The Road to Sardis

by Stephanie Plowman

  He nodded gravely. ‘I know how you feel,’ he said, ‘I was just four when the Persians came down from the north. From the cliffs of Salamis we could see smoke rising from village after village, until at last it rose from the Acropolis itself, licking the sacred shrines, making a bonfire of the scaffolding round the temple we were building for the Maiden.’

  He rose and stood looking out of the entrance towards the sparkling water, but I knew he was seeing a far grimmer scene.

  ‘And then I could look no longer,’ he said, as if to himself. ‘I turned away gasping, my eyes smarting, as if I stood in the very midst of that distant smoke, and it choked and blinded me.’

  After a moment I ventured, ‘But it was wonderful after the battle, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, wonderful for a time; we walked in the bright sunshine almost itching with bliss! So many things to play with; wrecks of ships from Phoenicia and Egypt slowly falling to pieces on the beach—what games you could have in and about them! For months afterwards the waves would bring in the most exciting treasures—outlandish swords and armour, silver plates and cups heavy with jewels—so many that there wasn’t a single family in Salamis that lacked its share of the spoils.’

  ‘I know,’ I interrupted importantly. ‘We’ve got a big gold cup with lions being hunted all round it. How nice to go down to the beach each morning to see what the sea had brought in.’

  ‘Not always so nice,’ said Euripides thoughtfully. ‘The sea brought in dead men, too.’

  ‘Only Persians.’

  ‘But men for all that. And looking terribly forlorn. After a time we grew so that we didn’t want to go near the beach; children haven’t much imagination, and some of us had seen plenty of men being actually killed in the battle, but we’d been excited then, and scared, and it hadn’t seemed like the killing of actual people, people like us, with flesh and blood and bone, and thoughts like us; we cheered sword blows falling on human beings, as if we were watching a farmer threshing his corn. But single bodies cast up on the beach, with that awful helplessness and loneliness of the dead—they were all too human.’

  His face was so sombre that I racked my brains to find something cheering to say. Eventually I tried to encourage him with, ‘But when the—the bodies stopped being washed up, you could forget all about it, sir!’

  ‘Not altogether,’ said Euripides. ‘There were no more dead enemies to make me miserable, but there were still the living. There were the slaves, Lycius, poor wretches dragged from the ends of the earth in the Great King’s ships and armies; cups and swords weren’t our only relics of the great invasion—we had human spoils, too.’

  ‘But if they were slaves already—’ I said.

  ‘They hadn’t all been slaves,’ he said. ‘Some of the great nobles had brought their wives with them. My father bought one of these to be my nurse. She’d been a queen, Lycius, only the barbarian queen of a little hill state, it’s true, but a queen and now she was nothing more than an old woman down in the dust, homeless, weeping for her dead, amid the rejoicing of her enemies.’

  ‘Poor old thing,’ I said, rather perfunctorily, not feeling very inclined to be sorry for any foreign woman who’d been the wife of an enemy. However, Euripides seemed to be sorry for her, seemed, indeed, from his expression, to have been fond of her, and since I wanted to win his approval, I said politely, ‘I hope she soon forgot to be miserable all the time.’

  He smiled suddenly—yes, he had liked her, very much, obviously.

  ‘She grew very fond of me,’ he said. ‘She had grandchildren of her own thousands of miles away, whom she’d never see again, so she concentrated all her affection on me. She would talk to me in her slow, stumbling Greek about her old life . . .’

  His voice died away, then resumed, but now as if he were talking to himself.

  ‘When my father and his friends used to talk about our wonderful victory, I’d be happy with them at the time, but afterwards I’d remember my nurse as I’d first seen her—she’d lain there weeping in the dust, Lycius, literally in the dust of our courtyard, her grey hair all dishevelled, everything gone from her, even dignity, and once she had been a very great lady. And I used to think, “Then there’s always another side of victory, even one’s own victory.” I remember I said once to my father that I couldn’t help feeling sad about what had happened to my poor old nurse, and he said impatiently, “These things have to happen in war,” but I kept wondering why they had to happen.’

  ‘Is that why you began to write plays, Euripides?’

  He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, those unanswered questions—because I couldn’t accept my father’s reply—were ghosts haunting me ever afterwards.’

  ‘Or—or like the Kindly Ones chasing Orestes?’

  ‘Indeed, that’s a very sensible idea,’ said Euripides, ‘because just as Orestes sought Apollo to free him from his ghosts, so, I suppose, did I. I had at first thought of becoming a painter, but painting didn’t answer the questions for me.’

  ‘And writing plays did?’

  ‘Not really, but I can go on asking the questions all the time, and I may eventually reach the answer. I may also start other people asking questions too.’

  4

  ‘Caught by the Ear’

  The next important event in my life followed closely after the speech made by Pericles over our war-dead.

  Other states bury their dead on the battlefield; non-Athenians are always extremely surprised by the way we proceed in this matter, for the ashes of ours we bring home for burial—with the one great exception of our dead at Marathon. But those who died at Marathon were, of course, already home.

  At the Cerameicus* I suddenly missed Theron horribly. It was winter; the plane trees were bare and the poplars, and I remembered how these trees, now so leafless, had whispered in the previous spring when, just after we came into the City, he had brought me here, with a garland of violets for the marble monument of the great uncle after whom I had been named. And now, when the trees budded and bore leaf, and the leaves rustled again in the light summer wind, Theron would not see them, nor would he see the asphodel growing thickly in pale pink waves, light as foam itself in the first rosy light of dawn.

  I was so intent on blinking back my tears that I did not notice the tall helmeted figure coming forward from the tomb, slowly mounting the high platform, but when that splendid voice began to speak my head jerked up and I riveted my tear-filled eyes on the grave face and forgot Theron, and where I stood, and what I was.

  What he said is history now, I suppose; having read and reread the reports of those older than I when he made the speech, I have it in my heart, but, even then, certain phrases caught in my child’s memory, echoed there, so that I thought, ‘This is how the sound of the sea gets into Euripides’ plays, perhaps.’

  And Euripides himself would be proud to have written some of those phrases:

  ‘Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now an adventurous spirit has forced an entry into every sea and every land—’

  ‘Fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she really is—fall in love with her.’

  Eventually I became aware of the fact that the old farmer was shaking me gently and saying, ‘Come on, lad; your mother wants you.’

  There she was, poor soul, crying as hard as if she were at Theron’s actual funeral, seeing a blue haze of smoke, thin tongues of flame. But I, with a sudden exclamation, tore my hand free from the old farmer’s grasp, and ran in a different direction, for I had seen the bright winter sunlight glinting on a tall red head; my father’s brother Demosthenes stood there, smiling at me, picking me up to kiss me. Beside him stood a thin-featured young man, who gazed at my exuberant welcome with such disapproval that his face looked as chilly and cheerless as any of the marble tombstones about us. However, he left us almost immediately, telling my uncle that the Strategos had promised to give him a copy of his speech.

  ‘Why?’ I whispered to my uncle. ‘Is he deaf? C
ouldn’t he hear what the Strategos was saying?’

  He smiled and began to say that his friend planned to be an historian; which was why he wanted an exact copy.

  But here Mother came up, and though my uncle let me ride all the way home on his shoulder, he, with his usual grave courtesy, gave her his whole attention. He would not be in Athens for any real length of time, he said, but long enough to cope with any family business that was outstanding.

  And he was off again in no time, back to the north-west of Greece. He was such an unobtrusive person that most people never realised he had been back in Athens at all. But it was not only Father’s family that had a returned representative in Athens that spring; Mother’s side had a representative too—and unobtrusive was the last adjective to apply to him.

  In the early spring the old farmer took me out into the countryside for a ramble while there was still time before the Spartans put in their appearance. He was so delighted, poor old fellow, to see a few indomitable, brilliantly green shoots pushing themselves up amid the blackened stubble that he forgot my excessive youth, and walked me off my short legs in search of other hopeful signs. Tecmessa carried me off to bed the moment we went home, and I slept through what remained of the afternoon and through the early evening, waking only at the sound of a ringing laugh.

  That was a strange sound in our house in those days; after Theron had gone, I had been the only person who’d laughed, and after Theron’s death they hushed even my gaiety. Wondering therefore, who laughed, agog to see the person who dared, I dragged on my tunic, smoothed down my ruffled hair, and pattered along the corridor to the main part of the house.

  I have said that it was early evening; the first time I saw my cousin, therefore, he was standing at the window, laughing in the brilliant rays of the setting sun. Everything about him seemed red-gold; his face was moving gold, his hair was a flame. He didn’t seem quite human to me, so I hesitated just outside the room, and peered warily round the door to see if this somehow uncomfortable visitor had with him a more normal companion; if he hadn’t, I’d scuttle away back to bed, and pretend to be asleep.

  But he had a companion, a man much older, stockier—that was all I could make out at first, because he was standing in the shadow. But as I peered into the comparative obscurity of his direction, he said, ‘I really think you might moderate your laughter a little, you know, or you’ll be gaining a reputation for getting drunk before sunset.’

  His deep voice was extremely reassuring; I crept into the room.

  ‘No fear of that,’ replied the inhumanly handsome person. ‘No matter what I did in this house, my dear Aunt Constantia would hush it up for the family’s sake.’

  He couldn’t pronounce ‘R’ properly; he sounded it as an ‘L’. This cheered me immensely. He couldn’t be a god, because a god wouldn’t lisp. Yet—and here my brow became furrowed—if one god might limp, as Hephaestos did, presumably another might lisp?

  ‘Why are you so worried, young fellow?’ asked the deep voice, very gently.

  ‘Worried? I’m not worried—’ began the lisping caller who looked god-like, only to be cut short with an ironical, ‘No, of course you’re not, you never are, and it would be a lot better for yourself, not to mention other people, if you did worry occasionally. But if you hadn’t deliberately taken up your position in that blaze of dying sunlight that sets off your hair and general beauty so admirably, but which, on the other hand, does blind you to other things, you would see that a few feet away from you is a small boy with rather remarkable grey eyes who’s screwing up his face in considerable thought. It was to him that I addressed my question.’

  ‘Small boy? It must be my little cousin, Lycius, whom I’ve never seen!’ said the god-made-abruptly-human. He shaded his eyes, then swooped down in my direction, and scooped me up into a strong arm.

  ‘You don’t know me, do you?’ he asked.

  I looked into the eyes now level with my own, blue eyes, bright blue eyes, shining and dancing like the sea about Salamis.

  I said sturdily, ‘Yes, I do. I thought you were a god at first, but then you couldn’t say your “R’s”, so I thought you couldn’t be a god, and now I know you’re my cousin, Alcibiades.’

  ‘He’s a brave little fellow,’ came the deep voice. ‘He stood his ground even though he thought you were a god—he even came further into the room.’

  ‘That was because of you, sir,’ I said hastily, wriggling round to look at him over my cousin’s shoulder. ‘Your voice made me feel safe.’

  There was a hoot of laughter from my cousin.

  ‘Lycius, I salute you!’ he shouted in delight. ‘Courageous indeed! It’s not often people feel that Socrates is reassuring!’

  I said obstinately to his companion, ‘Sir, you did make me feel safe.’

  He replied, ‘Thank you, Lycius. Let me introduce myself properly. I am Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, and your cousin and I would like to talk to some—some good, trustworthy servant before we see your mother.’

  ‘Tecmessa!’ I said instantly. ‘My nurse. Nurses are always safe, aren’t they? Look at Odysseus!’

  ‘Do you twist her round your little finger?’ said my cousin, laughing.

  I looked up at him squarely, ‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘If I start getting wilful she can always make me behave by saying she’ll hand me over to a Spartan nurse like the one you had—not that she did much good, Tecmessa says.’

  ‘Lycius,’ said my cousin, ‘there’s a delicious frankness about your conversation that reminds me of my late guardian—it might be Pericles himself hurling thunderbolts. Anyhow, will you find Tecmessa for me?’

  I gave a little bow to Socrates, and ran excitedly away, tracking down Tecmessa just as the dear soul was sneaking an extra honey cake from under the cook’s nose for my supper.

  I clutched at her hand, and whispered urgently, ‘Tecmessa, Tecmessa, my cousin, Alcibiades, is here with his friend, and they want to see you before they see Mother.’

  She gave a little scream. ‘Your cousin Alcibiades!’ she exclaimed, and her immediate reaction was the—to me—extraordinary one of standing stock-still and taking a kind of count of all the female slaves.

  ‘Come on!’ I whispered, tugging at her skirt.

  ‘Not until I’ve made sure that all the flighty young minxes are safely here under cook’s eyes,’ she replied grimly. ‘With your cousin and one of his disreputable friends loose in the house—’

  Disregarding the slur on my cousin, I responded immediately, ‘This man is a nice old man, as old as Father. His name is Socrates, and—’

  ‘Merciful heavens, the fellow with the face like a comic mask!’ Tecmessa exclaimed, but she relaxed and stopped counting. ‘No need to worry about your cousin either, for once,’ she commented. ‘If he’s with Socrates, he’ll play the philosopher, I suppose.’

  I knew enough about philosophers from what Theron had said from time to time to know that my cousin’s conversation had not been pronouncedly solemn or profound, but had the sense to say nothing, and urged her back along the corridor.

  ‘Why have they come?’ I whispered. ‘I thought my cousin had been sent away from Athens.’

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ said Tecmessa, her face softening suddenly in grief, ‘don’t you remember? He was at Potidaea. Socrates must have been there too, and I expect your cousin’s brought home our Theron’s belongings. It was thoughtful not to want to see your poor mother straight away—that would be Socrates, not your cousin.’

  She was, in fact, very amiable to Socrates, all the more so when she discovered she had known his mother, a midwife, quite well. They had, indeed, brought back Theron’s belongings; Socrates described, in his beautiful, deep voice, how very gallantly my brother had died; Alcibiades, who seemed suddenly bored with everything, turned his attention to tickling me, and telling me what a horrible younger brother he had had. Eventually Socrates and Tecmessa decided that Tecmessa should go to my mother with Theron’s things and find out whether she woul
d like to see her nephew and his friend.

  ‘She won’t!’ said Alcibiades, the moment Tecmessa had gone off. ‘Just as well, of course; never known such a waterfall of a person as my Aunt Constantia—Niobe in person.’

  My face fell; my life was rather dull and I had hoped they would stay for hours, telling Mother about the fighting.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Socrates gently, reading one’s thoughts as always. ‘We’ll stay and talk to Lycius here until it’s his bedtime.’

  ‘Was there a lot of fighting?’ I asked, cheering up immediately.

  ‘Was there not?’ exclaimed Alcibiades. ‘He—Socrates—saved my life, you know!’

  I wished that Socrates had managed to save Theron’s life as well, or even instead of my cousin’s; but I politely asked for details. Socrates, it seemed, had acted magnificently, standing astride the prostrate Alcibiades, and warding off countless assailants until relief came.

  Tecmessa came back. My mother, she said, thanked them for their courtesy and kindness, and asked if they would excuse her from talking with them.

  ‘There!’ said Alcibiades. ‘Didn’t I tell you so? You’re not the only person to have a prophetic gift!’

  I stood at Socrates’ knee and stared up at him.

  ‘Can you tell what’s going to happen, sir?’ I asked in some amazement.

  After a moment’s silence, he said matter-of-factly, ‘Your cousin here is rather twisting the truth—’

  ‘Nobly restraining yourself from adding “as usual,” ’ I interrupted Alcibiades.

  ‘—but it has happened that, while I can’t foretell what will happen, from time to time I have a strange feeling that I mustn’t do what I’d planned to do. And the sign has always been right.’

  ‘It’s a god telling you,’ I said with conviction, ‘like Athena catching hold of Achilles’ hair, and not letting him go for Agamemnon.’

  ‘Just like that,’ he agreed.

  ‘I tell you, he’s a useful friend to have,’ said my cousin.

  ‘How do you know?’ said Socrates. ‘Would you listen to me if I ever told you that my—well, my voice, if you like—had told me you shouldn’t do something you very much wanted to do?’