Tides of War (59 page)

“The people listened, and even carried his motion, but then Menecles lodged an objection on a technicality and the motion was about to be put to a second vote, that vote which in fact overturned Euryptolemus’ plea and doomed Pericles and the others. Before this ballot could be taken, however, you arose, Jason. I, as chair, recognized you, though many attempted to shout you down, knowing the fellowship you bore for the younger Pericles, not to say your own record of valor with the fleet. Will you permit me, friends, to attempt to recapture the character, if not the text, of our comrade’s plea? Or shall I quit this line of recital?”

The others desired most ardently that our master continue. He glanced once in my direction, then returned to them in sober mien.

“You spoke as follows, Jason:

“‘You are impatient, men of Athens, to conclude this matter. Allow me then to propose a course. As you have determined already that these men are guilty, sparing the state expense of trial or deliberation, let us so name them. Let us agree that in violation of the ordinances of gods and men, they forswore their duty to their comrades in peril. Are we agreed? Then let us advance upon them in a pack now and tear their throats out with our bare hands!

“‘You howl at me, gentlemen. We must do it by law, you cry. Which law is that: the one you overturn at your whim or the one you make unto yourselves? For tomorrow when you awaken, defiled with these innocent men’s blood, no canon or statute will cloak your wickedness.

“‘But you will contend, and those prosecutors speaking in your name have so contended, These accused are murderers! You will paint, as your
indictors have painted, the soul-rending portrait of our shipwrecked sons crying for that aid which did not come, until, strength at last failing, they gulped the salt element that overwhelmed them. I have fought upon the sea. We all have. God help us, to perish on that field is the most piteous death a man may suffer, where not his bones, nor the shreds of his garment, may be restored to find rest beneath his native soil.

“‘Yes, our sons’ blood cries for retribution. But how shall we exact it—by dishonoring the very law they gave their lives for? In my family we call ourselves democrats. Within my father’s vault reside commendations inscribed by the elder Pericles, father of one who stands here accused today, and my friend, as all know. These artifacts rest revered beneath our roof, talismans of our democracy. Now in holy assembly we gather, Athenians, as our fathers and theirs before them. But do we deliberate? Is that what you call this? My heart perceives a darker spawn. I peer into your faces and ask, Where have I seen this aspect before? I will tell you where I have not seen it. I have not seen it in the eyes of warriors facing the enemy with fortitude. That is another look entire, and you know it.

“‘What unholy imperative, men of Athens, compels you against all reason and your own self-interest to strike down those who are best among you?

“‘Themistocles preserved the state at her most imperiled hour; yet him you exiled and condemned. Miltiades brought you victory at Marathon, yet you bound him in chains and ravened to cast him into the Pit. Cimon, who won you empire, you hounded to the grave. Alcibiades? By the gods, you didn’t let his feet warm the very pedestal you had set him upon before dragging it and him to earth and jigging with glee upon the sundered stones. Acid and bile are mother’s milk to you. You would rather see the state ground to dust by its enemies than preserved by your betters and be compelled to acknowledge this to their faces. This is the most bitter fate you can imagine, men of Athens. Not vanquishment at the hands of them who hate you, but accepting grace from those who seek only your love.

“‘When I was a boy, my father took me to the yard at Telegoneia, where his cousin, a master shipwright, constructed a boat. The hull had been founded and within her bowl we reclined, enjoying our dinner and anticipating the pleasure of seeing the craft rise to completion. In sober tone my father’s cousin remarked of the necessity, now, to remain with the vessel even at night. Perceiving my perplexity, he set a hand upon my shoulder: “Beware the saboteur.”

“‘“Men are jealous,” the ship’s master instructed my innocent heart. “Of all affairs beneath heaven, they may bear least success in a friend.”

“‘Our enemies watch us, men of Athens. Lysander watches us. If he could slay in battle all ten of his enemy’s generals, how wouldn’t his countrymen honor him? Yet we propose to do this for him!

“‘What madness has seized you, my countrymen? You who claim above all peoples to oppose tyranny; you yourselves have become tyrants. For what is tyranny but the name men give to that form of governance which spurns justice and acts by might alone?

“‘I had come to this platform fearing you. In my wife’s bed last night I trembled and required her gallant heart, and those of my comrades this day, even to mount the stand to address you. Yet now hearing you howl, I feel no terror whatever, save that gravest of all: terror for you and for our nation. You are not democrats. Turn to the fleet for those. You will find none there who condemns these men. They saw that storm. I saw it. The men in the water were dead already, God help them. Yet that is not the crime for which you prosecute these commanders. They are guilty of another. They are your betters and for that your craven hearts may never acquit them.

“‘Yes, bay at me, men of Athens, but know yourselves for yourselves. Don’t be hypocrites. If you intend to overthrow the law, then by Chiron’s hoof, do it like men. You there, tear down the steles of ordinance. And you, seize chisel and mawl and efface the constitution stones. On our feet, all! Let us march as the mob we are to Solon’s tomb and there cast to hell his holy bones. That is what you do, to condemn these men against all law and precedent.’

“These words, my dear Jason, or others very like them, you spoke that day. You heard the mob roar at you then, as they did at me moments later, when I refused as president of the Assembly to put to the vote their unconstitutional motion. They cried for my head, threatened my wife and children. Such rancor I have never heard, even in battle from the blood-mad foe. But I had sworn my prytane’s oath and could act in no way contrary to law. It availed nothing, as you know. The people simply waited one day, till my term expired and the new presiding officer acceded to their will.

“The point, however, my dear Jason, is that in neither case—the conviction of the generals or my own—were the laws to blame. Rather the people overturned the law. Wherefore I believe you were right to defend the law then, and I am right to adhere to it now. Please, my friends, may we at last set aside the issue of flight or evasion?”

I yielded, chastened. Socrates placed his hand kindly upon my shoulder. He spoke to me, but addressing all.

“Can the
demos
rule itself? It may perhaps ease your mind to recall, my friend, that those ideals to which the lover of wisdom aspires—the precedence of soul over body, the inquiry after truth, the mastering of the passions of the flesh—are to the common herd not only abhorrent but absurd. The main of men seek not to govern their appetites, but to gratify them; to them justice is an impediment discommoding their cupidity and the gods but vacant tokens, invoked to mask their own actions taken out of fear, expediency, and self-interest. The
demos
may not be elevated as the
demos,
but only as individuals. In the end one may master only himself. Therefore let us leave the throng to its own.

“What distresses me far more, Jason, is your despair and its issue: estrangement from philosophy. It is as if you could endure all, holding fast to our calling, but this blow, the loss of myself, your heart cannot bear. Nothing could cause me greater grief or make me fear more that my endeavor, and in fact my life, have been in vain.”

I wept now, yet could not command myself to subscribe to his posture.

“Do you remember when the trial of the generals was over,” Socrates resumed, “how we gathered, friends of the younger Pericles, outside the precinct of the Barathron, the Dead Man’s Pit, and claimed his corpse from the officers?

“Pericles’ kinsmen Ariphron and Xenocrates had arranged for a carriage to bear his body home. His wife Chione, ‘Snow,’ overruled them. She dispatched her sons to the harbor to fetch a public handbarrow. You know these, my friends. They may be found on any quayside, two and three in a bunch, set out as a courtesy to returning sailors, to truck their gear to waiting carts or cabs. The barrows are marked
Epimeletai ton Neorion
—Property of the Admiralty.

“Upon this simple seaman’s cart we bore our friend’s corpse home. We were twenty, in a body, as we felt we must be in fear of the mob. None molested our way, however; their lust for blood had been sated. Pericles’ son Xanthippus was the bravest. Only fourteen, he strode before the party erect and dry-eyed. He dressed his father’s corpse, in apprehension yet that the Eleven may order it expelled from Attica, and that night sheared his mother’s hair and bound her in the cowl of mourning. The order had already been served, confiscating Pericles’ property. Do you remember? We gathered to take
into our own homes whomever and whatever we could. Yet what fell out was this: within two days the people had come to themselves and discovered their derangement. Collective contrition seized the city, as men discerned the outrage they had wrought and lamented bitterly their own passion and overhaste.

“Now Chione refused to confine herself to the women’s quarters. ‘Let them stop me,’ she declared. Draped in mourning, she strode abroad, veilless, with her shorn locks, in reproach to all and every. To those few who summoned courage to approach she addressed not a word, day upon day, but only displayed her cropped hair.

“Do you understand, Jason? She was a philosopher. Untutored, her valiant heart grasped the requirement of the hour and endowed her with the intrepidity to act. Neither Brasidas nor Leonidas, not Achilles himself, ever evinced greater fortitude or more selfless love for hearth and country. How then may I, friends, who call love of wisdom my calling, how may I permit myself an action unworthy of it or of her? I may step off the precipice, so to say, as in silence the younger Pericles, her husband, did. And you, friends, may walk abroad with shorn heads, as his wife.”

I finished.

Polemides said nothing for long moments, absorbed in meditations of his own.

“Thank you,” he spoke at last.

He smiled then and, producing a document from his chest, passed it to me.

“What is it?”

“Take a look.”

I glanced at its prologue. It was my defense of the younger Pericles, the very address I had, in Socrates’ redaction, just recounted.

“Where did you get this?”

“From Alcibiades, in Thrace. He admired it greatly, as do I. It was not the only copy among that army.”

Again my throat thickened, recalling those loved ones, Polemides’ as well as my own, of whom we could claim naught but memory. The night was well advanced; the porter’s steps could be heard below retiring to his cubby. It would require a racket now to accomplish my release. Let it go, I thought. My wife will not fret, but think me overnighting with one of our company. I turned to my companion, who, alert as well to my predicament, regarded me with amusement.

“Now you must keep your bargain, Pommo, to conclude your tale aloud. Or are you too wearied to see it through?”

An odd expression animated him.

“Why do you smile like that?” I asked.

“You’ve never addressed me as ‘Pommo.’”

“Haven’t I?”

Indeed it would be his pleasure to finish, he said. He confessed he had feared that I myself had lost interest, absent the need to prepare for trial. “Let us bring the ship to port, then, shall we, and secure her safely, if the gods will.”

I was with the Spartan colonel Philoteles at Teos
[Polemides resumed]
when reports came from Athens of the execution of Pericles and the generals. The Spartans could not believe it. First Alcibiades deposed, now their best men put to death. Had Athens gone mad? There was a ditty then.