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Potidaea
There were screaming Corinthians on either side of me, which was the moment at which I realized our line had been over-run. The air steamed with cold, and yet all of us were flushed and hot, in our heads as well as our limbs, and I was young. Falling back meant walking between two Corinthians stabbing at someone on the ground, so I locked shields with the man ahead of me and went forward, because that was all I could think of to do, It wasn’t courage as I know it now, but an image of courage, and my only notion, so I cannot even call it a choice. The man ahead of me levered his spear behind my shield and tore it away from my arm, giving me a little scratch that I regarded the way Achilles might a sting at his ankle - it was my death-wound, I knew it, and foolish as it seems now I suppose I was right. Without a shield, two men deep in the Corinthian lines, I was certainly done for.
It was at that time that the sounds behind me changed, on one side before the other, as our line was reinforced - but it was reinforced where it stood, with me well out of it, as likely to get an Athenian spear in my back by accident as a Corinthian spear on purpose from the front - well, perhaps a little less likely. I slapped aside the next few blows that came at me, which showed fine reflex but, I promise you gentlemen, better luck and the blessings of the gods than any real skill. Still, the Corinthians had become aware of me, not just my opponent but the men on all sides of me, and I opened my mouth to give a hero’s defiant last words only to realize I had nothing to say. It was a terrible thought.
And it is when a spear was flung over my shoulder, causing the men in front of me to duck behind their shields, and a callused grip fastened around my elbow and pulled me back behind a bristling line of swords. I knew at once who it was, because I’d already tried to fasten on him, listening to him banter and bargain while I purchased my sandals in the market. But to see that funny little man - and he is, you must admit, a peculiar figure - with a shield at his side, darting through the lines to seize me and drag me back to safety, abandoning the weapon in his hand for the sake of my life - it was that heartbeat and no other where I became crier and cupbearer and wretched slave of Socrates. Any man whose life was saved so might do the same. But if I am confused and common, he is not.
Mantinea
I rode out of my way to secure his retreat at Delium. I haven’t told that to too many people before, even deep in my cups, not even him. When the retreat was given I knew I had only one chance to pay him back the favor he paid me, and so I did save his life, but I know it wasn’t even, not remotely. He was threatened, falling back in good order, and perhaps he would have survived without me. And perhaps it is simply a cheat. He was not possessed of a grand strategy to save my life - he simply saw the right thing, and did it. I devised my rescue of him, and who knows what other men I could have saved instead who might have been in more dire need?
That is how I came to feel guilty about saving a good man’s life, a man who still had no regard for me, not after sixteen years of unseemly pursuit on my part. When I started to chase the hairy little stonemason, I was fifteen, and he was thirty-five, and if he’d chased me the way other men did it would have been very suitable. But not even naked and slicked in oil did I draw his attention more than anyone else. You can tell it looking at him that he has little mind for his own appearance. You can’t see until you know him better that he thinks just the same of everyone else’s. I have a beautiful body, but my mind is made of the same rough clay as anyone’s, and his - his infuriates me. He denies it! The Oracle at Delphi praises him as wisest, and he very nearly blasphemes by saying he knows nothing, twisting words into snake-coils to trap the unwary, and saying that takes no talent to do. I am an orator, when I want, and a good one. I model myself after Pericles. And he makes me a stammering ninny. For twelve years, he’s honed his tongue and made a target of every vanity in Athens, and never spoken of me, either in praise or contempt, while he skewered all my peers.
How much longer can I bear something like this? And why, you ask, do I dwell on it now?
Soon we’ll be done with all this mess and back in Athens. And I won’t be able to face him. If I failed at Delium, how much worse have I failed now? I pushed for this battle, and I swore I was right to, and the Spartans trampled our lines. I know he’s well, I looked in on him - not to the neglect of my duties - but what will he have to say of me now? And if he says nothing… why does he spare me? Why, if not from some regard?
So, I am not thinking about political schemes, or how to rescue myself or our city from disgrace. I am thinking about one man and one conversation alone. I am thinking about Socrates, and making myself shameless before him, begging like a dog, treating him as if he were a beautiful young boy. I’m no longer the age to be pursued. But if I’m to take up a lover - in the real sense, and not the momentary meeting of bodies that I can indulge in with anyone, man or woman, who can’t turn me down - it must be him. The next time I see him in the marketplace, if he does not speak to me, or speak of me, then I’ll speak my mind, the way I should have as a boy - or after Potidaea, or when he first began to practice philosophy and take students, or after Delium. I’ll make myself foolish for him - you may say, I shouldn’t have far to go in that case. Perhaps. But all I want is to be a thunderbolt in his life, lighting the way in brief moments, the way he’s been in mine.