Alcibiades' tent, Aspasia Three (the main streets of the seven fortified camps ringing the city had been named each after a famed courtesan of Athens), had become this nexus. This was in consequence not alone of his celebrity but of the wit and converse of his tentmates, who included in their number of sixteen your own master Socrates (renowned then less as a philosopher than a doughty and stalwart campaigner, forty years of age), the celebrated actor Alcaeus, Mantitheus the Olympic boxer, and Acumenus the physician. These fellows were the most fun.
Everyone wanted to be with them. An invitation to dine at Aspasia Three was more highly prized than a decoration. For that reason I had avoided Alcibiades, not wishing to push myself uninvited upon him and also because I judged the status of our friendship to be cordial but remote.
Now, however, the gravity of my situation compelled me to come forward. I waited till that hour when the evening meal would be concluded, then hiked the mile to Aspasia Camp, seeking only a few moments of Alcibiades' time, perhaps to speak with him outside the tent and get him to put in a word for me with the brass.
I had thought I could simply rap at the post and get it over with.
To my surprise, and in contrast to the other snug-battened precincts of the camp whose lanes stood dark and vacated save the odd trooper dashing from one shelter to another in the cold, the court fronting Alcibiades' tent burned bright with torch and brazier, the intersection of the lanes milling gaily with a motley of off-duty officers and infantrymen, wine sellers, jugglers, sweets bakers, a party of acrobats in midperformance upon a stage of logs, and a professional fool, not to mention a number of gap-toothed trollops from the whores' camp, loitering in high spirits. The aroma of spitted meat augmented the cheer; bonfires blazed upon the earth, which had thawed and was churned by the press of celebrants. As I wedged through the crush, the tent flaps parted and there emerged to the air the most dazzling specimen of womankind I had ever seen.
Her hair was russet; her eyes of such violet they seemed to flash like diadems in the torchlight. She was mantled crown to toe in sable and escorted by two cavalry officers, six-footers, clad in the ermine-fringed cloaks of the enemy. Of the besiegers none attempted to lay hands upon them; in fact our lads drew the party's mounts before them, boosting them onto the horses' backs.
The lady trotted off not in the direction of the city, but up the slope toward that bluff called the Asclepium where, I later learned, a cottage of spruce had been erected for her use and her bodyguards'.
“That's Cleonice,” a fried-onion vendor volunteered.
“Alcibiades' girl.”
I would doubtless have remained marooned on the doorstep all night had not my host's cousin Euryptolemus chanced to pass, seeking the tent, and, recognizing me, tugged me forward. He informed me in merry spirits that the gentlewoman Cleonice was the wife of Machaon, the wealthiest citizen of Potidaea. Alcibiades had initiated a liaison with the lady, seeking through her husband to facilitate the betrayal of the town from within. “Now she's fallen in love with him and refuses to go home. She even claims to be carrying his child. What can one do?”
Euryptolemus, whom his companions called Euro, instructed me to wait while he ducked inside. Moments later I heard Alcibiades' laughter; the flaps parted and I found myself tugged clear of the mob and welcomed to the warmth within. “Pommo, my friend, where have you been keeping yourself? Not alone in the woods with those innocent boys!”
Alcibiades, I was informed, had appointed himself master of revels. He sat upon the bench of honor, with his crown before him, cheeks flushed with wine. He had been wounded; beneath his tunic one could see his wrapped ribs. He introduced me as his mate of the Boilers and ordered a seat and a bowl of wine. He had heard of my troubles. “Is it true you called your commander a pimp?”
My arrival had interrupted a discourse; I sought to deflect attention from myself and let the talk resume. The party would not hear of it. I was asked by the Olympian Mantitheus to state my objections to a little harmless ash-hauling. I replied that such acts were far from innocuous, but degraded the morale of the youths in my charge.
“I have a younger sister, Meri,” I found myself appending with passion. “I would eviscerate the man who so much as laid a hand on her garment absent my father's leave. How then may I stand by and watch other maidens despoiled, even the daughters of the enemy?”
This elicited an ironic chorus of “Hear, hear.” To my surprise the advocate who sprang to my defense was Alcibiades. His posture was greeted with amusement both wry and derisive, which he endured with good nature. “You may laugh, gentlemen, to hear me, whose reputation as a seducer of women is not inconsequential, take up the cudgels in behalf of the fair gender. But I of all may claim to know how it feels to be female.”
He paused and, turning to me, declared that I must set aside all concern regarding the charges lodged against me. Strings would be pulled. For now I must drink, not moderately as the Spartans, but deep, Athenian-style, so as to overhaul the company which had got the start of me. Otherwise, my host asserted, the jests would not seem as droll or the discourse as profound. He turned to his companions and resumed.
“Consider, my friends, that a beautiful youth is much like a woman. He is paid court to, flattered, celebrated for virtues he does not yet possess, and in general acclaimed for qualities which are not of his own making but accidents of birth. And do you not smile, Socrates, for this is much to the point of that matter upon which you were presently discoursing. I mean the disparity between the true self of the political man and the mythos he must project to participate in public life. I was stating, nor did you impeach its veracity, that I or any other who enters politics must be two: Alcibiades, whom my friends know, and 'Alcibiades,' that fictive personality who is a stranger to me but whose fame I must fuel and fashion if my influence is to prevail in the arena of policy.
“A beautiful woman is in the same fix. She cannot but perceive herself as two creatures-the private soul known to her intimates and that external proxy presented to the world by her good looks.
The attention she receives may be gratifying to her vanity, but it is empty and she knows it. She comes to resemble those urchins during the Festival of Theseus who wheel painted barrows with bulls' horns on the front. She recognizes that her admirers love her not for herself, that is, the wheeler, but for that fancy she wheels before her. This is the definition of degradation. It is why, gentlemen, I came very young to despise those suitors who paid court to me. I recognized even as a child that it was not myself they loved. They sought only the surface, and for reasons of their own vanity.”
“And yet,” Mantitheus the boxer put in, “you do not rebuff the advances of our comrade Socrates, nor reject the friendship of ourselves, the remainder of this company.”
“That is because you are my true friends, Mantitheus. Even were my face as punched-up as your own, you would still love me.”
Alcibiades endeavored to induce Socrates to resume his dissertation on that subject which my arrival had interrupted, but before he could, the actor Alcaeus returned the topic to the shamed women of Potidaea.
“Let us not employ lightly, gentlemen, the word 'degradation.'
War is degradation. Its object is the ultimate degradation-death.