by Mary Renault
Before long, the City got quite used to the sight of people being put away without trial. They were only metics, after all. Then the Thirty began arresting democrats. And from this time on, there began to be two nations in the City. For it was no longer enough that a man, to be safe, should guard his tongue. It was necessary to surrender the soul; and many surrendered it.
One morning my father stopped me as I was going out. After some time beating about the point, at last it came. “… So, all things considered, it might be well, while matters are so delicate, not to be seen in public with Lysis son of Demokrates.”
The sunlight grew dark before my eyes. I felt sick. “Father,” I said, “in the name of my mother, tell me. Is Lysis in danger?” He looked at me with impatience. “Tut, not that I know of. But he has no discretion. He gets himself talked about.” I paused to command myself before I spoke. “For ten years now, sir, when Lysis has been talked about I have had a share of his honour. What shall I sell it for? A bowl of black soup? A kiss from Kritias? How much?”—“You are offensive. I speak of common prudence. There are matters which cannot be opened to loose-tongued young men; but we may hope the present state of things will not last to the end of time. Meanwhile, I expect in this house the manners you learned from me, not those Sokrates teaches.”
I saw deep lines about his eyes; lately he often looked tired. “I was insolent, Father. I am sorry. But would you do yourself what you ask of me?” He said after a moment, “However, remember I only have one son.”
I set out at once to call on Lysis. On the way, I saw ahead of me a back I knew by its breadth. Autolykos was making his way homeward from the palaestra.
As athletes went nowadays, he was considered notable for good looks and grace. He did not fight at much above the weight he had been at the Isthmus; having held his own against far heavier men, he had now the name of a classic fighter, a type of the golden age. Compared with what one saw now at every Games, I myself had come, little by little, to think him beautiful. At the last Games of Athene he had been crowned again.
I was thinking to overtake him for a word, when I saw at the head of the street Kallibios coming the other way, with two Spartan guards behind him. The middle of the road was mucky, but it was dry by the walls. Kallibios and Autolykos met, and stopped, and looked at one another, neither making way. People in the street about them stopped still where they were.
Kallibios said in his harsh Doric, “Out of my way, lout.” He need not have shouted to be heard. I saw Autolykos’ back, steady as an oak; and then Kallibios’ eyes, as his stick flew out.
Autolykos stooped, moving easily, like a grown man playing with boys. As he straightened, above his shoulder appeared the face of Kallibios, rising in the air. His hands beat at Autolykos’ shoulders; then he was tossed backward as lightly as a faggot, to land face down in the wet midden. Autolykos, without a glance to see where he had fallen, hitched his mantle and walked on, keeping the wall.
The whole street cheered, except those who were near enough to see Kallibios scraping muck from his face, and they were laughing. At the corner of the street Autolykos before he turned out of sight made the gesture by which a well-bred victor acknowledges applause on his way back to the dressing-room.
The two guards had been rather slow off the mark, getting no orders; now, when they sprinted after, they found their path full of impediments: laden donkeys, scuffling lads, even a group of women. But they soon overtook their man, since they were running and he was not. I think he considered taking them both on, with Kallibios as makeweight; then he saw the crowd following, and smiled, and went quietly. They did not dare to bind him. With every street we passed the crowd swelled, and grew noisier as people took courage from each other. When we reached the road to the High City we must have been near two hundred.
I had started near the front and managed to stay there. As we neared the Porch, I saw a man standing alone between the great pillars of Perikles. Even in that place, he still looked tall. Since his triumph in Sparta, it was Lysander’s habit to come and go unheralded. He was a law unto himself.
Autolykos mounted the last few steps, between his guards. Lysander waited, in his scarlet tunic, unarmed, three paces ahead of his men. He was hated for many things, but not for cowardice. He and Autolykos were pretty nearly of a height. Their eyes met, measuring one another; and the voice of Kallibios, spluttering out his charge, grew quick and shrill. Neither of them looked at him.
Spartans do not practise the pankration as we know it. The law of the Games requires the loser to lift his hand in surrender; and no Spartan having done that is expected to show himself in Lakonia alive. So it is an event they do not enter for; but they like watching it as much as anyone. Lysander in particular was very fond of attending the Games, and being acclaimed there.
Autolykos stood in the Porch, calm as marble; I had seen him look so in the temple, waiting to be crowned. Lysander frowned; but could not keep the cold approval out of his hard blue eyes. Kallibios, smeared with mud to the hair, looked at the two big men feeling each other’s strength; if he had had the power to turn everyone in sight to stone, he would have begun with Lysander. Everyone saw it, and Lysander, turning, saw it too.
His face told nothing. “You are Autolykos the wrestler. Is this charge true?”—“He talks too fast,” said Autolykos. “I daresay it is.”
Lysander said, “Let the accused hear the charge, Kallibios. Did you say he assaulted you? What did he do?” Kallibios stammered. Some of us in the crowd gave our evidence unasked. Lysander shouted for silence. “Well, Kallibios? Repeat the charge.”
So Kallibios related again how he had been tossed in the midden; and the crowd cheered. Lysander said, “How did he do it, Kallibios? I want a statement. Did he cross-buttock you, or what?” Kallibios stood chewing his lips. Autolykos said, “No, it was just a thigh-hold, and a straight lift.” Lysander nodded. “Is it true as these men say, that he took a stick to you?” Autolykos in silence raised his hand to his forehead, where blood was trickling from his short thick curls. “Charge dismissed,” said Lysander. “You are not working your farm with your Helots now, Kallibios. You had better learn how to govern free men.”
The City was quiet for a day or two. Then a notice was put up, cut in marble, that Thrasybulos and Alkibiades had been proclaimed exiles.
Thrasybulos had fled to Thebes a week before. It was said to have been Theramenes who had warned him of what was planned for him. His sentence caused anger rather than surprise. But, as always, it was enough to set Alkibiades’ name up in the Agora, to make people talk all day. What was he up to, that had scared the Thirty? He had left Thrace, it was said, and crossed to Ionia, and asked for safe-conduct to Artaxerxes the new King. Something was behind it. Some said he would never forgive the City for disgracing him unjustly a second time; others, that what he might not do for love of us, he would do from hatred of King Agis. Even after the battle at Goat’s Creek, where he had been driven off with insults by the generals, fugitives came back whom he had sheltered in his hilltop castle, and saved their lives. “Insolent he may be; but there is no meanness in him. That, from a boy, he never had.” And people said, “There is hope for the City, while Alkibiades lives.” The news of his banishment seemed a promise of his return. It was said openly in the streets that the Thirty were only in office to frame a new constitution; it was time they presented their draft, and made way for others.
Soon after this, there was a roll-call of the troops; a parade without arms, to re-group the units. On the Academy parade-ground I chatted with some old friends; then, having missed Lysis in the crowd, called to see him. As I got to his house, I heard weeping within, and Lysis saying in the smothered voice of a man distracted, “Here, dry your eyes. Never mind it. Be quiet now; I must go.”
He came flinging out, nearly knocking me down upon the threshold. He was half-dazed, and shaking with anger. Grabbing hold of me, as if I might walk off, he said, “Alexias. Those sons of whores have taken my armour
.” I said, “What? Who have taken it?”—“The Thirty. While I was at roll-call. My spear, my shield; even my sword.”
I stared at him like a fool. “But it can’t have been the Thirty. My arms are there; I’ve just come from home.”—“Listen.” The street was beginning to roar with angry voices, and men were running from house to house. “Your father is a Senator,” he said.
There are evils one does not imagine, till one sees them done. As my father had been fond of saying, this was supposed to be a gentlemen’s government. A gentleman, and a citizen, was reckoned to be a man who could defend the City in arms.
“Command yourself, Alexias,” Lysis was saying. “What is this? I have had enough to do already with tears.”—“I am not weeping. I am angry.” My face burned, and my throat felt bursting. “Let them take my arms too; what honour is left in bearing them?”—“Don’t be a fool. Arms are for use first, and for honour after. If you have arms, take good care of them. Lock them up.”
Next day we learned that three thousand knights and hoplites had been left their weapons. My father was one, and they had mistaken my arms for his. These only had citizenship, and the right to judicial trial. Over all others, the Thirty claimed power of life and death.
People went about the City like walking dead. There was nowhere to turn. We ourselves had been the source, once, of justice and democracy in Hellas. We were drained by war; ringed with victorious enemies; beyond were the lands of the barbarians, where even men’s minds are enslaved. What is there that will season salt?
My father said to me, “Don’t talk so wildly, Alexias. Few or many, a government that does well is good. Kritias is an intelligent man; responsibility will make him careful.”—“Will you make a drunkard temperate with more wine?”—“Between ourselves, Theramenes thinks three thousand too few. That is within these walls. But the principle is sound, that of an aristocracy.”—“Plato believes too in the rule of the best. When he heard Lysis had lost his arms, he could not speak for shame.”—“Don’t quote Plato to me,” my father said, “as if he were some philosopher. I have heard enough of your scent-shop friends.”
Work had still to go on; I rode out to the farm next day on a hired mule, and stayed overnight. Working stripped in the sun of early autumn, binding the vines, I was happy in spite of myself; the earth, and her fruitful gods, seemed all that was real, the rest as shadows of dreams. Coming home the day after, I went round by way of Dipylon, to return my mule; then, as I walked through the Street of Tombs, I felt a strangeness, and a fear, and knew not why. It seemed colder; the colours had altered on the hills; and looking on the ground, where the sunlight fell in bright rounds through the leaves, I saw that all these had changed their shape, and become as sickles. The heavens seemed turning to lead, and sinking on the earth. And lifting my eyes to the sun, I saw it so altered that I dared look no longer, lest the god strike me blind.
Among the tombs, in the gloom of the eclipse, it was as one supposes the Underworld to be. The hair crept on my neck. Anaxagoras said it is only the dark shape of the moon crossing the sun. I can believe it any bright morning, walking in the colonnade.
Then in the chill, and the livid shadow, I saw a funeral coming on the Sacred Way. It was a long one, as if of some notable person; it came slowly, in the deep silence of people oppressed both with grief and fear. Only behind the bier a young wife, blind with her own weeping, tore at her hair and cried aloud.
I waited for the bier to pass me. It bore a heavy corpse; for six big men carried it, and yet their shoulders bent. Then, as they came nearer, I knew them all. For each was an Olympic victor, a wrestler, a boxer or a pankratiast. And on the bier, upon the brow of the dead, was an olive crown.
I stood and gazed my last on the stern face of Autolykos, whom one seldom saw in life without a smile. Now he looked like some ancient hero, come back to judge us. The gloom thickened, till I could scarcely see his olive wreath and his mouth of stone. Behind him a catafalque was heaped with his trophies and his ribboned crowns. When this too had passed, I joined the mourners, and said to the man who walked next me, “I have been in the country. How did he die?” In the dusk he peered at me, with eyes of distrust and fear. “He was walking about yesterday. That’s all I know.” He looked aside.
The darkness had reached its deepest. Birds were silent; a dog howled in fear; the woman’s weeping seemed to fill the earth and reach to the low heaven. I thought, “Lysander pardoned him. Nor did Kallibios do it; for Spartans, even where they hate, obey. It was a present to Kallibios, to get his favour. Athenians did this.”
Then I said in my heart, “Come, then, Lord Apollo, healer and destroyer, in your black anger, as you came to the tents at Troy, striding down from the crags of Olympos like the fall of night. I hear the quiver at your shoulder shake with your footfall, and its arrows rattle with the dry sound of death. Shoot, Lord of the Bow, and do not pause upon your aim; for wherever you strike the City, you will find a man for whom it is better to die than live.”
But the shadow passed from the face of the sun, and when we laid Autolykos in his tomb, already the birds were singing.
It seemed to me then that the soul of Athens lay prone now in the dust, and could fall no lower. But a few days later, I called at the house of Phaedo. He was out; but he had some new books, so I read and waited. At last his shadow fell on the doorway, and I rose to greet him.
He looked at me in passing, as if trying to remember who I was; then he walked on, and back again, up and down the room. His hands were clenched; I saw, for the first time in many years, the halt from his old wound catching his stride. After he had taken two or three turns, he began to speak. On the benches of a war-trireme I have heard nothing like it. While he was working at Gurgos’s, I don’t remember hearing him use any phrase that would not have passed at a decent supper-party. Now there came pouring out of him the silt and filth of the stews, till I thought he would never stop. After a time I did not listen, not because it offended me, but for fear of the news that was coming when he ceased. At last I put out my hand and stopped him in his walking, and said, “Who is dead, Phaedo?”—“The City is,” he said, “and stinking. But corpse-loving Kritias keeps his mother above ground. They have passed a law forbidding logic to be taught.”
“Logic?” I said. “Logic?” It made no sense to me; as if he had said there was a law against men. “Who can forbid logic? Logic is.”
“Look in the Agora. There is a notice in marble, making it a crime to teach the art of words.” He burst out laughing; like a face in a dark wood, as Lysis had once said. “Oh, yes, it’s true. Did I teach you anything new, Alexias, just now? Learn it, write it down, it is the speech of a slave. I am starting a school in Athens; be my first pupil, and I’ll take you free.” His laughter cracked; he threw himself down upon his work-bench at the table, and laid his head in his arms among the pens and scrolls.
Presently he sat up and said, “I am sorry to make a show of myself. In the siege, when one felt one’s strength drain out a little every day, one had more fortitude of soul. It seems the want of hope unmans one more than the want of food.”
I half forgot his news in his pain, for he was dear to me. “Why, Phaedo, should you grieve so much? If the gods have cursed us, what is it to you? We shed the blood of your kindred; and to you we did the greatest of all wrongs.” But he answered, “It was the City of my mind.”
“Go back to Melos,” I said, “and claim your father’s land from the Spartans. You will find more freedom there then here.”—“Yes,” he said, “I will go, why not? Not to Melos; nothing would bring me to see it again. To Megara perhaps, to study mathematics, and then to some Doric city to teach.” He stood up, and began sweeping his books together on the table. Then he smiled, and said, “Why do I talk? You know I shall never leave Athens while Sokrates is alive.”
I smiled back at him; and then, in the same moment, the same thought came to both of us, and our smiles stiffened on our lips.
When I called at Sokr
ates’ house, he was out; it was to be expected so late in the morning, yet I was afraid. As I turned away, Xenophon met me, and I saw my own fear in his eyes. We forgot the constraint of our last meeting. He drew me into a porch; even he had learned at last to drop his voice in the street. “This Government will never be worthy of itself, Alexias, while Kritias is in it. I voted against his election, I may say.”—“I don’t suppose he got many votes from Sokrates’ friends.”—“Except from Plato. One thing is certain, Kritias has never forgiven Sokrates in the matter of Euthydemos. This law is framed against Sokrates, personally. Any fool can see it.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “It is against the freedom of men’s minds, as Phaedo says. No tyranny is safe while men can reason.”—“Tyranny is not a word I care for,” he said stiffly. “I would rather say a principle is being misapplied.” And then looking suddenly as I had known him since boyhood, “If you don’t remember Kritias’ face that day, I do.”
At first it seemed absurd to me. I had seen the fair Euthydemos only lately; he had been drinking to the birth of his second son. It was natural that where Phaedo saw thought in chains, Xenophon should see one man’s revenge; he had the more personal mind; yet there are times when feeling sees more than intellect. I said, “You may well be right.” We looked at each other, not wanting to say, like fools or women, “What shall we do?”
“Phaedo tells me,” said I, “that a saying of Sokrates’ is running around the Agora: When hiring a herdsman, do we pay him to increase the flock, or make it fewer every day?”—“We shall delude ourselves, Alexias, if we expect him to study his safety before his argument.”—“Do we even desire it? He is Sokrates. And yet …”—“In a word,” said Xenophon, “we love him, and are only men.” We were silent again. Presently I said, “I’m sorry I was uncivil last time we met. You have done nothing contrary to your honour.”—“I don’t reproach you, since Autolykos died. I myself …” Then we saw Sokrates coming towards us.