Shadows of Athens

by J M Alvey

  As Epikrates and I went on our way, I guessed that most of the men I could see out this early were slaves. Their masters would want them reaching the agora as soon as the market’s traders set up their stalls, ready to buy the freshest and finest provisions for their household’s celebrations. Other slaves would be buying up bundles of firewood and sacks of charcoal, brought in from Attica by the cartload to feed the city’s hearths and cooking braziers.

  After reaching the city walls, we waited our turn to go through the gate, guarded by this year’s contingent of young warriors called up for training. These lads would soon be kicking their heels on garrison duty somewhere on Attica’s borders. I envied them. Better to be bored by days of drills than be thrown into battle barely used to the weight of your shield.

  Things had been very different for me and my phalanx mates. There’s scant chance of perfecting such skills when your shield wall’s braced against roaring Boeotians all intent on ramming a spear point into your eye and out through the back of your skull.

  ‘Good morning.’ I greeted the youth approaching us and gestured at Epikrates cowering a few steps behind me. ‘This is my slave.’

  ‘Good day to you.’ Hearing my Athenian accent, he waved us through the gate with a smile.

  We still had a fair walk ahead of us. My family’s home is overlooked by the Hill of the Nymphs, some way to the south-west of the agora and to the north of the Hill of the Pnyx, where the People’s Assembly meets. We’re registered outside the walls in the Alopeke district because that’s where my great-grandfather lived, back when Cleisthenes established the voting tribes to secure popular rule. That’s merely one of the ways our Athenian democracy ensures this city won’t ever succumb to aristocratic tyrants again.

  Anyway, as Grandfather’s leather-working business prospered, he moved inside the city to be closer to his customers. Father always reminded us to give thanks for that decision every Epitaphia festival when we commemorate Athens’ honoured dead. Father remembered the fates of those people he’d known as a child, who’d still been living outside the walls when his family moved within the city. Those unfortunates had lost everything when the Persians invaded and devastated Attica with fire and sword.

  When I knocked on that familiar gate, my eldest brother, Nymenios, opened up.

  ‘Oh.’ He looked at me, blank-faced with surprise.

  ‘Who were you expecting?’ I was equally startled. A slave usually manned the entrance.

  He glanced over my shoulder at Epikrates. ‘I should have guessed he’d go running to you.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ We went into the courtyard. Broad, sloping roofs on either side sheltered piles of leather, baskets of off-cuts and racks of tools as well as wide work benches. This is where our household slaves turn out their share of the shoes, belts, purses and everything else that earns our family’s bread. I could smell the familiar scents of oils and freshly cut leather and glimpsed two of the household’s ferrets scampering around. With so many temptations to lure mice, my brothers need more than my mother’s hens to hunt down all the vermin.

  I glanced across at the front door, opposite the gate and sheltered by the wide porch where my mother’s tall loom had been set up for as long as I can remember. A new striped blanket was wound around the uppermost beam, waiting for my mother or Nymenios’s wife to return to it after the festival. There’s always weaving to be done for a growing household.

  As a small boy, I’d spent long afternoons in that porch with my brothers and sisters, playing with scraps of wool and leather while Mother deftly worked her patterns with warp and weft. As the family business prospered, more slaves arrived for Father to teach and then to supervise rather than work alongside. All too soon, Kleio and Ianthine had to learn the intricacies of running a household as well as the proper behaviour for an Athenian citizen maiden. Around the same time, Father decided Chairephanes and I were old enough to try our hand with some tools alongside Lysanias and Nymenios. Our sisters soon had their first lessons in tending our cuts and accidental gouges to our fingers.

  Today the door to the house was firmly closed, and only the upper-storey window shutters were ajar to let in daylight and fresh air. I could hear the voices of Nymenios’s children, indistinct above the purposeful murmur of conversation. The household’s women were busy with their morning routines, completing whatever tasks needed doing before the festival.

  ‘Syros never got the hides he was expecting yesterday.’ Nymenios gestured to the newest of the slaves we’d set up with his own workshop, currently deep in conversation with Chairephanes.

  ‘He’s not the only one left empty-handed.’ I explained Epikrates’s problem.

  Chairephanes came to join us. ‘We’ve had late deliveries before.’

  Nymenios snorted, sceptical. ‘Never by more than a day, and Dexios always turns up in person to play the wide-eyed innocent, claiming some simple error.’

  Though I hated to admit it, Nymenios was right. Five days of broken promises wasn’t just the glib-tongued tanner mistaking one day for the next in his calendar.

  ‘If he can’t supply the hides he’s promised, he’s in breach of contract and he owes us reparations.’ Nymenios thrust his jaw at me. ‘You need to go to his yard and ask what he thinks he’s playing at.’

  I understood my brother’s concern. Nymenios shoulders all the head of the family’s responsibilities for this household and our workforce elsewhere in the city. We needed those raw materials.

  ‘Dexios needs to know he’s dealing directly with us. No more fobbing off slaves who daren’t argue back.’ Chairephanes looked at me, apologetic. ‘And we need to know we’ll be getting that leather as soon as the festival’s over.’

  ‘If we’ll be getting any leather.’ Nymenios clearly doubted it. ‘Otherwise we need to make other arrangements, and fast.’

  ‘I’m in the middle of final rehearsals for the most important play I’ve ever written,’ I protested. ‘I don’t have time to traipse all the way out to a stinking tannery—’

  ‘Dexios needs a boot up his arse today,’ Nymenios insisted, ‘and you need to remember where the money to feed and clothe you will come from when this festival’s over.’

  Nymenios could go kiss a piglet. I wouldn’t starve in a gutter without my share of our family’s earnings. ‘I pay my own way with my pen.’ I scowled at him.

  ‘True enough,’ Chairephanes said quickly, ‘which is why you’ll be the one arguing our case in court, so you need to be asking the questions.’

  ‘Not today.’ I was adamant. ‘Chances are Dexios won’t even be in his yard. If I go to his house, his slaves will tell me he’s out somewhere in the city. Oh, they’ll be so sorry, but they won’t know where he might be. It’s the festival, after all. Even if I do manage to corner him, you know what he’s like. He’ll spin a yarn blaming somebody else. Someone I won’t be able to find, or who won’t have time to talk to me because they’ve got a house full of guests. I could waste the whole Dionysia trying to catch the slippery bastard in a lie.’

  I raised a hand to forestall Nymenios’s argument. ‘If we wait until after the festival though, once the magistrates are sitting again, Dexios will know we can drag him straight into court if he doesn’t explain himself.’

  ‘Then he’ll give us the leather he owes us,’ Chairephanes said, ever optimistic, ‘or we’ll get supplies from somewhere else and everything will be fine. Don’t fret so,’ he urged Nymenios. ‘Athens is never short of animal hides.’

  He wasn’t wrong. One or more festivals every month see herds of cows, sheep and goats led to the city’s sacrificial altars. The gods take their sustenance from the smoke and steam of the burnt offerings while the free meat feeds the grateful populace. The sale of everything else, from the innards collected by sausage makers to the hides sent to the tanneries, puts silver into the priests’ personal strongboxes.

  Nyme
nios glowered at us both for a long moment. ‘All right.’ He capitulated with ill grace before jabbing a finger at me. ‘But I want you knocking on Dexios’s gate first thing in the morning, the very first day after the festival.’

  ‘Of course.’ I nodded.

  A thought struck Chairephanes. ‘Did that man find you yesterday? I sent him to the agora to see if anyone knew where you were.’

  I opened my mouth to say I hadn’t seen anyone and to ask for more details, but Nymenios was already explaining. He does that a lot.

  ‘He came here looking for you. He wanted to commission you to write him a speech.’

  So far, so unremarkable. If I hadn’t won the honour of writing a play for this Dionysia, I’d have been sitting in the agora yesterday, waiting for this stranger to find me. That’s where I make my modest living offering a range of services to anyone who needs something writing. A soulful eulogy to honour a dead loved one. A joyful ode to celebrate a notable triumph. Speeches for the law courts. Whether a man’s challenging another over some crime or answering an accusation, he needs a compelling argument to win the jury’s votes. Most prefer someone well schooled in rhetoric to write it. That’s business as usual in Athens.

  ‘He was a Hellene, though I don’t know where from,’ Nymenios added. ‘I’ve never heard an accent like his.’

  ‘His shoes looked Persian,’ Chairephanes observed. ‘Fancy work.’

  ‘Red leather?’ As both of my brothers nodded, I felt sick. Having a potential customer dumped dead at my gate was very far from business as usual.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Nymenios asked with sharp suspicion.

  I explained what little I knew, leaving my brothers as much at a loss as I was.

  ‘You have an entire chorus who can swear you were in the city until dusk.’ Chairephanes scrubbed a hand through his dark curls. ‘You couldn’t have been the one to kill him. Why would you? You didn’t even know him.’

  ‘Just as long as Kadous doesn’t fall under suspicion,’ Nymenios said, belligerent in defence of our own. ‘We’ll all go to court as his character witnesses, if push comes to shove.’

  ‘I don’t imagine it will. The Scythians saw last night that Kadous had no more reason to kill the man than I did. He was a stranger to us all. Now, I must be going.’ I held up my hands to ward off anything else they might say. ‘I have to get to my rehearsal.’

  Though, now that I knew this murdered stranger had been looking for me, I could ask a few other people some questions to try and find out who he might be and where he had lodged.

  With a bit of divine blessing, that would tell us why he’d been killed. Then I could put all this behind me, content that the Furies were satisfied.

  Chapter Three

  The quickest route from one district to another in Athens is almost always through the agora. You can join the Panathenaic Way and cut right through the city instead of threading a winding path through the side streets.

  There can’t be a market in any other city to equal it: busier and noisier than visitors to Athens can ever imagine. Stallholders raise their voices over the morose protests of caged fowl awaiting their fate as somebody’s dinner. Traders promise passers-by the finest fruits of the season fresh from Attica’s farms, or brought in from Euboea. Garland sellers display their ingenuity with whatever flowers and foliage are currently flourishing, ready to crown wealthy guests at expensive banquets. Hot sausage vendors are on hand if anyone’s hungry, and wine carts sell cooling cupfuls. Musicians and singers and all manner of entertainers ply their trades, hoping for half an obol tossed their way.

  There’s olive oil, raisins and herbs for sale, and spices ranging from humble garlic to seasonings as exotic as silphium from Cyrene. There are dates and almonds from Paphlagonia, more often than not. When the bells proclaim the day’s fresh fish fetched up from the harbour at Piraeus, sometimes I honestly fear someone will get trampled in the rush.

  People aren’t only spending their silver. Some make offerings at the agora’s many statues and shrines, honouring the gods and goddesses as well as the city’s heroes. There are always plenty of citizens saluting Harmodios and Aristogeiton, who rid us of the tyrant Peisistratos and his sons. Others simply sit in the shade of the plane trees and swap news of family and friends with men they’ve served with on their district council, or fought alongside as hoplites, defending our democracy.

  Even when the courts and the council aren’t in session, details of cases to be tried and any bills proposing new laws are posted on large, whitewashed boards for all to read. Anyone volunteering for jury service or currently doing his duty in the People’s Assembly has no excuse for not being well informed.

  Every day is different. I always keep my ears open for some tale or some character I can work into a play. In between dealing with my own customers, I listen to the travelling tutors as they share their philosophies and histories. These teachers set up their schools surrounded by eager students in the shade of the Painted Colonnade, named for the paintings on its walls that celebrate Hellas’s triumphs, from the fall of Troy to our miraculous victory at Marathon.

  Today, though, I wanted to talk to my favourite wine seller and his wife, who were doing a brisk trade on their usual street corner. Anyone routinely spending their days in the agora soon learns which wine sellers rise early to fetch sweet water fresh from a spring to mix with their wine. The lazy ones dip their jugs in the murky streams that drain the Kerameikos district, and you’ll risk losing half a day’s income while you’re emptying your guts into the public latrines.

  I held up half an obol to get Elpis’s attention. ‘Half a pint of the black, if you please.’

  ‘Right you are.’ Elpis poured a measure from the jug standing ready on the cart’s lowered tailgate. The strong dark wine was already mixed with water, and the sunlight struck red glints from the twisting flow.

  I raised my eyes to Athena’s temple as I offered her the first mouthful, tipped from the brim to vanish into the dry earth. Then I emptied it without pause for breath.

  ‘Another?’ he offered.

  ‘Thank you, but no.’ I tossed him another coin all the same. ‘There is something else, though. Was anyone asking for me yesterday?’

  ‘A Carian was looking for you, to ask you to write a speech for him.’ Elpis filled a cup with scented golden wine for another customer.

  ‘You’re sure that’s where he was from?’

  ‘I’d know that accent anywhere,’ the wine seller assured me. ‘My mother was from Iasos.’

  So Zosime had been right about the dead man’s Ionian clothing. Carian meant he was from the southern end of that distant coast. ‘And he was asking for me by name?’

  Hermes only knew how this stranger had heard of me. I flatter myself that I do good work, but Caria’s all the way over on the other side of the Aegean.

  ‘He knew exactly who he wanted, so I gave him directions to your brothers’ workshop.’ Elpis paused before serving another customer. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘It seems the man turned up with his throat cut last night.’ I decided not to say where.

  ‘May the Furies drive his murderer mad!’ Elpis was appalled. ‘Killing a guest in Athena’s own city, come all this way to honour her.’

  ‘He was here to honour Athena? He wasn’t just here for the festival?’

  Elpis nodded, decisive. ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘Do you remember his name?’ I pressed. ‘His home town? Where he might be staying? You didn’t see his travelling companions, by any chance?’

  The wine seller could only offer a helpless shrug. ‘Sorry, no.’

  I sighed. ‘Well, if you come across anyone looking for him, send them to the Polemarch. The Scythians took charge of the body.’

  ‘Of course,’ Elpis assured me.

  I set down my cup on the wine cart and went on my way. M
y path was crowded with visitors but walking slowly gave me time to think.

  So this stranger had come here to find me and been sent to my brothers’ house. They’d sent him straight back to the agora. I wondered if he had gone asking around the other scriveners, looking for someone else to write his speech. Had he said the wrong thing to some hot-blooded Athenian, provoking sudden anger and an accidentally lethal swipe of a foolhardy knife? No, this killing looked personal. Had some enemy followed him across the Aegean, canny enough not to shit on his own doorstep? Perhaps, but that didn’t explain how the dead man ended up at my gate.

  I gazed around the agora, wondering where I might find some answers. Over in the Painted Colonnade, I spotted that historian from Halicarnassus who tells such wonderfully entertaining stories. The genial man had a lifelong traveller’s weather-beaten complexion and flowing grey beard. He sat on a stool with his knees spread wide, his belly as expansive as his gestures. As he concluded some stirring tale, the audience applauded and showed their appreciation with a shower of coins into the folds of the cloak at his feet. As a boy brought him a well-earned cup of wine, I remembered his story about ants as big as foxes in India. Surely, they can’t be real. At least, I hope they aren’t. If they are, I fervently hope that they stay there.

  I shook my head. I could waste all day here asking questions and learning nothing. I pressed on through the noisy crowds, heading for my rehearsal. Dionysos had as much call on my time as Athena and the Furies today.

  The actors must be wondering where I’d got to. I ran through the hydra-headed list of things I needed to check. Had the masks arrived? What about the costumes? How much final fitting would be needed? Was my entire chorus taking advantage of my late arrival to get incapably drunk in some tavern? Were there any last-minute changes to the script I should be considering? But, this late in the day, that risked a missed cue when an actor said something new that a forgetful chorus-man wasn’t expecting.

  ‘Philocles! Philocles Hestaiou!’

  I looked around, trying to work out who had called out my name. Then I saw a waving hand over on the steps at the far end of the Painted Colonnade, and recognised an amiable acquaintance.