The winter winds had dropped, the sea was blue, the gulls like kites on a string lay rocking with spread wings; it was sailing weather. One morning I saw a big trireme being loaded up at Munychia harbour and wondered where she was bound. When I got home I found our living-room all strewn with baggage and gear, and my father in the midst of it, his armour spread about him, oiling the straps.
I must have stared like a fool, for he called out impatiently to me either to go out or come in. I came over, asking if he was going to war. “Oh, no,” he said, raising his brows at me. “Don’t I always wear armour to ride to the farm?” He sounded like a young man. I suppose when I came in his mind had been far away. “What has happened, sir?” I asked. “Are the Spartans coming?” He pulled an old thong from his corselet and threw it away. “Not that I know of; if they do, my son, they will be your affair, so good luck to you. I am going to Sicily.”
I said foolishly that I had not known of it. “Nor I until this morning,” he said. He chose a new thong and put it in, singing to himself a soldier’s song which, recalling my presence, he stopped half-way. I had seldom seen him in such spirits. I suppose for a long time his nature had been pulling him two ways, and he was glad when his boats were burned for him.
He threw me over his greaves to polish and, as we worked, told me he had been drawn in place of another knight who was sick. “Nikias wants cavalry, and should have foreseen it. The Syracusan horse are harrying his siege-works. When we get there, he may start to move; he needs a sting on the tail. At the Dionysia, Aristophanes had a fling at his sluggishness.”—“Are you taking both horses?” I asked; thinking, I am afraid, of myself.
“Neither; he will mount us there. Don’t leave Phoenix to the groom; exercise him yourself, as I have always done.” And he gave me a long talk on horse-doctoring. I promised to see to it all, and said I would consult Xenophon’s father if in doubt. “Gryllos is going with us,” he said. “But you have chosen the right sort of friend in his boy.” He picked up his shield and began to polish it. Presently he said, “When the Feast of Families comes round, don’t forget your uncle Alexias, whom you were named after.”—“No, Father.”—“You must now be sixteen, or pretty near it.” I agreed to this. He put the shield down and looked at me. “Well, then, you will be an ephebe in two years, and it would be stupid to treat you as a child. There are good looks on your mother’s side of the family, as well as mine.” It was a moment before I saw it was my real mother he meant. “I daresay we shall find they have come down to you, or so it seems at present. There is more sense in your hearing it first from me, than from someone who only tells you to make a fool of you.” I was astonished; not by his news, which he was wrong in supposing himself the first with, but that he should think it true.
“Even in youth,” he said, “something has been written on the face by the man within. So of the suitors who are drawn by beauty there are a few, perhaps, who need not be distrusted; you must first deserve them. For the rest: those who would not care if you were a dolt, a coward, or a liar, I credit you with the wit to discern for yourself, but you will find others who, if they knew you to be so, would still let you tread on their pride and drag them about like slaves. Even though they may be distinguished in other ways, for this nevertheless despise them. To sell one’s friendship for gifts is a thing not fit for discussion among gentlemen. But to sell it for flattery, or be weakened by mere importunity as one throws an obol to a noisy beggar, is not much better in my opinion. If you are in doubt, you might do worse than remember your uncle Alexias. Consider if what he did for Philon, this man would do for you; and, by the way, don’t omit to ask yourself if you would do it for him.” He breathed on the shield and gave it another rub. “I should hope at your age you have no need to be experimenting with women. Don’t let anyone take you to such places as Milto’s, where you will be robbed and poisoned. Koritto’s girls, I am told, are clean.”
After this I suppose he was as glad as I was when my mother walked in. She was calm, though rather pale, and said the fuller would send back his cloak by nightfall.
He sailed a few days later. I went to the dock to see him off, with my great-uncle, Strymon. So much had our family been thinned, by the plague and then the war, that he would be my nearest kinsman when my father had gone. I wondered how this would turn out, for I did not know him well. My father had entertained him at festivals, sent him a present of meat when he sacrificed, and observed the usual civilities. He seldom asked him to supper with his friends. I think the only reason was that he found him dull.
Half the boys from my year at school seemed to be there, bidding their fathers goodbye. Xenophon did not see me; it was a mystery to me that a father and son should have so much to say to one another.
At last the ship cast off. I waved to my father a long while and he to me, both of us wishing, I suppose, to repair all omissions at the last. Afterwards I talked to some of my school friends; but Xenophon, though he kept a very good countenance, went off by himself. I don’t think even his tutor was with him.
I had to walk back with my great-uncle Strymon. He was not much over sixty (having been a good deal younger than my grandfather) and healthy for his years. His views were always those of the majority of respectable men. I think if I could have laughed at him sometimes I might have liked him better.
At home my mother met me smiling, and gave me some sesame-cake. Her hair was wet at the edges, where she had been dashing cold water into her eyes. She was beginning to show her pregnancy a little, and to look pale and thin in the face. I told her not to grieve, that the war would soon be over now the cavalry had gone out; but she shook her head. I said, “I expect you feel more easily frightened than at other times; but don’t give way to it; I am here to look after you. And if you want anything special to eat” (for this was almost the only thing I knew about the matter) “I will see you have it, no matter how scarce it is.” She looked at me, and started to laugh; but this brought on her weeping again, and she went away.
7
MY FATHER AT DEPARTING had freed Midas ahead of his promise, as a dedication to Apollo. Old Sostias was now supposed to keep an eye on me; but I had grown a good deal lately, in height and in other ways. I soon saw that he was at a loss, and that I could do as I liked with him. At first I had little time to please myself, there was so much to do on the farm. With my father to back me I had given his orders with some assurance; this I was now able to put into my own, without the slaves being much aware of the difference. Indeed it was not they who gave me trouble but the interference of my uncle Strymon. He had invested his whole patrimony in slaves, whom he leased to the silver-mines, with no more care than to collect their hire each month, and put something by for replacements: but he was a know-all, full of second-hand precepts, which he could not suit to the land. If I raised any objection, he would say, “Well, well, I know the youth of today doesn’t like to be told anything. I only do my duty by your father as well as I can.”
All this interrupted my training on the running-track; but going out to the farm I used to run across country while the groom took the horses, and there was plenty of exercise there to keep me from getting soft. In the last year I had been growing very fast, and had got rather lanky; now, up before dawn, out in all weathers, often sharing the work to set the slaves and hired hands a pace, I clothed my bones with muscle and grew firmly-knit, brown and hard. Soon I found that when I had time to visit the palaestra or the baths, people would turn as I passed who had never troubled themselves before. I even found it useful once or twice to have old rawboned Sostias shambling after me.