If a man has been beaten in the pankration, and knocked about till he can hardly stand; and as he drags himself off the ground, wiping the blood from his eyes, he meets in the way the man he knows will most rejoice at his defeat; then, however good his courage, something will show. So it was now, between my mother and me. When I understood this, then, I think, I first knew the grief of a man. But after the rain has fallen, you cannot put it back in the sky.
In this bitterness, each of us was sorry for the other. She smiled at me soon, and took my hand, and told me she was much better. I felt I should kiss her; but the room smelled of women and of blood, her flesh seemed like a stranger’s and mine shrank from it. She said, “Look, here is your sister.”
I had not thought about the child. She still had the bloom of birth on her, and her hair was like fine silver. I took her in my hands, being well used to puppies, which keep still in a firm grasp. As I had not kissed my mother, I thought it would please her if I kissed the child. I began to do it reluctantly, but found she smelled sweeter when I brought her near. With my own children too I have noticed the same.
The next day I was buying food in the market, when a man said to me, “Son of Myron, a seaman was asking for you with a letter. He is in Duris’ wine-shop still.”
Sostias was there to carry for me. Prompted by I know not what, I said to him, “Go to that stall and ask the price of the water-jars.” He went obediently; from my pedagogue he had easily become my servant. I went to the wine-shop and said, “Who is asking for Myron’s son?” A seaman got up and handed me a letter. I gave him a small present, such that he would not talk of me for praise or blame, then went round the corner and broke the thread. My father wrote that Syracuse was upon the point of surrender. He advised my mother to look after her health, to eat well and keep warm. Then he wrote “Regarding the child, rear it, if it is a boy; if it is a girl, expose it.”
I stood with the paper in my hand. The child was less than a day old; it only remained to take home my father’s command. It was clear that he had done prudently and with due regard for me. Since he had gone I knew something of our affairs; we could not afford a dower, and if he paid one it would come from my inheritance in the end. I had not liked to see my mother put the child to her breast, and should not have grieved much if it had died. But I had seen that it had already become pleasing to her, and a consolation in her defeat. Now that it was for me to take it from her, I thought of her pain and it tormented me. I remembered how when my bitch had whelped and Xenophon had said none of the litter was worth keeping, I had drowned them all; and she had come to me crying and pawing at my knees, believing I could give them back. It was this, I think, which drove me to the sin whose guilt clung to me for so long after. For as if I had planned from the first what I meant to do, I went to the yard behind the wine-shop, and tore my father’s letter, and threw it away in the privy. Then I found Sostias and went home. When next my mother sent for me to write to my father for her, I wrote, “By the gods’ favour we hope to hear from you, having had no word since you went away.”
8
WITHOUT LAUGHTER, WHAT MAN of sense could endure either politics or war? So we had pictured Alkibiades among the Spartans, weeping for his perfumer and his cook; while he, on the banks of the cold Eurotas, was out in all weathers, eating plain, sleeping hard and talking short. After a month, it is said, few who saw him could believe he was not Spartan born. I believe Xenophon was right in saying he once used his teeth in the palaestra. But it was before we were born, so we had missed the point of the story: not that he was weak or a coward, but that he would stick at nothing to win.
It was he who advised the Spartans that our loan of ships to the Argives was a breach of the truce. So they in turn made a loan. They lent the Syracusans a general. He came without troops, in a fishing-boat, served only by the Helots who carried his baggage and shield; so Nikias despised him, and let him get through.
After this news we had no more for some time. Xenophon, if one asked after his father, said he was well; he had been brought up in Spartan manners, not to talk of what he felt much. But he was livelier company than any Spartan, and we were still good friends. He was now a pupil of Gorgias, and could be seen among the well-bred youths who listened gravely and spoke in due turn. That he held his tongue about my own studies, I am sure was because he knew I had not Gorgias’ fee. He had stopped making fun of Sokrates, but deplored most of his friends, who, as I was aware, would not have been received in Gryllos’ house. He said as much to me one day on Hymettos, where we had been hunting. We had killed, and taken up our nets, and were eating our breakfast high on the stony upland, seated on a slab of rock round which the grass sparkled with dew. The City lay spread below us, golden in the sun; out beyond Aegina, the hills of Argolis looked blue across the gulf, and behind them stood the high mountains of Lakedaimon. The dogs, who had been given their pickings, were licking their chops and hunting fleas. One speaks easily at such times, and he asked me without any ill-nature how I could spend my time with such people. “Euripides, for instance. Is it true he shows Sokrates all his plays before he sends them in?” I said I had heard so. “Then how can Sokrates pass anything so disrespectful to the gods?”—“Define your terms,” I said. “What is respect for the gods? Supposing Euripides thinks some of the old tales are disrespectful to them?”—“Once you begin deciding for yourself what to believe about the gods, where do you leave off? Besides, he lets down women and makes them cheap.”—“Not at all, he simply makes them of flesh and blood. I should have thought that would please you.” For he had lately begun to take some interest in them.
He whistled up the dogs, and worked the burrs out of their coats, while they shoved at each other to get near him. They were Kastorian harriers, red with white muzzles; their names, I remember, were Psyche and Augo. While he was searching the ear of the bitch for ticks, he said, “Well, Alexias, a man has to be loyal to his teacher, we all know that. But from the way you go on about Sokrates, one might think he was your lover. If so, I’m sorry for what I’ve said.”
I saw he was perfectly serious, and only anxious to spare my feelings if such a thing should happen to be true. As I was beginning to understand, this kind of love was foreign ground to him. I may add that he never did, as far as I know, accept a suitor. He had always been impatient for manhood, and perhaps he feared, what is certainly true of inferior lovers, that they would want to keep him a youth as long as they could. In this he was not swayed even by the example of Sparta. Sometimes indeed I asked myself whether he lacked the capacity for loving men at all; but I liked him too well to offend him by such a question.
For the sake of clearness, I had better mention at this point something concerning myself, that I had begun to attract a certain notice in the City. When I came nowadays into the palaestra, I could not fail to be aware of a general pause, with some manoeuvring and foolishness as various rivals tried to thrust themselves forward and others back. Nothing is more wearisome and ridiculous than to hear a man in the latter half of his life running on about such youthful successes, as if in the meantime he had done nothing worthier of remark. All they generally amount to is this, that he was admired not by a hundred people taking notice for themselves, but by three or four who happened to lead the fashion. This is quite enough to set off a poet or two, to make the vase-painters letter some of their wares with BEAUTIFUL ALEXIAS, and so forth.