One morning early, we fell on the guard who held the pass, caught them on one leg at getting-up time, and chased them down into the plain. Soon we heard news of panic among the Thirty. Even the Three Thousand, once the core of their support, did not trust them since Theramenes had been struck off the roll. We rejoiced to hear it; but not when we got the proof of how deeply they feared.
After hubris, nemesis; but madness lets her in. They needed a refuge now, to fortify against extremity; and they chose Eleusis, because at the worst they could fly from it by sea. But having deserved good of no one, they did not trust the Eleusinians not to give them up. So on pretence of an Army exercise, they marched them through a narrow gateway, and had each one seized as he passed beyond. Every man and grown youth of Eleusis they murdered; but not with their own hands, taking like men their guilt before the gods. They dragged them to Athens, and charged them before the Senate as perilous to the City, not deigning to offer any further charge. The voting was open; guilty this side, innocent that; and the Senate was packed with Spartans in heavy arms.
The Senate voted death. So low they had gone, it was only one step lower. But it was the last. They were at the bottom of the pit; and some still had eyes to see it. When the news came up to the mountains, we knew that in the sight of gods and men our time had come.
All next morning we made ready. At noon we ate and rested, for we should not sleep that night. When Lysis and I had seen to our arms, he said to me, “We look rather too much men of Phyle. Let us make ourselves fit to be seen in the City.” We trimmed each other’s hair, but were in two minds whether to part with our beards or not; we had good ones by now, and were at home with them. But Lysis said laughing, “I want my wife to know me again.” We both shaved in the end, and were glad when it was done; it made us feel we were going home.
When the light was changing on the mountains, we sacrificed a ram, and poured libations. The soothsayer told us the signs were good, and we stood and sang our paean. Soon after we fell in, to begin our march, for we had a good way to go across the hills.
Just before the trumpet, Lysis and I stood on the walls, and looked down the Cleft of the Chariot, to see Athens shine, clear gold picked out with shadows, in the slanting winter sun. I turned to him and said, “You look sad, Lysis. It has been good here, but we are going to be better.” He smiled at me and said, “Amen, and so be it.” Then he was silent for a time, looking out at the High City, and leaning on his spear. “What is it?” I said; for my mind was full of memories, which I felt he shared. “I was thinking,” he said, “of the sacrifice just now, and of how one ought to pray. It is right for men setting out on a just enterprise to commend it to heaven. But for oneself … We have entreated many things of the gods, Alexias. Sometimes they gave, and sometimes they saw it otherwise. So today I petitioned them as Sokrates once taught us: ‘All-Knowing Zeus, give me what is best for me. Avert evil from me, though it be the thing I prayed for; and give me the good which from ignorance I do not ask.’”
Before I could reply to him, the trumpet sounded, and we went down to the gate.
The turn of the year was past; the light saw us through the mountains, and when we reached the plain of Eleusis, dusk hid us on the road. No enemy met us. The Thirty were watching the pass, to guard the farms. A little after midnight, skirting the shore, we came into Piraeus.
At first all was silence. Then the town awoke; but not to outcry or confusion. We had come as a good long watched for, in the sullen patience of men born to the sea. The rumour ran along the streets, and the houses opened. Men came out with swords, with knives, with axes or with stones; women came, decent wives rubbing shoulders with hetairas, bringing cakes or figs, and bold with the darkness thrust them into our hands. The metics came out: Phrygians and Syrians and Lydians and Thracians, whose kin the Thirty had killed and plucked, with no more pity than the farmer’s wife choosing a cockerel for the pot. When the dawn broke, we knew that all Piraeus was ours, as far as feeling went. But feeling does not pierce heavy armour; nor do stones. The stand was taken, but the battle was still to come.
The frosty sun peered over Hymettos; the day grew bright; and from the roofs we saw the enemy coming, the horses first, and then the hoplights, advancing from the shadow of the Long Walls, into the sunlight of Lysander’s breach. When it was pretty clear we were outnumbered five to one, and had no hope of holding the outer defences, we fell back upon the old fortress of Munychia, where the ephebes train. On the rocky road that climbs from the market to the citadel, we took our station, those of us who were heavy-armed, to hold the passage. Behind us, swarming on the rocks, were the men of Phyle who had light arms or none, and the people of Piraeus with cleavers, knives and stones.
Then, as one finds in a war, there was a pause. The army of the City was sacrificing, and making its dispositions. Behind us the people shouted to each other; over the harbour, the gulls wheeled and called; down below one heard an order, a horse neighing, the rattle of grounded shields. We fell to the idle-sounding talk of soldiers who wait. I remember saying, “When did you mend your sandal, Lysis? What a botch you have made of it. Why didn’t you ask me, for you know I do it better?” And he said, “Oh, there was no time; it will last the day.” Then came a trumpet, and the march of armour, and the enemy came into the market-place below.
It looked very wide, emptied of its traffic, with bare stalls; there had been no trading in Piraeus that day. The troops marched in, filling it from side to side, and, as line followed line, almost from end to end. I think their shields were fifty deep. I know that ours were ten.
As they deployed, we began to know them. It was no place for horses; the knights were on foot, but you could tell them by the gold on their armour, their crests of worked bronze. One could do more than pick out a man here and there, yet I thought, “Xenophon is not with them,” and was glad. Then to the left we saw the standard; and Thrasybulos called in his great voice, “The Thirty are there.”
He spoke to us, as he used to do in Samos, of our just cause; reminding us of the gods’ favour, when they saved us with the snow. “Fight, each man of you,” he said, “so that the victory will feel like yours alone. You have everything to win: your country, your homes, your rights, the sight of your lovers and your wives; joy if you live, glory if you die. There stand the tyrants; vengeance is ours. When I strike up the paean, take the note from me, and charge. We wait upon the gods.”
He turned to the soothsayer, who had made the sacrifice, and now came forward, the sacred fillet on his head. He passed through us to the front as if he neither felt nor saw us. I knew by his eyes that Apollo possessed him. “Be still,” he said. “The god gives victory; but first a man must fall. Till then stand fast.” Then he called on the name of the god with a loud cry and said, “It is I.” And on the word he leaped forward, upon the line of shields below. For a moment, in the suddenness, they stood unmoving; then the spears thrust at him, and he fell. And the walls of Munychia echoed back Thrasybulos’ voice, shouting the paean.