evil end,” Sokrates said. “Let there be as much pain as war must have, but only so much.” He knelt, drew his sword, and cut the boy’s throat. The end came soon after that.

An old woman-older than Sokrates, too old for any of the Athenians to bother-said, “Thank you for the mercy to my grandson.”

Her Doric drawl and some missing front teeth made her hard to understand, but the Athenian managed. “I did not do it for him,” he replied. “I did it for myself, for the sake of what I thought to be right.”

Her scrawny shoulders went up and down in a shrug. “You did it. That is what matters. He has peace now.” After a moment, she added, “You know I would kill you if I could?”

He dipped his head. “Oh, yes. So the old women of Athens say of the Spartans who despoiled them of a loved one. The symmetry does not surprise me.”

“Symmetry. Gylippos is dead, and you speak of symmetry.” She spat at his feet. “That for your symmetry.” She turned her back and walked away. Sokrates found no answer for her.

Even before the sun rose red and bloody over the smoke-filled valley of the Eurotas, Alkibiades booted the Athenian trumpeters out of sleep. “Get up, you wide-arsed catamites,” he called genially. “Blare the men awake. We don’t want to overstay our welcome in beautiful, charming Sparta, now do we?”

Hoplites groaned as they staggered to their feet. Spatters of fighting had gone on all through the night. If the army lingered, the fighting today wouldn’t be spatters. It would be a storm, a flood, a sea. And so, Alkibiades thought, we don’t linger.

Some of the men grumbled. “We haven’t done enough here. Too many buildings still standing,” was what Alkibiades heard most often.

He said, “The lion yawned. We reached into his mouth and gave his tongue a good yank. Do you want to hang on to it till he bites down?”

A lot of them did. They’d lost farmhouses. They’d seen olive groves that had stood for centuries hacked down and burned. They hungered for as much revenge as they could take. But they obeyed him. They followed him. He’d led them here. Without him, they never would have come. When he told them it was time to go, they were willing to believe him.

They didn’t have much to eat-bread they’d brought, bread and porridge they’d stolen, whatever sheep and pigs they’d killed. That alone would have kept them from staying very long. They didn’t worry about such things. Alkibiades had to.

Away they marched, back down the trail of destruction they’d left on the way to Sparta, back up toward the pass through the Taygetos Mountains. Even if nobody had pointed the way, the Spartans would have had no trouble pursuing. That didn’t matter. The Spartans could chase as hard as they pleased, but they wouldn’t catch up.

As he had on the way to Sparta, Nikias rode beside Alkibiades on the way back to the ships. He reminded Alkibiades of a man who’d spent too much time talking with Sokrates (though he hadn’t really spent any), or of one who’d been stunned by taking hold of an electric ray. “Son of Kleinias, I never thought any man could do what you have done,” he said in amazement. “Never.”

“A man who believes he will fail is surely right,” Alkibiades replied. “A man who believes he can do great things may yet fail, but if he succeeds… Ah, if he succeeds! He who does not dare does not win. Say what you will of me, but I dare.”

Nikias stared, shook his head-a gesture of bewilderment, not disagreement-and guided his horse off to one side. Alkibiades threw back his head and laughed. Nikias flinched as if a javelin had hissed past his head.

Halfway up the eastern slope of the mountains, where the woods came down close to the track on either side, a knot of Spartans and perioikoi, some armored, some in their shirts, made a stand. “They want to stall us, keep us here till pursuit can reach us,” Alkibiades called. “Thermopylai was a long time ago, though. And holding the pass didn’t work for these fellows then, either.”

He flung his hoplites at the enemy, keeping them busy. The peltasts, meanwhile, slipped among the trees till they came out on the track behind the embattled Spartans. After that, it wasn’t a fight anymore. It was a slaughter.

“They were brave,” Nikias said, looking at the huddled corpses, at the torn cloaks dyed red so they would not show blood.

“They were stupid,” Alkibiades said. “They couldn’t stop us. Since they couldn’t, what was the point of trying?” Nikias opened his mouth once or twice. Now he looked like nothing so much as a tunny freshly pulled from the sea. Dismissing him from his mind, Alkibiades urged his horse forward with pressure from his knees against its barrel and a flick of the reins. He raised his voice to a shout once more: “Come on, men! Almost halfway back to the ships!”

At the height of the pass through the mountains, he looked west toward the bay where the Athenian fleet waited. He couldn’t see the ships, of course, not from about a hundred stadia away, but he looked anyhow. If anything had gone wrong with them, he would end up looking just as stupid as those Spartans who’d tried to slow down the Athenian phalanx.

He lost a few men on the journey down to the seashore. One or two had their hearts give out, and fell over dead. Others, unable to bear the pace, fell out by the side of the road to rest. “We wait for nobody,” Alkibiades said, over and over. “Waiting for anyone endangers everyone.” Maybe some soldiers didn’t believe him. Maybe they were too exhausted to care. They would later, but that would be too late.

Where was Sokrates? Alkibiades peered anxiously at the marching Athenians. The dear old boy could have been father to most of the hoplites in the force. Had he been able to stand the pace? All at once, Alkibiades burst out laughing once more. There he was, not only keeping up but volubly arguing with the younger soldier to his right. Say what you would about his ideas-and Alkibiades, despite listening to him for years, still wasn’t sure about those-but the man himself was solid.

As the Athenians descended the western slopes of the Taygetos Mountains, they pointed, calling, “ Thalatta! Thalatta! ”-The sea! The sea! — and, “ Nees! Nees! ”-The ships! The ships! Sure enough, the transports and the triremes protecting them still waited there. Alkibiades allowed himself the luxury of a sigh of relief.

Then sand flew up under his horse’s hooves. He’d reached the beach from which he and the Athenians had set out early the morning before. “We did our part,” he called to the waiting sailors. “How was it here?”

“The Spartans’ triremes stuck their noses in to see what we had,” a man answered. “When they saw, they turned around and skedaddled.”

“Did they?” Alkibiades had hoped they would. The sailor dipped his head. Alkibiades said, “Well, best one, now we shall do the same.”

“And then what?” the fellow asked.

“And then what?” Alkibiades echoed. “Why, then we head back to our polis, and we find out just who ‘the people of Athens’ really are.” The sailor grinned. So did Alkibiades.

Down in the hold of his transport, Sokrates could see very little. That being so, he spent as little time as he could down there, and as much as he could up on the narrow strip of decking that ran from bow to stern. “For is it not unreasonable, and clean against nature,” he said to a sailor who grumbled about his being up there, “for a man to travel far, and see not a bit of where he has gone?”

“I don’t care about unreasonable or reasonable,” the sailor said, which made Sokrates flinch. “If you get in our way, we’ll chuck you down where you belong.”

“I shall be very careful,” Sokrates promised.

And so he was…for a while. The fleet had come back into the Saronic Gulf, bound for Athens and home. There was the island of Aigina-Athens’ old rival-to the left, famous Salamis closer to the port of Peiraieus, with the high headland of Cape Sounion, the southeastern corner of Attica, off to the right. The sun sparkled from myriads of little waves. Seabirds dove for fish and then robbed one another, for all the world as if they were men.

Sokrates squatted on the decking and asked a rower, “How is your work here, compared to what you would be doing in a trireme?”

“Oh, it’s a harder pull,” the fellow answered, grunting as he stroked with the six-cubit oar. “We’ve only got the one deck of rowers, and the ship’s heavier than a trireme would be. Still and all, though, this has its points, too. If you’re a thalamite or a zeugite in a trireme-anything but a thranite, up on the top bank of oars-the wide-arsed rogue in front of you is always farting in your face.”

“Yes, I’ve heard Aristophanes speak of this in comedies,” Sokrates said.

“Don’t have to worry about that here, by Zeus,” the rower said. His buttocks slid across his leather cushion as he stroked again.

Up at the bow of the transport, an officer pointed north, toward Peiraieus. “Look! A galley’s coming out to meet us.”

“Only one, though,” a man close by him said. “I wondered if they’d bring out a fleet against us.”

“They’d be sorry if they tried,” the officer said. “We’ve got the best ships and best crews right here. They couldn’t hope to match us.”

“Oh, they could hope,” the other man said, “but you’re right-they’d be sorry.” Now he pointed toward the approaching trireme. “It’s the Salaminia.”

“Haven’t seen her since Sicily,” the officer said sourly. “I wonder if they’ve heard the news about everything we did. We’ll find out.”

The triremes traveled ahead of the transports to protect them, but the ship carrying Sokrates was only a couple of plethra behind the warships: close enough to let him hear shouts across the water. There in the middle of the line of triremes sailed Alkibiades’ flagship. The commander of the expeditionary force was easy for the men of the Salaminia to spot. His bright hair flashed in the sun, and he wore that purple tunic that had to be just this side of hubris. The ceremonial galley steered toward the Thraseia.

“Hail!” Alkibiades called to the Salaminia as she drew near.

“Alkibiades son of Kleinias?” someone on the other galley replied.

“Is that you again, Herakleides, who don’t know who I am?” Alkibiades answered. Sokrates couldn’t make out the other man’s reply. Whatever it was, Alkibiades laughed and went on, “Go on back to the harbor and tell those stay-at-home fools the gods have given their judgment. We conquered Syracuse, and a government loyal to Athens rules there now. And on the way home we burned Sparta down around the haughty Spartans’ ears.”

By the sudden buzz-almost a roar-from the crew of the Salaminia, that news hadn’t reached Athens yet. Even so, the spokesman aboard the ceremonial galley, whether Herakleides or another man, went on, “Alkibiades son of Kleinias, it seems good to the people of Athens”-the ancient formula for an Assembly decree-“for your men not to enter the city in arms, but to lay down their weapons as they disembark from their ships at Peiraieus. And it further seems good to the people of Athens that you yourself should enter the city alone before they go in, to explain to the said people of Athens your reasons for flouting their previous summons.”

A rumble of anger went up from all the ships in the fleet close enough for the crews to make out the spokesman’s words. “Hear that, boys?” Alkibiades shouted in a great voice. “I won the war for them, and they want to tell me to drink hemlock. You won the war for them, and they want to take your spears and your corselets away from you. Are we going to let ’em get away with it?”

“ Nooooo! ” The great roar came from the whole fleet, or as much of it as Alkibiades’ voice could reach. Most of the rowers and the officers-and many of the hoplites, who, being belowdecks, couldn’t hear so well-aboard Sokrates’ transport joined in it.

“You hear that?” Alkibiades called to the Salaminia as aftershocks of outrage kept erupting from the wings of the fleet. “There’s your answer. You can take it back to the demagogues who lie when they call themselves the people of Athens. But you’d better hurry if you do, because we’re bringing it ourselves.”

Being the polis’ state trireme, the Salaminia naturally had a crack crew. Her starboard rowers pulled normally, while those on the port side backed oars. The galley spun in the water, turning almost in her own length. She also enjoyed the luxury of a dry hull, having laid up in a shipshed most of the time. That made her lighter and swifter than the ships of Alkibiades’ fleet, which were waterlogged and heavy from hard service. She raced back toward Peiraieus.

The triremes that had gone to Sicily followed. So did the transports, though a little more sedately. A naked sailor nudged Sokrates. “What do you think, old-timer? We going to have to fight our way in?”

“I have opinions on a great many things,” Sokrates replied. “Some of them, I hope, are true opinions. Here, however, I shall not venture any opinion. The unfolding of events will yield the answer.”

“You don’t know either, eh?” The sailor shrugged. “Well, we’ll find out pretty cursed quick.”

“I thought I just said that,” Sokrates said plaintively. But the other man wasn’t listening to him anymore.

No triremes came forth from Peiraieus to challenge the fleet’s entry. Indeed, Athens’ harbor seemed all but deserted; most of the sailors and longshoremen and quayside loungers had fled. A herald bearing the staff of his office stood on a quay and shouted in a great voice, “Let all know that any who proceed in arms from this place shall be judged traitors against the city and people of Athens!”

“We are the city and people of Athens!” Alkibiades shouted back, and the whole fleet roared agreement. “We have done great things! We will do more!” Again, soldiers and sailors bellowed to back him up.

That sailor came back to Sokrates. “Aren’t you going to arm?” he asked. “That’s what the orders are.”

“I shall do that which seems right,” Sokrates answered, which sent the other man off scratching his head.

Sokrates went below. Down in the hold, hoplites were struggling into their armor, poking one another with elbows and knees, and cursing as they were elbowed in turn. He pushed his way through the arming foot soldiers to his own leather duffel. “Come on!” someone said to him, voice cracking with excitement. “Hurry up! High time we cleaned out that whole nest of polluted catamites!”

“Is it?” Sokrates said. “Are they? How do you know?”

The hoplite stared at him. He saw that he might as well have been speaking Persian. The soldier fixed his scabbard on his belt. He reached around his body with his right hand to make sure he could draw his sword in a hurry if he had to.

Up on deck, the oarmaster shouted, “Oop!” and the rowers rested at their oars. Somebody said, “No one’s here to make us fast to the pier. Furies take ’em! We’ll do it ourselves.” The ship swayed slightly as a sailor sprang ashore. Other sailors flung him lines. They thumped on the quays. He tied the transport to the side of the pier.

A moment later, the gangplank thudded into place. Up on deck, an officer shouted, “All hoplites out! Go down the quay and form up on dry land!” With a cheer, the soldiers-almost all of them now ready for battle-did as they were told, crowding toward the transport’s stern to reach the gangplank. Duffel over his shoulder, Sokrates returned to Athenian soil, too.

This wasn’t the first transport to disembark its men. On the shore, red-caped officers were bellowing, “Form a phalanx! We’ve got work to do yet, and we’ll do it, by Zeus!” As the battle formation took shape, Sokrates started north toward Athens all by himself.

“Here, you!” a captain yelled. “Where do you think you’re going?”

He stopped for a moment. “Home,” he answered calmly.

“What? What are you talking about? We’ve got fighting to do yet,” the man said.

Sokrates tossed his head. “No. When Athenian fights Athenian, who can say which side has the just cause, which the unjust? Not wishing to do the unjust or to suffer it, I shall go home. Good day.” With a polite dip of the head, he started walking again.

Pounding sandals said the captain was coming after him. The man grabbed his arm. “You can’t do that!”

“Oh, but I can. I will.” Sokrates shook him off. The captain grabbed him again-and then, quite suddenly, found himself sitting in the dust. Sokrates kept walking.

“You’ll be sorry!” the other man shouted after him, slowly getting to his feet. “Wait till Alkibiades finds out about this!”

“No one can make me sorry for doing what is right,” Sokrates said. At his own pace, following his own will, he tramped along toward the city.

He was going along between the Long Walls, still at his own pace, when hoofbeats and the rhythmic thud of thousands of marching feet came from behind him. He got off the path, but kept going. Alkibiades trotted by on horseback in his purple chiton. Catching Sokrates’ eye, he grinned and waved. Sokrates dipped his head again.

Alkibiades and the rest of the horsemen rode on. Behind them came the hoplites and peltasts. Behind them came a great throng of rowers, unarmored and armed with belt knives and whatever else they could scrounge. They moved at a fine martial tempo, and left ambling Sokrates behind. He kept walking nonetheless.

“Tyrant!” the men on the walls of Athens shouted at Alkibiades. “Impious, sacrilegious defiler of the mysteries! Herm-smasher!”

“I put my fate in the hands of the gods,” Alkibiades told them, speaking for the benefit of his own soldiers as well as those who hadn’t gone to Sicily. “I prayed that they destroy me if I were guilty of the charges against me, or let me live and let me triumph if I was innocent. I lived. I triumphed. The gods know the right. Do you, men of Athens?” He raised his voice: “Nikias!”

“Yes? What is it?” Nikias sounded apprehensive. Had he been in the city, he would surely have tried to hold it against Alkibiades. But he was out here, and so he could be used.

“You were there. You can tell the men of Athens whether I speak the truth. Did I not call on the gods? Did they not reward me with victory, as I asked them to do to show my innocence?”

A lie here would make Alkibiades’ life much more difficult. Nikias had to know that. Alkibiades would have been tempted-more than tempted-to lie. But Nikias was a painfully honest man as well as a painfully pious one. Though he looked as if he’d just taken a big bite of bad fish, he dipped his head. “Yes, son of Kleinias. It is as you say.”

His voice was barely audible to Alkibiades, let alone to the soldiers on the walls of the city. Alkibiades pointed their way, saying, “Tell the men of Athens the truth.”

Nikias looked more revolted yet. Even so, he did as Alkibiades asked. Everybody does as I ask, Alkibiades thought complacently. Having spoken to the defenders of the city, Nikias turned back to Alkibiades. In a low, furious voice, he said, “I’ll thank you to leave me out of your schemes from now on.”

“What schemes, O best one?” Alkibiades asked, his eyes going wide with injured innocence. “All I asked you to do was tell the truth to the men there.”

“You did it so you could seize the city,” Nikias said.

“No.” Alkibiades tossed his head, though the true answer was of course yes. But he went on, “Even if no one opens a gate to me, I’ll hold the advantage soon enough. We draw our grain from Byzantion and beyond. I hold Peiraieus, so nothing can come in by sea. Before too long, if it comes to that, Athens will get hungry-and then she’ll get hungrier. But I don’t think we need to worry about that.”

“Why not?” Nikias demanded. “The whole polis stands in arms against you.”

“Oh, rubbish,” Alkibiades said genially. “I’ve got at least half the polis here on the outside of the city with me. And if you think everyone in there is against me, you’d better think again. You could do worse than talk with Sokrates about the whole and its parts.” As he’d expected, that provoked Nikias again. Alkibiades hid his smile and looked around. “Where is Sokrates, anyway?”

A hoplite standing close by answered, “He went into the city, most noble one.”

“ Into the city?” Alkibiades and Nikias said together, in identical surprise. Recovering first, Alkibiades asked, “By the dog of Egypt, how did he manage that?”

The hoplite pointed to a small postern gate. “He told the soldiers on guard there that he didn’t intend to fight anybody, that he thought it was wrong for Athenians to fight Athenians”-as most men of Athens would have, he took a certain cheeky pleasure in reporting that to Alkibiades-“and that he wanted to come in and see his wife.”

“To see Xanthippe? I wouldn’t have thought he’d been away from home that long,” Alkibiades said; Sokrates was married to a shrew. “But the gate guards let him in?”

“Yes, sir. I think one of them knew him,” the hoplite replied.

Nikias clucked like a hen. “You see, Alkibiades? Even your pet sophist wants no part of civil war.”

“He’s not my pet. He’s no more anyone’s pet than a fox running on the hills,” Alkibiades said. “And he would say he’s no sophist, either. He’s never taken even an obolos for teaching, you know.”

Nikias went right on clucking. Alkibiades stopped listening to him. He eyed the postern gate. That Sokrates had got into Athens only proved his own point. Not all the soldiers defending the city were loyal to the men who’d tried to execute him under form of law. A little discreet talk, preferably in the nighttime when fewer outside ears might hear, and who could say what would happen next?

Alkibiades thought he could. He looked forward to finding out whether he was right.

Quietly, ever so quietly, a postern gate swung open. At Alkibiades’ whispered urging the night before, the guards who held it had anointed with olive oil the posts that secured it to the stone lintel above and the stone set into the ground below. A squeak now would be… very embarrassing, Alkibiades thought as he hurried toward the gate at the head of a column of hoplites.

“You shouldn’t go first,” one of them whispered to him. “If it’s a trap, they’ll nail you straightaway.”

“If it’s a trap, they’ll nail me anyhow,” he answered easily. “But if I thought it were a trap, I wouldn’t be doing this, would I?”

“Who knows?” the hoplite said. “You might just figure you could talk them around once you got inside.”

He laughed at that. “You’re right. I might. But I don’t. Come on. It’s the same with a city as it is with a woman-once you’re inside, you’ve won.” The soldiers laughed, too. But Alkibiades hadn’t been joking, or not very much.

He carried no spear. His left hand gripped his shield, marked with his own emblem. His right tightened on the hilt of his sword as he went through the gate, through the wall itself, and into Athens. It was indeed a penetration of sorts. Bend forward, my polis. Here I am, taking you unawares.

If he wasn’t taking the city unawares, if his foes did have a trap waiting for him, they would spring it as soon as he came through. This would be the only moment when they knew exactly where he was. But everything inside seemed dark and quiet and sleepy. Except for his own followers, the only men who moved and talked were the guards who’d opened the gate.

In flowed his soldiers, a couple of hundred of them. He sent bands out to the right and left, to seize other gates and let in more men back from Sicily. How long would it be before the defenders realized the city was secure no more? Shouts and the sounds of fighting from another gate said the moment was here.

“Come on,” Alkibiades told the rest of the men with him. “We seize the agora, we seize the Akropolis, and the city’s ours.”

They hurried on through darkness as near absolute as made no difference. Night was a time for sleeping. Here and there, a lamp would glow faintly behind a closed shutter. Once, Alkibiades passed the sounds of flutes and raucous, drunken singing: someone was holding a symposion, civil strife or no civil strife. The streets wandered, twisted, doubled back on themselves, dead-ended. No one not an Athenian born could have hoped to find his way.

More lights showed when Alkibiades and his comrades got to the agora. Torches flared around the Tholos. At least seventeen members of the Boule were always on duty there. Alkibiades pointed toward the building. “We’ll take it,” he said. “That will leave them running around headless. Let’s go, my dears. Forward!”

“Eleleu!” the hoplites roared. A handful of guards stood outside the building. When so many men thundered down upon them, they dropped their spears and threw up their hands. A couple of them fell to their knees to beg for mercy.

“Spare them,” Alkibiades said. “We shed as little blood as we can.”

A voice came from inside the Tholos: “What’s that racket out there?”

Alkibiades had never been able to resist a dramatic gesture. Here, he didn’t even try. Marching into the building, he displayed the Eros with a thunderbolt on his shield that had helped make him famous-or, to some people, notorious. “Good evening, O best ones,” he said politely.

The councilors sprang to their feet. It was even better than he’d hoped. There with them were Androkles and Thettalos son of Kimon, two of his chief enemies-Thettalos had introduced the motion against him in the Assembly. “Alkibiades!” Androkles exclaimed in dismay. He could have sounded no more horrified if he’d seen Medusa standing before him-the last thing he would have seen before gazing upon her turned him to stone. No one else in the Tholos seemed any more delighted.

Bowing, Alkibiades answered, “Very much at your service, my dear. I will have you know that my whole army is in the city now. Those who are wise will comport themselves accordingly. Those who are not so wise will resist, for a little while-and pay the price for resisting.”

He bowed again, and smiled his sweetest smile. If his enemies chose to, they could still put up a fight for Athens, and perhaps even win. He wanted them to believe they had no chance, no hope. If they did believe it, their belief would help turn it true.

“Surely you are a kakodaimon, spawned from some pit of Tartaros!” Thettalos burst out. “We should have dealt with you before you sailed for Sicily.”

“You had your chance,” Alkibiades answered. “When the question of who mutilated the herms first came up, I asked for a speedy trial. I wanted my name cleared before the fleet sailed. You were the ones who delayed.”

“We needed to find witnesses who would talk,” Thettalos said.

“You needed to invent witnesses who would lie, you mean,” Alkibiades answered.

“They aren’t lying. They speak the truth,” Thettalos said stubbornly.

“I tell you, they lie.” Alkibiades cocked his head to one side. Yes, that was the sound of hoplites moving through the city, shields now and then clanking on greaves and corselets. And that was the sound of his name in the hoplites’ mouths. He’d told the truth here after all. By all appearances, his soldiers did hold Athens. He turned back to the men in the Tholos. “And I tell you this is your last chance to surrender and spare your lives. If you wait till my main force gets here, that will be too late. What do you say, gentlemen of Athens?” He used the title with savage irony.

They said what he’d thought they would: “We yield.” It was a glum, grumbling chorus, but a chorus nonetheless.

“Take them away,” Alkibiades told the soldiers with him. “We’ll put some honest people in the Tholos instead.” Laughing and grinning, the hoplites led the men of the Boule out into the night. Alkibiades stayed behind. He set down his shield and flung his arms wide in delight. At last! he thought. By all the gods-if gods there be-at last! Athens is mine!

As if nothing had changed in the polis, Simon the shoemaker drove hobnails into the sole of a sandal. As if nothing had changed, a small crowd of youths and young men gathered under the shade of the olive tree outside his shop. And, as if nothing had changed, Sokrates still argued with them about whatever came to mind.

He showed no inclination to talk about what had happened while he was away. After a while, a boy named Aristokles, who couldn’t have been above twelve, piped up: “Do you think your daimon was right, Sokrates, in urging you to go to the west?”

However young he was, he had a power and clarity to his thought that appealed to Sokrates. He’d phrased his question with a man’s directness, too. Sokrates wished he could answer so directly. After some hesitation-unusual for him-he said, “We won a victory in Sicily, which can only be good for the polis. And we won a victory in Sparta, where no foreign foe has ever won before. The Kings of Sparta are treating with Alkibiades for peace even while we speak here. That too can only be good for the polis.”

He sought truth like a lover pursuing his beloved. He always had. He always would. Here today, though, he wouldn’t have been disappointed to have his reply taken as full agreement, which it was not. And Aristokles saw as much, saying, “And yet you still have doubts. Why?”

“I know why,” Kritias said. “On account of Alkibiades, that’s why.”

Sokrates knew why Kritias spoke as he did-he was sick-jealous of Alkibiades. The other man had done things in Athens Kritias hadn’t matched and couldn’t hope to match. Ambition had always blazed in Kritias, perhaps to do good for his polis, certainly to do well for himself. Now he saw himself outdone, outdone by too much to make it even a contest. All he could do was fume.

Which did not mean he was altogether wrong. Alkibiades worried Sokrates, and had for years. He was brilliant, clever, handsome, dashing, charming-and, in him, all those traits led to vice as readily as to virtue. Sokrates had done everything he could to turn Alkibiades in the direction he should go. But another could do only so much; in the end, a man had to do for himself, too.

Aristokles’ eyes flicked from Sokrates to Kritias (they had a family connection, Sokrates recalled) and back again. “Is he right?” the boy asked. “Do you fear Alkibiades?”

“I fear for Alkibiades,” Sokrates answered. “Is it not reasonable that a man who has gained an uncommon amount of power should also have an uncommon amount of attention aimed at him to see what he does with it?”

“Surely he has done nothing wrong yet,” Aristokles said.

“Yet,” Kritias murmured.

The boy ignored that, which most men would have found hard to do. He said, “Why should we aim uncommon attention at a man who has done nothing wrong, unless we seek to learn his virtues and imitate them?”

Kritias said, “When we speak of Alkibiades, at least as many would seek to learn his vices and imitate them.”

“Yes, many might do that,” Aristokles said. “But is it right that they should?”

“Who cares whether it is right? It is true,” Kritias said.

“Wait.” Sokrates held up a hand, then waved out toward the agora. “Hail, Kritias. I wish no more of your company today, nor that of any man who asks, ‘Who cares whether it is right?’ For what could be more important than that? How can a man who knows what is right choose what is wrong?”

“Why ask me?” Kritias retorted. “Better you should inquire of Alkibiades.”

That held enough truth to sting, but Sokrates was too angry to care. He waved again, more vehemently than before. “Get out. You are not welcome here until you mend your tongue, or, better, your spirit.”

“Oh, I’ll go,” Kritias said. “But you blame me when you ought to blame yourself, for you taught Alkibiades the virtue he so blithely ignores.” He stalked off.

Again, that arrow hadn’t missed its target. Pretending not to feel the wound, Sokrates turned back to the other men standing under the olive tree. “Well, my friends, where were we?”

They did not break up till nearly sunset. Then Aristokles came over to Sokrates and said, “Since my kinsman will not apologize for himself, please let me do it in his place.”

“You are gracious,” Sokrates said with a smile. Aristokles was worth smiling at: he was a good-looking boy, and would make a striking youth in two or three years, although broad shoulders and a squat build left him short of perfection. However pleasant he was to see, though, Sokrates went on, “How can any man act in such a way on another’s behalf?”

With a sigh, Aristokles answered, “In truth, I cannot. But I wish I could.”

That made Sokrates’ smile get wider. “A noble wish. You are one who seeks the good, I see. That is not common in one so young. Truth to tell, it is not common at any age, but less so in the very young, who have not reflected on these things.”

“I can see in my mind the images-the forms, if you like-of perfect good, of perfect truth, of perfect beauty,” Aristokles said. “In the world, though, they are always flawed. How do we, how can we, approach them?”

“Let us walk.” Sokrates set a hand on the boy’s shoulder, not in physical longing but in a painful hope he had almost abandoned. Had he at last met someone whose thoughts might march with his? Even so young, the eagle displayed its claws.

They talked far into the night.

King Agis was a short, muscular man with a scar on the upper lip he shaved in the usual Spartan fashion. His face wore what looked like a permanent scowl. He had to fight to hold the expression, because he plainly kept wanting to turn and gape at everything he saw in Athens. However much he wanted to, though, he didn’t, which placed him a cut above the usual run of country bumpkins seeing the big city for the first time.

“Hail,” Alkibiades said smoothly, holding out his hands. “Welcome to Athens. Let us have peace, if we can.”

Agis’ right hand was ridged with callus, hard as a rower’s. He’d toughened it with swordhilt and spearshaft, though, and not with the oar. “Hail,” he replied. “Yes, let us have peace. Boys who were at their mothers’ breasts when we began this fight are old enough to wear armor now. And what have we got for it? Only our homeland ravaged. Enough, I say. Let us have peace.” The word seemed all the more emphatic in his flat Doric drawl.

He said nothing about the way the Spartans had devastated Attica for years. Alkibiades hadn’t expected him to. A man didn’t feel it when he stepped on someone else’s toes, only when his own got hurt.

Confirming that, Agis went on, “I thought no man could do what you did to my polis. Since you did…” He grimaced. “Yes, let us have peace.”

“My terms are not hard,” Alkibiades said. “Here in Hellas, let all be as it was before the war began. In Sicily…Well, we won in Sicily. We will not give back what we won. If you had done the same, neither would you.”

Grimly, Agis dipped his head in agreement. He said, “I can rely on you to get the people of Athens to accept these terms?”

“You can rely on me to get these terms accepted in this polis,” Alkibiades answered. How much the people of Athens would have to do with that, he didn’t know. His own position was…irregular. He was not a magistrate. He had been a general, yes, but the campaign for which he’d commanded was over. And yet, he was unquestionably the most powerful man in the city. Soldiers leaped to do his bidding. He didn’t want the name of tyrant-tyrants attracted tyrannicides as honey drew flies-but he had everything except that name.

“I would treat with no one else,” Agis said. “You beat us. You shamed us. You should have been a Spartan yourself. You should breed sons on our women, that we might add your bloodline to our stock.” He might have been talking of horses.

“You are gracious, but I have women enough here,” Alkibiades said. Inside, he laughed. Would Agis offer his own wife next? What was her name? Timaia, that was it. If King Agis did, it would insure that Alkibiades’ descendants ruled Sparta. He liked the idea.

But Agis did no such thing. Instead, he said, “If we are to have no more war, son of Kleinias, how shall we live at peace? For both of us aim to rule all of Hellas.”

“Yes.” Alkibiades rubbed his chin. Agis might be dour, but he was no fool. The Athenian went on, “Hear me. While we fought, who ruled Hellas? My polis? No. Yours? No again. Anyone’s? Not at all. The only ruler Hellas had was war. Whereas if we both pull together, like two horses in harness pulling a chariot, who knows where we might go?”

Agis stood stock-still for some little while, considering that. At last, he said, “I can think of a place where we might go if we pull in harness,” and spoke one word more.

Now Alkibiades laughed out loud. He leaned forward and kissed Agis on the cheek, as if the King of Sparta were a pretty boy. “Do you know, my dear,” he said, “we are not so very different after all.”

Kritias strode through the agora in a perfect transport of fury. He might have been a whirlwind trying to blow down everything around him. He made not the slightest effort to restrain himself or keep his voice down. When he drew near the Tholos-in fact, even before he drew very near the Tholos-his words were plainly audible under the olive tree in front of Simon’s cobbler’s shop. They were not only audible, they were loud enough to make the discussion already under way beneath that olive tree falter.

“Us, yoked together with the Spartans?” Kritias raged. “You might as well yoke a dolphin and a wolf! They will surely turn on us and rend us first chance they get!”

“What do you think of that, Sokrates?” a young man asked.

Before Sokrates could answer, someone else said, “Kritias is just jealous he didn’t think of it himself. If he had, he’d be screaming every bit as loud that it’s the best thing that could possibly happen to Athens.”

“Quiet,” another man said in a quick, low voice. “That’s Kritias’ kinsman over there by Sokrates.” He jerked a thumb at Aristokles.

“So?” said the man who’d spoken before. “I don’t care if that’s Kritias’ mother over there by Sokrates. It’s still true.”

Sokrates looked across the agora at the rampaging Kritias. His former pupil came to a stop by the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton near the center of the market square. There under the images of the young men said to have liberated Athens from her last tyranny, his fist pumping furiously, he harangued a growing crowd.

With a sigh, Sokrates said, “How is a man who cannot control himself to see clearly what the good is and what it is not?” Slowly and deliberately, he turned his back on Kritias. “Since he is not quite so noisy as he was, shall we resume our own discussion? Is knowledge innate and merely evoked by teachers, or do teachers impart new knowledge to those who study under them?”

“You have certainly shown me many things I never knew before, Sokrates,” a man named Apollodoros said.

“Ah, but did I show them to you for the first time, or did I merely bring them to light?” Sokrates replied. “That is what we need to…”

He stopped, for the others weren’t listening to him anymore. That irked him; he had an elegant demonstration planned, one that would use a slave boy of Simon’s to show that knowledge already existed and merely wanted bringing forth. But no one was paying any attention to him. Instead, his followers stared out into the agora, toward the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton and toward Kritias.

Part of Sokrates didn’t want to look, not when he’d already turned away. But he was no less curious than any other Hellene: was, indeed, perhaps more curious about more different things than any other Hellene. And so, muttering curses under his breath like the stonecutter he had been for so long, he looked back into the market square himself.

Three men, he saw, had come up out of the crowd and surrounded Kritias. “They wouldn’t dare,” somebody-Sokrates thought it was Apollodoros, but he wasn’t sure-said just as Kritias shoved one of the men away from him. Things happened very quickly after that. All three men-they wore only tunics and went barefoot, as sailors usually did-drew knives. The sun sparkled off the blades’ sharp edges. They stabbed Kritias, again and again. His bubbling shriek and the cries of horror from the crowd filled the agora. As he fell, the murderers loped off. A few men started to chase them, but one of them turned back to threaten the pursuers with his now-bloody weapon. They drew back. The three men made good their escape.

With a low wail, Aristokles dashed out toward his fallen relative. Sokrates hurried after the boy to keep anything from happening to him. Several of the other men who frequented the shade in front of Simon’s shop trailed along behind them.

“Make way!” Aristokles shouted, his voice full of command even though it had yet to break. “Make way, there! I am Kritias’ kinsman!”

People did step aside for him. Sokrates followed in his wake, but realized before he got very close to Kritias that Aristokles could do nothing for him now. He lay on his back in a still-spreading pool of his own blood. He’d been stabbed in the chest, the belly, and the throat-probably from behind, as well, but Sokrates couldn’t see that. His eyes were wide and staring and unblinking. His chest neither rose nor fell.

Aristokles knelt beside him, careless of the blood. “Who did this?” he asked, and then answered his own question: “Alkibiades.” No one contradicted him. He reached out and closed Kritias’ eyes. “My kinsman was, perhaps, not the best of men, but he did not deserve-this. He shall be avenged.” Unbroken voice or not, he sounded every bit a man.

The Assembly never met to ratify Alkibiades’ peace with Sparta. His argument-to the degree that he bothered making an argument-was that the peace was so self-evidently good, it needed no formal approval. That subverted the Athenian constitution, but few people complained out loud. Kritias’ murder made another sort of argument, one prudent men could not ignore. So did the untimely demise of a young relative of his who might have thought his youth granted his outspokenness immunity.

Over the years, the Athenians had called Sokrates a great many things. Few, though, had ever called him lacking in courage. A couple of weeks after Kritias died-and only a couple of days after Aristokles was laid to rest-Sokrates walked out across the agora from the safe, comfortable shade of the olive tree in front of Simon the shoemaker’s toward the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton in the heart of the market square. Several of his followers came along with him.

Apollodoros tugged at his chiton. “You don’t have to do this,” he said in a choked voice, as if about to burst into tears.

“No?” Sokrates looked around. “Men need to hear the truth. Men need to speak the truth. Do you see anyone else doing those things?” He kept walking.

“But what will happen to you?” Apollodoros wailed.

“What will happen to Athens?” Sokrates answered.

He took his place where Kritias must have stood. Blood still stained the base of Aristogeiton’s statue. Blocky and foursquare, Sokrates stood and waited. The men and youths who listened to him formed the beginnings of an audience-and the Athenians recognized the attitude of a man about to make a speech. By ones and twos, they wandered over to hear what he had to say.

“Men of Athens, I have always tried to do the good, so far as I could see what that was,” he began. “For I believe the good is most important to man: more important than ease, more important than wealth, more important even than peace. Our grandfathers could have had peace with Persia by giving the Great King’s envoys earth and water. Yet they saw that was not good, and they fought to stay free.

“Now we have peace with Sparta. Is it good? Alkibiades says it is. Someone asked that question once before, and now that man is dead, as is his young kinsman who dared be outraged at an unjust death. We all know who arranged these things. I tell no secrets. And I tell no secrets when I say these murders were not good.”

“You were the one who taught Alkibiades!” someone called.

“I tried to teach him the good and the true, or rather to show him what was already in his mind, as it is in all our minds,” Sokrates replied. “Yet I must have failed, for what man, knowing the good, would willingly do evil? And the murder of Kritias, and especially that of young Aristokles, was evil. How can anyone doubt that?”

“What do we do about it, then?” asked someone in the crowd-not one of Sokrates’ followers.

“We are Athenians,” he replied. “If we are not a light for Hellas to follow, who is? We rule ourselves, and have for a century, since we cast out the last tyrants, the sons of Peisistratos.” He set his hand on the statue of Aristogeiton, reminding the men who listened why that statue stood here. “The sons of Peisistratos were the last tyrants before Alkibiades, I should say. We Athenians beat the Persians. We have beaten the Spartans. We-”

“Alkibiades beat the Spartans!” somebody else yelled.

“I was there, my good fellow. Were you?” Sokrates asked. Sudden silence answered him. Into it, he went on, “Yes, Alkibiades led us. But we Athenians triumphed. Peisistratos was a fine general, too, or so they say. Yet he was also a tyrant. Will any man deny that? Alkibiades the man has good qualities. We all know as much. Alkibiades the tyrant…What qualities can a tyrant have, save those of a tyrant?”

“Do you say we should cast him out?” a man called.

“I say we should do what is good, what is right. We are men. We know what that is,” Sokrates said. “We have known what the good is since before birth. If you need me to remind you of it, I will do that. It is why I stand here before you now.”

“Alkibiades won’t like it,” another man predicted in a doleful voice.

Sokrates shrugged broad shoulders. “I have not liked many of the things he has done. If he does not care for my deeds, I doubt I shall lose any sleep over that.”

Bang! Bang! Bang! The pounding on the door woke Sokrates and Xanthippe at the same time. It was black as pitch inside their bedroom. “Stupid drunk,” Xanthippe grumbled when the racket went on and on. She pushed at her husband. “Go out there and tell the fool he’s trying to get into the wrong house.”

“I don’t think he is,” Sokrates answered as he got out of bed.

“What are you talking about?” Xanthippe demanded.

“Something I said in the market square. I seem to have been wrong,” Sokrates said. “Here I am, losing sleep after all.”

“You waste too much time in the agora.” Xanthippe shoved him again as the pounding got louder. “Now go give that drunk a piece of your mind.”

“Whoever is out there, I do not think he is drunk.” But Sokrates pulled his chiton on over his head. He went out through the crowded little courtyard where Xanthippe grew herbs and up to the front door. As he unbarred it, the pounding stopped. He opened the door. Half a dozen large, burly men stood outside. Three carried torches. They all carried cudgels. “Hail, friends,” Sokrates said mildly. “What do you want that cannot keep till morning?”

“Sokrates son of Sophroniskos?” one of the bruisers demanded.

“That’s Sokrates, all right,” another one said, even as Sokrates dipped his head.

“Got to be sure,” the first man said, and then, to Sokrates, “Come along with us.”

“And if I don’t?” he asked.

They all raised their bludgeons. “You will-one way or the other,” the leader said. “Your choice. Which is it?”

“What does the idiot want, Sokrates?” Xanthippe shrilled from the back of the house.

“Me,” he said, and went with the men into the night.

Alkibiades yawned. Even to him, an experienced roisterer, staying up into the middle of the night felt strange and unnatural. Once the sun went down, most people went to bed and waited for morning. Most of the time, even roisterers did. The clay lamps that cast a faint, flickering yellow light over this bare little courtyard and filled it with the smell of burning olive oil were a far cry from Helios’ bright, warm, cheerful rays.

A bat fluttered down, snatched a moth out of the air near a lamp, and disappeared again. “Hate those things,” muttered one of the men in the courtyard with Alkibiades. “They can’t be natural.”

“People have said the same thing about me,” Alkibiades answered lightly. “I will say, though, that I’m prettier than a bat.” He preened. He might have had reason to be, but he was vain about his looks.

His henchmen chuckled. The door to the house opened. “Here they are,” said the man who didn’t like bats. “About time, too.”

In came Sokrates, in the midst of half a dozen ruffians. “Hail,” Alkibiades said. “I wish you hadn’t forced me to this.”

Sokrates cocked his head to one side and studied him. He showed only curiosity, not fear, though he had to know what lay ahead for him. “How can one man force another to do anything?” he asked. “How, especially, can one man force another to do that which he knows not to be good?”

“This is good-for me,” Alkibiades answered. “You have been making a nuisance of yourself in the agora.”

“A nuisance?” Sokrates tossed his head. “I am sorry, but whoever told you these things is misinformed. I have spoken the truth and asked questions that might help others decide what is true.”

Voice dry, Alkibiades said, “That constitutes being a nuisance, my dear. If you criticize me, what else are you but a nuisance?”

“A truth-teller, as I said before,” Sokrates replied. “You must know this. We have discussed it often enough.” He sighed. “I think my daimon was wrong to bid me accompany you to Sicily. I have never known it to be wrong before, but how can you so lightly put aside what has been shown to be true?”

“True, you showed me the gods cannot be as Homer and Hesiod imagined them,” Alkibiades said. “But you have drawn the wrong lesson from that. You say we should live as if the gods were there watching us, even though they are not.”

“And so we should, for our own sake,” Sokrates said.

“But if the gods are not, O best one, why not grab with both hands?” Alkibiades asked. “This being all I have, I intend to make the most of it. And if anyone should stand in the way…” He shrugged. “Too bad.”

The henchman who didn’t like bats said, “Enough of this chatter. Give him the drug. It’s late. I want to go home.”

Alkibiades held up a small black-glazed jar with three horizontal incised grooves showing the red clay beneath the glaze. “Hemlock,” he told Sokrates. “It’s fairly quick and fairly easy-and a lot less messy than what Kritias got.”

“Generous of you,” Sokrates remarked. He stepped forward and reached out to take the jar. Alkibiades’ henchmen let him advance. Why not? If he’d swallow the poison without any fuss, so much the better.

But, when he got within a couple of paces of Alkibiades, he shouted out, “Eleleu!” and flung himself at the younger man. The jar of hemlock smashed on the hard dirt of the courtyard. Alkibiades knew at once he was fighting for his life. Sokrates gave away twenty years, but his stocky, broad-shouldered frame seemed nothing but rock-hard muscle.

He and Alkibiades rolled in the dirt, punching and cursing and gouging and kneeing and kicking each other. This was the pankration, the all-in fight of the Olympic and Panathenaic Games, without even the handful of rules the Games enforced. Alkibiades tucked his head down into his chest. The thumb that would have extracted one of his eyes scraped across his forehead instead.

Back when he was a youth, he’d sunk his teeth into a foe who’d got a good wrestling hold on him. “You bite like a woman!” the other boy had cried.

“No, like a lion!” he answered.

He’d bitten then because he couldn’t stand to lose. He bit now to keep Sokrates from getting a meaty forearm under his chin and strangling him. Sokrates roared. His hot, salty blood filled Alkibiades’ mouth. Alkibiades dug an elbow into his belly, but it might have been made from the marble that had gone into the Parthenon.

Shouting, Alkibiades’ henchmen ran up and started clubbing Sokrates. The only trouble was, they hit Alkibiades nearly as often. Then, suddenly, Sokrates groaned and went limp. Alkibiades scrambled away from him. The hilt of a knife stood in the older man’s back. The point, surely, had reached his heart.

Sokrates’ eyes still held reason as he stared up at Alkibiades. He tried to say something, but only blood poured from his mouth. The hand he’d raised fell back. A stench filled the courtyard; his bowels had let go in death.

“Pheu!” Alkibiades said, just starting to feel his aches and bruises. “He almost did for me there.”

“Who would’ve thought the old blabbermouth could fight like that?” one of his followers marveled, surprise and respect in his voice.

“He was a blabbermouth, sure enough.” Alkibiades bent down and closed the staring eyes. Gently, as a lover might, he kissed Sokrates on the cheek and on the tip of the snub nose. “He was a blabbermouth, yes, but oh, by the gods! he was a man.”

Alkibiades and King Agis of Sparta stood side by side on the speakers’ platform in the Pnyx, the fan-shaped open area west of the agora where the Athenian Assembly convened. Since Alkibiades had taken the rule of Athens into his own hands, this wasn’t really a meeting of the Assembly. But, along with the theater of Dionysos, the Pnyx still made a convenient place to gather the citizens so he-and Agis-could speak to them.

Along with the milling, chattering Athenians, several hundred Spartans who had come up from the Peloponnesos with Agis occupied a corner of the Pnyx. They stood out not only for their red cloaks and shaven upper lips: they stayed in place without movement or talk. Next to the voluble locals, they might almost have been statues.

Nor were they the only Hellenes from other poleis here today. Thebes had sent a delegation to Athens. So had Corinth. So had the Thessalians, from the towns in the north of Hellas proper. And so had the half-wild Macedonians. Their envoys kept staring every which way, especially back toward the Akropolis. Nodding toward them, Alkibiades murmured to Agis, “They haven’t got anything like this up in their backwoods country.”

“We have nothing like this, either,” Agis said. “I doubt whether so much luxury is a good thing.”

“It hasn’t spoiled us or made us soft,” Alkibiades replied. As you have reason to know. He didn’t say that. It hung in the air nonetheless.

“Yes,” Agis said laconically.

What Alkibiades did say was, “We’ve spent enough time-too much time-fighting among ourselves. If Athens and Sparta agree, if the rest of Hellas-and even Macedonia-follows…”

“Yes,” Agis said again. This time, he added, “That is why I have come. This job is worth doing, and Sparta cannot do it alone. Neither can Athens.”

Getting a bit of your own back? Alkibiades wondered. It wasn’t as if Agis were wrong. Alkibiades gestured to a herald who stood on the platform with him and the Spartan. The man stepped up and called in a great voice, “People of Hellas, hear the words of Alkibiades, leader of Hellas, and of Agis, King of Sparta.”

Leader sounded ever so much better than tyrant, even if they amounted to the same thing. Alkibiades took a step forward. He loved having thousands of pairs of eyes on him, where Agis seemed uncomfortable under that scrutiny. Agis, of course, was King because of his bloodline. Alkibiades had had to earn all the attention he’d got. He’d had to, and he’d done it.

Now he said, “People of Hellas, you see before you Athenian and Spartan, with neither one quarreling over who should lead us Hellenes in his direction.” Of course we’re not quarreling, he thought. I’ve won. He wondered how well Agis understood that. Such worries, though, would have to wait for another time. He went on, “For too long, Hellenes have fought other Hellenes. And while we fought among ourselves, while we spent our own treasure and our own blood, who benefited? Who smiled? Who, by the gods, laughed?”

A few of the men in the audience-the more clever, more alert ones-stirred, catching his drift. The rest stood there, waiting for him to explain. Sokrates would have understood. The gouge on Alkibiades’ forehead was only a pink scar now. Sokrates would have said I’m pointing the Athenians in a new direction so they don’t look my way. He would have been right, too. But now he’s dead, and not too many miss him. He wasn’t a nuisance only to me.

Such musing swallowed no more than a couple of heartbeats. Aloud, Alkibiades continued, “In our grandfathers’ day, the Great Kings of Persia tried to conquer Hellas with soldiers, and found they could not. We have men in Athens still alive who fought at Marathon and Salamis and Plataia.”

A handful of those ancient veterans stood in the crowd, white-bearded and bent and leaning on sticks like the last part of the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx. Some of them cupped a hand behind an ear to follow him better. What they’d seen in their long lives!

“Since then, though, Hellenes have battled other Hellenes and forgotten the common foe,” Alkibiades said. “Indeed, with all his gold Great King Dareios II has sought to buy mastery of Hellas, and has come closer to gaining it than Kyros and Xerxes did with their great swarms of men. For enmities among us suit Persia well. She gains from our disunion what she could not with spears and arrows.

“A lifetime ago, Great King Xerxes took Athens and burnt it. We have made it a finer polis, a grander polis, since, but our ashes are yet unavenged. Only when we Hellenes have burnt Persepolis to the ground can we say we are, at last, even with the Persians.”

Some fellow from Halikarnassos had written a great long book about the struggles between Hellenes and Persians. The burning of Athens was the least of it; he’d traced the conflict back even before the days of the Trojan War. What was his name? Alkibiades couldn’t recall. It didn’t matter. People knew Athens had gone up in flames. The rest? Long ago and far away.

Almost everyone in the Pnyx saw where he was going now. A low, excited murmur ran through the crowd. He continued, “We’ve shown one thing, and shown it plainly. Only Hellenes can beat other Hellenes. The Great King knows as much. That’s why he hires mercenaries from Hellas. But if all our poleis pull together, if all our poleis send hoplites and rowers and ships against Persia, not even those traitors can hope to hold us back.

“Persia and the wealth of Persia will be ours. We will have new lands to rule, new lands to settle. We won’t have to expose unwanted infants anymore. They will have places where they can live. The Great King’s treasury will fall into our hands. Now we starve for silver. Once we beat the Persians, we’ll have our fill of gold.”

No more low, excited murmur. Now the people in the Pnyx burst into cheers. Alkibiades watched the Spartans. They were shouting as loud as the Athenians. The idea of a war against Persia made them forget their usual reserve. The Thebans cheered, too, as did the men from the towns of Thessaly. During Xerxes’ invasion, they’d given the Persians earth and water in token of submission.

And the Macedonians cheered more enthusiastically still, pounding one another and their neighbors on the back. Seeing that made Alkibiades smile. For one thing, the Macedonians had also yielded to the Persians. For another, he had no intention of using them to any great degree in his campaign against Persia. Their King, Perdikkas son of Alexandros, was a hill bandit who squabbled with other hill bandits nearby. Macedonia had always been like that. It always would be. Expecting it to amount to anything was a waste of time, a waste of hope.

Alkibiades stepped back and waved King Agis forward. The Spartan said, “Alkibiades has spoken well. We owe our forefathers revenge against Persia. We can win it. We should win it. We will win it. So long as we stand together, no one can stop us. Let us go on, then, on to victory!”

He stepped back. More cheers rang out. In his plain way, he had spoken well. An Athenian would have been laughed off the platform for such a bare-bones speech, but standards were different for the Spartans. Poor fellows, Alkibiades thought. They can’t help being dull.

He eyed Agis. Just how dull was the Spartan King? So long as we stand together, no one can stop us. That was true. Alkibiades was sure of it. But how long would the Hellenes stand together? Long enough to beat Great King Dareios? Fighting a common foe would help.

How long after beating the Persians would the Hellenes stand together? Till we start quarreling over who will rule the lands we’ve won. Alkibiades eyed Agis again. Did he see that, too, or did he think they would go on sharing? He might. Spartans could be slow on the uptake.

I am alone at the top of Athens now, Alkibiades thought. Soon I will be alone at the top of the civilized world, from Sicily all the way to India. This must be what Sokrates’ daimon saw. This must be why it sent him to Sicily with me, to smooth my way to standing here at the pinnacle. Sure enough, it knew what it was doing, whether he thought so or not. Alkibiades smiled at Agis. Agis, fool that he was, smiled back.

THE REAL HISTORY BEHIND “THE DAIMON ”

In the real world, Sokrates did not accompany the Athenians’ expedition to Sicily in 415 B. C. E. As told in the story, Alkibiades’ political foes in Athens did arrange his recall. In real history, he left the expedition but fled on the way to Athens. He eventually wound up in Sparta, the Athenians’ bitter foe in the Peloponnesian War, and advised the Spartans to aid Syracuse and to continue the war against Athens. (He also, incidentally, fathered a bastard on King Agis’ wife, whose bed Agis was avoiding due to religious scruples.)

The Athenian expedition, despite substantial reinforcements in 413 B. C. E., was a disastrous failure. It did not take Syracuse, and few of the approximately 50,000 hoplites and sailors sent west ever saw Athens again. Nikias, who headed the force after Alkibiades’ recall, was executed by the Syracusans. Alkibiades returned to the Athenian side, then abandoned Athens’ cause after further political strife and was murdered in 404 B. C. E. In that same year, the Spartans decisively defeated the Athenians and, at a crushing cost, won the Peloponnesian War.

In the aftermath of the war, Sokrates’ pupil Kritias became the head of the Thirty Tyrants, and was killed during the civil war leading to the restoration of Athenian democracy in 403 B. C. E. Sokrates himself, convicted on a charge of bringing new gods to Athens, drank hemlock in 399 B. C. E., refusing to flee, though many might have wished he would have gone into exile instead. His pupil Aristokles-far more often known as Platon because of his broad shoulders-survived for more than half a century; it is through the writings of Platon, Xenophon, and Aristophanes that we know Sokrates, who himself left nothing in writing.

In real history, the assault on Persia waited until the reign of Alexander the Great (336–323 B. C. E.), and occurred under Macedonian domination, not that of the Hellenic poleis.

Harry Turtledove was born in Los Angeles in 1949. After flunking out of Caltech, he earned a Ph. D. in Byzantine history from UCLA. He has taught ancient and medieval history at UCLA, Cal State Fullerton, and Cal State L.A., and has published a translation of a ninth-century Byzantine chronicle and several scholarly articles. He is, however, primarily a full-time science fiction and fantasy writer; much of his work involves either alternate histories or historically based fantasy.

Among his science fiction are the alternate history novel The Guns of the South; and Worldwar series (an alternate history involving alien invasion during World War II); How Few Remain, a Nebula finalist; and Ruled Britannia, set largely in the theaters of Shakespeare’s London in a world where the Spanish Armada was successful.

His alternate history novella, “Down in the Bottomlands,” won the 1994 Hugo Award in its category. An alternate history novelette, “Must and Shall,” was a 1996 Hugo and 1997 Nebula finalist. The science-fiction novella “Forty, Counting Down” was a 2000 Hugo finalist, and is under option for film production.

He is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos Turtledove. They have three daughters, Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca.