The Last of the Wine: A Novel

  I put out my hand, and set it upon stone; it was the column of the Herm, that Sokrates had made. It was solid, and upheld me easily. I said, “Which friend?”

  “Why, the same,” said Euthydemos. “Plato is not one to change lightly. After the youth was left alone (for he had some old father or kinsman who died during the winter) Plato took charge of him entirely. While he had a crust, you may be sure the boy wouldn’t starve; he had quite a good colour, and nothing worse than a cough such as half the City suffered from. But one day, as they climbed up to the High City, suddenly he choked and brought forth a flow of blood; he fell down where he was, upon the steps of the Porch, and gave up his spirit. Plato buried him; and now is as you see.”

  My soul was alone, neither hearing nor seeing, encompassed by chaos and black night, forgetful of its name. A voice reached me, saying, “Drink this, Alexias,” and, my eyes clearing, I saw the face of the Herm above me, and Euthydemos leaning over me with a little wine in an earthen cup. “I thought, when first I saw you, you had walked too far.” I thanked him, and after resting a little went home. Then I remembered I had not asked where the tomb was.

  I sought some days for it, and came on it at last in an old garden at the foot of the Nymphs’ Hill, where there were other graves. Places such as this, being within the walls, were emptied later; and I could never learn afterwards where he lay. But the grave, when I saw it, was under an almond tree, which was all in flower, for spring had broken; and there was a brier in bud beside it.

  Most of the graves had steles of wood, or an urn of clay to mark the place; but this tomb had a stone. The work was undistinguished; and, remembering Plato’s fine taste, I saw the measure of his grief in his not having overseen the sculptor. A branch of the brier had covered the inscription; bending it back, I read the words:

  Lightbringing dawn star, kindled for the living;

  Bright torch of Hesperos, sinking to the dead.

  I looked again at the relief, which showed the youth standing as in thought, and a mourning man with his face hidden. The work was, as we say, sincere, but of so old-fashioned a simplicity that you might have thought the sculptor had scarcely picked up his chisel since Pheidias’ day. I stood gazing till, a thought coming to me, I knelt down and found the place where the statuary puts his mark; and I understood, when I saw the name.

  26

  THERE ARE DRAUGHTS THAT do not yield their taste with the first sip; but drink them, and their bitterness wrings the mouth.

  The stones still crashed from the Long Walls after the flutes were silent, and the victors who had helped for sport had wearied of the game. The Athenians, half-starved, wearied much sooner; but Lysander used to watch the work, a big man, square-jawed and blond, with a mouth of iron.

  Meanwhile, in the public places one saw the exiled oligarchs, making themselves at home. Some had entered as soon as the gates were opened; they had been with King Agis’ army, sitting before the walls.

  Presently the Spartans invited the oligarch clubs of Athens to choose five Ephors, as they called them, to draw up proposals for a government. My father attended these consultations. The upshot was that Theramenes was one of the five, and Kritias another. I believe my father voted for both. But I did not hold it against him. Regarding Theramenes, though he ate while we starved, I daresay it cost us nothing. If he had come back and owned to failure, the people would have been angry with him. It was said that he had employed the time in plotting with Lysander to put his friends in power; but this was gossip and guesswork. Of Kritias my father said to me, “I can’t think what makes you so prejudiced against him. One of our ablest men; a true orator, untainted with demagogy, from whom one can be sure of scholarship and logic. And in his writings, no one sets a higher moral tone.” He had been good to me when I was sick; so I swallowed my answer.

  Plato asked me to supper about this time. I went doubtfully, knowing I could not say to him what a friend should. But he singled me out for kindness, even to sharing his supper-couch, though there were others with more claim to the compliment. Whether Euthydemos had gossiped to anyone, no doubt I shall never know.

  He was always a graceful host, if rather a formal one; if his mind went wandering, he was quick to cover it. While the rest were talking of events, he said to me, “I believe this success will be just the thing for my uncle Kritias.”

  I had long given up arguing politics with Plato. His mind was the master of mine; and his motives were pure. It was not in him to despise a man for poverty or low birth. But he despised fools wherever he found them, horse or foot; and finding more of them than of the wise and just, he thought that rule by the people must debase the City. Lysis used to say that government was an exercise ennobling to the base, as good soldiering makes cowards brave. Plato, when I quoted this, praised its magnanimity, and disagreed. As for Kritias, the man was his kinsman, and he was my host.

  “Till now,” Plato said, “he has never filled an office worthy of his gifts. Sometimes I have feared it would make him bitter. I can’t tell you half his kindness during the siege. I shall not forget it easily; not only on my own behalf, but … but that is over.”

  I answered, “It is said, ‘If Fate were moved by tears, men would offer gold to buy them.’”

  “‘… Yet grief still puts them forth, as the tree puts forth its leaves.’ Speaking of my uncle, Charmides and I called to congratulate him; Charmides, you know, takes his career seriously, since Sokrates rebuked his idleness. Kritias urged both of us to come forward in the City’s service. Unless, he said, the better sort of people are prepared to do what they can to remedy democracy’s abuses, the City will fall into an apathy, or the dissipations of defeat, and lose the memory of her greatness. Though my ambitions till now have lain elsewhere, I confess he moved me.”

  I told him, in sincerity, that men of his kind were needed. He had begun, I think, by seeking an escape from his grief, but ambition was stirring in him. I said to myself, “I am prejudiced. The enmities of youth lack proportion. Perhaps Kritias might have seemed to me a gentleman, if I had met Chremon first.”

  One heard Chremon’s name everywhere that week. Pasion, the banker, had just bought for a great price his latest work. Half the City trooped into Pasion’s courtyard to see it, and brought back the news that the marble breathed, or at least seemed scarcely to have ceased breathing.

  For three days I avoided meeting Lysis. On the third he called. He was walking quite well now, hardly using his stick. We talked for a little; but he would fall silent, and look at me. I sought words at random; in my heart I thought, “I should have fallen on my sword. Once I would not have waited for this.” I could find no more talk, and was silent also. Presently Lysis said, “I have been to the High City, to sacrifice to Eros.”—“Yes? Well, he is a powerful god.”—“And cruel, it is said. But to me, noblest of all the Immortals; ‘the best soldier, comrade, and saviour’ as poor Agathon used to say. It was time to give thanks to him.”

  Soon afterwards the new Ephors, having consulted together, called an Assembly, and Kritias addressed it. He spoke as usual very well. His voice was elegantly trained, pitched to carry, without any of those mannerisms that make a man tiresome and human. He had the voice of knowledge advising honest simplicity without despising it. It was a voice to set you at ease, if you liked your thinking done for you.

  He proposed a Council of Thirty, to draw up a constitution upon the ancient code, and govern meanwhile. When he read the list, starting with the five Ephors themselves, the people listened at first as children to a teacher. Then there was a murmur; then a roar. The Assembly had awakened, and heard the names. The core of the Four Hundred, the traitors from Dekeleia, every extreme oligarch who hated the people as boar hates dog. The Pnyx echoed with the outcry. Kritias listened, it seemed unmoved; then he turned, and made a gesture, and stepped aside. The shouting died like a gust of wind. Lysander stood on the rostrum, in his armour. His eyes swept slowly over the hill. There was a dead hush.

  His sp
eech was short. The breach in the Walls, he said, was two stadia short of the mile; the time-limit was up. If he did not declare the treaty void, and wipe out the City, it was an act of mercy. We had best deserve it.

  So the people slunk down from the Pnyx like slaves caught stealing by the master. Our tongues were getting, now, the taste of defeat.

  But the new government was quick to get the public services in order, and people spoke well of it. On the day they appointed a Senate, people met me in the street with congratulations; my father, it appeared, had been named a Senator.

  I wished him well. Considering his views, no one could suspect him of time-serving. His work as envoy had brought him into the public eye, and Theramenes had not forgotten him. It was something that they were choosing Senators even as moderate as he.

  At first he used to come home full of affairs. You could almost tell in the street which men held office in the new administration, however small. They looked like people who are getting the right food. When men have shared in the City’s business since they put on a long mantle, it comes strange to cease. You can watch something wither in them, like a fettered limb. One evening he said over supper, “Well, I think we shall hand over the City a little cleaner than we found it. In confidence, a rat-hunt is on for tomorrow, and high time too.”—“Rats, Father?”—“Those creatures who live off their betters, and bring filth in exchange. How else describe an informer?”

  I congratulated him willingly. In the last year, when things were going badly and the people had war-fever, the informers had been a shame to the City. It was only with poor men that they simply laid information and took the reward. If he had a little, they took a bribe to keep quiet, and often informed in the end when he had nothing left. Some worked for themselves, some for rich blackmailers who made a business of it. “Good hunting, Father,” I said. “But they’re slippery game; they know every crack in the law, they always get away.”—“Not this time. Since the constitution is still upon the stocks, for once we can cut the law to their measure.”

  He laughed as he spoke. I looked up, the sound taking me back to another City; I saw again Hyperbolos falling open-mouthed. “With the Four Hundred too,” I said, “that was how it began.”

  “Nonsense,” he said; and I saw in his face the annoyance of a man who has been disturbed when he was at ease. “You will do far better, Alexias, to forget you were mixed up in that Samos affair. I don’t say it was any shame to you; too much discretion is unlovely in a youth of good blood; but the rough-and-ready faction fights of an overseas naval base are not understood here in the City. Keep that in mind, or you will do a great deal of harm, both to yourself and me.”—“Yes, Father. What trial are you giving these men?”—“A collective one, and too good for them.”—“Perhaps; but as a precedent?”—“That we have already, since the trial of the generals who left you to drown.”

  The informers were rounded up next day, and condemned to death, no one dissenting. My father assured me afterwards that he had not seen a man in the dock whose name did not stink throughout the City. The week after, there was another arrest of informers. When I asked him how the trial had gone, he said, “There will be some delay. One or two cases were more than doubtful. We voted to try them separately.” He cleared his throat and added, “There was some attempt to influence the Senate against it. But for an interim government, that was going too far.”

  There were no more mass trials, and the City was quiet some weeks. Then one morning a Spartan regiment was sighted on the Sacred Way. The Dipylon guard sent a runner to ask what should be done; and the Council sent back word to open.

  They marched up to the gate with their tread of iron, between the tombs of our fathers. They crossed the Kerameikos, and the Agora, and marched on. People stood in the market, staring upward, while they climbed the ramp to the High City, and marched through the Porch into the precinct of the Maiden. There they stacked arms, and pitched their tents. At the feet of Athene of the Vanguard, and about the Great Altar, they lit their campfires and stewed their black broth.

  In the courtyard I met my father, looking ill. I fancy he had hoped to avoid me. I said, “I think, sir, you did not know of this.”

  “I have come from Theramenes. It appears the Council had word of a conspiracy to seize the citadel, and put the leading citizens to death.”—“I see, sir. Did he give you any names?”—“They will be published after the arrests are made.” We looked at each other, as father and son can, needing no words. He meant, “Don’t be troublesome if you want me to keep my temper; I have troubles enough,” and I meant, “You cannot face me and you know it. I could forgive you if you would own the truth.” I was about to turn from him when he said, “Theramenes can be trusted to watch events; he has always set his face against extremes. Remember, I expect discretion.” With that he went indoors.

  Kallibios, the Spartan general, was undersized for one of his race. His eyes were bitter; you could see in them the beatings of his boyhood, and a black insolence, full of hatred. Beside it one remembered the insolence of Alkibiades like a child’s laughter. The Thirty fawned on him, and received him in their homes.

  One got used to the sight of Spartans in the streets, staring open-mouthed at the shops, or walking in pairs looking scornfully before them. Some of the younger ones, I admit, seemed modest and mannerly. I saw one such, a fine tall youth, at Pistias’ doorway, watching the work, and talking armour with a friend. They looked less dour than most of their fellows; I even heard them laugh. As I passed, the second man turned round and said, “Good day, Alexias.” I stared, and saw Xenophon.

  Turning my face from him I walked away; not so much concerned to affront him, as to believe that my eyes had lied. Next time I met him he was alone. He put out his hand to stop me, with his open smile. “Why are you angry with me, friend? What ails you?”—“Only what ails you too,” I said.

  He looked at me gravely, like one who has a right to feel hurt, but will set it by. “See things as they are, Alexias. The City has to be policed; it is a measure against the mob, not people like ourselves. The Spartans respect a soldier and a gentleman, even if he has carried a spear against them. Young Arakos, whom you saw me with, is a splendid fellow. He and I nearly killed each other once in the hills near Phyle. If we don’t bear malice, who else should? One must gain by the company of a man of honour, whatever his City. Virtue comes first; hasn’t Sokrates always taught us so?” His clear grey eyes looked straight into mine; he spoke from his soul.

  I was silent, thinking of schooldays, and the puppy-fights in the washroom. It had seemed hardly more than backing different chariots at the Games. He was looking at me, and I saw the thought in his eyes: “Do you do well to reproach me? Have I found a worse friend than Chremon?” But there are things a gentleman does not say. “There must be order,” he said, “in the City. Without order, how are men better than the beasts?”

  Lysis and I spoke little of events. We knew the rawness in one another’s minds, and saw no sense in rubbing salt. We met to talk, or to be quiet, or to hear Sokrates, who was living just as usual, pursuing his enquiries into the nature of man’s soul, justice and truth. As always, he took no part in politics, he only followed logic where it led. If some of the statements lately given the people did not stand up to logic, that was by the way.

  Plato came less often than he had. When he entered upon politics, Sokrates’ only advice to him had been to study law. “No man expects to throw a clay water-jar, without first serving an apprenticeship. Do you think the art of governing men is easier?” When he came to Sokrates, he seldom spoke; he listened, or withdrew into himself. He was like a sick man at a feast, who helps himself only to what he can keep down. I had not the folly to measure his grief by mine, the scar of a meteor’s passage, printed on the sky by brightness and the act of flight.

  Samos had fallen. Without a fleet they had never had any hope. Lysander had left the democrats their lives, and the clothes on their backs to carry into exile, and given the Ci
ty to the oligarchs we had overthrown. So his work being done, he sailed home in triumph to Lakonia, with his trophies of war, and a shipload of treasure, of which not a drachma, they say, ever stuck to his fingers. He was a man not greedy of anything but power. But with every Spartan who handled the stuff it was not the same; and there are great changes, I am told, since gold came into Lakonia.

  Kallibios’ troops stayed on the High City, and every Athenian who wanted to sacrifice had to ask their leave. And now, the Council of Thirty used to make their arrests with a Spartan guard. They began with the metics. I myself saw Polymarchos the Shieldmaker led through the streets. I knew him, a man of culture who entertained philosophers. I turned to a bystander, and asked what was the charge.

  “Ah,” said the man, “they’ve caught him out at last, it seems.” He was a seedy fellow; the whites of his eyes were like the whites of bad eggs. “Sold some poor soldier thin bronze with filling, I suppose, and got him killed. That’s the way these foreigners make their money, underselling honest men.”—“Well, we shall see when he’s tried if he’s guilty or not.”—“Guilty? Of course he is. He’s the brother of Lysias the Speech-maker, who defended these dirty informers and got them off. Their house is full of atheists and anarchists, like that Sokrates, who teaches young men to mock the gods and beat their fathers.” I looked at him. You could as well bring logic to a dog scratching for fleas. “That is a lie,” I said. “Your mind stinks like your body.” Then I went away and was ashamed. “It is a sickness,” I thought, “and I have it like the rest.”

  Polymarchos was never tried. It was given out that he had been found guilty of treason, for sufficient reasons, and given hemlock in prison. His brother Lysias slipping out at a back door had got away from Piraeus with his life. Their fortune was confiscated; to the state, the notice said. But the bronzes from their house were seen in the house of one of the Thirty. Afterwards others of them did much the same. Those who had profited already urged on the rest, so that they should all be in it alike. But Theramenes, it was noticed, refrained. He was looking ill, and when he supped at our house dieted himself, saying his stomach troubled him.