The Last of the Wine

by Mary Renault

  Demosthenes sailed for Sicily in early summer. The fleet went soberly, with no ceremony beyond the sacrifices, and libations to the gods. Lysis and I sat our horses on a hill, with the troop about us, and saw the sails grow little on the sea. He and I caught each other's eyes and smiled; then he turned and called, A cheer for our fathers, and good luck to Demosthenes! We all gave it, and felt proud that when the army came back with victory, no one could say we had sat idle among the women.

  We had need of pride in the months that followed. I was strong and in the flower of youth, yet I knew weariness then as since I have seldom known it. The remnant of the harvest was ripening in the farms. There was only the cavalry to save it. All the infantry that was left was manning the City walls, so near were the invaders. By day the citizens watched in shifts; you could see men plying their trades in armour, or shopping in the market. By night every fit man slept in the mustering-places about the temples, lest Agis should surprise us.

  The horsemen were based on the Anakeion; we in our turn saw the Twins' bridles against the stars, and more than once I stood watch on that same wall where I had stood with my father when I was fifteen. Dawn would grow red in the sky and we would wait for the sound of the trumpet, which was never long delayed; we would take out our weary horses, rub their legs still lame and stiff with yesterday's riding, and set out again. But often we slept the night in the hills, with what shelter we could find.

  Sometimes when the night was chilly, or there was rain, and we ached all over from riding or from wounds, Lysis and I would draw together, seeking a little warmth; but we never shared a cloak, because when you do that in winter you will do it in spring. Remembering those days, I hardly know what kept us to our resolve; we had no time to pursue philosophy, or be quiet, or consider the gods except when the squadron made the morning or the evening prayer; and I think it was weariness more than anything that made it easy to us. Yet sometimes in the night watch, when the Galaxy unrolled its book across a moonless sky, I knew what we were about, and where Sokrates was sending us. When Lysis had left me and gone to sleep, I would feel my soul climb love as a mountain, which at the foot has wide slopes with rocks and streams and woods, and fields of every kind, but at the top one peak, to which if you go upward all paths lead; and beyond it, the blue ether where the world swims like a fish in its ocean, and the winged soul flies free. And thence returning, for a while I found nothing created that I could not love: the comrade I had been angry with in the day, the Spartans sitting in Dekeleia; even Kritias I was sorry for, and knew why Sokrates had not sooner cast him out. Yet I was not drowsy, nor lost in dreams, but saw the night sparkle like a crystal, and every coney stirring, or the silent owl.

  Towards the end of summer we got a dispatch from Sicily; but I quote my father's letter which came with it, for brevity's sake. I had written to him, by one of Demosthenes' ships. After some instructions about reclaiming the farm, he said, Your choice of a friend I approve, a young man of good reputation, whose father also I know. Do not neglect his instruction, whether in virtue or in the field, that your fellowship may be held in honour by gods and men. With regard to the war, since I cannot amend your news with better, receive mine like a man. Nikias by infirmity of purpose has paltered victory away. Demosthenes, a good man out of luck, threw for double or quits and lost. He knows the game is up, and means to bring us home again with what he can save. Nikias lingers, waiting on omens, or for a democrat to open the gates of Syracuse, or for the intervention of a god; but Syracuse is not Troy. In my opinion he fears to face the Athenians with a defeat. Demosthenes, however, is a man and will do what is needful. Endure till we come; we will sweep Attica clean together.

  I was half ready for the news, for it came after long delay, and the sound of victory flies fast. I don't think there was great astonishment anywhere. People looked rather sullen, but everywhere one heard When the Army is home again ... We thought of our farms; we had had enough of King Agis sitting on our skyline.

  It was he, however, who lightened for us a weary evening at the Anakeion. I had been polishing my armour beside the fire; we had eaten, but were only half-full, for now the food had to come round by sea, rations were short. Xenophon had left his own fire and come to sit at ours; I shared my oil-flask with him, and we compared our wounds. One could always tell a cavalryman in the palaestra, by the way he was scarred about the arms and thighs and wherever the armour stops. Xenophon was trying to expound to me an invention of his, a long leather guard for the left arm and hand, which would not impede the reins like a shield. Suddenly a tremendous burst of laughter came from one of the other watchfires. Then it spread to the next, as if a flaming stick were being passed round to kindle it. We were getting up to satisfy our curiosity, when Gorgion arrived with the news. He was laughing so much that he nearly fell in the fire.

  When he could speak, he said, Do you want to know the true story of King Agis? Perhaps you thought he has been staying here because he hates us, and wants to do us harm. You were wrong, my friends. King Agis stays here out of family feeling, being united to us, you might say, by the most sacred ties. How proud he must be that he obeyed the omen, and left his new wife un-tumbled. If he hadn't, he would just have fathered one Spartan more, instead of an Athenian.

  An Athenian? I said, not daring to believe what I saw coming, till I remembered the laughter. Don't tell me Alkibiades has been keeping King Agis' bed warm for him all this time? — No one was using it. I daresay he used to feel chilly, after swimming in the Eurotas twice a day. Now we know why he never caught cold.

  A few years ago, when I was Xenophon's guest at his place near Olympia, I happened in our talk to recall this occasion. He said he had always reckoned it a most shocking thing, a virtuous man's piety being abused, and he could not conceive of anyone finding humour in it. People's recollections differ after so long; but my own is that he laughed as loud as I did.

  Well, I said, he's warmed the Eurotas for himself now, at all events. It must be blazing. — Yes, indeed. For the Spartan ladies, whose privilege it is to tell the City if a man drops his shield, aren't as shy as ours; it's no glory in them not to be talked about. When he gave her a boy, she boasted of it everywhere. — Tell us, said Lysis, how he proved his innocence. — The child's his picture in little, they say. But he carried it off with his usual grace, and taught her to make a fool of him. He told all enquirers that he, for his part, had never been the helpless prey of Aphrodite. Noble ambition alone had moved him. He had wished to found a line of kings. We gasped, and wiped our eyes. Someone said, Say what you like, there will never be another like him.

  So we laughed, and shared the last of our wine, and fell to telling bawdy tales and then to sleep. I daresay I remember the night so well, because soon afterwards there came an end of laughter in the City.

  15

  we were driving the Spartans off a farm near Marathon, when Phoenix stumbled and threw me. But for Lysis, I should have been speared on the ground; as it was I broke my collar-bone, and had to lie up at the farm. But I was in such fear for Phoenix, who had gone very lame, that I used to get up every day to see him; moreover the farmer was old, but his wife not. Like Sokrates, she made no charge for instructing the youth; but she undid the bandage Lysis had braced back my shoulder with, because it made me awkward. He rode over a few days later to see how I was mending, or I should be crooked to this day. I had to be carted back to the City, and the bone set again.

  He was disabled himself, with a thrust in the arm he had got in beating the Spartans away from me. He had made light of it at the time, but now it had an angry humour in it, and had to be dressed every day. Most of us found that we did not heal so quickly as at first; the food was bad, and we were tired. This was the first time Lysis and I had been wounded together; so we thought it a holiday. One day we were walking in the Agora, both feeling a little weak and sick; Lysis was feverish from his wound, and I had not long got on my feet again. We heard a great clamour from the other side, and went to see, n
ot hurrying much, because it hurt us to be jostled in crowds. As it happened, however, the man who had caused the commotion was coming our way, and bringing it with him. He was a metic, a Phrygian, with a barber's apron on. He was spreading his hands, calling on the gods to witness his truth, and demanding to be taken before the archons.

  I remember the look of him well: short, smooth and paunchy, with a ruby in his ear, and a black beard crimped to display his art. Having come some way in a hurry, he was sweating like a pig from his hair down into his beard; he looked the kind of little man who gets a roar in a comedy by pretending to have dirtied himself with fright. But no one was laughing, unless the gods were, as they sat above the clouds. They, it may be, were saying, We sent you Perikles to counsel you, and was not that dignity enough for your City? We sent you omens and prodigies, and writing in the stars, and the gods in your streets were wounded for a sign; but you knew better, you Athenians. You would tread upon purple; you would be greater than Necessity and Fate. Very well; take this in your face.

  He came towards us, out of breath, with a brawl about him, as if he might have cut a customer he was shaving, or overcharged. Seeing us, he outran the men who were shouting at him, and panted, Oh, sir, I can see you're a gentleman, sir, and a soldier; speak to them, sir; the City's given me a living these seven years, and what call would I have to leave my shop on a busy morning with a ship just in, and make up such a tale? I swear, sir, the man left me not an hour ago, and I came straight here, the gods be my witness. Stand by me, sir, you and the noble youth your friend, and take me to the archons, for people take liberties, sir, with a foreigner, though seven years I've . . .

  So Lysis turned to the people, and said they ought to leave the man to the law, whatever he had said, and anyone was welcome to come and see justice. Then they grew quieter, till an old man in leather, an armourer, said, And how many more will he tell on the road? Stop his mouth with pitch, I say. It's well enough for you, son of Demokrates, to keep your temper, but I've three sons with the Army, three sons, and how many more like me won't close their eyes tonight for this liar's tale? All to make himself somebody for a day, the foreign bastard, and cry up his stinking shop. Then the noise broke out again worse than before; the little man ran in between Lysis and me, like a chicken under a hen's wing, and we were forced to walk with him where he was going. He chattered in our ears, and the crowd shouted behind us, and called to others who shouted in their turn and joined the press. And the barber wheezed and panted out his tale, between the names of patrons who would put in a word for him, or sometimes broke it off to promise us a hair-trim or a shave for nothing.

  Such was the messenger the gods sent to the Athenians, to tell us that our Army in Sicily had perished from the earth.

  He had a shop in Piraeus, by the wharf where the traders come in from Italy. The colonists used to go there when they landed, to get polished up after the voyage. A ship was in, and one of the passengers sat down on the bench to wait his turn. And getting into talk with the men beside him, he said, Last time I came to your City it was a time of festival; garlands in the streets, torches at night, and the wine flowing. Now I dread to see the friends I made then, for what can one say to people in such calamity? I thought the war a mistake myself, for living at Rhegium I know something of Sicily; I doubted if the Athenians would come off with much to show; but, by Herakles, if anyone had told me that all would be lost, two great armies, two fleets of ships, the good Nikias and the brave Demosthenes both dying as wretchedly as thieves; yet what are they after all beside so many brave men, all butchered, or, what is worse, enslaved . . . At this all the people in the shop stopped him with an outcry, asking what he meant; and he looking about him in amazement said, But has it not reached you here? Has no one heard? All Italy talks of nothing else. So the barber had flung down his razor, and run all the way from Piraeus, and here he was. And Lysis and I believed him no more than the rest.

  We saw him safe to the Prytaneion, for it is not good that Hellenes living under law should deal out punishment on hearsay in the street. We left him there and went away. I saw that Lysis' cheeks were flushed along the bone, and his eyes bright with fever. You have walked too long, I said.— It's nothing, only that my wound is hot. I made him come home, and bathed it with the infusion the doctor had ordered, and wrung out warm cloths and bound them on; while I worked my shoulder ached again, more than it had for days. All this time we were saying how the barber ought to be made an example of, for upsetting the City with false news. Yet it was as if our bodies knew the truth.

  The archons were severe with the barber. Rumour was running like yeast, and he could not name his informant nor say where the man had gone. He was racked in the end, not being a citizen; this getting no sense out of him, they thought him punished enough, and let him go. About nine days later, another ship came from Italy; and the men she brought did not sit down at the barber's first, although they needed it. They were fugitives from the Army in Sicily, who throwing away their shields had saved themselves in the woods. Then we knew that the barber had let us down lightly, compared with the truth.

  When Demosthenes came out to the Army, he had been like a man after long absence visiting a friend. The family says, He has been ailing this last year ; but the fresh eye sees death behind the chair. The Syracusans held both horns of the harbour, and the heights above; he had taken the bold line, and attacked the heights. For a while it had been anyone's battle; but darkness fights for the man who knows the land. Even then, Nikias would have delayed, seeing a lifetime of honour about to close in disgrace; but Demosthenes, being sounder in body and nobler in mind, shamed him into decision. He agreed to go. With prudence and secrecy, everything was made ready; the Syracusans had no word of it; only a dark night was needed for the ships to flit away. It was the great moon of Athene's feast-day. Here in Athens we had a cloudy night, but there she shone clear upon the sea and the rocky headlands; till at her zenith, her face was seen to grow less, and to be cut away, and at last all darkened, as if a great shield had been held before her.

  You might have thought Nikias would have raised both hands to heaven, and vowed a hekatomb of oxen to Athene, who had cared for her people so well. For it happened on the night of her feast, when the prayers of all the Athenians were lifted up to her; and it has always seemed to me that to reject her gift, the shelter of her shield, was as great an impiety in its own way as that of Anaxagoras, who pretended that Helios is only a glowing stone. Yet Nikias would see nothing in the omen but calamity, and he carried so many with him that Demosthenes was over-ruled. They decided to wait another full course of the moon, before they sailed.

  So they waited; and the Syracusans attacked the ships again, and sank many more than they could still afford to lose. While they were debating what to do, the enemy strung his own ships across the harbour mouth and linked them with a boom. Then they needed no divination to know they must break out, or die. They prepared for battle.

  As if just wakened from a drugged sleep, Nikias worked like two men, seeing the ships made ready, exhorting the trierarchs and the soldiers. He recalled to them the famous words of Perikles, that they belonged to the freest people in the world; as if the Syracusans had been subjects of a tyrant, and not Hellenes themselves, resolved to be free or die. For two years they had seen the fate of Melos hanging over them. They manned their ships along the shore, and waited.

  It was Demosthenes who led out our ships to break the boom. They fell on it with such courage that they stormed the boom-ships, and were even casting off the ropes and chains; but then the Syracusan fleet fell on them from behind.

  They say two hundred ships fought that day in the Great Harbour. The water was choked with them, ramming and boarding, and drifting while grappled into ships already engaged, so that battles merged and joined in unutterable confusion; hoplites springing from deck to deck and, as they fought, being struck by javelins from their own ships; rudders crushed in the press, the lame ships fouling friend as well as foe; t
he din so great, and quarters so close, that men hardly knew if the orders they heard came from their own trierarch, or the enemy's.

  Meanwhile on shore the Athenians watched the battle, as helpless as if it were a game of dice, with their lives the stake. They swayed this way and that, crying out in triumph or gasping in despair as their own glimpse of the fight looked well or ill. But the Syracusans held four-fifths of the beaches; they could put in anywhere, if they were pressed; the Athenians had only the tiny strip Gylippos and his men had left them. They were trapped on all sides; the ships that were not sunk were driven back to land. At the sight of them returning, the waiting army gave one great groan of anguish, and stared from the sea strewn with wreckage and with dead, to the hostile land.

  To the land they turned their faces at last, leaving the dead unburied; and as if the reproaches of the homeless shades were not enough, they had to abandon the wounded and the sick. It was that, or stay and die with them. They dragged themselves on the flanks, clung to their friends till they could neither walk nor crawl; and then lay pleading, or cursing, or calling out last messages; their voices hung above the Army along with the ravens and the kites. The walking remnant marched on over the stony land, empty, thirsty, harried by the enemy on either side, until the end. At the last they came to a steep-banked river. They poured down into it, to cross over and to drink; and the Syracusans closed in, before and behind. As the Athenians struggled in the water, stones and darts and arrows rained on them. The river was churned to mud and ran with the blood of the dying. But such was their thirst that those who could reach it lay in it and drank, till others trampled them and they drowned. Demosthenes fell on his sword, but was taken alive to give the enemy the pleasure of killing him. Nikias too they put to death, no one knows how. Of the rank and file, many thousands perished on the spot; many were dragged off by Syracusan soldiers, to sell for gain. The rest were the common spoil of the State. The fugitives, hiding in the woods, saw them driven away like starved cattle, and knew no more.