every bit a man.
The Assembly 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 constitution, 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 attitude 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 Hellas 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 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.”
“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 went 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.
Alkibiades yawned. Even to him, an experienced roisterer, staying up into the middle of the night felt strange and unnatural. Once the sun went down, most people went to bed and waited for morning. Most of the time, even roisterers did. The clay lamps that cast a faint, flickering yellow light over this bare little courtyard and filled it with the smell of burning olive oil were a far cry from Helios’ bright, warm, cheerful rays.
A bat fluttered down, snatched a moth out of the air near a lamp, and disappeared again. “Hate those things,” muttered one of the men in the courtyard with Alkibiades. “They can’t be natural.”
“People have said the same thing about me,” Alkibiades answered lightly. “I will say, though, that I’m prettier than a bat.” He preened. He might have had reason to be, but he was vain about his looks.
His henchmen chuckled. The door to the house opened. “Here they are,” said the man who didn’t like bats. “About time, too.”
In came Sokrates, in the midst of half a dozen ruffians. “Hail,” Alkibiades said. “I wish you hadn’t forced me to this.”
Sokrates cocked his head to one side and studied him. He showed only curiosity, not fear, though he had to know what lay ahead for him. “How can one man force another to do anything?” he asked. “How, especially, can one man force another to do that which he knows not to be good?”
“This is good-for me,” Alkibiades answered. “You have been making a nuisance of yourself in the agora.”
“A nuisance?” Sokrates tossed his head. “I am sorry, but whoever told you these things is misinformed. I have spoken the truth and asked questions that might help others decide what is true.”
Voice dry, Alkibiades said, “That constitutes being a nuisance, my dear. If you criticize me, what else are you but a nuisance?”
“A truth-teller, as I said before,” Sokrates replied. “You must know this. We have discussed it often enough.” He sighed. “I think my daimon was wrong to bid me accompany you to Sicily. I have never known it to be wrong before, but how can you so lightly put aside what has been shown to be true?”
“True, you showed me the gods cannot be as Homer and Hesiod imagined them,” Alkibiades said. “But you
