Callias: A Tale of the Fall of Athens Part 26

"What did you say to that?" said Callias.

"Well, the only one of these things that Seuthes really had in his possession was the daughter. I saw the young lady, handsome I will allow, and tall; but, oh, such a savage! As for the money, and the land, and the oxen, and the towns, walled and unwalled, we had to get them for him and then have our portion back. However, it seemed to me the best thing for the army to do, and I advised the men to that effect, and they agreed, only it was provided that we were never to march more than seven days' journey from the seacoast. We had all had enough of marches up the country. Then Seuthes gave us a feast by way of striking the bargain.

"It was a wonderful scene, and some day I must tell you all about it.

But I must own that for a time I felt as uncomfortable as ever I did in my life. After dinner when the bowl had pa.s.sed round two or three times, in came a Thracian leading a white horse. He took the bowl from the cup-bearer, and said, 'Here is a health to thee, King Seuthes. Let me give you this horse. Mounted on him thou shalt take whom thou wilt, and when thou retirest from the battle thou shalt dread no pursuer.' Then another gave a slave, and another some robes for the Queen, and a fourth a silver saucer and a finely embroidered carpet. All the while I was sitting in an agony, for I was in the place of honor, and had nothing to offer. However 'our lady of Athens,' who is the inspirer of clever devices, and, it may be Father Bacchus also, for I had drained two or three cups, helped me out of my difficulty. When the cup-bearer handed me the goblet, I rose and said, 'King Seuthes, I present you with myself and these my trusty comrades. With their help you will recover the lands that were your forefathers' and gain many new lands with them. Nor shall you win lands only, but horses many, and men many, and fair women also.'

Up got the King, at this, and we drained the cup together.

"Seuthes was not going to let the gra.s.s grow under his feet. When we left the banqueting tent--this was at sunset because we wanted to set the guards about our camp--the King, who, for all his potations, was as sober as a water-drinker, sent for the generals and said, 'My neighbors have not yet heard of this alliance of ours. Let us go and take them by surprise.' And so we did. We went that night and brought back booty enough to pay for our day's pay, I warrant you.

"Well, we went on fighting for Seuthes for two months till we had conquered the whole countryside for him. Then the conquered tribes flocked to him--give a Thracian plenty to eat and drink and good pay and he will fight in any quarrel--till he did not want any more. That perhaps was not to be wondered at, but, like the mean hound that he was, he tried to get out of paying us.

"Just at this moment when I thought that we should have to settle with the sword for judge, Sparta declared war against the Persians and wanted all the men she could get. So Thuisbron, their commander-in-chief, came over and engaged the men at the same rate of pay that Seuthes was giving or rather promising. We never got anything but a wretched fragment from the King.

"By this time I had had about enough of campaigning of this fashion. Not a drachma had I made. In fact I was poorer than when I set out. I had even to sell my favorite horse, but Thuisbron bought it back for me.

"Just at the last I had a stroke of luck. That is another story I must tell you some day. But fortunately we took prisoners a Persian n.o.ble with his wife and children, his horses and cattle and all that he had.

The next day I left the army, but before I went they gave me the pick of the beasts of all kinds. It was a handsome present, I can tell you."

"So, on the whole," said Callias, "you came pretty well out of the business. You returned at least not poorer than you went, you have won for yourself a name which those who come after us will not, I take it, forget, and you helped, at least, to save the lives of many Greeks from perishing shamefully by the hands of the barbarians. Are you not content?"

"Yes," replied Xenophon, "all the more content on account of one thing you have not mentioned. For this indeed pleases me in the matter that we Greeks have now found a way by which we may both go to the capital of the Persians and return therefrom. Verily, I sometimes wish we had not been so eager to retreat, but had stopped and made ourselves masters of the country of our enemies. Perhaps we were not strong enough; but, if I can see so far into the future, some one will do this hereafter, and Greece will be avenged of all that she has suffered at the hands of the barbarians."

"The Master will be glad," Callias went on after a pause.

The "Master" of course was Socrates. Xenophon looked at the young man with some surprise.

"You seem very confident on this point. He indeed was always somewhat doubtful, and certainly there are great difficulties when you come to look into it a little more closely."

"I really do not know what you mean," answered Callias; "you have seen him I suppose, for you have been in Athens several days and know what he thinks."

For a few moments Xenophon stared at the speaker in utter perplexity.

Then a light broke in upon him. "What," he cried, "you do not know? You have not heard?"

"Know what? Have heard what? You speak in riddles."

"That he is dead."

The young man covered his face with his hands. After a few minutes he recovered calmness enough to speak. "No, indeed, I did not know it. I never thought of such a thing. He seemed so full of life and vigor. Yet he must have been an old man, not far from seventy I suppose, for he was more than forty at Delium.[84] Tell me of what did he die?"

"They killed him."

"Killed him! Who killed him?"

"The people of Athens."

FOOTNOTES:

[80] The last scene of his life is described by Xenophon. I give the pa.s.sage with some explanation. When he drank the fatal cup he threw the dregs on the floor with the peculiar jerk given in playing the game of Cottabos. This game had several forms; but the feature common to them all was the heaving of wine out of a cup. Sometimes the object seems to have been a kind of fortune telling. A guest when he had finished his cup would jerk out any dregs that might be left. At the same time he named the guest who was to drink next, and the sound made by the drops falling was supposed to give some omen good or bad. "To the gracious Critias," said Theramenes. It was to be a prophecy of his fate. As a matter of fact Critias fell a few weeks afterward in a battle with Thrasybulus and the exiles of the democratic party.

[81] It was usual to kick not to knock with the hand.

[82] About $18,000.

[83] Something less than $6.

[84] The battle of Delium (between the Boeotians and the Athenians) was fought in 424. The precise age of Socrates at the time of his death was seventy.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE STORY OF THE TRIAL.

It is not too much to say that the young man was prostrated by the news which he had just heard, for the blow fell upon him with a suddenness that seemed to increase the pain tenfold. He had not been indeed on the same intimate terms of friendship with the great philosopher as the older disciples, Crito, Simmias, Cebes, Phaedo and others had been. But he had regarded him with an affection and admiration that was nothing less than enthusiastic; and he had looked forward to getting his advice about the future conduct of his life with a hopeful eagerness that made disappointment very bitter. To find himself in Athens after all the vicissitudes of fortune through which he had pa.s.sed, and to learn that the man without whom Athens scarcely seemed itself, was lost to him forever, was a terrible shock. Xenophon's sorrow had not been less keen, but he had been prepared for his loss by at least a few days' previous knowledge. The news had reached him while he was on his way, and the first shock was over when he landed. But there had been nothing to break the news to Callias. He felt as a son might feel who returns home after a long absence in full expectation of a father's greeting, and finds himself an orphan.

So overpowered was the young man that he felt solitude to be absolutely necessary for a time.

"Let me talk to you about it another day," he said to Xenophon, "at present I am not master of myself."

Xenophon clasped his friend's hand with a warm and sympathetic pressure.

"I understand," he said. "Yet, I think it will comfort you when you hear how he bore himself at the last and what he said. Come to me to-morrow; Hippocles will tell you where I live."

Early the next morning, Callias presented himself at Xenophon's house, a modest little dwelling, not far from the garden of Academus. He found him in the company of some friends, most of whom were more or less known to the young man as having been members of the circle which had been accustomed to listen to the teaching of the great master. Crito, Menexenus and aeschines, and the two Thebans, Cebes and Simmias, were among the number; and there were others whom he did not recognize. He was greeted with kindness and even distinction. His host had evidently been giving a favorable account of him to the company.

"I thought it best," Xenophon went on to explain, "to ask some of those who were actually present when these things happened, to meet you. I myself, as you know, was not here; and it is well that you should hear a story so important from eye-witnesses, men who saw his demeanor with their own eyes, and heard his words with their own ears."

"I thank you," said Callias. "But tell me first how it was that such things came to pa.s.s. It seems incredible to me. I have heard that here and there a man has been found so monstrously wicked that he could kill his own father, though Solon thought it so impossible a crime that he would impose no penalty on it. But that a whole people should be stricken with such madness of wickedness seems to pa.s.s all imagination or belief."

"Ah! you do not understand," said Simmias; "I am a foreigner you know; and those who look at things from outside often see more of them than they who are within. I had long thought that Socrates was making many enemies in Athens. And verily if he had said such things in my own city, as he said here, I doubt whether he had been suffered to live so long."

"But he always spoke true things," said the young man, "and things that were to the real profit of his hearers."

"Just so," replied Simmias, "but that they were true and profitable did not make them pleasant, or the speaker of them welcome. What think you would happen to a school-master if his pupils whom he daily corrects and disciplines, sometimes with hard tasks and sometimes with blows, were permitted to judge him, or to a physician if the children whom he seeks to cure of their ailments with nauseous drugs, or, it may be, with the knife or cautery, had him in their power?"

"Truly, it might fare ill with him," Callias confessed, thinking to himself of certain angry thoughts that in his own boyhood he had cherished against his own teacher and doctor.

"Yes," said Crito, "Simmias is right, nor did this matter escape the notice of us Athenians, though we did not perceive it so plainly. You, I know, have been much absent from Athens since you grew to manhood, yet you must have seen something of this. You were here, for example, when the admirals were condemned after the battle at Arginusae. Is it not so?"

"I was here," said Callias.

"And you know how Socrates set himself against the will of the people, refusing to put to the vote a proposal which he believed to be unconst.i.tutional. Well, he suffered nothing at that time, because their will prevailed in spite of him. Yet we saw that there were many who remembered this against him, and only waited for the opportunity of avenging themselves upon him. Nor was he less constant in opposing the few, when he believed them to be acting wrongfully, than in opposing the many. Listen now, to what he did and said in the days of the Thirty.

Were you in Athens at that time?"

"No," replied Callias, "I left the city, or rather was carried away from it--" at this there was a general laugh, most of the company having heard of the curious story of his abduction--"after the murder of the Generals, and did not set foot in it till the other day."

"But you know what manner of men these Thirty were."