by Mary Renault
It was not that we were in love with the past. We were of an age to feel the present our own, and to suppose it would never outstrip us. In painting and sculpture and verse, the names we grew passionate over looked to us as big as those of Perikles’ day, and it still half surprises me when I find them unknown to my sons. But we seldom stood to enjoy good work, as one stands before a fine view or a flower, in simple gladness that it is. As we hailed each new artist we grew angry with the former ones, as with false guides we had caught out; we hastened, though we knew not where. To freedom, we said; the sculptors no longer proportioned their forms by the Golden Number of Pythagoras, as Pheidias and Polykleitos did; and art would do great things, we said, now it had cast off its chains.
Euripides was dead; he would suffer with our doubts no more, nor grieve with our losses. And Agathon had gone to Macedon, as the guest of the rich King, who dreamed of civilising his wild hillmen. For months we used to wonder, laughing, how our sweet singer was getting on up north, and picture him seeking among the rude youth for one whose conversation was not quite confined to women, horses and war. Then one day a traveller brought news that he was dead. It is ill to fall sick among barbarians. After he was gone, even Aristophanes had a kind word for him.
Only Sokrates was unchanged, unless he looked a little younger. His rough-tongued Xanthippe, tamed by kindness or mellowed with time, now that she drew near the end of childbearing had borne him two more sons. This, if it was more than he had bargained for, he took very cheerfully. He was as ready as the youngest of us to question fixed opinions, and the youths growing up came to him just as we had done, and worried at logic like puppies, tearing things up in the search for truth.
The north had taken Agathon, the gentle singer, but it had given us something back. Kritias had returned from Thessaly to the City.
He had fled there some time after the Four Hundred were overthrown, when some of his doings came to light. In Thessaly the landowners are like little kings, always at petty war. He found good fishing in this muddy water. Presently he learned that there was some discontent among the serfs, for the law in Thessaly does not take much account of poor men. So he intrigued with their leader and got them arms and plotted a rising to suit his plans. It was put down, I believe, with a good deal of bloodshed; but Kritias got safe away. I am sure that in the beginning he was an inspiration to them, and made them feel themselves the darlings of Zeus. Sokrates used to teach us that the human images of the gods contain the shadows of truth, but the lover of philosophy must look through and beyond. From this, I think, Kritias, following his nature, had inferred that religion and law are good for fools, but the superior man is above them. However, I do not pretend that in Kritias’ case I am capable of justice.
He passed me about this time in the street, and half-remembering me I suppose in some connection not pleasant to him, gazed, trying to place me. I don’t know whether he succeeded; but even the Spartans I had met in battle, seeing only my eyes through my helmet-slits, had looked at me more as man looks at man.
But having pronounced all these opinions, I ought to confess they are worth as much as if a man with fever were to judge of wine. On my last visit to the City, I had caught a sickness I had thought was cured. Now, the cause being near again, I learned it had been sleeping and growing in its sleep.
In this the god was kind to me, that from the start he never tormented me with hope. Nor did he poison his arrows; for what seemed at first sight to be beautiful and good, seems so to me until this day. Being now turned seventeen, he had left Mikkos’ school, and was often with Sokrates. There I avoided him, for many reasons; but where music was, he would not be far away. So my memories are set to the kithera, the syrinx, or to a concert of flutes, or clear voices singing; even now sometimes a chord or a descant can make me smell scented oil and bay-leaves, or grass and burning pitch, and torchlight flickers on the stillness of his listening eyes.
Only once I was in danger. In a night of early winter I had walked out on Lykabettos, when the peak stood black against thick-sown stars. Pausing for breath, a little below the summit, I saw on the terrace of the shrine his shape with lifted head, scanning the heaven. For he had the bent towards mathematics and astronomy, that one often finds in musicians. The belt of Orion was above him, and at his shoulder the sword.
I stood on the rocky pathway, between my will and my soul. I had taken the first step, and the second, upon the path, when I saw he was not alone. I was barefoot, so they had not heard me; I was able to get down into the woods again, where a few lamps shine between the pine-boughs, and a few stars. All in all, it is clear that the god took good care of me; and to show I am not ungrateful, on a certain day each year I bring him a pair of doves.
Lysis’ marriage was itself a good to me; for nothing could have given me any escape from myself just then, except the serious concerns of someone so dear. I could not intrude a grief he must have put down, if he had noticed it, to a kind of jealousy unworthy of a friend or a man. Being forced to lay it by, I could forget it sometimes and share his happiness. For he was just as happy, it seemed, as a man looking forward to a proper wedding night. I helped him find a little house in the Inner Kerameikos, not far from ours, and furnish it with some of his father’s things. He sold a bronze by Alkamenes to buy music and garlands for the feast. “I should like her to enjoy it,” he said. “After all, I daresay it’s the only wedding she’ll have.”
Xenophon confided to me his hearty approval of the match. “When I marry myself,” he said, “that is just about the age I shall look for; before they get their heads full of notions, and while there is still time to train them in orderly ways. I can’t endure things higgledy-piggledy, and nothing in its place. Order is the first half of a decent life.”
Then it seemed that one moment we were all saying, “Only a week, Lysis,” and the next it was the wedding morning.
There had been snow in the night. It lay on the roof-tops, under a bright pure sky, thin, hard and glistening; whiter than marble of Paros, whiter than our wedding robes. The lion-head rain spouts on the temple roofs had beards of crystal a cubit long; the red of baked clay looked dark and warm, and white plaster like curded cream. Helios shone far off and high, giving no heat from the pale heaven, only the flash of his silver hair. When we led the bridegroom to the house of the bride, the lyre-strings snapped with the cold, and the flutes went flat; but we covered it with our singing. Our breath rose in the frosty air in little clouds, in time with the song.
I can’t remember ever to have seen Lysis look better. His wedding mantle of white Milesian wool was trimmed with a border two spans deep of pure gold bullion, which his father and grandfather had been married in before him. We had brought him ribbons, of red, blue and gold, and crowned him with myrtle, and with the violets one finds by their scent in new-fallen snow. He strode up to the bride’s house, laughing and glowing with the cold. His tunic was pinned at the shoulder with a great brooch of antique goldwork from Mycenae, a gift to some ancestor from Agamemnon, as the story ran. His hair and his garland, and the ribbons on his arm, sparkled with snow-dust blown off the roofs. When we came into the guest-room, where the bride was sitting at the old man’s side, you could see her little face, framed in its veil of saffron, turn as you watched all into great eyes.
The women swept her up for kisses and whispers. She had good manners, as Lysis had said; but at every pause, as if her eyes had been let out of school they went slipping across. Once he saw it, and smiled straight across at her, and the women all sighed and murmured, “Charming!” Only the sister-in-law leaned forward, to hiss in her ear. She blushed crimson, and shrank up like a rose trying to grow backwards and fold itself away. I think there were tears in her eyes. For a moment I saw in Lysis’ face a look of such anger that I thought he was going to make a fool of himself and embarrass everyone. I twitched his mantle, to remind him where he was.
Then the feast was called, and they sat down together between the women and the men. He spo
ke to her smiling, but she answered in a dying whisper, and pushed her food about her plate. He mixed her wine for her and she drank when he told her to, like a child at the doctor’s; and, indeed, the medicine seemed to do her good.
The steward signalled me at the door; I went out and found the bridal car waiting. Everything was in order, the horns of the oxen, gilded, the wreaths and ribbons properly put on, and the canopy fixed. It was snowing again; not like meal as before, but like large feathers. They played us out, and shouted their nonsense; I clambered aboard, Lysis lifted up the bride to me and got in. We started off, he and I, and the girl between us. She shivered as the cold struck her; he pulled the sheepskins higher, and put his arm with a fold of his cloak about her shoulders. I felt a sudden rush of the past upon me; for a moment grief pierced me like a winter night; yet it came to me like an old grief, I had suffered it long since and now it was behind me. Everything is change; and you cannot step twice into the same river.
The cold was sweet and mild, not like the cold of the morning; it would thaw before dawn. Lysis said, “Well, Thalia, you were a very good girl, and I was proud of you.” She looked up at him. I could not see her face. He said, “This is my best friend Alexias.” Instead of murmuring a greeting into her lap, in the proper way, she lifted her veil, and smiled. Her eyes and her cheeks were bright in the torchlight. I had wondered before if it was wise of Lysis to give her a second cup of wine. “Oh, yes, Lysis,” she said, “you were right, he is more beautiful than Kleanor.”
It was the fresh air, I suppose, after the warmth inside. I saw Lysis blink for a moment; then he said cheerfully, “Yes, I always said so, didn’t I?” He caught my eye, asking me to be kind. I laughed and said, “Between you you’ll make me vain.”
She said to me, in the voice I suppose she had heard her mother use to visiting ladies, “I have heard Lysis speak of you often. Even before he went to sea, while I was still quite young. Whenever he called, my brother Neon would always ask how you were. Lysis would say, ‘How is Kleanor?’ or whoever his best friend was just then. But Neon always said to Lysis, ‘How is beautiful Alexias?’ and Lysis would say, ‘Still beautiful.’”
“Well,” said Lysis, “now you see him. Here he is. But you must talk to me now, or we shall be falling out.” She turned round, not a moment too soon. It was lucky we had the canopy; hardly anyone had seen. “Oh, no! You must never quarrel with Alexias, after so long.”
We went jolting on through the wheel-ploughed slush, while in the glow of the torches the snow floated like great flakes of fire. People in the street bawled out the age-old jokes about the month of long nights and so forth; and from time to time I stood up in the car and shouted back the age-old answers. When we got near the house he leaned over, and whispered to her not to be afraid. She nodded, and whispered back, “Melitta said I must scream.” Then she added firmly, “But I told her no.”—“I should say not indeed. What a vulgar notion.”—“And besides, I said to her, I am a soldier’s daughter.”—“And a soldier’s wife.”—“Oh, yes, Lysis. Yes, I know.”
When the time came, and he picked her up at the end of the bride-song, she put up her arms smiling, and caught him round the neck. As I ran after to keep the door for them, I heard a couple of old hens by the wall clicking their tongues, and censuring her shamelessness.
Next day I called to see him. There seemed no reason why I should wait till the late hour custom prescribes, so I got there quite early, before market-time, to be ahead of the rest. After some delay he came in, half-awake, the perfect picture of a bridegroom next morning. When I apologised for disturbing him, he said, “Oh, it’s time I was up. But I was talking to Thalia till all hours. I had no notion, Alexias, how much sense she has, and grace of mind. She’ll make a woman in ten thousand. Don’t speak too loud, she’s still asleep.”
“Shouldn’t she be about her work,” I said, “at this hour?” Seeing me look at him, he laughed a little shamefacedly. “Well, she was awake fairly late. She looked such a child, I sat down by her to talk her to sleep, thinking she might be scared alone; but I must have dropped off first in the end, for when I woke, I found she had got a new blanket out of her bridal chest, and laid it over me.”
I said nothing, since it was no business of mine. He said smiling, “Oh, yes, I can hold my horses till starting-time. With me it takes two to celebrate the rite of Aphrodite; I’d as soon lie with Athene of the Vanguard, shield and all, as a woman I don’t please. I know what the child needs of me just now, better than she knows herself. I daresay it won’t be for long.”
Certainly as time passed he looked well and happy; and one day later in the year, when he had asked me to sup, as I stood in the little porch I heard from within the sound of a young voice singing in time to some work or other, like water tinkling in the shade. Lysis said, “You must forgive the child. I know a modest woman shouldn’t tell her whereabouts to the guests; but when I see her happy, I can’t bear to trouble her with such things. She had enough of that from her brother’s wife; I gave her a good present, the bitch, and forbade her the house. There’s plenty of time. Her modesty is in her soul. We’ll attend to the outside later.”
It was a beautiful golden evening. The small supper-room just held four couches, but looked better with two. There were garlands laid out, of vine-shoots and roses. “Thalia made them,” he said. “She sulks if I buy made-up stuff in the market.” It was dressed sword-fish for supper. I was not very hungry, but I did my best because I could see he was proud of it. We talked about the war, which was largely at a standstill. The Spartans had given Lysander another year in command, against their custom, and he was getting money from Cyrus again.
“Don’t you care for the fish?” he asked. “She said I must ask you if the sauce was sharp enough.”—“I never tasted better. I heard some news on the way that spoiled my hunger. Those two triremes the Samian fleet took the other day; do you know what became of the rowers? They pitched them off a cliff into the sea. That will teach them to work for a side that can afford to pay them.”
He stared at me silent; then said, “Zeus! And when one thinks what was said at the start of the war, when the Spartans did it … I suppose you don’t remember. We’re improving daily; the last proposal was that enemy rowers we caught should have their right hands cut off, or was it both thumbs? I got some black looks in Assembly for voting against it. I’m glad we’re out of the Navy, Alexias. Everything one hears from Samos sounds bad.”
The fleet had done nothing for months. The generals did not trust each other, and the men did not trust the generals; rumours were always drifting home that one or other was taking bribes, the kind of talk that had made trouble among the Spartans at Miletos. There was poison in the mere knowledge that the gold was there. “Konon is sound,” I said.—“One man in a dozen. I wonder what Alkibiades thinks in that hill-fort of his. They say it looks over half the Hellespont. He must laugh sometimes from the top of his walls.”
“It’s Salamis Day,” I said. “Seventy-five years today since the battle. Don’t you remember how he used to give out a wine-issue? It was on Salamis Day he told that story about the Persian eunuch.” We laughed, and then fell silent together. In the pause I heard again the singing in the house, but softly now; she must have remembered there was company.
“You’re not drinking,” he said. The slave-boy had cleared the tables, and gone.—“No more for a while, Lysis. I’m as merry now as wine will make me.” I found him looking at me. “It’s a deep sadness,” he said, “that goes in fear of wine.”—“Are you coming to the race tomorrow? Kallias says the bay will win.”—“It’s the way of the world, it seems. If there’s a man one would sooner do a good turn to than any other, that’s the man one will see eating his heart out for what one can’t give.”—“Have you known long?” I asked.—“No matter. No one else knows. Can’t you find a woman again, like the one you had in Samos?”—“I’ll look one day soon. Don’t think of it, Lysis. It’s a madness. It will pass.”—“You should m
arry, Alexias. Yes, I know advice is cheap, but don’t be angry with me. If a man …” His voice ceased. We both put our wine-cups down, and got up from our couches, and ran to the door. The street was empty. But the noise drew nearer, streaming like smoke, blowing in great gusts upon the wind.
It was not a wail, nor was it a groan, nor the keening women make for the dead. Yet all these had part in it. Zeus gives good and evil things to men, but mostly evil; and the sound of sorrow is nothing new. But this was not the grief of one or two, or of a household. It was the voice of the City, crying despair.
We looked at each other. Lysis said, “I must speak to the child. Ask someone what it is.” I stood in the porch, but no one passed. Inside the house he was talking quietly. As he left I heard him say, “Finish your supper, keep busy, and wait for me.” She answered steadily, “Yes, Lysis. I’ll wait.”
A man shouted something far up the street. I said to Lysis, “I couldn’t make sense of it. ‘Everything lost,’ he said; and something about Goat’s Creek.”—“Goat’s Creek? We beached there once, when we sprang a plank. Half-way up the Hellespont, just north of Sestos. A village of clay huts, and a sandy shore. Goat’s Creek? You must have heard wrong. There’s nothing there.”
In the streets we saw no one, except a woman sometimes, peering from a door. One, forgetting her decency in her fear, called out to us, “What is it, oh, what is it?” We shook our heads and went on. The noise was from the Agora, like an army in rout. An echo seemed to go on beyond, into the distance. It was the sound of crying upon the Long Walls, throbbing between the City and Piraeus like pain along a limb.