“You’re probably right. You have to admit, though, that he had a way about him. The hetairai were crazy about him, and it’s common knowledge that the Queen of Sparta went to bed with him, and even had a bastard by him, and everyone can remember when he slapped the face of old Hipponicus and then had the nerve to talk him out of his daughter and a big dowry of twenty talents besides.”
“I admit that he was successful with the girls, and I only wish he’d been half as successful with the Syracusans.”
“He wasn’t in the campaign against Syracuse, and you know it perfectly well. Before he could get started, he was snatched back to Athens to stand trial for mimicking the Eleusinian Mysteries.”
“They used his plan of campaign, just the same, and where did it get them? Everyone wound up dead or in the stone quarries, that’s where it got them. If you want to know what I think, I think it’s too bad they didn’t get him on that Eleusinian Mysteries business, instead of letting him escape and run off to Sparta.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You have to admire him in a way. I guess it’s true that he offered to help Sparta beat us in the war, which is certainly treason, but he didn’t last long down there after all, and nothing came of it.”
“Of course he didn’t last long. How could you expect anyone to last long anywhere when he’s all the time crawling in and out of bed with someone else’s wife? The minute old King Agis heard he’d tumbled with the Queen, he was a dead pigeon so far as his chances in Sparta were concerned.”
“But he certainly was successful with the girls, all right.” Acron laughed. There was an envious expression on his face, and it was easy to see that this accomplishment was one that he admired. “Do you remember when poor old Hipparete, his wife, went before the archon for a divorce on the grounds that he’d been sleeping around with the hetairai? Well, he didn’t do a thing but snatch her right out from under the old archon’s nose and haul her off home. He carried her right through this marketplace, and I can testify to it, because I was right here when it happened.”
“Well,” he said bitterly, “I don’t make any excuse for most of the silliness that Alcibiades was always up to, but I can see how he might have been justified in sleeping around with the hetairai, and if things don’t pick up around my house pretty fast, I may take it up myself.”
Acron looked at him with interest, smelling something juicy.
“What’s the matter, old boy? You run into something unexpected when you got home? Personally, I make a special point of never coming home unexpectedly at night or early in the morning. It prevents a lot of unnecessary trouble, you know.”
“It’s not anything like that.”
“No? What’s the trouble, then? It might do you good to get it off your chest.”
“Well, the truth is, Lysistrata seems to be on a strike.”
“Strike? What kind of strike?”
“To come right out with it, the first thing I did when I got home this morning was to duck down to her bed chamber.”
“Naturally.”
“But Lysistrata refused to move over and make ready.”
“Really? That’s incredible.”
“It’s worse than that. It’s dereliction of duty, to say the least.”
“Of course you beat her and made her get ready just the same.”
“I didn’t, as a matter of fact. I was so surprised that I just couldn’t do anything.”
“Oh, that was a bad mistake. You certainly should have beaten her. I’ve never had precisely the same situation arise, but I’ve frequently been compelled to beat Calonice for other reasons having to do with pigheadedness. The results are always very satisfactory.”
“I don’t know. Somehow I got the idea that beating Lysistrata wouldn’t accomplish much in this case.”
“Did she give you a reason for not making ready? Is she ill or anything like that?”
“No. The best I can understand it, she’s annoyed because I spend too much time in the war and not enough at home.”
“Is that all? That’s common among wives, Lycon, old boy. Surely you realize that. Calonice is always bitching about the war, especially when it creates a shortage of Boeotian eels. You just don’t pay any attention to it, that’s all.”
“How can you help paying attention to it if your wife refuses absolutely to make ready?”
“Well, that complicates the problem, and I admit it. Did she declare openly that she was on strike because of the war and all?”
“Not exactly, but that’s what’s behind it, I’m certain. She just said she didn’t seem to be in the mood.”
“Not in the mood? I don’t want to plant nasty suspicions in your mind, old boy, but I feel compelled to point out that seven months without love is just as long to a wife as to a husband. Almost anyone short of an octogenarian should be able to work up a mood in seven months, and it’s my opinion that in every case where no mood is present, it hasn’t been seven months.”
“I thought of that myself, and I said so, but she just accused me of having a dirty mind. It was pretty confusing, if you want to know it.”
“Women are very clever at that sort of thing. They play some dirty trick on you, and you beat them or take some other appropriate action, and the first thing you know they’ve got you feeling like you’re completely wrong and it was all your fault in the first place. How do you feel? Physically, I mean. It’s hard on the health to be frustrated in these matters.”
“It is, especially after seven months and ten days, and it’s the truth that I’m feeling rather peculiar right now, not at all well.”
“In that case, you had better resolve the situation at home as soon as possible. Do you feel light in the head?”
“I believe I do, now that you mention it.”
“A stiffness?”
“Well, naturally. That’s to be expected.”
“In the joints, I mean. I’ve heard that it’s usual in this sort of thing to get a temporary stiffness in the joints, which is followed by a general muscular twitching and foaming at the mouth.”
“Really?”
“Well, I never actually saw it happen, but I was told that it’s so by a vendor of nostrums that I met one day at the Piraeus. He sold me a packet of powder that was guaranteed to relieve the attack if taken in time, but I lost it in the excursion against Melos. Fortunately, I have never been in a position to need it.”
“I don’t intend to need it either, I can promise you that, and I’ll relieve myself with something besides a packet of powder long before I begin to twitch in the muscles and foam at the mouth.”
“That’s the spirit, old boy. But these attacks are pretty sneaky, according to this vendor of nostrums, and get onto you fast. What I mean is, it doesn’t pay to fool around with anything as serious as this too long. By the way, isn’t that old Cadmus coming across the square?”
Acron pointed with a finger, and Lycon followed the gesture and saw a tall thin fellow approaching at a kind of lope with a too-short chiton flapping around his shanks.
“Yes, it is,” he said. “It’s certainly old Cadmus.”
“Do you suppose he’d be willing to chip in on a skin of wine with us?”
“It seems likely enough to me.”
“He’s a deadly old bore, to be honest about it, and is always talking about the theories of Empedocles, as if anyone cared, but I’m willing to tolerate him if he pays for his share of the wine. How about you?”
“I’m willing to tolerate him, and I’m strongly in favor of the wine.”
“In that case, I’ll put it up to him.”