The Last of the Wine Read Free Page A

out for him, and next day came a little earlier. I was at an age when children are full of questions; at home my father seldom had time to answer them, the Rhodian would not and the slaves could not. I brought them all to my neighbour at the music-class, and he never failed to give me answers that made sense, so that some of the other boys, who had mocked our friendship, began craning to listen. Sometimes, when I asked what makes the sun warm, or why the stars do not fall down on the earth, he would say he did not know, and that no one knew except the gods. But if anything frightened one, he had always a good reason not to be afraid.
    One day I noticed a bird’s nest in a tall tree near the school. When my friend arrived, I told him I was going to climb up after lessons, to see if there were any eggs. I did not think he was listening, for that morning he had seemed occupied with his thoughts while I ran on; when suddenly he stared at me intently, so that I was startled, and said, “No, child; I forbid you to do it.”—“Why?” I asked; for with him it came naturally to ask a reason. He told me that since he was a child as young as I, whenever he or his friends were about to do what would come to no good, something had made a sign to him, and had never told him wrong. And again he forbade me. I was overawed, feeling for the first time the force of his nature, and never dreamed of disobeying him. Not long afterwards, the branch with the nest on it fell to the ground, being rotten all through.
    Though he never played as well as I did, his fingers not being so supple, he learned his notes quickly, and the master had no more to teach him. I missed him greatly when he left. It may be that I had thought, “Here is a father who would not think me a disgrace to him (for he is ugly himself) but would love me, and would not want to throw me away on the mountain.” I do not know. Whoever came to Sokrates, no matter by what absurd chance, felt afterwards that he had been directed by a god.
    Not long after this my father married his second wife, Arete, the daughter of Archagoras.

3
    W HEN I AND THE other boys of my age became ephebes, it was sometimes said of us that we lacked respect for age and custom, took nothing on trust, and set up as judges of things on our own account. A man can only speak for himself. My recollection is that I believed most grown men to be wise, until a day when I was fifteen years old.
    My father was expecting his club to supper, and needed crowns for the guests. I had told him the day before that I should get the best flowers by going early, before school. He laughed, knowing that I wanted an excuse to run about without my tutor; but he gave me leave, knowing too that at such an hour I should not meet many temptations. It is well known that he in his young day was called Myron the Beautiful, just as one might say, Myron son of Philokles. But he thought, like all other fathers, that I was younger and sillier than himself at the same age.
    He was right that day in supposing that all I wanted was to look at the fleet assembling for the war. “The war” we boys called it, as if there had not been war from our birth; for this was a new venture of the City, and this great armament really looked to us like war. In the palaestra, all round the edges of the wrestling-ground, you could see men drawing little maps for each other in the dust: of Sicily, which the army was going to conquer, the friendly and the Dorian cities, and the great harbour of Syracuse.
    My father was not going, which surprised me. Not that the horsemen had been called up; but many of the knights, not to be left behind, had volunteered as hoplites. It was true that he was not long back from campaign, having sailed with Philokrates to the island of Melos, which had refused us tribute. The Athenians had triumphed, and the Melians been utterly put down. I had waited for the story, to say to the boys at school, “My father says so, who was