by Roger Hudson
Gods forgive me, he thought, I will make atonement later, but, to Sindron, he said, "Let's do it," stood up and straightened his shoulders.
Sindron breathed a sigh of relief. At least, the boy now seemed to recognise that he needed his slave and that slave's advice. He felt more secure now than he had since leaving Eion but he wasn't even certain that he was giving the right advice. Only time and the gods would decide that.
“And, oh, Sindron, can we do something about these?” Lysanias indicated the wall hangings. Sindron could see that a young man from a simple background could find the explicitness disturbing. He found them disturbing himself. “I’m sure we can, master. Hardly appropriate for a funeral anyway. I’ll speak to Otanes.”
CHAPTER 3
Lysanias was a strange mixture of emotions. Out of that dark and shady house of death and suspicion, striding along in the afternoon sunshine, he felt suddenly free and like the young man he was, yet the stark realities of his new position buzzed round and round in his head. He gave little attention to the street of two storey houses, the second storey overhanging the street, and the few people returning from the market.
Keeping a pace behind as befitting a slave, Sindron was worried, though he tried not to show it for the boy's sake. He wanted to find an old friend, who, he hoped, would be able to explain where they stood under the new laws, without fear of their predicament getting back to Klereides' enemies, whoever they might be.
Yet there was a new spring in his step, his slight limp barely noticeable, and his eyes glistened with a fresh alertness. Sindron had always felt that the big advantage of being a household slave was that you have very limited responsibility. Food, clothing and shelter are provided. As long as you perform your tasks adequately, you retain your place. Generally, being a slave meant little mental effort. Now here he was, forced to act and think as though he was Lysanias' father, his guardian and protector, mentor and advisor, all rolled into one – as well as his personal slave. And all in a context where his master's life could be in danger, and conceivably his own. On top of that, he had to let the boy believe that he was making the important decisions himself, or he might decide to sell Sindron to who knew what disreputable master.
Did he want this new life? He knew the answer without really asking the question. Yes, yes, yes. His heart was beating faster, his mind was racing, he hadn't felt so alive in years. But was he up to it? As a slave, he had so little experience of so many areas his master would now be involved in. And Athens had changed so much he hardly recognised the place. But what a challenge!!!
As Lysanias' head turned, Sindron quickly suppressed a smile, re-imposing the dignified expression he had learnt so many years before from watching the other pedagogues when he first supervised young Klereides, and after him Leochares, Lysanias' father, on his way to and from school as a boy. He thanked the gods for the leg injury that had seen him delegated to that task at a younger age than most.
"I wish you wouldn't carry that staff, Sindron. It makes me look like a schoolboy," said Lysanias in a low voice.
If the boy had time to think about things like that, at least he wasn't letting the worries of his new status get to him, thought Sindron, realising how accustomed he had become to the staff he had acquired long ago as symbol of a pedagogue when his duties had included escorting Lysanias’ father to school.
"I'm an Athenian citizen and head of a household now," Lysanias added.
Or maybe he was.
"I want people to know it."
Oh, no! It was going to his head. "May I suggest, master, that we don't get rid of it, not just yet. We have to remain inconspicuous today. People will just think I'm accompanying you to the gardens of the Academeia to watch the wrestling practice."
Lysanias looked a little sheepish and, after a short pause, replied over his shoulder. "Yes, I know. I don't mean today."
Sindron had to admit the boy had a point. "I've become used to the staff, master, but I'll try to find a shorter stick when I can."
"Thank you, Sindron."
"Many's the time I've walked up and down this road taking your father to school or the gymnasium," Sindron volunteered, in what, for him, was an unusually personal and confiding tone.
"Sindron, now is not the time for reminiscences!" The boy was sounding as pompous as young Klereides sometimes had.
"Education is not to be frowned at, master. I sometimes think I learnt more than your uncle and your father from sitting at the back of the class and from listening to philosophers and poets with them in the public gardens." Sindron thought of all he had learnt and was grateful for.
"Sindron, could it be dangerous?" The slave's musings were abruptly interrupted by hard reality. A one-horse chariot, the driver grasping the reins with one hand, the other round his passenger who needed both of his own to hang onto his market purchases, rattled towards them, forcing them to leap aside smartly. It gave Sindron time to think.
"Could what be dangerous, master?" His tone was innocent. No point in having the boy worried unnecessarily.
"Athens. The political situation. You know, civil war between factions, classes."
Sindron was amazed the boy had deduced so much on so little evidence. He hadn't realised he knew about such things. In Eion, everyone had seemed to work to the same end – survival – and military discipline had dominated everything, so he had assumed the idea would be difficult to grasp. Then he remembered that the family had talked about it at home when such crises had occurred in other Greek cities, sometimes with disastrous results. Here, even from what they had heard so far, it sounded like a revolution and he knew that, elsewhere, such happenings had brought terrible consequences for the populace. But he didn’t say that.
"Yes, master, in theory it could become dangerous. But we've seen nothing that serious here yet."
"Sindron, tell me honestly, do you think I'm prepared for all this? I feel so inexperienced."
Great gods, the arrogant brat was looking at himself with open eyes for once! Asking in humility. The boy had stopped and turned, confronting him. Sindron thought quickly.
"You come from outside, so you can see things more objectively than if you'd grown up here," he started. Making a list, ordering his statements, made Sindron feel more comfortable somehow. "Your father and I have done our best to teach you what an Athenian gentleman would learn. In addition, you know how to work the land, and you have acquired a manual skill, so you are more able to understand the lower levels of society. And you've had more military training, and even war experience, than young Athenians of your age."
Lysanias stared at his slave open-mouthed. The thought that activities that he had regarded as such a chore, even an ordeal, could actually be an asset was difficult to embrace, but it was reassuring. The fact that Sindron could see things that clearly and be that open with him put the value of the slave in a new light, too. Even Sindron’s suggestion that they keep their ears open for any useful information on how things worked in Athens, so that they could avoid making serious mistakes, seemed rational rather than alarming. He relaxed a little and became absorbed in the new sights, as they passed the pottery workshops that gave the quarter of Inner Kerameikos its name, with their displays of red and black vases and bowls and roof tiles set out to dry in the sun.
Then they could hear the bustle of the agora, the market place, the buzz in the air like a hive of busy bees growing louder and louder as they approached, and suddenly they were out from the narrow street and looking into the dazzling open space of the market place.
Lysanias stopped dead, soaking it all in. This was it, this was it! He was here, part of it. Mighty Athens, hub of the whole Greek world. He wanted to leap and shout in the sheer exhilaration of it but a glance from Sindron and he controlled himself, like a good Athenian.
But Sindron’s face broke into a broad smile and his eyes sparkled and they laughed together, knowing they shared the same excitement. Then Sindron’s face became serious and he brought Lysanias down w
ith, “We must be wary, master. We’re not familiar with the place. We could be easily duped.”
Lysanias was surprised that the old man should be this suspicious, and found it difficult to imagine anything unworthy happening in this place dedicated to the great goddess Athene. He nodded but the thought was gone as he wondered at all around them. Sindron named the different features.
Up to their left, the tall hill of the High City, the Akropolis, with its steep cliffs rising above the bustling modern city, dominated everything, and beyond it the city walls with their defensive towers snaked over the hills, protecting them all. To their right, they had just passed the ancient shrine to Aphrodite, left badly damaged by the Persians, but with a new-looking statue of the goddess, her face, shoulders and arms glowing pink against the sea-blue of her gown.
Now, confronting them beside the entryway to the Market square were Herms of various sizes, portrait busts of the god Hermes, on their square pedestals with the god’s sexual paraphernalia displayed below. Dominating them were three tall stone Herms with inscriptions praising Kimon’s achievement in defeating the Persians at Eion, which Lysanias read with pride. The god of boundaries, travellers, commerce, poets, athletics and trickery was certainly needed in a place like this, Lysanias thought.
“Touch them, master,” instructed Sindron, as if Lysanias needed telling. They were travellers, newly arrived, in a situation where they needed all the luck the god of good fortune, with his familiar friendly face, curly hair and bushy beard, could give them and, if Lysanias had to marry Klereides’ widow, a bit of fertility would do him no harm. He laid a hand on the two nearest as they passed, already smoothed and polished by countless other touches.
On their left, an elegant and colourful columned building sparkled in the sun, which Sindron named as the new Painted Colonnade. He wasn’t too sure whether it was built by one of Kimon’s brothers in law or built by Kimon and the paintings on the walls inside commissioned by his brother in law but it looked a pleasant place to seek shelter from the sun and to stroll and chat. In front of this were more bronze Herms. From the activity around, it looked as though it was a centre of business as well. Lysanias stood amazed. He had never seen anything like this before.
They crossed the River Eridanos that flowed through the city, though now channelled and covered in, burbling beneath them, and saw, to their right, the Royal Colonnade, surprisingly modest for its importance, but smartly renovated after the Persians in impressive blues and reds. This housed the offices of the chief magistrate, “king for a year” as the saying went and here new magistrates swore loyalty to the city, Sindron explained.
Beyond it came the sad remains of the sanctuary of Zeus the Freedom Bringer, dominated by its powerful new statue of the god, the line of its old enclosure carefully fenced and obviously well cared for like the altar in front and the nearby smaller altar to Zeus of the Market Place. On rising ground behind, the hill had been cut away and construction started on what would be a big new building, possibly a temple, that Sindron didn’t know about. Turning round, Lysanias looked more closely at the flat-topped hill of the High City that his parents had so often described. Yes, there was the famous wooden statue of the goddess and, behind her, the ruins of temples looking strangely out of place.
The sight of those distant ruins didn’t stop Lysanias being horrified when Sindron pointed out nearby the rubble-strewn site that had once been the Temple to Apollo, a god he had worshipped in Eion as the god of colonists as well as of healing and the arts. The god must still look favourably on the people of Athens though, if he bestowed this prosperity on them. Next to it, the giant stones of the Temple of The Mother seemed to have deterred even the Persians in their rampage, though they were not without their signs of attempted destruction. Further on, and covering the hill slopes around and also on the far side of the market square, temporary wooden structures seemed to be serving as civic offices and as shops and workshops.
"Remember, it has been a long war," explained Sindron, disappointed, like Lysanias, that this heart of the city wasn't even back to the state it had been before the invasion.
Sindron pointed out some of the key features of the market place. The shrine to the twelve gods; the performance area in the centre; the running track; the route of the famous religious processions in honour of Athene, the Panethenaic Way, running diagonally across the square, which was also used for chariot races; the statue of the heroic tyrant slayers to remind everyone of the dangers to democracy; the great drain running the length of the market square to carry rainwater from winter storms into the Eridanos and away; the leafy plane trees that, once full-grown, would provide welcome shelter from the heat of the sun. "They're new. I believe Kimon had those planted."
By now they had entered the crowds and the stalls with different areas for each type of produce, the street vendors, the smells, the colours, the shouts, the haggling for bargains. Lysanias was fascinated – the market square at Eion had been sedate compared to this.
Having seen the market in past days, Sindron was more amazed at the range of accents denoting Greeks from other cities and the number of non-Greek people, different races, different colour skins. Some, from their costumes, were merchants, foreign residents; many others were slaves. More people seemed to own slaves than he remembered, not just the very wealthy. Even some stallholders had a slave helping them. The war with its captives had certainly enriched the city with slaves. As a slave himself, he didn’t find it a pleasant thought, as he wondered what lives these captives might have enjoyed in their home cities in the days of their freedom, before the battles that brought them here. Sindron realised he had been enslaved too young to have any real understanding of what freedom was like, but he knew that was not a thought to dwell on and dismissed it.
Most of the market activity was finishing but there was enough still going on for Lysanias to be caught by the life and bustle all around him, the sounds of conversation, vendors’ calls and hammering from workshops off to the sides of the market square. There was a feeling of excitement in the air, of expectation, of tension.
"Why are so many people just standing around, not working?" Lysanias whispered to Sindron.
"There are a lot of wealthy people in Athens," explained Sindron. "Landowners and the like. They don't need to work and don't believe in it. That's the well-dressed ones. The others are probably passing through, going about their business."
Lysanias noticed that there were clear distinctions, marked mainly by costume but also by mannerisms. As well as the calmly pacing figures in fine fabrics with immaculately dressed hair and beards, there were workers in workers' tunics, who seemed to be more excited even agitated, shopkeepers in their aprons, farmers and shepherds in coarse fabrics and furs, foreigners in the costumes of their native lands, slaves in whatever their owners provided.
"There must be a city meeting, an Assembly, on later today, otherwise I can't see why they'd all be here ... "
Lysanias realised that, to an observant Athenian, his neat homespun cloak would place him somewhere in the middle of this hierarchy. There were far fewer women around than would have been the case in Eion, or even than they'd seen in Peiraeos. Just a few female stallholders and wandering street vendors.
Sindron was leading the way purposefully through the crowds. Having kept up with artistic developments in Athens, he was able to point out some of Kimon's contributions to the city. The start of work on the new entrance-way to the High City that everyone already called Kimon's wall, the Herms they had passed, the plane trees, the Temple to Theseos, which housed the giant bones of the hero Theseos that Kimon had discovered and brought back to Athens and which Sindron thought was somewhere on the other side of the market square, and, indirectly, the Painted Colonnade. “Incidentally, he also paid for the foundations of the Long Walls we saw,” Sindron said.
Fascinated by the paintings he had glimpsed, Lysanias was heading back in that direction when Sindron halted.
"Well, he certainl
y has come up in the world," Sindron said admiringly.
"Who?" Lysanias wrenched his attention away from the giant paintings.
"Lydos, my friend, that banker there. Look at the quality of that cloak he's wearing!"
Lysanias was confused. He saw a table covered by a dark cloth, with weighing scales, weights, and small piles of coins glistening on it, and behind it a very prosperous-looking banker, soberly-dressed in fine linen with a deep blue embroidered edging, hair and beard smartly trimmed, brimming with self-confidence. How could this man be Sindron’s friend?
"But he can't be a slave!"
"Yes, he can! Or he was when I left Athens. We were once sold at the same time in the slave auction in this very market. Belonged to Phraston. He looks busy. I’ll come back when we’ve got you to the baths…"
It felt so good to see an old friend in this city that now seemed so unfamiliar and confusing – though he wouldn’t tell Lysanias that – and such a relief that Lydos was still here. Sindron could have hugged the man except that even slaves didn’t do that in public in Athens.
Lysanias' had moved off towards a figure whose head stuck up above the crowd, moving his arms in dramatic gestures. Sindron followed, annoyed.
It was the news-teller they had seen at the harbour. "Don't point the finger of scorn at Kimon, " he shouted. "It's not as though he sleeps every night with his sister Elpinike. Sometimes he goes to Sparta and guzzles wine with his pals. " He went on to suggest that Kimon had been thrown out of Sparta for having an affair with the wife of one of the Spartan leaders. Lysanias felt a twinge of anger that his hero was being made fun of in such a scurrilous way, but it seemed that, in the big city, it was acceptable to poke fun at and even insult the city’s leaders. However, not everyone laughed and some looked very stern.