His voice was quite low; yet the boy, who all this while had not once glanced my way, lifted his head upon his name, and turned towards us his sea-dark eyes. Upon this moment my memory hangs transfixed; I do not know if they smiled at one another. As, while the lightning leaps between sky and sea, the shape of cloud or wave is indistinguishable, so with their joy.
Walking away through the City, I saw I had been foolish not to watch the dance through to the end, and have the memory. For one can bear more than one supposes; and in Thrace once, when an arrow broke in me and they cut down for the barb, from having fixed my eyes on a mere bird in a tree I can see every feather still. But I had walked too far to turn back. As the pines that girdle Lykabettos touched me with their shade, I wondered what had brought me there. Then, a little higher up the mountain, where the rock feeds nothing but a few small flowers, a voice in me said, “Know yourself.” And I perceived the truth, that one does not feel such grief for the loss of what one never had, however excellent; I grieved rather for what had once been mine. So I did not sit down upon the rocks as I had meant to do, but climbed to the peak of the mountain, where the little shrine stands against the sky. There, remembering what is due to the gods and to the soul through whose truth we know them, I lifted my hand to Zeus the Father, and vowed him an offering, because he had given Sokrates in due time his sons.
After a while I thought I would go to the City and find him; he seemed always to know when one was fit to listen and not to speak. Then I saw from the mountain the road to Lysis’ farm. He had not asked me for help; yet he was short-handed, and perhaps he had only thought I would rather see friends in the City. There was always the chance, too, of a stray band of Spartans getting through the Guard. I was ashamed that I had let him go alone. So I went down, and borrowed a horse from Xenophon, and rode out to do what he might need.
22
WE SAW ALKIBIADES PROCLAIMED upon the Pnyx supreme leader of the Athenians, a place that only Perikles had held before him; we cheered him as he stood on the great stone rostrum, his bright hair crowned with a wreath of golden olive, looking over the City like a charioteer above his team. We saw the curse pronounced against him for impiety thrown on its lead tablet into the sea; and marched with him along the Sacred Way, escorting the Procession of the Mysteries to Eleusis in King Agis’ teeth; the first time since Dekeleia fell that the City had dared to send it by land. We saw him received into the great temple, like the Goddess’s favourite son.
Even his enemies joined in the paean of praise, lauding his victories so that the people, who never tired of gazing, would send him off to get more. It was said in those days that he need only have whistled, and Athens might have had a king again. Had he not come when we were beaten to our knees, and oppressed with tyrants, and made us the masters of the sea? But he left for Samos again before three months were up; and when people marvelled at his modesty, we who had come with him only laughed.
We thought for our part that we could guess his mind. Nothing would content him now but to win the war. He was not moderate in any of his desires, but above all he liked to excel. It would be a sweet day for him when King Agis came suing for terms of surrender. The war had lasted twenty-three years now; he had been engaged in it, on one side or another, since he was a young ephebe, whom a sturdy hoplite, one Sokrates, had pulled out wounded from under the spears at Potidea, giving him back his life to use as he chose.
So we said goodbye to friends and kindred, and made ready to sail. Once, before I left, I went back to Mikkos’ school to watch the boys at exercise. But this time my old trainer was there, and kept me talking; so it was only for a moment that I saw the boy Aster, standing with the javelin poised at his shoulder, aiming at the mark.
We sailed to Samos, and dined out with envious friends upon our news from the City, and settled down to the war again.
But lately, over in the Spartan base at Miletos, we found that there had been a change. We had profited well in the past from their stupid old custom of changing admirals every year. Sometimes the man they sent had never even been to sea before. Just lately the time had come round again. The new man was called Lysander.
It did not do nowadays, we found, to reckon on a Doric wit. He had contrived very soon to meet the young Prince Cyrus, Darius’ son, a heart of fire in whom Marathon and Salamis rankled as if they had been yesterday. The Spartans he forgave; no one had lived to boast of Thermopylae. It was the Athenians who had turned the host that drank the rivers dry. So he gave Lysander money enough to raise his rowers’ pay.
Neither side owned slaves enough to row a fleet. Each used free aliens mostly, who worked to make a living. Ours, therefore, began at once slipping over to Lysander. He had moved his fleet from Miletos, where we had had it under our eye, north to Ephesos. There, where a deserter from us could reach him in a day, he sat at ease, drilling his men, choosing the best rowers, and spending Cyrus’ silver darics on timber and pitch.
We had all been ready to push on to Chios, whose capture would have been decisive. None of us doubted it would fall to Alkibiades; after all, he had taken it before, when it was ours. But now, with Lysander’s fleet between, and not enough silver to bid against him for rowers, we must wait for money from Athens, or sail to squeeze tribute out. One does not expect a commander-in-chief to sail on such petty missions, when his mind is fixed on total victory. For the first time on Samos, Alkibiades was bored.
As men make light of the first signs of sickness, so did we of the change we began to find. We were angry with the Athenians at home, for plaguing him with despatches about the delay; the injustice put us on his side. “Let him be merry sometimes,” we said; “by Herakles he has earned it.” If when we wanted orders the street of the women had swallowed him up, we laughed, and saw to it for him, and said that when he had work worth while he would be there soon enough. If he was drunk, he was not silly drunk; and we put up with a good deal of insolence from him because he had a way with him even then. But we seldom saw him on the ships. The rowers we had were a rough lot, the remnant when Lysander had picked the market over; if their pay was behind, they would grumble and curse even in his hearing, knowing we dared not pack them off. He would make a joke of it, or would not hear; but I think it burned his soul, even from scum like these. He was in love with being loved, as some people are with loving.
From this cause, I fancy, more than from indolence, he came less and less aboard, and used to send his friend Antiochos instead.
I can’t pretend that I disliked this man as much as some did. On the Siren Lysis always offered him a drink, saying to me that it was a pleasure to hear anyone talk who knew his work so well. If he was vain of his seamanship, he was a fine seaman, bred to it from childhood; he could both sail a ship and fight it, and the most villainous rowers cringed before his eyes. As things were, he was much fitter for the harbour drill than Alkibiades; he had humour too, or you may be sure they would not have been friends so long. But if he got on a ship where the trierarch stood on his dignity at getting his orders through a pilot, or would not be told anything, he lost patience quickly, and was not very careful of his tongue. He had come from the people; if he did not expect to have it thrown at him in a city like Samos, I do not blame him; however, he was very much resented. The more so because Alkibiades, whose fortunes he had shared through all the years of exile, would never hear a word against him.