Have you seen the kind of slaves who sit in corners rambling, talking crazy, and never raise their eyes? No – you haven't. I never buy 'em, not even for rough work. People can be broken, just like toys.
I missed being broken because I was so disgusting. Bless the Lord of the Silver Bow and his deadly arrows. His ravens sit on my shield to this day because of that beautiful, stinking pus. I watched it – they raped a boy until he stopped complaining just a spear's length from where I lay. He was Thracian, and he got up silently from their abuse and killed himself, ripping his guts out with a stick, but few are so determined. Honey, you have no idea what a person can put up with, what depth of cowardice we discover when, by small surrenders, we can stay alive. Eh?
Oh, yes. Me, too. I'm sure I'd have given in. I was just a boy, and unlike the brave Thracian, I was utterly disoriented. I couldn't imagine how I'd come to be a slave, and I couldn't get my feet under me, so to speak, and I had a wound.
The slaves themselves prey on the weak. Oh yes! No honour among slaves. I had no food – ever. No honest boy came and brought me bread. They ate my gruel and my soup, and one day I awoke to find two bigger boys discussing my squalor and deciding I wasn't worth 'a fuck' – pardon me, honey, but they meant it. And then they pulled up their rags and pissed on me.
This is harder for you than the death of Pater, isn't it? Hard to picture the noble aristocrat as a victim, your own father with boys raining yellow urine in contempt. Hard to imagine me as a worthless slave. The dishonour. The shame. Eh?
Listen, honey – you know what Achilles says? Better to be the slave of a bad master than King of the Dead. Right? I was alive.
I told you that I tell the truth, at least as I remember it. Who is this fellow you've brought to listen to me? You look like an Ionian, young man. Well – eat well. You are my guest, and guest-friendship still counts for something, eh?
Odd as it sounds, I've always thought that the urine saved me. Being pissed on. It made me angry, and I think it washed the wound. Persians and Aegyptians use piss that way. Maybe not. Maybe the Deadly Archer simply looked the other way and I healed.
But, by the Lady, I was weak. I was so weak that I couldn't stand. I hadn't eaten for two weeks at least. I didn't even know where I was, but I knew that I was angry, and I wasn't going to die so that they could defecate on my corpse. I decided that I had to eat. And to eat, I had to fight off all comers and take food. The thing is, I couldn't fight. I could barely drag myself to the place where the food trough was filled. The boys who ate the most food were bigger, tougher, and none of them had a wound.
I'd like to say that I thought of something noble, like the Plataeans at Oinoe. They didn't win by fighting better. They merely refused to break. Fair enough. But I didn't really have a thought in my head. I was an animal. I decided that if I could endure pain, I could eat. I noticed that other slaves tried to take their food off into a corner and eat, like animals on a kill ripping a haunch and running. But it occurred to me in my feverish desperation that I could simply eat while they beat me. I'd tear food out of their hands and put it in my mouth. I've seen a starving cat do the same, on a wharf in Aegypt.
That was my plan, and it worked well enough.
It only worked because they feared the guards.
We had Scythian guards. Now that I know the Sakje better, I suspect that few, if any, were actually Sakje. They were probably a rabble of Persian bastards, half-Medes, half-Sakje and Bactrians. Scum. But armed scum, soldiers with bows.
They didn't do a lot, except prevent escape and punish us if we hurt each other too much. After all, we were worth money. But they watched us with the lazy, amused contempt of the better man for the worse. All free people know they are better than slaves. Slaves have no honour, no beauty, no dignity, nothing that makes them worth knowing. Why? It's all taken from them with their freedom, that's why. The ones who might have had dignity kill themselves.
They watched us for entertainment. They loved it when we fought, and they would wager money on their favourites.
One old fellow had wagered money that I would live. I figured it out from listening to him argue – he felt that I'd already beaten the odds. So the first day that I decided to eat, when I grabbed bread from the trough and stuck it in my mouth, and when a bigger man hit me with his fist, I kept eating.
I took a blow to the head, and my nose broke, and blood sprayed.
I kept eating.
Then the cage opened and the old Sakje waddled in and kicked my tormentor in the head.
I ate his food, too. While he lay unconscious, I ate it all.
The next morning, he was groggy. I ate his food again. His partner, one of the boys who had pissed on me, hit me in the face, where my nose had been broken, and I vomited from the pain. Then I picked up my bread and ate it. Disgusted yet?
In the evening, I felt better, despite the inflammation of my whole face. I got to the food trough and waited.
When the bread loaves began to fall into the trough, I waited for the food melee to begin and then I punched the biggest boy in the ear. Down he went. Once he was down, I kicked him in the head and took his bread. While I ate, I kicked him again and hurt my foot.
The next morning, the other slaves gave me space at the trough. My guard laughed when he saw me. Later I heard him demand payment, but the other soldier told him I would be dead before the end of the day. He said this in Ionian Greek, a variant on our language – well, you know, honey. And this fellow you brought with you grew up with it, so I won't bore you with how it still sounds alien to me now.
It didn't take long to realize that my two tormentors were planning to kill me. Murder was not so infrequent in the slave pens. I watched them from under my hair – my lank, filthy hair, full of bugs – and saw they were together. I had united them. Or perhaps they were allies before my coming, although, as I say, such alliances are rare for slaves.
Of course, they were waiting for my Scythian to go off duty.
I watched them, and I waited, and I tried to plan. But I was still wounded, and I was still weak, and they were bigger and tougher and there were two of them.
I was beginning to think of attacking them – if only to get it over with while my Scythian was on duty – when the cage opened and a priest came in. He was fat, and clean, and his eyes were sharper than Deer Killer.
Six of the archers came in behind him. He began to gesture with his staff, and the men and boys he pointed out were taken.
I was the last to be chosen.
Someone was purchasing a packet of slaves – ten or twelve in a single lot. I was being used to make weight, which meant that somebody was getting swindled. I was as likely to die as live.
Slave traders. The very lowest form of life, eh?
We were fettered together by the necks and wrists and marched off up the road. I had no idea where I was, and no idea where I was going, and I didn't care. I had already surrendered. I might not have broken yet, but I was breaking, because I had no one to talk to and no one to care about. I plodded along behind another man, as close as if we were file-mates in the phalanx, and I didn't know his name.
On the other hand, neither of the boys who had wanted me dead were in the purchase. I was going to live, if I could just get through the walk to wherever we were going.
I had thought that the trip over Parnes was the hardest thing I would ever do, marching with all the weight of my brother's armour, but this was far tougher, although the pace was gentle enough. I was touched with the whip only once – for falling – and otherwise we were fairly treated.
We walked some stades. Perhaps my fever was still on me, but I scarcely remember a moment of it. I knew we were by the sea, or perhaps a great river. I assumed we were in Euboea.
For the first time, I wondered how I had come to be a slave, when none of the other men were Plataeans or even Athenians. And as far as I could remember, we were winning the battle when I fell. But that made no sense.
The farther I walked
up a long river valley in the brilliant noon sun, the more unlikely it was that I was in Euboea. For one thing, except for the old bridge, Euboea is an island. It has neither great mountains nor a huge river. I was walking along a great river, deep enough to carry a warship with three tiers of oars. It flowed out of a pair of mighty mountains in the purple distance, or so it seemed when I raised my head and looked around.
When we stopped at a well and the guards paid silver for water, the people were small and brown. Not much browner than I was myself, but brown with that flawless skin that marks Lydians and Phrygians – not that I knew that then. And of course our guards were Scythians. I'd seen Scythians in pictures, and Pater had fought some, and Miltiades had fought thousands and run away from others – a story he loved to tell.
As we walked, and my thigh throbbed, I saw that there were trees I didn't know, and the goats were different.
I kept walking. What could I do?
We walked up that valley for a day. I've ridden the distance in an hour – the guards must have had orders to go easy on us – but I never expected to live.
We had a meal of gruel and bread in a village on the flank of a mountain, still above the beautiful river. I squatted next to the safest-looking male.
'Are we in Asia?' I asked.
He looked startled when I spoke. He chewed bread, and his eyes flicked around as he considered his answer. Finally, he nodded. 'Yes,' he said. He pointed up the valley, where something winked like fire. 'Ephesus,' he said.
I was such a bumpkin that I had never heard of Ephesus. 'What's Ephesus?' I asked.
'You are a fool,' he said. And turned his back.
We walked on in the cool of the evening, and before true night fell, we were in the streets of a city more beautiful than anything I had ever seen in Boeotia or Attika. The streets were paved in grey stone. There was a temple that rose from the peak of the acropolis over the town, and it was made of marble. It looked like a house of the gods, and the roof was gold – that was the 'fire' I had seen ten stades away. The houses were brick and stone, every one of them bigger than anything at home. Water flowed from springs through fountains.
It was like a mortal going to Olympus. I had never seen anything like it, and I gaped like the barbarian I was.
The people were tall and handsome, and they looked like Greeks – dark hair, straight noses, fine-breasted women and strong men, with a proportion with fairer skin and red and blond hair. They were taller and more handsome than Boeotians, but not a different race.
I felt even dirtier.
The guards moved us carefully from square to square so that we didn't offend the citizens as they strolled through the cool evening air. But several men and at least one woman stopped to look at us.
Women in Boeotia seldom leave their own farms. I was not used to seeing a half-clothed woman in her prime gawping at slaves and mocking the guards. I stared at her.
She turned and stared back, and then her hand moved and she tried to strike me. I moved my head.
The man with her stopped. He was examining the older man who had called me a fool. Now he turned and looked at me. He was even taller than the other tall men, with the muscles of an athlete and the chiton of a very rich man.
He looked at me for a moment and then threw something at me.
It was a nut. He had been eating nuts, and he threw hard.
I caught it.
He nodded, whispered something to the beautiful woman at his side and turned away. Then the guards moved us on, up the acropolis and into a slave barracks at the bottom of the temple district. In the morning, I was sold to the man who had thrown the nut. He came in person to collect me. I had no idea what he saw in me, any more than I knew why I was a slave, but the man obviously saw something he liked and bought it – or rather, his beautiful wife did. Later, I came to know that he was simply that way, and his life of random acquisition had probably saved my life and my spirit, for the slaves who went to the temple sometimes became priests, but those who didn't died of the work. The rest of the parcel I came up with carried mud bricks for the new priests' barracks for two years. Back-breaking labour in the sun.
A priest told me that my new owner's name was Hipponax, and that I should call him Master and avert my eyes. Hipponax put his carnelian seal on a clay tablet, grabbed me by the neck and hustled me out of the slave barracks. At the portico of the great temple, he stopped and looked me over. Then he made a face. 'Well,' he said, 'you were cheap.' He laughed. 'Aphrodite's tits, boy, you stink. Let's get you a doctor.'
We walked down from the acropolis, past the magnificent steps to the Temple of Artemis and into the lower temple precinct, where he took me to the Temple of Asclepius. We don't even have Asclepius in Boeotia. He's a healing god.
I was there for three days. They cleaned my leg and poured wine over it twice a day and wrapped it in bandages. I was bathed and fed well – coarse food, but there was barley bread, pork and lots of onions, and I ate like a horse.
Let me give you, in a sentence, the difference between Ephesus and Plataea. At the Temple of Asclepius, I was housed in the precinct of slaves. I thought I was living with aristocrats. My bed had linen sheets and a white wool blanket, and they gave me a linen chiton to wear as if it wasn't worth more than my best spear. I was waited on by free men and women until I was healed. Imagine!
Most of the other men in my ward were victims of old age, and most of them were Thracians. In fact, the overwhelming number of slaves in Ephesus were Thracians, blond men and women with robust bodies and big heads. And I didn't have a word in common with them.
On the third day, my new master came and fetched me. I was clean. All my hair had been cut away and my head shaved. I thought it was a condition of servitude, but it turned out that they did it to rid me of lice. They shaved my pubic hair, too. That worried me. Easterners were notorious for their sexual licence.
I wore my linen chiton when I followed my master on to the street. The sun, reflected from marble and pale grey stone, blinded me. I had a crutch and I hobbled along behind him as best I could.
We walked down just one level of the town. The acropolis was at the top, and then the temples, and then – the rich.
He took me into the main entrance of his house, and it was so magnificent that I stopped behind him and looked.
In the entranceway, under the gate that led from the street to the courtyard, there was a fresco of the gods sitting in state, painted in colour on the plaster. On either side, carved as if from life, there was a maenad on my right and a satyr on my left. Once I walked two more steps under the portico and into the courtyard, I saw that every column was a statue of a man or a woman, each standing like slaves awaiting service, holding the roof, and under the arches there were more painted scenes – scenes from the Iliad and scenes of the gods. Zeus ravished a very willing Europa, and the only cowlike thing about her was her eyes. Achilles held his arms high in triumphant revenge, and Hector lay at his feet.
'Welcome,' my master said. He smiled. 'Let's have a look at you.'
He pulled my chiton off. The beautiful woman came out into the courtyard, followed by two female slaves. All three of them were perfumed, and all three were wearing garments better than Plataea's finest wedding dress. The lady had gold earrings and a necklace as broad as a soldier's girdle that seemed to be tied with the knot of Heracles in gold, although I didn't think that was possible. I caught her name from my master – she was Euthalia, and that name was right for her, for she was beautiful and well-formed, and child-bearing had not touched her, except to give her the strength of face that most matrons get when they have had the rearing of a child.
I took the knot of Heracles as a sign. Heracles was the family patron, and there was his sign in the home of my master. Heracles had been a slave. I took it as a sign and I still think it was.
They ran their hands over me and played games. The slave girls fetched a ball and threw it at me. I caught it. The man nodded. Then he swung a stick at me – s
lowly, but with some force. I moved. I ducked. I ducked a blow and caught a ball without dropping my crutch.
Finally, the man nodded. 'What do you know of horses?' he asked.
'Nothing,' I said.
Both Master and Mistress looked disappointed. 'Nothing? Speak the truth, boy.'
I shook my head. 'I have touched a horse,' I said.
That made Mistress smile. 'He could be taught,' she said.
'He will be too tall soon,' Master said. 'But it is worth a try.' He put a finger under my chin and raised my face, the way a man does with a shy girl. 'What's your name, boy?'
'Arimnestos,' I said. 'Of Plataea.'
'You're a Greek,' he said.
'Yes, master,' I answered.
He shook his head. 'Well, I'm glad to have a Greek slave, but the man who sold you is a fool. You were a free man, weren't you? And you were trained to be an athlete.' He glanced back – he almost treated me as a person and not a household object. 'I am Hipponax. You've heard of me?'
'No, master.' I hung my head. He had expected me to know of him. He had expected me to know of horses, too.
I had never thought of Calchas's training as training for sport. 'I was trained to hunt and fight,' I said. 'Master.'
He pursed his lips and looked at Mistress.
She smiled back at him. It was good to see them together, they were so much of one mind. 'Don't be offended because a slave does not know your poetry, dear. He can't read, after all.'
I wondered if I was foolish to brag about my skills – but I did not want to go back to the priests. And they seemed like good people.
'I can read and write,' I said.
'You can read and write Doric?' master asked. 'Or Ionic? Or both?'
'I can read the Iliad and the Odyssey and Alcaeus and Theognis,' I said.
Mistress smiled broadly. 'I think you owe me a new robe of my own choosing, dear. Oh, that Daxes will be so angry.' She clapped her hands. Then she came and ran a hand down my flank, and I shivered, and she laughed. 'You can fight, catch a ball and read. Fine accomplishments for a young man. But your name is barbarous. I think we shall call you Doru. A spear – a Dorian. An intrusion to our family.' She smiled at me and turned back to Master. 'I am going to try and spend a few useful hours accomplishing something at my loom.'
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