He paused. I said, staring at him, “But, Father, how do you know that?”—“I was with him,” my father said. “He has been my friend these thirty years. When we were lads, we served in the Guard together. There was a notion, in the beginning, that the City was going to be governed by gentlemen. Because Kritias has forgotten it, we need not all do so, I suppose.”
He glanced at the tile where the will was buried, and tapped it down with his foot. “Over Apollo’s sanctuary,” he said, “at Delphi, the navel of the earth, is written ‘Nothing too much.’ Extremes breed one another. I have tried to give you a decent education; yet you, too, instead of learning from the sight of tyranny to fear all extremes, can only fly from one to its opposite. And a man like Theramenes, who has risked his life often, and given it at last, in the cause of moderation, gets nothing for it but a vulgar nickname. There is some reason, I suppose. Well, he is dead. The Council made no difficulty when I asked to attend him in the prison. Kritias said they were glad to know who his friends were.”
I opened my mouth, to say I know not what; but I could see he thought me a fool, and it made my tongue heavy. “You must be out of the City, Father, before the night. I will go and hire the mule I go to the farm on; no one will notice that. Will you go to Thebes?”—“I shall go to my land,” he said. “It will take a better man than Kritias to send me chasing over the border like a slave on the run. A hundred years and more before we owned any house in Athens, the farm was our home. It is a pity we left it. Men are better watching the seasons, and putting good into the earth, than running together in cities, where they listen all day to each other’s noises and forget the gods. Acharnai is quite far enough.”
“I doubt it, sir. I beg you to go to Thebes. The Thebans hate Lysander now more than they ever hated us; they have sworn not to give an Athenian up to him. Some of our best men are there.” I was going to name Thrasybulos, but remembered in time. “I should have gone myself, if it had not been for the harvest. Leave the farm to me; I will see to that.” At length he said unwillingly that he would go to Thebes. “Take your sister,” he said, “to the house of Krokinos. Though only a cousin he has family feeling; he offered to take her of his own accord. I have arranged for her keep.”
At the fall of dusk I led round the mule. As he mounted, I saw he was shivering. “It’s this accursed fever,” he said. “I knew I was in for a turn. It’s nothing; I have taken the draught for it. The air is better in the hills.”—“Give me your blessing, sir, before you go.” He blessed me, adding immediately after, “Don’t fill the house while I am gone with drunken sailors, or those young nincompoops from the scent-shop. Perform the sacrifices on the proper days, and keep some decency in the place.”
Afterwards I led Charis to our cousin’s house. “Please,” she said, “can’t I stay with Thalia and Lysis? I liked being there.”—“You shall go again, when Father comes home. Just now Lysis might have to go away too, and Thalia would be at his sister’s then.” She did not ask where our father had gone, or why. I never knew a child of her age with so few questions. A year or two before, she had been full of them.
Krokinos’ house was overflowing with women to the doors. A good fellow, as unlike as possible to his father Strymon, he and his wife had taken in the womenfolk of their remotest kindred, if they were exiled or had to fly. Strymon himself, after getting through the siege without losing any flesh to speak of, had died a month afterwards of a chill on the belly.
Next day early, I packed a bag and set out for the farm, on an ass I had hired outside the walls. On Lysis’ advice, I meant to stay there for a week or two. There was plenty to do, and no sense in being about the City when my father was missed. Lysis had promised to come often and bring me news.
It was a beautiful fresh morning when I rode into the hills. Everywhere the wasted farms had started to bear again. In one they were treading the grapes. A little bare boy, driving goats, gave me a smile of milk-teeth and holes. The birds were singing; the cool westward-leaning shadows were the colour of Athene’s eyes. I rode up to the farm, humming to myself The King’s Wife of Sparta. Then I saw that the door stood open.
I thought the place must have been broken into, and ran inside. Nothing seemed disturbed, except one of the beds, which had a blanket on it. But as I walked about, I found my foot was leaving a stain on the floor. Going back to the door, I saw what I had trodden in.
I followed the blood-trail down the path, and across the farmyard. As first there were footsteps, then the marks of hands in the dust, and of a body dragging itself along. Up on the hillside, a mule was cropping the scrub.
I found him at the well, lying on the stone of the well-head, his head hanging over the shaft. I thought he was hours dead; but he said, in a voice like dry grass brushed with the foot, “Draw me some water, Alexias.”
I laid him down, and drew water, and gave it him. He had been stabbed in the back, and again in front when he turned to fight. I don’t know how he had lived so long. When he had drunk, I bent to raise him, and carry him to the house; but he said, “Let me alone. If you move me I shall die; I must speak first.”
I knelt beside him, and dipped my cloak in the water, and cooled his face with it, and waited. “Kritias,” he said. I answered, “I shall remember.” He sunk back into himself, being near his death, and his mind lost in shadows. Presently he said, “Who is it?” I answered, and he came to himself a little.
“Alexias,” he said, “I gave you life. Twice over I gave it.” I said, “Yes, Father,” thinking he wandered. Then he said, “An untimely birth. Sickly and small. One could foresee no credit in you. A man has a right over his own stock. But your mother …” He paused; not as before, but with his eyes on me, seeking strength to speak. I said, “Yes, Father; I owe you a debt.”
He muttered to himself; I heard a few words: “Sokrates” and “Sophists” and “young men today.” His eyes widened, and he pressed his clenched hands back upon the earth; and lifting his voice, as one might lift a heavy stone, he said, “Avenge my blood.” Then he shut his eyes, and turned his head away, and muttered again.
I took his hand, and grasped it hard, till his eyes turned towards me. “Father,” I said, “since I was seventeen I have borne arms for the City. I have not run off any field, though I was fighting strangers only, who had done me no wrong. Am I so base of soul as to forgive my enemies? Believe, Father, that you begot a man.”
His eyes met mine; then his lips parted. I thought he was grimacing in pain, but perceived presently that he was trying to smile. His hand closed on mine, so that his nails pierced my flesh; then it slackened, and I saw that his soul was gone.
Soon after, the hired men, who had fled from the murderers, came back ashamed. I did not reproach them, for they had no arms, but set them to dig a grave for him. At first I had meant to burn his body, and bring back his ashes to the City; but remembering his own words, I buried him in the old plot of our ancestors, which they used long ago before we lived in town. It is a little way up the hill, above the vineyards, where the earth is too poor to farm; but you can see a long way from it, and pick out, when the sun is right, the flash from the High City, when it strikes Athene’s spear. I set the offerings on the grave, and poured the libations. As I sheared my hair for him, I recalled that it was the second time; and yet, I thought, the first time too it was not unfitting.
I laid it on the grave; then heard behind me a movement, and turned swiftly, my knife in my hand. But it was Lysis standing there. I perceived he had been some time waiting, in silence, while I finished the rites. He came forward and took the knife from me and cut off a lock of his hair in token of respect, and laid it on the grave. Then he held out his hand to me, and, when I took it, said, “Come, my dear, get together what you have. We are going to Thebes.”
“No, Lysis. I must go back to the City. I have a matter to settle there.”—“From Thebes it can be settled better. So Thrasybulos writes. I should have come out tomorrow to talk of it; but I had word they were c
oming for me tonight.” He smiled and said, “Two men warned me, neither knowing of the other. Manhood may be sleeping in the City, but it lives. It has slept in me too, Alexias. I should have gone long since, and tried to do what Thrasybulos has been doing. Weakness held me. It is hard to watch over the green shoot, and then when the flower opens to go away.”
We set forth within the hour upon the mountain road, going on foot, for we had sent back our hired mounts to the City. At first we were silent; he because the parting he had come from was a wound that still bled in him, I because I seemed only now to know myself, when what had pressed my soul into its mould was gone. But in a few hours, with the good air and clear light, and the movement of walking, and seeing places all about where we had fought in the Guard, sorrow lifted from us; and Lysis told me about the force Thrasybulos was raising to free the City. The road climbed high; the air grew sweet and thin; we saw the stone fort of Phyle on its steep hill watching the pass, and left the road lest the guard come out to challenge us. We had a hard scramble over the mountain, but made good going after, and were out of Attica by fall of dark.
So we turned aside, and in sheltered place between rocks we made a little fire, and ate what we had. It was like the days on campaign; we sat recalling old fights and old comrades, till sleep made us heavy. Then we fell to disputing, as we had years back, whether the thicker of our cloaks should be spread to lie on, or above to keep out the cold. When one, which of us I can’t remember, had given way grumbling to the other’s view, we came to spread them, and found there was not a bit to choose between them for thickness; so we laughed, and lay down to sleep.
We were tired, and slept late. I opened my eyes to find a blush of dawn already on the peaks; then I heard a voice say, softly, “One of them is awake.”
I touched Lysis to rouse him without noise, and felt for my dagger. Then I turned my head; and saw two youths, or boys rather, sitting on their heels and smiling. They were dressed for hunting, in leather tunics and belts and shin-guards; one was sturdy and fair, the other long-limbed, and dark. The fair one said, “Good morning, guests of the land. Can you eat a hunter’s breakfast?”
We greeted them, and they led us off to the place where their horses were. There was a fire, and a hare wrapped in clay and leaves baking in the embers. The lads got it out, burning their fingers and swearing and laughing, and cut it up, and handed us choice pieces on the points of their knives.
After they had asked the latest news from the City, “Tell me pray,” said the dark one, “how a man can converse with another whom he doesn’t see or hear?” Something in the way he put his question told me he studied philosophy; so I said smiling, “Enlighten my ignorance, best of men.”—“He can now if he’s a Theban; for our new law is that when we meet you Athenians crossing the hills to take up arms against the tyrants, we don’t see you or hear you; and quite right too.”—“However,” the fair one said, “coming on you asleep, we forgot for a moment you were invisible, and said, ‘These two like us are old friends, and for friendship’s sake we ought to entertain them.’ Kebes and I took the vow of Iolaos, you see, a year ago today. My name is Simmias.”
We introduced ourselves, with compliments on their long association. You could not have told which was the elder, except that Kebes, the dark one, had his boy’s hair still. The sun rose as we ate, round and red above the valley mists. Simmias said, “Our teacher, Philolaos, the Pythagorean, considers the sun to be a great round mirror, reflecting back the central fire of the universe, like a polished shield. But why the fire grows red at sunrise, and white at noon, we cannot determine to our satisfaction; can we, Kebes? How do the Athenian philosophers explain the sun?”—“In nearly as many ways,” said Lysis, “as there are philosophers. But our teacher says that the nature of Helios is a secret of the god; and that a man’s first business is to know himself, and seek the source of light in his own soul. We don’t eat everything we see, but have to learn what our bodies can turn to good. So with the mind.”
“That is reasonable,” said the dark Kebes. “Man’s intellectual soul is a chord struck from all his parts, as the music of the spheres is the chord of the heavenly bodies. If the intervals have no measure, it can make no more sense of anything than a lyre untuned. So Philolaos taught us.”—“But,” Simmias said, “he is soon going back to Italy, and then we shall have no teacher, for we can’t be satisfied with any of the others here. But our fathers won’t let us go to Athens while the tyrants are in power there; so you see we have our own reasons for wanting them gone. Tell us more about this teacher you go to. Has he anything new to say upon the nature of the soul?”
In the end they put our knapsacks on their horses, and walked with us, talking, all the way to Thebes. That night we slept on supper-couches in the guestroom of Simmias’ father. He was putting up two or three other Athenians, and the house of Kebes’ father was already full. Everywhere one met with friendship; it was hard to believe in the bitterness of former days. They had seen enough, they said, of Lysander’s oligarchies, the worst men ruling by the worst means for the worst ends; the friends of liberty were not Thebans and Athenians now, but Hellenes all alike.
Next day the lads wanted to carry us off to hear Philolaos; but we excused ourselves till we had seen Thrasybulos first. It was like old times to go into a plain little wine-shop, and see him pull in his long legs from under the table and come striding over, his brown eyes warm and straight in his lean dark face. “Samian men!” he said. “The best news today.”
It was about a week after this that we left Seven-Gated Thebes; but not alone.
We set forth in the red light of sunset, a band of seventy men. Our shields were covered, our armour brazed, and smeared with dark oil. We were all heavy-armed, however we had come from Attica; the Thebans had armed us. Crossing the border we made an altar, and sacrificed victims to Pallas Athene, and to Zeus the King. The omens were good.
The sun sank, but a little moon was up, enough to save our necks on the hills. It would set later, which was well. By its dipping light, we came to the place where the pass hugs the side of the mountain; opposite is a hollow and a rise, and on the rise the stone fort of Phyle, backed against the drop of a great gorge, its face to the Theban road.
We dropped into the valley, going single file by a little path; at the bottom is a stream, from a source in the hill above, very clean and good to drink. There we waited, while a scout stole up under the walls. He had been stationed there, and knew it like his home. He was back within the hour. They were only a peacetime garrison, glad to be easy now the Spartans had gone. They had given each other the countersign, he said, as loud as a good-day in the Agora.
We crept up to the main gate, just before the guard was due to change again. The moon was down. Someone gave the countersign; when the gate opened, we held it while others thrust in. By good luck, the postern over the gorge, where the rubbish is thrown out, had been left unguarded; the drop is steep, but some of our mountain men climbed in there.
I never saw a garrison so confounded. They hardly resisted, once they understood who and what we were. The officer in charge, thinking of his reputation, put up a fight; but Thrasybulos took him on, and, holding him off without wounding him, asked him across their shields why he was concerned to maintain his honour before rulers who had none themselves, when he might be earning himself a liberator’s undying fame. In the end not only he, but half the garrison took the oath with us, and looked, I thought, five years younger and gayer. The rest we held in bonds till it was light, and we could see where they went; then keeping their arms we let them go.
Later Lysis and I, standing the morning watch upon the walls, saw the sunrise. It came red and purple, for winter drew on, and up there one felt already the nip of frost. Then gold touched the heights; but below us the great cleft of Phyle, which they call the Swallower of Chariots, was a river of unfathomed mist. Light spread; the mist dispersed; far out through the gorge we saw the Acharnian Plain, threaded with a little road;
and at the road’s end, dimly shining, the walls and roofs of Athens. In the midst the High City, like an altar, lifted her offerings to the gods. For a long time we gazed in silence; then Lysis said to me, “I think we are seeing the dawn indeed.”
27
ON THE SECOND DAY after, we saw from our walls the army of Athens advancing.
The sky was cloudless, of a thrush-egg blue. Horse and foot they wound along the road, like beads stitched on a ribbon, hardly seeming to move; then the mountains hid them. A little before sunset, we saw them close at hand, upon the pass. We watched the line of men thrown round us, first a thread, then a cord, then a great cable, thick as the girdle of a ship. Five thousand men, I believe, sat down that evening before Phyle. The baggage-train streamed over the bridlepath, bringing their food. When it was finished, more would come. We had only what had been laid in for a force of fifty, and that part-eaten.
They lit their fires, and bivouacked for the night, and pitched tents for the leaders. The Thirty themselves were there. All of us now saw how it was likely to end. But not one, I think, would have exchanged Phyle for Athens. Under our eastern wall, so deep that the pines on its sides looked as small as brush, was the Cleft of the Chariot. There was a door open still to freedom, when the food was gone.
All night the stars shone bright above us, the watch-fires bright below. The dawn was clear. It brought a herald, who bawled at us to surrender to the Council. We laughed, and answered as each man thought good. At the foot of the hill, some of the knights were watching their horses being groomed; rich young men, campaigning like gentlemen. One or two came forward and, with taunts, shouted to us to come down. “No,” we called, “you come up. Honour the house. Make us happy.” Suddenly a score or so jumped on their horses, and put them at the hill; perhaps from bravado, perhaps hoping that if they could reach it, they might force the gate.
Phyle was well off for javelins. From the walls I marked down a man who was coming up just below. One or two others would have done as well, but I chose this one to punish his insolence: a well-built fellow, sitting his horse as if he had grown there, showing its paces.