When we reached the Porch I said, “I must make an offering to Hermes, before I go. He has answered a prayer of mine.”—“What prayer was that?”—“I prayed he would tell me if Sokrates wanted anything.” He looked at me a moment under his brows, then laughed. “Make your offering; we will talk later.” I went to get some myrrh, and Lysis went away into the Temple of the Maiden. He was gone longer than I, so I waited for him beside the little Temple of Victory on the bastion, which that year was almost finished. When he came, I asked him why he had laughed. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “I was wondering whether it was Sokrates you were in love with, or me. Am I only the sacrifice you have killed on the altar, so that you can ask your friend to sup with you on the meat?”
I turned to protest, but he was smiling. “I forgive you,” he said. “I must; I’ve been his captive myself since I was fifteen. It was Hermes’ Day at school when some visitor brought him in. My tutor and Menexenos had slipped off together for a drink, so we started listening. He saw us stretching our ears behind the men, called us to talk to him, and asked us what friendship was. In the end, we never clinched a definition; Menexenos and I wrangled it over for the rest of the day. My poor father got no peace till he let me go to him, after that.”
Before we went down, we paused to look once more at the mountains. The air was so clear that we could see northward as far as Dekeleia, where the Spartans used to come down before the truce. A little trail of smoke came up from it, where some guard, or a shepherd, was lighting his mid-day fire.
11
THE WEEKS PASSED BY, bringing winter to the fields and spring to me. As, when great Helios shines upon a frost-bound pool, the birds begin alighting, and at evening the beasts came down to drink, so I, being happy, instead of suitors began to have friends. But my head was too full of Lysis to notice the change, and, when he was busy, I scarcely knew how my time was spent.
One day a despatch came in from Sicily, and was read to the Assembly. We boys who were not of age hung about at the foot of the hill, waiting for news. The men trooped down, long-faced and loud-mouthed, from the Pnyx.
Nikias wrote that Gylippos, the Spartan general, had raised a force on the far side of the island, had trained it, taught it discipline, and marched it to the relief of Syracuse. He had dug in on high ground, penning our Army between him and the town. He had united Sicily against us, and troops were expected from the Spartan confederacy as well. In the upshot, Nikias asked for a second army not less than the first, and a second load of treasure to maintain it, and for a general to relieve him. He was sick in the kidneys, he said, and could not do his work as he would wish. He could hold out over winter, but help must not be delayed beyond the spring; and so he ended.
Lysis told me all this while the crowd still surged around us. Everyone sounded angry; but I don’t remember any foreboding. They were more like people come to a festival, who have been told nothing will be ready for a week, and they must all go home.
Before long the muster-rolls came out, and ended fears which I had kept to myself. Lysis was not going; too few cavalry were left as it was to guard the frontier. When the knights sailed, he had been taken out of his tribal squadron, and made a Phylarch of the Guard in place of an officer who had gone. Though he was young for it, they were glad to find someone who could get himself respected by the youths, and keep them in order. It took him much away from me, and I thought it long till I should be an ephebe myself; for he had promised to ask that I should be enrolled under his command. Finding me eager to improve, though there were many things he enjoyed more than soldiering, he often gave up his leisure to take me practising across country, which Demeas never did.
We used to ride out with buttoned javelins, and he would teach me how one steadies oneself to throw from a gallop; or we would close in and try to drag each other off. I thought he would be afraid of hurting me, but he was often rougher than Demeas. Once when he had unhorsed me in a place full of stones, so that I was grazed and bruised all over, he was really sorry, but said he would rather hurt me himself than see me killed in battle by someone else.
It was seldom now that we could spend many hours at a time with Sokrates; who, however, certainly never wished to keep young men from useful work. But as someone was always falling under his spell, one would find new faces about him, which had come while one was away. Some went, some stayed; but none struck me with such surprise as one I found in Phokas the Silversmith’s, where I overtook the company one morning. On the opposite wall a polished silver mirror was hanging. As I came up behind, it showed me first Sokrates’ face, then the one beside it. I did not believe my eyes at first. The face was Xenophon’s.
Afterwards, when I got him alone, he laughed at my surprise, and said he had been about Sokrates for some weeks, and wondered we had not met before; “but I suppose it’s one man’s work to conduct the most celebrated love-affair in the City, and you’ll be looking up your friends in a few years.” I saw that he was really a little hurt; and it was as difficult to put things right with him, as to tell a deaf man why you went to the theatre.
“But,” I said, “what brought you to Sokrates?”—“He did.”—“How? Through your overhearing his talk?”—“No, he asked me to come.” More than ever surprised, I demanded the story. He said he had been walking down a narrow alley-way, when Sokrates had met him in it. “I had never been so near him, and at the risk of my manners could not keep from looking at his face. ‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘people can laugh; but still, that is a man.’ I dropped my eyes, and was going to pass him; but he put his staff across the way, and stopped me dead. ‘Can you tell me,’ he said, ‘where one can buy good oil?’ I thought it odd he should need telling, but I directed him. Then he asked after flour and cloth. I told him the best places I knew; he said, ‘And where can one get the good and beautiful?’ I must have looked pretty blank; at last I said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, I can’t tell you that.’—‘No?’ he said smiling. ‘Come with me, then, and let us find out.’ So I turned and walked with him, and stayed with him all day. Why, Alexias, didn’t you tell me more about him?”
“What!” I said.
“I thought the sophists spent their lives measuring the moon and stars, and arguing whether matter was one or manifold. You yourself, if you’ll forgive my saying so, are inclined to have your head in the clouds, so I thought that would be just the kind of sophist you would take up with. But now I find he’s the most practical person one could possibly go to for advice. I heard him say myself that no one should presume to read the universe till he has first read and mastered his own soul, else there is nothing to prevent his turning all other knowledge to evil. He says the soul sickens without exercise just like the body, and one can only know the gods by training as hard in goodness as one trains for the Games.”—“Did he say that? I see now why he would never be initiated.”—“But it’s quite untrue, Alexias, that he lacks reverence; I assure you, he is a most religious man.”—“Are you now, Xenophon, defending Sokrates to me?”—“I’m sorry,” he said. “But people’s injustice makes me angry. What do they mean by their accusations? My own father, the best of men, believes this legend of Aristophanes’ that Sokrates teaches young men to despise their parents and deny the gods. Surely among all his friends who write and compose, somebody could put him into a play as he really is? If they would do no more than jot down a few notes of his daily talk, it might get justice done him.”—“You should do it yourself,” I said. He blushed. “Now you’re laughing at me; I only mean that sooner or later someone must.”