‘It’s so wonderful, Saviour God, that you chose me, out of all the beautiful youths in Athens. Of course I love you more ardently than any of the others, but such love is not often requited. And to make things even better our love will rescue my family from the perils which now beset us. Do you know, Saviour God, that Stratocles the demagogue is blackmailing my father? In the days of the Phalerian we were oligarchs, of course. A house of our eminence could hardly choose any other party. But we are Athenians first, as befits citizens who have served the city since Theseus was king. If a lawful Assembly brings in democracy we obey the laws. That kind of loyalty is something Stratocles can’t understand. My father was arrested on suspicion of treason, and a packed jury sentenced him to pay a fine of fifty talents. That would mean selling the ancestral estates, estates which have been in our family since the Trojan War. Luckily we were given time to pay. No one can be expected to keep fifty talents ready in his strong-box. Now my father won’t have to pay the unjust fine, because you will get a pardon for him. Of course you will. You would yourself be shamed if the people who worship you were to ruin the father of your chosen lover.’
‘Of course I would be shamed,’ Demetrius admitted gravely. ‘You will get the pardon at once. I can’t pardon you myself, since I did not pass sentence. But I shall command the people of Athens to reverse their judgement. Here, fetch a tablet. I shall write at once. What’s your father’s name?’
He scribbled quickly.
‘There. Take it. My divine and royal command to the sovereign peoples of Athens, bidding them to remit the fine imposed on Cleomedon, father of Cleaenetus. Show it to Stratocles and tell him to get on with it. There, that’s a favour done for a friend. In return I ask a small favour of you.’
‘Anything, anything in the world, Saviour God,’ the boy simpered.
‘It’s not difficult, but it’s something I want badly.’ Demetrius turned on him the face he used on parade. ‘You will visit those ancestral estates of yours, and take your father with you. Get there before dawn tomorrow, and don’t come back to Athens while I am in the city. Make sure that I never see you again.’
That was not the last of the unfortunate affair. Two days later Stratocles called at the Parthenon in a towering rage.
‘Look here, my lord god,’ he said as soon as they were alone. ‘There isn’t room for two tyrants in Athens. Either I govern the Assembly in accordance with your directions, or you take over and I go into exile. We are too unlike to pull together in double harness.’
‘We are unlike, certainly,’ answered Demetrius, ‘and probably both of us are glad of it. But what have I done to make your position difficult? I pardoned a rich oligarch because I like his son’s dimples. That’s how the world has always been run. I suppose Ganymede’s father enjoyed the favour of Zeus. I will be glad to pardon the father of any young friend of yours. It was done discreetly, in a private note addressed to you. If it has become a public scandal that’s because you handled it clumsily,’
‘It was handled with great skill, not by me,’ said Stratocles. ‘My lord, you mustn’t meddle with Assembly matters. A discreet note, addressed to me. Ha! But you gave it to Cleaenetus, who gave it to his father, who gave it to Demochares the demagogue - and Demochares, my rival, is trying to arrange a coalition between the extreme patriots who hate all kings and the remnant of the oligarchs. Demochares read out your note in full Assembly, and then moved, without comment, that the people should decree as the Saviour God had commanded. That was carried unanimously. But then Demochares put up one of his jackals to rub in the disgrace of it all - the sovereign people of Athens taking orders from a Macedonian king. There was a great commotion, and the shouts and cat-calls were directed against me as much as against you. I genuinely lost control of the Assembly. If that had continued for more than half an hour I wouldn’t be wearing my head now. When calm had been restored another extreme patriot made a speech against kingship and tyranny and foreigners and so on, quite clearly directed at the Saviour Gods. He ended by proposing a decree, that in future anyone who reads to the Assembly a letter written by a king automatically incurs the death penalty. It was passed with enthusiasm. Now what shall we do about that?’
‘I didn’t know they hated me. Why do they? Do they hate you also?’
‘Athenians always hate their rulers,’ said Stratocles impatiently. ‘They hate you because you are braver and taller and better born and richer and more beautiful than they are, which are all very good reasons for hating anyone. All of them don’t hate me, but it’s natural that some of them should. I can’t arrange matters so that everyone lives off the taxes; someone has to pay them. The tax-eaters are for me and the taxpayers against me. There are perhaps more taxpayers than tax-eaters.’
Demetrius smiled. Politics as described by Stratocles were within the comprehension even of a soldier. ‘That’s clear enough. We have been attacked and must defend ourselves. Since this is a military crisis I take over from you. I can manage it easily. I shall begin by making an example. These people who proposed decrees aimed at me - is there a legal charge you could bring against them?’
‘There’s an obvious one, though if I had proposed it this morning the Assembly would have lynched me. To prohibit the introduction of some type of decree is a very old political dodge, so old, and such a nuisance to posterity, that it has itself been forbidden on pain of death. Those extreme patriots have laid themselves open to a capital prosecution. But Demochares kept in the background. I don’t see how I can get him.’
‘Never mind. We’ll get his followers, and that will scare him into silence. Tomorrow my troops will undertake routine manoeuvres, just the ordinary training they do every winter. The main exercise will be a mock assault on the Acropolis, which will not be defended to make sure that the exercise does not get out of hand. When the Assembly meets I shall happen to be marching up the hill at the head of my bodyguard. You will be speaking. Out of respect for the deliberation of the sovereign people of Athens I shall halt my men at the end of the marketplace, lest they interrupt your speech. Then you propose a decree which you think will meet the case, and I shan’t be at all surprised if it is carried unanimously.’
‘A little crude, my lord god, but subtlety would be wasted on Demochares. Introducing a new capital crime, indeed! Any demagogue ought to have more sense. The trade of politics is quite dangerous enough as it is. He deserves to be squashed, and we’ll squash him.’
Next morning Demetrius listened with interest to Stratocles. The rogue could be eloquent in his vulgar way. It was easy enough to persuade the Assembly to arrest the imprudent patriots (who were executed the same evening), but the terms of Stratocles’ next proposal surprised even the Saviour God and his devoted bodyguard. By an overwhelming majority the sovereign people of Athens resolved that any command of the Divine King Demetrius should be regarded as both righteous in respect of the gods and lawful as regards men. In Athens he might do whatever he liked - so long as his army lay encamped within the Long Walls.
Demochares, a nephew of the great Demosthenes and so a hereditary foe to all Macedonians, prudently went into exile. But Stratocles was still not quite satisfied. The volatile Assembly might turn on him again, unless kept loyal by a permanent threat of force. Without any public announcement or legal decree the soldiers of Demetrius took over the defence of the Acropolis, displacing the garrison of citizens. Henceforth Athens was even less free than when Cassander ruled it, for his garrison had been confined to Munychia. On the other hand, the poorest Athenian now had a voice in the Assembly and might vote for anything he chose, so long as what he chose did not displease Demetrius.
There was still this matter of pretty boys. Demetrius felt that he owed it to his own reputation as a man of gallantry to choose a male favourite. This second time he was determined to do the wooing himself. No conspirator in trouble with the government would earn an easy pardon by pleasing him.
Unfortunately he was unable to choose; boys just did not interest
him in that way. Besides, Lamia exhausted all his energies. She had developed the tiresome trick of biting him in some place where the marks showed if he did not love her ardently enough. To get the business settled he decided to let public opinion choose for him. He soon discovered that one Democles was considered the prettiest of all the boys in Athens.
Even this second attempt went wrong, though he was trying so hard to behave like everyone else. By bad luck he had picked on the only boy in the city who was as revolted by homosexuality as Demetrius himself.
He began with the obvious moves, making a point of being there to admire the boy on the many occasions when he showed himself naked, in the gymnasium or the palaestra or the bath. Democles replied by breaking training, though that might unfit him for military service when he grew up and so wreck any chance of a political career. All the same, he had to wash from time to time. He managed that by using a private bath-house, set up for the use of eunuchs and veterans maimed in battle who did not care to display their bodies in public. For a young Athenian that was most extraordinary, and the anti-Macedonian wits made scurrilous songs about it.
Demetrius grew obstinate. It was not that he wanted the boy; but he could not bear to fail, and fail publicly, in a city where he was reverenced as both god and king. One afternoon he went along to the private bath-house, thrust his way in, and surprised young Democles as he oiled his naked body.
The boy fell into a frenzy, crying out that beauty was a curse and that his only hope of happiness was to disfigure himself. In a passion he ran to the great copper tub where the bathwater boiled, snatched off the lid, and plunged in. The attendants hauled him out and dressed his scalded legs; but he died of the shock.
For three days no Athenian talked of anything else.
In the little room at the west end of the Parthenon, the special chamber of the goddess and the most numinous and sacred spot in Athens, Demetrius sat twirling his wine cup as he looked out at the sunset. It amused him to use this holy little room for intimate suppers, and for making love to Lamia. This was the private bedroom of a maiden goddess, and such conduct proved that he was as powerful as Athene.
This evening he had only two guests, Lamia and Stratocles. They reclined at their ease, since neither feared the anger of the goddess; but the servants scuttled in and out as quickly as they could, scarcely daring to breathe under the sacred roof. That was another advantage of the inner shrine; it was one of the few places in inquisitive Athens fairly free from eavesdroppers.
‘We shall march soon,’ said Demetrius. ‘The roads are drying and the grass beginning to grow. It’s time to be off to the conquest of other cities. I shall be sorry to leave. I’ve enjoyed myself. All the same, Athens is not quite the wonderful place I had expected. Not quite so beautiful, and not nearly so friendly.’
‘If you sit inside the most beautiful building in the town, looking out, you don’t get the best view,’ Lamia said lazily. ‘You ought to come down to my nice house by the market, and look up. Why not come there tonight? We’ll round up the neighbours and have a few drinks, and you will find everyone friendly enough.’
‘No. I’m staying here. It’s my due, and I don’t want to waste it. No one else has even been invited to lodge in Athene’s own room in her own citadel. It may be cold and draughty, with not enough windows; but to live here helps my prestige. What do you think, Stratocles? Do the Athenians hate me because I lodge in the Parthenon?’
‘I don’t hate you for it, my lord god. It was my idea in the first place. There are people who don’t like it. Perhaps they would like it better if you didn’t sup with such dissolute companions. But in that case neither Lamia nor I would be here, so perhaps I am wrong to raise the point.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Lamia said crossly. ‘I’m not dissolute now, whatever I may have been. I live chastely with one man, or rather one god. I may look like Aphrodite, but I don’t carry on as she does.’
‘I don’t carry on like Dionysus either,’ Demetrius answered. ‘I appreciate good wine, but no one has ever seen me drunk when you are tipsy. But unless all your faculties are working at full stretch you don't see the fine points of a battle, the skill and courage of the troops and the occasional fumble of a commander. But we are not discussing war, nor drunkenness either. Tell me, Stratocles, what went wrong? Why don’t the Athenians like me?’
‘Some like you, my lord god. Others don’t. In a democracy the citizens are seldom unanimous. At present I have a majority in the Assembly, and that’s what matters.’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t like this when I made my first entry, after driving Cassander’s men from Munychia. Then everybody was glad to see me. Now half of them are waiting for me to go away.’
‘Nobody likes a garrison, even an allied garrison. It’s a pity that we can’t trust the Athenians to hold their own Acropolis. But we can’t, and we must get used to it.’ Stratocles spoke sadly. ‘At your bidding the Athenians have made war on the wicked tyrant Cassander. They don’t dislike fighting, but they hate the taxes I levy to pay for the war. I don’t know the answer. I don’t know what has gone wrong. I can only say, my lord god, that if you march away you must leave a garrison behind you; or I will lose my head and you will lose Athens.’
‘There’s something I have learned since I became a general.’ Demetrius was speaking almost to himself. ‘No disaster is as bad as you had feared it would be. I learned that when Ptolemy beat me at Gaza. The other half I have learned quite recently. No triumph is ever as complete as you had expected. When I first came to land in Hellas I thought Athens needed nothing but liberty. I gave you liberty, didn’t I, Stratocles? Athens was genuinely free - free to be neutral, free to bring back the oligarchs if that was what you really wanted. But free Athens isn’t as good as I had hoped it would be, and I don’t know what to put in its place.’
‘Athens is ruled by a divine king, a Saviour God. You can’t have a better government than that,’ said Lamia smugly.
‘Perhaps not.’ Stratocles spoke absently. ‘At any rate, it worked - for the time being.’
‘Lamia may be right.’ Demetrius spoke with enthusiasm, for suddenly a picture of an ideal world had come into his head. ‘Quite soon the Empire of Alexander will be in working order again. But we shall correct Alexander’s one mistake. I mean that silly fad about the equality of man - the marriage of East and West, satrapies governed by Persians, no distinction between Hellene and barbarian. Instead, I shall rule the Empire, but all my ministers will be Hellenes. That will do it, eh, Stratocles? The Athenians won’t mind a foreign garrison when every one of them has a fair chance of becoming satrap of Babylon. Any Hellene with a clear mind and courage and diligence, that’s to say any average Hellene, will come home after thirty years among the barbarians wealthy, knowing the world, a competent governor. The silver which used to flow into Persepolis will be spent in Hellas. Athens will be an earthly paradise.’
‘That sounds very nice,’ said Stratocles, after he had waited politely to be sure Demetrius had finished. ‘But you have omitted one quality these lucky Hellenes ought to possess - fidelity. It’s rarer in Hellas than you might suppose. Another point. How long before the Empire is restored? There’s no denying that my Athenians are getting a little tired of war.’
Demetrius was too pleased with his vision of the future to take offence. ‘The Empire is nearer than you suppose. We march to the Isthmus, that’s common knowledge. It isn’t so generally known that the Peloponnese is already coming over. Corinth, Argos, Achaea are all awaiting my arrival. The citizens will declare for me and I shall drive out Cassander’s garrisons or, better still, bribe them to go away.’
'All the Peloponnese?’ Stratocles asked quickly.
‘Well, Sparta stays out, of course, because Spartans won’t take second place in any alliance. There are so few Spartans now that it doesn’t matter. The Messenians will be too busy watching the Spartans to help me. Except for those two I have assurances from all the cities.’
�
��Then you will bring it off,’ Stratocles said weightily. ‘I didn’t think you would, quite frankly. So many leaders have planned to unite Hellas, and then lead all Hellas to the conquest of the world; and usually they are dead of old age before Hellas is united.’
‘It’s something to look forward to, isn’t it? The whole world governed by Hellenes in one great Empire. No more potty little wars between potty little cities, no more grubbing-up of olive trees or cutting-down of vines. Everyone secure in his city. What cannot Hellas accomplish after a generation or so of domestic peace?’
‘How long will they remain Hellenes, if they have no liberty?’
‘That’s a point,’ Demetrius admitted. ‘But it will work for one lifetime. In this age we can’t plan for eternity - too much happens every year. I was born when the Persian king ruled all Asia. Thirty years hence we may all be governed by Scythians. No one can take a long view.’
Lamia had not been listening. She tried never to contemplate the future, an unpleasant prospect for a hetaira of her age. Now she suddenly woke up. ‘I don’t want to go to the Isthmus. Can’t you just send your army, and stay here in Athens?’
‘You will stay in Athens, sweetheart. I was coming to that. I must go to the Isthmus - my army isn’t my army unless I lead it. But it may be more convenient if I go without you. There will be formal parties with fussy old politicians and narrow-minded regular soldiers, parties that wouldn’t amuse you. Besides, I may have to make another political marriage, and that will be easier if I am living as a bachelor,’
‘Yet another Queen, besides Phila and Eurydice? Or doesn’t Eurydice count anymore? Two wives is just Macedonian, but more than that is rather barbarous. There’s one thing - you can’t deceive an innocent maiden. Your love-life is as notorious throughout Hellas as that of any god. How will you manifest yourself at the wedding, as a swan or as a bull?’
Elephants and Castles Page 14