“I don’t think so,” I said. “Indeed I don’t know what you mean, unless that Sokrates thinks it foolish to choose archons and judges by lot. He says no man chooses a doctor by lot, when his son is sick. Would you?”
His face darkened, and I saw I had stirred some thought that vexed him. “Take my advice,” he said, “and don’t stay till he corrupts your mind, and leaves you without principle or religion or reverence for anything, as he has other young men.”—“Corrupts me? Before I talked with Sokrates, I did not know what religion meant. It would be late to leave him now, Anytos. Since I was a child he has been as a father to me, and much more.” I saw a vein swell in his forehead; and when he spoke again, I perceived he had passed beyond logic, and was delivered up entirely to himself. “More than a father! You have said it. There is the root of the evil. Who can guide a lad better than his own father, I should like to know?”—“It depends,” I said. “A pilot might, don’t you think, if he were at sea? Or a physician, if he had fever? The City seems to think even I can do it better, when the boy is learning to run.” And I began to speak of those who were competing in the torch-race, thinking to calm him. But he was angrier than before.
“Quibbles!” he said. “Everlasting quibbling, eating away the decent principles every man’s instinct should tell him are true. How does he get this hold over young men? By flattering them, of course; making them think they have a mission in life to be something out of the way, like that head-in-air young fellow who was sneering at the Demos just now; teaching them that to work at a good trade, where they could learn the meaning of true democracy in give-and-take with their mates, is a waste of their precious souls; that unless they can dawdle about with him all day in the colonnades, talking away everything sacred, they will turn to clods—just like their poor fathers, who have only sweated blood that they might live as citizens and not as slaves.”—“He was brought up to a trade himself, and is proud of it. All the City knows that.”—“Don’t speak to me of Sokrates. If young men don’t pay for his lessons, by the Dog, their fathers pay.”
I followed his eyes, knowing beforehand, now, what I should see. His son, Anthemion, a youth of about eighteen, was sitting a little way further on, in a group of tradesmen’s sons, who were gazing at him admiringly. From the sound of their laughter, he had just told a very dirty tale; and as I looked, he beckoned back the wine-seller, as I had seen him do already two or three times. Crude as the stuff was, he was drinking it unmixed, as men do who cannot be without it, a youth with pale hair and brows, a flushed quick-moving face, and desperate eyes.
“He is taking more than is good for him,” I said. “All his friends are sorry for it. In the days when he was coming to Sokrates, I never saw him drink at all. I don’t think he is happy. Not, I am sure, from thinking himself too good to work in your tanyard, but perhaps because it keeps him from using something in himself, as it might be with a bird, if you caged it when its wings were growing”—“Twaddle!” he said. “What does he think he is? He will serve his apprenticeship like anyone else. I fought for equality between man and man. No one shall say of me that I brought up my son to be better than his fellow citizens.”
“Must we forsake the love of excellence, then, till every citizen feels it alike? I did not fight, Anytos, to be crowned where I have not run; but for a City where I can know who my equals really are, and my betters, to do them honour; where a man’s daily life is his own business; and where no one will force a lie on me because it is expedient, or some other man’s will.”
The words seemed, as I spoke, to be my own thoughts that I owed to no one, only to some memory in my soul; but when I looked beyond the Stadium, to where they were kindling the lights on the High City in the falling dark, I saw the lamps of Samos shine through a doorway, and the wine-cup standing on the table of scoured wood. Then the pain of loss leaped out on me, like a knife in the night when one has been on one’s guard all day. The world grew hollow, a place of shadows; yet none would hold out the cup of Lethe to let me drink.
“No,” I thought, “I would not drink it. For here he lives in the thing we made: the boys down there, dancing for Zeus; people watching in freedom, their thoughts upon their faces; this silly old man speaking his mind, such as it is, with none to threaten him; and Sokrates saying among his friends, ‘We shall either find what we are seeking, or free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.’”
I looked down the benches, and saw him in conversation with the wine-seller, from whom Chairophon was buying a round. The flambeaux had been kindled ready for the race, showing me his old Silenos mask, and Plato and Phaedo laughing. I touched the ring on my finger, saying within me, “Sleep quietly, Lysis. All is well.”
The voice of Anytos, some while unheeded, came back into my ear. “He taught you a new religion, too, you say. I can believe it. Even the holy Olympians are not good enough for him. He must have his own deity to give him oracles, and sets it above the gods of the City. He is impious; he is anti-democratic; in a word, he is un-Athenian. I am not the only one who has had enough of it. Only influence in high places has kept him from getting his deserts long since. But this is a democracy.”
I turned to look at him, and saw his eyes. Then I knew what it was in his voice that had caught my ear. It was the feel of power. A cold wind blew up the stream of the Dissos, and swept along the Stadium. It flattened the flame of the torches, and the black night leaned down.
Someone reached from above and touched my shoulder. “Aren’t you coming, Alexias? Your boys are looking for you. It is getting near starting-time; the dance is over already, and they are going to sing the hymn.”
As he spoke, the choregos raised his wand, and the young boys’ chorus rose into the fading sky, like a flight of bright birds, invoking Zeus the King, the All-Knowing, giver of wisdom, and of justice between man and man. I rose to my feet, the voice of Anytos running on beside me; and before me in the torchlight Sokrates talking to Phaedo, with the cup in his hand.
This book I found among the papers of my father Myron, which came to me at his death. It must be, as I suppose, the work of my grandfather Alexias, who died suddenly in the hunting-field, I being then a young. child, and he about fifty-five years old. I have bound it up as it was, being able to find no more of it. Whether my grandfather had finished the book, I do not know.
ALEXIAS, son of Myron, Phylarch of the Athenian horse to the divine Alexander, King of Macedon, Leader Supreme of all the Hellenes.
NOTES ON SOME OF THE CHARACTERS
Alexias AND HIS FAMILY are all fictional persons.
Lysis appears in Plato’s eponymous dialogue on Friendship, as a lad of about fifteen. Plato quite commonly draws youthful portraits of people (e.g. Charmides, Alkibiades) who were in fact considerably his elders. The family details there given of Lysis suggest he was a real Athenian; but no more is known of him, beyond a comment of Diogenes Laertius that “by conversing with Sokrates, Lysis became an excellent person.” Even this may well be only a gloss upon Plato.
The account here given of Phaedo’s origins is from Diogenes Laertius. He calls him an Elian; but Grote points out that the Melians, not the Elians, were enslaved at a consistent date. After Sokrates’ death Phaedo lived in Elis, founding the Eleatic School, noted for its severe negative dialectic, derived from Sokrates’ elenchos. Athenaeus says that Phaedo used to disclaim the opinions Plato attributes to him. But the Phaedo attributes none; which strongly suggests that Plato, from delicacy, made Simmias and Kebes the spokesmen of a scepticism meant for his. Perhaps he had abandoned it; perhaps he thought his own dialectic would have been less easily demolished. It seems clear that a widening intellectual gulf separated the two friends.