“Surely you are a kakodaimon, spawned from some pit of Tartaros!” Thettalos burst out. “We should have dealt with you before you sailed for Sicily.”
“You had your chance,” Alkibiades answered. “When the question of who mutilated the herms first came up, I asked for a speedy trial. I wanted my name cleared before the fleet sailed. You were the ones who delayed.”
“We needed to find witnesses who would talk,” Thettalos said.
“You needed to invent witnesses who would lie, you mean,” Alkibiades answered.
“They aren’t lying. They speak the truth,” Thettalos said stubbornly.
“I tell you, they lie.” Alkibiades cocked his head to one side. Yes, that was the sound of hoplites moving through the city, shields now and then clanking on greaves and corselets. And that was the sound of his name in the hoplites’ mouths. He’d told the truth here after all. By all appearances, his soldiers did hold Athens. He turned back to the men in the Tholos. “And I tell you this is your last chance to surrender and spare your lives. If you wait till my main force gets here, that will be too late. What do you say, gentlemen of Athens?” He used the title with savage irony.
They said what he’d thought they would: “We yield.” It was a glum, grumbling chorus, but a chorus nonetheless.
“Take them away,” Alkibiades told the soldiers with him. “We’ll put some honest people in the Tholos instead.” Laughing and grinning, the hoplites led the men of the Boule out into the night. Alkibiades stayed behind. He set down his shield and flung his arms wide in delight. At last! he thought. By all the gods-if gods there be-at last! Athens is mine!
As if nothing had changed in the polis, Simon the shoemaker drove hobnails into the sole of a sandal. As if nothing had changed, a small crowd of youths and young men gathered under the shade of the olive tree outside his shop. And, as if nothing had changed, Sokrates still argued with them about whatever came to mind.
He showed no inclination to talk about what had happened while he was away. After a while, a boy named Aristokles, who couldn’t have been above twelve, piped up: “Do you think your daimon was right, Sokrates, in urging you to go to the west?”
However young he was, he had a power and clarity to his thought that appealed to Sokrates. He’d phrased his question with a man’s directness, too. Sokrates wished he could answer so directly. After some hesitation-unusual for him-he said, “We won a victory in Sicily, which can only be good for the polis. And we won a victory in Sparta, where no foreign foe has ever won before. The Kings of Sparta are treating with Alkibiades for peace even while we speak here. That too can only be good for the polis.”
He sought truth like a lover pursuing his beloved. He always had. He always would. Here today, though, he wouldn’t have been disappointed to have his reply taken as full agreement, which it was not. And Aristokles saw as much, saying, “And yet you still have doubts. Why?”
“I know why,” Kritias said. “On account of Alkibiades, that’s why.”
Sokrates knew why Kritias spoke as he did-he was sick-jealous of Alkibiades. The other man had done things in Athens Kritias hadn’t matched and couldn’t hope to match. Ambition had always blazed in Kritias, perhaps to do good for his polis, certainly to do well for himself. Now he saw himself outdone, outdone by too much to make it even a contest. All he could do was fume.
Which did not mean he was altogether wrong. Alkibiades worried Sokrates, and had for years. He was brilliant, clever, handsome, dashing, charming-and, in him, all those traits led to vice as readily as to virtue. Sokrates had done everything he could to turn Alkibiades in the direction he should go. But another could do only so much; in the end, a man had to do for himself, too.
Aristokles’ eyes flicked from Sokrates to Kritias (they had a family connection, Sokrates recalled) and back again. “Is he right?” the boy asked. “Do you fear Alkibiades?”
“I fear for Alkibiades,” Sokrates answered. “Is it not reasonable that a man who has gained an uncommon amount of power should also have an uncommon amount of attention aimed at him to see what he does with it?”
“Surely he has done nothing wrong yet,” Aristokles said.
“Yet,” Kritias murmured.
The boy ignored that, which most men would have found hard to do. He said, “Why should we aim uncommon attention at a man who has done nothing wrong, unless we seek to learn his virtues and imitate them?”
Kritias said, “When we speak of Alkibiades, at least as many would seek to learn his vices and imitate them.”
“Yes, many might do that,” Aristokles said. “But is it right that they should?”
“Who cares whether it is right? It is true,” Kritias said.
“Wait.” Sokrates held up a hand, then waved out toward the agora. “Hail, Kritias. I wish no more of your company today, nor that of any man who asks, ‘Who cares whether it is right?’ For what could be more important than that? How can a man who knows what is right choose what is wrong?”
“Why ask me?” Kritias retorted. “Better you should inquire of Alkibiades.”
That held enough truth to sting, but Sokrates was too angry to care. He waved again, more vehemently than before. “Get out. You are not welcome here until you mend your tongue, or, better, your spirit.”
“Oh, I’ll go,” Kritias said. “But you blame me when you ought to blame yourself, for you taught Alkibiades the virtue he so blithely ignores.” He stalked off.
Again, that arrow hadn’t missed its target. Pretending not to feel the wound, Sokrates turned back to the other men standing under the olive tree. “Well, my friends, where were we?”
They did not break up till nearly sunset. Then Aristokles came over to Sokrates and said, “Since my kinsman will not apologize for himself, please let me do it in his place.”
“You are gracious,” Sokrates said with a smile. Aristokles was worth smiling at: he was a good-looking boy, and would make a striking youth in two or three years, although broad shoulders and a squat build left him short of perfection. However pleasant he was to see, though, Sokrates went on, “How can any man act in such a way on another’s behalf?”
With a sigh, Aristokles answered, “In truth, I cannot. But I wish I could.”
That made Sokrates’ smile get wider. “A noble wish. You are one who seeks the good, I see. That is not common in one so young. Truth to tell, it is not common at any age, but less so in the very young, who have not reflected on these things.”
“I can see in my mind the images-the forms, if you like-of perfect good, of perfect truth, of perfect beauty,” Aristokles said. “In the world, though, they are always flawed. How do we, how can we, approach them?”
“Let us walk.” Sokrates set a hand on the boy’s shoulder, not in physical longing but in a painful hope he had almost abandoned. Had he at last met someone whose thoughts might march with his? Even so young, the eagle displayed its claws.
They talked far into the night.
King Agis was a short, muscular man with a scar on the upper lip he shaved in the usual Spartan fashion. His face wore what looked like a permanent scowl. He had to fight to hold the expression, because he plainly kept wanting to turn and gape at everything he saw in Athens. However much he wanted to, though, he didn’t, which placed him a cut above the usual run of country bumpkins seeing the big city for the first time.
“Hail,” Alkibiades said smoothly, holding out his hands. “Welcome to Athens. Let us have peace, if we can.”
Agis’ right hand was ridged with callus, hard as a rower’s. He’d toughened it with swordhilt and spearshaft, though, and not with the oar. “Hail,” he replied. “Yes, let us have peace. Boys who were at their mothers’ breasts when we began this fight are old enough to wear armor now. And what have we got for it? Only our homeland ravaged. Enough, I say. Let us have peace.” The word seemed all the more emphatic in his flat Doric drawl.