24
WHEN WE KNEW THAT Athens was alone now, we went up to the High City and took the oath of fellowship. Someone proposed it who remembered the oath on Samos. I remembered too. A lark had sung when we raised the hymn to Zeus, and the smoke rose into the deep blue ether, high as the gods. Today autumn was setting in; the sky was grey over the sun-dried hills; when the priest made the offering, a cold wind blew smoke and ashes into my face.
Night and day we waited for the Spartans, watching the walls. But Athenians came instead to the City.
They were not the captives from Goat’s Creek. Those Lysander had put to the sword, three thousand men. They came from the Hellespont cities which had opened their gates to him. Wherever he found a democracy he overthrew it. The worst oligarchs everywhere were already his creatures. They held down the people for him; he gave them the lives of their enemies, and confirmed them in their estates. In a few weeks they slaughtered as many men as the war had killed in years. It seemed to the Spartans at home that Lysander was putting all these lands under the heel of his City, while he was getting into his own hands more power than the Great King.
Wherever on his march he found Athenians, soldiers or traders or colonists, he spared them, and gave them safe-conduct, provided they went nowhere but to Athens. All along the Theban Road, over the passes of Parnes, and down into the plain, they trudged with their wives and children, their bedding and their cooking-pots. All day they walked with dusty feet through the gates of the City, and set down their loads, praising the mercy of Lysander.
Then, when they had rested a little, they went to the market for food.
We had closed the ports of Piraeus as soon as we knew we had no ships to hold them. Only little Munychia was left without a boom, for the corn-ships. At first one or two came in from the Hellespont, which had got through before the battle, and a couple from Cyprus. The corn was stored under armed guard. But next day as many sacks had to be issued; with all the new mouths, the market was eaten bare. Presently Lysander’s fleet was sighted, two hundred sail. They folded their wings on Salamis, and picked it clean. Then they perched there, their eyes upon Piraeus, and waited.
Sparta indeed did us honour; she sent us both her kings. King Pausanias marched his army over the Isthmus and up to the walls. In the Academy gardens he pitched his tents; we could see on the sand-track the Spartans racing, or throwing the disk. They closed the road to Megara; then King Agis came down from Dekeleia, and closed the road to Thebes. Winter came on, first with cold sunlight, then with cold rain. In a little while, even the smallest child could understand Lysander’s mercy.
It was not for some weeks that people began to die. At first it was the very poor, the very old, and those who were sick already. As things got scarcer prices got higher; food took all people had; trade dropped, men fell out of work, rents were not paid to those who had lived on them; every day the army of the poor was growing, and when people had been poor for long enough, they died.
The corn was given out by the government, a measure a head. The measure got smaller each day, and last comers got none. The head of the household had to get it. My father used to get up before dawn; many waited all night. People used to take cold when the nights were bad; in this way very many died.
At home, however, we lived pretty well at first. Nowadays the man with a mule was as rich as the man with a horse. Ours was quite young, and salted down almost like venison. When my father killed it, I said, “We must send Lysis a portion. You know we always do when we sacrifice, and he sends to us.”—“We are not sacrificing,” my father said. “A mule is not a proper beast to offer to a god. One cannot keep up every convention now. Your Uncle Strymon, though he is pretty well off and my own father’s brother, sends nothing to me.”—“Then take it from my share, Father. Often enough in battle Lysis has shed his own blood, to save mine. Now am I to grudge him the flesh of a mule?”—“There are five thousand men in the City, Alexias, who have shed blood in battle for all of us alike. Shall I send to each of them?” But he sent in the end. A little while after, Lysis sent us a dove. I knew when we met that it distressed him to have sent nothing better, and that he must have gone short for it. It was the same everywhere, except among the rich; but it came hard on those who had said with Pythagoras, “There is no mine or yours between us.”
When the corn measure was down to half a pint a head, it was determined to send the Spartans envoys, and ask their terms for peace.
The envoys rode out to the Academy; and people watching them recalled how, after Alkibiades took Kyzikos, and again after our sea victory off the White Isles, the Spartans had offered peace, on condition of each side keeping what it had, except for Dekeleia, which they would give back to us if we would take the oligarch exiles in. Because of this last, the democrat leader, Kleophon, had roused up the people to demand nothing but a fight to the finish, promising victory. Now they brought him up on a charge of evading military service, and put him to death. But they say a man ought not to look back, when he comes to the end.
Our envoys were soon home, for the kings would not treat with them. It was a matter, they said, for the ephors of Sparta. So we sent them off again, on their long ride over the hills and the Isthmus; and they were empowered to offer the Spartans, now, what they had asked, each side to keep what it had. Only now they had everything, except the City itself, and Piraeus, and the Long Walls.
The harbours were over-fished, and the catch grew less each day. When people heard from some courtyard the sound of an octopus being beaten on a stone to make it tender, they would look at each other, as they used to when the frontlet of an ox was hung before the door. A pint of oil sold for two drachmas, if you could find it.
Then the envoys came back again. It was a grey wet day, with great clouds coming in dark from the sea. From the top of the Pnyx you could see the waves capped with white as far as Salamis, and Lysander’s ships making for port. The envoys stood up; and one look at their faces made the cold seem colder. The Spartans had turned them back on the frontier, when they heard their offer, and told them to come back with something serious. Let Athens acknowledge the rule of Sparta as subject ally, and pull down the Long Walls for the length of a mile. Then there might be talk of peace.
Out of the silence, a voice cried, “Slavery!” We looked out towards Piraeus, and saw the great walls of Themistokles thrust out to the harbour, guarding the road, like a man’s right arm reaching out from the shoulder to grasp his spear. Only one senator proposed surrender, and he was voted a prison sentence, for dishonouring the City. Then we went down from the hill, each man’s mind going back to the matter of his next meal.
I stopped on my way at Simon the Cobbler’s to get my sandal patched, and ran into Phaedo at the door. It was a week or so since I had seen him; he was getting rather thin, but having beautiful bones he had changed his looks, rather than lost them. I asked how he was, not liking to ask how he was living. “Oh, I’m well enough while the paper lasts. People still buy books, to take their minds off their bellies. And I get a little teaching nowadays. They come to me for mathematics, and I make them learn logic as well. Half the world’s troubles come from men not being trained to resent a fallacy as much as an insult.”