Clearly they hadn't heard of the Argive games.
Anyway, by any standards Alastor overstated his case. My guess is, he let his heart run away with him, working out his store of irritation and bad temper in his attack on us. If he'd been himself, I'm sure he'd have noticed that he'd lost the sympathy of his audience at a very early stage, but fortunately for us the god blinded him to Demodocus' mustard frowns - embarrassment first, followed in short order by downright anger - until he'd baled all the malice out of his heart and was waiting for a response.
Demodocus started by saying that it was a pity Alastor lacked the manners to refrain from insulting his guests and friends to their faces under his roof; having a rather more traditional view of hospitality, he went on, he was prepared to put it out of his mind if we were (of course, we said; we were gloriously magnanimous about it) and offer Alastor and his friend the welcome of the house for the next day or so, until we all set off for the annual games at Argos...
I remember one time when Gratus and I were young men, watching Gratus getting his face slapped by a girl. He really wasn't expecting it - he thought the treaty was as good as made, all over bar the libations, and then whack, right across the cheek; she was wearing one of those old-style heavy coiled-wire gold rings, as I recall, which must have stung like anything. Anyway, the exhibition of stunned dismay on his face was the closest thing I've ever seen to the look on Alastor's face when Demodocus mentioned the Argive games. Demodocus decided to interpret it as a request for further details, and started telling him all about the games, with particular reference to what a good idea it was, games with nobody dead. He concluded by saying that he was extremely pleased to have been invited to the games at Elis, which sounded just like the Argive games, except that they promised to be bigger and better; doubtless, he said, we'd all of us meet up again then, at which time he'd be pleased to accept Alastor's hospitality in return for his own.
The kindest thing you could have done for Alastor at that moment was take him out the back of the house and bury him in the dung-heap, like you do with a dead dog. I almost felt sorry for him - except that it'd have been wrong in the sight of the gods, who ordained that we should love our friends and hate our enemies.
They were both fairly quiet after that, apart from the occasional groan of misery from Tachys and a few sneezes from Alastor after he ate too much garlic. For our part, we were feeling quite pleased with ourselves - I for one was glad to see Dusa looking a bit more like her old, troublemaking self - which may explain why, although I noticed Alastor staring at Pentheus when he thought nobody was looking, I didn't think anything of it. I suppose the gods were trying to be fair. I hate it when they do that.
If you'd told me when I was a kid that one day I'd visit Argos.
Just goes to show how much we lose when we grow up. It's an interesting balance, that; the gains and the losses. Try to work it out from a practical point of view, as if you were looking at a patch of waste land on your boundary, trying to decide whether to take it in hand, build terraces - you'd figure out likely yields and returns, ask yourself if it's worth the effort and the seed corn. Well; we gain so much as we take our lives in hand, but the expenditure - and the losses... If you could make a decision, standing on the boundary of childhood, looking at the future, which way would you go? Would you risk the losses to make the gains, or would your heart ask you if there was anything you stood to gain that'd make up for what you stood to lose?
Well, fortunately the question doesn't arise, or else the chances are you'd have to walk halfway to Tegea to find a grown-up. The point being, it was only after we'd set out, and we were bumping along the Argos road in one of Demodocus' chariots, that my heart suddenly pointed out to me where we were going - Argos, for the gods' sakes; the oldest city in the world. The nurse of heroes. The second cradle of the Sons of the Achaeans. And all I could think about was games-players. If the little boy I once was had seen me then and known what was in my heart, he'd have knocked my eye out with a stone.
On the way from Asine to Argos, we stopped in a small village under a hill. Demodocus jumped down and waved to us to follow him, and we trudged up the hill till we came to the top. There were a few blocks of stone there, poking up out of the dirt.
'See that?' Demodocus asked.
'Sure,' Gratus replied. 'What is it?'
Demodocus smiled. 'Tiryns,' he said.
Tiryns... You could have knocked me over by blowing in my ear. Of course, I knew that Tiryns was somewhere near Argos - the three great strongholds of the Sons of the Achaeans: Mycenae, Tiryns, Argos. But it didn't make sense.
"Where's the rest of it?' I asked.
Demodocus pointed down at the dirt. 'There,' he said. 'Buried. Or scattered about there.' He waved his arms towards the village below, with its clutter of houses, barns, storage towers and low stone walls parcelling out the home fields. 'Look at any of the houses around here, you'll find bits of the stones the Giants used when they built Tiryns - far bigger than any stones we use nowadays, and they cut them as straight as a plumb-line and fitted them together without mortar. When I was a boy, a few of us came up here with an old man, and he showed us where to dig; we dug right down into this hill, and just when we were about to give up and go home, we broke through into the ceiling of a house - deep in the hill, I promise you, you've never seen the like. Well, we lit some torches and dropped down through; the old man said that when he was our age, he'd come here with his father and they'd found gold and bronze and all sorts of treasure, stuff the Giants had made, just lying about on the floor. That got us interested all right, but there was nothing like that; instead there was this enormous room, one room that was bigger than the entire palace at Asine. It had the most incredible painted pictures on the walls - painted on plaster, and if you touched them, they just turned into dust and fell on the floor like spilt flour - men and women and chariots and horses, men jumping over the backs of bulls, flowers and processions and I don't know what else; all things the Giants made, before the Sons of the Achaeans ever came here. I tell you, we're children compared with what they must have been.'
'Evidently,' Gratus said. 'Which begs the question: if they were so strong and clever, and their city was so beautiful, why the hell did they bury it under the ground and go away?'
Demodocus smiled. 'I haven't the faintest idea,' he said. 'It's not like at Mycenae; friends of mine have been there, poking about like we were doing, and they told me that all they found was old ash and cinders and blackened stones, as if the whole city had been burned to the ground.'
I scratched my head. 'None of this makes sense,' I said. 'I can see where even a great and splendid city might burn down; well, we went to Pylos-'
'Pylos?' Demodocus raised an eyebrow. 'What about it?'
'Have you been there?' I asked.
'No,' Demodocus replied. 'Always wanted to, never got round to it. Why?'
'Don't bother,' I told him. 'It's gone. Burned down. Nothing but ruins.'
'You don't say.' Demodocus looked astonished. 'What happened?'
I shrugged. 'No idea. Can't even tell you when it happened.'
'My grandfather went there,' Demodocus replied, 'so it can't have been that long ago. Oh well, that's one ambition I'll never realise. You've told me something I didn't know, anyway.'
'There you are,' I said. 'And I can see how a city might burn down and be destroyed, like I was saying; but who in their right minds would go to all the trouble of burying the ruins under all this dirt? It'd take years and years and thousands of people.'
'The Giants weren't like us,' Demodocus said. 'And since we don't know anything about them, it's pointless speculating, because we'll never understand them. When I first came here, I guessed that the Giants had decided to go away but planned on coming back some day; so they buried their beautiful city to keep it safe, the way you might bury your family treasure during a war, or if you were likely to be away for several years. That bothered me, actually; what if the Giants came home, an
d found out that we'd been digging holes in their roof? Anybody as big and strong as they obviously were, you wouldn't want to make them angry.'
Dusa yawned and stretched, a sure sign she was getting bored. 'Well,' she said, 'if there's no gold and treasure left, we might as well be getting on.'
I smiled. 'You aren't curious, then?' I asked her.
'It's a few bits of stone,' she said, 'and a pile of dirt covering some fallen-down old buildings. So what?'
I shrugged. 'It's very old,' I said.
'So will I be, if I stay here much longer. Come on, let's go to Argos.' She stopped, and looked back. 'Argos is still there, isn't it?' she asked. 'We're not going to get there and find that someone's taken it away and put it somewhere safe, in case it gets stolen or dropped or anything?'
Demodocus nodded gravely. 'Argos is still there,' he said. 'At least, it was last time I looked.'
Dusa frowned. 'I bet someone said that about Pylos,' she said.
Argos is big (Cleander continued). It lies on the south-western slopes of one of two mountains that flank the road to Sparta, looking out over a plain that's so fat and rich you wouldn't want to stand on it for too long, for fear your sandals might take root and start growing up your legs.
Big, but not pretty. Excuse me if I sound like I've been out without a hat; some cities smile at you when you walk up to them. Argos frowns. It's not sure it wants your sort in it. I'm talking about the city now, not the people; by and large, the people are all right. But Argos the city's been there so long that it doesn't necessarily think the same way its people do. My heart tells me it looks down its nose at you as you walk under the gate; it's seen the likes of Atreus and Agamemnon and Orestes in its time, and it's not sure you measure up to its high standards.
You can ignore it; you can stick your tongue out at the walls, say, 'I'm coming in, and there's nothing you can do about it.' But that stare of disapproval, it'd get to you after a while, if you were planning to stay there more than a day or so. My guess is that when a city gets too big and too old, it gets ideas above its station, starts imagining that the people are there to look after it, not the other way round. When it gets to that point, maybe a good fire, or burying the bugger, would be the right way to go.
About the Argives, though. Living in a city that's so old and so grand and so very big - someone told me there's the best part of five thousand people living in Argos; can you imagine that, five thousand people all living together in one place? Crazy - you'd think they'd be grand and standoffish and distant. Not a bit of it. I was feeling a little apprehensive about having anything to do with them, but the fact is, they're just straight, simple folks - it's as if they're grimly determined to be ordinary, living in the shadow of all that grandeur. It makes you feel like you're in some great man's house and you're talking to his household and his servants, the lower orders, while you wait for the great man himself and his sons and retainers to come back from the hunt.
You're here for the games, then; that's what everybody said to us, as soon as they saw we weren't locals. And when we said, Yes, thank you, that's right, they all beamed at us with big smiles you could have stored a winter's supply of grain in; they were delighted that we'd come to their games, even more so when we told them where we were from, how far we'd come - we didn't get around to pointing out that we hadn't come all that way just for the Argive games, but that was what they all assumed. The more I heard and saw, the happier I felt; it was as plain as anything, the games meant so much to these people, made them feel quite ridiculously proud and good about themselves. If we could get anything like this sort of feeling going in Elis, the whole scheme might actually work.
The drill was, Demodocus said, that we should go to the palace, pay our respects to the king, give him his present, in the usual way; he'd then invite us to stay with him while the games were on; we'd thank him kindly for the offer, but say, No, if it's all the same to you we're planning to stay with some friends of ours down in the city. That way, he'd be free of his obligations of hospitality without having his house turned into a cattle-stall.
We'd actually be sleeping in a tent. This wouldn't be a hardship; Demodocus had brought along the tent his grandfather had built for taking to the wars - it was a great big thing made of proofed hides neatly sewn together, with plenty of space for all of us, our gear, the chariots and horses, the lot. Everybody pitched their tents in a ring around the plain where the games were to be held; it's a lovely place and exactly right for the purpose, just outside the town looking up the hill, where there's a flat spot under the lee of the rise. That means the spectators can sit on the slope and get a good view of what's going on in the middle, rather than the neck of the man in front.
I remember next to nothing about the King of Argos, I'm afraid, and not much more about his palace. I'm sure they were both impressive enough if only you could get to see them, but there were so many people milling about the place that all I could see of the palace were the beams of the roof, while we were whisked in front of and past His Majesty as if we were jars of olives on our way to the press. I think he was called Tisamenus; the kings of Argos usually are. I suppose it's got the benefit of continuity, having all your kings with the same name, and the convenience outweighs the confusion.
We all lent a hand getting the tent up - Demodocus thanked us for our help, because of which (he said) the job had taken twice as long as usual. The king had given us a sheep, a couple of goats and two big jars of wine and flour (everybody got the same; shows what a rich man he was), so we killed the sheep and dressed it out, made the bread and sat down to dinner. We'd had a long day and we were all happily tired, if you know what I mean.
After dinner we went and called on the tent next door, which belonged to a man called Gorgias, who told us he came from Lerna, a small place to the south-west we'd passed through on our way. He was happy enough to meet us and we got on well; but I couldn't help noticing the interest he was taking in Pentheus, as if he'd come across him before but wasn't sure if he remembered him. That made me feel a little apprehensive, but I told my heart that Pentheus, like the rest of us, was here as the guest of the Prince of Asine, who seemed to be both known and respected in Argos, so it was unlikely that anything bad was going to happen; besides, one of the rules of the games was that nobody was allowed to carry on feuds or grudges or wars while the games were on, or while travelling through Argive territory to or from the games, and I got the impression that everybody took this rule very seriously. Even if we did bump into some of Pentheus' enemies, it was highly unlikely there'd be any trouble; and it ought to be within our capabilities to give them the slip before the truce ended. I told my heart not to worry about it.
This Gorgias, by all accounts, was a mighty boxer. He certainly had a boxer's face, but that's no guarantee of ability, just of participation at some time or other. I could get a boxer's face any time I like, just by picking a fight with twelve strong men or walking into a water-pump. Rather more convincing proof was his habit of stopping in the middle of whatever he was saying, blinking a couple of times and then starting again, saying the same thing but in a different way. They say that when a man's been bashed on the chin many, many times over the course of many years, his mind gets dizzy and loses its way along a path of thought. My brother Cratus dabbled in boxing when he was a young man. I thought I'd just mention that, in passing.
We asked Gorgias if he was taking part; he said he wasn't quite sure yet, it depended on whether someone else whose name escapes me turned up in time. If he didn't get to play, he added, he wouldn't be absolutely heartbroken, since he'd heard that the Corinthian champion was going to be there, and this character had an unfortunate habit of killing his opponents, or at the very least knocking out all their teeth and at least one eye. There was no malice in it, Gorgias went on; it was just that the Corinthian's fist was harder than anybody else's skull. The lad had taken to boxing, so the story went, after his father had come upon him at ploughing, hammering a loose nail back into
the plough handle with the heel of his hand.
Were any of us taking part, Gorgias asked; I was about to say no when Pentheus spoke up, taking care to avoid looking where he might see Demodocus' face or cut himself on Dusa's eyes. He quite fancied having a go at the long-jump, Pentheus said, and maybe, possibly one of the wrestling events, if there were still places.
Gorgias replied that he was sure there were, and told Pentheus what to do in order to enter; Demodocus stood up in the middle of the explanation and made let's-go-home-now noises, but it was already too late; and when the rest of us trooped back to the tent, Pentheus nipped smartly off under the pretext of being sick; he was heading for the tent of the games-marshal, as described to him by the annoying, helpful Gorgias.
Olympiad Tom Holt Page 24