The Last of the Wine: A Novel

  The City sent us to Corinth in the State galley Paralos. This was my first acquaintance with men I was to know much better afterwards; but it is remarkable how quickly you notice the difference in a ship where the whole crew are free citizens, rowers and all. A place on the Paralos was the most honourable open to any man who could not afford the panoply of a hoplite, which is the reason in many cases why a man takes to the sea. But their necessity had become their choice. They were great democrats and stood no nonsense from anyone; and one or two of the passengers, who were oligarch-minded, complained of their insolence. For myself, after weeks of palaestra small-talk I could have listened to them by the hour. I confess I cannot see why a sailor should not take as much pride in himself as a soldier or even an athlete. No one can say it is a base employment, like that of a man cramped indoors at a work-bench, which spoils the body and confines the soul.

  Autolykos was a favourite with them, as with everyone else. I have heard superior people say he had no more mind than a fine bull, and I don’t pretend he would have shone in a disputation; but he was modest in success, a good fellow and a thorough gentleman. Once when Lysis was praising him to me, I said, “I can’t think how you pankratiasts manage in the contest. A runner only needs to leave his rivals behind; but in a day or two, if you and Autolykos are drawn in the same heat, you will be buffeting each other about the ears, flinging each other down, kicking and twisting and throttling; doing each other as much harm, short of biting and gouging, as two men can without weapons in their hands. Don’t you mind it?” He laughed and said, “One doesn’t go out to do a man harm, only to make him give in. I can tell you, Autolykos in action is no object for tenderness.”

  We were having supper at the time at a tavern in Salamis, where the wind being contrary we had put in for the night. Autolykos was there too, treating the pilot. I said to Lysis, “He’s grown very heavy this last year. It has almost spoiled his looks. I’ve never seen a man eat as much as he does.”—“He’s only following his training-diet; in fact, according to that he ought to eat even more, two pounds of meat a day.”—“Meat every day! I should think it would make one slower than an ox.”—“Well, there is something in weight too, and the City trainers are rather divided on it, so they let us go on as we did with our trainers before. I agree with mine that the pankration was founded to be the test of a man, and the right weight for a man is the weight for a pankratiast.”

  The inn lamp had been lit; and all Salamis, it seemed, had gathered outside on the harbour front to watch us eating, word having got round of who we were. Seeing them stare, I looked at Lysis with a stranger’s eyes, which I had almost forgotten how to do. I thought that Theseus, setting forth in his flower of strength to wrestle at the Isthmus, could have looked no better. His mantle being open, the lamplight showed the beautiful hard sheen of his body, like oiled beechwood, and the smooth curve of muscle and sinew. His neck and shoulders, though firm as rock, had not thickened; he moved them as lightly as a racehorse. It was plain that the people outside were betting on his victory, and envying my place beside him. Yet he thought in his modesty that they were looking at me.

  Next day we sighted the port of Isthmia, and, standing against the sky, the round-topped mountain where the Corinthian citadel is. As the haze lifted, one could see the walls twined like a fillet about its brows. On the very summit I saw a small temple shining, and asked Lysis if he knew what it was. He said, “That must be the shrine of Aphodite, to whom the Girls of the Goddess belong.”

  “Do they live there?” I asked him. It seemed beautiful to me that Aphrodite should keep her girls like doves in a tall pine-tree, not lightly to be won; I pictured them waking in the dawn, and clothing their rosy limbs against the brisk air of morning, and going down to the mountain spring; girls like milk, like honey or like dark wine, presents to the Cyprian from every land under the sun. “No,” he said, smiling as he watched my face, “the shrine’s for people like you, who like love on top of a mountain. The girls are in the City precinct, or the Goddess wouldn’t grow very rich. But never mind; after the Games we’ll go to both. The girls at night; daybreak for the mountain. We’ll watch them make the morning sacrifice to Helios as he rises from the sea.”

  I agreed, thinking all this very fitting for men who have been contending for glory before a god. In my mind I saw the girl of my choice, opening her arms by the light of a little lamp, her shining hair heavy on the pillow.

  Round about us people were watching the coast grow nearer, and talking, as men in strict training will, of the pleasures of Corinth, exchanging the names of bathhouses and brothels, and of the famous hetairas from Laïs down. Seeing the lad Plato near by, looking as usual rather serious, I clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Well, my friend, what do you want to do in Corinth?” He looked round at me and answered, without so much as a pause for thought, “To drink from the Fountain of Peirene.”

  “From Peirene?” I said staring. “The spring of Pegasos? You’re not intending to set up as a poet, are you?” He gave me a straight look, to see if I was laughing at him (I had remarked already that he was no fool) and having satisfied himself, said, “Yes, I hope so.” I looked at his heavy brows and solid frame. His face had a distinction which just kept one from calling him ugly; it occurred to me that as a man he might even become impressive. So I asked him with proper gravity whether he composed already. He said he had written a number of epigrams and elegies, and had almost completed a tragedy, upon Hippolytos. Then he dropped his voice, partly with a boy’s shyness, but partly, it seemed, with the discretion of a man. “I was thinking, Alexias, if you and Lysis should both be crowned at the Games, what a subject for an ode!”—“You young fool!” I said, half laughing and half angry with him. “It’s a proverb for bad luck, to make the triumph-song before the contest. No more of your odes, in Apollo’s name!”

  But now nearing the port we saw between the pines the great temple of Poseidon, and around it the gymnasiums and palaestras, the stadium and the hippodrome. The Council of the Games met us very courteously when we landed, read us the rules, and saw we were shown our lodgings and the athletes’ mess. All the dressing-places and the baths were much finer than at home; marble everywhere, and every water-spout made of wrought bronze. The place was full already of competitors who had arrived before us. When I got out on the practise-track, I found youths from every city in the Aegean, and as far as Ephesos.

  The practice itself was quite properly conducted. But I did not care for the way that all kinds of idlers were allowed to crowd in: hucksters selling luck-charms and unguents, touts from the brothels, and gamblers who laid their odds on us as noisily as if we had been horses. It was hard to keep one’s mind on what one was about; but when I was used to it all, and had time to study the form of the other youths, I did not think there were more than two or three from whom I had much to fear. One of these was a Spartan, called Eumastas, to whom I spoke out of curiosity; I had never conversed with one, unless it is conversation to shout the paean at one another. His behaviour on the track was excellent, but his manners were rather uncouth; having never been outside Lakonia before even for war, he felt unsure of himself in this large concourse, and thought to cover it by standing on his dignity. I fancy he envied me my battle-scars; for he showed me the stripes on his back, where he had been flogged before Artemis Orthia, according to their custom. He had been the victor, he told me, in the contest, having held out the longest; the runner-up, he said, had died. I was at a loss for a proper reply, but congratulated him. There seemed no harm in him, beyond some dullness of wit.

  I liked much less a youth from Corinth, one Tisander. His chances were a good deal fancied, by himself even more than the rest; and finding a newcomer talked of as a threat to him, he showed his pique with an openness as laughable as unseemly. I made a sprint or two, and left him to his conjectures.

  Lysis, when we met, told me the crowds had been worse in the palaestra than at the stadium; for the Corinthians are devoted to wrestli
ng and the pankration. I did not ask after his rivals’ form; for naturally no pankratiast practises the all-in-fight just before the Games, for fear of getting an injury. He was rather quiet; but before I could ask him why, it was put out of my mind by the din about us. We had intended to walk over the Isthmus to Corinth. It seemed, however, that not only Corinth had come to us, but most of Hellas and all of Ionia. The throngs at the Panathenaia were nothing to this. Every shop-keeper in Corinth had set up a stall here; there were whole streets of them, selling not only oil-flasks and ribbons and strigils, and such things as you find at any Games, but all the costly luxuries of the City; bronze images and mirrors, helmets studded with silver and gold, silks you could see through, jewels and toys. The rich hetairas in clouds of perfume were walking with their slaves, pricing others’ merchandise and showing their own. Mountebanks were swallowing swords and serpents, tossing torches in the air, or leaping into circles of knives; dancers and mimes and musicians were quarrelling for pitches. I thought I should never be tired of walking up and down; every moment there was something new. We visited the temple, in whose porch a crowd of sophists was debating, and saw, within, the great gold and ivory Poseidon, who almost touched the roof. Then we walked back through the shops again. My eye began to be caught by things: a silver-mounted sword, a gold necklace which seemed made for my mother, and a beautiful painted wine-cup with the exploits of Theseus, which was just the kind of keepsake I had always wished to offer Lysis. I found I was thinking for the first time about the hundred drachmas the City gives to an Isthmian victor, and of what they would buy.

  Next morning I went seriously to work; for we were within three days of the Games. In any strange gymnasium one will drift into someone’s company more than the rest, scraping each other’s backs or sluicing each other in the wash-room, and this happened with me and Eumastas; from curiosity at first, and from our both disliking Tisander, and thereafter I can’t tell why. I had never known anyone so dour, nor he, it was plain, anyone so talkative; yet when I got tired of talking for two, in his curt way he would contrive to start me off again. Once when we were resting he asked me if all Athenians had smooth legs like mine; he thought it was natural, and I had to explain to him the uses of a barber. He was a lank youth, with the leather look all Spartans have from rough living, and a shock head; he was just starting to grow his hair long, at the age when we cut it off. I even made one attempt to tell him about Sokrates; but he said anyone would soon be run out of Sparta who taught the boys to answer back.

  I feared Eumastas as my greatest rival in staying-power; Tisander in a sprint; and Nikomedes of Kos because he was variable, the kind who may take sudden fire during the race. My mind was running on all this towards the end of the second morning, when the flute-player came in to time the jumping. As I was waiting in line to take my turn, I saw a man beckoning me from the side. One might have taken him for an ill-bred suitor; but, knowing those, I saw that this was some other thing. So I went over, and asked him what he wanted.

  He said he was a trainer, and was studying the Athenian methods, having been out of the way of it because of the war; and he asked me a few questions. I thought them not much to the purpose, and soon began doubting that he was what he claimed. When he asked me what I thought of my own chances, I put him down as a common gamester, and answering with some trite proverb would have gone away. But he detained me, and began running on about young Tisander, his birth and wealth, and his family’s devotion to him, till I made sure I was listening to some besotted lover. Suddenly he dropped his voice, and fixed his eyes on mine. “The lad’s father told me, only today, that it would be worth five hundred drachmas to him to watch his son win.”

  It may be that we are born remembering evil, as well as good; or I don’t know how I understood him so quickly. I had been practising the long jump with the hand-weights, and had them still in my hands. I felt my right begin to come up of itself, and saw the man flinch backward. Yet even in his fright there was some calculation. It came to my mind that if I struck him down, I should be taken up for brawling in the sacred precinct, and could not run. I said, “You ditch-born son of a slave and a whore, tell your master to meet me after the truce. I will show him then what is the price of an Athenian.”

  He was a man nearly as old as my father would have been; yet he took this from me, with a silly smile. “Don’t be a foolish boy. Nikomedes has agreed, and Eumastas: but if you won’t come in, then the deal is off; you may be beaten by any of them, without being an obol to the good. I shall be in this same place at noon. Think it over.”

  I threw at him a filthy phrase that boys were using just then, and left him. The flute was still piping away. You must have seen in battle a hurt man get up, not yet feeling it and thinking he can go on; so I went straight back into the line and took my turn, and was surprised when I made the worst leap ever seen, I should think, upon that ground. Once was enough of that, and I withdrew. I could see neither what to do, nor, indeed, the use of doing anything. All the world I knew seemed to give, like rotten fruit, under my hand.

  In the line of jumpers I could pick out the tall back of Eumastas, by the pink shiny scars on his brown skin. If anyone had told me I considered him a friend, I should have stared and laughed; yet now a bitter sickness filled me. I remembered what one always hears of the Spartans, that never being allowed to see money at home, when they meet it they are sooner corrupted than anyone. You may well ask why I should be tender for the honour of someone who next year might be killing me, or burning my farm. Yet I thought, “I will go to him, and tell him of this. Then, if he has agreed to take the bribe, he will merely deny it. But if he has been offered it and refused, he will agree to come with me and report it to the Council of the Games. Thus I shall be sure of him; and Tisander will be whipped, and scratched from the race. But wait. In a place where men buy their rivals out, slander may be commoner still, being much cheaper. If we report and are disbelieved, the dirt will stick to us forever. And if Eumastas with this in mind refuses to go with me, I have no witness; nor shall I ever know whether he was bribed or not. No; let me run a good race, and keep my own hands clean; what is it to me how clean the others are?”

  With this I felt quieter, and firmer in mind; till it seemed that the voice of the Corinthian whispered in my ear, “Clever lad! You guessed I lied to you when I said the others would call off their deal if you refused. I told you that lest you should grasp the chance of an easy win. Well, you were too quick for me. Eumastas is bribed, and Nikomedes; now you have only Tisander to beat. Go in, and get your crown.”

  I walked away from the gymnasium, not regarding where I went. It seemed there was no way I could turn with perfect honour, and that I should never be clean again. In my trouble, my feet had carried me of themselves to the gate of the men’s palaestra. I thought, “He will know what I should do,” and already my heart was lighter; till it paused, and said to me, “Is that what you call friendship, Alexias? The Games are almost on us; for a man fighting the pankration, his own troubles are enough.”

  He came out rather before the usual tune. I did not ask how it had gone with him that day, in case he should return my question. He was quiet, which I was glad of, having little to say myself; but after we had walked a short way, he said, “It’s fine and clear, and the wind is cool. Shall we climb the mountain?”

  I was rather surprised; for it was unlike him, having fixed a time for anything, to change it at a whim. I was afraid he had noticed my low spirits; but indeed I was glad of this diversion. The noonday heat was over, and the tower-wreathed head of Acrocorinth looked golden against the tender sky of spring. As we climbed, the other hills grew tall around us, Corinth shone below, and the blue sea spread wide. When we were just below the walls, I said that perhaps the Corinthians would bar us from their citadel, being their enemies but for the sacred truce. But the man in the gatehouse spoke civilly, chatted about the Games and let us in.

  There is still a good way to climb on Acrocorinth after you have
passed the walls. Being so high, the place is not thronged like our own High City; it was quiet, so that one could hear the bees in the asphodel, the little clappers of the mountain goats, and a shepherd piping. Beyond the walls were great spaces of blue air; for the citadel stands on high cliffs, like a roof on the columns of a temple.

  The sacred way wound up between shrines, and holy springs. There was one sanctuary built of grey stone, which we entered. After the bright sunlight it seemed very dark; in the midst, where the god should stand, was a curtain of purple. A priest in a dark-red robe came out and said, “Strangers, come no nearer. This is the temple of Necessity and Force; and the image of this god is not to be looked upon.” I would have gone at once, for the place disquieted me; but Lysis paused and said, “Is it permitted to make an offering?” The priest answered, “No. This god accepts only the appointed sacrifice.” Lysis said, “Be it so, then,” and to me, “Let us go.” After this he was silent so long that I asked if anything troubled him. He smiled, and shook his head, and pointed forward; for now we had reached the crown of Acrocorinth, and stepping on small heath and mountain flowers, saw before us the shrine.

  The image of Aphrodite there is armed with shield and spear; yet I never knew a place so full of peace. The temple is delicate and small, with a terrace from which the slopes fall gently; the walls and towers seem far below; the mountains round about hang like veils of grey and purple, and the two seas stretch away, all silken in the light, I thought of the day when Lysis and I had heard Sokrates and gone up to the High City; it seemed that the memory had been already here awaiting us, as if the place were a dwelling of such things.