Someone said he was standing guard at the northeast corner of the precinct; and going that way I saw him on the wall, leaning upon his spear with firelight on his armour, like a warrior done in red on a black vase. I went up and said, “Sir, Mother has sent you some wine.” He said he would be glad of it later; I put it down, and was going to bid him goodnight when he said, “You may stay for a while, and watch with me.”
I climbed up and stood beside him. One could not see far, for the night was moonless. No one was very near; as it got cooler, they were drawing round the fires, or into the temple. I felt I should say something to him; but we had never talked much together. At last I asked him if he expected an attack in the morning. “We shall see,” he said. “Confusion in a city breeds false alarms. Still they may be coming, in the hope we have not enough men left to man the walls.” He did not look round as he talked, keeping his eyes on the dark, as men do on watch, lest the firelight dull them. Presently I asked, “How long will it take the Army, sir, to conquer Sicily?” He answered, “Only the gods know.”
I was surprised and fell silent. After a moment he said, “The Syracusans had not injured us, nor threatened us. The war was with the Spartans.”—“But,” I said, “when we have beaten the Syracusans, and have got their ships and harbour and the gold, shan’t we finish the Spartans easily?”—“Maybe. But time was when we fought only to hold off the barbarian, or to defend the City, or for justice’s sake.”
In most men I should have thought such words poor-spirited; for I was used to hearing that we fought to make the City great, and leader of the Hellenes. But when I saw him standing in his armour, I knew not what to think.
He said, “In the third year of the war, when you were still at nurse, the Lesbians, our subject allies, rose against us. They were reduced without much trouble; and the Assembly voting on their fate thought it wise to make an example of them. The men of fighting age should be put to the sword, and the rest of the people sold as slaves. So the galley set out for Lesbos with this decree. But that night we lay sleepless, or started up from sleep, hearing the cries of the dying, the shrieks of women, and children’s weeping, still in our ears. In the morning we all returned to the Assembly, and when we had rescinded the decree, we offered rewards to the rowers of the second galley to overtake the first. They did it; for the first had laboured along as if sick men pulled the oars, so much their errand oppressed them. When they were overhauled at Mytilene, the Athenians felt reprieved as much as the Lesbians; they rejoiced together and shared their wine. But last year, the Melians, who owed us nothing, being Doric, chose to pay tribute to their mother-city rather than to us. What we did, you know.”
I took courage to say he had never related it to me. He answered, “When you sacrifice, pray the gods that it may never fall to your lot, either to suffer it, or to do it.”
I had never guessed that such things were in his mind. It was Alkibiades who had moved the Melians’ punishment. “The gods punish hubris in men,” he said. “So why should we think they praise it in cities?”
Just then someone relieved his watch. We went to one of the fires, where he shared his wine with some friends, and presented me to them. “You can see,” he said, “that he has not done growing yet, from the size of his hands and feet.” Then I felt that he was apologising for me, because anyone could see I should never be as big as he was; I remembered how he had wanted to expose me at my birth; so as soon as it was civil, I took my leave.
I was kindling my torch at a fire that was burning near the statue of the Twins, when a man, who had just come down from the temple, walked up to me. He had his helmet off, and turning with my torch alight I saw that it was Lysis. I had seen him before in armour, exercising with the horsemen; he looked very well in it. He said, “Did you find your father, son of Myron?” I thanked him and said yes. He stood for a moment, so that I almost thought he had come out on purpose to speak to me; but he only said, “Good,” and went back up the steps again.
Next day no more had been heard of the enemy, and the troops went home. The next storm to shake the City concerned Alkibiades.
His sail had scarcely dropped under the horizon before the informers crept out. The tale of the Eleusis party was told in full. Even the woman, whose role it would be unholy to hint at (let the Twice-Born guess; they will be right), was found and induced to testify. Now that his face was out of sight, and his voice out of hearing, everyone saw the madness of trusting the army to such a man. So the state galley, the Salaminia, was sent to fetch him and his friend Antiochos the pilot, who had been denounced too. He was not to be seized, however, lest trouble with the seamen and the Argives should break out again. The trierarch of the Salaminia was to offer him civilly the trial he had asked for, and convoy him back in his own ship.
I remember, on the day of the decree, coming in to find my father standing by the big press with a painted winecup in his hands. It was one he rarely used, for it was valuable, one of the finest pieces of the master Bacchios. In the bowl was a picture, red on black, of Eros coursing a hare; it was inscribed on the one side MYRON and on the other ALKIBIADES. My father was turning it in his hands, like a man in two minds; when he saw me, however, he put it back in the press.
Nothing but Alkibiades was talked of in the City. In the street, the palaestra and the markets, old tales were told of his insolence and riot. Those who had once spoken for him would only debate, now, how he came to be what he was, after being brought up by so good a man as Perikles. The answer was always the same: the Sophists had corrupted him. They had taken him up as a lad, caught by his beauty and quick mind; they had puffed him up with vanity, taught him impious free-thinking (here someone usually quoted The Clouds) until he dared to chop logic with Perikles himself. After which he, having got from them what served his turn, laughed at their talk of wisdom and virtue, and went away.
I listened sick at heart, waiting for the name that always came up before long. It was common knowledge, people said, that Sokrates had been in love with the youth, and wanted to make a greater Perikles of him; would follow him to his loose revels, rebuke him in front of his friends, and drag him off like a slave, out of jealousy, unwilling to have the boy an hour out of his sight. I felt the disgrace as if it were my own. Since I could not silence the men, I spoke to Xenophon. We were scraping each other’s backs after wrestling; as I worked on him with the strigil, I said I could not see any crime in trying to make a bad man good. He laughed at me over his shoulder. “Scrape harder; you never scrape hard enough. I will say for you, Alexias, you stick to your side. Well, let’s be fair to him; all these people were taken in by Alkibiades themselves and want a scapegoat. But a man like Sokrates, who goes about all day tripping people up and setting them right, can’t afford to make a fool of himself. Do you know that when Alkibiades was a youth he once used his teeth in a wrestling-bout, when he was losing? If that had happened in Sparta, they would have beaten not only him, but his lover as well, for not teaching him to be a man.”
I had not spirit enough even to rise to the Spartans. “Look into the scent-shop,” he said, “and you will see Sokrates’ young men lolling about by the hour, word-splitting and discussing their souls; like Agathon, who, if you mistook him for a girl, I should think would be delighted.”—“He is a crowned tragedian,” I said. “Why laugh at a man who will be immortal, when no one remembers you or me? Have you seen Sokrates in the scent-shop? I never have.”—“It will be some time, I should say, before we see him anywhere. Ten knucklebones to one I’ll lay you, that he doesn’t show himself in the colonnade for a week at least. Do you take me?”—“Yes.” He noticed then that I had stopped scraping, and looked round. “Pax,” he said smiling, “or we shall be having to clean-off all over again.”