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with this decree. But that night we lay sleepless, or started up from sleep, hearing the cries of the dying, the shrieks of women, and children’s weeping, still in our ears. In the morning we all returned to the Assembly, and when we had rescinded the decree, we offered rewards to the rowers of the second galley to overtake the first. They did it; for the first had laboured along as if sick men pulled the oars, so much their errand oppressed them. When they were overhauled at Mytilene, the Athenians felt reprieved as much as the Lesbians; they rejoiced together and shared their wine. But last year, the Melians, who owed us nothing, being Doric, chose to pay tribute to their mother-city rather than to us. What we did, you know.”
    I took courage to say he had never related it to me. He answered, “When you sacrifice, pray the gods that it may never fall to your lot, either to suffer it, or to do it.”
    I had never guessed that such things were in his mind. It was Alkibiades who had moved the Melians’ punishment. “The gods punish hubris in men,” he said. “So why should we think they praise it in cities?”
    Just then someone relieved his watch. We went to one of the fires, where he shared his wine with some friends, and presented me to them. “You can see,” he said, “that he has not done growing yet, from the size of his hands and feet.” Then I felt that he was apologising for me, because anyone could see I should never be as big as he was; I remembered how he had wanted to expose me at my birth; so as soon as it was civil, I took my leave.
    I was kindling my torch at a fire that was burning near the statue of the Twins, when a man, who had just come down from the temple, walked up to me. He had his helmet off, and turning with my torch alight I saw that it was Lysis. I had seen him before in armour, exercising with the horsemen; he looked very well in it. He said, “Did you find your father, son of Myron?” I thanked him and said yes. He stood for a moment, so that I almost thought he had come out on purpose to speak to me; but he only said, “Good,” and went back up the steps again.
    Next day no more had been heard of the enemy, and the troops went home. The next storm to shake the City concerned Alkibiades.
    His sail had scarcely dropped under the horizon before the informers crept out. The tale of the Eleusis party was told in full. Even the woman, whose role it would be unholy to hint at (let the Twice-Born guess; they will be right), was found and induced to testify. Now that his face was out of sight, and his voice out of hearing, everyone saw the madness of trusting the army to such a man. So the state galley, the Salaminia , was sent to fetch him and his friend Antiochos the pilot, who had been denounced too. He was not to be seized, however, lest trouble with the seamen and the Argives should break out again. The trierarch of the Salaminia was to offer him civilly the trial he had asked for, and convoy him back in his own ship.
    I remember, on the day of the decree, coming in to find my father standing by the big press with a painted winecup in his hands. It was one he rarely used, for it was valuable, one of the finest pieces of the master Bacchios. In the bowl was a picture, red on black, of Eros coursing a hare; it was inscribed on the one side MYRON and on the other ALKIBIADES. My father was turning it in his hands, like a man in two minds; when he saw me, however, he put it back in the press.
    Nothing but Alkibiades was talked of in the City. In the street, the palaestra and the markets, old tales were told of his insolence and riot. Those who had once spoken for him would only debate, now, how he came to be what he was, after being brought up by so good a man as Perikles. The answer was always the same: the Sophists had corrupted him. They had taken him up as a lad, caught by his beauty and quick mind; they had puffed him up with vanity, taught him impious free-thinking (here someone