Spartans do not practise the pankration as we know it. The law of the Games requires the loser to lift his hand in surrender; and no Spartan having done that is expected to show himself in Lakonia alive. So it is an event they do not enter for; but they like watching it as much as anyone. Lysander in particular was very fond of attending the Games, and being acclaimed there.
Autolykos stood in the Porch, calm as marble; I had seen him look so in the temple, waiting to be crowned. Lysander frowned; but could not keep the cold approval out of his hard blue eyes. Kallibios, smeared with mud to the hair, looked at the two big men feeling each other’s strength; if he had had the power to turn everyone in sight to stone, he would have begun with Lysander. Everyone saw it, and Lysander, turning, saw it too.
His face told nothing. “You are Autolykos the wrestler. Is this charge true?”—“He talks too fast,” said Autolykos. “I daresay it is.”
Lysander said, “Let the accused hear the charge, Kallibios. Did you say he assaulted you? What did he do?” Kallibios stammered. Some of us in the crowd gave our evidence unasked. Lysander shouted for silence. “Well, Kallibios? Repeat the charge.”
So Kallibios related again how he had been tossed in the midden; and the crowd cheered. Lysander said, “How did he do it, Kallibios? I want a statement. Did he cross-buttock you, or what?” Kallibios stood chewing his lips. Autolykos said, “No, it was just a thigh-hold, and a straight lift.” Lysander nodded. “Is it true as these men say, that he took a stick to you?” Autolykos in silence raised his hand to his forehead, where blood was trickling from his short thick curls. “Charge dismissed,” said Lysander. “You are not working your farm with your Helots now, Kallibios. You had better learn how to govern free men.”
The City was quiet for a day or two. Then a notice was put up, cut in marble, that Thrasybulos and Alkibiades had been proclaimed exiles.
Thrasybulos had fled to Thebes a week before. It was said to have been Theramenes who had warned him of what was planned for him. His sentence caused anger rather than surprise. But, as always, it was enough to set Alkibiades’ name up in the Agora, to make people talk all day. What was he up to, that had scared the Thirty? He had left Thrace, it was said, and crossed to Ionia, and asked for safe-conduct to Artaxerxes the new King. Something was behind it. Some said he would never forgive the City for disgracing him unjustly a second time; others, that what he might not do for love of us, he would do from hatred of King Agis. Even after the battle at Goat’s Creek, where he had been driven off with insults by the generals, fugitives came back whom he had sheltered in his hilltop castle, and saved their lives. “Insolent he may be; but there is no meanness in him. That, from a boy, he never had.” And people said, “There is hope for the City, while Alkibiades lives.” The news of his banishment seemed a promise of his return. It was said openly in the streets that the Thirty were only in office to frame a new constitution; it was time they presented their draft, and made way for others.
Soon after this, there was a roll-call of the troops; a parade without arms, to re-group the units. On the Academy parade-ground I chatted with some old friends; then, having missed Lysis in the crowd, called to see him. As I got to his house, I heard weeping within, and Lysis saying in the smothered voice of a man distracted, “Here, dry your eyes. Never mind it. Be quiet now; I must go.”
He came flinging out, nearly knocking me down upon the threshold. He was half-dazed, and shaking with anger. Grabbing hold of me, as if I might walk off, he said, “Alexias. Those sons of whores have taken my armour.” I said, “What? Who have taken it?”—“The Thirty. While I was at roll-call. My spear, my shield; even my sword.”
I stared at him like a fool. “But it can’t have been the Thirty. My arms are there; I’ve just come from home.”—“Listen.” The street was beginning to roar with angry voices, and men were running from house to house. “Your father is a Senator,” he said.
There are evils one does not imagine, till one sees them done. As my father had been fond of saying, this was supposed to be a gentlemen’s government. A gentleman, and a citizen, was reckoned to be a man who could defend the City in arms.
“Command yourself, Alexias,” Lysis was saying. “What is this? I have had enough to do already with tears.”—“I am not weeping. I am angry.” My face burned, and my throat felt bursting. “Let them take my arms too; what honour is left in bearing them?”—“Don’t be a fool. Arms are for use first, and for honour after. If you have arms, take good care of them. Lock them up.”
Next day we learned that three thousand knights and hoplites had been left their weapons. My father was one, and they had mistaken my arms for his. These only had citizenship, and the right to judicial trial. Over all others, the Thirty claimed power of life and death.
People went about the City like walking dead. There was nowhere to turn. We ourselves had been the source, once, of justice and democracy in Hellas. We were drained by war; ringed with victorious enemies; beyond were the lands of the barbarians, where even men’s minds are enslaved. What is there that will season salt?
My father said to me, “Don’t talk so wildly, Alexias. Few or many, a government that does well is good. Kritias is an intelligent man; responsibility will make him careful.”—“Will you make a drunkard temperate with more wine?”—“Between ourselves, Theramenes thinks three thousand too few. That is within these walls. But the principle is sound, that of an aristocracy.”—“Plato believes too in the rule of the best. When he heard Lysis had lost his arms, he could not speak for shame.”—“Don’t quote Plato to me,” my father said, “as if he were some philosopher. I have heard enough of your scent-shop friends.”
Work had still to go on; I rode out to the farm next day on a hired mule, and stayed overnight. Working stripped in the sun of early autumn, binding the vines, I was happy in spite of myself; the earth, and her fruitful gods, seemed all that was real, the rest as shadows of dreams. Coming home the day after, I went round by way of Dipylon, to return my mule; then, as I walked through the Street of Tombs, I felt a strangeness, and a fear, and knew not why. It seemed colder; the colours had altered on the hills; and looking on the ground, where the sunlight fell in bright rounds through the leaves, I saw that all these had changed their shape, and become as sickles. The heavens seemed turning to lead, and sinking on the earth. And lifting my eyes to the sun, I saw it so altered that I dared look no longer, lest the god strike me blind.
Among the tombs, in the gloom of the eclipse, it was as one supposes the Underworld to be. The hair crept on my neck. Anaxagoras said it is only the dark shape of the moon crossing the sun. I can believe it any bright morning, walking in the colonnade.
Then in the chill, and the livid shadow, I saw a funeral coming on the Sacred Way. It was a long one, as if of some notable person; it came slowly, in the deep silence of people oppressed both with grief and fear. Only behind the bier a young wife, blind with her own weeping, tore at her hair and cried aloud.
I waited for the bier to pass me. It bore a heavy corpse; for six big men carried it, and yet their shoulders bent. Then, as they came nearer, I knew them all. For each was an Olympic victor, a wrestler, a boxer or a pankratiast. And on the bier, upon the brow of the dead, was an olive crown.
I stood and gazed my last on the stern face of Autolykos, whom one seldom saw in life without a smile. Now he looked like some ancient hero, come back to judge us. The gloom thickened, till I could scarcely see his olive wreath and his mouth of stone. Behind him a catafalque was heaped with his trophies and his ribboned crowns. When this too had passed, I joined the mourners, and said to the man who walked next me, “I have been in the country. How did he die?” In the dusk he peered at me, with eyes of distrust and fear. “He was walking about yesterday. That’s all I know.” He looked aside.