Philopoemen looked up and saw Alexanor. He shot to his feet and threw his arms around him, pounding his back.
‘She had persuasions I apparently lacked,’ Lykortas said, and the dark woman barked a laugh.
Alexanor found himself deeply moved by Philopoemen’s obvious demonstration.
‘You are in charge here, I find,’ Alexanor said.
‘Never,’ Philopoemen said. ‘There is a council of thirty and a citizen assembly, and we’ve restored everyone here to full citizen rights. We’re writing the laws for a real thētes class, like Athens, lower-class men with actual voting rights. And while we’re at it, giving metics some rights, too.’ He was all but glowing with vitality, and his eyes seemed to pour beneficence. ‘Which reminds me.’
He went back to the big work table. Antiphatas chuckled and handed him a scroll tube, and Alexanor found that he was suddenly holding a writ of citizenship.
Tears came unbidden to his eyes.
Dinaeos came and embraced him. ‘It’s only a four-hour ride from Lentas,’ he said. ‘Too far to come and visit your friends?’
‘I had work to do …’ Alexanor said.
‘So do we!’ Telemnastos said. ‘We’re going to change the world.’
‘We are?’ Alexanor asked.
‘Who is this man?’ asked a blond giant.
‘Plator,’ Lykortas said, ‘this is Alexanor, High Priest of Apollo and Asklepios at Lentas. Alexanor, this is Plator, commander of the Illyrians sent by Philip.’
The two men clasped hands. ‘Acting high priest,’ Alexanor said.
‘And perhaps you remember Aristaenos?’ Philopoemen said.
‘You healed me,’ said a young man, who was both bigger and more mature than Alexanor remembered him. ‘I will never forget that.’
‘Aristaenos came with the Achaean military expedition,’ Dinaeos said. ‘Two hundred men.’
‘The worst infantry on Crete,’ Aristaenos said.
‘Not any more, after a winter of drilling with Periander,’ Dinaeos said.
‘I will teach them to fight with horse,’ Thodor said. ‘To ride.’
‘And we have our own phalanx now, and our own archer corps and we’re working on forming a federal league, with laws,’ Telemnastos said.
‘Even for women,’ said the dark-haired woman. ‘I’m Cyrena. No one ever introduces me.’
She stuck out her hand like a man, and Alexanor clasped it.
Phila smiled. ‘I’d have got to you in time. Cyrena organised the porne as spies during the stasis.’
‘I want women to have a voice in government,’ Cyrena said.
Antiphatas rolled his eyes. Telemnastos beamed.
Alexanor grinned. ‘I’ve missed this.’
‘Good,’ Philopoemen said. ‘You hear a good deal of news down at Lentas and I need to know what’s happening in the world. Phila’s information came like a breath of fresh air, but I need more. Do you know where Philip is?’
Alexanor shook his head. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But I have heard that Knossos sent a thousand men to fight in Aetolia. The Aetolians and the Macedonians are locked together. My last batch of pilgrims came from Sicily. There’s a rumour at Syracusa that one of the Carthaginian nobles has broken the treaty in Iberia.’ He paused. ‘That could be important.’
‘That means no Romans at our end of the Inner Sea for a few years,’ Dinaeos said. ‘Good news if true. They say Hannibal is thirsting for war with Rome.’
‘Despite which,’ Phila said, ‘I have an unimpeachable source who says that one of the two Roman consuls for the year has received Illyria as his theatre of operations.’
‘I just received two new priests from Kos,’ Alexanor added. ‘One of Ptolemy’s generals defected to the Seleucids. I gather that Aegypt is in chaos. You know that Cleomenes is dead?’
Philopoemen coloured slightly at the mention of the Spartan king’s name.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I would rejoice, except that his successor, Lykourgos, seems determined to carry on his work. Spartans are burning the farms around Megalopolis. Again.’
‘But we are here,’ Cyrena said. ‘Not in the Peloponnese, not in Arkadia, not in Elis or Sparta. We are here. Peasants are dying here. Women are raped here.’
She crossed her arms, and then, head high, tapped the pile of scrolls, like a schoolmistress recalling an errant schoolboy to his work. Alexanor expected an explosion, but Philopoemen smiled.
‘Your remarks are just,’ he said.
Later, Alexanor lay with Phila. ‘Are they lovers?’ he asked, incredulous.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Surely, he could have any woman …’
‘Sometimes you sound very like a misogynist, my dear. And in this case, I’d say that Cyrena had him.’
‘But she’s a porne! A whore!’
Phila rolled over and looked at him. ‘Interesting.’ She rolled off the kline and walked to the window.
‘I didn’t mean that!’ Alexanor exclaimed.
‘Mean what?’ Phila said over her shoulder.
‘You are being difficult.’
‘You just made your views on women who provide sex for money very plain. I name you hypocrite.’
‘You … I didn’t mean you. And besides, I didn’t “make my views plain”.’
‘Didn’t you?’ Phila asked.
Silence, and darkness, lay between them.
‘I suspect that you mean that she is neither as beautiful as I am, nor as well-educated.’ Phila rustled; out in the darkness, she was putting on a peplos. ‘A cheap whore, rather than an expensive one.’
‘I didn’t say anything like that. You are making up words I didn’t say,’ muttered the priest.
‘Am I? When a patient is obese and short of breath, do you need him to use words to tell you what is wrong? When I saw you in your sanctuary, did I need words to tell me what you wanted from me?’
‘Phila!’
‘Alexanor!’ she said, mockingly.
He thought that she was leaving, and he was desolated. He rose, but she pressed him down.
‘No, no. I’d rather stay and educate you than leave you to mull over your many failings,’ she said. ‘Cyrena was taught pankration – as a slave, she gave demonstrations against other women slaves. It titillated men in Alexandria. Apparently, your friend had never seen a woman who could fight. He’s … obsessed. Also, her very origins, as a freed slave, a foreigner, an African, all fit his current political ideals. Which, if I may be direct, are my own.’ She lit an oil lamp from the coals in the crock by the bed. ‘Also, she is ridiculously beautiful, for a woman of her size. You just can’t see past her skin colour.’
‘I care nothing for her skin,’ Alexanor protested. ‘It is her accent!’
‘Alexanor, we’re having a revolution. We are overthrowing the old oligarchs and restoring democracy. We’re not doing it just so that people from “the best families” can enjoy their political rights.’
‘I am not a farm boy from Pella!’ Alexanor said. ‘You do not need to patronise me like this.’
‘Don’t I?’ she asked. ‘You should have heard yourself when you called her a whore. I promise you, she loves your friend. And we need spies, Alexanor, something that you, of all people, should understand.’
‘I told you that in confidence, not so you could throw it at me. Besides, I told you, I don’t send reports to Rhodes any more.’ He sounded petulant, and he regretted it.
‘My dear, we’re lucky to have her – doubly lucky she’s such a noble soul. Frankly, I’m surprised a woman who has lived her life, been abused, been raped a hundred times, been sold, can love anyone. But she does. Perhaps she sees him as the saviour of the slaves. Perhaps he sees in her the slaves he means to save.’
She shrugged, her face beautiful in the lamplight, like a distant goddess.
‘Do you believe that women should have political rights?’ Alexanor asked.
She laughed. ‘Yes. But it won’t happen in my lifetime, so whatev
er Cyrena believes, I won’t alienate the very men I need to save the world by forcing them to give me the franchise now. Bastards.’
Alexanor took a deep breath. ‘Where’s she from?’
‘Somewhere south of Aegypt. Far to the south of Alexandria.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid of your revolution. What will be left?’
She shrugged and lay down again. ‘What’s left now, my dear? At the current rate, in a few years a handful of kings and extremely rich men will own everything – here, Macedon, Aegypt, Syria, Rome, Carthage …’ She leant over him. ‘Philopoemen says that to have a strong city, we must build on strong foundations – justice for every class of men. All Cyrena and I want is for the men to remember women.’
Alexanor thought of his father. And his mother. And Aspasia.
He sighed. ‘I’m sorry I said whore,’ he admitted.
‘I know that. That’s why I am still here.’ She looked at him fondly. ‘I’m thirty now. Too old for customers, mostly. Lines in the skin of my eyes, no?’ She gazed at him. ‘And what happened when you went to Rhodes? A little bird tells me that you walked out on a dinner party.’
‘Aphrodite!’ he spat. ‘Are your spies everywhere?’
‘Well, you went to a party with some old men who hired a pair of flute girls for entertainment,’ the hetaera said. ‘So you needn’t be shocked that I know what happened.’ She put a finger on his chest. ‘Except that I don’t know why you left. Were you sick?’
‘Sick with anger,’ he admitted.
And then, without fully intending, he was telling her the whole ugly story, from his first trysts with Aspasia, to their betrothal, to his father’s dissolution of their impending marriage, and then on to the dinner party.
‘He … wanted my Aspasia for his friend,’ Alexanor said. ‘She was the only child of a very rich man. I’m sure she stood to inherit some … wonderful warehouses.’
Phila kissed him. ‘So this is why you ran away from your family?’
Alexanor lay looking at the darkness. ‘Bodily intimacy makes for easy confession,’ he said.
‘How astute of you, doctor.’
‘Have you ever done something so … bad … that …’ He shook his head.
‘You? Did something bad?’ she asked. ‘In a way, you cheer me up. I’m so glad to know you can do something bad. You’re always so stable.’
‘I am?’ Alexanor asked. ‘No, I mean something … against the law of the gods.’
‘I’m not sure I recognise any laws of the gods. You killed your father? No, I’d know.’
He shook his head. ‘No. I dissected a man.’
‘Dissected?’
‘I cut him up. Carefully.’ Alexanor said it with a bitter pride.
‘Was he … alive?’ she asked.
‘Zeus – no! What do you take me for, a monster?’
She shrugged, her body tight against him now. ‘No. So … you cut up a dead man. For … science? Don’t they do that in Alexandria?’
‘Yes. But you understand, it is forbidden …’
‘Forbidden?’ She shook her head, and he felt her hair against his chest. ‘This is your crime against the gods? Cutting up a dead man?’
Alexanor lay back.
‘Where is your lady-love now?’ she asked.
‘I find it very odd to talk to you about her.’
‘That’s because you equate us. But I promise you, I feel no jealousy, now or ever, and to me, she is just another misused woman.’ She breathed out. ‘One of thousands.’
Alexanor enjoyed voting in the Assembly. The citizens of Gortyna were not revolutionaries; most of them were middle-aged men, farmers and merchants, not unlike the citizens of any other Greek polity. They were a little more efficient than most, as if their recent brush with loss of their citizen rights had reminded every one of them to do a better job. In a day of voting in the Assembly they summoned the citizen phalanx to its duty, voted a long series of taxes on themselves for the war, and then got down to the drudgery of voting on temple repairs, theatre costs, festival liturgies and everything from flowers to wood for cremations. The budget lists took an hour to read out and five hours to vote, men rising to discuss the cost of torches, or who made better ones, or just speaking to hear the sound of their own voices, or so it seemed to Alexanor.
One of the most frequent voices was Creon, who disagreed with everything that cost money, and was outraged when he was handed the largest set of temple liturgies and theatre productions, to be paid for out of his own funds.
The second loudest voice was Zophanes. He was more of a wheedler than an orator, but he was just as outraged to be taxed for the upkeep of roads, which he proclaimed repeatedly neither he nor anyone else needed or used.
‘If the farmers at the east end of the valley want a better road, they should build it themselves!’ he said. ‘It’s only fair. If the men of Phaistos want a good road to Gortyna, let them pay for it.’ He looked around. ‘It is unfair to ask me to pay for things I do not use.’
Very few agreed with him.
Philopoemen only rose twice – once to defend the military budget, and once to insist on funding to improve the paving of roads outside the city.
‘The roads are everyone’s property,’ he said. ‘They are for the common good. This is why we have government – so that we, collectively, can act, like hoplites in the phalanx, for the good of our state. Who can fight alone on a battlefield? Who can build a road alone?’
He received an ovation, and Zophanes glared.
During an ‘interval’, Alexanor read the laws of the city, carved into stones, along with lists of slaves freed by vote of the Assembly and men granted citizenship. He was pleased to find his own name, immediately after Philopoemen’s.
‘They are fine men,’ Philopoemen said.
‘I agree. I love it here.’
‘As do I,’ said the Achaean. ‘I will probably never go home.’
‘What?’ Alexanor asked.
‘Aratos and Philip have ruined the Achaean League. These men are still capable of ruling themselves. They can work, they can fight, they can debate. This summer, when we face Knossos, we will have a citizen phalanx – the first one on Crete in fifty years. The first in Greece since …’ He shrugged. ‘Since the Lamian War.’
He stood looking at the lists of laws of Gortyna.
‘How old are they?’ Alexanor asked.
Philopoemen shrugged. ‘The laws? More than two hundred years old. Does it ever occur to you that we live in the ruins of the lives of our ancestors, and they were better men than we are ourselves? Look at what they built. Look at Socrates and Plato. Look at the Parthenon in Athens.’
‘I might say, look at the theatre in Epidauros,’ Alexanor said. ‘Read a modern medical text – watch a good surgeon cut.’
‘And in politics?’ Philopoemen asked, crossing his arms.
Alexanor nodded. ‘I concede that the Spartans and Athenians and Thebans of the past seem the better men,’ he admitted.
‘The men of Attica and Boeotia seem to me fewer, weaker, and less capable,’ Philopoemen said. ‘They live among the monuments of their greatness like keepers in a graveyard.’
‘You may be doing an injustice to the Attics and the Boeotians.’
‘Maybe. You know that Aratos has been defeated in battle twice now? Some of the Achaean federal states have raised their own armies, because they despair of the Federal army ever defeating the Spartans. It’s Sellasia all over again. Aratos will invite Philip to do the fighting, and Philip will demand concessions, and in the end, Aratos will disband the Achaean Army.’
‘And, of course, Aratos has no time for you,’ Alexanor said.
Philopoemen glanced at him with a smile on his lips.
‘I think you accuse me of ambition,’ he said. ‘But in truth, friends in Megalopolis have suggested that I may be exiled.’
‘Exiled?’ Alexanor asked.
‘For serving a foreign power. This is the way of the w
orld. Aratos sent me to Crete, and now, apparently, he tells people that I have abandoned my homeland to serve Philip of Macedon. In this way, he makes it impossible for me to return.’ Philopoemen shrugged.
‘That’s insane!’
‘Welcome to Achaean League politics. No one can rise to the level of the great Aratos, or they will be cut down. He was a great man once – a lesson to us all. Regardless, I will be happy to be a citizen of Gortyna. I will hold office here, too.’
Alexanor shrugged. ‘I, too, am delighted to be a citizen of Gortyna. My father is disinheriting me. I will no longer be a citizen of Rhodes.’
‘Oh, gods,’ Philopoemen embraced the Rhodian. ‘That’s terrible.’
‘It’s a long story,’ Alexanor said.
After that, Alexanor began to shuttle back and forth between Lentas and Gortyna. He prepared Theophilus and Omphalion to accompany him to war, and then added Leon and two more novices after consultation with Philopoemen. He went to testify before the Council of Ten on matters of sanitation, and again to vote in the Assembly about the war and covering the harvest.
Philopoemen was in the field, using his cavalry and the Illyrians as a hammer and a surgical knife to raid the great valleys around Knossos, first from Petra, and then from the west, using the superior horsemanship of his cavalry troopers to ride through rocky mountain passes that their opponents deemed impassable. Once, in late spring, Alexanor rode along on a raid. His clearest memory was that wherever he rode, there were Illyrians high above him, moving as fast on foot as he could move on horseback. They returned home with hundreds of head of sheep and cattle.
‘One of my many worries is that the Gortynians will become so adept at this raiding that they’ll never want peace,’ Philopoemen said.
‘It is not a very Hellenic method of war,’ Alexanor muttered, possibly because his thighs were so sore.
‘Perhaps not in Athens or Sparta,’ Philopoemen said. ‘But in Arkadia or Thessaly, this sort of thing is our bread and oil.’
‘Thrake, too,’ Thodor said, and all the Thracians laughed.
Dadas pointed mutely at the Illyrians in the rocks.
The New Achilles Page 28