17
ON THE DAY APPOINTED, we assembled at Piraeus: the priests and important citizens who were to lead the procession; two trainers; and the athletes, men and boys. The lad Aristokles greeted me on the dock with his old-fashioned courtliness. His nickname had stuck; boys, trainers and everyone called him Plato now. He took it cheerfully, and I soon got in the way of it like the rest.
The City sent us to Corinth in the State galley Paralos. This was my first acquaintance with men I was to know much better afterwards; but it is remarkable how quickly you notice the difference in a ship where the whole crew are free citizens, rowers and all. A place on the Paralos was the most honourable open to any man who could not afford the panoply of a hoplite, which is the reason in many cases why a man takes to the sea. But their necessity had become their choice. They were great democrats and stood no nonsense from anyone; and one or two of the passengers, who were oligarch-minded, complained of their insolence. For myself, after weeks of palaestra small-talk I could have listened to them by the hour. I confess I cannot see why a sailor should not take as much pride in himself as a soldier or even an athlete. No one can say it is a base employment, like that of a man cramped indoors at a work-bench, which spoils the body and confines the soul.
Autolykos was a favourite with them, as with everyone else. I have heard superior people say he had no more mind than a fine bull, and I don’t pretend he would have shone in a disputation; but he was modest in success, a good fellow and a thorough gentleman. Once when Lysis was praising him to me, I said, “I can’t think how you pankratiasts manage in the contest. A runner only needs to leave his rivals behind; but in a day or two, if you and Autolykos are drawn in the same heat, you will be buffeting each other about the ears, flinging each other down, kicking and twisting and throttling; doing each other as much harm, short of biting and gouging, as two men can without weapons in their hands. Don’t you mind it?” He laughed and said, “One doesn’t go out to do a man harm, only to make him give in. I can tell you, Autolykos in action is no object for tenderness.”
We were having supper at the time at a tavern in Salamis, where the wind being contrary we had put in for the night. Autolykos was there too, treating the pilot. I said to Lysis, “He’s grown very heavy this last year. It has almost spoiled his looks. I’ve never seen a man eat as much as he does.”—“He’s only following his training-diet; in fact, according to that he ought to eat even more, two pounds of meat a day.”—“Meat every day! I should think it would make one slower than an ox.”—“Well, there is something in weight too, and the City trainers are rather divided on it, so they let us go on as we did with our trainers before. I agree with mine that the pankration was founded to be the test of a man, and the right weight for a man is the weight for a pankratiast.”
The inn lamp had been lit; and all Salamis, it seemed, had gathered outside on the harbour front to watch us eating, word having got round of who we were. Seeing them stare, I looked at Lysis with a stranger’s eyes, which I had almost forgotten how to do. I thought that Theseus, setting forth in his flower of strength to wrestle at the Isthmus, could have looked no better. His mantle being open, the lamplight showed the beautiful hard sheen of his body, like oiled beechwood, and the smooth curve of muscle and sinew. His neck and shoulders, though firm as rock, had not thickened; he moved them as lightly as a racehorse. It was plain that the people outside were betting on his victory, and envying my place beside him. Yet he thought in his modesty that they were looking at me.
Next day we sighted the port of Isthmia, and, standing against the sky, the round-topped mountain where the Corinthian citadel is. As the haze lifted, one could see the walls twined like a fillet about its brows. On the very summit I saw a small temple shining, and asked Lysis if he knew what it was. He said, “That must be the shrine of Aphodite, to whom the Girls of the Goddess belong.”
“Do they live there?” I asked him. It seemed beautiful to me that Aphrodite should keep her girls like doves in a tall pine-tree, not lightly to be won; I pictured them waking in the dawn, and clothing their rosy limbs against the brisk air of morning, and going down to the mountain spring; girls like milk, like honey or like dark wine, presents to the Cyprian from every land under the sun. “No,” he said, smiling as he watched my face, “the shrine’s for people like you, who like love on top of a mountain. The girls are in the City precinct, or the Goddess wouldn’t grow very rich. But never mind; after the Games we’ll go to both. The girls at night; daybreak for the mountain. We’ll watch them make the morning sacrifice to Helios as he rises from the sea.”
I agreed, thinking all this very fitting for men who have been contending for glory before a god. In my mind I saw the girl of my choice, opening her arms by the light of a little lamp, her shining hair heavy on the pillow.
Round about us people were watching the coast grow nearer, and talking, as men in strict training will, of the pleasures of Corinth, exchanging the names of bathhouses and brothels, and of the famous hetairas from Laïs down. Seeing the lad Plato near by, looking as usual rather serious, I clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Well, my friend, what do you want to do in Corinth?” He looked round at me and answered, without so much as a pause for thought, “To drink from the Fountain of Peirene.”
“From Peirene?” I said staring. “The spring of Pegasos? You’re not intending to set up as a poet, are you?” He gave me a straight look, to see if I was laughing at him (I had remarked already that he was no fool) and having satisfied himself, said, “Yes, I hope so.” I looked at his heavy brows and solid frame. His face had a distinction which just kept one from calling him ugly; it occurred to me that as a man he might even become impressive. So I asked him with proper gravity whether he composed already. He said he had written a number of epigrams and elegies, and had almost completed a tragedy, upon Hippolytos. Then he dropped his voice, partly with a boy’s shyness, but partly, it seemed, with the discretion of a man. “I was thinking, Alexias, if you and Lysis should both be crowned at the Games, what a subject for an ode!”—“You young fool!” I said, half laughing and half angry with him. “It’s a proverb for bad luck, to make the triumph-song before the contest. No more of your odes, in Apollo’s name!”
But now nearing the port we saw between the pines the great temple of Poseidon, and around it the gymnasiums and palaestras, the stadium and the hippodrome. The Council of the Games met us very courteously when we landed, read us the rules, and saw we were shown our lodgings and the athletes’ mess. All the dressing-places and the baths were much finer than at home; marble everywhere, and every water-spout made of wrought bronze. The place was full already of competitors who had arrived before us. When I got out on the practise-track, I found youths from every city in the Aegean, and as far as Ephesos.
The practice itself was quite properly conducted. But I did not care for the way that all kinds of idlers were allowed to crowd in: hucksters selling luck-charms and unguents, touts from the brothels, and gamblers who laid their odds on us as noisily as if we had been horses. It was hard to keep one’s mind on what one was about; but when I was used to it all, and had time to study the form of the other youths, I did not think there were more than two or three from whom I had much to fear. One of these was a Spartan, called Eumastas, to whom I spoke out of curiosity; I had never conversed with one, unless it is conversation to shout the paean at one another. His behaviour on the track was excellent, but his manners were rather uncouth; having never been outside Lakonia before even for war, he felt unsure of himself in this large concourse, and thought to cover it by standing on his dignity. I fancy he envied me my battle-scars; for he showed me the stripes on his back, where he had been flogged before Artemis Orthia, according to their custom. He had been the victor, he told me, in the contest, having held out the longest; the runner-up, he said, had died. I was at a loss for a proper reply, but congratulated him. There seemed no harm in him, beyond some dullness of wit.