Marathon: Freedom or Death lw-2

by Christian Cameron

  ‘How stands the case with Miltiades?’ I asked after I had eaten my fill. Among Greeks, it is bad manners to ask hard questions during a meal. Truth to tell, it is bad manners in Persia, in Aegypt, in Sicily and in Rome, too.

  Aristides wiped his fingers on a cloth — my sister would have kicked him, but customs differ from town to town — and pursed his lips. ‘On the evidence, the jury can do nothing but convict him,’ he said.

  I could hear something in his voice. I raised an eyebrow. ‘But?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Men are seldom convicted on evidence,’ he said. ‘Miltiades’ case has become a test of the reach of the Great King into our city. The case was brought with malice, by the Alcmaeonids, and I have reason to believe that the Great King paid for it to be done.’

  I laughed. ‘And the sad truth is that every one of us knows that Miltiades had every intention of seizing the city.’

  Aristides frowned. ‘I wish you would phrase things more accurately, Plataean. We know nothing of the kind. We know what he might have done had he defeated the Persians and Medes at Lade.’ He shrugged.

  I confess that I laughed. ‘Aristides!’ I said, as I understood. ‘You are his advocate? You, his enemy?’

  His wife laughed, and I slapped the table, and the Athenians’ byword for justice and honour glared at us as if he was our pedagogue and we were errant children.

  ‘It’s not funny!’ he snapped.

  Try stopping a man from laughing with those words.

  ‘Besides,’ he said. ‘I am hardly his enemy.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. I laughed again. I couldn’t help myself, and his wife joined me.

  ‘Why is it,’ he asked, when we began to breathe again, ‘that visitors here always mock me, and you, despoina, always abet them?’

  I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘If you will be better than other men, you must be patient with their mockery,’ I said. ‘Besides, we only tease you because we love you.’

  ‘Why?’ Aristides asked. Like most righteous men, he was impatient of teasing and had neither defence against it nor any idea why it was directed at him.

  I shook my head and gave up. ‘Forgive me, lord,’ I said. ‘Imagine I’m but a poor witless foreigner, and tell me how Miltiades might survive this charge.’

  Aristides ignored my tone and nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said, taking me at my word. ‘The question before the jury ought to be whether Miltiades sought to make himself tyrant or not. But the question that is actually facing the jury is simpler, and more complex — whether Athens ought to resist Persia or not. Had we won Lade, this trial would never have come about.’

  I decided that I should not make the point that if we had won Lade, Miltiades would have landed here with fifty triremes and five thousand hoplites and made himself master in short order. Better not to say every thought that comes to one’s mind.

  ‘Men know that the Great King took Miletus. Thanks to Phrynichus, starting tomorrow, men will hear how close we came to defeating Datis — and how we were betrayed by the aristocrats of Samos. Do you know that the trierarchs there were stoned by a mob? Or that the eleven captains who stood with us are to have statues?’

  ‘Someday I will find Dionysius of Samos in a dark alley,’ I said.

  ‘Too late,’ Aristides said. ‘His oarsmen killed him to erase the shame of their defection.’

  ‘Good for them,’ I said. It was, truly, the best news I’d heard all day. ‘His shade will never go to Elysium!’

  We poured libations to Zeus who watches over oaths, and to the furies who avenge men who are wronged.

  ‘So,’ Aristides continued, when the wine was pooling on the floor, ‘to summarize, we seek to remind every juror — and indeed, every man — that we fought with the men of Miletus, and that, but for betrayal, we would have been victorious. And we seek to remind them that if the Great King rules here, our sons and daughters will service his soldiers like the virgins of Lesbos and Chios.’

  That was close to a blatant lie — it was at least stretching the facts. The rape of the islands had been a horror — but it didn’t represent the daily policy of the Great King. On the other hand, it had been terrible. I nodded.

  ‘And if the men of this city see Persia as a threat, and see that we can stand against the Great King, then they will silence the Alcmaeonids and stand their ground, and Miltiades will be found innocent.’ Aristides had risen to his feet. He was giving a speech.

  I clapped. So did his wife.

  He sat down and hung his head. ‘But here in my own home, I’ll say that I have very little hope,’ he said. ‘They tried to kill Sophanes today.’

  I grinned. I didn’t know that Sophanes was yet alive. ‘I’ve seen that boy in action,’ I said. ‘Hired thugs will never get him.’

  ‘Yesterday Themistocles was beaten,’ he went on. ‘He’s rising to be the head of the Demos. I have no time for him — but he’s with us against the Alcmaeonids and their supporters.’ He shrugged. ‘Men are afraid to speak openly.’

  I rubbed my chin. ‘Where is my suit against the Alcmaeonids for my slave girl and my horse?’ I asked.

  Aristides stopped as if he’d been struck. ‘By Zeus Soter,’ he said, ‘I had forgotten. I must apologize — Miltiades is your proxenos, and he should have reminded me.’ A proxenos is the man — usually a prominent man — who represents the affairs of your city in his own. Miltiades was the proxenos of Plataea in Athens.

  I took a sip of wine. ‘I mean to have that woman back,’ I said. ‘I’ll turn to violence if I must. I swore an oath, which was recently brought to my attention. It lowers me to admit this — but I forgot her, too.’

  ‘More than a year since we swore the suit,’ Aristides said. ‘You must not turn to violence, Arimnestos. This city is the symbol of the rule of law.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said. Thugs were beating my friends. Miltiades was in fear of his life from his own people. And I felt alive for the first time in months.

  By Aristides’ shoulder, Jocasta raised an eyebrow — and moved one long finger across her throat.

  I got her message as clearly as if she’d shouted it, and I smiled at her.

  ‘What is there to grin at?’ Aristides asked.

  I shrugged. ‘It’s good to be here with you,’ I said, with perfect honesty.

  The next morning I went and visited Miltiades, who was being kept in one of the caves above the Agora. The men guarding him were mostly his friends.

  ‘I’m safe here,’ he said with a smile, after he hugged me. ‘Unless Aristides gets himself a bodyguard, they’ll kill him in the Agora. The rule of law is over. The Great King has bought the rich men, and they have bought the thugs. There’ll be little justice after this.’

  I could have said that there would have been little enough justice if he had made himself tyrant, but to Hades with that. Miltiades was my childhood hero, and my friend.

  ‘I mean to take some action,’ I said, glancing around.

  ‘Legal action?’ Miltiades asked. ‘You are a foreigner.’

  ‘You are my proxenos,’ I said. ‘And I have a lawsuit sworn against Cleitus of the Alcmaeonids.’

  ‘So you do,’ he said. He shrugged and raised both eyebrows. ‘I fail to see why this is germane.’

  I looked around. ‘You trust all these men?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Miltiades said, but his eyes said otherwise.

  ‘Suffice it to say that if I move my case, you will have to act for me.’ I bowed. Miltiades was no Aristides, and he did not know the law the way the Just Man did. ‘And if there is no advantage to you, lord, I, at least, would reclaim the woman and the horse.’

  Miltiades looked disgruntled — but he was too good a man to be despondent. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he promised.

  ‘I need to contact some witnesses,’ I said. ‘Paramanos? And Agios?’

  ‘What have they to do with your damned horse?’ he asked, and then realization began to dawn. He choked a moment, coughed and called to a
boy who stood by, wearing the green and gold of Miltiades’ father. ‘Take Lord Arimnestos to Piraeus,’ he said, ‘and find the men he needs to see.’

  ‘Aye, lord,’ the boy said with a deep bow.

  Aristides was a good man, the Just Man, but it was civil war in the streets, and by putting Miltiades, the fighter, in irons, the Alcmaeonids had muzzled their opposition.

  I meant to have my slave girl back. And it seemed to me, after looking around for a few hours, that the fastest way through the tangle of Athenian politics would be to break some heads.

  I have great respect for democracy, friends. But democracy needs a little help sometimes.

  The first man I met with was Phrynichus. He was easy to find, in a good house high on the hill, hard by the Acropolis. I asked my way there, with one hand on my purse and a wary eye out for Alcmaeonid-paid brutes.

  He was happy to see me. His fighting days were probably over — his two wounds had both been almost mortal, and he made it clear to me that he felt that the gods had sent him back to life to redress the balance of the loss at Lade. As he was the man who had sent the letter, I stayed a night with him, ate his food and tried to help out as much as possible, as I could tell that he was living small.

  His wife Irene was kind, careful with money and smitten with a sadness that often comes to those who cannot have children — or perhaps poverty was wearing her down. I had a cure for poverty, and I took her aside while her husband napped. She pulled a shawl over her head — she was not used to talking to men without a chaperone present.

  I put a purse on the table. ‘Your husband never received his share from our last voyage,’ I said carefully. ‘I don’t like to speak of it — I know he was there for the principle of the thing, and not for filthy loot.’

  Her eyes were carefully lowered, but now they came up and locked on mine. ‘I understand,’ she said steadily. ‘You are clearly more of a gentleman than some of our other friends.’

  I laughed. ‘Don’t believe it, lady. But that money is his, and perhaps I could buy some wine for dinner?’

  She shook her head behind the shawl. ‘I, for one, would appreciate some decent wine,’ she allowed.

  When Phrynichus was awake, he sat with me at the farm table that dominated the main room. ‘Irene is happier today,’ he said. ‘What did you say to her?’

  ‘I took the liberty of buying you some decent wine,’ I said. I put a hand on his shoulder as his face darkened. ‘Don’t give me any shit, brother. You’re poor as a frog without a swamp and you need a decent amphora to get you through the play.’

  ‘If it ever goes on,’ he said. ‘Fuck me, Arimnestos. Cleitus and the Alcmaeonids paid to suppress it, and now they’ve threatened that if it goes on, I’ll be beaten. Or Irene will be. They say they’ll pay men to disrupt the performance, the way they broke up Miltiades’ festival of return.’

  I shook my head. ‘Don’t give an inch,’ I said. ‘I’m working on the problem of the Alcmaeonids.’

  ‘What can you do?’ he asked. ‘I mean no offence, Arimnestos, but you’re just a foreigner!’

  ‘And you need a bodyguard,’ I said. I knew where to find one.

  That night, we ate good fish and drank good wine, and Irene lied like a good wife and said she’d found a big silver piece in the floorboards. And in the morning, I made excuses and slipped away, feeling bad for having done so. Phrynichus needed me. But what he really needed was a success for his play.

  My next stop was Cleon’s. He was more sober than when last I’d found him.

  ‘You’re a thetes now?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘I drank the money I made with Aristides,’ he said. ‘After they died, I mean. And spent some on whores.’ He looked around the main room of his house. It was clean, because it was empty.

  ‘What trade do you work?’ I asked.

  He looked out of the door into the street. ‘I was a pot-engraver,’ he said. ‘Hard to explain, really. I cut the scenes into the surface of pots before the painter painted them, on the most expensive items. But there’s a whole new style of painting now, with no engraving, and I don’t get much work, and what I do get — well, slaves earn as much as I do.’ He shook his head. ‘Before Yani died, I had a fishing boat — my pater’s. That kept us on the right side of the ledger. But I sold it.’

  ‘You don’t have any land?’ I asked.

  ‘Not any more,’ he allowed.

  ‘Would you work for me?’

  ‘Here? In Athens?’ he asked.

  I watched him for a moment, because I didn’t need a drunk, but I did need to know that the man who’d stood at my shoulder in the fight at Ephesus was still in there. His hair was greying at the temples, his chiton was dirty and he had the weathered skin of a man who’d slept in alleys too many times.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That is, I need you here for a few days. We’ll break some heads. And then you’ll have to leave, because the Alcmaeonids will eventually figure out who you are, and kill you.’

  Cleon looked blank. ‘And then?’

  ‘And then you come with me to Plataea. And start again.’ I walked over to him. ‘Sell this house, go to Plataea and become a citizen. Stand at my shoulder. Be my friend.’

  ‘On a farm?’ he asked.

  ‘If that’s what you can do, yes.’ I looked around the house. ‘Anything to keep you here?’

  ‘Not a fucking thing,’ Cleon said. ‘Who do we kill?’

  Paramanos hugged me like a lost brother. I had last seen him covered with wounds from Lade and making a slow recovery when we fled Kallipolis, and we drank more wine than might have been wise.

  It’s a funny thing — Paramanos and I could have been great friends all along, I think, but for the fact that I used fear to cow him in the first moments of his service under me, and while he served me, I think he hated me. Relationships between men can be as complicated as those between women.

  But Lade changed that, as you’ll see. After Lade, those of us who survived it — we never forgot.

  Black joined us, and Herk, my first tutor in the ways of the sea, and he and Cleon embraced, and we drank too much cheap wine, as I mentioned. Other men came around — oarsmen, sailors, hoplites.

  ‘Miltiades needs us,’ I said.

  Agios, once Miltiades’ helmsman, nodded, and Cleon shrugged, but Paramanos shook his head.

  ‘I’m not a citizen here,’ he said. ‘And my status has been made abundantly clear. When I’ve had my fees paid, I’ll be taking my money and going back to Cyrene.’

  Black nodded.

  I looked at him. ‘You too?’

  ‘Athens isn’t my place,’ he said.

  ‘Herk, you’re a citizen?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ he said. ‘Born a thetes, but in the last allotment, I was a hippeis.’ He shrugged. ‘The men of property treat me like shit, for all that I’m a landowner now. You think I lived in Kallipolis as an exile? I hate Athens. The City of Aristocrats.’ He looked around. ‘You know what? For the commoners — the tyranny was better.’

  Cleon barked his strange laugh, and I could see that the two of them got along very well.

  I need to explain. For me, my loyalty to Plataea was absolute. To hear these three knock Athens — most especially Herk, who, by all accounts had made his fortune in her service — made me angry. Cleon I could understand. His city had let him down. But Herk?

  ‘You’re a thankless bunch,’ I said. ‘Miltiades made you rich in the service of Athens, and now he needs you, and you are running off to Cyrene?’

  Paramanos stroked his beard. ‘Yes.’ He turned his head away. ‘I’ve been threatened. My daughters have been threatened.’

  Agios nodded, clearly unhappy.

  ‘Gentlemen, sitting at this table are five bad men whose names make Syrian merchants shit themselves — and you are afraid of some threats from bum-boys in Piraeus?’ I stood up. ‘I’m going to take action. My actions are going to be carefully thought out, but I’m not going to use the law — exce
pt as bait. When I’m done, there won’t be anyone to threaten your daughters. Join me. We all owe Miltiades.’

  Paramanos made a curious face. ‘Do we really owe Miltiades, friend?’ He shrugged, but his eyes met mine squarely. ‘Be honest — Miltiades uses us, and now that he’s down, he can’t help us. Why should we help him? Listen — if it was you, or Herk, or Black or Cleon here — I’d carve my way through the bastards. But this is not my city, and not my fight.’

  Black shrugged. ‘I’m your helmsman,’ he said. ‘You bought me free. I do what you say.’ He took a drink of wine. ‘I got married,’ he added, and moved as if he feared a reprisal.

  ‘You got married?’ I asked. ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Like any Athenian fishwife, but louder,’ Paramanos said. ‘You can meet her later. Tell me why I should help.’

  I could marshal arguments — Heraclitus had taught me well — but I shook my head. ‘No, brother. It’s up to you. For all his little ways, Miltiades has been our friend. I think we owe him.’ I looked around. ‘Yes — he uses us. And by the gods, we know he wanted to be tyrant, and he’d have sold his own mother in a brothel to get it. But how often have we followed him to riches, eh?’

  Paramanos shook his head. ‘You know — we all know — that we’ll do it. If only to find out what you have planned.’

  ‘I need citizens,’ I said. I wasn’t going to stop to consider his sudden change of heart — I’d expected it. ‘How many oarsmen on your ships are citizens? How many marines?’

  ‘A dozen marines — many of them are zeugitai, members of the hoplite class. And I can round up fifty oarsmen who are thetes.’ He looked at me. ‘Why?’

  ‘The muscle have to be citizens,’ I said. ‘And we have to have their families safe — on Salamis, for instance.’

  My plan was simple — far simpler than Phrynichus and Aristides and their plans with complex choruses and speeches by actors. I explained what I had in mind, and then we mustered the oarsmen. It was winter — most of them were delighted to have a few days’ work. Most of them were so poor when they were ashore that the prospect of moving their families to Salamis — the island off Athens, if you don’t know it — sounded like a festival. I paid them enough to make it a festival.