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

“And yet,” Mantitheus the boxer put in, “you do not rebuff the advances of our comrade Socrates, nor reject the friendship of ourselves, the remainder of this company.”

“That is because you are my true friends, Mantitheus. Even were my face as punched-up as your own, you would still love me.”

Alcibiades endeavored to induce Socrates to resume his dissertation on that subject which my arrival had interrupted, but before he could, the actor Alcaeus returned the topic to the shamed women of Potidaea.

“Let us not employ lightly, gentlemen, the word 'degradation.'

War is degradation. Its object is the ultimate degradation-death.

These women have not been slain. Their bruises of the flesh will heal.”

“You surprise me, my excellent friend,” Alcibiades replied. “As an actor you of all people should know that death takes many and far more evil forms than the physical. Isn't that what tragedy is all about? Consider Oedipus, Clytemnestra, Medea. Their wounds would heal as well. Yet were they not ruined utterly from within?”

Mantitheus spoke. “If you ask me, it is not these women who suffer true debasement, but their fathers and brothers who permit them to be used in this hateful manner. These men possess options.

They could starve. They could fight and die. In truth these young women are heroes. Consider that when a man risks all in defense of his country, he is crowned for valor. Are not these girls the same?

Are they not sacrificing their most cherished possessions, their maidenhood and name of virtue, to succor their beleaguered countrymen? What if, come spring, their confederates the Spartans at last get off their asses and trek here to their aid? What if it is ourselves who are routed? By the gods, the Potidaeans should erect statues to these brave girls! In fact, taken in this light, our young gentleman here” [he indicated myself] “is not delivering these noble lasses from shame, but denying them their shot at immortality.”

Laughter and choruses of “Again, again” greeted this, accompanied by raps of wine bowl bottoms upon the wooden crates and trunks which served as tables for the banquet.

“But wait,” Alcibiades broke in, “I see our friend Socrates smiling. He is about to speak. In all conscience we must warn our comrade Polemides, or perhaps as Odysseus approaching the Isle of the Sirens stopper his ears with wax. For once exposed to the sweet discourse of our friend, he will find himself enslaved forever, as are we all.”

“You make sport of me as usual, Alcibiades,” the man Socrates declared. “Must I endure such abuse, gentlemen, coming from this fellow who of all ignores my counsel, attending only to his own pursuit of popularity?”

Socrates the son of Sophroniscus sat across from me. Of all assembled, his appearance was far the least prepossessing. He was stocky, thick-lipped and pug-nosed, already at forty quite bald, and his cloak, blood-besmirched yet from a skirmish earlier in the month, was of a cloth coarse and pecunious as a Spartan's.

The men began chaffing him about an incident of several days prior. Apparently Socrates, standing outside in the bitter cold, had been seized midmorning with some enigma or perplexity. There he remained, in open sandals on the ice, pondering the issue daylong to the marvel of all who beheld him, themselves shivering indoors with their feet swathed in fleeces. The soldiers peeked out at intervals; there Socrates remained. It was not until nightfall that, his puzzlement resolved, he abandoned his self-imposed post and decamped to the fire for supper. Led by Alcibiades, the party demanded now to hear what riddle had with such tenacity occupied their friend's mind.

“We were speaking of degradation,” Socrates began. “Of what does this consist? Is it not that apprehension of an individual according to a solitary quality, to the exclusion of all the manifold facets of his soul and being, then using him or her thereby? In the case of these unhappy women, that quality is their flesh and its utility in gratifying our own base desires. We dismiss all else that renders them human, descended of the gods.

“Note further, gentlemen, that this single quality by which we convict these women and sentence them to exile from humanity is one over which they themselves possess no authority, a quality thrust upon them willy-nilly at birth. This is the antithesis of freedom, is it not? It is the use one makes of a slave. We treat even our dogs and horses better, granting to them their subtleties and contradictions of character and esteeming or contemning them thereby.”

Socrates drew up and inquired of the company if any found fault with his meditation thus far. He was endorsed by all and exhorted to continue.

“And yet we who consider ourselves free men often act in this manner not only toward others but toward ourselves as well. We account and define our persons by qualities gifted to or deprived us at birth, to the exclusion of those earned or acquired thereafter, brought into being by enterprise and will. This to my mind is an evil greater than degradation. It is self-degradation. “

He glanced subtly toward Alcibiades. Our master of revels clearly discerned this look and returned it, amused and intrigued, and not without irony.

Socrates resumed. “Pondering this state of self-slavery, I began to puzzle: what precisely are the qualities which make men free?”

“Our will, as you said,” put in Acumenus the physician.

“And the force to exercise it,” added Mantitheus.

“My thoughts precisely, gentlemen. You are running along with me, and even outpacing my poor ruminations. But what is free will? We must agree that nothing that does not possess free will may be called free. And that which is unfree is degraded; that is, diminished to a state lesser than that intended by the gods.”

“I think I see where this is going,” Alcibiades put in with a smile.

“I feel chastisement coming, gentlemen, of myself and us all.”

“Shall I break off?” Socrates inquired. “Perhaps our master of revels is fatigued, worn out from heroism and the adulation of his peers.”

The company urged their comrade to recommence.

“I was observing the young soldiers of the camp. Conformity to the norm is their overmastering impetus, is it not? Each unprompted wears his curls like every other, drapes his hem to the same length, and strides about and even postures in the identical attitude. Inclusion in the hierarchy is all; exclusion the paramount fear.”

“This doesn't sound much like freedom,” volunteered Acumenus.

“It sounds like democracy,” put in Euryptolemus with a laugh.

“Would you agree, gentlemen, that these youths, tyrannized by the good opinion of their peers, do not possess freedom?”

All concurred.

“In fact they are slaves, are they not? They act not by the dictates of their own hearts, but to please others. There are two words for this. Demagoguery. And fashion.” The company responded with whistles and cheers. “To whose dictates you, Socrates, are mercifully immune,” declared Alcibiades.

“No doubt with my poor cloak and sword-barbered beard I am perceived throughout the camp as a figure of fun. Yet I maintain that, unfettered by the constraints of the mode, I am the most free of men.”

Socrates expanded his metaphor to include the Assembly at Athens. “Does there exist beneath heaven a spectacle more debased than that of a demagogue orating before the masses? Each syllable screeches of shamelessness, and why? Because we discern, hearing this vile wretch pimp himself to the multitude, that his speech springs not from the true conviction of his soul, but is crafted cunningly to truckle to the whim of the mob. He seeks his own advancement by their favor and will say anything, however wicked or infamous, to promote his stature in their eyes. In other words the politician is the supreme slave.”