Mary Renault - Greece 4 - The Last Of The Wine

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MARY RENAULT

THE LAST OF THE WINE

Vintage Books

A Division of Random House

New York

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, September 1975

United States by Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published by Pantheon Books, a division

of Random House, Inc., in 1956.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Renault, Mary, pseud. The last of the wine.

Reprint of the ed. published by Pantheon Books, New York.

i. Greece—History—Fiction. I. Title.

[PZ3.R29i3Las7] [PR6O35.E55] 823'.g'i2 75-4841

ISBN 0-394-71653-1

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MAP OF GREECE AND THE AEGEAN

GLOSSARY

Agora,place of assembly, especially the market-place

Archon,one of the nine chief magistrates of Athens

Chlamys,a cloak worn by men

Doric,gold or silver coin, named after Darius, King of Persia, equal to 20 drachmas

Deme,township or district in Attica

Dikastery,law-courts formed by 6,000 citizens elected annually for the trial of judicial cases

Drachma,Greek silver coin

Ephebe,name given to young men belonging to the first three property classes, when they were eighteen

to twenty years of age; they then became liable to military training and duties

Ephor,title of the highest magistrates in Sparta; there were five, elected annually, and put in charge of

guardianship over law, conduct of war, internal affairs, and the training of the young

Epitaphion,the annual funeral oration spoken for the Athenians who had fallen in battle

Gymnasiarch,Athenian official charged with the supervision of athletic training schools and games

Hipparch,commander of the cavalry

Hoplite,foot-soldier

Kerameikos,potters' field, an area of ancient Athens divided by the walls of Themistokles into the Inner

and Outer Kerameikos

Kordax,an obscene dance of Greek comedy

Kottabos,a game played at drinking parties, in which the wine left in the cup was thrown into a bronze

vessel; if the sound was clear, it was a good omen

Metic,an alien allowed to reside at Athens on payment of a tax

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Mina,denomination of money corresponding to 100 drachmas

Obol,coin representing the value of 1/6 of a drachma

Palaestra,training school for wrestling and athletics

Pankratiast,participant in a Pankration

Pankration,athletic contest, combining wrestling and boxing

Pnyx,public place of assembly in Athens, on a hill west of the Akropolis

Prytaneum,hall in which distinguished citizens and foreign ambassadors were entertained at public

expense

Scolion,song sung in turn by guests at a banquet

Stater,gold coin, weight about 1/2 ounce

Stele,upright slab or stone

Strategos,commander-in-chief or chief magistrate at Athens

Strigil,instrument for scraping dust and sweat from the body

Trireme,galley with three ranks of oars, used chiefly in war

Triarch,ruler of one of the three divisions of a country

THE LAST OF THE WINE

1

whenI was a young boy, if I was sick or in trouble, or had been beaten at school, I used to remember

that on the day I was born my father had wanted to kill me.

You will say there is nothing out of the way in this. Yet I daresay it is less common than you might

suppose; for as a rule, when a father decides to expose an infant, it is done and there the matter ends.

And it is seldom a man can say, either of the Spartans or the plague, that he owes them life instead of

death.

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It was at the beginning of the Great War, when the Spartans were in Attica, burning the farms. There

was a notion in those days that no other army could meet them on land and live; so we were holding only

the City, and Piraeus, and the Long Walls between. This was the advice of Perikles. It is true that when I

was born he was still alive, though already sick; which is no reason for foolish youths to ask me, as one

did lately, whether I remember him.

The country people, whose farms were being burned, poured into the City, and lived like beasts

wherever they could put up a few boards, or a roof of hide. They were even sleeping and cooking in the

shrines, and in the colonnades of the wrestling schools. The Long Walls were lined with stinking huts all

the way to the harbour. Somewhere thereabouts the plague began, and spread like fire in old heather.

Some said the Spartans had called on Far-Shooting Apollo, some that they had contrived to poison the

springs. Some of the women, I believe, blamed the country people for bringing in a curse; as if anyone

could reasonably suppose that the gods would punish a state for treating its own citizens justly. But

women, being ignorant of philosophy and logic, and fearing dream-diviners more than immortal Zeus, will

always suppose that whatever causes them trouble must be wicked.

The plague thinned my family as it did every other. My mother's father, Damiskos, the Olympic runner,

was buried with his old trophies and his olive crown. My father was among those who got the disease

and survived; it left him for some tune with a bloody flux, too sick for war; and when I was born he had

only just recovered his strength.

On the day of my birth, my father's younger brother, Alexias, died in his twenty-fourth year. He, hearing

that a youth called Philon, with whom he was in love, had been taken sick, went at once to him; meeting,

I have been told, not only the slaves but the boy's own sister, running the other way. His father and

mother had already perished; Alexias found the lad alone, lying in the basin of the courtyard fountain,

where he had crawled to cool his fever; he had not called out to anyone to fetch his friend, not wishing to

endanger him; but some passers-by, who had not cared to go very near, reported that they had seen

Alexias carrying him indoors.

This reached my father after some time, while my mother was in labour with me. He sent over a reliable

servant who had had the plague already; who, however, found both the young men dead. From the way

they were lying, it seems that in the hour of Philon's death, Alexias had felt himself sicken; and, knowing

the end, had taken hemlock, so that they should make the journey together. The cup was standing on the

floor beside him; he had tipped out the dregs, and written PHILON with his finger, as one does after

supper in the last of the wine.

Getting this news at night, my father set out with torches to fetch the bodies, so that he could mix their

ashes in one urn, and have a fit memorial made. They were gone, having been thrown already on a

common pyre in the street; but later, my grandfather had a stone set up for Alexias in the Street of

Tombs, with a relief showing the friends clasping hands in farewell, and a cup beside them on a pedestal.

Every year at the Feast of Families, we sacrificed for Alexias at the household altar, and the story is one

of the first that I remember. My father used to say that all over the City, those who died in the plague

were the beautiful and the good.

Alexias having died before the time of his marriage, my father now decided to name after him the child

that was being born, if it should be a boy. My elder brother Philokles, who was two years old, had been

a particularly fine strong child at his birth: but I, when held up by the midwife, was seen to be small,

wizened and ugly; my mother having brought me forth nearly a month too soon, either through a

weakness of her body or the foreknowledge of a god. My father decided at once that it would be

unworthy of Alexias to name me after him; that I was the child of an unlucky time, marked with the gods'

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anger, and that it would be better not to rear me.

As it happened, however, I had been born while he was out searching for the bodies; and the midwife

had handed me over to my mother to nurse. This annoyed my father; for she had taken a fancy to me

after this, as women will, and being rather sick and feverish begged for my life with tears. He was still

reasoning with her— for he was reluctant to snatch me from her by force— when the herald blew for the

horsemen, because the Spartans had been sighted making for the City.

We were a fairly rich family in those days; my father kept two or three horses; he had therefore to arm,

and muster with his squadron. He took leave of my mother, not withdrawing his orders; but, whether

through haste or pity, he charged no one with carrying them out. There is never much rivalry for such

work; so there the matter rested till some days later, when the Spartans withdrew and my father rode

home.

He found the household in distraction. My brother Philokles was dead, and my mother breathing her

last. From the first she had ordered me to be kept away from her; I had been left with a wet-nurse found

by one of the slaves.

Returning with shorn hair from the funeral, he had me brought to him, and, finding the wet-nurse a decent

woman, left me in her charge. He had been, I believe, fond of my mother; I daresay too he called to mind

the uncertainty of life, and thought it less disgraceful to leave even me behind him, than to perish without

offspring as if he had never been. In the end, finding I put on flesh and seemed stronger and

better-looking, he named me Alexias, as he had first meant to do.

2

ourhouse stood in the Inner Kerameikos, not far from the Dipylon Gate. The courtyard had a little

colonnade of painted columns, a fig-tree and a vine. At the back were the stables, where my father kept

his two horses and a mule; it was easy to climb on the stable roof, and thence to the roof of the house.

The roof had a border of acanthus tiles, and was not very steep. If one straddled the ridge, one could

see right over the City wall, past the gate-towers of the Dipylon to the Sacred Way, where it curves

towards Eleusis between its gardens and its tombs. In summertime, I could pick out the funeral stele of

my uncle Alexias and his friend, by a white oleander that grew there. Then I would turn south, to where

the High City stands like a great stone altar against the sky, and search between the winged roofs of the

temples for the point of gold, where tall Athene of the Vanguard lifts her spear to the ships at sea.

But I liked best to look north at the range of Parnes, snow-topped, or scorched brown in summer, or

grey and green in spring, and watch for the Spartans coming over. Until I was six, they came nearly every

year. They came over the pass at Dekeleia, and as a rule some horseman brought word of their coming;

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but sometimes the first thing we knew in the City was the smoke on the hills, where they were burning a

farm.

Our own place is in the foothills, beyond Acharnai. Our family has been there, as they say, since the

grasshoppers came. The slope above the valley is terraced for vines, but the best crop is the olives, and

the barley from the olive-fields. There was one grove nearly as old, I think, as the earth itself. The trunks

were as thick as three men's bodies, and all knotted and gnarled. Athene herself was reputed to have

planted them, when she gave the olive as a gift to the land. Two or three of them are standing still. We

sacrificed there at every harvest-time; that is, when there was a harvest.

I used to be sent to the farm early each spring, to get the country air, and fetched back when it was time

for the Spartans to come. But once, when I was four or five, they came early, and we had a great

scramble to get away. I remember sitting in the cart, with the women slaves and the household gear, my

father riding beside us and the slave pricking the oxen on; the cart-wheels jolting, and all of us coughing

with the smoke of the burning fields. Everything was burned that year, all but the house walls, and the

sacred olive-grove, which they piously spared.

Being too young to understand serious things, I used to look forward, when they had gone, to seeing

what they had been up to. One year a troop of them had been quartered in the farmhouse; and those

who could write had inscribed the names of their friends, with various tributes to their beauty and virtue,

all over the walls. I recall my father rubbing angrily at the charcoal and saying, Get this ignorant scrawl

whited over. The boy will never learn to spell, or to make his letters properly, with this in front of him.

One of the Spartans had left his comb behind. I thought it a treasure; but my father said in disgust that it

was filthy, and threw it away.

For my own part, I don't think I knew what trouble meant till I turned six. My grandmother, who had

taken charge of me whenever my father was at war, died then. My grandfather Philokles (a tall old man

with a beautiful beard, always just combed, and white almost to blueness, in whose image I see the god

Poseidon to this day) was growing infirm and could not do with me; so my father engaged a nurse, a free

woman from Rhodes.

She was slim and swarthy, with a strain of Egypt in her. Presently I grew to know, without quite knowing

what it meant, that she was my father's concubine. Not that he ever failed in propriety before me; but

sometimes I used to hear things said by the slaves, who had their own reasons to hate her.

If I had been a little older, I might have consoled myself, when her hand lay heavy on me, with the

thought that my father would soon be weary of her. She had no such graces as he could have found in a

hetaira of very moderate accomplishment, and in those days he could afford the best. But to me she

seemed as lasting a part of my home as the porch or the well. She herself began to guess, I think, that

when I was old enough to go to school with a pedagogue he would take the occasion to be rid of her; so

any progress I made was a signal for her anger.

Seeking some company, I had got a stray kitten from a slave; which presently finding, she wrung its neck

before me. While trying to get it from her, I bit her arm; and it was then she told me, after her own

fashion, the tale of my birth, which she had heard from the slaves. So, when she beat me, I never thought

of telling my father, or asking his help. While he, seeing me grow daily more sly and sullen in my ways,

paler and duller in the face, must I daresay have wondered, sometimes, if first thoughts would not have

been best.

In the evenings, when he came in dressed for supper, I used to look at him and wonder how it felt to be

beautiful. He was more than six feet tall, grey-eyed, brown-skinned, and golden-haired; made like those

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big Apollos Pheidias' workshop used to turn out, in the days before the statuaries began carving their

Apollos soft. As for me, I was one of those who grow late, and still small for my age; it was clear already

that I should favour the men of my mother's family, who are dark-haired, with blue eyes, and who tend to

be runners and jumpers, rather than wrestlers and pankratiasts. The Rhodian had left me in no doubt that

I was the runt of a good kennel; and no one else had told me otherwise.

It pleased me, however, to see him in his best blue mantle with the gold border, his brown chest and left

shoulder bare, bathed and combed and rubbed down with sweet oil, his hair dressed into a garland and

his. beard short-pointed. It meant a supper-party: going by myself unwashed to bed while the Rhodian

was busy in the kitchen, I would lie listening to the flutes and laughter, to the ring of the bronze bowl

when they played kottabos, the rise and fall of voices in talk, or someone singing to the lyre. Sometimes,

if a dancer or a juggler had been hired, I used to climb the roof, and look in across the courtyard.

Once he gave a party to which the god Hermes came. So at least I first believed; not only because the

young man seemed too tall and beautiful not to be a god, and had the air of one accustomed to worship,

but because he was so exactly like a Herm outside one of the rich new houses, that his head looked to

have been the model, as in fact it had. I was only shaken from my awe when he walked out and made

water in the courtyard, which made me almost sure he was a man. Then someone inside called out,

Alkibiades! Where are you? and he went back into the supper-room.

My father, having at this time concerns of his own, seldom brought me into remembrance. But

sometimes he would call to mind that he had a son, and set himself to do his duty by me. There was, for

example, the day when our steward caught me stealing corn to throw to the doves, and took it away

from me, for corn was scarce that year. With the kind of manners I had learned from my nurse, I

stamped my foot at him, and said he had no right to forbid me, being only a slave. At this my father, who

had overheard, stepped into the room. He sent out the man with a civil word, and called me to him.

Alexias, he said, my shield is over there in the corner. Pick it up, and bring it to me.

I went over to where the shield was leaning on the wall; and, getting hold of it by the rim, began to roll it

along, finding it too heavy for me to lift. That is not the way, he said. Put your arm through the bands, and

carry it as I do.

I put my arm through one of the bands, and managed to stand it upright, but I could not lift it; it was

nearly as tall as I. He said, Surely you can hold it up? Do you know that when I fight on foot I have not

only that to carry, but a spear too? — But, I said, Father, I am not a man.

Put it back in the corner, then, he said, and come here. I obeyed him.

And now, he said, pay attention to me. When you are man enough to carry a shield, you will learn how it

happens that men are sold into slavery, and their children born in it. Till then, it is enough for you to know

that Amasis and the rest are slaves, not through any merit of yours, but by the destiny of heaven. You will

refrain from hubris, which the gods hate, and behave yourself like a gentleman. And if you forget this, I

myself will beat you.

Such signs of interest in my father were hateful to the Rhodian; she began to see both buck and kid

slipping through her broken net. As soon as she could she found occasion to turn a small fault of mine

into a great one, and make me look a liar when I denied it. But she over-reached herself a little. My

father said it was high time I went to school, and sent me forthwith.

He went on campaign soon after, so she did not go for a couple of months. I have lived in hard days and

taken my share of them, but those are nearly the worst that I remember. How I should have borne it, I do

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not know, if it had not been for a friend I made at school, at a time when I had grown silent and furtive,

and had no friends at all.

I arrived one morning to find the music-class laughing and nudging each other, and giving the master a

new name, the Old Man's Teacher. And, in fact, there in the classroom on one of the benches sat a man

who, being about forty-five with a grizzled beard, looked certainly rather old to be studying the first thing

children learn. I could see at once that I, who was always alone, was the one who would be made a fool

of by having to share his bench; so I pretended not to mind, and sat there of my own accord. He nodded

to me, and I stared at him in wonder. At first, this was simply because he was the ugliest man I had seen;

and then it was because I thought I recognised him, for he was the image of the Silenos painted on the big

wine-mixer at home, with his snub nose, wide thick mouth, bulging eyes, strong shoulders and big head.

He had seemed friendly, so sidling up the bench to him, I asked softly if Silenos was his name. He turned

to answer me; and I felt a kind of shock, as if a bright light had been shone upon my heart; for he did not

look as most people do at children, half thinking of something else. After telling me what his name was,

he asked me how he ought to tune his lyre.

I was pleased to show off my little knowledge; and, feeling already at home with him, asked why an old

man like him wanted to come to school. He replied, not at all put out, that it was much more disgraceful

for an old man not to learn what could make him better, than for boys, since he had had time to know the

worth of it; and besides, he said, a god came to me lately in a dream, and told me to make music. But

whether with the hands or in the soul, he did not say; so you can see I ought not to neglect either. I

wanted to hear more of his dream, and tell him one of my own; but he said, The master is coming.

I was so curious that next day, instead of creeping to school, I ran, so as to be early and talk with him.

He was only just in time for the lesson; but he must have noticed me looking 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.

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3

whenI 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 there. But he grew short-tempered when I questioned him.

Now, rising at the second cock, while the stars were still bright, I took care not to wake the household,

which I knew would anger him, for we had been disturbed in the night. The dogs had made a great noise,

and we had got up to make sure of the bolts and bars; but after all no one had tried to break in.

I waked the porter to lock up after me, and went out. In my youth I always went barefoot, as every

runner ought. Coming from the forecourt into the street, I trod on something sharp; but my soles being as

tough as oxhide, it drew no blood, and I did not pause to look at it. That year I had entered for the boys'

long-race at the Panathenaic Games; so as I ran I kept my mind on my trainer's precepts. My steps felt

light on the thin dust of the street, after the heavy sand of the practice track.

Early as it was, in the Street of the Armourers the lamps were burning, and the smoke was red in the

mouths of the stumpy chimneys beside the shops. All along the way the hammers were clattering; the big

ones flattening the plates, the lesser closing the rivets, and the little ones tapping at the gold ornaments

which had been ordered by those who liked them. My father was against them; he said they often held a

spear-point instead of glancing it off. I should have liked to go in and watch the work, but had only just

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