The Last of the Wine: A Novel

  It would be tedious, in these days, to rehearse what we found. Any man about my age, or younger for that matter, knows some such picture. After weeks of intrigue, of move and counter-move, the city was on the brink of revolution. It was clear enough, after an hour or two, why my father had told me to use my wits. The Athenian army itself was split from top to bottom, the oligarchs intriguing with those of Samos, the democrats rallying to the citizens. But what gave to everything an extra stink of corruption was this, that the Samian oligarchs were not, for the most part, those who had been expelled before, but men who had been in the van of the democrat revolt. Some subtle nose had smelled out the rotten patch in the core, the men who had wanted, not freedom and justice, but only what some other man had.

  What it meant to our own force, we got our first taste of next day, when the Spartan fleet was sighted making to pass the island. The trumpets sounded; the ships were stripped and hauled down the slipways; the benches manned; the weapons and shields stacked amidships; the cup stood ready on the poop for the libation. We only waited to sing the paean, and sail out. Lysis had not wasted our wait at the Hellespont, and already the marines had caught something of his spirit. We sang as we waited for the signal; the rowers caught it, and I even heard the slaves. But we waited till the singing died, and the men grew restless and weary; the Spartan fleet sailed on, past the temple and round the point, and we all went ashore to drink away our shame. It was not the enemy our generals were frightened of. It was one another. You heard it said openly, after, of this trierarch or that, that he might cover you in a fight, or he might sail across to the other side. Things hardly hinted at in Athens were taken for granted here.

  Samos is an old and a noble city. Even its ancient tyrants hung gifts upon it, like jewels on a favourite slave. Now it was at the height of prosperity, the sculptors and masons and painters never idle, the streets growing like tendrils up the slopes of the hills, in flower with yellow marble, or pink, or green, carved and gilded in the light Ionic style. Yet one picked one’s way about as if in a foul quagmire, trusting no one. Even our own trierarch we were uncertain of: a pale thin-lipped man who at the Hellespont had been biting his nails over the delay, yet, when impatience was natural enough, had tried to hide it.

  Over all this murk, there flickered like a marsh-fire the name of Alkibiades. He had come down to the coast from Tissaphernes’ palace, and was living just across the straits. The oligarchs were putting it about that if the democracy, which had unjustly exiled him, were put down in Athens, he would forgive us and would come back, with the Persians eating from his hand, to win the war for us. And this might well be true, for at Magnesia he feasted with a sword hung over him; if the Spartans got the mastery of Hellas, the Medes to keep in with them would certainly hand him over. He could be sure of his death in Sparta, as long as King Agis lived.

  The oppression of the place was weighing on us, so that we were growing silent even with each other, when we had the good luck to meet with our old friend Agios, the pilot of the Paralos, which was stationed at the port. To him we knew we could speak freely; and he soon put a little solid ground under our feet, telling us that the seamen were sound democrats to a man. He could afford to speak for them, the Paralos being the crack galley, and he the senior pilot of the fleet.

  Next day by arrangement we met him again. He took us to a certain tavern, with the sign of a golden tripod. It had a little whited courtyard behind it, shaded with a vine. Here at a table a tall lank man was sitting, dressed in a marine’s seagoing kilt and leather jerkin. He was lean but broad-chested, with a big firm mouth, and brown eyes that looked straight into one. Agios said, “Here are my friends, Thrasybulos.”

  This man had come to Samos as a simple hoplite, but being a natural leader had found his level; by now all the democrats looked to him. He had a bigness not of his body alone; you knew he would remember your face and name, and be concerned in your trouble.

  Agios having told him we could be trusted, he spoke to us very frankly; saying our trierarch was deep in the plot, and that if fighting broke out, Lysis must be ready to take command. It was now certain that this Samian business was only the spearhead of a greater one. The Athenian oligarchs were using it to seize control of the Navy and presently of Athens itself. Then they would treat with Sparta for terms; how disgraceful was no matter, if they could grow fat on the carrion of their City. Athens would be only one more, then, of the Spartan vassals, crushed under such a rule as no Spartan would bear at home, to make the leaders servile and the people weak. We were to be sold to the Spartans, as long ago the tyrant Hippias would have sold us to the Medes.

  But just now, he said, the traitors had had a blow they were still reeling under. Alkibiades had slipped off their hook.

  Either (which was what he claimed) he had never meant to support them, and had only been probing the plot, or for reasons of his own he had changed his mind. After all, he had always been a democrat. At all events he was working for us now, and had given proof of it; taking his chance of a pardon when he had saved the City’s liberties. In Athens, he had been the biggest bait the oligarchs had had to fish with; only since his exile had his real genius in the field been fully known. “So,” said Thrasybulos, “don’t leave Samos at present, even for an hour. Unless I’m a fool, they mean to strike before this news breaks at home.”

  Afterwards, as we went, we were both rather quiet. I was thinking that if my father had gone into this with open eyes, I should never hold up my head again. Even Lysis, I thought, would be touched by the disgrace. I looked at him, as he walked beside me shut in his own trouble: he was not the kind of soldier who shakes off lightly his faith to his commander. His thoughts were on his honour, and mine on him.

  It had seemed to me, since I was nineteen, that the common exchanges of scent-shop and drinking party struck on my ear for the first time. “How are you, friend, after so long? And how is the beautiful So-and-So, whose praises you filled our ears with?”—“Why, time runs on, you know. He must be turned twenty by now, wherever he is.” When I laughed too loud, or drank too late, or took a foolish risk in battle, this was the spur that pricked me. Now on the threshold of manhood, when aspiration should have beckoned me onward, I thought only how I had put myself into the hand of time, and counted only the loss.

  But time was busy in Samos with larger concerns than mine.

  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 Hyperbolos.”

  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 Hyperbolos 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 Hyperbolos. 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 Hyperbolos, 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 Hyperbolos 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 Hyperbolos, 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.”