The Last of the Wine

by Mary Renault

  When they knew what news the Paralos brought, they dared not let the City hear it. They turned the whole crew off the ship of honour, where it was their right to serve, transferred them to a troopship just leaving port, and imprisoned those who refused to go. The trierarch, by luck, had seen what was happening from the dock, and slipping off among the shipping had escaped to bring back word. He added that any soldier had only to look at the new fort they were building on the harbour, to see what it was for: to hold the grain-store against the citizens, and made a bridgehead for the Spartans to land.

  You might have supposed this news would have flung all Samos from triumph to despair. But our blood still glowed with victory, our souls with our just cause; we were like the men of Marathon when they marched straight off the field to take their stand before the City, knowing the gods were with them.

  The day after we got the news, Athenians and Samians together, soldiers and seamen and citizens, trooped up together to their hilltop acropolis. There we took an oath of fellowship, to defend each other's liberties, pursue the war, and make no terms with our enemies, at home or abroad. It is a great open field up there, girt with an ancient wall; larks flew up singing when we raised the hymn to Zeus, and the smoke of the offering rose straight to heaven.

  I have never felt less like an exile. It was we who were the City now, a free Athens beyond the sea. We carried her sword too and her armour; it was the Navy, not the government at home, which levied the island tribute to finance the war. The sun shone; the sea like hammered silver flashed below us; we felt we were making a new thing on the earth.

  Afterwards, down in the city, every Athenian found himself pulled into a Samian house and set in the guest's chair, while they brought out the best wine and spiced figs and anything they had. I told the story of my life, or a good part of it, at three Samian hearths that evening; and when Lysis and I met in camp we were neither of us quite sober. But we were happy, and full of faith. He had forgotten all about the girl; and, what was more remarkable, so had I.

  It was a warm spring evening; one smelt the sea, and supper cooking on pinewood fires, and the scent of flowers upon the hillside; we sat in the doorway of our hut in the late sun, greeting friends as they passed. And we opened a wine-jar, to drink to our enterprise, for, said Lysis, half sober is neither here nor there. But our minds only sparked brighter with the wine; we settled the affairs of all Athens and Samos between us, and went on to win the war.

  Presently the trierarch of the Paralos came by, and stopped to drink with us; and Lysis offered him some courtesy on the loss of his ship. He laughed and said, Don't pity me, but the trierarch who's commanding her now. I know those lads. The net won't hold the dolphin. I'll lay you five to one that the first chance they get in open water, they clap him in irons and run for Samos. (I may add that he won his bet.)

  It still put him in a rage, he said, to remember what he had seen in Athens. But now the dark tale was lightened by our hopes. When Alkibiades takes command here, he said, they can't last long. They have lost the moderates, you know, already. Theramenes and his party are only biding their time. They came in on the promise of a limited franchise, a principle I don't hold with but still a principle. Now they know they have got a tyranny, they won't bear it longer than they need.

  I listened silent, ashamed that this stranger should do my father more justice than I had done. Many things came back to me, from my first years. When I came back from the mountains, I had found in my room the silver I had put down for Sostias, wrapped in a cloth..

  But, said the trierarch, I almost forgot what I came here first to tell you, that an Army Assembly is fixed for tomorrow; you will hear the herald very soon. Half the ships in the fleet are in the same state as yours, the trierarch fled to Miletos, and the First Officer carrying on. The new promotions are going by vote. If I were as sure of a ship as you are, Lysis, I'd sleep well tonight.

  I looked at Lysis, my contentment crowned. He put it aside, from modesty; but the trierarch said, Your pilot was heard to say of you, 'He knows a ship's not steered from the same end as a horse.' And that's a paean, from a pilot. Which was true enough; for between the soldier who fights a ship, and the seaman who sails her, is a contention as old as Troy.

  He went away, and we heard the herald; then we filled and drank, not naming the good news for fear of tempting the gods. The evening sun glowed like bronze upon the reed thatch of the roofs; here and there men were singing about the fires. I said in my heart, Such things as these are the pleasures of manhood. We must do the work of the season, as Hesiod says.

  Lysis caught my eye above the wine-cup. To beautiful Alexias, he said, and jerked the lees out of the doorway. They made an alpha in the dust; he could do it, from practice, three times out of four. He yawned, and smiled, and said, It is getting late.

  But we sat a little longer; for as the sun sank, the moon had risen. Her light had mixed with the afterglow, and the hill behind the city was the colour of the skins of lions. I thought, Change is the sum of the universe, and what is of nature ought not to be feared. But one gives it hostages, and lays one's grief upon the gods. Sokrates is free, and would have taught me freedom. But I have yoked the immortal horse that draws the chariot with a horse of earth; and when the one falls, both are entangled in the traces. And I thought of Sokrates, and saw the logic of my case.

  Lysis said to me, Those are long thoughts to keep unshared.

  I was thinking, I said, of time, and change, and that a man must go with them as with a river, conforming to what is. And yet at last, if we are never so obedient, or if we call defiance, the last change is still to death. — The last? he said, and smiled. Never state an opinion like something proved. Today we have lived as if it were not so; and we have felt that it was good. His face was calm in the brightening moonlight; it came to me that in the use of his courage, and the faith of his cause, and in the exaltation of our vow upon the hilltop, he had found himself again.

  We sat in thought. I turned my eyes from the mountains, to find his turned to me. He laid his hand on mine. Nothing will change, Alexias. No, that is false; there is change wherever there is life, and already we are not the two who met in Taureas' palaestra. But what kind of fool would plant an apple-slip, to cut it down at the season when the fruit is setting? Flowers you can get every year, but only with time the tree that shades your doorway and grows into the house with each year's sun and rain.

  Indeed he was too good for me. Often it has seemed to me that it was only he who made me a man.

  Helios had plunged his red hair in the waves of the sea, and the songs were dying round the watch-fires. It was growing cold, and we went within; for, as the men of Homer said when a long day was behind them, it is well to yield to the night.

  21

  welcome home, Alexias, said a young man in the Agora, who was quite strange to me. Do you know you are staring about you like a colonist? Indeed you have been away too long, and it is good to see you.

  Three years, I said. I know your face well, but . . . — My name, he said smiling, is what you may know better, for I've grown my beard since last we met. Euthydemos.

  We exclaimed, and laughed, and sat to talk on a bench outside a shop. He had grown into an excellent fellow, sound without his old solemnity; Sokrates always knew where to dig for gold. I am keeping you, he said, from all your friends, but I must hear your news before the crowd sweeps you away. Alkibiades' men all walk the City dusted with his glory; and so they should. How does it feel, to be hung so thick with crowns of victory? — It feels, I said, like having a good commander.

  He raised his brows, half smiling. What, Alexias! Even you! You who distrusted vulgar idolatries, and disapproved of him, as I remember? I laughed, and shrugged. The truth was, there was not a man of us in Samos but thought the sun rose in his eyes.

  No one knows him, I said, who hasn't fought under him in war. He puts a shine on it. Here in the City they didn't understand him as we in Samos do. He trusts us and we trust hi
m, and that's the secret of it. At this Euthydemos laughed aloud, and said, Great Zeus! He must have given you a philtre.

  I felt myself getting angry, which was absurd. I'm not a politician, only a lieutenant of marines. I speak as I find. I've never seen him leave ship or man in the lurch in any action. Men who fight for him don't die for nothing. He sees what each man is good for, and lets him know he has put a stake on it. There was a black squall, and night coming on, when he led out the fleet to take Byzantium; but we all set off singing against the thunder. No one stops to ask questions when he gives an order. He thinks fast. I was with him when he took Selymbria with thirty men.

  I told him the story. It is on the Propontis, and lies on low hills near the sea. We had sat down before it, and beached the ships, and at the time of lamplighting were at supper round the fires. The marines of the Siren, and of another ship, thirty all told, were on outpost between the camp and the town to guard against surprise; so we were eating with our armour on, and weapons beside us. We had just begun when Alkibiades came out through the tamarisks with his long light stride. Good evening, Lysis. Can you spare me a place at the fire? Here's something towards supper. His slave put down a Chian wine-jar, and he settled himself among us. He was the best of company at such times; any troop he visited would be quoting him all next day; but tonight he was brisk, and told us no one was to turn in, but we must be ready to advance at midnight. He had got in touch with some democrats in the town, who had agreed to open the gates to him. The army was to steal up in the dark, ready to rush in, the signal being a torch held up on the wall.

  I've posted the Thracians over the hill, he said. We can do this business without them. Neither god nor man can hold a Thracian in a taken town; and I passed my word, if the City paid tribute, to shed no blood. In necessity he killed without softness; but he killed without lust, and seemed always well pleased to get what he wanted without it. Whatever had moved him against Melos (I suppose he saw what the Athenians wanted) that one day, it seems, lasted him a lifetime.

  We finished supper, and were mixing the last round of wine. Below us the fires twinkled on the shore; a stade or so away, just out of bowshot, were the dark walls of the town. Night was falling. Of a sudden Lysis pointed and said, Did you say midnight, Alkibiades? What's that?

  The torch burned red above the gate-tower. We leaped to our feet dismayed. The army was half a mile away; most of them naked by this time, oiling and scraping-down, or mending their armour before the action. Our eyes all turned to Alkibiades. The prize was dangling, while he watched helpless with only thirty men in arms. I for one was simply waiting to hear him curse. I had heard great accounts of it.

  He stood with his large blue eyes fixed upon the torch, and his brows lifted. These colonials, he said. People who turn up to a party while one is still dressing. Someone has gone white-livered, I suppose, and the rest daren't wait. Pollis, run back to camp, fall in the men, and bring them up at the double. Company, stand to arms. Well, friends, there's the signal, and here we go. Forward!

  He ran into the darkness towards the town, and we ran with him, as if it were the most reasonable thing in life. As we got to the gates they swung open; we went through into a street, where the leader of the plot ran breathless by Alkibiades, explaining the untimely call. I could just see the man bobbing up and down, and Alkibiades looking about, not listening. Just as we got to the Agora, with a great noise and clatter and calling to arms, the Selymrians came tumbling out around us.

  Lysis moved up to me and set his shield against my side. I wondered if the gates were shut behind us, and thought, If we fall, Alkibiades will see we are buried together ; for he was not forgetful of such things. But I prickled with life, as a cat sparks in thunder; it is the man half dead who fears death. Then Alkibiades' voice, as cool as if we were at exercise, said, Herald, sound for a proclamation. Our herald sounded the call. There was a pause in the dark streets, with much buzzing and muttering. Give this out, Herald. 'The people of Selymbria must not resist the Athenians. I will spare them on that condition.'

  He stood forth and proclaimed it. Silence followed. We did not breathe. Then a voice, shaken but still consequential, said, So you say, General; but let us hear your terms first. Alkibiades said, Then show me your spokesmen.

  His impudence had succeeded. They supposed us masters of the town already; and he held them in talk long enough to make it true. We used to say of him, in Samos, that he was a young man's general.

  At the end of the story, Euthydemos said, So you and Lysis are still together? — How not? I left him at the dock, seeing the fitters. There's no better trierarch in the fleet; if you think me partial, ask some of the others. — Indeed, you never praised him, Alexias, beyond his desert. I looked for you both when the squadron came into Piraeus; but the crowds were so thick to greet Alkibiades, that I saw nothing myself but garlands and myrtle-sprays flying through the air towards the crest of his helmet. — It's a pity, I said, that some of this fortune that's gone on festoons and choruses wasn't handed him for ship-money instead. He's been kept short for years. If he didn't work a miracle every month, you'd have no Navy at all. Half our battles are fought for tribute; we've had to squeeze it out where it hurt sometimes, but what could we do? — Well, he said, I think the City is taxed to the limit as it is; let's speak of something pleasanter. I see you have lost no time in getting to the bookshops, and have bought Agathon's latest play.

  He came into the shop, I said, and I got him to sign it. Not that I set much store myself by such trimmings; it's to take back to Samos, as a present for my girl.

  Out of affection for her, I called her a girl even when she was not there. Euphro never made any great secret of her age, or of having been the mother of a son who had turned sixteen when he died. Indeed, I had met her first in the graveyard outside the city, where she had come with an offering-basket to set upon his tomb. She drew her veil on seeing me near her, out of a sense of fitness for the occasion; and this making her tread carelessly, as she leaned forward her foot slipped, and the basket spilled at my feet.

  Like any man who goes much to sea, I was observant of omens; I did not care to have flung to me, in a manner of speaking, a gift meant for the dead. But when she begged my pardon, it seemed to me that her voice had a gentleness beyond the art of her calling; her dark eyes looked clear above her veil, and her brow was fair and white. I bent to pick up the oil-vase for her, and found that it had broken. It came into my mind to buy her another; so I followed her some way off, and learned where she lived. When I brought my gift, she came to the door unveiled and greeted me; not boldly, but as with an expected friend. I had never made love before with a woman who knew, or cared, what manner of man I was. I saw I had been like a man who dispraises wine, never having tasted anything but the lees.

  Lysis was glad for my sake, when I told him I had found a woman to please me. When later he saw how often I went back, and how much I conversed with her, I don't think it was quite so welcome to him. His own girl was pretty, but without any accomplishments save one; when he had thoughts to share, he came to me. He was much too generous to show any jealousy; but when I quoted any opinion of Euphro's on tragedy or music he would often find occasion to disagree. With his usual goodness, he agreed to my proposal that we should entertain both our companions at a supper-room in the city; but I can't pretend this party was a great success. Lysis, though Euphro was older than he cared for himself, was pleased with her mind, and quite ready to talk politics and poetry with her, if inclined, I felt, to be a little severe. But the girl cared nothing for such things, and being besotted on him saw rivals everywhere. Upon her interrupting a story of Euphro's and saying those were days she was too young to remember, I could not forbear remarking that I, who was younger, could recall them very well. When Lysis and I met again after taking home the women, we were a little constrained at first and sat thinking it over; till suddenly we caught each other's eyes, and started to laugh.

  Now, back in Athens, while the Cit
y feted Alkibiades, we had time to meet friends, and see our homes again.

  My father I found looking younger and better than when I left; and pleased, in the way of fathers, that I had got myself attached to a not inglorious corps. He for his part, having come forth boldly with Theramenes against the tyrants, and helped with his own hands to tear their traitor's gatehouse down, was enjoying some deserved consequence in the City. My mother, on the other hand, had aged more than I expected. She had miscarried of a child not long before. But since it was another girl, one could not but feel it was for the best.

  Sokrates I found in the Agora, standing in Zeus' porch. His beard had more white in it, for he was past sixty now; but except that he wanted to know all that had happened to me, I might never have been away. Within a few minutes, I was neck-deep in the argument that had been going on before I got there: whether the holy is whatever the gods love, or if they love it because it is holy; whether a thing can be holy that is sacred to one god and hateful to another, or only if all the gods love it alike; what things they all love, and why. Before the end some orthodox person, who had inspired the conversation, went away scandalised, muttering to himself; which was a relief to everyone, for he was one of those who only want to prove themselves right. As for me, it was wonderful to hear again Sokrates saying, Either we shall find what we are seeking, or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.

  I found, as you might expect after so long, some new faces about him, and one half-familiar one that puzzled me at first. It belonged to a young man of, I thought, about my age, broad and strong-looking, with intent deep-set eyes in a powerful face. I was sure he was strange to me, yet something stirred my memory; I wondered if I could have met some kinsman who resembled him. As soon as he saw me looking, he smiled at me; I returned it, but still could not place him. In stillness he had a somewhat chilling dignity; his smile however was modest, almost shy. He did not often intervene in the debate, but whenever he did, he changed the course of it; and I was struck with Sokrates' manner at such times. Not that he seemed to make much of the young man, nor treated him with that tenderness he used to show Phaedo; but he seemed to grow more than ever himself. Perhaps it was because he found his thought so quickly followed; they had to go back sometimes to let others catch up with them. While I was still puzzling my memory, he said, Yes, I know, Plato; but if you always take the steps in threes, one day you will miss a cracked one.