Tides of War by Steven Pressfield Read Free Book Online Page B

observed, “for your client Polemides.”
    At that time Socrates’ summers had passed seventy, yet he appeared save his beard gone white and the noble amplitude of his girth much as Polemides described during the siege of Potidaea. His limbs stood hale and sturdy, his
carriage vigorous and purposeful; it required scant imagination to picture the veteran snatching up shield and armor to advance once again into the fray.
    Not surprisingly the philosopher evinced curiosity about his fellow inmate and even advanced counsel upon how best to defend him. “It is too late to file a countersuit, a
paragraphe,
declaring his indictment unlawful, which of course it is. Perhaps a
dike pseudomartyriou,
a suit for false witness, which may be invoked up to the moment of the jury’s vote.” He laughed. “You see, my own ordeal has rendered me something of a jailhouse lawyer.”
    We discussed the Amnesty, in place since the restoration of the democracy, which exempted all citizens from prosecution for crimes committed theretofore. “Polemides’ enemies have gotten around this cleverly, Socrates, by charging him with ‘wrongdoing.’ That rakes a lot of mud, and, as he admits, there is more than enough with which to tar him.” I narrated an abridged version of Polemides’ story, what he had told me thus far.
    “I knew several of his family,” Socrates remarked when this chronicle concluded. “His father, Nicolaus, was a man of exceptional integrity, who perished in attendance upon the stricken during the Plague. And I enjoyed a cordial if chaste acquaintance with his great-aunt Daphne, who effectively ran the Board of Naval Governors through her second and third husbands. She was the first of the aristocratic dames, in her widowhood, to conduct her affairs entirely on her own, with no male as
kyrios
or guardian, and not even a servant about the house.”
    Our master expressed concern for Polemides’ comfort. “The heat is stifling on that side of the court, I hear. Please, Jason, take him this fruit, and that wine; I may imbibe no more, as they say it spoils the savor of hemlock.”
    When the others returned with the evening, some measure of amusement was wrung from the coincident confinement of the murderer and the philosopher. Crito, Socrates’ wealthiest and most devoted follower, spoke. In the days prior to our master’s trial, he had hired detectives and set about acquiring intelligence of the philosopher’s accusers, seeking to bring to light their private crimes and thus discredit them and their indictments. It occurred to me now that I might do the same for Polemides.
    I had then in my employ a married couple of middle years, Myron and Lado. They were incorrigible snoops, both, who delighted in nothing more than digging up dirt on the high and mighty. I decided to set these bloodhounds to work. What had become of Polemides’ family? What motivated hisaccusers? Had someone put them up to this, and if so, who? What covert agenda did they seek to promote?
    Meanwhile, my grandson, I sense your assimilation of this tale wanting. You need more background. Polemides and I were contemporaries; he knew as he spoke that I understood the times and required no exposition as to their feel and flavor. You of a later generation, however, may benefit by a brief historical digression.
    In the years before the War, that period of my own and our narrator’s boyhood, Athens stood not in the state of faded glory within which she currently resides. Her best days were not behind her, but present, to hand, dazzling and incandescent. Her navy had routed the Empire of Asia and driven the Persian from the sea. Tribute flowed to her from two hundred states. She was a conqueror, an empire, the cultural and commercial capital of the world.
    The Spartan War lay years in the future, yet already Pericles’ vision had inspired him to prepare for it. He fortified the harbors at Munychia and Zea, reinforced the Long Walls along their entire length,