Alkibiades, a tale of the Great Athenian War

by Charles Hamilton Bromby

He found a scroll of writing on his table. He opened it and read:

‘I have gone back to my old home. Would to the gods that I had never left it!’

He lay down and slept. It was late before he woke. He remembered he had promised to sup that night at the house of Polytion. He called his slave and bade him prepare his bath, and then anoint him.

Dressed in his finest robes, he went to Polytion’s. The feast was nearly over, and the guests heated with wine. They rallied him as he came in. He heard Timandra’s name. He declined all food, but drank eagerly of Polytion’s generous wine unmixed with water. His wit that night was more poignant, more satirical, than it was wont to be. For all his efforts to conceal his thoughts, it was plain that something was amiss.

Days passed by in the great solitary house. His nights were spent in revelry. There was ever present all the time a feeling of imperfectness, a want. Sometimes he fought against it almost successfully, then it would come over him again when least expected. When he lay down alone at night, or in the early morning, he thought of all his wife’s great love and her devotion, and the kindlier portion of his nature took possession of him. This was the woman he was repaying for her love by making her spend days and nights in bitterest anguish. And all that time she was wandering like a spectre in her brother’s house—the brother she could never care much for, who was ever trying to persuade her to leave her husband altogether.

There had never been any love between her brother and her husband. She half suspected his design was to get back the dowry her father had given her, and the large patrimony he had left her in his last testament. By the law of Athens she knew if she left her husband she and all her fortune would be in her brother’s power.

She soon got tired of living in the brother’s house. Amykla sent her word each day how unhappy her dear husband was. She pictured him to herself alone in the big house, no one to take care of him except Amykla and the slaves. Poor old Amykla, she thought, could not do much for him, or make up for her. Perhaps he was wishing her to come back, too proud to ask her to return. And, after all, his great offence, bad as it was, was not a bit worse than many other men had been guilty of. He was so strong, so great, so noble. Perhaps she ought not to expect from him all that other wives might properly expect from their husbands, and he was pining for her, longing for her back again. Was it not her duty to go to him?

Then for Ephialtes’ sake ought she not to go—forget it all, try to know him better, please him more, make him love her more than he could ever really love that other woman? Ought she not to put up with almost anything, rather than the child should ever know his father had—had not been always constant?

Kallias was at her day by day about the question of a divorce. He told her her husband’s conduct had been such that she had only to go before the Archon Eponymos, tell him her wrongs, pray for justice, and, by the law of Athens, he could not refuse it to her. But she must go herself in person before the magistrate.

She began to think of this, though with a different design to that of poor, mean Kallias. Yet how terrible to go before so high a judge to accuse her husband, and lay bare the secrets of their married life.