“You’ll excuse me, friends,” he said, using a sort of hail, I suppose the only way he knew to make his voice carry, “for putting myself forward; but I took my oath. I was bosun’s mate on the old Eleutheria. All I’ve got to say is, when she went down, I caught hold of a meal-bin, and it kept floating. There was a lot of my mates in the sea all about, and some of the marines, wounded mostly, and knew they couldn’t last long. I heard someone shout out, ‘Antandros,’ that’s my name, ‘Antandros, if you get home, tell them we did right by the City.’ And another says, ‘And tell them what we got for it. Drowned like dogs. You tell them, Antandros.’ And I took my oath, which a man ought to abide by. So you’ll pardon the liberty. Thank you.”
He went running down from the rostrum; there was a moment’s silence, then a roar you could have heard at Eleusis. Someone shouted out that anyone who opposed the will of the people ought to be tried himself, along with the generals. We cheered our throats dry. It felt like giving the paean, or being drunk at the Dionysia, or like the last lap of the race when the crowd wants you to win. But not quite like.
So it was put to the presiding senators, whether the trial was in order, and there could not be much doubt of what their verdict would be, if only for their health’s sake. But they seemed to be a long time about it; people began to whistle and call; till at length the crier stood up, and gave out that they could not agree.
Where I was, we could not see them; but we made ourselves heard; especially when word was passed along that only one old man was standing out. We were asking only one life each from these cowards, who bore the guilt of hundreds; and they would die in more comfort than our friends in the rough autumn sea. People were asking each other who was this senile quibbler to set himself up a little jack-in-office chosen by lot for the day. “Has he ever carried a shield?” someone shouted; and I said, “I suppose he has no sons.”—“Who is it?” we called to those who were nearer. A voice shouted back, “Old crackpot Sokrates, son of Sophroniskos the sculptor.”
As the shock of an icy stream to the drunkard stumbling and singing; as the alarm of battle to a man sweating in the bed of lust; so these words came to me. The noise and heat died in me, leaving me naked under the sky. I had been many, but now I was one; and to me, myself, grey-eyed Athene spoke from the High City, saying, “Alexias, son of Myron, I am justice, whom you have made a whore and a slave.”
When I came back from the silence within me, and heard the noise going on just as before, I could not believe it. I had felt that everyone’s eyes must have been opened in the same moment as mine. I looked about me, but the faces were all as before, shouting with their mouths open, all alike, like a sounder of hogs.
I turned to the man beside me. He looked like a person of some schooling, a merchant perhaps. “We are wrong,” I said. “We ought not to overthrow the law.” He turned round and snapped at me, “What do you know about it, young man?”—“I was there,” I said. “My ship was sunk in the battle.”—“All the more shame to you,” he said, “for taking the fellow’s part. Have you no feeling for your shipmates?” Soon afterwards, the crier gave out that since only one senator opposed the motion, the others had passed it without him.
I dropped a white pebble in the urn, and, as it left my hand, tried to think that it made me clean.
Lysis overtook me on the slope below the Pnyx. Always my example in courage, it was he who spoke first.
“You know,” he said, “how the wind comes down in those parts, from the hills of Ionia; blowing a gale, when a mile away it’s no more than a capful. It might even be true that the storm prevented them.” I said, “Alkibiades would have come.”—“Yes, if he had a pilot. The truth is, Alexias, our navigation’s not what it once was. Even in my few years I’ve seen a change. Alkibiades knew, and Antiochos. These new men are about the common run of captains now. One of them was wrecked himself. We have killed them as a child kicks the bench it bruised its shin on. What has become of us?”
“I have done injustice,” I said. We were shouldered as we walked by men disputing, and justifying themselves; but some were laughing, and betting on a cockfight. After being a long time silent, he said, “Madness is sacred to the gods. They give it us at the proper season to purge our souls, as they give us strong herbs to clean out our bodies. At the Dionysia we are a little mad; but it leaves us clean, because we dedicated it to a god. This we offered to ourselves, and it had defiled us.”
“Don’t talk so, Lysis. I’m sure you kept your head much better than I did.” He smiled, and quoted a certain phrase, recalling a personal matter between us. Then he said, “Am I getting old, to find myself always thinking, ‘Last year was better’?”—“Sometimes it seems to me, Lysis, that nothing has been the same since the Games.”—“We think so, my dear, because that was our concern. If you asked that potter over there, or that old soldier, or Kallippides the actor, each would name his own Isthmia, I daresay … It has been a long war, Alexias. Twenty-four years now. Even Troy was only ten.”
We were crossing the Agora just then; he pointed to some women at a stall and said, “When that child there was born, it had lasted already as long as Troy, and now she is almost a woman.” His voice must have carried more than he meant, for the maiden looked up, and stared at him. He smiled at her, and she parted her lips in answer, her face lightening for a moment; she was in mourning, and looked peaked and pale. The woman with her, who did not seem like her mother, spoke sharply to her, though one could see she had only thought as a child does. I said to Lysis, “She must have lost her father in the battle.” He looked after her, over the heads of the crowd, and said, “Yes, and the last of her brothers too. There were three.”—“You knew them, then?”—“Oh, yes. I even know the child herself. She almost spoke to me, till she was reminded she is older now. She is Timasion’s daughter, who was trierarch of the Demokratia.”
Meanwhile the child was being led away through the market. You could tell from their backs that the woman was scolding her still. Lysis said, “What will become of her, I wonder? That sour-faced bitch is the eldest son’s widow, I suppose. It’s a hard time of life to make such a change. She had a slapdash kind of upbringing; the mother, who is dead now, was usually sick, and little Thalia seemed to be always with her father or the young men. Up to last year, even, they no more thought of sending her out when I came than a hand-reared pup; you know how it is sometimes with a late-born child. One son was killed at Byzantium, and one here in Attica in a raid. Then Timasion and the last boy went out just now with the Athenian flotilla. That finished the family, except for this poor little remnant.”
He walked on in thought. When presently I spoke to him he did not hear. “She was quite pretty,” he said, “before this happened; at least, she had a good little face. That woman will get her off her hands to the first offer, I suppose, no matter whom … They were good stock, Timasion and his sons. I knew them all.”
“Lysis!” I said, staring at him. “What are you thinking of? She doesn’t look more than twelve years old.” He reckoned on his fingers. “Well, she was born three Olympics ago, the year Alkibiades won the chariot-race; so she must be rising thirteen, at any rate.” Then he laughed and said, “Why not? One can have patience in a good cause; there are plenty of women meanwhile. Look how much better a horse is, if you have him from a colt.” After a moment I said, “Well, then, why not, Lysis, if you think so?” I recalled all my anticipations, so different from this; and yet, as soon as one thought, it was exactly like him.