Marathon: Freedom or Death lw-2

by Christian Cameron

  Hah! I’m keeping my plan from you children. It helps build the story, does it not? But not many men can say that in one day they bested Cleitus of the Alcmaeonids and Themistocles of Athens in a contest of wits. Let me tell it my own way.

  The play was only halfway through when the first man in the crowd gave way to tears. And by the time Istes died (in the play, he asks ‘Where is Athens?’ as he falls to his death), men were weeping, some were pouring dust on their heads and the whole row of Alcmaeonids were looking uneasy under all that dignity and good breeding.

  It was a mighty play.

  And then there was my contribution.

  Not long after Istes’ death, when the angry crowd was to understand that the maidens of Miletus were being ravished offstage by the Persian archers, I saw a man come to Cleitus. His face was broad and puffy — or did I imagine that? And when he whispered into his master’s ear, Cleitus flushed red and stood up.

  We were separated by ten horse-lengths, but the gods meant him to know. I caught his eye. And I smiled.

  Whatever the news was, it passed from man to man along the Alcmaeonid family seats. Several of them pointed at me.

  Aeschylus watched them, and then Sophanes pushed up next to me.

  ‘What have you done?’ he asked.

  ‘An act of piety and justice,’ I said quietly.

  I wasn’t there to see it, but Cleon told the tale well. This is what happened.

  In a south-side brothel owned by the Alcmaeonids, a group of oarsmen swaggered in demanding wine — no uncommon thing during the feast of Dionysus. But when they had their wine, they demanded to see all the girls, and having chosen one, they beat the owner and his bruisers to death with their fists. Four men died. The girl they took away with them.

  Oh, it’s a nasty business, children.

  Out by the tanneries, a small crowd descended on a taverna known to be owned by one of the gangs of toughs who ‘organized’ things in the town. They pulled four men out of the taverna and stabbed them to death. The four men were literally cut to ribbons.

  Up on the hill by the Acropolis, another pair of bruisers were caught by a small mob and cudgelled to death. Sailors were blamed.

  But the worst atrocity, in the eyes of the ‘good men’, was that someone — or some group of men — invaded one of the largest Alcmaeonid farms. In fact, it was Cleitus’s home farm. His workers were badly beaten, and every horse in his barns was killed, throats cut with knives. Every horse.

  Not everything I planned came off. I had wanted my own horse back, but the men who were sent to the farm misunderstood, and my nice mare died with all their stock. I hadn’t meant so many men to die — ten is a big body count for a peaceable city — but when you make soup, the vegetables are best cut small.

  I did what had to be done. I wanted the Alcmaeonids to be struck with terror. I didn’t want them to consider fighting back.

  I couldn’t be certain what the consequences of my little gambit would be. And perhaps the consequences would have been less, if not for Phrynichus’s play.

  Cleitus had meant for the play to be cancelled, or if not cancelled, he’d planned a disturbance in the Agora that would have forced the magistrates to take action. That’s what should have happened, but his bruisers were cooling corpses by then, their shades already far on the road to Hades. I’d paid another crowd of oarsmen and their friends to attend the play. I packed the crowd to get it cheering, but that was unnecessary, and I regret that I thought so little of Phrynichus. I didn’t pay them to attack the Alcmaeonids. That happened all by itself.

  The end of the play set off a convulsion of sorrow and regret. Phrynichus’s words brought home to the mass of men what the fall of Miletus had meant — and what role they had played, or not played. Never once had he named the Alcmaeonids, or spoken harshly of the power of Persian gold — but when men dried their eyes after the last speech, a demand by a Persian general that all Greeks submit or share the fate of Miletus, the crowd turned on the Alcmaeonids like wild dogs.

  They were pelted with filth, and their retainers were beaten. At first, men were restrained, both by the prestige of the aristocrats and by fear of their bruisers — but there were no bruisers in evidence.

  Then some of the oarsmen grew bolder and pressed forward.

  But the aristocrats weren’t cowards — far from it. These were the leaders of Athens, and swords appeared, despite the law. Commoners were cut down.

  The area behind the stands was now enveloped in the chaos of a formless fight. I pushed my way there, past men trying to join the fight and others attempting to flee it. I wanted Cleitus — I wanted to see his face.

  Instead, I saw Themistocles. He was grinning from ear to ear, and yet he was struggling to restrain some thetes who had cudgels and were trying to finish off a fallen man.

  Themistocles shook his head at me. ‘You see what you’ve done?’ he roared — not that he was displeased.

  I pushed past him, looking for Cleitus. I took a blow on the shoulder and I wondered if the Alcmaeonids would be finished off right here in a massacre by the Royal Stoa, but the crowd wanted more and less than blood, and already the older aristocrats were clear of the crowd. And running. A sight that the demos never forgot.

  Cleitus was holding the crowd back with a dozen armed men. The thetes feared his sword and his ability to use it.

  I didn’t. I pushed forward through the last edge of lower-class men, and I laughed at him.

  As if by prompt on the stage, Paramanos appeared with my slave girl in tow. Her eyes widened when she saw me — until then, as I later heard, she’d assumed the worst. If there can be worse than working in a brothel in Athens.

  I grabbed her hand and she came with me.

  ‘I have back what is mine,’ I called to Cleitus.

  ‘You’re a dead man,’ he roared at me.

  And then he ran, pursued by the sound of my laughter.

  I gave her her freedom, as I had promised. It was a year or more late, and I paid her the best damages I could, hard silver for her lost year. She was never again the open-faced, friendly companion of our first weeks together. The gods had used her and cast her away, and I had forgotten her, who had sworn to save her. It’s not a pretty story. How many men did she service in the Agora because I was heartsick?

  But we made the Athenian aristocrats pay. No Alcmaeonid dared come into the streets for weeks thereafter, and my court case was won by the absence of my opponent, and the unanimity of the jury was a sign of the collapse of aristocratic power. Miltiades argued my case with a deep voice and an unworried countenance, because he knew he was going to win — both as my proxenos and in his own case. No jury in Athens would convict Miltiades of anything after Phrynichus’s play. And the Alcmaeonid political machine died with their handlers. I’m afraid I taught the Athenians a terrible lesson, and they still fear the demos.

  But I smile to think that Phrynichus and I saved Athenian democracy from the Alcmaeonids so that the man who wanted to be tyrant could save it from the Medes. The gods — who is so foolish as to not believe in the gods? — work in the strangest ways.

  Aristides was distant for the next week, until my case was resolved. He was no fool, and he knew where the muscle had come from, and so did Themistocles. I went back to staying with Phrynichus, who was now deluged with money and offers of more from admirers as distant as Hieron of Syracuse.

  Phrynichus knew I’d done something, but I never let on exactly what — and yet, by having Agios and Paramanos and Black and Cleon for dinner every night, Phrynichus became untouchable. We kept fifty oarsmen in the streets around his house at all hours, on Miltiades’ money.

  But on the day that Miltiades was released — the jury refused to hear the charges read, which had precedent in Athenian law, and seemed to satisfy everyone — I met him and Aristides together with Themistocles. We met as if by chance in a wine shop at the edge of the Agora, where well-to-do men used to cement business deals.

  Themistocles
didn’t meet my eye. Miltiades, on the other hand, rose to his feet and embraced me.

  ‘Money well spent,’ he said. ‘Pardon my doubts of you, friend. I will always be in your debt.’ He gave me a broad wink. ‘I don’t think these other gentlemen liked their taste of your politics.’

  Themistocles spat. ‘I do not want to live in a state powered by blood,’ he said.

  ‘And yet you seek increased power for the lowest class,’ Miltiades answered. ‘What do you expect?’

  Themistocles glared at me. ‘I expect them to learn to be men of honour, and to stand in their places and vote — not cudgel each other like thieves.’

  But Aristides shocked me. He took my hand and embraced me. ‘I thought to hate you,’ he said. ‘I considered asking for a writ of banishment against you.’

  Themistocles looked at him as if the gods had taken his wits. ‘But you did not?’

  Aristides shook his head and sat. ‘Drink wine with us, Arimnestos,’ he said. ‘I invited Cleitus to join us, but he declined. I wanted all the factions.’ He almost smirked. ‘Perhaps their faction isn’t worth having today.’

  ‘They’ll be back,’ I said.

  ‘So they will,’ Aristides agreed. ‘But no amount of Persian gold will buy them the mob now.’

  ‘And for that, you forgive this foreigner who used violence to achieve his ends?’ Themistocles asked.

  Aristides shrugged. ‘In former times, when a city had reached a point of stasis — civil war — the leading men would invite a foreigner, a lawmaker, to come and save them.’ Aristides smiled. ‘My wife told me that I was being a fool, and that I should see the Plataean as a man who came to Athens and restored order.’

  I looked around at all of them. ‘You see me as a killer of men,’ I said. ‘But I was trained by Heraclitus of Ephesus, and I know a little of how cities work. Athens has too many poor, and too few rich, for the rich to control the poor with fear and silver. Too many of Athens’s poor are seamen and oarsmen. They’re not cowards, as all of us around this table have cause to know. And they have no reason to love Persia.’ I shrugged.

  ‘I know all that,’ Themistocles said. ‘I don’t need some eastern-trained foreigner to tell me.’

  ‘You know it all,’ Aristides said, ‘but despite that, you did not act.’ He turned to me and smiled. ‘I prefer the rule of law, Plataean.’

  ‘I am a man of property, too,’ I said. ‘Not as rich as you lot, but I have a good farm, a forge, horses. I, too, treasure the rule of law. But when one side controls the laws, the other side must appeal to another court.’

  Aristides nodded. ‘We all wish to ask you to leave the city now.’

  I smiled. ‘You are going to run me out of town after all?’

  Aristides nodded. ‘We have to. You killed ten men — and most citizens know how. You will be welcomed back soon enough.’

  I rose to my feet. ‘Gentlemen, I have fought for Athens, bled for Athens and now I have schemed for Athens. The depth of your thanks never ceases to amaze me.’

  Aristides shook his head. ‘Don’t be like that, Arimnestos. If you were one of us, we would all now fear your power. Since you are an ally, we can ask you to leave, and trust you again in the future.’ He said this as if it made sense, and in a way it did. But I was hurt, too. I had planned a brilliant campaign, and the only person who thanked me was Irene, wife of Phrynichus.

  ‘What can we do for you, Arimnestos?’ Miltiades asked.

  I had the good grace to laugh. ‘Nothing, unless it is to make sure that Phrynichus doesn’t starve while you all plot the future of Athens.’ And then I had a thought. ‘Perhaps I will have something after all. I have in my hand a set of manumission papers for a slave girl. They’ve all been signed by a magistrate — how about if you all sign them?’

  Her name, it appeared on the tablets, was Apollonasia — quite a mouthful for a twist-foot slave girl from Boeotia, but Apollo’s daughter she certainly was. And all three of them — the three most famous men of their generation — put their stamps and their names across the magistrate’s mark on her tablets.

  It was the best gift I could give her. I went and fetched her, and introduced her — her eyes cast modestly down — and each swore that they would remember her.

  She walked with us, out of the city. I stopped on the Acropolis hill to say farewell to Phrynichus, and I stopped in Piraeus to say farewell to Agios and Paramanos, and I stopped at Eleusis to say farewell to Eumenios, who I’d barely seen, because in Attica, eighty stades is reckoned a great distance. Cleon came with me, of course. And on our last night in Attica, at Oinoe, where my brother died, she came into my blankets, and kissed me.

  ‘I’m going in the morning,’ she said. ‘I’ll be a farmer’s wife in Attica, and my sight tells me I will see you again. I was a vessel to lead you, and now I am free.’

  I murmured something, because I was hard as rock and wanted to have her, and I didn’t need any of her moon-gazing female nonsense just then, but she bit my shoulder hard to get my attention.

  ‘You owe me,’ she said. ‘Give me a child of yours, or I’ll curse you. Again.’

  So I did.

  In the morning, she was gone. I did hear of her again, and I know who she married and who our child grew to be, as you’ll hear eventually, if you all keep sitting here.

  But I’ll say this of her in eulogy. She was a hero, as much as Eumeles of Euboea or Aristides. She was a vessel for the gods, and she stood her ground, and when they treated her like shit, she did not become shit. Eh?

  I can never lose the notion that if I had gone back for her, the Greeks might have won at Lade. Foolishness. But I still carry the guilt for leaving her to bloody Cleitus for a year.

  And he didn’t send her to a brothel because he was evil, either. That’s what you do with a club-footed chattel with good breasts, if she has no skills. Right?

  I’m an old man and I have few regrets, but she is one. And when she lay with me that night and took my seed — I felt better. I won’t say otherwise. Much better.

  When I awoke in the first light, she was gone, but sitting on my leather bag, where her dark head had lain just hours before, was a great black raven. It cawed once, and the beat of its wings frightened me, and then it rose into the sky with a cry.

  I lay still with my heart beating hard, and my body felt lighter. Indeed, when I rose from my blankets, my hip and lower leg hurt less — much less. I’ve never run the stade since Lade, but from that moment I got something back. Something more than mere muscle and tissue.

  11

  My third return to Plataea was the easiest. Perhaps my fellow townsmen were becoming accustomed to my travels, or perhaps Simon, son of Simon, had just lost his supporters in Thebes and had no money with which to blacken my name. In any event, I went back over Cithaeron in winter, froze my arse in the high pass and made a sacrifice on the family altar nonetheless, and came down to green Plataea in time for spring harvest.

  The truth is that Plataeans can be ignorant hicks, and it’s possible that the winter was so cold that they never noticed I was gone.

  Either way, I was there for the first harvest, the barley harvest, and my spirits were high — whatever the raven gave me, it was strong. I settled Cleon on a small farm in Cithaeron’s shadow, and he seemed happy enough. I ploughed my fallow land with Hermogenes, and won his grudging praise for my unstinting work. I made new props for grape vines and I pruned everything I could get a sickle to. I gathered all my male slaves and on the spot freed the two Thracians who had been with me since my first return, and then told the rest exactly how they could work their way to freedom.

  When the spring farm work was done, I threw myself into the forge, making pots and pitchers and cups and temple vases with Tiraeus and Bion. For twenty days, my forge was never silent. Even Hermogenes worked the forge, and that was rare, because despite his skills, he’d become a farmer first and foremost.

  At the feast of Demeter, we danced the Pyrrhiche and I eyed the new cr
op of boys-become-men with the wary amusement that men have for boys. They preened and slunk away by turns, and lost their heads whenever a pretty girl walked by. Despite which, by the end of the festival, I had a notion of who was worthy and who was worthless, and where they might stand in the phalanx.

  I had not taken naturally to being the strategos of the town — or perhaps I had. My father was briefly the polemarch before his death — the war archon. And no man had been formally appointed to either role since his death. The Plataeans had not stood in battle a single day since the Week of Battles. Indeed, in all the town, there were only six of us who had faced iron in the storm of Ares since then.

  There was me. There was Idomeneus, who was accepted as a citizen despite his alienness, because he was the priest of the hero. There was Ajax, a Plataean who had served with the Medes against us in the Chersonese, and of whom we nonetheless thought highly. There was Styges, who had followed us to Lade. Hermogenes had served me for two years in the Chersonese, and had fine armour and a steady hand. Lysius of Plataea was another local man — he’d served for four years under Miltiades before buying a good farm along the Asopus. That was it, in my generation.

  The fifty Milesian families brought us a wealth of war experience. Teucer was the best archer our town had ever seen, and I used him to organize the men who carried bows — in those days, honey, archers still walked with the phalanx. And Alcaeus, who was the chief lord of the survivors, was as good a man in spear-fighting as Idomeneus, and owned full panoply, with thigh guards and arm armour and even foot armour shaped like his own feet, so that when he was fully kitted, he looked like a bronze statue.

  The Milesians added real fighting power. And that allowed them — as Ionians and foreigners — to gain acceptance more rapidly than they might otherwise have done.

  And finally, there was Cleon, who took one of Simon’s former farms, a Corvaxae property that I granted him, just over the hill from mine, running hard by Epictetus’s vineyards. He was never fond of war, but he’d stood in the front ranks several times. Plataea was delighted to have him, and Myron got up a collection to buy him an aspis and a helmet, as he had sold his.