After about two months the Syracusans took away the allied troops from among them, branded these in the forehead, and sold them off. They kept the Athenians in the quarry; but at this time they removed the dead, among whom was my father. His body had then been lying there some weeks: but Lysikles had recognised it while it was still fresh.
On this he paused and drew his brows together, as if trying to recall what it was he had omitted. When his forehead wrinkled, the legs of the horse, which was branded on it, seemed to move. Then he remembered and offered me a condolence on the loss of my father, such as a man of breeding makes to a friend’s son. You might have thought it was I who had given the news to him. I thanked him, and we sat looking at one another. I had made his memory live for him, and he had made it live for me. So we stared, both of us, with an inward eye, seeking blindness again.
His own story he did not tell me, but I heard it later. He had passed himself off as an Argive, having picked up some of their Doric, and having been branded with them was sold. He had been bought for a small price by a rough master; and at last, preferring to starve in the woods, he had run away. When too weak to go further, he had been found by a Syracusan riding out to his farm. This man guessed he was an Athenian, yet gave him food and drink and a place to sleep; then, when he was somewhat recovered, asked him whether any new play by Euripides had lately been shown in Athens. For of all the modern poets, it is he whom the Sicilians value most. And living so much out of the way, they are the last to hear of anything new.
Lysikles replied that the year before they sailed, Euripides had been crowned for a new tragedy upon the sack of Troy, and the fate of the captive women. Whereon the Syracusan asked him if he could repeat any of it.
This is the play Euripides wrote just after the fall of Melos. I did not hear it myself; for my father, having thought his former work unorthodox, did not take me. Phaedo once told me that he heard it. He said that from the moment when he was struck down in battle, through all he saw on the island, and while he was a slave at Gurgos’s, that was the only time he wept. And no one noticed him, for the Athenians were weeping on either side. Lysikles had both heard the play and read it; so as much as he knew, he taught the Syracusan, who in payment gave him a bag of food and a garment and set him on his way. This was not the only case of the kind; Euripides had several visits from Athenians who came to tell him that one of his choruses had been worth a meal or a drink to them. Some, who had been sold as house slaves at the beginning, were promoted to tutors if they knew the plays, and at last saw their City again.
But for my father, who had liked to laugh with Aristophanes, there was no returning. I did not even know if a handful of earth had been sprinkled over him at last, to put his shade at rest. We performed the sacrifice for the dead at the household altar, my uncle Strymon and I; and I cut off my hair for him. In only a little while, when I became a man, I should have been offering it to Apollo. This was the god my father had always honoured most. As I laid the wreath on the altar, with the dark locks of my hair tied into it, I remembered how his had shone in the sunlight like fine gold. Though he had turned forty when he sailed for Sicily, the colour had scarcely begun to fade; and his body was as firm as an athlete’s of thirty years.
I told Strymon that my father had died of a wound in the first days of his captivity; for I could not trust his tongue, and this was the story I had given my mother.
Soon I was back in the field again; and this, I found, was as good a consolation as any. For however little sense there may be in it, while risking one’s life one feels that one makes an offering, and that the gods who afflict men with remorse are appeased.
Now that spring was here, the shipyards worked all day; ribbed keels stood everywhere on the slipways; here and there you could see a vessel ready, with torches burning half the night to light the fitters. It was a fine sight and put heart into you, till you saw what was ready to take the sea. Only one piece of news was dreaded now whenever a ship came in, that the island allies were in revolt.
All this while, I was waiting to go before the gymnaisiarchs when they picked the entrants for the Isthmian Games. If I could have entered as a boy, I could have been fairly sure of it; but I should have turned eighteen by then so must enter as an ephebe. Yet, at the trial runs, the gods gave me in swiftness what I lacked in art, and I found myself among the chosen.
I stood transported with joy, till the public trainer came up and said to me, “Your body is now dedicated to the god; report to your officer that you are freed from military service till after the Games, and be here tomorrow morning.” I walked with dragging feet through the porch into the street; I had not thought ahead, nor known that separation would come so hard. It troubled me; there seemed something excessive in it; I should have been ashamed to confess it, even to Lysis himself. I was walking to his house, resolved to put a sensible face on it, when Xenophon met me in the street and said laughing, “Well, when you and Lysis celebrate tonight, don’t forget to take plenty of water with it; you’re both in training now.”
I was getting to an age when people stare if you run in the street; but I did not pause till I found him. It was true; he had been chosen along with Autolykos to fight the pankration. He had not even told me he was going before the selectors, for fear of its coming to nothing. We embraced each other laughing like children.
Next day our training began in earnest: practising all morning, a walk after supper, two parts of water always to one of wine, and to bed with the dark. Another knight had taken over the troop from Lysis; till after the Games, we should only take up arms if the enemy attacked the walls.
One day when we met after exercise, Lysis said “Do you remember that young cousin of Kritias’, Aristokles, the wrestler? You gave him a message from me once, in the Argive’s palaestra.”—“Oh, yes; Ariston’s son, the lad who talks like a prince. I’ve not seen him since.”—“You’ll be seeing him soon; he’s going to the Games with us, to wrestle in the boys’ class.”—“You were right, then, when you said he would be heard of again.”—“Yes, and I fancy his chances too, unless another city puts up someone outstanding. He was born for a wrestler; it’s stamped all over him, too clearly indeed for grace. They have a nickname for him now in the palaestra; they call him Plato.”—“How does he like that?” I asked. I remembered the boy gazing at my face; as if he were putting it up against some notion of beauty in his mind which for a moment I satisfied. “If his proportions are bad,” I said, “he looked the kind of lad who wouldn’t need reminding of it.”—“Probably not; he practises running in armour, to keep himself in balance. I daresay a little teasing won’t hurt him; he is inclined to be solemn. He takes it very well; at least they learn manners in that family, and it’s a pleasant change to see one of them in the palaestra instead of on the rostrum.”