We crept up to the main gate, just before the guard was due to change again. The moon was down. Someone gave the countersign; when the gate opened, we held it while others thrust in. By good luck, the postern over the gorge, where the rubbish is thrown out, had been left unguarded; the drop is steep, but some of our mountain men climbed in there.
I never saw a garrison so confounded. They hardly resisted, once they understood who and what we were. The officer in charge, thinking of his reputation, put up a fight; but Thrasybulos took him on, and, holding him off without wounding him, asked him across their shields why he was concerned to maintain his honour before rulers who had none themselves, when he might be earning himself a liberator’s undying fame. In the end not only he, but half the garrison took the oath with us, and looked, I thought, five years younger and gayer. The rest we held in bonds till it was light, and we could see where they went; then keeping their arms we let them go.
Later Lysis and I, standing the morning watch upon the walls, saw the sunrise. It came red and purple, for winter drew on, and up there one felt already the nip of frost. Then gold touched the heights; but below us the great cleft of Phyle, which they call the Swallower of Chariots, was a river of unfathomed mist. Light spread; the mist dispersed; far out through the gorge we saw the Acharnian Plain, threaded with a little road; and at the road’s end, dimly shining, the walls and roofs of Athens. In the midst the High City, like an altar, lifted her offerings to the gods. For a long time we gazed in silence; then Lysis said to me, “I think we are seeing the dawn indeed.”
27
ON THE SECOND DAY after, we saw from our walls the army of Athens advancing.
The sky was cloudless, of a thrush-egg blue. Horse and foot they wound along the road, like beads stitched on a ribbon, hardly seeming to move; then the mountains hid them. A little before sunset, we saw them close at hand, upon the pass. We watched the line of men thrown round us, first a thread, then a cord, then a great cable, thick as the girdle of a ship. Five thousand men, I believe, sat down that evening before Phyle. The baggage-train streamed over the bridlepath, bringing their food. When it was finished, more would come. We had only what had been laid in for a force of fifty, and that part-eaten.
They lit their fires, and bivouacked for the night, and pitched tents for the leaders. The Thirty themselves were there. All of us now saw how it was likely to end. But not one, I think, would have exchanged Phyle for Athens. Under our eastern wall, so deep that the pines on its sides looked as small as brush, was the Cleft of the Chariot. There was a door open still to freedom, when the food was gone.
All night the stars shone bright above us, the watch-fires bright below. The dawn was clear. It brought a herald, who bawled at us to surrender to the Council. We laughed, and answered as each man thought good. At the foot of the hill, some of the knights were watching their horses being groomed; rich young men, campaigning like gentlemen. One or two came forward and, with taunts, shouted to us to come down. “No,” we called, “you come up. Honour the house. Make us happy.” Suddenly a score or so jumped on their horses, and put them at the hill; perhaps from bravado, perhaps hoping that if they could reach it, they might force the gate.
Phyle was well off for javelins. From the walls I marked down a man who was coming up just below. One or two others would have done as well, but I chose this one to punish his insolence: a well-built fellow, sitting his horse as if he had grown there, showing its paces.
He too was armed with the javelin. He got ready as he rode up the hill; but downward one throws harder. He had seen me; we took aim together: then, in the moment before we both let fly, he checked with a great start, as if I had hit him already. His horse felt it, and reared, spoiling my aim. Struggling with his mount he got his helmet twisted, and thrust it back in order to see. It was Xenophon. For a moment, as he sat the prancing horse with his head flung up, we stared into each other’s eyes. Then he rode round the side of the wall, and I saw him no more.
The knights were beaten off, and several wounded. There was no more fighting that day. Thrasybulos counted the stores. Then he assembled us, all but the lookouts, and asked us to pray all together to Zeus the Saviour, that, as he loved justice, he would not let it perish out of Hellas along with us. We prayed, and sang a hymn. The evening came down, solemn and red, the air cold, not a breath stirring. And in the night, Zeus the Saviour leaned out to us, and opened his hand.
His hand opened; and, from a sky filled till then with great white stars, came a fall of snow. Cold as the breast of Artemis, and stinging like her arrows, all night it fell, and when day broke it was still falling. The mountain heights stood in the snow-whirl like a world of white marble veined with black. Down below were the thin tents of the besiegers; and the many who had no shelter, huddled round smoking, damp fires, beating their bodies, stamping their feet to keep them from freezing, wrapping up the starved horses in blankets they needed themselves. An army of beggars gazed up in envy of our wealth. We called down to them, inviting them to visit us, and we would see that they were warm.
All day it snowed; but by noon they had had enough. The Thirty, used by now to comfort, were the first to go. Then the knights had pity on their shivering horses; then the hoplites marched off; and then, strung out below us, a banquet spread as it were by heaven, the long cumbrous baggage-train, creeping half-foundered in the snow. We flung the gates open. Yelling the paean, as men for whom the gods are fighting, we charged down the hill.
We left red snow that day; and carried up to Phyle food and fuel and blankets to keep us like kings for a year.
We were snowed up for a time. Then volunteers began to come. Most were proscribed exiles: democrats; or gentlemen too touchy in their honour to please the Government; or simply people whose estates one of the Thirty had fancied for himself. But one or two came from the army that had besieged us; even before the snow they had thought it looked better up the hill. Their soothsayer came, a burning silent man; Apollo had warned him, through the aspect of the sacrifice, not to serve men hateful to the gods.
We were a hundred strong; then two; then three. All Attica, and Megara, and Thebes, heard of the Men of Phyle. We were seven hundred. When bad weather drove us all indoors, there was hardly room to sleep.
The Thirty set a guard on the pass, to keep us from the farms; but we had our own ways across the mountains. We were never short of stores. Some we were given for love, some we took from necessity. Our best sport was raiding our own estates. There were scores of us who had had land stolen by the tyrants. They looked after it well, as I found when we raided mine. I had never seen it so thriving and well-stocked since I was a child.
When the work was well on, I found a slave hidden in a grain-bin. “Get out,” I said, “and tell me who farms this land. Then you can run free, for all I care. This if you lie.” I showed my dagger. “By the Arrow of Bendis, my lord” (he was a Thracian) “my master’s name is Kritias.”
I let him go, and went up between the vineyards, with a white cock in my hand. On my father’s grave I killed it, to comfort his shade, and as an earnest of things to come, and to show Kritias who had called.
Within a short time the Thirty had had many such reminders; and up at Phyle we were a thousand men. Though only a few could bring armour and weapons with them, all the news was that the tyrants hardly trusted Lysander, even, to protect them now.
It was still deep winter; but hope was strong in us, hard and firm as the buds furled up in the armoured trees. We had no slaves, and were all servants of one another, cooking and cleaning and fetching water in. I never tasted such cold sweet water as it is in the spring at Phyle. There was a gladness in us, such as I have seldom known. I remember tramping a windy hill-track, laden with fuel, singing, and talking of the future when the City was free. Lysis said he was going to get a son; “though if a daughter comes first, no matter; little girls make me laugh.”—“I shall write,” I said, “to those Theban lads, Simmias and Kebes. We owe them some hospitality. They are longing to hear Sokrates.”—“Their famous Philolaos,” Lysis said, “is rather too mathematical for me.”—“Yes, but I shall introduce them to Phaedo. I am sure he would enjoy hearing them talk.”