As we stepped forward, everyone else seemed to fall back in relief, like people saying, “Pray help yourself, the affair is yours.” But just then the crowd parted on the other side.
Some of the men who pushed through I had seen following Hyperbolos before. One pointed at the body without speaking. His face and his thumb said, “Take this dirt to the midden.” None of the crowd moved; but a little man said, “It was murder. The magistrates ought to see him.” At this one of the youths turned quickly and spat in his face. They stepped towards the body.
I felt Lysis’ fingers grip my arm, and he was gone from my side. Running after, I saw him bestriding the mean little corpse, his dagger in his hand. The youth who had spat, about whom was nothing Homeric, was looking at him, much put out. I drew my own dagger, and leaped in to cover his back. Then I could see him no longer; only the encircling faces: some frightened, some making themselves dull so as not to understand, some awaking to battle-joy and friendship; and the faces of the men who had come for the body, as they dragged out the long knives from under their arms.
I never doubted we were in as much danger as ever in war, and of an uglier death. Yet, strangely, I had not to force up my courage; I was in such spirits that I could have cheered aloud, or sung. The truth is, I think, that I felt myself enacting the kind of scene every schoolboy dreams of, when he first hears the ballad of Aristogeiton and Harmodios. My head was full of great words; like a boy, I saw our bodies lying together on a hero’s bier, but did not imagine myself dying. I stood there feeling Lysis’ shoulder, and looking, I don’t doubt, as if I had been requested to strike the pose of a Liberator. I was so carried away that I shouted “Death to the tyrants!” at the top of my voice.
Next moment, I felt Lysis take the shock of someone springing at him, and saw two of the youth making for me. Then I forgot heroics; it was war again, and standing to it unhorsed when your spear is gone. In the confusion around, I heard some voice shout, “Death to the tyrants!” but I could only see the two men I was fighting, till one of them was pulled off me from behind. The press closed in again; I felt a limb of the corpse tangle my feet and cursed it as I fought. I heard Lysis’ voice; we put our shoulders side by side and backed up the steps till we felt the statue-base behind us. Now we could see there was fighting all round. Lysis threw back his head and shouted, “Siren! Siren!” Then we heard the Athenian paean across the square, and voices crying, “Paralos!”
The seamen came racing up the square to us, and the oligarchs made off. A few timid citizens had run indoors, but most joined up with us, cheering Lysis and me as leaders, because they saw us on the steps. It was just like a happy ending to my dream. People were still taking up the cry of “Death to the tyrants!” But now I heard a different note in it. There was a huddle of men in the corner of the square; and as I looked, a face rose up from the midst, with blood on it, and the eyes wide, staring about. Someone was being mobbed there. This is a thing that you do not see in war; it was like filth flung on my exultation.
I pulled at Lysis’ arm, and pointed. He saw, and calling for silence, spoke to the crowd. He said this was a great day for Samos, for her enemies had declared themselves. But the work was hardly begun; we must go forward with proper discipline, and seize the armoury. All traitors would be tried when the city was secure, and meanwhile we must attack only those who resisted us, for we could not put injustice down by doing it ourselves. Then he said that Samians and Athenians, as long as they loved justice, would be friends together; and this got them cheering. It was a very good speech for someone who had only just got his breath back after such a fight. The Samians picked him up and carried him some way shoulder-high; and for no reason, in the way of crowds, they did the same with me. Being now high enough to look, I craned over to see if the man they had been mobbing was on his feet again. But he was still lying there.
That was the start, as we saw it, of the fight in Samos. There were, however, other beginnings; for the oligarchs had struck all over the town, choosing for their first victims such people as Hyperbolos, who were generally disliked or despised, and whom they thought no one would strike a blow for, so that they might get off to a good start under pretext of cleaning up the city. In some places this succeeded; but in others people knew what it meant; so already battle was flaring up all over, like fire in thatch with a high wind blowing.
As everyone knows, the oligarchs were beaten everywhere, and the democrats left masters of the town.
That night, when we had left our comrades, Lysis and I sat together in his little reed hut near the shore. We were weary with battle, but still too stirred to rest; we dressed our wounds, which were nothing much, and ate, for we were hungry, having had no time before. On stools at the scrubbed wooden table we sat over our wine. The sea sounded on the shore; outside the stars twinkled above, the watchfires and harbour lights below; on the table between us stood a shallow clay lamp which had just been lit. Lysis sat chin on fist, looking at the flame. Presently he said, “Why are you a democrat, Alexias?”
If I had now to answer truly for the youth who sat at the table, I might say perhaps, “Because of my father, or of the Rhodian woman. Because I love you.” But of course I replied that I thought democracy more just.
He said, “Undeceive yourself, my dear; it can be as unjust as anything else. Take Alkibiades, who, by the way, I suppose will soon be commanding us.” I stared, the thought coming home to me for the first time. “Get used to it,” he said. “He may seem shop-soiled; so he is; but it is arguable how much loyalty a man owes to a City which has outlawed him unjustly. Whatever else he has done in his time, he no more broke the Herms than you and I did … Tell me, is it better for all the citizens to be unjust, or only a few?”—“A few surely, Lysis.”—“Is it better to suffer evil, or to do it?”—“Sokrates says to do it is worse.”—“Then an unjust democracy must be worse than an unjust oligarchy, mustn’t it?” I thought it over. “What is democracy, Lysis?”—“It is what it says, the rule of the people. It is as good as the people are, or as bad.”
He turned the wine-cup in his hand. The black of his eyes, which had been wide open, grew small from looking at the flame, and the iris pleated, like grey and brown silk catching the light.
“They held an Epitaphion at Athens,” he said, “in the first year of the war, in honour of the fallen. The ashes and the offerings were carried in state along the Sacred Way, with an empty bier for the bodies that were lost. It was only a few months before your birth; perhaps your mother carried you in the procession. I was seven years old. I stood with my father in the Street of Tombs; it was cold, and I wanted to run off and play. I stared at the high wooden rostrum they had built for Perikles, waiting for him to climb it, as children wait for a show. When he appeared, I admired his dignity and his fine helmet; and the first sound of his voice struck a kind of thrill upon my ear. But soon I grew tired of standing with cold hands and feet, and doing nothing; I thought it would never end; the weeping of the women had disturbed me, and now the people listened in so deep a silence that I was oppressed by it. I stood staring at the gravestone of a lad carved with his horse; I can see it to this day. I was glad when it was over, and if you had asked me a year later to quote the speech of Perikles, I doubt if I could have fished you up a dozen words. So before I left, I looked it up in the archives. And there were the thoughts that I had supposed I owed to no one. While I read, I still could not remember hearing Perikles say these things. My soul seemed to remember them, as Sokrates says we remember music and mathematics, from the days when we were unborn and pure.”