by Tom Holt
Then came the outbreak of the Great War against Sparta, and my idyllic life of poetry and goat herding was interrupted every year by the annual invasion by the Spartans, which involved two unpleasantnesses; going to school to learn oratory and the poetry of Homer, and having to live in the City while the Spartans were about. On the whole, I thought Homer more of a nuisance than the Spartans, because inside the City there were men who had recently been in a Chorus and so could recite the latest Comedies. Since there was nothing for men to do in the City between Assemblies and trials, with most of the population cooped up inside the walls for months at a time, everyone had time to spare for a small boy who said he was going to be a Comic poet as soon as he was old enough to be given a Chorus. The only condition was that I should give Pericles a hard time in my first Comedy; little did they know that I had already done this.
The leading Comic poet of the time was the celebrated Cratinus, whom I was privileged to meet when I was twelve years old. There are few people in this world who truly merit the epithet Disgusting, but Cratinus was one of them. He was a little, stooped man with a leering smile, and his hands never stopped shaking, even when he was relatively sober. There was always vomit on his gown somewhere, and his interest in small boys was not that of a teacher. Nevertheless, he was always an honoured guest, at least for the early part of the evening, and in spite of his unfortunate personal habits, such as wiping his fingers on his neighbour’s hair when he sneezed, I never met anyone (apart from other Comic poets) who really disliked him. He was a born politician, and he loathed and despised Pericles with every ounce of his small, frail, unpleasant body. It was therefore quite easy to win his undying friendship, and my mother’s uncle Philodemus, who knew him quite well, instructed me in the art when I said that I would like to meet him.
To endear yourself to Cratinus, all you had to do was this. As soon as the conversation turned to politics, you had to look troubled, as if you were on the point of making some dreadful confession. ‘I know it’s very foolish of me,’ you would say, ‘and I know he’s made this country what it is today, but in my heart of hearts I think Pericles is wrong about…’ (Here insert the leading issue of the day.) ‘I can’t tell you why,’ you would continue, looking sheepish and if possible mumbling slightly, ‘it’s just a feeling I have.’
This was Cratinus’ cue. He would break in and start explaining, very forcibly and with many gestures, exactly what was wrong with Pericles’ latest policy. During the exposition, you would frown and nod reluctantly, as if you were being forced, against your will, to accept some great truth. Cratinus would then believe that he and he alone had converted you to the right way of thinking, and you would be his friend and political ally for life.
After several rehearsals I was judged to be word perfect, so a drinking party was arranged and a cheap second-hand dinner-service was bought from the market, in case Cratinus started throwing things when he got drunk. It was my job to be Ganymede and pour the wine, and my uncle invited a couple of old friends with strong stomachs to be the other guests. As usual, Cratinus was unanimously appointed King of the Feast (which means he had the right to choose the drinking-songs and topics of conversation and declare who should sing or speak first), and the food was quickly and messily eaten. Then I was brought forward to play my scene, which I did perfectly.
Cratinus swallowed the bait like a tunny-fish, and started waving his hands about furiously. If only, he exclaimed, spilling his wine over my uncle’s gown and tilting the neck of the jar I was carrying over his cup, all in the same movement, the voters of Athens had the common sense of this clear-thinking brat!
‘You’d think,’ he said, quivering with indignation, ‘that if the idiots award first prize to a play entirely devoted to obscene and scurrilous attacks on a man, then they don’t like him. It stands to reason, surely. Not in this miserable city it doesn’t. Every year I put him on the stage and those imbeciles in the audience wet themselves laughing at his expense. Then they go home, change into something clean, and troop off and elect him for another term. I don’t understand it; it’s almost as if having the piss taken out of him makes the bastard more popular.’
‘Maybe it does,’ said my uncle. ‘Maybe all you’re doing is giving them an outlet for their natural frustration. If they didn’t have that, maybe they wouldn’t vote for him so much.’
‘And anyway,’ said one of the other guests, a neighbour of my uncle’s called Anaxander, ‘so long as you win your prize you don’t care, surely?’
Cratinus nearly choked. ‘What the hell do you take me for?’ he snapped. ‘I wouldn’t give you a dead frog for all the prizes ever awarded. What do you think I want out of life, for God’s sake?’
‘Come off it,’ said Anaxander cheerfully. ‘All this crusading stuff is just for the audiences. Everyone knows that as soon as the Chorus have left the stage, the poet and the politicians go off and get drunk with each other, which is why we have all those pools of curiously coloured vomit in the streets the day after the Festivals. I bet you fifty drachmas that if Pericles died tomorrow you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself. He’s your meal-ticket and you’re his pet jackal.’
Cratinus went as purple as the wine and started to growl, so that I was quite frightened; but my uncle just smiled.
‘That’s just the sort of crap I expect from a voter,’ said Cratinus at last, when he had finally managed to control his fury. ‘I’ll bet you fifty drachmas you voted for the little sod at the last election. Well, didn’t you?’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Anaxander, ‘I did. What of it?’
Cratinus leaned over and spat into Anaxander’s cup. ‘Now we’re even,’ he said. ‘You foul my cup, I foul yours.’
Anaxander didn’t think this was terribly funny, and my uncle started to frown.
Just then, it occurred to me that I might be able to save the situation, so I cleared my throat timidly and said, ‘But isn’t what Anaxander said right, up to a point? Isn’t winning the prize, or at least writing a good play, what it’s all about? Just because the audience don’t get the point, that doesn’t make the play any less good.’
Cratinus turned on me and scowled. ‘The boy isn’t quite so sensible after all,’ he said. ‘If I wanted to write good plays, I’d be a Tragedian, and then perhaps I wouldn’t get thrown out of quite so many polite parties. If all I wanted to do was write good iambics I wouldn’t fool about with Comedy, which is mostly hard work; I’d write Oedipuses and Sevens against Thebes and all that kind of crap, and then I’d win all the prizes in the world, and nobody would have the faintest idea what I was on about, and neither would I. You listen to me, and I’ll tell you something. If ever you want to be a Comic poet —God forbid you should, it’s a really rotten life, I’m telling you — find yourself someone to hate, and hate them as much as you possibly can. For me it’s easy, I’ve got Pericles and I actually do hate him. That’s why I do Comedy better than anyone else. But you’re young, you probably don’t hate anyone enough to want to eat their guts warm off a meat-hook. In which case, you’ll have to imagine you hate him. Picture him in your mind’s eye killing your father, raping your mother, pissing down your well, smashing your vine-props. When you cut your little toe, say “That’s Pericles’ fault”; if it rains during harvest, say “Pericles has made it rain again.” Everything that goes wrong in your life, I want you to pin it on this enemy of yours. That way you’ll get a sort of lump in your intestines like a slowly forming turd which you’ve just got to squeeze out, somehow or other, and then you’ll start writing Comedy. At first, you’ll just write hours and hours of vulgar abuse, like “Pericles has got balls like a camel”, but then you’ll realise that that doesn’t do any good. You’ll find that if you want to hurt you’ve got to write well, so that when the audience laugh they’re siding with you and against him. Now I’m still not good enough to be able to make them do that, but it’s too late now. One of these days I’ll have his nuts, and then I can retire and grow beans.’
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‘You’ll never manage that,’ said my uncle. ‘Or don’t you know anything about Athenians?’
‘I’ve been a Comic poet for fifteen years,’ Cratinus replied. ‘I know more about Athenians than any man living.’
‘No you don’t,’ said my uncle. ‘All you know about is making Athenians laugh, which is a trade, like mending buckets. You obviously don’t know what makes them work, or you wouldn’t still be trying to put a message across in the Theatre. If you knew the first thing about your fellow citizens, you’d have realised by now that what they love above all things is the pleasure of words. The Persians love gold, the Spartans love bravery, the Scythians love wine and the Athenians love clever speaking. The fact of the matter is that an Athenian would far rather listen to a description of a banquet in the great king’s palace than eat a nice bean stew, and he much prefers voting to annex the silver mines of Thasos to harvesting his own winter barley.’ He paused, took a long gulp of wine, and continued. ‘Why do you think we invented the Theatre, for God’s sake? Come to that, why do you think we have a democracy? It’s not because a democracy makes for better government; quite the opposite, as you well know. It’s because in a democracy, if you want to have your own way, you’ve got to make the best speech, and then all the farmers and the sausage-merchants and the men who work in the dockyards go away from Assembly in the morning with their heads full of the most glorious drivel and think they own the world. That’s how your beloved Pericles got to be Zeus’ favourite nephew; by clever speaking. And it’s the likes of you that keep him there, because just as soon as the fumes of all that oratory have worn off and the voters start wanting to see some public expenditure accounts, along you come with your incredibly funny plays and your brilliant speeches, and soon they’re all soaked to the skin in words again.’
‘Hold on a moment,’ interrupted Cratinus. ‘I write cleverer speeches than anyone in Athens. If they always do what the best speaker says, why aren’t Pericles’ nuts roasting on a spit on my hearth this very moment?’
‘Because it’s just the Theatre,’ said my uncle, ‘and so they don’t take any notice; they’ve worked off their anger against Pericles by having you make a monkey out of him, and the next time he stands up in Assembly and proposes an expedition to conquer the moon, they stand there and gobble up his golden phrases like spilt figs. The Theatre is the place for making fun of Generals and Assembly is the place for voting for them. I’d have thought you’d have worked that one out ages ago.’
‘So you’re anti-democracy as well as pro-Pericles,’ said Cratinus irritably. ‘Don’t bother asking me here again.’
My uncle laughed. ‘What makes you think I’m anti-democracy?’ he said. ‘Just because my nephew here is an idiot doesn’t mean I don’t love him, and just because my city does a lot of very stupid things doesn’t mean I want to overthrow the constitution. I love the democracy and I hate tyranny. Which is why I get irritated with people who don’t understand the nature of democracy, and people who abuse it.’
‘If we’re going to start discussing democracy,’ said Anaxander, yawning ostentatiously, ‘I’m going home. I’ve got vines to prune in the morning.’
‘You stay where you are and shut up,’ said my uncle. ‘You’re just as bad as the rest of them really. Just now you provoked a quarrel with Cratinus just to see if he’d say something funny when he got angry, and then when he spat in your cup you didn’t like it at all. That’s typically Athenian. We all like a nice juicy crisis because it makes for such entertaining public speaking, so we all vote to annex this city or make that treaty, and when some smart-arse politician makes a good speech we feel so proud of ourselves that our little tummies swell up as tight as wineskins. Then when the crisis turns into a war and our vines get burnt we want to kill someone important, and we execute the first politician who catches our eye — probably the only one who really wants what’s best for the City and is trying to clear up the mess. And then the whole circus starts up all over again, with factions and political trials and more and more and more speeches, and in the meantime we’ve sent five thousand infantry to some god-forsaken rock in the middle of the sea to fight a load of savages we’ve never even heard of. Now all this comes from us Athenians being the cleverest and most intelligent race on earth, and loving the pleasures of the mind more than the pleasures of the body. That’s why Cratinus here is our most popular playwright, why Pericles is our most popular politician, why Athens is the greatest city in the world, and why one of these days we’re all going to meet with a nasty end.’
‘The hell with you,’ said Cratinus, after a long pause. ‘When I go out to dinner, I expect to do all the talking.’
‘Exactly,’ said my uncle. ‘That’s why I asked you. But then you got all incoherent, so like a good host I provided the entertainment myself. Where’s that boy with the wine? I’ve got a throat like stone-mason’s sand after all that pontificating.’
Anaxander emptied his cup out on to the floor and held it out to me to be refilled. ‘If I’d wanted to hear you speaking,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t have come half-way across the City on a wet night. I propose that we don’t give Cratinus anything more to drink until he’s given us a speech from his latest play.’
‘Steady on,’ said my uncle. ‘You’ll give him a heart attack.’
‘You can keep your lousy wine,’ said Cratinus. ‘After everything you’ve said about me, it’ll take more than this goat’s piss of yours to get me to do any reciting.’
‘I’ve got a jar of quite palatable Rhodian out the back there,’ replied my uncle. ‘Now I know it would be wasted on you, but I’m such a typical Athenian that a really good speech might induce me to part with some of it.’
Cratinus grinned, displaying his few remaining teeth. ‘Listen to this,’ he said.
Which is how I came to be one of the first four people ever to hear the great speech from The Lions in which Pericles’ descent, conception and birth is described in loving and exquisite detail. It is quite the most revolting thing that Cratinus ever wrote, and will be remembered when everything I have written is long forgotten. Cratinus said later that he wrote the whole thing at a sitting while the barber was lancing a particularly objectionable and inconveniently situated boil. Of course we all fell about with laughter, stuffing cushions into our mouths to stop ourselves choking, while the great man sat there with a face as straight as a spear-handle, timing each line to absolute perfection, and when he had finished he got his Rhodian wine and shortly afterwards passed out. But my uncle was right, of course; if anything, it made me feel fonder of Pericles than I ever had before, if only because he had afforded me such glorious entertainment. To this day I believe that Comedy has very little effect on the part of the human brain that makes political decisions — God only knows what does.
It was not long after that dinner party that Pericles died in the Great Plague, and sure enough, Cratinus was inconsolable for months afterwards. He felt that Pericles had tricked him yet again, slipping quietly out of the world before he had had a chance to savage him properly. He had to tear up the Comedy he had been writing, which he swore was the best thing he had ever done, and immediately started on a new one, in which Pericles is brought up before the Judges of the Dead and condemned to the most frightful punishments, in most of which horse manure plays a prominent part. But he gave it up before it was finished and wrote a miserable little farce about Heracles and Alcestis instead. He dashed it off in a few days just before the deadline for entries for the competition, and to his unutterable disgust it won first prize at that year’s Lenaea.
CHAPTER TWO
And now I think it is about time for me to justify the boast I made at the beginning of this book, when I claimed that in my lifetime I have seen all the most remarkable events in our city’s history, and tell you about my experience of the Great Plague. After all, that’s something you’re bound to be interested in, even if you can’t be doing with Politics or the Theatre; so we might as well make the
most of it. It is, with one exception, the most interesting of the events which has shaped my life, and so I can get on and describe it without having to be clever and witty to retain your attention. This will be a great relief to me.
Mind you, it doesn’t necessarily follow that because an event is of great historical importance it will have any significant effect on the lives of the people who were there at the time. I remember there was one very old man in our village when I was a boy who had been in the City when the Persians came. Now you would imagine that seeing the City burnt to the ground and the temples of the Gods levelled with the dust would profoundly affect a young man’s character and development; but this was not so at all in this man’s case. He was a tomb-robber by vocation, and he had only gone back to the City after the general evacuation to see if many people had left any articles of value behind in their hurry to escape, and when he found that the place was swarming with weird-looking savages with red faces and gold-plated armour, he very sensibly hid in a charcoal heap until they had gone past. When the burning started, he slipped out and escaped through a gap in the Wall with a sack full of small gold and silver statuettes he had found in a house in the Ceramicus, which later provided him with the capital to set up in business as a part-time blacksmith. The great event in his life, which entirely changed his perceptions of the world and the behaviour of mankind, was when the owner of these small gold and silver statuettes caught up with him and had him thrown in the prison.
The Great Plague, then, came early in the war and lasted for two or perhaps three years. I must be honest and confess that my memories of that period are all inclined to run into each other, so that I tend to look back on the plague as happening in the space of about a week; but then, I was young and it’s remarkable how quickly you get used to things when you’re that age. Recently I heard an account of the war by a very learned and scholarly gentleman — he had been a general at one time, and got himself exiled because of a terrible blunder; whereupon he retired to some safe little town in neutral territory and started writing this monumental History of the War, so that when everyone’s memories were getting as bad as mine is now he could read them his book and show them that everyone else had been at least as incompetent as he was and probably more so —and he claimed that Pericles died of the plague in the third year of the war, which surprised me very much. But I suppose I prefer to remember the years before the plague to those immediately after it, and so I have made that time seem longer than it actually was. Now I come to consider it, I’m probably not cut out to be a Historian.