What passed that day between Plato and his kinsman, none of us ever knew. If you ask how a man of twenty-four could put shame into one of five-and-forty, when Sokrates himself could not, I have nothing to say, except that Sokrates defied the Thirty, and lived. It was a saying of his, which all his young men knew by heart, that when you assume the show of any virtue, you open a credit account, which one day you will have to meet or go broke. It may be that what Kritias had seemed to his nephew was worth something to him. No man is all of a piece. If I had myself to choose someone who should find me out in a lie, Plato would come very low upon my list.
Nowadays, as in my boyhood, I went much to Piraeus, but for a different cause. One breathed the air of the sea there; and the quiet was not the quiet of the City above. They were quiet like seamen who have got a bad captain, and are all of one mind. One day the yard will fall from the block, or a hawser be stretched ankle-high on a dirty night.
Lysis and I were walking there, to a certain tavern where one could talk freely. As we passed through Spice Street, where some of the women have their houses, we saw one of them come out in a mourning veil, and lock up her door, and walk away with her head bowed, on which two others, who were gossiping in the street, turned and laughed at her. Lysis stopped when he saw it, and said to them. “Come, girls, don’t mock at grief. The gods don’t like it. Tomorrow it might be our turn.” One of them tossed her head at him. “May they send me nothing worse than what she suffers! A man who, if he had ever seen her again, wouldn’t have known her from a Hyperborean, you may be sure. Such airs and graces. She to mourn for Alkibiades!”
We stared, and stopped in our tracks, and said, “For whom?”—“Oh, hasn’t the news reached the Upper City? The Chian trader brought it. Dead in Phrygia, so they say; but like as not it’s another of his tricks. Never mind him; come in, tall darling, and take some wine with us. My sister will look after your friend.”
We hurried to the tavern, and found pilots and captains vowing and swearing Alkibiades was not dead. He was at Artaxerxes’ court, making alliance with him; or raising an army of Thracians to free the City. There was even a rumour that he was in hiding in Piraeus. But in the City, Xenophon said to me, “Sokrates believes it, and has gone away to meditate. If it were false, his daimon would have told him.”
Next day we met some Chians from the ship, and questioned them. One said, “He was killed over a woman. How else would Alkibiades die?” And another, “He had her in his house, and the men of her family came after him. Six to one they were, but it seems no one cared to be first. They threw torches at the thatch while he was sleeping. He woke up, and choked down the fire with the bedding, while he got out with the girl; then he ran at them naked, with only his sword, and his cloak round his arm for a shield. None of them would stand up to him; so they shot him full of arrows at twenty paces, by the light of the fire. And that was the end of him.”
Often, on campaign, he would come and sit at our watch-fire, to scrape and oil. He was vain of his body, fair-haired and glossy brown, clean as good food; the only marks he had were an old white spear-wound, and, sometimes, a love-bite from a woman. I saw his eyes, drowsy and blue, in the light of the crumbling embers. “Who’ll give us a song, before we turn in? You sing, Alexias. ‘I loved you, Atthis, I loved you long ago.’ Sing us that.”
Lysis said to the Chian, “What girl was this?”—“I don’t know her City. A girl called Timandra.”—“But he had her in Samos. She was a hetaira.”—“She buried him,” said the Chian, “whoever she was. Wrapped him in her own dress, and sold her bracelets to put him down in style. Well, fortune’s a wheel, sure enough. Brought up by Perikles; raced seven chariots at Olympia; and buried by a whore.”
Afterwards Lysis said to me, “If that girl had father and brothers, it’s long since they went seeking her. And men revenging their honour show a little more spirit, or they stay at home. But hired killers aren’t paid to shed their own blood. In Phrygia … yes, he must have been going to Artaxerxes. I wonder if King Agis ordered it, or someone nearer home.”
All over Piraeus, and up in the City, you could hear people declaring in the street that Alkibiades was not dead. In some of the poor quarters, more than a year after they were saying it still. But the Thirty went about cheerfully, like men who have shed a fear.
One day I came home from the farm, where we were getting our first small harvest in. The olives had put out strong shoots again; one, which had been only half scorched, was even bearing. I had brought home the crop, and came in calling, “Father, look here!” His voice from within said, “What is it?” At the sound, I put down the panier, and came in quietly. He was at his desk, his papers before him. “Sit down, Alexias. I have things to say to you.” I came and sat down by him, looking at his face.
“These,” he said, “are the deeds of the farm. Here are the deeds of the Euboean land; waste paper today, but the future no man knows. I have no debts. Hermokrates still owes us a quarter’s rent, and can now afford to pay it.”
I looked at the paper on the desk, and saw what it was. “Father,” I said.—“Don’t interrupt, Alexias. Kydilla, after her long service, ought to have been bequeathed her freedom. I have put nothing in writing, but express to you as my wish that when the estate can run to it, you will find her if you can, and buy her out. The time I leave to your honour and common-sense. Don’t give your sister Charis in marriage before she is fifteen years old. Alkiphron of Acharnai has a likely son, and the lands march; but times are uncertain, so that too I must leave in your hands.”
I heard him till he had done. “You know, Father, I will do all you ask; God keep it far from us. What has happened?”—“Have you not heard, then, that Theramenes died today?”
“Theramenes?” Even of Alkibiades I could believe it sooner: he was an acrobat, as Kritias once had said; one knew that some day the rope would break, or the sword slip. But Theramenes was shrewd like a mountain fox, who does nothing for show, and digs no earth without a second door. “Murdered,” my father said, “by the Council, under the form of law.” He tipped a loose tile in a corner, set so well that I had never seen it, and put the will in the hole. “If when you come for this you find other papers, burn them, but read them first. I should wish you to know you are the son of a man who did not consent to tyranny.”
“I never supposed it, Father. Through my own fault you do not know me.” And I tried to tell him what I had been doing. But he was displeased to hear I had made connections in Piraeus. “I had sooner you spent your time with flute-girls. I thought no good would come of your going to sea, and mixing with riff-raff.”—“Father, we will talk of that later. What happened today?”
“Kritias indicted Theramenes on a charge of treason. In his defence before the Senate, he did not deny that he opposed the Council, as its aims are now. He accused Kritias boldly in turn, of having betrayed the principles of the aristocracy, and set up a tyranny instead. I have no time to give you his speech, but I never heard an abler. The whole of the Senate, except the notorious extremists, acclaimed him at the end. About our verdict there could be no doubt, nor the sequel; he had put Kritias in the dock in his room. But meantime, a rabble of young louts had crowded in upon the public floor. Before the verdict could be voted on, they began shouting, and waving knives: men of no city, metics out of work, soldiers broke for cowardice, such men as take to the trade of hired bully for money or from choice. These, Kritias said, had come to make known to us the people’s will. Well, some of us who had faced a Spartan battle-line had seen bigger men. We pressed for a vote. Then Kritias reminded us that only the Three Thousand have right of trial; and holding up the list, he crossed the name of Theramenes off it.”