The Last of the Wine (41 page)

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

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

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

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

W
HEN WE KNEW THAT
Athens was alone now, we went up to the High City and took the oath of fellowship. Someone proposed it who remembered the oath on Samos. I remembered too. A lark had sung when we raised the hymn to Zeus, and the smoke rose into the deep blue ether, high as the gods. Today autumn was setting in; the sky was grey over the sun-dried hills; when the priest made the offering, a cold wind blew smoke and ashes into my face.

Night and day we waited for the Spartans, watching the walls. But Athenians came instead to the City.

They were not the captives from Goat’s Creek. Those Lysander had put to the sword, three thousand men. They came from the Hellespont cities which had opened their gates to him. Wherever he found a democracy he overthrew it. The worst oligarchs everywhere were already his creatures. They held down the people for him; he gave them the lives of their enemies, and confirmed them in their estates. In a few weeks they slaughtered as many men as the war had killed in years. It seemed to the Spartans at home that Lysander was putting all these lands under the heel of his City, while he was getting into his own hands more power than the Great King.

Wherever on his march he found Athenians, soldiers or traders or colonists, he spared them, and gave them safe-conduct, provided they went nowhere but to Athens. All along the Theban Road, over the passes of Parnes, and down into the plain, they trudged with their wives and children, their bedding and their cooking-pots. All day they walked with dusty feet through the gates of the City, and set down their loads, praising the mercy of Lysander.

Then, when they had rested a little, they went to the market for food.

We had closed the ports of Piraeus as soon as we knew we had no ships to hold them. Only little Munychia was left without a boom, for the corn-ships. At first one or two came in from the Hellespont, which had got through before the battle, and a couple from Cyprus. The corn was stored under armed guard. But next day as many sacks had to be issued; with all the new mouths, the market was eaten bare. Presently Lysander’s fleet was sighted, two hundred sail. They folded their wings on Salamis, and picked it clean. Then they perched there, their eyes upon Piraeus, and waited.

Sparta indeed did us honour; she sent us both her kings. King Pausanias marched his army over the Isthmus and up to the walls. In the Academy gardens he pitched his tents; we could see on the sand-track the Spartans racing, or throwing the disk. They closed the road to Megara; then King Agis came down from Dekeleia, and closed the road to Thebes. Winter came on, first with cold sunlight, then with cold rain. In a little while, even the smallest child could understand Lysander’s mercy.

It was not for some weeks that people began to die. At first it was the very poor, the very old, and those who were sick already. As things got scarcer prices got higher; food took all people had; trade dropped, men fell out of work, rents were not paid to those who had lived on them; every day the army of the poor was growing, and when people had been poor for long enough, they died.

The corn was given out by the government, a measure a head. The measure got smaller each day, and last comers got none. The head of the household had to get it. My father used to get up before dawn; many waited all night. People used to take cold when the nights were bad; in this way very many died.

At home, however, we lived pretty well at first. Nowadays the man with a mule was as rich as the man with a horse. Ours was quite young, and salted down almost like venison. When my father killed it, I said, “We must send Lysis a portion. You know we always do when we sacrifice, and he sends to us.”—“We are not sacrificing,” my father said. “A mule is not a proper beast to offer to a god. One cannot keep up every convention now. Your Uncle Strymon, though he is pretty well off and my own father’s brother, sends nothing to me.”—“Then take it from my share, Father. Often enough in battle Lysis has shed his own blood, to save mine. Now am I to grudge him the flesh of a mule?”—“There are five thousand men in the City, Alexias, who have shed blood in battle for all of us alike. Shall I send to each of them?” But he sent in the end. A little while after, Lysis sent us a dove. I knew when we met that it distressed him to have sent nothing better, and that he must have gone short for it. It was the same everywhere, except among the rich; but it came hard on those who had said with Pythagoras, “There is no mine or yours between us.”

When the corn measure was down to half a pint a head, it was determined to send the Spartans envoys, and ask their terms for peace.

The envoys rode out to the Academy; and people watching them recalled how, after Alkibiades took Kyzikos, and again after our sea victory off the White Isles, the Spartans had offered peace, on condition of each side keeping what it had, except for Dekeleia, which they would give back to us if we would take the oligarch exiles in. Because of this last, the democrat leader, Kleophon, had roused up the people to demand nothing but a fight to the finish, promising victory. Now they brought him up on a charge of evading military service, and put him to death. But they say a man ought not to look back, when he comes to the end.

Our envoys were soon home, for the kings would not treat with them. It was a matter, they said, for the ephors of Sparta. So we sent them off again, on their long ride over the hills and the Isthmus; and they were empowered to offer the Spartans, now, what they had asked, each side to keep what it had. Only now they had everything, except the City itself, and Piraeus, and the Long Walls.

The harbours were over-fished, and the catch grew less each day. When people heard from some courtyard the sound of an octopus being beaten on a stone to make it tender, they would look at each other, as they used to when the frontlet of an ox was hung before the door. A pint of oil sold for two drachmas, if you could find it.

Then the envoys came back again. It was a grey wet day, with great clouds coming in dark from the sea. From the top of the Pnyx you could see the waves capped with white as far as Salamis, and Lysander’s ships making for port. The envoys stood up; and one look at their faces made the cold seem colder. The Spartans had turned them back on the frontier, when they heard their offer, and told them to come back with something serious. Let Athens acknowledge the rule of Sparta as subject ally, and pull down the Long Walls for the length of a mile. Then there might be talk of peace.

Out of the silence, a voice cried, “Slavery!” We looked out towards Piraeus, and saw the great walls of Themistokles thrust out to the harbour, guarding the road, like a man’s right arm reaching out from the shoulder to grasp his spear. Only one senator proposed surrender, and he was voted a prison sentence, for dishonouring the City. Then we went down from the hill, each man’s mind going back to the matter of his next meal.

I stopped on my way at Simon the Cobbler’s to get my sandal patched, and ran into Phaedo at the door. It was a week or so since I had seen him; he was getting rather thin, but having beautiful bones he had changed his looks, rather than lost them. I asked how he was, not liking to ask how he was living. “Oh, I’m well enough while the paper lasts. People still buy books, to take their minds off their bellies. And I get a little teaching nowadays. They come to me for mathematics, and I make them learn logic as well. Half the world’s troubles come from men not being trained to resent a fallacy as much as an insult.”

I looked at the book he held, and at his hand. You could nearly see the writing through it. “Phaedo, what are you doing here at all? Don’t you know the Spartans are repatriating the Melians, and offering them safe-conduct?” He smiled, and looked over his shoulder into the shop. Simon was sitting at his work-bench, a woman’s shoe in one hand and his awl in the other, listening to Sokrates, who was talking to Euthydemos with a piece of dressed hide in his hand. Phaedo said, “We have been defining fortitude. Now having defined it, we can’t determine whether it is good absolutely, or conditionally, or in part. But you will find, dear Alexias, if you come in, that Sokrates is comparing it to the process of tanning, and the end will be that, whether it is an absolute good or not, we shall go away with more than we had. Why should I starve in Melos, when the fare here is so good? Come and join us.” And putting his arm in mine, he led me inside.

Meantime the Spartan lines tightened about the City, and it was five drachmas a pint for oil. Everything but corn was on the open market; there was not enough to control. The poor began to expose their new-born infants, when the mothers had no milk. If one walked on the High City, there was always one crying somewhere in the rocks or the long grass below.

The rich had not felt it yet. Such people buy stores in bulk; what they lacked, they could pay for, besides their horses, asses and mules. Many were generous: Xenophon when he killed his favourite charger sent something to all his friends, and wrote us a most gentlemanly letter, making a joke of it, so that it would not shame us to send nothing back; Kriton, I believe, kept Sokrates’ whole family alive at one time, and Phaedo at another, as well as the pensioners and dependants he had supported from the first; Autolykos maintained some broken-down wrestler who had taught him as a boy. But none of this could alter the fact; once rich or poor had been a matter of purple or homespun, now it was becoming life or death.

So presently the City chose another envoy, to try again. It was Theramenes. He proposed himself for the mission. He had influence among the Spartans, he said, of a kind he could not disclose. People knew what he meant. He had not been one of the Four Hundred for nothing. However, he had come out on the right side in the end, and done more than most to save the City. If he could get us better terms now, good luck to him. My father was glad of this honour done to so old a friend, who had sent us a good cut of neck off a donkey only a week before.

So he set forth, and was seen upon the Sacred Way, riding with some Spartans towards Eleusis. The City waited. Three days ran into four, and a week into two; and a pint of oil cost eight drachmas.

At the end of the first week I killed the dogs. They had foraged for themselves at first, and had stopped coming to look at us at feeding-time. But now a rat sold for a drachma, and their ribs were showing; and, as my father said, if we left it longer there would be no meat on them at all. When I was whetting my hunting-knife, two of them came up wagging their tails, thinking we were off to get a hare. I meant to begin with the smallest, whom I liked the best, so that being the first he would feel no fear. But he had hidden himself, and from a dark corner looked up at me weeping. There was a little on the biggest to salt away. The others, when I had them skinned, were only good to stew; but we lived three days on them.

Already before this we had sold Kydilla. My father had bought her for my mother when they married; we would have freed her when we could feed her no longer, but it would only have been turning her off to starve. A mantle-maker bought her, for a quarter what she had cost when raw and untaught. She wept not only for herself, but at leaving my mother within a month or two of her time.

All this while there were the walls to man, lest the Spartans grow impatient and try a surprise. At about this time, one of Lysis’ men accused another of stealing food, and their swords came out. Lysis running in to part them got a cut in front of the thigh, nearly to the bone. When I called, it was always getting better, and did not hurt, and he would walk tomorrow. He was getting no more rent for his father’s house, it being outside the walls; now he was losing his army pay, and I thought he looked ill. But he said he had sold the great brooch of Agamemnon before the bottom fell out of the market, and that his brother-in-law had sent him something, and that little Thalia was proving a splendid manager, and that they did as well as the next.

The only thing the City was not short of was citizens; we had plenty of spare time between watches. One day I came upon my sister Charis with her dolls about her, giving them a meal of pebbles and beads. “Be good,” she was saying, “and eat up your soup, or you shan’t have any roast kid, or honey fritters.” Children grow fast at eight years old; there seemed nothing of her but legs and eyes. Next morning I said to my father, “I am going out to look for work.”

We were having breakfast at the time, a gill or two of wine in four parts of water. He put down his cup and said, “Work? What work?”—“Any work. Tanning, or mixing mortar, for all I care.” It was a frosty morning, and the cold made my temper short. “What do you mean?” he said. “A Eupatrid, of the seed of Erechtheus and of Ion child of Apollo, touting the tradesmen like a metic, asking for work? Before the day is out, some informer will be saying we are not citizens; it always happens. Let us keep some dignity at least.”—“Well, Father,” I said, “if our line is so good, we had better see it doesn’t end with us.”