The Last of the Wine: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  I said foolishly that I had not known of it. “Nor I until this morning,” he said. He chose a new thong and put it in, singing to himself a soldier’s song which, recalling my presence, he stopped half-way. I had seldom seen him in such spirits. I suppose for a long time his nature had been pulling him two ways, and he was glad when his boats were burned for him.

  He threw me over his greaves to polish and, as we worked, told me he had been drawn in place of another knight who was sick. “Nikias wants cavalry, and should have foreseen it. The Syracusan horse are harrying his siege-works. When we get there, he may start to move; he needs a sting on the tail. At the Dionysia, Aristophanes had a fling at his sluggishness.”—“Are you taking both horses?” I asked; thinking, I am afraid, of myself.

  “Neither; he will mount us there. Don’t leave Phoenix to the groom; exercise him yourself, as I have always done.” And he gave me a long talk on horse-doctoring. I promised to see to it all, and said I would consult Xenophon’s father if in doubt. “Gryllos is going with us,” he said. “But you have chosen the right sort of friend in his boy.” He picked up his shield and began to polish it. Presently he said, “When the Feast of Families comes round, don’t forget your uncle Alexias, whom you were named after.”—“No, Father.”—“You must now be sixteen, or pretty near it.” I agreed to this. He put the shield down and looked at me. “Well, then, you will be an ephebe in two years, and it would be stupid to treat you as a child. There are good looks on your mother’s side of the family, as well as mine.” It was a moment before I saw it was my real mother he meant. “I daresay we shall find they have come down to you, or so it seems at present. There is more sense in your hearing it first from me, than from someone who only tells you to make a fool of you.” I was astonished; not by his news, which he was wrong in supposing himself the first with, but that he should think it true.

  “Even in youth,” he said, “something has been written on the face by the man within. So of the suitors who are drawn by beauty there are a few, perhaps, who need not be distrusted; you must first deserve them. For the rest: those who would not care if you were a dolt, a coward, or a liar, I credit you with the wit to discern for yourself, but you will find others who, if they knew you to be so, would still let you tread on their pride and drag them about like slaves. Even though they may be distinguished in other ways, for this nevertheless despise them. To sell one’s friendship for gifts is a thing not fit for discussion among gentlemen. But to sell it for flattery, or be weakened by mere importunity as one throws an obol to a noisy beggar, is not much better in my opinion. If you are in doubt, you might do worse than remember your uncle Alexias. Consider if what he did for Philon, this man would do for you; and, by the way, don’t omit to ask yourself if you would do it for him.” He breathed on the shield and gave it another rub. “I should hope at your age you have no need to be experimenting with women. Don’t let anyone take you to such places as Milto’s, where you will be robbed and poisoned. Koritto’s girls, I am told, are clean.”

  After this I suppose he was as glad as I was when my mother walked in. She was calm, though rather pale, and said the fuller would send back his cloak by nightfall.

  He sailed a few days later. I went to the dock to see him off, with my great-uncle, Strymon. So much had our family been thinned, by the plague and then the war, that he would be my nearest kinsman when my father had gone. I wondered how this would turn out, for I did not know him well. My father had entertained him at festivals, sent him a present of meat when he sacrificed, and observed the usual civilities. He seldom asked him to supper with his friends. I think the only reason was that he found him dull.

  Half the boys from my year at school seemed to be there, bidding their fathers goodbye. Xenophon did not see me; it was a mystery to me that a father and son should have so much to say to one another.

  At last the ship cast off. I waved to my father a long while and he to me, both of us wishing, I suppose, to repair all omissions at the last. Afterwards I talked to some of my school friends; but Xenophon, though he kept a very good countenance, went off by himself. I don’t think even his tutor was with him.

  I had to walk back with my great-uncle Strymon. He was not much over sixty (having been a good deal younger than my grandfather) and healthy for his years. His views were always those of the majority of respectable men. I think if I could have laughed at him sometimes I might have liked him better.

  At home my mother met me smiling, and gave me some sesame-cake. Her hair was wet at the edges, where she had been dashing cold water into her eyes. She was beginning to show her pregnancy a little, and to look pale and thin in the face. I told her not to grieve, that the war would soon be over now the cavalry had gone out; but she shook her head. I said, “I expect you feel more easily frightened than at other times; but don’t give way to it; I am here to look after you. And if you want anything special to eat” (for this was almost the only thing I knew about the matter) “I will see you have it, no matter how scarce it is.” She looked at me, and started to laugh; but this brought on her weeping again, and she went away.

  7

  MY FATHER AT DEPARTING had freed Midas ahead of his promise, as a dedication to Apollo. Old Sostias was now supposed to keep an eye on me; but I had grown a good deal lately, in height and in other ways. I soon saw that he was at a loss, and that I could do as I liked with him. At first I had little time to please myself, there was so much to do on the farm. With my father to back me I had given his orders with some assurance; this I was now able to put into my own, without the slaves being much aware of the difference. Indeed it was not they who gave me trouble but the interference of my uncle Strymon. He had invested his whole patrimony in slaves, whom he leased to the silver-mines, with no more care than to collect their hire each month, and put something by for replacements: but he was a know-all, full of second-hand precepts, which he could not suit to the land. If I raised any objection, he would say, “Well, well, I know the youth of today doesn’t like to be told anything. I only do my duty by your father as well as I can.”

  All this interrupted my training on the running-track; but going out to the farm I used to run across country while the groom took the horses, and there was plenty of exercise there to keep me from getting soft. In the last year I had been growing very fast, and had got rather lanky; now, up before dawn, out in all weathers, often sharing the work to set the slaves and hired hands a pace, I clothed my bones with muscle and grew firmly-knit, brown and hard. Soon I found that when I had time to visit the palaestra or the baths, people would turn as I passed who had never troubled themselves before. I even found it useful once or twice to have old rawboned Sostias shambling after me.

  The ship that had taken my father to Sicily brought back the news that Lamachos was dead. He had fallen storming a cross-wall which the Syracusans had built to command our siege-works. But, thanks to him, the town was almost invested, on completing which the war would be as good as over. The Syracusans had turned out to be raw soldiers, a rabble of little armies from here and there. They were fighting before the doors of their homes, which makes the worst troops tenacious, or they would long since have been swept away.

  All Hellas was quiet, except that the Argives, having been raided by the Spartans, begged a loan of ships from us to defend their coast. Though we were at truce with the Spartans, to refuse seemed dishonourable, after the Argives had sent men to Sicily. When we heard that some of the ships had raided the coast of Lakonia, a few heads were shaken; but it was only a little action, like a pirate raid, and soon out of mind: out of my mind certainly, for this was the year when I first kept company with Sokrates.

  I came at first like a thief in the night, lest he should notice me, and ask me some question which would show up my stupidity so that I should not dare to go again. When people asked him why he charged no fees, he used to say that he liked to be free to choose whom he conversed with, and he would not let anyone call himself his pupil, only his friend. So I
was aware of my presumption. I used to wait till he had a knot of people round him, and hide behind them; if he seemed about to look my way I would step out of sight. I thought myself well concealed, till he said in the midst of some discussion, “But now a fallacy will be evident, I expect, to the youngest of us; what do you think, Alexias?” I felt at once that we had been conversing all along; nothing new seemed to have happened, and I answered without any fear. When he liked he could make any hard thing seem easy, and the natural thing to do; yet he could make something familiar look new and strange, so that one was surprised not to have seen its beauty, or not to have cast it away in disgust.

  I think the world was made new for him every hour. Most of us see what other men tell us, who in turn were told by someone else. But to him, everything that is in the world was full of the gods, and it would have seemed to him the greatest impiety not to look upon it for himself. That, I suppose, is why he was hated both by the cowardly and the insolent of soul, and by all such men as dare to know neither themselves nor God.

  Many things kept me away from him; a boy of my age could not go everywhere he went, and I had my work to do. There was also another cause that sometimes drove me away. As soon as my father had gone, Kritias had revealed himself; not as a suitor, who could be civilly refused, but as the kind of furtive pest who ought to be forbidden by law, in my opinion, to go near free men’s sons at all. He had a disgusting way, as I have shown already, of trading on one’s sense of decency, or respect for one’s elders. In the last resort, I would sign to Sostias to fetch me away. Kritias never glanced after me; I would hear him as I left, making some apt syllogism.

  At first I used to wonder how Sokrates could be so deceived. Later I understood that he knew, though not what I knew, much of the man that was beyond my grasp. It was clear that Kritias was going to make his mark in politics, so to teach him virtue was to benefit the City. For the rest, Sokrates was shrewder than most, but too great of soul to walk with his eyes down looking for dirt. So if I saw Kritias about him, I kept away. It was not too often; the man was full of affairs, and frequented other sophists, who taught the political arts.

  A little after midsummer, my mother’s time came to bear the child.

  I was sleeping heavily after a day at the farm, when Kydilla came in with a lamp, and asked me to fetch the midwife. I jumped out of bed, forgetting to keep covered till the girl had gone; and her face told me pretty clearly that I was not a child any longer. But I had no time to care for that. I guessed that my mother had sent me, instead of a slave, because I was the swiftest and she was in pain. This happened long before dawn, and she was in labour all day.

  When it was light, I went alone into the City, seeking some way to pass the time. First I went to the palaestra, where by taking on more than I could handle, I had no trouble in getting myself thrown till I was tired. While I was scraping-down and bathing afterwards, two or three people approached who had waited (they said) some time for the chance to meet me. I was scarcely aware of them, and did not know till much later how I first got a name for being cold and disdainful.

  In the afternoon early I went home, but there was no news for me, and the midwife finding me near the door sent me sharply away. I snatched up a barley-cake and a handful of olives, then went down to Phaleron and swam till I could no more. I came to Piraeus at evening, feeling strange in myself, my sinews loosened from the water and from lying a long time naked in the sun. In a street behind Munychia harbour, I saw a woman walking ahead of me. Her dress of thin red stuff was pulled close to show her shape, which was slender and pleasing. When she had turned the corner, I saw her footprints in the dust. On the sole of her shoe some metal letters had been fastened, so that at each step her foot wrote, “Follow me.”

  I had guessed before what she was, from her being alone. The footprints led me to a low doorway, where I stood, making up my mind to knock; for I had never been with a woman before. I was afraid of finding a man there already, and that they would laugh at me. But I heard nothing, so I knocked. The woman came to the door, with her veil half drawn, showing her eyes, which were painted like an Egyptian’s. I did not like her eyes, and wished to go, but she drew me in and I was ashamed to run away. The walls of the room were washed with blue; the one facing the bed had a lewd picture on it, done in red chalk. When I was in, she threw off not only her veil but her dress, and stood before me naked. It was the first such sight I had seen, and in the confusion of feelings natural to a lad of my age, I did not look clearly at her face. When she came up to embrace me, I saw nothing else. Though it was ten years since, though she had painted her lips and eyes and breasts, I knew her. It was the Rhodian. I drew back, as if I had turned a stone and found the mouth of hell. So she, thinking I was bashful, reached out for me, inviting me with the words such women use. With a cry of horror I thrust her off, remembering her voice. This made her angry, so that as I went to the door she screamed a curse at me, and once again I felt her hands striking my flesh.

  I went down the street as if it were a race-track. When I came to myself, I had only one thought, that returning from all this I should find my mother dead. On reaching home, I found she had been delivered an hour before. The child was a girl.

  I had not looked at the wooden billet upon the door, so sure I had been of seeing the olive-bough. Now it was as if some god had come down on a cloud to change my fate. I stood dumb, enjoying my felicity, till my uncle Strymon rose from his chair to point out that I had overlooked him. He said we must all rejoice at her safe delivery, and though no doubt my father would be disappointed, they were young and could afford to wait on the gods. “Yet it is a pity; he had promised to call the child after her father Archagoras, that the name of a worthy man should not be lost.” Then I remembered that, whatever I liked to pretend to myself, this was her firstborn child.

  When I came to the room, the women told me it had not been purified yet and I should incur uncleanness. I said, “Be it so, then,” and went in. She was lying with her hair about her; it looked limp and damp, as after a long struggle; her face was drawn, and blue round the eyes. The child lay in her arm. I said, “How is it, Mother?” and she looked up at me.

  If a man has been beaten in the pankration, and knocked about till he can hardly stand; and as he drags himself off the ground, wiping the blood from his eyes, he meets in the way the man he knows will most rejoice at his defeat; then, however good his courage, something will show. So it was now, between my mother and me. When I understood this, then, I think, I first knew the grief of a man. But after the rain has fallen, you cannot put it back in the sky.

  In this bitterness, each of us was sorry for the other. She smiled at me soon, and took my hand, and told me she was much better. I felt I should kiss her; but the room smelled of women and of blood, her flesh seemed like a stranger’s and mine shrank from it. She said, “Look, here is your sister.”

  I had not thought about the child. She still had the bloom of birth on her, and her hair was like fine silver. I took her in my hands, being well used to puppies, which keep still in a firm grasp. As I had not kissed my mother, I thought it would please her if I kissed the child. I began to do it reluctantly, but found she smelled sweeter when I brought her near. With my own children too I have noticed the same.

  The next day I was buying food in the market, when a man said to me, “Son of Myron, a seaman was asking for you with a letter. He is in Duris’ wine-shop still.”

  Sostias was there to carry for me. Prompted by I know not what, I said to him, “Go to that stall and ask the price of the water-jars.” He went obediently; from my pedagogue he had easily become my servant. I went to the wine-shop and said, “Who is asking for Myron’s son?” A seaman got up and handed me a letter. I gave him a small present, such that he would not talk of me for praise or blame, then went round the corner and broke the thread. My father wrote that Syracuse was upon the point of surrender. He advised my mother to look after her health, to eat well and keep warm. Then he wrote “R
egarding the child, rear it, if it is a boy; if it is a girl, expose it.”

  I stood with the paper in my hand. The child was less than a day old; it only remained to take home my father’s command. It was clear that he had done prudently and with due regard for me. Since he had gone I knew something of our affairs; we could not afford a dower, and if he paid one it would come from my inheritance in the end. I had not liked to see my mother put the child to her breast, and should not have grieved much if it had died. But I had seen that it had already become pleasing to her, and a consolation in her defeat. Now that it was for me to take it from her, I thought of her pain and it tormented me. I remembered how when my bitch had whelped and Xenophon had said none of the litter was worth keeping, I had drowned them all; and she had come to me crying and pawing at my knees, believing I could give them back. It was this, I think, which drove me to the sin whose guilt clung to me for so long after. For as if I had planned from the first what I meant to do, I went to the yard behind the wine-shop, and tore my father’s letter, and threw it away in the privy. Then I found Sostias and went home. When next my mother sent for me to write to my father for her, I wrote, “By the gods’ favour we hope to hear from you, having had no word since you went away.”

  8

  WITHOUT LAUGHTER, WHAT MAN of sense could endure either politics or war? So we had pictured Alkibiades among the Spartans, weeping for his perfumer and his cook; while he, on the banks of the cold Eurotas, was out in all weathers, eating plain, sleeping hard and talking short. After a month, it is said, few who saw him could believe he was not Spartan born. I believe Xenophon was right in saying he once used his teeth in the palaestra. But it was before we were born, so we had missed the point of the story: not that he was weak or a coward, but that he would stick at nothing to win.