Amber and Clay by Laura Schlitz (phonics books txt) 📕

die, and you to live. Which is better, only the god knows.

EXHIBIT 16

Votive offering to Asklepios, terra-cotta, fourth century BCE, found on the southwest slope of the Akropolis.

Asklepios may have been a real person who lived around 1200 BCE and practiced medicine. By the time of Sokrates, Asklepios was considered the son of Apollo and had risen to the status of a god. He was able to heal the sick and even to bring the dead back to life.

The person who gave this clay brick to the temple evidently suffered from an eye ailment. Temples to Asklepios are full of clay representations of body parts: legs, hands, breasts, and internal organs. Many are carved with inscriptions that praise the god for his healing powers.

On his deathbed, the philosopher Sokrates instructed his friend Krito to sacrifice a white cockerel to Asklepios. The sacrifice of a rooster was often performed after an act of healing.

They didn’t kill him for a month.

Every year a ship is sent to Delos

bearing seven youths and seven maidens,

in memory of the fourteen Athenians

who were sent to feed the cannibal Minotaur.

Theseus, Prince of Athens,

threaded the maze and slaughtered the monster.

His ship is still docked in the harbor. It’s ancient,

patched so often down the years,

there’s not a splinter of the old wood left.

But once a year, the ship is crowned with flowers

and sets sail for Delos.

From the time the garlands of spring flowers

are lashed to the mast

to the day when the ship comes back,

it’s a holy time. The city has to be pure.

No bloodshed. No man, no matter how guilty, is put to death.

So Sokrates was in prison till the ship came back.

When the time came, he’d drink hemlock:

a poison that turns a man to stone

and stops his breath.

It was better than what might have been.

He could have been strapped to a plank,

garroted, trapped in a pit.

Phaistus was good to me. He told me I could visit the prison.

I didn’t want to. I wished Phaistus

would forbid me to go —

though it wouldn’t have stopped me.

I’d have still gone. But I was afraid to be with a man

who was doomed to die.

The idea made my heart race and my hair rise up,

as if death might be catching.

Zosima gave me a new-baked loaf;

it wasn’t very big, but it was hot.

The jailer let me in. I wasn’t the only one who’d come.

Sokrates sat among his friends —

he was sitting on a bed. Someone must have brought it there

and set it up. His legs were shackled.

He sat with a lyre across his knees.

I didn’t know he played the lyre.

I felt like a fool, standing there with my loaf;

he didn’t see me right away,

but when he did —

“Rhaskos! Come and serve as my judge;

I’ve been setting verses to music, a fable of Aesop.

See what you think!”

I didn’t know what to think.

He seemed merry. He plucked the lyre, and I tried to listen.

The song was about the King of the Apes —

who tore a man to pieces for telling the truth.

Sokrates sang it lustily, though his voice was scratchy;

the tune was one he’d made up himself.

“So, Rhaskos! what do you think of my music?

I’ve sometimes heard a voice inside me whisper

that I ought to practice the arts.

I’ve never worried about it,

because what art is greater than philosophy?

But now that I’m about to die, I see;

I ought to have spent more time making music.

I must go on learning, even as I grow old —

Do you like my song?”

“I don’t know, Sokrates.

I don’t know much about music.

It sounds all right to me.”

The men laughed. I felt myself get red.

“You’re an honest fellow, Rhaskos,

not a flatterer. Stay that way.

I remember the first day we met,

you looked at me and said, ‘Honestly, Sokrates, I don’t know.’

I knew right then I liked you.”

He remembered —

but that was the last time he spoke to me that day.

His grown-up friends were there, and they’d brought wine.

They talked about music,

passed the lyre back and forth, singing verses by Homer —

I edged over; left my loaf on the bed.

I muttered that I had to go to work.

I was luckier the second time.

He was alone, asleep.

Lying flat, he looked old and maybe sick,

clutching his cloak like a blanket;

his skin was blotched and purplish,

ribbed and damp.

He had crusts of yellow crud

in the corners of his mouth.

He shifted in his sleep, squirmed against his shackles,

grumbled;

then his eyes opened

and they were clear.

“Rhaskos. My friend.”

That was the best moment.

“Does your master know you’re here?”

“He said I could come.”

“Good.”

He sat up and folded his cloak around his shoulders;

he looked more like himself then,

not like a sick man under a blanket.

He eased his legs over the side of the bed,

rubbed his thighs, and grunted a little.

His ankles had welts where the shackles chafed.

I pointed. “Do they hurt?”

“What? Oh, those. They’re not too bad.

Remember what I told you, Rhaskos —

Men view pain as the greatest of evils,

but they are mistaken. The body feels a sharp pain,

or an acute pleasure, and mistakes those feelings for reality.

Remember: pleasure is not the same as goodness,

and the pain I suffer is no great evil.”

I racked my brains for something to say.

“I don’t have any food this time. No loaf.”

“Just as well. My kind friends bring too much —

savories and treats, things I can’t digest.

I’m not used to all that food,

it’s charming of them, of course.

My wife comes every day.

She brings what I’m used to: plain bread or porridge.

It’s good of her to come.

All this” — he spread his hands,

wiggled his toes to show off his shackles —

“upsets her.

She’s fond of me in her own way.”

He looked at me sideways, a glint in his eye.

“Have you come to hear me sing?”

“No.” I said it too fast. I didn’t want to hear him sing.

All I could think of was that he was going to die.

At last I said, “There’s a story you used to tell —

I heard part of it once, in the Agora.

I couldn’t stop to listen. I never heard the end.

It was about a cave.

There were some