Socrates: My dear friend, your confidence is like that of a man who drinks from a goblet of vinegar because his host has recited a paean in praise of wine.
The philosopher, after this nettling remark, obliged his companion by stopping to put on the sandals; and they resumed their walk through the town, passing out of the two eastern gates. The sun was rising above Mount Pentelicus, and Hymettus glowed before them in shadows as purple as the thyme which bloomed on its slopes.
They were soon climbing the gentle rise which led them to the shrine of Apollo Lyceus. It was a small, graceful temple whose columns and caryatids had been hewn from sugar-bright marble.
At the hilltop shrine they saw the fading wisps of smoke rising from its eastern altar. The priestess, her sacrifices completed, was mounting the stairs to enter the golden doors of her sanctuary. She was clothed in the flowing white robes of her office; her hair fell in a tumble of shimmering black coils about her shoulders; and a garland of laurel leaves dipped on her forehead. Her gray eyes were serene, and on her lips played a smile that was not gentle.
Socrates: What omens, Alecto?
Alecto: For some, good. For some, evil. The smoke drifted first to the west; but now, as you see, it hastens to the god.
Indeed, as she spoke, a gentle gust of wind rose from the slope before them and sent the smoke into the shrine.
Alecto withdrew, and the two men proceeded down the short path which led to the Lyceum itself and to their destination, the swimming pool.
It appeared at first that their only companion this morning would be the statue which stood beside the pool, a beautiful Eros that stood on tiptoe as if it were about to ascend on quivering wings over the water that shivered beneath it.
The statue was not large — scarcely five feet high even on its pedestal; but the delicacy of its limbs and the airy seeming-softness of its wings gave an illusion of soaring height. The right arm of the god was extended; in the waxing light it appeared to be traced with fine blue veins. The hand was palm upward; and the face, touched with a smile that was at once roguish and innocent, was also turned to the heavens.
When Socrates and Aristodemus came closer to the edge of the pool, they perceived for the first time a young man, kneeling before the statue in prayer. They could not distinguish his words, but he was apparently supplicating the god of love with urgency.
No sooner had they taken note of this unexpected presence than a concussion of strident voices exploded from the palaestra adjoining the pool, and a party of perhaps a dozen young men bounded into view. All laughing, they raced to the water’s edge and leaped in one after another, with much splashing and gurgling.
Socrates led his companion to a marble bench a few yards from the pool, and bade him sit down.
“But,” frowned Aristodemus, “I thought we came to swim. Surely you have not become afraid of cold water and morning air?”
“No,” replied his friend, tugging at his paunch with laced fingers, “but I consider it prudent to discourse in a crowd, and swim in solitude.”
Socrates turned from Aristodemus to watch the sleek young men at their play in the pool, and he listened with an indulgent smile on his satyr’s face to their noisy banter.
Suddenly a piercing Eee-Eee, Eee-EEE screeched at the south end of the pool, where stood Eros and knelt the pious youth.
“A hawk!” Socrates pointed to a shadow that sat on the fragile hand of Eros. The bird, not a large one, seemed a giant thing on so delicate a mount.
Its screams had not attracted the young men in the water. Their laughter was incongruous and horrible as the marble Eros swayed on its pedestal and then crashed to the ground at the pool’s edge, sending the evil bird crying into the sun.
The two friends rushed to the assistance of the youth who, with only a glance at the bird, had remained at his prayers. The body of Eros was rubble; but its wings — which had seemed so tremulous, so poised for flight — had swept down like cleavers. One wing had cleanly severed the youth’s head.
Socrates knelt beside the broken bodies, marble and flesh, the one glistening in crystalline fragments, the other twitching with the false life of the newly dead. He gently tossed a dark curl from the boy’s pale forehead, and he looked into the vacant blue eyes for a long time before he drew down the lids.
Aristodemus, fairly dancing with excitement and fright, shouted, “Socrates, you know him? It is Tydeus, the Pythagorean. What a fool he was to try to bargain with Eros! The god has paid him justly!”
The philosopher rose slowly, murmuring, “Eros dispenses love, not justice.” His eyes strayed over the rubble, now becoming tinted with the red of sunlight and the deeper red. A white cluster of fat clung to the shattered marble fingers of the god.
“The sacrifice,” said Aristodemus, following his glance. “Tydeus was going to sacrifice that piece of lamb.” By this time the crowd of swimmers, glistening and shivering, had run to see what had happened. They chattered like birds, their voices pitched high by death.
“Someone must run to tell his friend Euchecrates,” cried Aristodemus.
At this, the group fell silent. Socrates looked intently on each of the young men. “You are unwilling,” he said mildly, “to tell a man of his friend’s death?”
At last a youth spoke up: “We were all at dinner together last night, Tydeus and Euchecrates among us. Our symposiarch suggested that we discourse on the theme of Fidelity, for we all knew that Tydeus found it difficult to remain loyal to his friend Euchecrates. The symposiarch thought to twit him about it.”
“But,” broke in one of the others, “Tydeus immediately took up the topic and spoke as though he, not Euchecrates, were the victim of faithlessness!”
The first boy nodded. “It became a personal argument between them, then, instead of a discussion among friends. They began to rail at each other about gifts of money and gamecocks and I know not what. All manner of fine things, from what Tydeus said.”
Socrates: Then these gifts were from our dead friend Tydeus to Euchecrates?
Youth: Yes, Socrates; and Tydeus was angry because Euchecrates had given them all away to someone else.
Socrates: To whom did Euchecrates give the gifts of Tydeus?
Once again silence fell, and the young men exchanged puzzled looks. But a bronzed athlete who had been standing outside the circle blurted out: “Even Tydeus didn’t know who it was!”
Socrates: Why do you say that?
Athlete: I came here to the palaestra before any of the others, just at daybreak, and I met Tydeus on his way to the god. I recall that I asked him if he were going to swim, and he said, no, he was about to offer a prayer to Eros for a misdeed. Then I teased him about losing his gifts...
Socrates: And asked him who Euchecrates’s admirer was?
Athlete: Yes, but Tydeus flew into a rage and began to say things in a distracted fashion about “that person,” as he put it, “whoever it may be.” I wanted to speculate with him on the identity, but Tydeus said he must hurry to Eros, for he wished to complete his prayer before the sun rose above the horizon.
Socrates: And he said nothing further? Well, then, will you now please go to Euchecrates’s house and tell him what has befallen his friend Tydeus, and ask him to meet Socrates at the Shrine of Apollo Lyceus?
The bronzed youth agreed to do so, and Socrates took his companion Aristodemus by the arm, leading him back up the path to the shrine. “I shall return with water,” he said, passing through the crowd, “that you who have touched the body may purify yourselves.”
When they were out of the hearing of the young men, Aristodemus said in a low voice, “I know, Socrates, that you seek answers by the most devious questions; but I cannot discover what it is you attempt to glean from all that you have asked of those boys.”