The party went well, and Phaedo seemed to enjoy it. When everyone had gone, and Lysis and I were yawning in the first light but still unwilling to part, I asked him what Gurgos’s place was like.
“Very fashionable. You are received first by Gurgos, who is a fat Phrygian with a dyed beard. He enquires your tastes, rubbing his hands; when you ask for Phaedo he bows himself in two, like a cloth-seller when you order purple. You are directed through the bath, where you find all those bodies that are never seen in the palaestra, and the boys who are free, making themselves useful till they are needed elsewhere. They are mostly slaves, so I suppose they could be worse off, but when a child of nine years or so came up ogling me, the pleasure I would have paid highest for would have been that of throwing Gurgos head first into the cauldron, to rinse his beard for him. The rooms are behind the baths. Phaedo has the apartment of honour; his name is over the door, together with his price. He had a customer when I got there. Phaedo’s clients are treated like gentlemen and not hurried; Gurgos’s strong man is at hand, lest some impatient person should try to break down the door. In due course I knocked, and Phaedo opened. All he had on was the paint on his face. I knew then I shouldn’t have come. The next moment, he slammed to the door. He was almost too quick for me; but being rather stronger I managed to hold it. ‘Next room,’ he said through the crack, ‘I’m engaged.’—‘Wait, Phaedo,’ I began. Suddenly he flung open the door, so that I nearly fell inside. He stood there laughing. He looked like something you might come upon in a dark wood. ‘Come in, Lysis,’ he said. ‘Honour the threshold. Who am I to turn away trade? Ever since Alexias sang me the hymn of your virtues, I’ve been expecting you here. What can I do for you?’ He added one or two remarks, compared with which Gurgos had talked like a schoolmaster. All the same, you can tell he was brought up a gentleman; he knows how to apologise and keep his dignity. It was my fault for going to his room. But I’ve never set foot inside a boys’ house before. I told him anyone who was ready to be angry for your sake was a friend of mine. I only wish I could afford to buy him out; it would be as good a dedication to the gods as one could make in a lifetime. But I had to pay two gold staters for one evening of him. To sell outright, Gurgos would want the price of a racehorse.”
They were good friends after this; but Lysis never spent long alone with Phaedo, who never seemed offended at it. I daresay he felt a compliment to himself, which he was too well-bred to hint at to me; and I daresay he was right. Even I myself felt something of his attraction; for Eros had certainly smiled upon his birth. But to him it had all become such a weariness and disgust as the oar is to the rower. I was as safe with him as with my father.
All his life was in his mind which Sokrates had awakened. I, who had followed the man for love of his nature, seemed to Phaedo only half a friend; he had no mercy on my softness. He would force me to the logic of the negative elenchos, attacking my dearest beliefs till, driven from my last ditch, I would say, “But Phaedo, we know it’s true.”—“Oh, no. We may have a true opinion, perhaps. Do you call that knowledge? We know what we have proved.” Once I lost my temper with him, and trying to hide it walked on in silence. Presently he said, “You look rather the worse for wear today, Alexias; has someone been knocking you about?”—“Of course not,” I said. “Lysis threw me at practise, and I got a few bruises, that’s all.”—“Does he call himself a friend, and treat you like that?” I drew breath for an angry answer; then I understood, and begged his pardon. “No harm done,” he said. “But I daresay I know as well as Lysis what a good guard is worth.”
I never heard him pity himself, or complain of what he was going back to. But in the meantime, a better friend than I had his cause in hand. Sokrates had told his story to Kriton; the man who, in their own youth, had urged him forth from his workshop to take his place among the philosophers. Kriton was rich; he offered at once to buy Phaedo out.
The bargaining took some time. Phaedo’s fame had spread and his price gone up again; Gurgos treated Kriton at first like one who had lost his head over the boy and would pay anything. But he soon found out he was dealing with a businessman; Kriton asked if his boys had drunk of the fountain of youth, offering to come back in a year or two and ask the price again. Gurgos was scared, and closed the deal.
Happy enough at such a change of masters, Phaedo could scarcely be got to understand that he was free. Kriton, finding he wrote a good hand, employed him in his library, copying books, and recommended him to other men of learning, so that he could be studying as he worked. Soon none of us could remember what our circle had been like without him. There was that in his bearing which even the shameless had to respect; you did not find his former customers being familiar in the street. He on his side was strict in not giving them away, saying that every trade has its ethic. But sometimes, when a self-important citizen was holding forth in the Agora, condemning foreign luxury or wondering what young men were coming to, I saw Phaedo watching with irony in his dark eye.
12
THE EARTH QUICKENED TO spring; on the great Academy training-ground, the army exercised every day under Demosthenes’ eye. He was a man as solid as a rock, but not as cold; red-faced, from weather more than wine in spite of the jokes at the theatre; loud-voiced and hearty, but confident, not blustering. I thought my father would be glad of his coming.
All this while, the child at home was thriving. My mother had called her Charis, after my father’s mother, since he had not named her himself. She could crawl, and would try to stand by clinging to my fingers. One day I had thought, “If he who gives life is the father, then I am he.” In this I had felt some sweetness; but soon it seemed impious and I put it away. Then I thought, “She shall never know it. No one shall suffer through me what I myself remember.” So I went out to the household altar, and burned some saffron, and vowed it to Zeus the Merciful. The guilt of my impiety sometimes rode my pillow; yet even with Lysis I had kept my oath. Perhaps I might have broken it some dark night; but at this time each bore himself before the other like the player chosen to wear the mask of the god.
One morning, when even the City was scented with spring, I woke happy; I was to ride to the farm, and Lysis had promised to come too. The first sunlight was green in the new leaves of the fig-tree; the doves were calling, and Kydilla sang at her work an old country song about a bride. From the courtyard I could hear the child piping and chattering indoors like a young bird. I took up the song and sang the verse for the bridegroom; Kydilla giggled and broke off, and started singing again. Suddenly there was a great clatter of hoofs under the entry. I sprang to see, my father’s image in my mind. But it was Lysis, full-armed and helmed, his javelins standing in the holster. When he saw me, he said without dismounting, “Alexias, have you got your armour?”
“Armour?” I was still two minas short of Pistias’ price, and had not even been measured yet; I was not sure I had done growing. “When shall I need it, Lysis?” He said, “Now.”
The doves were still making love, and the child singing. He said, “The Spartans have broken the truce, and come down into Attica. Dekeleia fell last night. They are nearly at Acharnai. From the High City you can see the fires. What armour have you? My troop’s three men short.”