Robin Linnet

DAMON and Pythias, collegiately and colloquially known as Day and Pie, were seated in Damon’s room in the great quadrangle, on two chairs, side by side, with a candle on the table that guttered in the draught, and a copy of “Socrates’s Apology” (in the original Greek) between them. Between them also, propped up against the candle, was a firmly literal translation of what they were reading, to which they both constantly referred.