The Last of the Wine (50 page)

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.

We ran down the hill. The slope made our feet light, our purpose gave us wings. It was like the last lap of the race, when the Eros of victory lifts one. I know I killed and killed, yet I felt no anger, more than the priest who sheds the blood of the victim. Lysis and I fought side by side, pressing onward, feeling the line of the enemy bend before us, and give, and shatter to shards. They were many; but their crust was thin, their centre was soft; they were men not at peace with the gods, or with their own souls. In a little while, if a man of them still stood firm, he was one with nothing to lose. It was while the battle hung so that I heard a voice, trying to rally the line; the voice of a speech-maker, not used to the talk of the field where a man speaks to man. I knew it; and leaping forth from Lysis’ side (for till now we had gone forward step by step together) I made for it through the press.

I came on him by the stall of a potter, which stood empty at the side of the square. In silence I had tracked him down, not calling his name, or any challenge, for I knew that many desired his company as much as I. Like a lover I sought him, keeping my rivals in the dark, feeling my way. Then he was before me, and through his helmet-slits I saw his eyes.

As we leaned shield to shield, I said, “You courted me once, Kritias. Now am I close enough?” But he only gritted his teeth and panted; for I had been living hard, he softly, and his breath was short. I turned his shield with mine, and thrust at him, and wounded him in the leg. “Do you know me?” I said to him. “I am Myron’s son.” I waited for his face to alter; but except when it jerked at the spear-thrust, it did not change; and I understood that this one name meant nothing to him, among the many he had sent to death. Upon this I felt a rage at him, so that my strength flared up like a torch; and leaning hard on him till I bore him backward, I hooked his knee with mine, as I had seen Lysis do it in the pankration; and he went back with a clatter of armour against the racks of the potter’s stall.

He clutched a shelf, and it came away; he rolled, and fell on his back, and I leaped upon him and pulled his helmet off. Then I saw his hair was streaked with grey; his face being drawn with fear looked shrivelled as with age, and my stomach turned at killing him; till I remembered he had forgotten my father’s name, and thought, “A beast is under my knees, and not a man.” So I drew my sword, and thrust it through his throat, saying, “Take this for Myron.” He gasped, and died. Whether he heard me I do not know.

When he was certainly dead, I leaped up, and saw the battle swaying all about me. I lifted my voice and shouted, “Lysis!” For I thought it long till I could tell him what I had done. I heard his voice rising above the din call, “Alexias! I am coming!” Then it seemed that a great rock fell on me; I was crushed and flung into darkness; the sounds of the battle reached me without meaning, as a child near sleep hears voices in another room.

I came to myself in a courtyard, full of wounded men. In the centre was a fountain, playing into a basin lined with blue tiles, such as the Medes make. My head ached, and I felt very sick. I must have been struck down with a blow on the helmet, and stunned, but my head was not bleeding; the wound was in my hip, just below the corselet-rim. It was deep, and my blood lay all about me. I must have been speared when I fell. The stain was black and dry at the edges, where it had flowed over the marble tiles; so I knew I had been there some time.

I was thirsty, and the sound of the water made my thirst more. Then when I wished to drink, I thought for the first time, “Am I a captive, or free?” And turning my head towards a man lying near me, I said, “Have we won?” He gave a great sigh, and rolled his head towards me. I saw he was near death. “We lost,” he said, and closed his eyes. Then I knew him, altered as he was; it was Charmides. I had seen him before the battle, down in the market-place among the knights. I called him by name, but he spoke no more.

I began to crawl towards the fountain, the knowledge of victory giving me heart; but a man who could walk, and use one arm, brought me some water in a helmet. I drank, and thanked him, and asked if the battle was long over. “An hour gone,” he said, “and they have declared a truce to gather up the dead. I was there myself till lately. The Thirty have fled; and before I left, the people taking up the bodies were talking together, men of both sides.”

He told me more, but I was too weak to heed it. I looked at my blood on the floor, and trailed my hand in it, and thought, “Well spent.” For a while I rested; an old woman came out and tied a cloth over my wound; then I opened my eyes and felt better, and began to look about me, and to feel impatient for someone to come and carry me to my friends.

I heard the feet of men bearing a burden, and turned to call to them. But they were carrying a dead body on a shield. The head hung back, and the legs dangled from the knees, and a horseman’s cloak was thrown over all, so that the face was hidden. I did not know the cloak, and was turning away, when I saw the two men look at me, and then at one another. Then I felt my heart turn to water, and my wounds grow cold. The feet were showing beneath the cloak, and one of the sandals was mended.

I found a voice, and called to the men, who at first pretended not to hear me. But they stopped when I called again. I said, “Who is it?” Each of them waited for the other to speak; but presently one said, “I am sorry, Alexias.” And the other said, “He died very well. Twice after he was struck he got upon his feet, and again after that he tried. We must go on, Alexias, for he is heavy.”

I said, “Do not carry him any further. Leave him here with me.”

They looked about the courtyard, which was crowded by this time, and then at each other again; and I saw what was in their minds, that wounded men do not like to be with the dead. So I said, “I will go with you, then,” and got up from where I lay, and followed after them. In the porch I found a spear with a broken head, and took it to lean on. We went a little way, and came to a small pavement before an altar. There was a broken wall beside it, and dust upon the stones; but I could not walk any longer, so I said, “This place will do.”

They put him down, and, excusing themselves to me, took away the cloak and the shield, for they had other bodies to fetch. He had been wounded between neck and shoulder; it was the bleeding that had killed him. He was so drained of blood that his flesh was not discoloured as one sees it in the dead, but like a clear yellow marble. There was blood on his armour, and in his hair. His helmet was off; his open eyes looked, as he lay, straight upward at the sky, as if they asked a question. I had to press my hand over them a long time, before they would close.

His body had not stiffened yet, but his skin was growing cold. He lay already as one of the unnumbered dead. Always, from my first remembrance, whether he rode, or walked, or ran, or stood talking in the street, as far as I could see him I knew him apart from all other men; nor was it possible, in the darkest night, to mistake another’s hand for his. Now the flies were beginning to come, and I had to drive them away.

I was weak as a young child, in mind and body, and yet I could not weep. That is well, you may say; for when a Hellene dies commendably, even a woman ought to restrain her tears. I too from my first youth had been taught what is proper to be felt on such occasions; nor had I been ignorant that what I loved was mortal. Yet now I was as a stranger to the earth, and to my own soul. For it said to me that if there be any god who concerns himself with the lives of men, the god himself must suffer with me. And when I thought that the Immortals live far off in joy, holding eternal festival, then it seemed to me that the gods were not.

After I do not know how long, the men who had carried him came back, to see how I was. I said I was well enough, and asked if they had seen him fall. They said no, but they had heard him praised by those who had; and one said he had been there later, when he died. I asked him if he had spoken to anyone.

“Yes,” said the man, “he spoke to Eukles, whom he knew better than me, and asked about you; he seemed afraid you might be dead. He said you had cried out for help to him; and I think he got his wound trying to reach you. We told him you had been carried off the field, but not hurt mortally, and he seemed content, and rested a little. By that time his mind was growing clouded, and he was beginning to yawn, as I have seen other men do when bleeding to death. Then he said, ‘He will care for the child.’ Had he one, then? But I suppose you know what he meant.” I answered, “Yes. Did he say anything else?”

“Seeing he was nearly gone, Eukles asked if he wished to leave you anything for remembrance. He said nothing, but smiled. I daresay he had not heard. But when Eukles asked again, he said, ‘Whatever there is.’ Eukles showed him he had a ring on, and he tried to draw it off, but it had been there a long time and from weakness he could not. Eukles has it for you; he got it off after he was dead.

“At just this time, the troops of the City fell back altogether from the Agora, leaving us masters of the field; and Thrasybulos ordered the trumpet to sound for victory. He opened his eyes and said, ‘Is that for us?’ I told him yes, and he said, ‘Then all is well, isn’t it?’ Eukles answered, ‘Yes, Lysis; all is well’; and with that he died.”

I thanked him, and they went away. When they had gone, I lifted his hand, and saw how they had bruised it, pulling off the ring for me. Then I wept.

Presently from the walls of Munychia I heard the victors singing a hymn of praise to Zeus. As I listened, my head swam, and my senses melted in darkness; for walking had opened my wound, and it had been bleeding again. Then men were lifting me upon a litter, and debating together whether I was alive. I did not speak, for it seemed no matter; but lay with closed eyes, listening to the triumph song.

A
YEAR LATER, ON
a warm day in spring, I went up to the High City, to receive an olive crown.

It was only one of seventy, which the City had voted to Thrasybulos, and the men who went with him to Phyle. The civil war was over, and the tyranny crushed for good; for Lysander had over-reached himself in Sparta, intriguing for a kingship; King Pausanias had got wind of it, and moved to set him down. Seeking to sap his power everywhere, and thinking it policy besides, the kings had given us leave to set up a democracy again. So the City gave thanks to Zeus, and pledged itself to a rule of perfect justice between man and man.