The Last of the Wine

by Mary Renault

  When I came back from the silence within me, and heard the noise going on just as before, I could not believe it. I had felt that everyone's eyes must have been opened in the same moment as mine. I looked about me, but the faces were all as before, shouting with their mouths open, all alike, like a sounder of hogs.

  I turned to the man beside me. He looked like a person of some schooling, a merchant perhaps. We are wrong, I said. We ought not to overthrow the law. He turned round and snapped at me, What do you know about it, young man? — I was there, I said. My ship was sunk in the battle. — All the more shame to you, he said, for taking the fellow's part. Have you no feeling for your shipmates? Soon afterwards, the crier gave out that since only one senator opposed the motion, the others had passed it without him.

  I dropped a white pebble in the urn, and, as it left my hand, tried to think that it made me clean.

  Lysis overtook me on the slope below the Pnyx. Always my example in courage, it was he who spoke first.

  You know, he said, how the wind comes down in those parts, from the hills of Ionia; blowing a gale, when a mile away it's no more than a capful. It might even be true that the storm prevented them. I said, Alkibiades would have come. — Yes, if he had a pilot. The truth is, Alexias, our navigation's not what it once was. Even in my few years I've seen a change. Alkibiades knew, and Antiochos. These new men are about the common run of captains now. One of them was wrecked himself. We have killed them as a child kicks the bench it bruised its shin on. What has become of us?

  I have done injustice, I said. We were shouldered as we walked by men disputing, and justifying themselves; but some were laughing, and betting on a cockfight. After being a long time silent, he said, Madness is sacred to the gods. They give it us at the proper season to purge our souls, as they give us strong herbs to clean out our bodies. At the Dionysia we are a little mad; but it leaves us clean, because we dedicated it to a god. This we offered to ourselves, and it had defiled us.

  Don't talk so, Lysis. I'm sure you kept your head much better than I did. He smiled, and quoted a certain phrase, recalling a personal matter between us. Then he said, Am I getting old, to find myself always thinking, 'Last year was better'? — Sometimes it seems to me, Lysis, that nothing has been the same since the Games. — We think so, my dear, because that was our concern. If you asked that potter over there, or that old soldier, or Kallippides the actor, each would name his own Isthmia, I daresay ... It has been a long war, Alexias. Twenty-four years now. Even Troy was only ten.

  We were crossing the Agora just then; he pointed to some women at a stall and said, When that child there was born, it had lasted already as long as Troy, and now she is almost a woman. His voice must have carried more than he meant, for the maiden looked up, and stared at him. He smiled at her, and she parted her lips in answer, her face lightening for a moment; she was in mourning, and looked peaked and pale. The woman with her, who did not seem like her mother, spoke sharply to her, though one could see she had only thought as a child does. I said to Lysis, She must have lost her father in the battle. He looked after her, over the heads of the crowd, and said, Yes, and the last of her brothers too. There were three. — You knew them, then? — Oh, yes. I even know the child herself. She almost spoke to me, till she was reminded she is older now. She is Timasion's daughter, who was trierarch of the Demokratia.

  Meanwhile the child was being led away through the market. You could tell from their backs that the woman was scolding her still. Lysis said, What will become of her, I wonder? That sour-faced bitch is the eldest son's widow, I suppose. It's a hard time of life to make such a change. She had a slapdash kind of upbringing; the mother, who is dead now, was usually sick, and little Thalia seemed to be always with her father or the young men. Up to last year, even, they no more thought of sending her out when I came than a hand-reared pup; you know how it is sometimes with a late-born child. One son was killed at Byzantium, and one here in Attica in a raid. Then Timasion and the last boy went out just now with the Athenian flotilla. That finished the family, except for this poor little remnant.

  He walked on in thought. When presently I spoke to him he did not hear. She was quite pretty, he said, before this happened; at least, she had a good little face. That woman will get her off her hands to the first offer, I suppose, no matter whom . . . They were good stock, Timasion and his sons. I knew them all.

  Lysis! I said, staring at him. What are you thinking of? She doesn't look more than twelve years old. He reckoned on his fingers. Well, she was born three Olympics ago, the year Alkibiades won the chariot-race; so she must be rising thirteen, at any rate. Then he laughed and said, Why not? One can have patience in a good cause; there are plenty of women meanwhile. Look how much better a horse is, if you have him from a colt. After a moment I said, Well, then, why not, Lysis, if you think so? I recalled all my anticipations, so different from this; and yet, as soon as one thought, it was exactly like him.

  She will have a small portion, I suppose, he said, so that neither of us will be too much beholden to the other. My sister Niko will teach her the things she has probably not learned at home. I shall take a small house, not scrape to live in the big one. If things improve later, so much the better, it makes a woman respect one more than the other way. He went running on like this; you would have thought he had had it in mind for weeks. What month are we in? he said. I suppose we might as well have the wedding in Gamelion, like everyone else.

  You don't mean, I said staring, this next Gamelion, do you? — How not? She can have everything ready in three months, surely? '— I thought you meant just to get contracted to her now. She's quite a baby. — Oh, I shall have to marry her at once, I can see that. It will be the only way of doing anything with her. As she is, whatever defects her upbringing had, she has got its virtues. They taught her good manners, courage, and to speak the truth, if they didn't teach her embroidery. Why turn her over for a year to that pinch-lipped vixen, who will make her sly and prudish and mealy-mouthed, and full of old midwives' nastiness? I wonder if Gamelion is soon enough. Recalling the scene in the Agora, I saw what he meant. He said, I could tell just how she felt when she saw me, as if she had come on a bit of furniture, or a dog, that brought back her home to her. I told her the story of Perseus when she was six years old. — What are you waiting for? I said. Get your winged boots, and unchain her before the dragon arrives. He laughed and took my arm and said, Bless you, Alexias, I think I will. I suppose today has set me thinking. Since this war began we have spent more than silver; more than blood even; something of our souls. Last time I went up to the High City, I thought even the Maiden herself looked tired. It's time to think of making a son, to start out fresh for the next lap ... I must get Niko to call.

  Two days later he gave me his sister's report. She had quite taken, he said, to the little Thalia, and did not think her really backward for her age. It was the shock of her loss, and homesickness, Niko said, that had driven her in upon her childhood. Niko reported the sister-in-law not quite such a shrew as Lysis called her; pointing out with some justice that no decent person in charge of a young girl would let her smile at men in the market. But she was a silly woman, set in her ways, and without much feeling, and trying to give the girl three years' training in a month, had made her so nervous she could not pick up a distaff without breaking the thread. She thinks the world of you, Lysis, and was going to repeat to me all the kind things she had heard her father say of you, only to give me pleasure, for she has a natural sweetness one feels at once. But she was called to order, and shown her own forwardness. I felt so sorry for the poor child; it hadn't crossed her mind till then that my call concerned her, and not one word more could I get from her, you can be sure.

  The head of the household was an ancient grandfather, deaf and so nearly blind that he took Lysis for a youth, because he had no beard. But at last things were settled, the dowry agreed on, and he went with his sister to see the girl.

  At first, he said, I couldn't get
her to look at me. Poor little creature, I never saw such a change. One used to hear her from the courtyard, singing about the house. But clever Niko got her sister-in-law upon the iniquities of slaves, which gave me a little time. I told her how well her father did in the battle; she can follow anything you like of that kind. Then I reminded her of our old acquaintance, and said she would find my house a little more like home. She started to look rather less wretched; but I could see that bitch had been at her, putting her in a panic; so I said, 'Now you must listen to me, for you've known me longer than any of them. The snatching-up and running at the feast is a game we shall play to amuse the guests, who think it is the best part of a wedding. But the rest can wait,' I said, 'till we've time to make friends. That's our first secret; now we'll see how you keep it.' She looked much better when we left, almost as I remember her. Niko persuaded him, however, to wait for the turn of the year, and marry in Gamelion, as he had first planned. She said, sensibly enough, that Thalia would be turned fourteen by then, which was really the earliest he could take such a young girl to his house without people talking.

  He told me he did not mean to look for another ship; it would be a long time in any case before the fleet was up to strength. He would drill with his tribal regiment (which was mine too), settle down, and farm his land when the Spartans would let him.

  I too felt that my place was in the City. My father was not well; a tertian fever he had brought from Sicily often troubled him; when the bout was on he could not do business, or attend to the farm. Not only duty but inclination drew me; for I had been long out of the City; my wits were getting rusty with the sea, and smoked from the watchfire, and the schoolboys of yesterday were young men, making their voices heard in the colonnades.

  So I came back to philosophy, but differently; feeling it in myself, and in those I met in talk, a fever of the blood. I had come to it as a boy from wonder at the visible world; to know the causes of things; and to feel the sinews of my mind, as one feels one's muscles in the palaestra. But now we searched the nature of the universe, and our own souls, more like physicians in time of sickness.

  It was not that we were in love with the past. We were of an age to feel the present our own, and to suppose it would never outstrip us. In painting and sculpture and verse, the names we grew passionate over looked to us as big as those of Perikles' day, and it still half surprises me when I find them unknown to my sons. But we seldom stood to enjoy good work, as one stands before a fine view or a flower, in simple gladness that it is. As we hailed each new artist we grew angry with the former ones, as with false guides we had caught out; we hastened, though we knew not where. To freedom, we said; the sculptors no longer proportioned their forms by the Golden Number of Pythagoras, as Pheidias and Polykleitos did; and art would do great things, we said, now it had cast off its chains.

  Euripides was dead; he would suffer with our doubts no more, nor grieve with our losses. And Agathon had gone to Macedon, as the guest of the rich King, who dreamed of civilising his wild hillmen. For months we used to wonder, laughing, how our sweet singer was getting on up north, and picture him seeking among the rude youth for one whose conversation was not quite confined to women, horses and war. Then one day a traveller brought news that he was dead. It is ill to fall sick among barbarians. After he was gone, even Aristophanes had a kind word for him.

  Only Sokrates was unchanged, unless he looked a little younger. His rough-tongued Xanthippe, tamed by kindness or mellowed with time, now that she drew near the end of childbearing had borne him two more sons. This, if it was more than he had bargained for, he took very cheerfully. He was as ready as the youngest of us to question fixed opinions, and the youths growing up came to him just as we had done, and worried at logic like puppies, tearing things up in the search for truth.

  The north had taken Agathon, the gentle singer, but it had given us something back. Kritias had returned from Thessaly to the City.

  He had fled there some time after the Four Hundred were overthrown, when some of his doings came to light. In Thessaly the landowners are like little kings, always at petty war. He found good fishing in this muddy water. Presently he learned that there was some discontent among the serfs, for the law in Thessaly does not take much account of poor men. So he intrigued with their leader and got them arms and plotted a rising to suit his plans. It was put down, I believe, with a good deal of bloodshed; but Kritias got safe away. I am sure that in the beginning he was an inspiration to them, and made them feel themselves the darlings of Zeus. Sokrates used to teach us that the human images of the gods contain the shadows of truth, but the lover of philosophy must look through and beyond. From this, I think, Kritias, following his nature, had inferred that religion and law are good for fools, but the superior man is above them. However, I do not pretend that in Kritias' case I am capable of justice.

  He passed me about this time in the street, and half-remembering me I suppose in some connection not pleasant to him, gazed, trying to place me. I don't know whether he succeeded; but even the Spartans I had met in battle, seeing only my eyes through my helmet-slits, had looked at me more as man looks at man.

  But having pronounced all these opinions, I ought to confess they are worth as much as if a man with fever were to judge of wine. On my last visit to the City, I had caught a sickness I had thought was cured. Now, the cause being near again, I learned it had been sleeping and growing in its sleep.

  In this the god was kind to me, that from the start he never tormented me with hope. Nor did he poison his arrows; for what seemed at first sight to be beautiful and good, seems so to me until this day. Being now turned seventeen, he had left Mikkos' school, and was often with Sokrates. There I avoided him, for many reasons; but where music was, he would not be far away. So my memories are set to the kithera, the syrinx, or to a concert of flutes, or clear voices singing; even now sometimes a chord or a descant can make me smell scented oil and bay-leaves, or grass and burning pitch, and torchlight flickers on the stillness of his listening eyes.

  Only once I was in danger. In a night of early winter I had walked out on Lykabettos, when the peak stood black against thick-sown stars. Pausing for breath, a little below the summit, I saw on the terrace of the shrine his shape with lifted head, scanning the heaven. For he had the bent towards mathematics and astronomy, that one often finds in musicians. The belt of Orion was above him, and at his shoulder the sword.

  I stood on the rocky pathway, between my will and my soul. I had taken the first step, and the second, upon the path, when I saw he was not alone. I was barefoot, so they had not heard me; I was able to get down into the woods again, where a few lamps shine between the pine-boughs, and a few stars. All in all, it is clear that the god took good care of me; and to show I am not ungrateful, on a certain day each year I bring him a pair of doves.

  Lysis' marriage was itself a good to me; for nothing could have given me any escape from myself just then, except the serious concerns of someone so dear. I could not intrude a grief he must have put down, if he had noticed it, to a kind of jealousy unworthy of a friend or a man. Being forced to lay it by, I could forget it sometimes and share his happiness. For he was just as happy, it seemed, as a man looking forward to a proper wedding night. I helped him find a little house in the Inner Kerameikos, not far from ours, and furnish it with some of his father's things. He sold a bronze by Alkamenes to buy music and garlands for the feast. I should like her to enjoy it, he said. After all, I daresay it's the only wedding she'll have.

  Xenophon confided to me his hearty approval of the match. When I marry myself, he said, that is just about the age I shall look for; before they get their heads full of notions, and while there is still time to train them in orderly ways. I can't endure things higgledy-piggledy, and nothing in its place. Order is the first half of a decent life.

  Then it seemed that one moment we were all saying, Only a week, Lysis, and the next it was the wedding morning.

  There had been snow in the night. It
lay on the roof-tops, under a bright pure sky, thin, hard and glistening; whiter than marble of Paros, whiter than out wedding robes. The lion-head rain spouts on the temple roofs had beards of crystal a cubit long; the red of baked clay looked dark and warm, and white plaster like curded cream. Helios shone far off and high, giving no heat from the pale heaven, only the flash of his silver hair. When we led the bridegroom to the house of the bride, the lyre-strings snapped with the cold, and the flutes went flat; but we covered it with our singing. Our breath rose in the frosty air in little clouds, in time with the song.

  I can't remember ever to have seen Lysis look better. His wedding mantle of white Milesian wool was trimmed with a border two spans deep of pure gold bullion, which his father and grandfather had been married in before him. We had brought him ribbons, of red, blue and gold, and crowned him with myrtle, and with the violets one finds by their scent in new-fallen snow. He strode up to the bride's house, laughing and glowing with the cold. His tunic was pinned at the shoulder with a great brooch of antique goldwork from Mycenae, a gift to some ancestor from Agamemnon, as the story ran. His hair and his garland, and the ribbons on his arm, sparkled with snow-dust blown off the roofs. When we came into the guest-room, where the bride was sitting at the old man's side, you could see her little face, framed in its veil of saffron, turn as you watched all into great eyes. The women swept her up for kisses and whispers. She had good manners, as Lysis had said; but at every pause, as if her eyes had been let out of school they went slipping across. Once he saw it, and smiled straight across at her, and the women all sighed and murmured, Charming! Only the sister-in-law leaned forward, to hiss in her ear. She blushed crimson, and shrank up like a rose trying to grow backwards and fold itself away. I think there were tears in her eyes. For a moment I saw in Lysis' face a look of such anger that I thought he was going to make a fool of himself and embarrass everyone. I twitched his mantle, to remind him where he was.