The Last of the Wine

by Mary Renault

  Next day, Lysis and I had walked out a little beyond the walls, to see the ruined castle of old Polykrates, the Samian tyrant: he who was so long fortunate that he dropped his great emerald in the sea, to break his luck lest the gods do it for him. But they sent it back in a fish's belly, to let him know there is no running from fate; and now his walls are as the Medes left them. There was a sheepfold within them, and a scatter of little flowers. Spring was here; on the terraced fields below us, new barley bloomed the earth with green, and the black vine-stocks were budding. We were sunning ourselves with the lizards on the great warm stones, when of a sudden Lysis said, How long have we been here? We ought to be going.

  Why? I said. Everything's quiet. It's not often now we can get away together. — I feel a warning. Perhaps I saw some omen I did not regard. — A warning that you have had enough of my company? The omen is for me. — Be serious, he said. Something is happening; I feel it. We must go.

  We found the Agora full, but no more uncomfortable than it usually was. I was about to reproach Lysis with it, when I myself began to feel uneasy. For something to do, we were watching a silversmith, who was beating out on a fish-platter a border of shells; when Lysis, who had been looking out at the door, said, By Herakles, I swear that's Hyperboles.

  I craned to look, half expecting to see a serpent covered in scales. He had been banished when I was quite a little boy, and I had never heard my father refer to him except as a kind of monster. I had forgotten that he had made his home in Samos. Now I saw him, he looked just like any other disreputable old demagogue, one who lives by denouncing and exposing while he is in credit, and, when he is out, by sycophancy and informations, with a little perjury thrown in. He had a pale face with a loose mouth and thin sandy beard, and spluttered as he talked, slapping his hand with a scroll he carried, as such men do, for show. Some friend was with him, listening with half an ear. Even from afar, the old rogue was stamped with the marks of invincible boredom. Which made it doubly odd that, now in Samos, he should have an audience.

  Five or six men were gathered behind him. Some seemed like lumpish apprentices, the kind who, when the craftsman curses their slovenliness, would rather smash the work than do it better. There were also two older men, who seemed of their company but did not speak.

  I saw one or two citizens glance at Hyperboles and his following, and pass swiftly on. There was a statue beside him of some athlete, with two or three steps at the base. On one of these, as if from habit, he set his foot; and, feeling at home there, he began to orate. What it was about, I do not know. He turned then, and saw the men behind him. He was a pale man, but he did not go paler. I saw him go red. He went straight up the steps till he stood on the highest, and started to address the people.

  Lysis and I looked at each other. He threw his arm round me and patted my shoulder; then he said, Let us hear this.

  We left the shop and crossed over. Whenever I think I have summed up a man, I remind myself of Hyperboles. He gave that day, I suppose, the performance of his life. He was the vilest speaker I ever heard: vulgar, ignorant, not seeking to teach his hearers, but rather to stir in men as vulgar as himself the irrational excesses to which such people are prone; a whore among orators. Yet, when he denounced the men who were putting the City in fear, there was a kind of flame in him. He was a man so ignoble that if he remembered anything of the nature of excellence, I should think it was only so that he could taunt someone with the lack of it. He lived in spite and hate. And now he only invoked the good in the name of hatred, yet for a moment nobility glanced back at him, and made him brave. It was like seeing some mangy cur, who for years has lived on scraps and filth about the market, raising his hackles at a pack of wolves.

  He was leaning out, wagging his finger at the crowd, dragging out some phrase word by word before a peroration, when one of the young men jumped up the steps, grabbed him by the leg, and tumbled him over. There was a laugh, for he had looked absurd going down with his mouth still open.

  At the natural sight of someone speaking in the Agora, a number of people had come up. While Lysis and I were trying to see over them, we heard a sound from the foot of the statue, between a cry and a grunt. Then there was a shout, and the feet of men running away. The crowd began to work and seethe about, some people trying to get out and others to press forward.

  I saw Lysis' hand feeling his belt. Even in Samos, one could not walk the streets wearing a sword like a barbarian. But we both had Spartan daggers, which had been approved ornaments in the Guard. Every Athenian carried something, even if only a hunting-knife.

  Suddenly the crowd gave way before our shoulders, and we found ourselves at the statue. Here no one disputed our place; there was a little space quite empty of people, except for Hyperboles, who lay with his thin beard pointing to heaven, and the food-stains on his mantle mixed with blood. His mouth was wide open, with a kind of grin on it, as if he had just exposed someone beyond shadow of doubt.

  As we stepped forward, everyone else seemed to fall back in relief, like people saying, Pray help yourself, the affair is yours. But just then the crowd parted on the other side.

  Some of the men who pushed through I had seen following Hyperboles before. One pointed at the body without speaking. His face and his thumb said, Take this dirt to the midden. None of the crowd moved; but a little man said, It was murder. The magistrates ought to see him. At this one of the youths turned quickly and spat in his face. They stepped towards the body.

  I felt Lysis' fingers grip my arm, and he was gone from my side. Running after, I saw him bestriding the mean little corpse, his dagger in his hand. The youth who had spat, about whom was nothing Homeric, was looking at him, much put out. I drew my own dagger, and leaped in to cover his back. Then I could see him no longer; only the encircling faces: some frightened, some making themselves dull so as not to understand, some awaking to battle-joy and friendship; and the faces of the men who had come for the body, as they dragged out the long knives from under their arms.

  I never doubted we were in as much danger as ever in war, and of an uglier death. Yet, strangely, I had not to force up my courage; I was in such spirits that I could have cheered aloud, or sung. The truth is, I think, that I felt myself enacting the kind of scene every schoolboy dreams of, when he first hears the ballad of Aristogeiton and Harmodios. My head was full of great words; like a boy, I saw our bodies lying together on a hero's bier, but did not imagine myself dying. I stood there feeling Lysis' shoulder, and looking, I don't doubt, as if I had been requested to strike the pose of a Liberator. I was so carried away that I shouted Death to the tyrants! at the top of my voice. Next moment, I felt Lysis take the shock of someone springing at him, and saw two of the youth making for me. Then I forgot heroics; it was war again, and standing to it unhorsed when your spear is gone. In the confusion around, I heard some voice shout, Death to the tyrants! but I could only see the two men I was fighting, till one of them was pulled off me from behind. The press closed in again; I felt a limb of the corpse tangle my feet and cursed it as I fought. I heard Lysis' voice; we put our shoulders side by side and backed up the steps till we felt the statue-base behind us. Now we could see there was fighting all round. Lysis threw back his head and shouted, Siren! Siren! Then we heard the Athenian paean across the square, and voices crying, Paralos!

  The seamen came racing up the square to us, and the oligarchs made off. A few timid citizens had run indoors, but most joined up with us, cheering Lysis and me as leaders, because they saw us on the steps. It was just like a happy ending to my dream. People were still taking up the cry of Death to the tyrants! But now I heard a different note in it. There was a huddle of men in the corner of the square; and as I looked, a face rose up from the midst, with blood on it, and the eyes wide, staring about. Someone was being mobbed there. This is a thing that you do not see in war; it was like filth flung on my exultation.

  I pulled at Lysis' arm, and pointed. He saw, and calling for silence, spoke to the crowd. He said
this was a great day for Samos, for her enemies had declared themselves. But the work was hardly begun; we must go forward with proper discipline, and seize the armoury. All traitors would be tried when the city was secure, and meanwhile we must attack only those who resisted us, for we could not put injustice down by doing it ourselves. Then he said that Samians and Athenians, as long as they loved justice, would be friends together; and this got them cheering. It was a very good speech for someone who had only just got his breath back after such a fight. The Samians picked him up and carried him some way shoulder-high; and for no reason, in the way of crowds, they did the same with me. Being now high enough to look, I craned over to see if the man they had been mobbing was on his feet again. But he was still lying there.

  That was the start, as we saw it, of the fight in Samos. There were, however, other beginnings; for the oligarchs had struck all over the town, choosing for their first victims such people as Hyperboles, who were generally disliked or despised, and whom they thought no one would strike a blow for, so that they might get off to a good start under pretext of cleaning up the city. In some places this succeeded; but in others people knew what it meant; so already battle was flaring up all over, like fire in thatch with a high wind blowing.

  As everyone knows, the oligarchs were beaten everywhere, and the democrats left masters of the town.

  That night, when we had left our comrades, Lysis and I sat together in his little reed hut near the shore. We were weary with battle, but still too stirred to rest; we dressed our wounds, which were nothing much, and ate, for we were hungry, having had no time before. On stools at the scrubbed wooden table we sat over our wine. The sea sounded on the shore; outside the stars twinkled above, the watchfires and harbour lights below; on the table between us stood a shallow clay lamp which had just been lit. Lysis sat chin on fist, looking at the flame. Presently he said, Why are you a democrat, Alexias?

  If I had now to answer truly for the youth who sat at the table, I might say perhaps, Because of my father, or of the Rhodian woman. Because I love you. But of course I replied that I thought democracy more just.

  He said, Undeceive yourself, my dear; it can be as unjust as anything else. Take Alkibiades, who, by the way, I suppose will soon be commanding us. I stared, the thought coming home to me for the first time. Get used to it, he said. He may seem shop-soiled; so he is; but it is arguable how much loyalty a man owes to a City which has outlawed him unjustly. Whatever else he has done in his time, he no more broke the Herms than you and I did . . . Tell me, is it better for all the citizens to be unjust, or only a few? — A few surely, Lysis. — Is it better to suffer evil, or to do it? — Sokrates says to do it is worse. — Then an unjust democracy must be worse than an unjust oligarchy, mustn't it? I thought it over. What is democracy, Lysis? — It is what it says, the rule of the people. It is as good as the people are, or as bad.

  He turned the wine-cup in his hand. The black of his eyes, which had been wide open, grew small from looking at the flame, and the iris pleated, like grey and brown silk catching the light.

  They held an Epitaphion at Athens, he said, in the first year of the war, in honour of the fallen. The ashes and the offerings were carried in state along the Sacred Way, with an empty bier for the bodies that were lost. It was only a few months before your birth; perhaps your mother carried you in the procession. I was seven years old. I stood with my father in the Street of Tombs; it was cold, and I wanted to run off and play. I stared at the high wooden rostrum they had built for Perikles, waiting for him to climb it, as children wait for a show. When he appeared, I admired his dignity and his fine helmet; and the first sound of his voice struck a kind of thrill upon my ear. But soon I grew tired of standing with cold hands and feet, and doing nothing; I thought it would never end; the weeping of the women had disturbed me, and now the people listened in so deep a silence that I was oppressed by it. I stood staring at the gravestone of a lad carved with his horse; I can see it to this day. I was glad when it was over, and if you had asked me a year later to quote the speech of Perikles, I doubt if I could have fished you up a dozen words. So before I left, I looked it up in the archives. And there were the thoughts that I had supposed I owed to no one. While I read, I still could not remember hearing Perikles say these things. My soul seemed to remember them, as Sokrates says we remember music and mathematics, from the days when we were unborn and pure.

  I told him I had heard of the speech but never read it; and he quoted me as much of it as he could remember. Since then I have read it many times. But since I never knew Perikles, to me it is always Lysis who is speaking; I see not the tomb and the rostrum, but the lamps of Samos through a doorway, his shadow thrown big upon the wall, the piled armour shining beside the pallet, the black glossy wine-cup, and his hand, with an old ring of plaited gold on it, touching the stem.

  Men are not born equal in themselves, he said to me after, so I think it beneath a man to postulate that they are. If I thought myself as good as Sokrates I should be a fool; and if, not really believing it, I asked you to make me happy by assuring me of it, you would rightly despise me. So why should I insult my fellow-citizens by treating them as fools and cowards? A man who thinks himself as good as everyone else will be at no pains to grow better. On the other hand, I might think myself as good as Socrates, and even persuade other fools to agree with me; but under a democracy, Sokrates is there in the Agora to prove me wrong. I want a City where I can find my equals and respect my betters, whoever they are; and where no one can tell me to swallow a lie because it is expedient, or some other man's will.

  Then the day's weariness came down on us, and we slept. And next day, the Paralos set out to bring the good news to Athens, her prow garlanded, the rowers singing at the oar. When we had cheered them away, I went to the temple and offered a kid to Zeus, for saving my father in his own despite.

  We had no more trouble with the oligarchs, whose only care now was to hide their traces and save their skins. After the Paralos sailed, we spent a very peaceful week; I mean to say that it was peaceful in Samos. I cannot say quite the same for myself; for within the next two days Lysis remarked to me, in the easy way he had at such times, that he had met a girl in the town who had taken his fancy, and was going that night to visit her. This was the first time it had happened, that I knew of, since things had changed between us; and I was surprised to find how much I minded it. You might almost have thought, from my vexation, that he had been caught by some youth who could seriously engage him. It was absurd, considering his fidelity.

  I was oiling the straps of his armour and mine (leather perishes quickly in sea air) and I kept busy at it, to hide my thoughts. But he noticed I had got rather quiet, and asked whether I would like to come too, for he was sure his girl could find another one for me. I thanked him, and said I would come another night. He stood combing his hair into curl, and whistling to himself; then he looked round, and sitting down by me, urged me very kindly to come. He said among other things that I was my father's only son, and should have one day to marry; and I should not know whom to choose, or how to make the best of her, if I had not got myself used to women first. I told him I liked them well enough, but not tonight. The truth was that his encouragement had rather missed its mark, reminding me that it would be he, in the natural course of things, who would get married first. People I knew seemed to take this lightly enough; I had seen them acting groomsman to their friends with perfect cheerfulness; it distressed me to think myself more given to extremes, and less capable of reason, than other men. Indeed, when I look back, I cannot understand myself at this time of my life.

  When he had gone, I went out walking; for the god, having marked me down for punishment, spared neither my mind nor body, and I could not stay in bed. There was a young moon in the sky; I went up by the footpath to Polykrates' castle, and sat looking out to sea. The place smelled of sheep, for the flock was in the fold; there was a smell too of thyme, and of green things in spring. I complained to the god
that he was unjust to me, who had never insulted nor defied him; but with face averted he accused me, reminding me of my former unkindness to Lysis, who had shown nothing but kindness to me; and of how, long before that, I had cared nothing for Polymedes, or for a dozen others whose names, even, I had not kept in mind. He said too that by my own will I had become his bondsman; and that since he was the giver of more joy to men than any other deity, it was natural his chastisements should give more pain. So I acknowledged his justice, and at last went home; and when Lysis came back, I pretended to be sleeping.

  As it turned out, he found the girl more pleasing than he had expected, and went back to her several nights running. I suffered at the time. Yet it has left less mark upon my mind than wounds which seemed slighter at first, where someone of small consequence has failed me in loyalty or honour. As the mould is broken and falls to dust, while the statue of bronze endures, I cannot call the pain to life again; yet remember like yesterday the scents of night, the Galaxy hanging like spray in the deep sky, the cresset burning on an anchored ship, and the cry of a waking lamb answered by the night-jar.

  I don't know how long all this would have gone on. The thing was getting a hold on me that was past all sense, and Lysis had even asked me whether I was ill. But serious matters broke in on us, and blew such follies away.

  The trierarch of the Paralos arrived alone, in a trader from Aegina. The ship had reached Athens to find the oligarchs already in control. Made desperate by the loss of Alkibiades, they had not dared to await results in Samos, but moved at once. They had falsely reported the coup successful and Alkibiades on the way; and getting power on the strength of this, had stopped all payment for public office and dismissed the Senate. Between hired bullies and informers they were keeping the people down, and their own moderates quiet by promising an electoral roll of gentlemen, which was to come out shortly.