The captain beckoned the man who had caught me, and motioned with his hand. The man nodded and moved out of sight. I heard his armour creak behind me. My heart leaped in my throat and I said, “Wait.”
Someone laughed. One of the men holding my shoulders spat, and said, “Are you frightened, Athenian? My son was at Mykalessos, which your City sacked with the Thracians. Are you too young, ephebe, to be brave? He was eight years old.”—“May the child’s shade rest; blood for blood pays all. That man behind me, bring him in front.” The man at my back said, “Will you be better for that?”—“I think so,” I said. “I was told you Thebans understood these matters. Is it all one to you, then, whether your friend finds you wounded before or behind?”
They paused, murmuring to one another. Then a man who had come over from the other fire said, “I know that voice. Let me see him.” He picked up a burning stick and looked at my face. His I could not see, the flame blinding me; yet there was something I remembered. He said, “Yes, I know him. I have a score to settle with this one. Let no one trouble himself further; give him to me.” The officer said, “Take him and welcome, if it’s any pleasure to you. But do as he asked.” The man pulled me to my feet and showed me his sword and said, “Come.”
I wondered what it was he meant to do to me, that he was ashamed for the rest to see. He took me some way off, past rocks and some trees. The stars glittered and flashed. It was cold away from the fire. He stopped at last. I said, “Your friends are not here, Theban; but the gods are.”—“Let them judge between us. Do you know me?”—“No. What wrong have I done you?”—“Last summer I was taken by the Frontier Guard, I and my friend. There was a lad called Alexias; they said the Captain was his lover.”—“They said well. If your quarrel is with Lysis, I stand here for him. But he will kill you.”—“He sent us food at night; you brought it. My friend could not sit up to drink, so you raised his head.” I remembered then. “His name was Tolmides,” I said. “He wanted to raise a regiment of lovers and conquer the world. Is he here too?”—“He died the evening after. If you had been rough with him, I would have cut out your heart tonight.” He slid his sword under my bonds and cut them with a couple of jerks of the edge; his sword was sharp, and he was strong. “Are you that Alexias who was crowned for the long-race?”—“I am the runner.”—“All Athenians boast,” he said. “Prove it.”
When I got back to the camp, it was within an hour of dawn. The outpost, when I gave the countersign, would hardly speak to me. He said that Lysis had watched all night. I found him lying in his place beside the stacked arms, his armour by him, wrapped in his cloak. When I came near he did not open his eyes. I knew he was not asleep but angry. All the way back I had been thinking of him. I said to myself, “If I speak, we shall fall out. Let me be near him now, and he can be angry in the morning.” I got my cloak, and lay down beside him. I was tired, but could not sleep, and did not know whether he slept or not. I must have dozed in the end, for I woke to a cold dusk of dawn, and Lysis leaning over me.
Presently he said softly, for the rest were still asleep, “Are you much hurt?”—“Hurt?” I said. “No.”—“You are bruised all over, and covered with blood.” I had forgotten how roughly the Thebans had handled me. We got up, and went down to the stream to wash. A grey mist filled the valley and hung on the water. I was stiff all over, and cold. It was the hour when life burns low, and the sick die. His face looked grey with weariness; I understood his wish had been to let the troop look after itself, and to come seeking me. He said, “There is blood in your hair too,” and found the cut and washed it. I thought, “The love one feels at a time like this, must be truly the love of the soul.”
“If the man had killed you,” he said, “finding you with his wife, the law would have upheld him. Are you cold?”—“The water was cold.” He put his arm with his cloak about my shoulders. “Was it for this,” he said, “that we made our offering to the god?”
I said, “Yes, Lysis.” We stood by the stream, for it was too cold and wet to sit, and I told him. The first birds woke, and the face of the opposite mountain showed grey through the haze; the dark thorn-tree wept with dew. At last the sun shone red on the peak, and we heard the others waking; so we went back to rub down our horses, and make ready for the day.
16
IN THE SPRING, KING Agis came back to Dekeleia, and marched straight down into Attica again. Nearly all the farms which had been saved or missed before were burned this time, and Demokrates’ went among the first. Lysis got the news while we were in the City, and came to tell me.
“Rather than complain,” he said, “we ought to thank the gods we saved what we did. For that matter, Father can thank me for some of it. We picked the place bare a month ago, but he wouldn’t strip off the roof-tiles till I had been at him for days. There is the horse-farm in Euboea, which will bring something in as long as we can ship the horses. We shan’t starve; but it’s hard for a man of his age to take a change of fortune, and now he is sick again. Come home with me, I’ve something to show you.”
I went, and he unlocked one of the stables. The door creaked with rust. Inside was a chariot, covered with dusty cobwebs. The work was very grand in the old style, painted with figures from Homer, the carvings gilded. A bleached and withered garland hung on it, with faded ribbons; Lysis pulled it off, and spiders ran out. “That must be from the Pythian Games,” he said. “It’s ten years or more since we kept up the stud to race it; it ought to have gone long since. When I was a boy, our charioteer used to take me up at practice sometimes, and let me put my hands on the reins and believe I was driving. I had great notions of winning one day with myself up, as my grandfather Lysis did. I don’t want Father to see this before it has been cleaned. We’re selling it tomorrow.”
Not very long after this, I was brought at last the news of my father’s death.
It was Sokrates who prepared me for what I was going to hear, and led me to Euripides’ house. For he had one, like anyone else, in the City, not far from ours, though one hears everywhere lately a silly tale that he lived in a cave. This has grown, I suppose, from his having had a little stone hut built on the shore, where he went to work and be quiet. As to his being a misanthrope, I think the truth is that he grieved for men as much as Timon hated them, and had to escape from them sometimes in order to write at all.
He greeted me with gentleness but few words, looking at me with apology, as if I might reproach him, for having no more to say. Then he led me to a man whom, if I had not been forewarned, I should have taken for some beggar he had washed and clothed. The man’s bones were staring from his skin, the nails of his hands and feet broken and rilled with grime; his eyes were sunk into pits, and he was covered with festering scratches and with sores. In the midst of his forehead was a slave-brand done in the shape of a horse, still red and scabby. But Euripides presented me to him, not him to me. He was Lysikles, who had commanded my father’s squadron.
He began to tell me his tale quite clearly; then he lost the thread of it, and became confused among things of no purpose till Euripides reminded him who I was, and who my father was. A little later again he forgot I was there, and sat looking before him. So I will not relate the story as he told it then.
My father, as I learned, had been working in the quarries at the time of his death. That was where the Syracusans took the public prisoners after the battle, and where most of them ended their lives. The quarries at Syracuse are deep. They lived there without shelter from the scorching sun or the frosts of the autumn nights. Those who could work quarried the stone. They all grew grey with the stone-dust, which only the rain that sometimes fell on them ever washed away. The dust filled their hair, and the wounds of the dying, and the mouths of the dead whom the Syracusans left rotting where they lay. There was nowhere in the rock to dig them graves, if anyone had had the strength to do it; but because a fallen man takes up more room than one on his feet, they piled them into stacks; for the living had scarcely space to lie down and sleep, and in this one place they lived and did everything. After a time not much work was demanded of them, for no overseer could be got to endure the stench. For food they were given a pint of meal a day, and for drink half a pint of water. The guards would not stay to give it out, but put down the bulk and let them scramble for it. At first the people of Syracuse used to come out in numbers to look into the quarry and see the sight; but in time they grew weary of it and of the smells, all but the boys who still came to throw stones. If any citizen was seen from below, those who were not already resigned to death would call out to him, begging to be bought into slavery and taken anywhere. They had nothing worse to fear than what they suffered.