Atlantis And Other Places Part 14

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 daimon was right, Sokrates, in urging you to go to the west?" 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, das.h.i.+ng, 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 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?" 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 them."

"Yes, many might do that," Aristokles said. "But is it right that they should?"

"Who cares whether it is right? It is true 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 n.o.ble 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 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 fas.h.i.+on. His face wore what looked like a permanent scowl. He had to fight to hold the expression, though, 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 b.u.mpkins 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' b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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.

He said nothing about the way the Spartans had devastated Attica for years. Alkibiades hadn't expected him to. A man didn't feel it when he stepped on someone else's toes, only when his own got hurt.

Confirming that, Agis went on, "I thought no man could do what you did to my polis. Since you did ..." He grimaced. "Yes, let us have peace."

"My terms are not hard," Alkibiades said. "Here in h.e.l.las, let all be as it was before the war began. In Sicily . . . Well, we won in Sicily. We will not give back what we won. If you had done the same, neither would you."

Grimly, Agis dipped his head in agreement. He said, "I can rely on you to get the people of Athens to accept these terms?"

"You can rely on me to get these terms accepted in this polis," Alkibiades answered. How much the people of Athens would have to do with that, he didn't know. His own position was . . . irregular. He was not a magistrate. He had been a general, yes, but the campaign for which he'd commanded was over. And yet, he was unquestionably the most powerful man in the city. Soldiers leaped to do his bidding. He didn't want the name of tyrant-tyrants attracted tyrannicides as honey drew flies-but he had everything except that name.

"I would treat with no one else," Agis said. "You beat us. You shamed us. You should have been a Spartan yourself. You should breed sons on our women, that we might add your bloodline to our stock." He might have been talking of horses.

"You are gracious, but I have women enough here," Alkibiades said. Inside, he laughed. Would Agis offer his own wife next? What was her name? Timaia, that was it. If King Agis did, it would insure that Alkibiades' descendants ruled Sparta. He liked the idea.

But Agis did no such thing. Instead, he said, "If we are to have no more war, son of Kleinias, how shall we live at peace? For both of us aim to rule all of h.e.l.las."

"Yes." Alkibiades rubbed his chin. Agis might be dour, but he was no fool. The Athenian went on, "Hear me. While we fought, who ruled h.e.l.las? My polis? No. Yours? No again. Anyone's? Not at all. The only ruler h.e.l.las had was war. Whereas if we both pull together, like two horses in harness pulling a chariot, who knows where we might go?"

Agis stood stock-still for some little while, considering that. At last, he said, "I can think of a place where we might go if we pull in harness," and spoke one word more.

Now Alkibiades laughed out loud. He leaned forward and kissed Agis on the cheek, as if the King of Sparta were a pretty boy. "Do you know, my dear," he said, "we are not so very different after all."

Kritias strode through the agora in a perfect transport of fury. He might have been a whirlwind trying to blow down everything around him. He made not the slightest effort to restrain himself or keep his voice down. When he drew near the Tholos-in fact, even before he drew very near the Tholos-his words were plainly audible under the olive tree in front of Simon's cobbler's shop. They were not only audible, they were loud enough to make the discussion already under way beneath that olive tree falter.

"Us, yoked together with the Spartans?" Kritias raged. "You might as well yoke a dolphin and a wolf! They will surely turn on us and rend us first chance they get!"

"What do you think of that, Sokrates?" a young man asked.

Before Sokrates could answer, someone else said, "Kritias is just jealous he didn't think of it himself. If he had, he'd be screaming every bit as loud that it's the best thing that could possibly happen to Athens."

"Quiet," another man said in a quick, low voice. "That's Kritias' kinsman over there by Sokrates." He jerked a thumb at Aristokles.

"So?" said the man who'd spoken before. "I don't care if that's Kritias' mother over there by Sokrates. It's still true."

Sokrates looked across the agora at the rampaging Kritias. His former pupil came to a stop by the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton near the center of the market square. There under the images of the young men said to have liberated Athens from her last tyranny, his fist pumping furiously, he harangued a growing crowd.

With a sigh, Sokrates said, "How is a man who cannot control himself to see clearly what the good is and what it is not?" Slowly and deliberately, he turned his back on Kritias. "Since he is not quite quite so noisy as he was, shall we resume our own discussion? Is knowledge innate and merely evoked by teachers, or do teachers impart new knowledge to those who study under them?" so noisy as he was, shall we resume our own discussion? Is knowledge innate and merely evoked by teachers, or do teachers impart new knowledge to those who study under them?"

"You have certainly shown me many things I never knew before, Sokrates," a man named Apollodoros said.

"Ah, but did I show them to you for the first time, or did I merely bring them to light?" Sokrates replied. "That is what we need to ..."

He stopped, for the others weren't listening to him any more. That irked him; he had an elegant demonstration planned, one that would use a slave boy of Simon's to show that knowledge already existed and merely wanted bringing forth. But no one was paying any attention to him. Instead, his followers stared out into the agora, toward the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton and toward Kritias.

Part of Sokrates didn't want to look, not when he'd already turned away. But he was no less curious than any other h.e.l.lene-was, indeed, perhaps more curious about more different things than any other h.e.l.lene. And so, muttering curses under his breath like the stonecutter he had been for so long, he looked back into the market square himself.

Three men, he saw, had come up out of the crowd and surrounded Kritias. "They wouldn't dare," somebody-Sokrates thought it was Apollodoros, but he wasn't sure-said just as Kritias shoved one of the men away from him. Things happened very quickly after that. All three men-they wore only tunics and went barefoot, as sailors usually did-drew knives. The sun sparkled off the blades' sharp edges. They stabbed Kritias, again and again. His bubbling shriek and the cries of horror from the crowd filled the agora. As he fell, the murderers loped off. A few men started to chase them, but one of them turned back to threaten the pursuers with his now-b.l.o.o.d.y weapon. They drew back. The three men made good their escape.

With a low wail, Aristokles dashed out toward his fallen relative. Sokrates hurried after the boy to keep anything from happening to him. Several of the other men who frequented the shade in front of Simon's shop trailed along behind them.

"Make way!" Aristokles shouted, his voice full of command even though it had yet to break. "Make way, there! I am Kritias' kinsman!"

People did did step aside for him. Sokrates followed in his wake, but realized before he got very close to Kritias that Aristokles could do nothing for him now. He lay on his back in a still-spreading pool of his own blood. He'd been stabbed in the chest, the belly, and the throat-probably from behind as well, but Sokrates couldn't see that. His eyes were wide and staring and unblinking. His chest neither rose nor fell. step aside for him. Sokrates followed in his wake, but realized before he got very close to Kritias that Aristokles could do nothing for him now. He lay on his back in a still-spreading pool of his own blood. He'd been stabbed in the chest, the belly, and the throat-probably from behind as well, but Sokrates couldn't see that. His eyes were wide and staring and unblinking. His chest neither rose nor fell.

Aristokles knelt beside him, careless of the blood. "Who did this?" he asked, and then answered his own question: "Alkibiades." No one contradicted him. He reached out and closed Kritias' eyes. "My kinsman was, perhaps, not the best of men, but he did not deserve-this. He shall be avenged." Unbroken voice or not, he sounded every bit a man.

The a.s.sembly never met to ratify Alkibiades' peace with Sparta. His argument-to the degree that he bothered making an argument-was that the peace was so self-evidently good, it needed no formal approval. That subverted the Athenian const.i.tution, but few people complained out loud. Kritias' murder made another sort of argument, one prudent men could not ignore. So did the untimely demise of a young relative of his who might have thought his youth granted his outspokenness immunity.

Over the years, the Athenians had called Sokrates a great many things. Few, though, had ever called him lacking in courage. A couple of weeks after Kritias died-and only a couple of days after Aristokles was laid to rest-Sokrates walked out across the agora from the safe, comfortable shade of the olive tree in front of Simon the shoemaker's toward the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton in the heart of the market square. Several of his followers came along with him.

Apollodoros tugged at his chiton. "You don't have to do this," he said in a choked voice, as if about to burst into tears.

"No?" Sokrates looked around. "Men need to hear the truth. Men need to speak the truth. Do you see anyone else doing those things?" He kept walking.

"But what will happen to you?" Apollodoros wailed.

"What will happen to Athens?" Sokrates answered.

He took his place where Kritias must have stood. Blood still stained the base of Aristogeiton's statue. Blocky and foursquare, Sokrates stood and waited. The men and youths who listened to him formed the beginnings of an audience-and the Athenians recognized the att.i.tude of a man about to make a speech. By ones and twos, they wandered over to hear what he had to say.

"Men of Athens, I have always tried to do the good, so far as I could see what that was," he began. "For I believe the good is most important to man: more important than ease, more important than wealth, more important even than peace. Our grandfathers could have had peace with Persia by giving the Great King's envoys earth and water. Yet they saw that was not good, and they fought to stay free.

"Now we have peace with Sparta. Is it good? Alkibiades says it is. Someone asked that question once before, and now that man is dead, as is his young kinsman who dared be outraged at an unjust death. We all know who arranged these things. I tell no secrets. And I tell no secrets when I say these murders were not good."

"You were the one who taught Alkibiades!" someone called.

"I tried to teach him the good and the true, or rather to show him what was already in his mind, as it is in all our minds," Sokrates replied. "Yet I must have failed, for what man, knowing the good, would willingly do evil? And the murder of Kritias, and especially that of young Aristokles, was evil. How can anyone doubt that?"

"What do we do about it, then?" asked someone in the crowd-not one of Sokrates' followers.

"We are Athenians," he replied. "If we are not a light for h.e.l.las to follow, who is? We rule ourselves, and have for a century, since we cast out the last tyrants, the sons of Peisistratos." He set his hand on the statue of Aristogeiton, reminding the men who listened why that statue stood here. "The sons of Peisistratos were the last tyrants before Alkibiades, I should say. We Athenians beat the Persians. We have beaten the Spartans. We-"

"Alkibiades beat the Spartans!" somebody else yelled.

"I was there, my good fellow. Were you?" Sokrates asked. Sudden silence answered him. Into it, he went on, "Yes, Alkibiades led us. But we Athenians triumphed. Peisistratos was a fine general, too, or so they say. Yet he was also a tyrant. Will any man deny that? Alkibiades the man has good qualities. We all know as much. Alkibiades the tyrant . . . What qualities can a tyrant have, save those of of a tyrant?" a tyrant?"

"Do you say we should cast him out?" a man called.

"I say we should do what is good, what is right. We are men. We know what that is," Sokrates said. "We have known what the good is since before birth. If you need me to remind you of it, I will do that. It is why I stand here before you now."

"Alkibiades won't like it," another man predicted in a doleful voice.

Sokrates shrugged broad shoulders. "I have not liked many of the things he has done. If he does not care for my deeds, I doubt I shall lose any sleep over that."

Bang! Bang! Bang! The pounding on the door woke Sokrates and Xanthippe at the same time. It was black as pitch inside their bedroom. "Stupid drunk," Xanthippe grumbled when the racket went on and on. She pushed at her husband. "Go out there and tell the fool he's trying to get into the wrong house." The pounding on the door woke Sokrates and Xanthippe at the same time. It was black as pitch inside their bedroom. "Stupid drunk," Xanthippe grumbled when the racket went on and on. She pushed at her husband. "Go out there and tell the fool he's trying to get into the wrong house."

"I don't think he is," Sokrates answered as he got out of bed.

"What are you talking about?" Xanthippe demanded.

"Something I said in the market square. I seem to have been wrong," Sokrates said. "Here I am, losing sleep after all."

"You waste too much time in the agora." Xanthippe shoved him again as the pounding got louder. "Now go give that drunk a piece of your mind."

"Whoever is out there, I do not think he is drunk." But Sokrates pulled his chiton on over his head. He made his way out through the crowded little courtyard where Xanthippe grew herbs and up to the front door. As he unbarred it, the pounding stopped. He opened the door. Half a dozen large, burly men stood outside. Three carried torches. They all carried cudgels. "Hail, friends," Sokrates said mildly. "What do you want that cannot keep till morning?"

"Sokrates son of Sophroniskos?" one of the bruisers demanded.

"That's Sokrates, all right," another one said, even as Sokrates dipped his head.

"Got to be sure," the first man said, and then, to Sokrates, "Come along with us."

"And if I don't?" he asked.

They all raised their bludgeons. "You will-one way or the other," the leader said. "Your choice. Which is it?"

"What does the idiot want, Sokrates?" Xanthippe shrilled from the back of the house.

"Me," he said, and went with the men into the night.