I suppose he had picked up this argument from someone like Dionysodoros. Though still untrained in logic I could smell a fallacy. “If Alkibiades broke the Herms, everyone agrees it’s the worst thing he has done. So when he was with Sokrates he must have been better than he is now, mustn’t he? You don’t even know yet if he did it at all. And,” I said, becoming angry again, “as for Lysis, he only wanted out of kindness to put me at ease.” Midas sucked in his cheeks. “Certainly. Why should anyone doubt it? However, we know your father’s orders.”
I could think of no answer to this, so I said, “Father told you I wasn’t to hear the Sophists: Sokrates is a philosopher.”—“Any Sophist,” said Midas sniffing, “is a philosopher to his friends.”
I walked on in silence, thinking, “Why do I argue with a man who thinks whatever will earn him his freedom in two years? He can think what he likes then. It seems I can be more just than Midas, not because I am good, but because I am free.” He walked a foot behind my elbow, carrying my tablets and lyre. I thought, “When he is free he will grow his beard and look, I should think, rather like Hippias. And if he chooses, he can strip for exercise then, with other free men; but he is getting old for that, and might not care to show his body, soft and white as it must be.” I had not seen him naked in all these years; he might as well have been a woman. Even when he was free he would still be no more than a metic, an immigrant, never a citizen.
Once long before, I had asked my father why Zeus made some men to be Hellenes living in cities with laws, some barbarians under tyrants, and others slaves. He said, “You might as well ask, my dear boy, why he made some beasts lions, some horses, and other swine. Zeus the All-Knowing has placed all sorts of men in a state comformable with their natures; we cannot suppose anything else. Don’t forget, however, that a bad horse is worse than a good ass. And wait till you are older before you question the purposes of the gods.”
He met me in the courtyard when I got home, with a myrtle wreath on his head. He had got together what was needed for the purification of the house, water from the Nine Springs, frankincense and the rest, and was waiting for me to serve at the rites with him. It was a long time since we had needed to perform them, and then it was only because a slave had died. I bound the myrtle round my head and helped him with the lustrations, and when the incense was burning on the household altar, made the responses to the prayers. I was glad to finish, for I was hungry, and the smell from inside told me that my mother had cooked something good.
I ought to write my stepmother for clearness’ sake; but I not only called her Mother, but so thought of her, having known no other. Her coming had, as I have explained, saved me from much misery; so it seemed that such and not otherwise a mother ought to be. It made no difference in my mind that she was only about eight years older than I was, my father having married her when she was not quite sixteen. I daresay it might have seemed to other people, when she came, that she behaved to me more like an elder sister who has been given the keys; I remember that often at first, being uncertain about the ways of the house and not wanting to lose authority with the slaves, she would ask me. Yet because when unhappy I had dreamed of a kind mother, and she was kind, she seemed to me the pattern of all mothers. Perhaps this was why at my initiation into the Mysteries, having been shown certain things of which it is unlawful to speak, I could not be as much moved by them as the candidates I saw around me. The Goddesses pardon me, if I have said amiss.
Even in looks she might have been my sister; for my father had chosen a second wife not unlike the first, being, it appears, fond of dark women. Her father had fallen at Amphipolis with a good deal of glory; she kept his armour, in an olive-wood chest, for he had no sons. I think for this reason he must have been in the habit of talking to her with rather improper freedom; for when she first came to us, she used often to ask my father questions about the war, and events in the Assembly. About the first he would sometimes speak; but if she became persistent about business or politics, as a kindly reproof he would walk over to the loom, and praise her work. So now, when I smelt the good food cooking, I smiled to myself, thinking, “Dear Mother, you have no need to coax me, who for a bowl of bean soup would tell you all they are saying in the City.”
After the meal, then, I went up to the women’s rooms. She had been weaving for some time a big hanging for the supper-room; scarlet, with a white ship in the centre on a blue sea, and a border of Persian work. She had just finished the centrepiece. At a smaller loom one of the maids whom she had taught was weaving plain cloth; the sound went smoothly on, while the noise of the big loom would change its pace with the pattern.
She asked me first how I had done at school. To tease her I said, “Not very well. Mikkos beat me, for forgetting my lines.” I thought she would at least ask what made me forget them, but she only said, “For shame.” Seeing her look round, however, I laughed, and she laughed too. The tilt of her head made one think of a slender bird with bright eyes. As I stood beside her I saw I had been growing again; for whereas our eyes had been level, now mine looked upon her brows.
I told her all the rumours that were going about. When she was in thought, her eyebrows lifted at the inner ends, making a hollow between them in her forehead, which was very white. “Who do you think did it, Mother?” I asked. She said, “The gods will reveal it, perhaps. But, Alexias, who will command the Army now, instead of Alkibiades?”
“Instead?” I said, staring. “But he must command. It’s his own war.”—“A man charged with sacrilege? How can they put the Army under a curse?”—“I suppose not. Perhaps they won’t go to Sicily, then, at all.” My face fell, thinking of the ships, and all the great victories we had looked forward to. My mother looked at me and, nodding her head, said, “Oh, yes, they will go. Men are like children who must wear their new clothes today.” She wove a couple of lines and said, “Your father says Lamachos is a good general.”—“He has been laughed at rather too much,” I said. “He can’t help being so poor; but when he indented for his own shoe-leather last time, Aristophanes got hold of it, you know, and started all these jokes about him. But Nikias will consult him, I suppose.”
She stopped weaving and turned round, the shuttle in her hand. “Nikias?” she said.—“Of course, Mother. It stands to reason. He has been one of the first of the Athenians ever since I remember.” And indeed, a citizen of my father’s age could still have said this.
“But he is an old sick man,” she said. “He ought to be taking soup in bed, not crossing the sea. And he had no stomach for the war from the very first.” I saw she knew something of events already; no doubt every woman who had the use of her legs had been running from house to house, under excuse of borrowing a little flour or a measure of oil. “Still,” I said, “he would be a good man if the gods are angry. They’ve never lost him a battle all his life. No one has paid them more attention than he has. Why, he has even given them whole shrines and temples.” She looked up. “What is it worth to the gods,” she said, “to be feared by a man who fears everything? How should he lose battles? He never took a risk.”