Steven Pressfield: Tides of War, a Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War

“I don't understand, Simmias.”

“Horses and escorts are here! What shall I do?”

Simmias was clearly distraught; no doubt he had been fetched from Socrates' cell only moments prior, by the porter in a state of alarm and demanding immediate action. Simmias failed yet to rally his reason. All that animated his purpose, clearly, was to return at once to our master's side and, above all, not to stand truant at the hour of his passing.

“Leave this to me, Simmias.”

“By heaven's mercy, Jason! Will you manage this for me, my friend?”

There are frontiers one crosses, our client had once observed, without understanding of what he does. This was not one of them.

To Polemides and to our master the demos had debarred clemency.

Now by fortune's hand a fresh magistrate had been appointed, and that arbiter was myself. Who would reprieve the transgressor, if not me? Who would account him absolution, when he himself had cast the black pebble? Perhaps heaven had granted, through his surrogateship, occasion to pardon all, myself included.

I turned to the lad. “Your father claims he has made peace with his own execution.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you change his mind?”

The boy seized both my hands in his. “But what of you, sir?” He feared that informers, learning of my part, would set my life at peril.

“Whose silence must be bought, has been bought.”

The keeper had overheard all and now nodded his concordance.

I released the lad's grip. Away he tore to his father's side.

Should I, too, seek Polemides, for farewell, or track Simmias' footsteps to our master's chamber? I regarded the porter. He was already dispatching his own prentice to communicate to the escort riders, who awaited no doubt in some abutting starless lane, the change in plans. I asked if this discommoded him. “Horses is horses,” he replied. “Who sits 'em is no account to me.”

The porter had become anxious, however, and the keeper as well, as any upon the instant of felony's commission.

“Best if you begone, Cap'n.”

And leading across the court, he conducted me without.

Our master's body was released next day to his companions; we interred his bones within his ancestors' tomb at Alopece. I cannot cite that date as the one upon which I lost all heart for politics; any man of reason had despaired for years of the demos's capacity to rule itself. Within the twelve-month I had quit the city, with wife and daughters, and taken up residence in the country at Holm Oak Hill. Here I have remained.

For thirty-nine years from my twentieth birthday, I donated all of flesh and treasure to our nation. Youth and manhood I accorded, and broke my health in Athens' cause. Three sons I sacrificed to her corps at arms, and two more she stole in paroxysms of civil derangement. Through pestilence and privation she robbed two wives of the measure of their days.

As a naval officer I performed the trierarchy seven times. I have served as councilor, magistrate, and minister. My country I have represented on deputations abroad and affixed my name in her cause to instruments of peace and war. Once I tallied our clan's contributions to the state. The toll came to eleven talents, roughly the produce of all our holdings over twenty years. I do not repent such impost and would gladly bear all again in the cause of our country. I still call myself a democrat, though, as my wife, your grandmother, would have it, a heartsore one.

I heard nothing from Polemides for above three years. Then one morning a lad came racing with report of a stranger at the gate. I hastened down. A man awaited in blistered leather, shouldering a mercenary's kit. I had never seen the Arcadian Telamon yet knew at once this was he. He would not stay but delivered into my hand a pair of letters. He had packed them from Asia two years.

Polemides was dead, he reported. Not of war but mishap; an iron spike trodden upon and gone to lockjaw.

I beseeched the fellow to layover. “You have trekked leagues, sir, to render us this service. Please stay for supper, for our sake if not your own, or at least come in and wash off the dust.”

The man assented to enter as far as the copse that shades the steading spring. There is a pleasant bench there, as you know. He sat. The girls brought wine and alphita bread and an excellent opson of salt fish and onion. While the man ate, I scanned the letters.

The first was from Polemides, dated two years prior. He is well, he says, and hopes I am the same. He remarks the slender margin of his reprieve from the tympanon and chaffs me for joining him among “the gallery of rogues.”

…I trust, my friend, you harbor no illusions as to my reformation. I dance ever to the time-fixed tune. As all abhorred of heaven, my luck continues brilliant. Nothing can kill me and the girls scratch out each other's eyes for a berth beneath my bed sheets.

The second was from his son. They served together, the mercenary noted, beneath the Spartan colonel Philoteles, in Agesilaus' brigades fighting the King of Persia. Nicolaus informs me of his father's death. This was in Phrygia, the valley of the Maeander, not sixty stades from Deer Mountain.

…as to the contents of my father's sea chest, he would deem it a meed of honor, sir, if you would hold them as your own. I would not know how best to use them. I am not the kind.

The chest had been delivered to my door a month after Polemides' escape by my old shipmate Bruise, who, you may recall, ran the refectory in the lane opposite the prison. Bruise had this tale of that final night.

It was he who had contracted the horses for the getaway and, following my departure, had brought them round to the alley abutting the court. The keeper meanwhile had released Polemides, and, with his son, the trio descended to this egress. As they stepped into the lane where Bruise and the horses waited, three men turned the corner into view-Lysimachus, Secretary of the Eleven, and two magistrates-come to check on the disposition of the executions.

The officers' placement was such as to easily intercept the absconders. A cry would summon the prison's complement. Bruise himself, he declared, nearly pissed the paving stones with fright.

What went through their minds, these magistrates enjoined by the demos to carry out the execution of the noblest of their countrymen? Did they, who were but men and fellows of his race, grasp the enormity? Perhaps by some measure they came to perceive this gentleman turned villain, Polemides, as a surrogate, if not for Socrates, then themselves. He was as guilty as they, not alone for those acts with which he had been charged but for a thousand more, unwitnessed and unarraigned, down thrice nine years of war. Perhaps their silence now confessed such conviction as my own. Let him live, for our sake. Let us once play Zeus and tender clemency, through this man, for all those evils of our own devising.

For whatever motive, the officers stood aside. In heartbeats Polemides and the boy made off. The man's parting prayer to the keeper was that his chest be released to my care, when this could be performed without setting me at hazard.

Here let me insert, my grandson, one final document. I discovered this in our client's chest only days ago, seeking another I wished you to see. It is a transcription of that address delivered by Alcibiades to the men of the Samos fleet upon his second farewell, following Notium, that estrangement from which he never returned.

…what I say now I address to your generals and officers, gentlemen, who must command you scrofulous rabble, may the gods help them. Shall I tell where I learned to lead such men as you? In my father's stable, from his horses. And I call upon our friend Thrasybulus to back me, for he stood at my shoulder when as lads we marveled at those champions on racing day. No one had to teach them to run. Buying a horse, we learned to remark carriage and posture before length of bone or power of ham. Will you agree that a racer may possess nobility? And what is nobility that a beast may own it as well as a man? Is it not that capacity of soul by which one donates himself to an object greater than his own self-interest?