by Mary Renault
Beside me some young men were blaming the oligarchs. “Only wait; they will try to fix this on the democrats, and then ask to carry arms for protection. Pisistratos the Tyrant’s trick. But at least he wounded his own head, not a god’s.” Naturally the oligarchs called this a piece of filthy demagogy, and voices rose, till a new one said, “Don’t blame the oligarchs nor the democrats, but one man alone. I know a witness who has taken sanctuary, fearing for his life. He swears that Alkibiades …”
Upon the name, there was a greater hubbub than ever. People began telling tales of his erotic feats, not very edifying to us boys, who listened attentively; others spoke of his extravagance, his seven chariots at Olympia, his race-horses, flute-girls, and hetairas; of how when he promoted a play or a chorus, he outdid everyone else in elegance and splendour by three to one. “It was for gold and loot that he began the Sicilian war.”—“Then why should he do this to hinder it?”—“He would do better still out of a tyranny.” The City never tired of gossip about Alkibiades. Tales twenty years old came up, about his insolence to his suitors when he was a boy.
“He has kept the war going for his own glory,” someone said. “If he had not fooled the Spartan envoys when they came to make peace, we should have it now.” But an angry voice, which had been trying a long time to be heard, cried out, “Shall I tell you the sin of Alkibiades? He was born too late into a City of little men. Why did the mob banish Aristides the Just? Because they were sick of hearing his virtue praised. They admitted it. It shamed them. Now they hate to see beauty and wit, valour and birth and wealth, united in one man. What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence; the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?”
“Not so, by the gods. It is justice, the gift of Zeus to men.”—“Justice? If the gods give a man wisdom, or forethought, or skill, must he be brought down as if he had got them by theft? We shall be laming the best athletes soon, at the demand of the worst, in the name of justice. Or some citizen with pockmarks and a squint will lay a complaint against such a boy as this” (here he pointed suddenly at me) “and his nose will be broken, I suppose, for justice’s sake.”
At this laughter broke up the argument. The better-bred of them, seeing me confused, looked away, but one or two kept on staring. I saw Midas pursing his mouth, and walked away from them.
Of the few boys who had made some attempt to exercise, Xenophon was one. He had finished his bout, and came over to me. I thought he would say there would be less noise in Sparta. But he said, “Have you been listening? I’ll tell you an odd thing. Those who blame the Corinthians or the oligarchs all say it stands to reason, or that everything points to it. But those who blame Alkibiades all say that someone told them in the street.”—“So they do. Then perhaps there is something in it?”—“Yes; unless someone is putting it about.” He had an open face and quiet manners; you had to know him well to learn he had a head on his shoulders. He stood looking about the colonnade, then laughed to himself. “By the way, if you want to study with a Sophist when you leave, now’s the time to choose one.”
One could not blame him for laughing. I had forgotten, till he reminded me, that the Sophists were there. On any other day, each would have stood forth among his pupils like a flower among bees; now, seated on the benches or pacing the colonnade, they were questioning like the rest anyone who professed to know something; some with more seemliness than those around them, some not. Zenon was expressing fiercely his democratic opinions; Hippias, who was accustomed to treat his young men much as if they were still at school, had let them start a quarrel among themselves and was red in the face from calling them to order; Dionysodoros and his brother, cheapjack Sophists who would teach anything from virtue to rope-dancing at cut rates, were screaming like market-women, denouncing Alkibiades, and flying in a rage when people laughed, for he was well known to have taken them on together and refuted them both in half a dozen responses. Only Gorgias, with his long white beard and golden voice, though a Sicilian himself, looked as calm as Saturn; he sat with his hands folded in his lap, surrounded by grave young men whose grace of posture announced their breeding; when a word or two came over, you could hear that they were wholly engaged with philosophy.
“My father told me,” Xenophon said, “that I could choose between Hippias and Gorgias. It had better be Gorgias, I think.” I looked round the palaestra and said, “They are not all here yet.”
I had not confided my own ambitions to him. He shared my father’s view that philosophers should dress and behave in a respectable way, suited to their calling. But Midas had found me out. He took his work seriously; and my father had ordered him, besides repelling suitors, to keep me away from all Sophists and rhetoricians. I was too young, my father said, to get anything solid from philosophy, which would only teach me to quibble with my elders and be wise in my own conceit.
Just then the trainer bawled out that we were there to wrestle, not to gabble like girls at a wedding, and that we should be sorry if he had to speak again. While we were all scrambling to find partners, I heard a loud commotion at the end of the colonnade. In the midst was a voice I knew. Why I did not stay where I was, I hardly know. A boy, like a dog, feels happier with the pack behind him. When his gods are mocked, down go his ears and tail. Yet I had to run to that end of the palaestra, pretending to look for a partner and avoiding anyone who was free.
Sokrates was arguing at the top of his voice with a big man who was trying to shout him down. As I got there he was saying, “Very well, so you respect the gods of the City. And the laws too?”—“How not?” shouted the man. “Ask your friend Alkibiades that, not me.”—“The law of evidence, for instance?” The man shouted out, “Don’t you try to confuse the issue.” At this the bystanders exclaimed, “No, no, that’s fair, you ought to answer that.”—“Very well, any law you like, and there ought to be one against people like you.”—“Good. Then if what you’ve been telling us seems to you to be evidence, why don’t you take it to the archons? If it’s worth anything, they would even pay you. You trust the laws; do you trust the evidence? Well, speak up.”
The man did so, calling Sokrates a cunning snake who would argue black white and was in Corinthian pay. I could not hear Sokrates’ reply; but the man suddenly hit him a swinging blow on the side of the head, rocking him over against Kriton, who was standing beside him. Everyone shouted. Kriton, who was very much put out, said, “You’ll regret this, sir. Striking a free citizen; you’ll pay damages for this.” Sokrates had by now recovered his balance. He nodded to the man and said, “Thank you. Now we can all see the force of your argument.” The man swore and raised his fist and I thought, “This time he will kill him.”
Hardly knowing what I did, I started to run forward. Then I saw that one of the young men who had been walking behind Sokrates had stepped out, and caught the brawler by the wrist. I knew who it was, not only from seeing him with Sokrates or about the City, but because there was a bronze statuette of him in Mikkos’s hallway, done when he was about sixteen. He was a former pupil, who had won a crown for wrestling, while still at school, at the Panathenaic Games. He was said too to have been among the notable beauties of his year, which one could still believe without trouble. I saw his name every day, since it was written on the base of the statue: Lysis, son of Demokrates of OExone.
Sokrates’ enemy was a great hulking man. Lysis was taller, but not so thick. I had seen him on the wrestling-ground, however. He bent back the man’s arm, looking rather grave and careful, as if he were sacrificing. The man’s fist opened and writhed; when he had leaned off balance, Lysis gave him a quick jerk which tumbled him neatly down the steps into the dust of the palaestra. He got a mouthful of it and all the boys laughed, a sweet sound to me. Lysis looked at Sokrates as if with apology for his intrusion, and drew back among the young men again. He had not spoken all this time. Indeed, I had seldom heard his voice, except at the mounted torch-race, when he was urging on his team. Then it carried over the c
heers, the noise of the horses, and everything else.
There was a red mark on Sokrates’ face. Kriton was urging him to bring an action, and offering to cover the speech-writer’s fee. “Old friend,” said Sokrates, “last year an ass bolted in the street and kicked you; but I don’t recall your suing him. As for you, my dear Lysis, thanks for your kind intentions. Just when he was starting to doubt the force of his argument, you re-stated it for him with eloquence and conviction. And now, gentlemen, shall we return to what we were saying about the functions of music?”
Their reasoning became too hard for me; but I lingered, standing in the dust, and looking at them on the pavement above me. Lysis was the nearest, being a little behind the rest. I set him in my mind beside his statue in the hallway; the comparison was easy because his face was shaved; a new fashion then, which the athletes had lately begun setting. It seemed to me a pity that someone should not do another bronze of him, now he was a man. His hair, which he wore short, lay half-curled against his head, and being mingled fair and brown, gleamed like a bronze helmet inlaid with gold. Just as I was thinking about him, he looked round. It was evident he did not recollect having ever seen me before; he smiled at me, however, as if to say, “Come nearer, then, if you like; no one will eat you.”
I took courage at this, and a step forward. But Midas, who never idled for long, saw me and came bustling over. He even seized me by the arm; so to save myself from more indignity, I went with him quietly. Sokrates, who was talking to Kriton, took no notice. I saw Lysis looking after me as I went; but whether approving my obedience, or despising my meekness, I could not tell.
On the way home Midas said to me, “Son of Myron, a boy of your age should not need watching every moment. What do you mean by running after Sokrates after all I have told you? Especially today.”—“Why today?” I said.—“Have you forgotten that he taught Alkibiades?”—“Well, what of it?”—“Sokrates has always refused to be initiated into the holy Mysteries; so who else, do you suppose, taught Alkibiades to mock at them?”—“Mock at them?” I said. “Does he?”—“You have heard what all the citizens are saying.” It was the first I had heard of it; but I knew that slaves tell things to one another. “Well, if he does, it’s absurd to blame Sokrates for it. I’ve not seen Alkibiades go near him for years, or speak to him beyond a greeting in the street.”—“A teacher has to answer for his pupil. If Alkibiades left Sokrates justly, then Sokrates gave him cause and is to blame; or if unjustly, then Sokrates did not teach him justice, so how can he claim to make his pupils better?”
I suppose he had picked up this argument from someone like Dionysodoros. Though still untrained in logic I could smell a fallacy. “If Alkibiades broke the Herms, everyone agrees it’s the worst thing he has done. So when he was with Sokrates he must have been better than he is now, mustn’t he? You don’t even know yet if he did it at all. And,” I said, becoming angry again, “as for Lysis, he only wanted out of kindness to put me at ease.” Midas sucked in his cheeks. “Certainly. Why should anyone doubt it? However, we know your father’s orders.”
I could think of no answer to this, so I said, “Father told you I wasn’t to hear the Sophists: Sokrates is a philosopher.”—“Any Sophist,” said Midas sniffing, “is a philosopher to his friends.”
I walked on in silence, thinking, “Why do I argue with a man who thinks whatever will earn him his freedom in two years? He can think what he likes then. It seems I can be more just than Midas, not because I am good, but because I am free.” He walked a foot behind my elbow, carrying my tablets and lyre. I thought, “When he is free he will grow his beard and look, I should think, rather like Hippias. And if he chooses, he can strip for exercise then, with other free men; but he is getting old for that, and might not care to show his body, soft and white as it must be.” I had not seen him naked in all these years; he might as well have been a woman. Even when he was free he would still be no more than a metic, an immigrant, never a citizen.
Once long before, I had asked my father why Zeus made some men to be Hellenes living in cities with laws, some barbarians under tyrants, and others slaves. He said, “You might as well ask, my dear boy, why he made some beasts lions, some horses, and other swine. Zeus the All-Knowing has placed all sorts of men in a state comformable with their natures; we cannot suppose anything else. Don’t forget, however, that a bad horse is worse than a good ass. And wait till you are older before you question the purposes of the gods.”
He met me in the courtyard when I got home, with a myrtle wreath on his head. He had got together what was needed for the purification of the house, water from the Nine Springs, frankincense and the rest, and was waiting for me to serve at the rites with him. It was a long time since we had needed to perform them, and then it was only because a slave had died. I bound the myrtle round my head and helped him with the lustrations, and when the incense was burning on the household altar, made the responses to the prayers. I was glad to finish, for I was hungry, and the smell from inside told me that my mother had cooked something good.
I ought to write my stepmother for clearness’ sake; but I not only called her Mother, but so thought of her, having known no other. Her coming had, as I have explained, saved me from much misery; so it seemed that such and not otherwise a mother ought to be. It made no difference in my mind that she was only about eight years older than I was, my father having married her when she was not quite sixteen. I daresay it might have seemed to other people, when she came, that she behaved to me more like an elder sister who has been given the keys; I remember that often at first, being uncertain about the ways of the house and not wanting to lose authority with the slaves, she would ask me. Yet because when unhappy I had dreamed of a kind mother, and she was kind, she seemed to me the pattern of all mothers. Perhaps this was why at my initiation into the Mysteries, having been shown certain things of which it is unlawful to speak, I could not be as much moved by them as the candidates I saw around me. The Goddesses pardon me, if I have said amiss.
Even in looks she might have been my sister; for my father had chosen a second wife not unlike the first, being, it appears, fond of dark women. Her father had fallen at Amphipolis with a good deal of glory; she kept his armour, in an olive-wood chest, for he had no sons. I think for this reason he must have been in the habit of talking to her with rather improper freedom; for when she first came to us, she used often to ask my father questions about the war, and events in the Assembly. About the first he would sometimes speak; but if she became persistent about business or politics, as a kindly reproof he would walk over to the loom, and praise her work. So now, when I smelt the good food cooking, I smiled to myself, thinking, “Dear Mother, you have no need to coax me, who for a bowl of bean soup would tell you all they are saying in the City.”
After the meal, then, I went up to the women’s rooms. She had been weaving for some time a big hanging for the supper-room; scarlet, with a white ship in the centre on a blue sea, and a border of Persian work. She had just finished the centrepiece. At a smaller loom one of the maids whom she had taught was weaving plain cloth; the sound went smoothly on, while the noise of the big loom would change its pace with the pattern.
She asked me first how I had done at school. To tease her I said, “Not very well. Mikkos beat me, for forgetting my lines.” I thought she would at least ask what made me forget them, but she only said, “For shame.” Seeing her look round, however, I laughed, and she laughed too. The tilt of her head made one think of a slender bird with bright eyes. As I stood beside her I saw I had been growing again; for whereas our eyes had been level, now mine looked upon her brows.
I told her all the rumours that were going about. When she was in thought, her eyebrows lifted at the inner ends, making a hollow between them in her forehead, which was very white. “Who do you think did it, Mother?” I asked. She said, “The gods will reveal it, perhaps. But, Alexias, who will command the Army now, instead of Alkibiades?”
“Instead?” I said, s
taring. “But he must command. It’s his own war.”—“A man charged with sacrilege? How can they put the Army under a curse?”—“I suppose not. Perhaps they won’t go to Sicily, then, at all.” My face fell, thinking of the ships, and all the great victories we had looked forward to. My mother looked at me and, nodding her head, said, “Oh, yes, they will go. Men are like children who must wear their new clothes today.” She wove a couple of lines and said, “Your father says Lamachos is a good general.”—“He has been laughed at rather too much,” I said. “He can’t help being so poor; but when he indented for his own shoe-leather last time, Aristophanes got hold of it, you know, and started all these jokes about him. But Nikias will consult him, I suppose.”
She stopped weaving and turned round, the shuttle in her hand. “Nikias?” she said.—“Of course, Mother. It stands to reason. He has been one of the first of the Athenians ever since I remember.” And indeed, a citizen of my father’s age could still have said this.
“But he is an old sick man,” she said. “He ought to be taking soup in bed, not crossing the sea. And he had no stomach for the war from the very first.” I saw she knew something of events already; no doubt every woman who had the use of her legs had been running from house to house, under excuse of borrowing a little flour or a measure of oil. “Still,” I said, “he would be a good man if the gods are angry. They’ve never lost him a battle all his life. No one has paid them more attention than he has. Why, he has even given them whole shrines and temples.” She looked up. “What is it worth to the gods,” she said, “to be feared by a man who fears everything? How should he lose battles? He never took a risk.”
I looked round anxiously. Luckily my father was out.
“I myself have seen him in the street,” she said, “when a cat crossed his path, waiting for someone else to pass to take off the bad luck. What kind of man is that for a soldier?”—“No one doubts, Mother,” I said laughing, “that you’d make a better one.” She blushed, and turning to the loom said, “I can’t waste any more time in talking. Your father’s club is coming tonight.”
