Free Hunger's Brides by W. Paul Anderson

principle which is for the good of all—that anyone in danger should have just and equitable treatment and any advantage, even if not strictly his due, which he can secure by persuasion. This is your interest as much as ours, for your own fall would involve you in a crushing punishment that would be a lesson to the world.
    ATHENS: Leave that danger to us to face…. We wish you to become our subjects with least trouble to ourselves, and we would like you to survive, in our interests as well as your own.
    MELOS: It may be your interest to be our masters: how can it be ours to be your slaves?
    ATHENS: By submitting you would avoid a terrible fate, and we should gain by not destroying you.
    MELOS: Would you not agree to an arrangement under which we should keep out of the war, and be your friends instead of your enemies, but neutral?
    ATHENS: No: your hostility injures us less than your friendship. That, to our subjects, is an illustration of weakness, while your hatred exhibits our power….
    MELOS: Surely then, if you are ready to risk so much to maintain your empire, and the enslaved peoples so much to escape from it, it would be criminal cowardice in us, who are still free, not to take any and every measure before submitting to slavery? … We trust that Heaven will not allow us to be worsted by Fortune, for in this quarrel we are right and you are wrong…. 8
    Thus spoke the last Melian emissary, before every man of Melos was slaughtered, every woman and child sold into bondage. Before every stone sacred to Melos was pulled to the ground. It was
terrible—
stupid and pitiless, the exercise of beautiful minds in a mindless, fatal cause. And then for trusting to heaven, for their faith in
right
, the Melians are held up to the scorn of all practical men. What real choice was left them? In the left hand, Athens holds slavery and criminal cowardice. In the right, annihilation.
    â€œYes, you are right, Angel, the Melians were very reasonable. But they were not realistic. There is no shame in surrender to a greatly superiorforce, or to Fortune, or God. There can be a kind of grace in this. Pericles saw this. Moctezuma saw….”
    I was sitting in the same chair as always, looking towards the library door, with the kitchen at my back. He had dragged the other chair to sit beside me now, so as to be able to look into my eyes and reason with me. His thin old leg, though not quite touching, felt warm next to mine. My face was hidden in my hands. I knew it was childish to cry like this. Gently he coaxed them down to the table, letting his big bony hand rest lightly across my wrists.
    â€œBut Socrates was an Athenian too, wasn’t he, Abuelo? What about Plato’s
Republic
—he proved to Thrasymachus that honour was necessary even among thieves. Socrates
proved
it.”
    â€œYes. Yes he did. And resoundingly. But the Athenians had not read it.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause, Angelina, it would not be written for thirty more years.”
    â€œBut Socrates was alive, he was a teacher. He and Thucydides both lived in Athens.”
    â€œIt may be they never met.”
    â€œHow big was Athens, then—bigger than Tenochtitlan?”
    â€œNo, no.”
    â€œBigger than Mexico City now, or Seville?”
    â€œEven smaller.”
    â€œThen how …?”
    They
had
to know each other. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Socrates, Pericles, Thucydides. These were Grandfather’s heroes. They
were
Athens. How could they have become great all alone, all together, all at the same time? No. They influenced,
learned
from one another, as I learned from Abuelo. Athens made them, but they made each other great. Or else what was a city
for?
On Melos, Thucydides had somehow failed Athens. I sensed this, I knew this. But if he and Socrates had never had the chance to meet, or walk together, or know each other’s hearts, then I must feel that their city had failed them first.
    I could not have