The Last of the Wine: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  As his deep voice talked on, my soul grew impatient with my body, and reached beyond it, seeking a god above the gods. I remembered nothing of my life, except the moments this god had touched: when in the High City I had watched dawn break upon the ships; or in the mountains sometimes, when Xenophon had gone off with the dogs and left me watching the nets alone; or with Lysis on the banks of the Kephissos. Sokrates did not stay as usual to invite our objections to his argument, but got up at once, and bade us good day.

  The others sat down on the grass to talk, and we sat too. No one spoke to us. Long after, Agathon told me he would as soon have spoken to the Pythia while she was in the trance of the god. But I don’t think we were a trouble to them. We were so deep in our thoughts, not even looking at one another, that they talked round and over us, as if we had been statues or trees. After what I suppose was not so very long, I began to hear what they were saying. Pausanias said, “It is a long time since Sokrates last gave us what we heard today. It was at your house, Agathon, do you remember? When we drank to your first crown.”—“I shall be dead, my dear, when I forget that.”—“And as he ended, Alkabiades came in drunk through the garden door.”—“His looks can’t stand wine as they did,” said Kriton. “When he was a boy, he looked like a flushed god.” Someone asked, “What happened then?”—“Hearing us all praising Sokrates, he said, ‘Oh, I can tell you something more remarkable than that.’ And he described how he had tried, without success, to seduce Sokrates one night after supper. Drunk as he was, I must say he told the story well; but you could see that years later he was still puzzling it over. I really think he had offered the highest praise he knew. Sokrates made a joke of it, which indeed it was, in its own way. I should have laughed myself with the best, if I had not remembered when he loved the boy.”

  At this my thoughts, which had been nowhere and everywhere, settled and grew clear. I remembered the dull youth at Sokrates’ house. And Alkibiades had received his love as a cracked jar holds wine. Yet being in love with the good, he could not, I thought, have ceased desiring to beget her offspring. It was for Lysis and me, not to be chosen (for no man can lay such a thing upon another) but to choose ourselves his sons.

  I felt Lysis look at me, and turned towards him. Understanding each other, we got up and walked out through the gardens into the streets. We did not speak, having no need of it, but made for the High City, and climbed the stairway side by side. Leaning on the northern wall we looked out to the mountains. On the tops of Parnes the first snow had fallen; the day was bright and blue, with a few small clouds, white and violet-dark. The wind from the north blew our hair from our brows, and streamed our garments behind us. The air was clear, keen, and filled with light. It seemed to us that at our command the wind would have lifted us like eagles, that our home was the sky. We joined our hands; they were cold, so that in clasping them we felt the bone within the flesh. Still we had not spoken; or not with words. Turning from the wall we saw people offering at the altars or going in and out of the temples; it had seemed to us that the place was empty, but for ourselves. When we came to the great altar of Athene I stopped and said, “Shall we swear it?” He thought for a moment and answered, “No. When a man needs an oath, he has repented that he swore it, and is compelled by fear. This must come from our own souls, and from love.”

  When we reached the Porch I said, “I must make an offering to Hermes, before I go. He has answered a prayer of mine.”—“What prayer was that?”—“I prayed he would tell me if Sokrates wanted anything.” He looked at me a moment under his brows, then laughed. “Make your offering; we will talk later.” I went to get some myrrh, and Lysis went away into the Temple of the Maiden. He was gone longer than I, so I waited for him beside the little Temple of Victory on the bastion, which that year was almost finished. When he came, I asked him why he had laughed. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “I was wondering whether it was Sokrates you were in love with, or me. Am I only the sacrifice you have killed on the altar, so that you can ask your friend to sup with you on the meat?”

  I turned to protest, but he was smiling. “I forgive you,” he said. “I must; I’ve been his captive myself since I was fifteen. It was Hermes’ Day at school when some visitor brought him in. My tutor and Menexenos had slipped off together for a drink, so we started listening. He saw us stretching our ears behind the men, called us to talk to him, and asked us what friendship was. In the end, we never clinched a definition; Menexenos and I wrangled it over for the rest of the day. My poor father got no peace till he let me go to him, after that.”

  Before we went down, we paused to look once more at the mountains. The air was so clear that we could see northward as far as Dekeleia, where the Spartans used to come down before the truce. A little trail of smoke came up from it, where some guard, or a shepherd, was lighting his mid-day fire.

  11

  THE WEEKS PASSED BY, bringing winter to the fields and spring to me. As, when great Helios shines upon a frost-bound pool, the birds begin alighting, and at evening the beasts came down to drink, so I, being happy, instead of suitors began to have friends. But my head was too full of Lysis to notice the change, and, when he was busy, I scarcely knew how my time was spent.

  One day a despatch came in from Sicily, and was read to the Assembly. We boys who were not of age hung about at the foot of the hill, waiting for news. The men trooped down, long-faced and loud-mouthed, from the Pnyx.

  Nikias wrote that Gylippos, the Spartan general, had raised a force on the far side of the island, had trained it, taught it discipline, and marched it to the relief of Syracuse. He had dug in on high ground, penning our Army between him and the town. He had united Sicily against us, and troops were expected from the Spartan confederacy as well. In the upshot, Nikias asked for a second army not less than the first, and a second load of treasure to maintain it, and for a general to relieve him. He was sick in the kidneys, he said, and could not do his work as he would wish. He could hold out over winter, but help must not be delayed beyond the spring; and so he ended.

  Lysis told me all this while the crowd still surged around us. Everyone sounded angry; but I don’t remember any foreboding. They were more like people come to a festival, who have been told nothing will be ready for a week, and they must all go home.

  Before long the muster-rolls came out, and ended fears which I had kept to myself. Lysis was not going; too few cavalry were left as it was to guard the frontier. When the knights sailed, he had been taken out of his tribal squadron, and made a Phylarch of the Guard in place of an officer who had gone. Though he was young for it, they were glad to find someone who could get himself respected by the youths, and keep them in order. It took him much away from me, and I thought it long till I should be an ephebe myself; for he had promised to ask that I should be enrolled under his command. Finding me eager to improve, though there were many things he enjoyed more than soldiering, he often gave up his leisure to take me practising across country, which Demeas never did.

  We used to ride out with buttoned javelins, and he would teach me how one steadies oneself to throw from a gallop; or we would close in and try to drag each other off. I thought he would be afraid of hurting me, but he was often rougher than Demeas. Once when he had unhorsed me in a place full of stones, so that I was grazed and bruised all over, he was really sorry, but said he would rather hurt me himself than see me killed in battle by someone else.

  It was seldom now that we could spend many hours at a time with Sokrates; who, however, certainly never wished to keep young men from useful work. But as someone was always falling under his spell, one would find new faces about him, which had come while one was away. Some went, some stayed; but none struck me with such surprise as one I found in Phokas the Silversmith’s, where I overtook the company one morning. On the opposite wall a polished silver mirror was hanging. As I came up behind, it showed me first Sokrates’ face, then the one beside it. I did not believe my eyes at first. The face was Xenophon’s.

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nbsp; Afterwards, when I got him alone, he laughed at my surprise, and said he had been about Sokrates for some weeks, and wondered we had not met before; “but I suppose it’s one man’s work to conduct the most celebrated love-affair in the City, and you’ll be looking up your friends in a few years.” I saw that he was really a little hurt; and it was as difficult to put things right with him, as to tell a deaf man why you went to the theatre.

  “But,” I said, “what brought you to Sokrates?”—“He did.”—“How? Through your overhearing his talk?”—“No, he asked me to come.” More than ever surprised, I demanded the story. He said he had been walking down a narrow alley-way, when Sokrates had met him in it. “I had never been so near him, and at the risk of my manners could not keep from looking at his face. ‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘people can laugh; but still, that is a man.’ I dropped my eyes, and was going to pass him; but he put his staff across the way, and stopped me dead. ‘Can you tell me,’ he said, ‘where one can buy good oil?’ I thought it odd he should need telling, but I directed him. Then he asked after flour and cloth. I told him the best places I knew; he said, ‘And where can one get the good and beautiful?’ I must have looked pretty blank; at last I said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, I can’t tell you that.’—‘No?’ he said smiling. ‘Come with me, then, and let us find out.’ So I turned and walked with him, and stayed with him all day. Why, Alexias, didn’t you tell me more about him?”

  “What!” I said.

  “I thought the sophists spent their lives measuring the moon and stars, and arguing whether matter was one or manifold. You yourself, if you’ll forgive my saying so, are inclined to have your head in the clouds, so I thought that would be just the kind of sophist you would take up with. But now I find he’s the most practical person one could possibly go to for advice. I heard him say myself that no one should presume to read the universe till he has first read and mastered his own soul, else there is nothing to prevent his turning all other knowledge to evil. He says the soul sickens without exercise just like the body, and one can only know the gods by training as hard in goodness as one trains for the Games.”—“Did he say that? I see now why he would never be initiated.”—“But it’s quite untrue, Alexias, that he lacks reverence; I assure you, he is a most religious man.”—“Are you now, Xenophon, defending Sokrates to me?”—“I’m sorry,” he said. “But people’s injustice makes me angry. What do they mean by their accusations? My own father, the best of men, believes this legend of Aristophanes’ that Sokrates teaches young men to despise their parents and deny the gods. Surely among all his friends who write and compose, somebody could put him into a play as he really is? If they would do no more than jot down a few notes of his daily talk, it might get justice done him.”—“You should do it yourself,” I said. He blushed. “Now you’re laughing at me; I only mean that sooner or later someone must.”

  There was another who came to Sokrates about this time; I think in the early spring.

  I noticed him first one day when we had all walked in from the Agora to talk in the Stoa of Zeus. The youth I am speaking of came up quietly, and stood half-hidden by a column. Sokrates, however, as soon as he saw him turned in welcome. “Good morning, Phaedo; I hoped we might meet today. Come and sit where we can hear each other.” Then the boy came forward, and sat at his feet. Lysis murmured in my ear, “Silenos with a leopard.”

  He could scarcely have put it better. The youth had what one often hears of from the lyric poets, but seldom sees; very dark eyes, with hair of the clearest blond. It swung like heavy silk, cut straight across his brows, which were strongly drawn and lifted outward. His mouth was nobly carved, but strange, brooding and secret; his beauty was not of Apollo but of Dionysos. His eyes never left Sokrates’ face. They were deep and subtle; you could see the thoughts running in them like fish in dark water. So it struck me as odd in every way that he should sit without opening his mouth, and that Sokrates seemed to expect nothing better. Just once he said, “This may interest you, Phaedo, if, as I think, it bears on our enquiry of yesterday,” and the lad said something in assent, so that I no longer wondered whether he was dumb. As we were going away I said to Lysis, “Who is he, do you know?”—“No; but he came one day when you were at Demeas’. He walked up quietly, looked the company over, and went away. It was much like today’s, except that Kritias was there.” Nowadays Kritias never came within a spear’s-length of me. I was sorry for the boy. But then all the world, not being the beloved of Lysis, seemed pitiable to me.

  Soon after, when he was absent on manoeuvre, I was in one of the public gardens, the small one by the Theatre, where Sokrates was disputing with Aristippos, whether the good is identical with pleasure, or not. They stood in debate, looking each like the image of his cause. Aristippos was about thirty, a good-looking man, but sagging in the face a little, and wearing the price, I should say, of a good riding-mule on his back. Sokrates in his old drab mantle was as brown and firm as a nut. You could believe the story that when he was on campaign in Thrace he stood all a winter’s night in meditation, while the troops were shivering under heaps of skins.

  A man’s strength, he was saying, depends on toil to maintain it; his freedom depends on strength to protect it; and without freedom, what pleasure is secure? I don’t think Aristippos found any way of meeting this; but just then I saw Phaedo again, loitering, half hidden by some trees. He drew back when Sokrates glanced his way; but as soon as Aristippos had gone, came forward of his own accord. Sokrates greeted him, and he sat down on the grass close by. I forget the conversation, which I suppose related to what had passed; Phaedo sat silent and attentive, his head close to Sokrates’ knees. Those slopes round the Theatre catch the late sunlight, which shone on the boy’s fair hair, showing its lucid beauty; Sokrates, as he sat talking, put out a hand half absently to touch it, and ran a strand of it through his fingers. It was as a man might touch a flower. But I saw the boy start away, and his face change. His dark eyes looked quick and ugly; he made you think of a half-tamed animal that is going to bite. Sokrates, feeling the movement, glanced down at him; for a moment their eyes met. Suddenly the boy was quiet again. His face grew still, as before; he sat listening, hands clasping knees, and Sokrates stroked his hair.

  It had increased my curiosity, which I was determined to satisfy this time. When Sokrates had gone, I began making my way over. But, what was hardly surprising, some man who had been waiting his chance got there before me. One could see he was a stranger, making the usual kind of civil approach. The youth smiled coldly at him, and gave him some answer. I did not hear it; but the man looked shocked, and retired as if struck.

  You may be surprised that after this I did not change my mind. But those were days when I thought well of mankind, and had confidence enough for two. At all events, I overtook Phaedo, greeted him, and said something about the debate. At first he barely answered, closed his beautiful sullen mouth, and left everything to me. Yet I had the feeling he was more confused than angry; so I persisted, and at last he began to talk. At once I perceived that in the comparison of our minds I was a child to him. He asked me about a discussion he had heard of, but missed. I retailed it as best I could; once he stopped me, to make a rebuttal which even Kritias had not seen. I could find no way past it; but he, after considering, answered it himself.

  I said he was too modest, and ought to let his voice be heard more often. We had been talking without any constraint; but now he shook his head, and grew silent again. At the next corner he said, “Thanks for your company, but I go this way now. Goodbye.” It was clear he did not want me to see where he lived. I thought, “His family has fallen into poverty; perhaps he has even to work at a trade.” He was quite well dressed and I caught from his hair the scent of camomile-flowers; but people will keep up appearances when they can. In any event he seemed to me now an excellent person; and he had not appeared to dislike my company; so seeing we were near the palaestra where I usually exercised, I said, “It’s early yet; come and give me a match.” But
he drew back from me, saying quickly, “No, thank you, I must go.”

  I could not believe he was afraid of my seeing his style, for he stood and moved like a gentleman. Just then I noticed a deep wound in his leg, as if a spear had gone clean through. I apologised, and asked if it gave him much trouble. He looked at me strangely. “It’s nothing. I never feel it now.” Then he said slowly, “I got it in battle. But we lost.”

  The scar was almost white, yet he seemed no older than I. He spoke a Doric Greek, with an accent of the islands. I asked him what battle it was he had fought in. But he stared in silence, his eyes like a winter midnight under his shining hair. I felt troubled and constrained; at last I said, “Where do you come from, Phaedo?”—“You should have asked before, Athenian. I come from Melos.”

  I was about to hold out my hand to him, and say the war was over. But the words died upon my tongue. I knew why he could not go into the palaestra. Till now, it had only been a tale to me. It is the victor who can say, “The war is over,” and go home. Only death ends it, for a slave.

  He was withdrawing already; I put out my hand to keep him, as bewildered as if I had seen the sun rising in the west. In everything I had found him my superior. I had not believed such things could be in the world. There was no time to think more, for I saw in his face that he suffered. I said, “Can we both be friends of Sokrates, and not of one another? And they say, ‘Fate is the master of all men.’”