Marathon: Freedom or Death lw-2

by Christian Cameron

  We were a silent crew as we walked to my murder trial. I was pretty sure that my two companions were no longer in the grips of hero worship.

  Athenian justice is swift. I arrived a little early, but most of the Areopagitica was already on the hill, and the last of the old men made their climb just behind me. Aristides was there. He had a bruise on one shoulder that he hadn’t had that morning.

  ‘Tried to kill you?’ I said quietly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And you, I take it?’

  I handed him the tablet with the dagger through it. Heads turned all over the summit.

  He was angry. ‘This is not Athens,’ he spat. ‘What are we, some court of Medes? Some soft-handed Lydians? Next, men will turn to poison.’ But then he calmed. ‘This will tell in your favour. I’ll hand it around. The symbolism is so clear, it’s like an augury — the dagger through the law!’

  So I watched the tablet passed from man to man, and the muttering must have helped me a little.

  Aristides was calm and forceful when the trial started. Let me digress a moment: you’ve noticed that I wandered the city without much trouble. I could have run. But of course I didn’t. That’s how it was then — Athens assumed that I would come to my trial, and I did.

  In a murder trial, each side gets one speech — a couple of hours by a water-clock — first the prosecution, then the defence. And the verdict is delivered immediately after the defence delivers its argument. We’re much the same in Plataea, although it’s years since we had a proper murder trial. Simon, my cousin, killed himself rather than face the tribunal.

  So we all stood in the blazing sun, and Cleitus of the Alcmaeonids began his speech. I can’t remember all he said, but I know it was damning and at the same time utterly inaccurate.

  ‘I accuse Arimnestos of Plataea, the man who stands before you, of the murder of my cousin Nepos. Nepos was murdered within the precincts of a shrine — foully murdered, with impiety — unarmed, standing making an oration to the gods.’ Cleitus had a good voice.

  I couldn’t speak. But I could roll my eyes. So I did.

  ‘All of you know of this man — a notorious pirate, a man who serves with the vicious cut-throat Miltiades. With Miltiades, he sacked Naucratis. With Miltiades, he attacked the Great King’s ships, and those of our allies at Ephesus and other places — over and over again. It is men like this who bring the just wrath of the Great King down on our city.’

  Well, I couldn’t really disagree with that, so I smiled genially.

  ‘Don’t let this man’s reputation as a fighter cloud your vision, though, gentlemen. Look at him. This is no Achilles. This is a fighter trained in the pits of slavery — a man who has neither arete nor generosity. He is merely a killer. Is the look on his brow more than that of a bestial destroyer? Is he different from a boar or a lion that kills the men who tend our crops?

  ‘This is a man bred to slavery, and what he has now, he has stolen from better men — first through piracy and then through open theft of a farm in Plataea. No man in Plataea dares act against him — they fear his wrath. But here in Athens we are better men, with a better strength of law.’

  There was more — much more. Two hours of detailed (and fallacious) vilification. Cleitus knew nothing of me save some highly coloured details from Plataea — and it was obvious where they came from. Because my cousin Simon, son of Simon who hanged himself, was standing a little to the left of Cleitus, with a look of joyous hate stamped across his features.

  I locked eyes with him, and gave him some bland indifference.

  By the time Cleitus was finished, many of his audience were asleep. He had, after all, repeated the charges and the assaults on my character fifteen or twenty times. His arrogance showed through too plainly. Heraclitus would have taught him better. At Ephesus, one of the things we learned was not to annoy a jury — nor to bore it.

  On the other hand, none of the men in that jury were my friends, and most were bored only because they had made up their minds before they put a sandal on the slippery rock of justice.

  Slaves came and refilled the water-clock. I leaned over and pointed out Simon to Aristides, who looked at him and nodded to me.

  Aristides stood up slowly. He walked gracefully to the speaker’s podium and turned to me. Our eyes met for a long time.

  Then he turned back to the jurors.

  ‘My friend Arimnestos cannot speak here today as he is a foreigner,’ he said. ‘But although his tongue cannot speak, his spear has spoken loud and long for Athens — louder and longer than any of you Alcmaeonids. If deeds rather than words were the weight of a man, if the price of citizenship were measured in feats of arms, not barley or oil, he would sit in judgment, and none of you would even qualify as thetes.

  Ouch. Powerful rhetoric — but a damned annoying way to win over a jury.

  Aristides walked across to Cleitus. ‘You maintain that my friend is a slave? Or some sort of penniless foreigner?’

  Cleitus stood. ‘I do.’

  Aristides smiled. ‘And you have received my suit against you for the theft of a horse and a woman?’

  ‘I have taken them against the man’s indemnity,’ Cleitus said.

  ‘In other words, you admit yourself that my friend was the owner of the horse and the slave.’ Aristides stepped back, just like a swordsman who administers the killing blow and now avoids the fountain of blood.

  Cleitus flushed red. ‘He probably stole them!’ he shouted, but the archon basileus pointed his staff.

  ‘Silence!’ he roared. ‘Your time is done and you speak out of turn.’

  Aristides turned to the jurors. ‘My friend is the son of Technes, head of the Corvaxae of Plataea. My friend could, if he might speak, tell you how his father was murdered — by the father of that man standing by Cleitus — and his farm stolen by the same man, and how Arimnestos later returned from ten years of war — war at the behest of Athens, I might add — to find his enemies in possession of his farm. He might speak of how the assembly of Plataea voted to punish the usurper — that man’s father — and he might speak of what a twisted claim has just been made — accusations void of truth. Any man of Plataea would tell us, if called to witness, that my friend is master of a farm that provides three hundred measures of grain and oil and wine.’

  Aristides had them listening now.

  ‘But none of this matters. What matters is simple. My friend did not kill Cleitus’s useless cousin. In point of fact, Cleitus’s case is already void, because he has spoken — and he may not speak again — yet he has not troubled to prove that his cousin is dead.’

  Cleitus had missed the matter entirely. His head snapped up, his mouth worked.

  ‘Really, cousin — for we are cousins, Cleitus, are we not? — you are too young to plead before this august body. You needed, first, to prove that your cousin Nepos is dead. Second, you needed to demonstrate that my friend was in some way linked to his death, beyond the circumstance that he is from Plataea. If you had remembered, you would have maintained that your cousin died at the shrine of Leitos on the flanks of Cithaeron. But like a young man, you let spite carry you away, and you forgot to mention the place of this supposed murder, or any other facts relating to it. What you have not told these worthy men is that your whole knowledge of this matter comes from two panicked slaves who returned to you, claiming that their master had been killed. You have never been to Plataea, you have no idea if the claim is accurate, you have acted on the word of two treacherous slaves, and in truth, as far as you know, at any moment your cousin Nepos may stroll into the crowd and ask what this is about.’

  Cleitus rose again. ‘He is dead. He was killed at the shrine-’

  The archon rose. ‘Silence this instant, puppy.’

  ‘Listen to me!’ Cleitus spat.

  The archon waved and two gaudily dressed Scythian archers took Cleitus by the arms and carried him off the hill.

  Aristides looked around in silence. ‘I claim that my opponent has made no case. H
e has not shown a body. He has not offered a witness. There is nothing for me to answer but the slander of a traitor’s son. I call a vote on the evidence presented.’

  Stunned silence greeted him. The water-clock was running noisily — it was still almost full.

  The archon looked them over. ‘I cannot direct you,’ he said. ‘But if you pretend that Cleitus has a case, I’ll make you pay.’

  I was acquitted, twenty-seven to fourteen. A carefully arranged vote, as it meant that I could not claim damages from Cleitus.

  Several men tried to force through a different vote that would have made me stand trial again if more evidence could be gathered. They were still arguing when the sun set and Aristides led me off the hill.

  ‘You are the very Achilles of orators,’ I said.

  Aristides shook his head. ‘That was bad. I used arts to win. Had I argued the case on its merits, they would have found a way to kill you.’ He rubbed his nose. ‘I feel dirty. Perhaps I should exile myself. This is not law. This is foolishness.’

  ‘The archon was just.’

  ‘The archon hates the Alcmaeonids as upstarts and posturers. He’s no friend of mine, but he’d raise me to Olympus if it would hurt the new men. All I had to do was put Cleitus in a place where his arrogance would count against him.’

  ‘What now?’ I asked. ‘I want my horse and my slave girl.’

  Aristides shook his head. ‘Perhaps in the spring. And if you stay here, you’ll be dead. I don’t have enough wax tablets to keep you alive.’

  We walked to his farm and Jocasta served wine. I told her the whole of the trial while Glaucon and Sophanes sulked. They didn’t love me any more.

  Aristides noted them. He inclined his long chin in their direction and raised an eyebrow at me.

  ‘Hmm,’ I said.

  Jocasta was looking at her husband with her eyes shining. ‘Should I invite this pretty foreigner to live in our house, so that I can finally hear what happens at your trials, love?’ she asked. To me, she said, ‘He never tells me a word of his speeches.’

  The great man looked down his nose. ‘If I told you my speeches, you would only seek to improve them,’ he said. ‘I could not bear that.’

  Their eyes met, and I felt a twinge of jealousy — not bodily jealousy, like a boy feels when a girl leaves him for another, but something in the soul. Those two had something I had never had — something calm and deep.

  ‘Why are the boys on edge?’ Aristides asked quietly.

  ‘I killed some thugs,’ I said. I saw the effect my words had on the lady. Killing was part of life for me. Not for her. ‘Sorry, despoina.’ When Aristides shrugged, I clarified why the two young men were upset. ‘One I killed in cold blood.’

  Aristides shuddered in revulsion. ‘How can you do such things?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s much like killing a man in a fight, only quicker,’ I retorted. His squeamishness — did I mention that he was a prig? — offended me.

  ‘I cannot have you under my roof while you are tainted with such a crime,’ Aristides said.

  I all but fell over in shock.

  ‘They attacked us.’ But I could see it on his face. This was Athens. I had spent too long in the camp of Miltiades. Men didn’t simply cut other men’s throats here. I had, unwittingly, committed a crime — and offended my host and patron.

  I’m no fool. I got to my feet. ‘I understand, my lord. But the man — what was before him but death in the mines? And he might have been used against us in law.’

  Aristides kept his head turned away, as if breathing the same air as me would hurt him. ‘A thug — a metic? He could never have been used in a trial. And you should know better. Are you a god, that you may choose who lives and who dies? You killed him because it was easy.’

  Alas, he was right.

  ‘A god, or one of the fates, might well say that this man had no future but a straight trip to the mines and a few months of wretchedness.’ Aristides pulled his chlamys over his head in disgust. ‘You have no such knowledge. You killed him for convenience. Your own convenience. Now I am beginning to doubt my wisdom in defending you.’

  Jocasta was standing as far from me as possible. They were a very religious household, and my bloody pragmatism now looked to me, as it did to them, like selfish crime.

  I had two choices — the amoral outrage of the pragmatist, or admission that I had acted wrongly. Rage rose within me, but Heraclitus was there, too.

  ‘You are right,’ I said. I clamped down on my anger. It was wrong — ugly, unworthy.

  Aristides raised his head. ‘You mean that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You have convicted me in the court of my own mind. I should not have killed him, though he was of no use, even to himself.’ I shuddered. It was so easy to fall back into the habits of the pirate.

  ‘Cleanse yourself,’ he said.

  ‘I need my horse and my woman,’ I said. ‘I swore an oath.’

  Aristides shook his head. ‘Cleanse yourself, and perhaps the gods will provide.’

  There were, in those days, a number of temples that offered cleansing from the stain of death and impiety. Even the shrine to Leitos, in Plataea, although that was open only to soldiers.

  But the principal places of cleansing for crime were Olympia, Delphi and Delos. And of the three, Delos was easiest to reach, though most distant in stades, I suppose. And the Apollo there was the most ready to listen to a common man.

  ‘I will go to Delos,’ I said.

  ‘You can be in Sounion by morning,’ Aristides said. ‘Have you money?’

  I didn’t tell him I still had twenty drachmas from the dead men. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Gods speed you there,’ Aristides said. He stood by me while I rolled my blankets and an old bearskin, then followed me out of his gate. ‘Listen, Arimnestos. You may take me for a pious fool, or a hypocrite.’

  ‘Neither, my lord.’ We were alone in the dark.

  ‘You need to be gone — before your wagon arrives with the corpse and the goods, and they find an excuse to take you again. I will try to find your girl. But this murder is a stain, and you must be clean before you come back here. It may be that some god led you to it — because you do need to be gone, and tonight is better than tomorrow.’ He shrugged. ‘They will kill you if they cannot convict you.’

  ‘I don’t fear them,’ I said, but I wasn’t telling the truth.

  ‘In a year, the balance will change. Right now, you cannot be here. Even Plataea might prove dangerous for you. Go to Delos, and do as the god bids you.’ He held out his hand. ‘I do not fear pollution so much that I would not clasp your hand.’

  And then I was walking in the dark, down the rocky road to Sounion.

  3

  I managed to find a ship at Sounion, practically on the steps of the Temple of Poseidon. He was a Phoenician bound for Delos with a cargo of slaves from Italy and Iberia. I didn’t think very highly of slavers and I dislike Phoenicians on principle, even though they are great sailors, but I took it as a test from the gods and I kept my eyes open and my mouth shut.

  All the slaves were Iberians, big men with heavy moustaches, tattoos and the deep anger of the recently enslaved. They eyed my weapons and I kept my distance. They all looked like fighting men.

  The navarch, a man with a beard trimmed the Aegyptian way, curling like a talon from his chin, made them row in shifts between his professional rowers. He was training them so that he’d get a better price. He planned to sell the best of them at Delos and the rest at Tyre or Ephesus.

  ‘Ephesus?’ I asked. Ephesus always interested me.

  ‘The satrap of Phrygia has an army laying siege to Miletus,’ he said. ‘His fleet is based at Ephesus.’

  That was news to me. ‘Already?’ I asked. The fall of Miletus — the most powerful city in the Greek world, or so we thought — would be the end of the Ionian Revolt.

  Once again, I have to leave my tale to explain. In those days, most of the cities of Ionia — and ther
e were dozens, from beautiful Heraklea on the Euxine, down along the coast of Asia to mighty Miletus, then to Ephesus, the city of my youth, richer than Athens by a factor of five times — across the Cyprian Sea to Cyprus and Crete — more Greeks lived in Ionia than lived in Greece. Except that most of those Greeks lived under the rule of the King of Kings — the Great King of the Persians.

  While I was growing to manhood in the house of Hipponax, I lived under Persian rule. The Persians ruled well, thugater. Never believe the crap men say today about how they were a nation of slaves. They were warriors, and men of honour — in most cases, more honour than we Greeks. Artaphernes — the satrap of Phrygia — was the friend and foe of my youth. He was a great man.

  In those days — in my youth — the Greeks of Ionia rose up to throw off the shackles of Persian slavery. Hah! Now, there’s a load of cow shit. Selfish men seeking power for themselves cozened the citizens of many Ionian cities to trade the safety and stability of the world’s greatest empire for ‘freedom’. To most Ionians, that freedom was the freedom to be killed by a Persian. None of the Ionians trusted each other, and every one of them wanted power over the others. The Persians had a unified command, brilliant generals and excellent supplies. And money.

  The Ionian Revolt had lasted for ten years, but it was never much of a success. And when this story starts, as I was sailing as a passenger on a slave ship, it was entering its final phase, although we didn’t know it. The Persians had seemed at the edge of triumph before, and each time, the revolt had been rescued — usually by Athens, or by Athenians acting as surrogates for their mother city, like Miltiades.

  But Athens had its own problems — the near civil war I described. Persian gold was pouring into the city, inflating the power of the aristocratic party and the Alcmaeonids, and the Pisistratids were backed by Persia to restore the tyranny — not that I knew that then. Persian gold was paralysing Athens, and the Persian axe was poised over Miletus.