Lysis was uneasy at it, yet had no Heart to blame me. We had our own life to live, which was no one else’s concern. But where both are restless, it will appear in this also; there was a certain wildness in us at this time, which broke out sometimes in violent joy, and sometimes in recklessness; in extravagant pranks at drinking-parties, or over-boldness in the field.
Sokrates never spoke of it. Indeed, I don’t think the cause was a secret from him long. Love is a boaster at heart, who cannot hide the stolen horse without giving a glimpse of the bridle. No one could have been kinder in those days than he. Without a word spoken, simply from being with him, I understood this: that while we had supposed we were doing something for him, it was he who, out of affection for us, had thought to give us some of his riches; and now he was gentle to us, as to friends who have suffered a loss.
This we knew, but did not feel it, then, within ourselves. What had defeated us was something beyond; and this, which had come after, seemed to us now a consolation and a joy. We did our duties to the gods, and were faithful together, and held each other’s honour dear. Only from this time on I found the visions of my youth grew fewer, and faded, and turned to memory. But I have been told that this is the necessary effect of years.
So things were drifting, when on a certain day I visited Asklepios, son of Apollo.
One could not go to Epidauros, because of the war; and indeed that would have been making too much of it. So I went to the little shrine in the cave, in the rocks of the High City, just below the walls. I went at evening. A fading sunlight fell on the pillars of the porch, but it was dark inside; the dripping of the holy spring sounded solemn and loud. The priest took the honey-cake I had brought, and gave it to the sacred snake in his little pit. He uncoiled himself, and accepted it; and the priest asked me why I had come. He was a dark man, thin, with long fingers; while I talked he felt my skin, and pulled my eyelids back from my eyes. I said, “It is my desire, at the next Olympic Games, to enter for the men’s long-race.”—“Thank the god, then, for good health,” he said, “and if you want a dietary, consult your trainer. This place is for the sick.” I was going away when he stopped me and said, “Wait. What is it?”
“Nothing much,” I said. “I ought not to have troubled Apollo. A runner’s wind is a small matter to him. But sometimes, running the last lap, or at the finish, when I am short of breath, I have felt a pain like a knife thrust into me. Sometimes it strikes me in the breast, and sometimes in the left arm; and sometimes with the pain the light of the sun turns black. But it passes, after the race.”
“When did this begin with you?” he said.—“At the Isthmus a little. But lately I ran across country a good way, up in the mountains; and since then, even at practice the pain will come.”—“I see. Go, then, to the Agora. Salute the Altar of the Twelve, and come back here quickly, not staying to speak with anyone.”
The run was nothing; but the climb at the end made me pant, and feel the pain a little. He put his hands on my neck and wrists, then laid the side of his head against my breast. His beard tickled me, but I knew it would be unseemly to laugh. He brought me a cup and said, “Drink this, and sleep; and when you wake, remember what dream the god has sent you.”
I took the draught, which was bitter, and lay down on a pallet in the porch. There was a man sleeping on another pallet, and the rest were empty. I fell asleep at the time of lamp-lighting. On awaking I smelt myrrh, and found the priest at his morning prayer, for it was near sunrise. The man on the other bed was still sleeping. I felt drowsy, and heavy in the head, and strange. Soon the priest came from the altar, and asked me if the god had sent me a dream.
“Yes,” I said, “and a lucky one. I dreamed that something cold touched my brow, and I opened my eyes upon this place; and the god appeared to me. He was as one sees him in the temple, but a little older; about thirty years old, shaved clean like an athlete. He had a white chlamys on his shoulder, and his bow at his back. He stood over there.”—“Yes,” said the priest. “What then?”—“And then,” I said, “the god himself held out to me the olive crown, with the ribbons of Olympia.” The priest nodded, and stroked his beard. “In which hand was the god grasping it? In the left or the right?” Then I remembered, and said, “In neither. He drew an arrow from his quiver, and on the point of the arrow he hung the crown; and so he held it out to me.”
“Wait,” he said, and threw incense on the altar, and looked at the smoke. The sacred water fell into the hollow of the rock with a heavy dripping, and the dry coils of the snake stirred in his pit of sand. The morning was misty, and rather cold. The priest came back to me, with the garland on his head. “Thus says Apollo. ‘Son of Myron, I have been your friend till now. Even the olive of Olympia I will not refuse you, if you ask it with all your will. But do not ask; for with the crown comes the arrow, swiftly, out of the open sky.’” And he looked at me, to see I had understood. I considered it a while in silence, then I asked him why this should be. He said, “Your heart is too great for your body, Alexias. That is the message of the god.”
The sun was up. I walked round the rocks, and climbed to the High City, and looked towards the tall blue hills of Lakedaimon, beyond which Olympia lay. I thought how after the very last Games, when the long-race winner returned to his own city, they had thought the town gates too mean for him, and breached the walls to bear him through. When I first heard the tale of Ladas the Spartan, who fell dead with the olive still fresh in his crown, I thought man could scarcely look for a happier end. But since then I had been at the Isthmus; and now it seemed to me more fit for a gentleman to spend himself as Harmodios and Aristogeiton did, for the City’s freedom and the honour of one’s friend. Yet, as I walked home, my mind felt bare, its familiar furnishing gone. So long I had dreamed of Olympia: the green fields by the pebbled river, Kronos’ Hill with its solemn oakwoods, the stadium at its foot; and the statues of the victors lining the walks, from the time of the heroes till yesterday. When the sculptor in the palaestra had asked me to pose for him, I think I had said in my heart, “There is time enough.”
This, then, is why I ceased to run the long-race. The time is coming, I daresay, when I shall pay the price for my old crowns; since I turned fifty, after a climb or a hard ride, I have felt again the arrow of Far-Shooting Apollo prick my breast. So I set things down while I remember them.
It was soon after this that we fell in with an Athenian of the Samos squadron, attached to one of the ships as a hoplite of marines. We were all easy with wine, so he asked us cheerfully why good fellows like us should starve ourselves to feed horses, when we could be living like gentlemen in the finest city of the islands, and seeing action worth a man’s while against the ships of the Spartan league, which were based on Miletos just across the straits.
“There’s no better station than Samos,” he said. “The Samians will do anything for an Athenian, since they threw out their oligarchs, and our men that were in harbour fought on the democrat side. You can have what you like, or whom. And, by the way, they need every democrat they can get there, for there’s trouble blowing up.”
This last we discounted; for only a fool, as Lysis said, will dash straight into politics in a strange city. But the rest seemed good to us. He told us of a new ship, the Siren, which was fitting at Piraeus, with her complement not made up. The trierarch, wanting a lieutenant of marines, was glad to get a man with Lysis’ record; and as we were fellow-tribesmen, it was easy to get me posted aboard. I was still a little under age for foreign service; but in war one can generally get leave to do more than one need, particularly if it is a case of helping out lovers.