I tried to keep my anger between me and fear. He was a very big man. I set my teeth and resolved that if he killed me, he should not see me flinch. But he only said in a low voice, “Go to your room, and wait for me there.”
The evening was cold and I was hungry. My little room was dark at evening, for it looked upon the fig-tree. I walked to and fro, trying to get warm. At last he came in, with his riding-whip in his hand. “I have waited,” he said, “because I would not lay my hand to you while I was in anger. Rather than please myself, I wanted to do what was just. If you grow up to be worth anything, you will have me to thank for correcting your insolence. Strip.”
I doubt if I gained as much as he did by his self-command, for that was the worst beating of my life. Towards the end I could not quite keep silent; but I kept from crying out aloud, or asking him to stop. After he had done I kept my back to him, wanting for him to go. “Alexias,” he said. I turned then, lest he thought I dared not show my face. “Well,” he said, “I am glad to see you not so wanting in courage as in sense. But courage without conduct is the virtue of a robber, or a tyrant. Don’t forget it.” I was feeling very sick, and if I was going to faint now in his presence I would as soon have died outright, so to get rid of him I said, “I’m sorry, Father.”—“Very well,” he said, “that is the end of it then; goodnight.”
When I was alone I lay on my bed and felt, as one does when young, that my present misery would last without relief as long as my life. I determined that I would go to the shore, and throw myself from a rock into the sea. I lay resting, only waiting to get back enough of my strength to go, and seeing in my mind the streets I should pass through as I left the City. Then I remembered Lysis meeting me in the road and saying, “Where are you going so fast, son of Myron?” I tried to imagine myself replying to him, “I am going to leap in the sea, because my father beat me.” At this thought, I knew that I was being absurd. So I covered myself in bed, and at last fell asleep.
Later I learned that my father had sought me about the City, and must have known that I had not been to the palaestra, but had punished me for my disrespect, as any father would. I have never beaten my own boys so hard; but for all I know, they are the worse for it.
Next day I was slow to seek my mother at her loom; but she called me to her. “When you were little, Alexias, were you angry at hearing you were to have a stepmother? I am sure you were; for in the tales they are always wicked creatures.”—“Of course not. I have often told you how it was.”—“But surely someone said to you that when a stepmother has a son of her own, she grows unkind to her husband’s child? Slaves are full of tales like that.” I turned my face away and said “No.”
She rattled her shuttle through the loom. “Old women are much the same. With a young bride, they love to croak about the trials of a second wife; making sure she will be frightened not only of her husband, which will happen in any case, but of his slaves, and even his friends who will know no more of her than her cooking and weaving. More than anything, she is certain her stepson already hates her, and looks to her coming as the worst misfortune of his life. And when, expecting all this, she finds a good son with hands stretched out in welcome, nothing is so long remembered; no child can grow dearer than the first.” She ceased, but I could not answer her. “You were a boy fond of your own way,” she said, “yet when you saw that I was afraid of seeming ignorant, you told me the rules you had to keep yourself, and even how you were punished for breaking them.”
Her voice trembled and I saw she was going to cry. I knew I should have to run away without speaking; but as I went, I caught her arm in my hand to let her know we parted friends. Her bones felt small, like a hare’s.
After this I grew used to the thought of the baby, and even told some of my friends. Xenophon gave me advice on how I ought to train it. At times it seemed he wanted me to bring it up as a Spartan; at others, as a horse.
I was now turned sixteen and had finished my schooling with Mikkos. Some of my friends were already studying with sophists. I was careful not to open this subject with my father, for after recent events I knew he would not let me go to Sokrates and might commit me to someone else. I meant to approach him when the scandal had faded somewhat from his mind. A good part of my spare time I spent at our farm, carrying out his orders and keeping an eye on things when he was busy; and sometimes Xenophon and I hunted hares together. He had his own leash of harriers, which he had bred from his father’s dogs; he had trained them well to follow the line, and not be drawn off by foxes and other vermin.
I had almost forgotten the Salaminia when she returned. Everyone flocked to the harbour, to see how Alkibiades would look, and if he would show any fear. Most people’s anger had cooled by now; they were wondering what sort of defence he would make, and saying it would certainly be better than anything by a hired speechmaker.
The two ships came nearer; but he was not to be seen. Then the trierarch of the Salaminia came ashore, looking like a man who has lost a bag of gold and found a rope. His news was overheard and flew from mouth to mouth. Alkibiades had agreed very civilly to come, and had sailed with them as far as Thurii in Italy. While they stopped for water, he and Antiochos had gone ashore to stretch their legs; and when it was time to start again, their ship lacked both trierarch and pilot. No one blamed the Salaminia’s trierarch much. Once the voyage began, Alkibiades had had as many men to defend him as the trierarch to make an arrest, which moreover he had been told not to do.
The dikastery sat in the absence of the accused, and the full indictment was presented. The verdict was confiscation of all his goods, and death. His house was cast down, and the site given to the gods. His young son was dispossessed. The auction of his goods lasted four full days. Almost everyone in the City bought something. Even my father came back with a gold-edged mantle; the hem was frayed, from Alkibiades’ habit of trailing the end behind him, and I daresay my father thought it a bad bargain, for he never wore it.
Some time after, a ship came in from Italy, carrying letters from the colonists to their friends. Somebody had one from an Athenian called Thukydides, a former general who had bungled the relief of a town earlier in the war, and was living in exile. Having no occupation he travelled here and there, and wrote a good deal to pass the time. He told his friend he had been there when the death-sentence was brought to Alkibiades. Onlookers had waited to hear some high-spirited eloquence. But it seems he only said, “I shall let them know I am alive.”
Before long we heard that he had crossed from Italy in a fishing-boat to Argos, and it was supposed he had settled there. But a few days later a trader docked in Piraeus and we learned the truth. I ran all the way to Xenophon’s, to be first with the news, for I longed to see his face. First he stared at me, then he threw back his head and laughed aloud. “Is life really as dear to him as that? Alkibiades in Sparta! The gods must have crazed him, to make him work out their curse himself. What the Athenians would have done to him would have been nothing to this.”
All over the City, angry as people were, you could hear laughter. They painted the scene to one another: Alkibiades seated on a wooden bench in a barn, at the public mess (if any mess would have him) drinking filthy black broth from a wooden bowl, he who had kept Lydian cooks and lain on couches stuffed with down; his hair growing down uncombed, his body un-bathed unless he cared for a swim in the cold Eurotas; no more scented oil for him, nor jewelled sandals; rushes for his bed, and no one to share it. “It will kill him,” they said, “and less gently than the hemlock.” Someone would add, “No praise for his wit either; they like theirs short and dour.” No one quoted, it seems, his words when he heard his sentence.