The Last of the Wine: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  He too was armed with the javelin. He got ready as he rode up the hill; but downward one throws harder. He had seen me; we took aim together: then, in the moment before we both let fly, he checked with a great start, as if I had hit him already. His horse felt it, and reared, spoiling my aim. Struggling with his mount he got his helmet twisted, and thrust it back in order to see. It was Xenophon. For a moment, as he sat the prancing horse with his head flung up, we stared into each other’s eyes. Then he rode round the side of the wall, and I saw him no more.

  The knights were beaten off, and several wounded. There was no more fighting that day. Thrasybulos counted the stores. Then he assembled us, all but the lookouts, and asked us to pray all together to Zeus the Saviour, that, as he loved justice, he would not let it perish out of Hellas along with us. We prayed, and sang a hymn. The evening came down, solemn and red, the air cold, not a breath stirring. And in the night, Zeus the Saviour leaned out to us, and opened his hand.

  His hand opened; and, from a sky filled till then with great white stars, came a fall of snow. Cold as the breast of Artemis, and stinging like her arrows, all night it fell, and when day broke it was still falling. The mountain heights stood in the snow-whirl like a world of white marble veined with black. Down below were the thin tents of the besiegers; and the many who had no shelter, huddled round smoking, damp fires, beating their bodies, stamping their feet to keep them from freezing, wrapping up the starved horses in blankets they needed themselves. An army of beggars gazed up in envy of our wealth. We called down to them, inviting them to visit us, and we would see that they were warm.

  All day it snowed; but by noon they had had enough. The Thirty, used by now to comfort, were the first to go. Then the knights had pity on their shivering horses; then the hoplites marched off; and then, strung out below us, a banquet spread as it were by heaven, the long cumbrous baggage-train, creeping half-foundered in the snow. We flung the gates open. Yelling the paean, as men for whom the gods are fighting, we charged down the hill.

  We left red snow that day; and carried up to Phyle food and fuel and blankets to keep us like kings for a year.

  We were snowed up for a time. Then volunteers began to come. Most were proscribed exiles: democrats; or gentlemen too touchy in their honour to please the Government; or simply people whose estates one of the Thirty had fancied for himself. But one or two came from the army that had besieged us; even before the snow they had thought it looked better up the hill. Their soothsayer came, a burning silent man; Apollo had warned him, through the aspect of the sacrifice, not to serve men hateful to the gods.

  We were a hundred strong; then two; then three. All Attica, and Megara, and Thebes, heard of the Men of Phyle. We were seven hundred. When bad weather drove us all indoors, there was hardly room to sleep.

  The Thirty set a guard on the pass, to keep us from the farms; but we had our own ways across the mountains. We were never short of stores. Some we were given for love, some we took from necessity. Our best sport was raiding our own estates. There were scores of us who had had land stolen by the tyrants. They looked after it well, as I found when we raided mine. I had never seen it so thriving and well-stocked since I was a child.

  When the work was well on, I found a slave hidden in a grain-bin. “Get out,” I said, “and tell me who farms this land. Then you can run free, for all I care. This if you lie.” I showed my dagger. “By the Arrow of Bendis, my lord” (he was a Thracian) “my master’s name is Kritias.”

  I let him go, and went up between the vineyards, with a white cock in my hand. On my father’s grave I killed it, to comfort his shade, and as an earnest of things to come, and to show Kritias who had called.

  Within a short time the Thirty had had many such reminders; and up at Phyle we were a thousand men. Though only a few could bring armour and weapons with them, all the news was that the tyrants hardly trusted Lysander, even, to protect them now.

  It was still deep winter; but hope was strong in us, hard and firm as the buds furled up in the armoured trees. We had no slaves, and were all servants of one another, cooking and cleaning and fetching water in. I never tasted such cold sweet water as it is in the spring at Phyle. There was a gladness in us, such as I have seldom known. I remember tramping a windy hill-track, laden with fuel, singing, and talking of the future when the City was free. Lysis said he was going to get a son; “though if a daughter comes first, no matter; little girls make me laugh.”—“I shall write,” I said, “to those Theban lads, Simmias and Kebes. We owe them some hospitality. They are longing to hear Sokrates.”—“Their famous Philolaos,” Lysis said, “is rather too mathematical for me.”—“Yes, but I shall introduce them to Phaedo. I am sure he would enjoy hearing them talk.”

  One morning early, we fell on the guard who held the pass, caught them on one leg at getting-up time, and chased them down into the plain. Soon we heard news of panic among the Thirty. Even the Three Thousand, once the core of their support, did not trust them since Theramenes had been struck off the roll. We rejoiced to hear it; but not when we got the proof of how deeply they feared.

  After hubris, nemesis; but madness lets her in. They needed a refuge now, to fortify against extremity; and they chose Eleusis, because at the worst they could fly from it by sea. But having deserved good of no one, they did not trust the Eleusinians not to give them up. So on pretence of an Army exercise, they marched them through a narrow gateway, and had each one seized as he passed beyond. Every man and grown youth of Eleusis they murdered; but not with their own hands, taking like men their guilt before the gods. They dragged them to Athens, and charged them before the Senate as perilous to the City, not deigning to offer any further charge. The voting was open; guilty this side, innocent that; and the Senate was packed with Spartans in heavy arms.

  The Senate voted death. So low they had gone, it was only one step lower. But it was the last. They were at the bottom of the pit; and some still had eyes to see it. When the news came up to the mountains, we knew that in the sight of gods and men our time had come.

  All next morning we made ready. At noon we ate and rested, for we should not sleep that night. When Lysis and I had seen to our arms, he said to me, “We look rather too much men of Phyle. Let us make ourselves fit to be seen in the City.” We trimmed each other’s hair, but were in two minds whether to part with our beards or not; we had good ones by now, and were at home with them. But Lysis said laughing, “I want my wife to know me again.” We both shaved in the end, and were glad when it was done; it made us feel we were going home.

  When the light was changing on the mountains, we sacrificed a ram, and poured libations. The soothsayer told us the signs were good, and we stood and sang our paean. Soon after we fell in, to begin our march, for we had a good way to go across the hills.

  Just before the trumpet, Lysis and I stood on the walls, and looked down the Cleft of the Chariot, to see Athens shine, clear gold picked out with shadows, in the slanting winter sun. I turned to him and said, “You look sad, Lysis. It has been good here, but we are going to be better.” He smiled at me and said, “Amen, and so be it.” Then he was silent for a time, looking out at the High City, and leaning on his spear. “What is it?” I said; for my mind was full of memories, which I felt he shared. “I was thinking,” he said, “of the sacrifice just now, and of how one ought to pray. It is right for men setting out on a just enterprise to commend it to heaven. But for oneself … We have entreated many things of the gods, Alexias. Sometimes they gave, and sometimes they saw it otherwise. So today I petitioned them as Sokrates once taught us: ‘All-Knowing Zeus, give me what is best for me. Avert evil from me, though it be the thing I prayed for; and give me the good which from ignorance I do not ask.’”

  Before I could reply to him, the trumpet sounded, and we went down to the gate.

  The turn of the year was past; the light saw us through the mountains, and when we reached the plain of Eleusis, dusk hid us on the road. No enemy met us. The Thirty were watch
ing the pass, to guard the farms. A little after midnight, skirting the shore, we came into Piraeus.

  At first all was silence. Then the town awoke; but not to outcry or confusion. We had come as a good long watched for, in the sullen patience of men born to the sea. The rumour ran along the streets, and the houses opened. Men came out with swords, with knives, with axes or with stones; women came, decent wives rubbing shoulders with hetairas, bringing cakes or figs, and bold with the darkness thrust them into our hands. The metics came out: Phrygians and Syrians and Lydians and Thracians, whose kin the Thirty had killed and plucked, with no more pity than the farmer’s wife choosing a cockerel for the pot. When the dawn broke, we knew that all Piraeus was ours, as far as feeling went. But feeling does not pierce heavy armour; nor do stones. The stand was taken, but the battle was still to come.

  The frosty sun peered over Hymettos; the day grew bright; and from the roofs we saw the enemy coming, the horses first, and then the hoplights, advancing from the shadow of the Long Walls, into the sunlight of Lysander’s breach. When it was pretty clear we were outnumbered five to one, and had no hope of holding the outer defences, we fell back upon the old fortress of Munychia, where the ephebes train. On the rocky road that climbs from the market to the citadel, we took our station, those of us who were heavy-armed, to hold the passage. Behind us, swarming on the rocks, were the men of Phyle who had light arms or none, and the people of Piraeus with cleavers, knives and stones.

  Then, as one finds in a war, there was a pause. The army of the City was sacrificing, and making its dispositions. Behind us the people shouted to each other; over the harbour, the gulls wheeled and called; down below one heard an order, a horse neighing, the rattle of grounded shields. We fell to the idle-sounding talk of soldiers who wait. I remember saying, “When did you mend your sandal, Lysis? What a botch you have made of it. Why didn’t you ask me, for you know I do it better?” And he said, “Oh, there was no time; it will last the day.” Then came a trumpet, and the march of armour, and the enemy came into the market-place below.

  It looked very wide, emptied of its traffic, with bare stalls; there had been no trading in Piraeus that day. The troops marched in, filling it from side to side, and, as line followed line, almost from end to end. I think their shields were fifty deep. I know that ours were ten.

  As they deployed, we began to know them. It was no place for horses; the knights were on foot, but you could tell them by the gold on their armour, their crests of worked bronze. One could do more than pick out a man here and there, yet I thought, “Xenophon is not with them,” and was glad. Then to the left we saw the standard; and Thrasybulos called in his great voice, “The Thirty are there.”

  He spoke to us, as he used to do in Samos, of our just cause; reminding us of the gods’ favour, when they saved us with the snow. “Fight, each man of you,” he said, “so that the victory will feel like yours alone. You have everything to win: your country, your homes, your rights, the sight of your lovers and your wives; joy if you live, glory if you die. There stand the tyrants; vengeance is ours. When I strike up the paean, take the note from me, and charge. We wait upon the gods.”

  He turned to the soothsayer, who had made the sacrifice, and now came forward, the sacred fillet on his head. He passed through us to the front as if he neither felt nor saw us. I knew by his eyes that Apollo possessed him. “Be still,” he said. “The god gives victory; but first a man must fall. Till then stand fast.” Then he called on the name of the god with a loud cry and said, “It is I.” And on the word he leaped forward, upon the line of shields below. For a moment, in the suddenness, they stood unmoving; then the spears thrust at him, and he fell. And the walls of Munychia echoed back Thrasybulos’ voice, shouting the paean.

  We ran down the hill. The slope made our feet light, our purpose gave us wings. It was like the last lap of the race, when the Eros of victory lifts one. I know I killed and killed, yet I felt no anger, more than the priest who sheds the blood of the victim. Lysis and I fought side by side, pressing onward, feeling the line of the enemy bend before us, and give, and shatter to shards. They were many; but their crust was thin, their centre was soft; they were men not at peace with the gods, or with their own souls. In a little while, if a man of them still stood firm, he was one with nothing to lose. It was while the battle hung so that I heard a voice, trying to rally the line; the voice of a speech-maker, not used to the talk of the field where a man speaks to man. I knew it; and leaping forth from Lysis’ side (for till now we had gone forward step by step together) I made for it through the press.

  I came on him by the stall of a potter, which stood empty at the side of the square. In silence I had tracked him down, not calling his name, or any challenge, for I knew that many desired his company as much as I. Like a lover I sought him, keeping my rivals in the dark, feeling my way. Then he was before me, and through his helmet-slits I saw his eyes.

  As we leaned shield to shield, I said, “You courted me once, Kritias. Now am I close enough?” But he only gritted his teeth and panted; for I had been living hard, he softly, and his breath was short. I turned his shield with mine, and thrust at him, and wounded him in the leg. “Do you know me?” I said to him. “I am Myron’s son.” I waited for his face to alter; but except when it jerked at the spear-thrust, it did not change; and I understood that this one name meant nothing to him, among the many he had sent to death. Upon this I felt a rage at him, so that my strength flared up like a torch; and leaning hard on him till I bore him backward, I hooked his knee with mine, as I had seen Lysis do it in the pankration; and he went back with a clatter of armour against the racks of the potter’s stall.

  He clutched a shelf, and it came away; he rolled, and fell on his back, and I leaped upon him and pulled his helmet off. Then I saw his hair was streaked with grey; his face being drawn with fear looked shrivelled as with age, and my stomach turned at killing him; till I remembered he had forgotten my father’s name, and thought, “A beast is under my knees, and not a man.” So I drew my sword, and thrust it through his throat, saying, “Take this for Myron.” He gasped, and died. Whether he heard me I do not know.

  When he was certainly dead, I leaped up, and saw the battle swaying all about me. I lifted my voice and shouted, “Lysis!” For I thought it long till I could tell him what I had done. I heard his voice rising above the din call, “Alexias! I am coming!” Then it seemed that a great rock fell on me; I was crushed and flung into darkness; the sounds of the battle reached me without meaning, as a child near sleep hears voices in another room.

  I came to myself in a courtyard, full of wounded men. In the centre was a fountain, playing into a basin lined with blue tiles, such as the Medes make. My head ached, and I felt very sick. I must have been struck down with a blow on the helmet, and stunned, but my head was not bleeding; the wound was in my hip, just below the corselet-rim. It was deep, and my blood lay all about me. I must have been speared when I fell. The stain was black and dry at the edges, where it had flowed over the marble tiles; so I knew I had been there some time.

  I was thirsty, and the sound of the water made my thirst more. Then when I wished to drink, I thought for the first time, “Am I a captive, or free?” And turning my head towards a man lying near me, I said, “Have we won?” He gave a great sigh, and rolled his head towards me. I saw he was near death. “We lost,” he said, and closed his eyes. Then I knew him, altered as he was; it was Charmides. I had seen him before the battle, down in the market-place among the knights. I called him by name, but he spoke no more.

  I began to crawl towards the fountain, the knowledge of victory giving me heart; but a man who could walk, and use one arm, brought me some water in a helmet. I drank, and thanked him, and asked if the battle was long over. “An hour gone,” he said, “and they have declared a truce to gather up the dead. I was there myself till lately. The Thirty have fled; and before I left, the people taking up the bodies were talking together, men of both sides.”

  He
told me more, but I was too weak to heed it. I looked at my blood on the floor, and trailed my hand in it, and thought, “Well spent.” For a while I rested; an old woman came out and tied a cloth over my wound; then I opened my eyes and felt better, and began to look about me, and to feel impatient for someone to come and carry me to my friends.

  I heard the feet of men bearing a burden, and turned to call to them. But they were carrying a dead body on a shield. The head hung back, and the legs dangled from the knees, and a horseman’s cloak was thrown over all, so that the face was hidden. I did not know the cloak, and was turning away, when I saw the two men look at me, and then at one another. Then I felt my heart turn to water, and my wounds grow cold. The feet were showing beneath the cloak, and one of the sandals was mended.

  I found a voice, and called to the men, who at first pretended not to hear me. But they stopped when I called again. I said, “Who is it?” Each of them waited for the other to speak; but presently one said, “I am sorry, Alexias.” And the other said, “He died very well. Twice after he was struck he got upon his feet, and again after that he tried. We must go on, Alexias, for he is heavy.”

  I said, “Do not carry him any further. Leave him here with me.”

  They looked about the courtyard, which was crowded by this time, and then at each other again; and I saw what was in their minds, that wounded men do not like to be with the dead. So I said, “I will go with you, then,” and got up from where I lay, and followed after them. In the porch I found a spear with a broken head, and took it to lean on. We went a little way, and came to a small pavement before an altar. There was a broken wall beside it, and dust upon the stones; but I could not walk any longer, so I said, “This place will do.”