The Last of the Wine (6 page)

Kritias said smoothly, “No one, I am sure, will think worse of Tellis for supporting his host.”

The men had been drinking, and were full of their affairs. But I, who was watching, saw Tellis’ face stiffen, as at the first bite of a sword-thrust. When you have thought yourself among good friends, who have given the best proof of their liking for your company, it strikes hard to be called a sycophant for the first time. I knew he would never sup with the club again. I went over to him and filled his cup, knowing no other way to show what I felt; and he smiled at me, trying to greet me as he always did. Our eyes met above the wine-cup, like men’s who have picked up the sound of a lost battle before the trumpet blows the retreat.

A
DONIS WAS DEAD. MY
mother put on her mourning veil and went out to weep for him, with a basket of anemones to strew about his bier. Soon one met a procession at every corner, the dead god carried in his garden, the women with hair unbound wailing against the flutes.

I have never met a man yet who liked this festival. That year it was a cold grey day, with heavy cloud. The citizens crowded into the palaestra and the baths and any place where women cannot go, and muttered gossip about omens and prodigies. Word came from the Agora that a man had just gone raving mad there; he had leaped on the Altar of the Twelve, drawn a knife, and hacked off his genitals with it. The altar was defiled and would have to be consecrated again.

In the High City, the temples were so thronged that those who came to sacrifice stood in lines to take their turn. They came away like men who having touched the plague have just washed themselves, and doubt if they have washed enough. In the midst of the temple, great Athene gazed down upon us all. Her gold robes gleamed, her cloak worked with victories hung behind her; the soft light, creeping through the thin marble of the roof-tiles, glowed on her face, so that the warm ivory seemed alive; one waited only for her to raise her mighty arm and, pointing, say in a voice of clashing gold, “There is the man.” But she kept her counsel.

Men were busier. A public award had now been offered to informers, and a board appointed to hear them. Soon information was coming in not about the Herm-breaking, but about anyone who might be supposed to have done, or said, or thought, something sacrilegious. My father said to anyone who would listen that this was bribing scum to come to the top, and that Perikles would have sickened at it.

Xenophon and I, to escape all this gloom in the City, spent our spare time at Piraeus. Here there was always something new; a rich metic from Phrygia or Egypt might be building himself a house in the style of his former city, or putting up a shrine to one of the gods whom one hardly knew in his foreign dress, with even a dog’s head perhaps or a fish’s tail; or there would be a new shipment in the Emporion of carpets from Babylon, Persian lapis, Scythian turquoises, or tin and amber from the wild Hyperborean places that only Phoenicians know. Our silver owls were the only coinage, then, that was good all over the world. You saw in the wide streets Nubians with plugs of ivory pulling their ears down to their shoulders; long-haired Medes, in trousers and sequin bonnets; Egyptians with painted eyes, wearing only skirts of stiff linen and collars of gems and beads. The air was heavy with the smells of foreign bodies, of spices and hemp and pitch; strange tongues chattered like beast speaking to bird; one guessed at the meaning, and watched the talking hands.

Alkibiades was denounced on the day when he stood up before the Assembly, to declare the fleet ready for sailing.

The accuser, who had a slave at hand, asked for an immunity, and for all who were not initiates to depart. This being done, the slave recited aloud the central Words, which, he said, Alkibiades had profaned before him.

It was the day after this that I missed Sokrates in the palaestra.

His absence in itself I should have thought nothing of; for he used to talk with all kinds of people, all about the City. I was not disturbed till I went out on the running-track, and saw among the onlookers a group of his friends, talking together like troubled men. At once it sprang into my mind that someone had denounced him, because he had taught Alkibiades, and refused to be initiated. Eryximachos the doctor had now joined the others. I could not endure my ignorance any longer. I leaned on one foot as I ran, stopped as if hurt, and went halting off the track. The trainer was too busy to come after me: I sat down near them to listen.

Eryximachos must just have asked whether Sokrates was ill; for Kriton was saying that nothing ever ailed him. He went on, “No, Sokrates is at home, sacrificing and praying for the army of the Athenians.” And Chairophon said, “His daimon has spoken to him.”

They exchanged looks. I too was silent, nursing my foot in my hand, and remembering the nest in the tree.

As I sat lost in thought, scarcely hearing the noises of the track, I became aware of someone’s shadow falling on me, and a voice. Looking up I saw Lysis son of Demokrates. He had been with Sokrates’ friends when I first sat down, but almost at once he had gone away. “I saw you twist your foot,” he said. “Does it hurt much? You ought to bind it with cold water, before it swells up.”

I thanked him stammeringly, being taken by surprise, and overwhelmed that such a person should speak to me. Seeing I had a long way to look up, he came down on one knee; I saw that he had a wet cloth in his hand, which he must just have got from the bath. He paused a moment and then said, “Shall I do it?”

At this I remembered that nothing was wrong with me. I was so ashamed at the thought of his finding it out, and thinking I had sat down out of weakness, or the fear of being outrun, that I felt my face and my whole body grow burning hot, and sat unable to answer anything. I thought he would be disgusted by my boorishness; but holding out the cloth he said gently, “If you would rather, then, do it yourself.”

All this while Midas, thinking me safe in the trainer’s care, had been taking his ease. Now for the first time he saw where I was. He came up breathless, almost snatched the cloth from Lysis’ hands, and said he would attend to it. He was doing no more than his duty; but, at the time, it seemed to me barbarous; I looked up at Lysis at a loss for words to excuse it. But he, without showing any offence, bade me goodbye smiling, and went away.

I was so angry and confused that I pushed Midas away from me, saying that my foot was better and I was now able to run. The impression this made on him, he is hardly to be blamed for. Going home he asked me whether I would take a beating from him, or would rather he told my father. I could imagine the kind of story he would make of it, and chose the first. Though he laid it well on, I bore it in silence; I was still wondering whether Lysis had thought me soft.

Meanwhile the City was on tiptoe, waiting to see Alkibiades brought to trial. The Argives and Mantineans demonstrated: it was Alkibiades they had come to fight under, they said, and threatened to march home. The seamen looked so ugly that the trierarchs feared a mutiny. Those who had been pressing hardest for the trial, grew suddenly less loud; and other speakers came forth, by whom inspired nobody knew. Claiming to be friends of the accused, they did not doubt that he could produce a good defence when called upon, and moved he be allowed to set forth upon the war he had prepared so ably. People waited to see him jump at this opportunity; but he sprang up before the Assembly, demanding with passion and eloquence to be tried. No one knew what to make of it. In the end, the second motion was carried.

The fleet sailed a few days later.

A friend of my father had a warehouse at Piraeus, and let us boys climb on the roof. We felt like gods looking down upon a voyage of the heroes. All the storeships had gone on to the assembly at Korkyra; only the bright, slim triremes were left in the bay. The breeze of early summer lifted their stern-pennants; eagles and dragons, dolphins and boars and lions, tossed their heads as the beaks met the swell.

The cheering began in the City, like the sound of a distant landslide, and crept towards us between the Long Walls. Then it roared through Piraeus; one could hear the music coming, and shield clashing on corselet to the beat. Now you could see between the Walls the helmet-crests moving, a river of them, a long snake bright with his new scales in springtime, bronze and gold, purple and red. Sparks of light seemed to dance above it, the early sun catching the points of many thousand spears; the dust-cloud shone like powdered gold.

On the roofs about us the foreigners were chattering together, marvelling at the beauty and might of the army which the City could still send forth after so many years of war. Two Nubian slaves were making their eyes white and saying “Auh! Auh!” We cheered till our throats ached. Xenophon’s voice sounded already almost like a man’s.

The troops deployed upon the water-front and on the quays; they filed along gang-planks, or were loaded into boats with their gunwales dipping, and ferried to the ships. Kinsmen and friends ran up for last farewells. An old man would bless his son, a lad run to his father with some gift the mother had sent after him; or two lovers might be parting, the youth being too young to go with his friend. That day not all the tears had been left at home with the women. But to me it seemed the greatest of all festivals, better than the Panathenaia in the Great Year. As the proverb tells us, war is sweet to the untried.

Noise sounded again between the walls. Someone shouted “Long life to the Generals!” We began to hear horses and to see their dust.

Presently there passed below us Lamachos on his borrowed hack; tall and saturnine, greeting old soldiers when they cheered him, indifferent to the rest. Then Nikias, gravely splendid, his white hair garlanded, fresh from the sacrifice, his soothsayer riding by him with the sacred tripod, knives and bowl. The leaden tinge of skin that he always had only added dignity to him. People reminded each other as he passed of the ancient oracle, that in Sicily the Athenians should win lasting fame.

There was a restless pause then, like the quiet before the sea gets up. And the many-voiced muttering that came nearer was like the sound of a great wave, sucking a stony beach, and drawing the pebbles resistless in its wake. Then a youth with a clear voice shouted, like a battle-paean, “Alkibiades!”

He burst on us like the sun. His armour was worked with golden stars; his purple cloak hung as if a sculptor had set the folds. His groom rode behind him with his famous shield, the City’s scandal and delight, blazoned with Eros wielding a thunderbolt.

His opened helmet showed his face, the profile of Hermes, and the short curled beard. His chin was up; his blue eyes, wide and clear, seemed open on an emptiness demanding to be filled. It seems to me now that they were saying, “You wished for me, Athenians; I am here. Do not question me, do not hurt me; I am the wish sprung from your heart, and if you wound me your heart will bleed for it. Your love made me. Do not take it away; for without love I am a temple forsaken by its god, where dark Alastor will enter. It was you, Athenians, who conjured me, a daimon whose food is love. Feed me, then, and I will clothe you with glory, and show you to yourselves in the image of your desire. I am hungry: feed me. It is too late to repent.”

The crowd murmured and swayed, like a moving shoal drawn by the tide. Then from some doorway a hetaira leaned out, and blew him a kiss. He waved, his clouded eyes warming like the sea in spring; and the cheering broke forth, and roared about him. His smile appeared, like the smile of a boy crowned at his first Games, young and enchanted, embracing all the world; and they cheered him out of sight. Adonis had passed through the street before him; mashed by the horse-hoofs, the strewn anemones stained the dust like blood.

The Generals joined their ships, the bustle grew less and ended. A trumpet blew a long call. Then one heard only a dying mutter, the slap of the sea on the jetties, the cry of gulls, and the bark of some dog grown uneasy in the hush. The small clear voice of a distant herald cried the Invocation. It was taken up in the ships and on the shore; the sound flowed and rolled like surf; on each poop gold or silver flashed, as the trierarch lifted his cup to pour the offering. Then ringing across the water came the paean, and the shouts of the pilots, bidding the ships away. The chantymen began to give the time to the rowers; up went the great sails painted with suns and stars and birds. So they put out to sea, the crews answering song for song, and the pilots calling out to each other challenges to race. I saw Nikias’ white beard flutter as he prayed with raised hands; and on the poop of Alkibiades’ trireme, which already was standing away, a little shining figure like a golden image, no bigger than the Adonis dolls the women had carried in the streets.

The sails filled; the oar-blades all together beat up and down, bright-feathered wings; like swans the ships flew singing towards the islands. Tears stung in my eyes. I wept for the beauty of it, like many more. Happy for the Athenians, if the tears that followed afterwards had been like mine.

Q
UITE SOON AFTER THIS
, I got the news that Kritias was in prison.

An informer swore to seeing him, on the night when the Herms were broken, helping to assemble and instruct the gang, in the portico of the Theatre. The moon had been bright, the man said, and he could name most of the leaders.

I could not imagine, when I heard this, why I had not known it must be Kritias from the very first; for, being young, I supposed he was the only person of his kind in the world. When I walked past the prison there was a knot of women outside, some of them with children, sobbing and wailing. But I could not believe that Kritias had anyone to weep for him.

My triumph was brief, however, for his cousin Andokides, who was one of the accused, offered a full confession in return for immunity. The substance of it was that he knew about the plot, but had an alibi; Kritias was innocent too. Then he named the guilty ones, including some of his kinsmen. These were put to death at once; so was the first informer, for perjury. Some people said Andokides had made up the whole statement for the sake of the immunity, rather than risk his trial. No one knows the truth to this very day.