I marvelled that no one had thought before of something so simple. My father went on, “He was condemned out of hand, by order of the Thirty, and was dragged off from the very altar of the Sacred Hearth, crying on gods and men for justice … He was good to you, Alexias, when you were a boy, so I daresay you will be glad to hear that he died creditably. When they gave him the hemlock, he drank it straight off, all but the lees; those he tossed down, and called, ‘This for Kritias the Beautiful.’ Even the guards laughed at it.”
He paused. I said, staring at him, “But, Father, how do you know that?”—“I was with him,” my father said. “He has been my friend these thirty years. When we were lads, we served in the Guard together. There was a notion, in the beginning, that the City was going to be governed by gentlemen. Because Kritias has forgotten it, we need not all do so, I suppose.”
He glanced at the tile where the will was buried, and tapped it down with his foot. “Over Apollo’s sanctuary,” he said, “at Delphi, the navel of the earth, is written ‘Nothing too much.’ Extremes breed one another. I have tried to give you a decent education; yet you, too, instead of learning from the sight of tyranny to fear all extremes, can only fly from one to its opposite. And a man like Theramenes, who has risked his life often, and given it at last, in the cause of moderation, gets nothing for it but a vulgar nickname. There is some reason, I suppose. Well, he is dead. The Council made no difficulty when I asked to attend him in the prison. Kritias said they were glad to know who his friends were.”
I opened my mouth, to say I know not what; but I could see he thought me a fool, and it made my tongue heavy. “You must be out of the City, Father, before the night. I will go and hire the mule I go to the farm on; no one will notice that. Will you go to Thebes?”—“I shall go to my land,” he said. “It will take a better man than Kritias to send me chasing over the border like a slave on the run. A hundred years and more before we owned any house in Athens, the farm was our home. It is a pity we left it. Men are better watching the seasons, and putting good into the earth, than running together in cities, where they listen all day to each other’s noises and forget the gods. Acharnai is quite far enough.”
“I doubt it, sir. I beg you to go to Thebes. The Thebans hate Lysander now more than they ever hated us; they have sworn not to give an Athenian up to him. Some of our best men are there.” I was going to name Thrasybulos, but remembered in time. “I should have gone myself, if it had not been for the harvest. Leave the farm to me; I will see to that.” At length he said unwillingly that he would go to Thebes. “Take your sister,” he said, “to the house of Krokinos. Though only a cousin he has family feeling; he offered to take her of his own accord. I have arranged for her keep.”
At the fall of dusk I led round the mule. As he mounted, I saw he was shivering. “It’s this accursed fever,” he said. “I knew I was in for a turn. It’s nothing; I have taken the draught for it. The air is better in the hills.”—“Give me your blessing, sir, before you go.” He blessed me, adding immediately after, “Don’t fill the house while I am gone with drunken sailors, or those young nincompoops from the scent-shop. Perform the sacrifices on the proper days, and keep some decency in the place.”
Afterwards I led Charis to our cousin’s house. “Please,” she said, “can’t I stay with Thalia and Lysis? I liked being there.”—“You shall go again, when Father comes home. Just now Lysis might have to go away too, and Thalia would be at his sister’s then.” She did not ask where our father had gone, or why. I never knew a child of her age with so few questions. A year or two before, she had been full of them.
Krokinos’ house was overflowing with women to the doors. A good fellow, as unlike as possible to his father Strymon, he and his wife had taken in the womenfolk of their remotest kindred, if they were exiled or had to fly. Strymon himself, after getting through the siege without losing any flesh to speak of, had died a month afterwards of a chill on the belly.
Next day early, I packed a bag and set out for the farm, on an ass I had hired outside the walls. On Lysis’ advice, I meant to stay there for a week or two. There was plenty to do, and no sense in being about the City when my father was missed. Lysis had promised to come often and bring me news.
It was a beautiful fresh morning when I rode into the hills. Everywhere the wasted farms had started to bear again. In one they were treading the grapes. A little bare boy, driving goats, gave me a smile of milk-teeth and holes. The birds were singing; the cool westward-leaning shadows were the colour of Athene’s eyes. I rode up to the farm, humming to myself The King’s Wife of Sparta. Then I saw that the door stood open.
I thought the place must have been broken into, and ran inside. Nothing seemed disturbed, except one of the beds, which had a blanket on it. But as I walked about, I found my foot was leaving a stain on the floor. Going back to the door, I saw what I had trodden in.
I followed the blood-trail down the path, and across the farmyard. As first there were footsteps, then the marks of hands in the dust, and of a body dragging itself along. Up on the hillside, a mule was cropping the scrub.
I found him at the well, lying on the stone of the well-head, his head hanging over the shaft. I thought he was hours dead; but he said, in a voice like dry grass brushed with the foot, “Draw me some water, Alexias.”
I laid him down, and drew water, and gave it him. He had been stabbed in the back, and again in front when he turned to fight. I don’t know how he had lived so long. When he had drunk, I bent to raise him, and carry him to the house; but he said, “Let me alone. If you move me I shall die; I must speak first.”
I knelt beside him, and dipped my cloak in the water, and cooled his face with it, and waited. “Kritias,” he said. I answered, “I shall remember.” He sunk back into himself, being near his death, and his mind lost in shadows. Presently he said, “Who is it?” I answered, and he came to himself a little.
“Alexias,” he said, “I gave you life. Twice over I gave it.” I said, “Yes, Father,” thinking he wandered. Then he said, “An untimely birth. Sickly and small. One could foresee no credit in you. A man has a right over his own stock. But your mother …” He paused; not as before, but with his eyes on me, seeking strength to speak. I said, “Yes, Father; I owe you a debt.”
He muttered to himself; I heard a few words: “Sokrates” and “Sophists” and “young men today.” His eyes widened, and he pressed his clenched hands back upon the earth; and lifting his voice, as one might lift a heavy stone, he said, “Avenge my blood.” Then he shut his eyes, and turned his head away, and muttered again.
I took his hand, and grasped it hard, till his eyes turned towards me. “Father,” I said, “since I was seventeen I have borne arms for the City. I have not run off any field, though I was fighting strangers only, who had done me no wrong. Am I so base of soul as to forgive my enemies? Believe, Father, that you begot a man.”
His eyes met mine; then his lips parted. I thought he was grimacing in pain, but perceived presently that he was trying to smile. His hand closed on mine, so that his nails pierced my flesh; then it slackened, and I saw that his soul was gone.
Soon after, the hired men, who had fled from the murderers, came back ashamed. I did not reproach them, for they had no arms, but set them to dig a grave for him. At first I had meant to burn his body, and bring back his ashes to the City; but remembering his own words, I buried him in the old plot of our ancestors, which they used long ago before we lived in town. It is a little way up the hill, above the vineyards, where the earth is too poor to farm; but you can see a long way from it, and pick out, when the sun is right, the flash from the High City, when it strikes Athene’s spear. I set the offerings on the grave, and poured the libations. As I sheared my hair for him, I recalled that it was the second time; and yet, I thought, the first time too it was not unfitting.