1Across the sea from Ephesus, on a dry rock with a silver mine behind it and a harbour before it, stood the city of Athens. In the years after the Persians were driven back, it grew rich and loud and proud. It built temples of white marble. It governed itself by the votes of its citizens, which was a new thing in the world. It also kept slaves, as every city did, and thought nothing of it.
2In that city lived a slave boy named Sosias. He had been born in the house of his master, a landowner named Philokles, and had never known another. He carried water, swept the court, and ran messages. He was twelve years old, and no one had ever asked his opinion on any matter whatever.
3One summer afternoon Philokles sat in his court with a guest from the north, drinking watered wine, and with them sat a man whom Sosias had seen about the marketplace. Everyone in Athens had. He was a stonecutter's son, past fifty, with a snub nose and bulging eyes and a belly, and he went barefoot in all seasons in one old cloak. His name was Socrates. He had fought in the city's wars as a foot soldier, and men who had stood beside him said that in the retreat from one lost battle he had walked off the field as calmly as if he were crossing the market, so that no enemy cared to come near him.
4He did no work that anyone could see. He went about asking questions. He would stop a general and ask him what courage was, or a priest and ask him what holiness was, and by the end of an hour the general or the priest would be red in the face and no longer sure. The young men of the city followed him about to watch. The older men were less amused.
5It was told that a friend of his had gone to the great shrine at Delphi and asked whether any man was wiser than Socrates, and the priestess had answered that none was. Socrates said that this had puzzled him greatly, since he knew that he was not wise. So he had gone to everyone with a name for wisdom and questioned them, to prove the saying wrong. He found that they thought they knew a great deal and did not. He at least knew that he did not know. That, he supposed, was the whole of his advantage.
6It was told also that someone once gave him the book of Heraclitus, the dark man of Ephesus. He said that what he understood of it was excellent, and so, he dared say, was what he did not understand; but it wanted a deep-sea diver to get to the bottom of it.
7On this afternoon the guest from the north was holding forth. Goodness and good sense, he said, were a matter of blood. A man of good family had reason in him. A labourer had a little. A barbarian or a slave had none worth the name. You might as well reason with a mule.
8"That is interesting," said Socrates. "Philokles, lend me one of your household. That boy with the broom will do. Does he speak Greek?"
9"He was born here."
10"Come here, boy," said Socrates. Sosias came, and stood with his eyes down, as he had been taught. "Look at me. No, look. I am going to ask you some things. No one will beat you for a wrong answer. I am wrong myself most days. Do you know what a square is?"
11He took the broom from the boy's hand and drew with the end of it in the dust of the court. Four lines, the same length. "Suppose each side is two feet long. How many feet of ground are inside? Count the small squares." He drew a cross through it.
12"Four," said Sosias.
13"Good. Now I want a square with twice as much ground. Eight. How long must I make each side?"
14That was easy. "Twice as long," said Sosias. "Four feet."
15The guest laughed. Socrates did not. "Let us see," he said. He drew the sides out to four. "Count."
16Sosias counted the small squares. His face grew hot. "Sixteen."
17"That is four times, and we wanted twice. So four is too long, and two was too short. Try again."
18"Three," said Sosias. It must be three.
19Socrates drew it. Sosias counted. Nine.
20He stood looking at the dust. He had been sure, and then sure again. "I do not know," he said. He waited for the laugh, or for the back of a hand.
21"Now that is the best thing you have said," said Socrates. "A moment ago you thought you knew, and you did not. Now you know that you do not, and you want to find out. You are better off than half the Assembly. Look here."
22He rubbed the dust smooth and drew the first square again, and three more like it beside and below, so that four small squares made one great one. Then in each small square he drew a line from corner to corner, slantwise, so that the four slant lines made a new square standing on its point in the middle.
23"Each of these slant lines cuts a small square in half. Is that so?" Sosias nodded. "How many halves are inside the new square?"
24Sosias looked. Something moved in his head, like a bolt sliding. "Four halves."
25"And four halves make?"
26"Two. Two of the small squares. Eight feet." His voice went up. "It is that one! The slant one! You make the new side out of the slant line of the old one!"
27"So you do," said Socrates. He handed back the broom. Then he turned to the two men. "You saw. I told him nothing. I did not say, the answer is the slant line. I asked, and he looked, and he found it where it was. Where was it? Not in me. I only kept him from stopping too soon." He scratched his beard. "Now tell me, my friend from the north. Which part of that was done by his blood?"
28The guest said that it was a trick. Philokles said nothing. He was looking at his slave boy in a way that he had not looked before, and he did not seem to like it. If the boy could reason, then some other things followed, and Philokles was not ready to follow them.
29Sosias was sent back to his sweeping. But that night he lay awake on his mat with his heart going fast. It was not the square. It was the bolt sliding. No one had put the answer in him. It had been his own eyes and his own head. He had not known that he had such a thing, any more than a man knows he has a liver. After that he drew squares in the dust whenever he was alone, and other shapes, and he began to ask himself questions about matters that were not shapes at all.
30Now hear what came after, for twelve years went by, and they were bad ones.
31Athens fought a long war with Sparta, and lost it. Her fleet was destroyed. Her walls were pulled down, to the music of flutes. The Spartans set thirty men over the city to rule it, Athenians all, and these Thirty began by killing informers, whom no one mourned. Then they killed their enemies. Then they killed men who were merely rich, for the sake of what they owned. Fifteen hundred died in eight months. No one spoke freely in the street. And the Thirty had a custom: they made as many citizens as they could take a hand in the work, so that all should be guilty together and none could accuse.
32Sosias was a grown man now, and his master's steward. One evening a runner came to the house. Philokles was wanted at the Round House, where the Thirty sat.
33Sosias went with him, carrying the lamp. There were four other men waiting in the porch, summoned in the same way. One of them was barefoot, in an old cloak. He was sixty-five now, and his beard was white.
34They were taken in together. Sosias stood by the door with the other servants and heard it. The order was short. There was a man named Leon, living on the island of Salamis, an honest man by every account. The five of them were to go across that night and bring him back to be put to death.
35No reason was given. None was needed. Everyone in that room knew what happened to those who said no.
36The five came out into the dusk. For a moment they stood in the street and no one spoke. Then four of them turned toward the road that goes down to the harbour.
37Socrates turned the other way. He drew his cloak about him and began to walk home.
38Philokles had gone a few steps with the four. He stopped. He called out, in a low voice, "Socrates. They will kill you for this."
39The old man looked back. "They may," he said. "I am old, and they will not be cheating me of much. But I would have to keep house afterward with the man who fetched Leon, and I do not think I could stand his company." He nodded to Philokles, quite kindly, and to Sosias behind him with the lamp. Then he went on up the street at his usual pace, barefoot on the stones.
40Philokles stood in the road. Sosias saw his master's face in the lamplight, and it was terrible to see. The man knew. That was the thing. There was no question about what was right; a child could have answered it. The four knew, and Socrates knew, and the difference between them was not in the knowing.
41"I have a wife," said Philokles, to no one. "I have sons." And he turned and went down to the harbour after the others.
42Leon of Salamis was brought across that night, and he was put to death. It is written, and it is true.
43Philokles came home at dawn. He did not eat. He sat in the court where the wine had once been drunk, and looked at the ground.
44Three days later a second summons came, of another kind. The Thirty wished every man of substance to name a foreigner living in the city who had money: a shield-maker, a banker, a merchant. Such men had no vote and no protector. They would be seized, and their goods shared out. Philokles need only write one name.
45There was a lamp-maker named Hermon who lived two doors away. He had come from the islands thirty years ago. He had lent Philokles money in a bad year and never pressed for it. Philokles sat a long while. Then he took a wax tablet and wrote, and closed it, and held it out to his steward. "Take this to the Round House."
46Sosias did not put out his hand.
47A slave could be flogged for less. He could be sent to the silver mines, where men lasted three years. Sosias knew it. His mouth was dry. But there was a thing in him that had been awake since he was twelve, and it would not lie down.
48"Master," he said. "May I ask you something?"
49Philokles stared at him.
50"Three nights ago you went to Salamis. Was that a good act or a bad one?"
51"You forget yourself."
52"I am asking only. I do not know the answer; you were there, and I was not. Was it good?"
53There was a long silence. "No," said Philokles.
54"And since then, have you slept?"
55"You know I have not."
56"Then this tablet. Is it the same kind of thing as Salamis, or a different kind?"
57Philokles's hand had begun to tremble. "They will put my name on the list if I do not."
58"They may. I do not say they will not. I ask only which kind of thing it is. You taught me to keep the accounts, master. I am trying to see what goes in which column."
59Philokles rose. He had a stick in his hand, and he lifted it. Sosias did not step back. He was more afraid than he had ever been in his life. But he found, standing there, that fear and knowing sat in two different places in him, and that the fear had no power to make the knowing say anything else.
60The stick stayed in the air. Then Philokles looked past it, at the dust of the court, at the place where a square had once been drawn. He remembered. Sosias saw that he remembered.
61"I told him nothing," Philokles said, very low. "That is what he said. He only asked, and the boy looked." He lowered the stick. He opened the tablet, and with his thumb he rubbed the wax smooth until the name was gone. "I went once," he said. "I knew, and I went. I will not go twice. Run to Hermon. Tell him to be out of the city before light. Tell him to make for the harbour town; there are men gathering there against the Thirty."
62Sosias ran. The lamp-maker was gone by midnight, with his wife and a bag on his back, and he lived.
63Philokles's name did go on a list. He slept in a different house each night for a month. But the Thirty did not last. Men who had fled the city seized a hill fort, and then the harbour, and the people rose, and the tyrants fell eight months after they had come. Socrates was not touched. He said himself that he would likely have died for that walk home, if their rule had not ended so soon.
64Philokles lived, and never held up his head quite as before. He told his sons what he had done on the night of Salamis; he did not hide it. In his will he set Sosias free. The steward kept a small shop near the marketplace after that, and scratched figures in the dust of the doorway to amuse the children, and asked them questions.
65The city had its votes again, and its courts. It was glad, and it was sore, and it looked about for someone to blame for its long shame. There was an old man still going barefoot about the marketplace, asking generals what courage was, and making the great feel small. He had displeased the tyrants. He had never much pleased the people either.
66And it was not the tyrants who came for him in the end.