by Gary Corby
Diotima looked at me. I looked at her. We both wondered how to explain what had happened.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Diotima offered.
“These people don’t drink wine,” Theokritos said. “They drink beer!”
“Yes.”
“This must be stopped!” Theokritos thundered.
Diotima and I had washed in the Ilissos River on our way home, where we stayed only long enough to change clothes. They were covered in various bodily fluids. The washing slave looked disgusted as we handed them to her and asked us what we’d been doing.
We went straight to see the High Priest of Dionysos. Diotima insisted. The Sabazian rites might have been fun—I certainly thought so—but having experienced them, it was obvious to us both that they were in direct opposition to Dionysos. At any other time of the year that might have been acceptable, but to invoke a rival god at the height of the Dionysia was perilously close to sacrilege. The high priest had to be informed.
Theokritos muttered, “I see Dionysos demands more of me.”
“I know it’s a problem, Theokritos,” I said. “But is it really so bad?”
“Of course it is!” Theokritos almost shouted. He made a visible effort to calm down. “I know you’re a man after my own heart, Nicolaos. That was obvious from our last meeting. Do you not see that if beer becomes popular among the ignorant, it must inevitably lead to a loss of worshippers for Dionysos?”
I rubbed my chin and thought about it. “I see what you mean. But what can you do?” I asked. “Forgive me, Theokritos, but there’s no law against handing out free beer.”
“There is against importuning the Gods of Athens!”
That was true. The impiety laws in Athens were very strong indeed. I for one wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of them. Indeed that was the crime which we’d been hired to solve, not the murder.
Diotima said, “But if the Sabazians distribute their beer without proselytizing their god, then they haven’t broken any laws, have they sir?”
“That’s not the point!” Theokritos went red in the face. “This drinking of beer in the time of Dionysos defies every ethic; it passes every boundary of common decency.”
“Yes, I know. Nevertheless sir, if you went to the courts and argued before a jury that free beer was a crime, I fear you might lose.”
Theokritos took visible steps to calm himself. He wiped his brow and took a cup of wine. “I believe you’re right, Nicolaos. Yet steps must be taken.”
“I hope you won’t do anything rash, sir,” I said, slightly alarmed.
“I will do all that is good in the eyes of Dionysos.”
SCENE 36
THE FEAST
DIOTIMA AND I talked through the rest of the day. We were too exhausted to do much else. The last days had been more than intense. More to the point, we felt as if we’d learned everything there was to learn in the time we had left. Pericles’s feast was due to begin that evening. Failure beckoned, unless we could solve the crime with what we had.
We considered every possible combination of killers, but no matter which we tried, there always seemed to be an objection that was hard to remove, or worse, no proof good enough for a court.
In the end, as the sun began to set, we resigned ourselves to the inevitable. Diotima put on her special party chiton, though she said she hardly felt in the mood. Together we set off for the agora, certain to be last to arrive at the biggest party of the year.
Where stalls normally stood, slaves had erected long rows of trestle tables. Barbecue pits had been hastily dug about the periphery. Beside the pits, temporary altars had been erected so that the meat could be blessed before it was cooked, and beside the altars, priests stood ready and waiting to perform the blessings. Chief among these was Theokritos, the High Priest of Dionysos, which was no surprise since the festivities were in honor of his god.
Women slaves carried in basket after basket of fruit: olives and quince and apples—more baskets than I could count—hundreds of them, all decked in flowers.
The fishermen had been cleared of all their stock. There was a traffic jam of fisher carts waiting to offload their catch at special fires along the west side of the agora.
Musicians played at every corner. They played upon aulos pipes and lyres and drums. As soon as you passed by one group you came upon the next, so that the entire agora was bathed in music. The sights and sounds were enough to lift our hearts, at least enough to enjoy the night’s show.
The Altar of the Twelve Gods stands at the center of the agora. Diotima and I pushed our way through, the better to see everything. The Altar too had been wreathed about in flowers.
I led Diotima by the hand to the statues of the Ten Heroes, each of whom lends his name to one of the ten tribes. The Ten Heroes are spread out in a line, each hero in such a noble pose that I’m sure his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him: Ægeus, Erechtheus, Pandion, Oeneus, Leos, Acamas, Cecrops, and Hippothoon; then there was Ajax, who fought at Troy, and finally Antiochus, the son of Heracles, to whose tribe my own family belonged.
Some wag had tied giant wooden dildoes to each of them. The heroes didn’t seem too upset about it.
Phalluses are charms of the greatest good luck. Phalluses had been hung from poles all about, made of wood or clay or carved in stone. They were various models, but all of them of a shape and size to please even Diotima’s mother.
People wore good luck amulets with models of phalluses dangling upon their chests. A troop of small boys walked past. Each carried a giant phallus made of light wood.
Diotima watched these pass and said, “I wonder if Theokritos would appreciate it if I pointed out the correspondence between the phalluses in the agora and the rites of Sabazios in the glade?”
“I wouldn’t mention it if I were you,” I said. I took her hand. “Come with me behind the Ten Heroes.”
“Why?” she said suspiciously. But then she followed me behind the statuary. I showed her, scratched deep into the buttocks of Antiochus, just below the cloak line, a large N.
“I did that when I was a boy,” I said proudly.
“Congratulations,” she said. My wife seemed strangely disinterested.
We weren’t the only ones arriving late. People streamed in from all directions, all of us looking forward to a free meal of the best Athens had to offer.
I took pleasure in the knowledge that Pericles was paying for the feast. This magnificent display of public benefaction must be killing him.
The thought took me in search of the man himself. We found him upon the steps of the Painted Stoa, where he could be seen by all the merrymakers, and from whence he could direct the festivities. From time to time he called out instructions to the slaves who served.
Diotima and I climbed the steps to join him.
Pericles stood and watched while the entire year’s produce from his estates went down the mouths of his fellow citizens. He smiled benignly, with that serene composure for which he was famous, and waved when the people cheered him.
As he smiled and waved, out of the corner of his mouth he muttered, “I want you to know that this party has cost me a fortune, and then some.”
Pericles said it as if it was my fault.
“I actually had to borrow to fund it.”
“Is that bad?” I asked.
“When every drachma I borrowed is being poured down someone’s gullet and will be excreted by this time tomorrow? Of course it is. This had better be worth it, Nicolaos. Are you making progress?”
“None whatsoever, Pericles,” I said, for the pure joy of seeing his reaction.
We left him before he could reply. Diotima and I plunged back into the crowd.
I was whacked on the head from behind. It wasn’t a hard hit, but it was unexpected and the more painful for that.
“Ouch!”
I turned at once to see that the weapon was a giant phallus, one made of light pine. It was carried by a small boy. He grinned up at m
e.
The boy rested the phallus on the ground beside him. The phallus was taller than he was.
“Now you’re going to have good luck!” the small boy said.
It was the children from Melite, the ones who had led us to the home of Romanos. They hadn’t said a word before. I had thought they must be mute.
“How come you talk to us now?” I asked.
“We’ve been eating lots of food!” the boy said proudly, and his sisters nodded. “Our mother bought us some with the money you gave us.”
“What about your father?”
“He’s dead.” The boy shrugged, but I could see him struggling not to cry. “After we came here he got a disease and then he died.”
“I see.”
It happened. The orphans of citizens were cared for—the archons saw to that—but the same wasn’t true of metics. They could look after themselves. Or they could go away. In a city that struggled to feed its own children, there was nothing left over to feed someone else’s offspring.
Diotima asked, “Where were you before you came here?”
“Some other city. I don’t remember it. Our mother said we were poor there. Father brought us here to get rich.”
And now he was dead. I remembered the mother of these children. She had insisted they maintain standards, even while they starved.
I crouched down to their level and said, “Listen, do you know I owe you again?”
“Why?”
“You just gave me good luck, didn’t you? That’s very valuable. Here you go.”
I gave the boy every coin I had. It wasn’t much.
“Now you take these straight to your mother, all right?”
“Yes sir.”
“And make sure you stuff yourselves full tonight!” I smiled.
They ran off.
Diotima leant over and kissed me on the cheek.
“Diotima!” I said shocked.
“You’re a good man, Nico,” Diotima said.
“I’m a foolish one. I can’t support that family. All I’m doing is prolonging their agony.”
The party was in full swing. People were sitting at the long benches to eat. We grabbed food from the stalls. Then I elbowed room at one of the benches for Diotima and myself. We’d seen Pythax and Euterpe on the other side of the agora, but it was too hard to get across in the press.
The conversation at our bench was all about the festival and the plays to come. Then one man said, “Hey, have you heard about the psyche?”
“What psyche?” I asked.
“The psyche at the theater. They say the psyche of Thespis is haunting the place. They say he’s really angry.”
“I’m not surprised, with the quality of plays we get these days,” said a critic. “Someone pass me that ox meat?”
“I heard they tried to expel the psyche, but they failed,” a woman said. She appeared to be the wife of the first man. She clutched a piece of lamb in one hand and an onion in the other. “It was the ghost that came back and killed the actor.”
“Shoddy work on the expelling rite, if you ask me,” said the critic.
“Excuse me, it was an excellent rite,” said Diotima, deeply offended.
“How would you know, lady?” the man scoffed.
Diotima was angry now. “Because I’m the one who—”
I jabbed her with my elbow. Diotima glared at me but wisely said nothing more.
The critic said, “Well I say we can expect more of this sort of thing if the plays don’t improve. Psyches haunting theaters.”
I was amazed that people were still talking about the ghost. People would believe anything.
“Are you sure there’s a psyche at all?” I said.
“Of course there’s a psyche. They tried to expel it, didn’t they?”
“Well, yes,” I admitted.
“They wouldn’t try to expel something that wasn’t there, would they?”
Heads nodded up and down the bench.
“You don’t think there might be some other cause?” I inserted into the conversation.
“Like what?” someone asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe some insane person is hanging about the theater.”
They all laughed. They thought a ghost was a better idea. Cups were upended and wine was drunk.
A voice spoke from behind us. “Hey, can I join you?”
Diotima and I turned to see the honest landlord. He stood at our backs, holding a bowl of hot food in one hand and a cup of wine in the other. His breath blew over me. This wasn’t his first cup of wine, but he was steady on his feet.
Beside him juggling four bowls was a woman who was obviously his wife, and three small children who in the crowd held on to their mother’s chiton as if their lives depended on it.
Diotima grabbed some of the bowls to help. I made room to one side and they squeezed in. The landlord said, “I saw you sitting here. I wanted to thank you for letting me know about Romanos, and your great idea.”
“What idea?” I asked.
“You said I should get some of the Dionysia crowd to rent my room. Would you believe there’s a whole family living in there? They were camping outside the city, you know. They wanted to escape the heavy rain we’ve been having. They’re paying me well above rate to get under cover.”
“I’m pleased for you.”
He put a chunk of meat in his mouth and talked around it as he chewed. “Still and all, it’s a pity about Romanos. He seemed a nice guy.”
“Er … yes.”
“You never know when you’re gonna go, do you?”
“I guess not.”
“Goes to show how important is to enjoy your time. A man needs to enjoy his time, doesn’t he, Dora?”
Dora looked up from feeding their children. She said, “Yes, dear.”
“That’s why we rent our spare room,” he confided. “It means I don’t have to work so much. Landlording is easy.”
“I should imagine,” I said. The honest landlord was also a talkative one when he was in his cups. I desperately cast about for some question that might end the dialogue.
“Especially when the renter is someone as quiet as Romanos,” I said.
“Don’t know about that,” the landlord said, to my surprise. “He came and went at odd times. Not many visitors though, I’ll say that for him.”
It had never occurred to me that Romanos might have had visitors to his secret room.
I asked, “Did he by any chance have visitors on the night he died?”
The honest landlord spat the gristly part of his meat onto the ground. “Nah. He was off to a party somewhere else. I wouldn’t let a renter have a party on my property.”
I thought about my own experience renting Diotima’s house, and could only agree with him.
The landlord was still speaking. “So Romanos went out. Late at night it was, after all the rain. Saw him run into some friends. They were happy to see him. Isn’t that right, Dora?”
Dora looked about and said, “Yes, that’s right, dear. I saw them. Hugs all round.”
At these words Diotima’s eyes lit up.
“Can you describe his friends?” Diotima asked.
“Tipsy,” said Dora. “They were carrying wineskins. One of them passed his skin to Romanos. Poor fellow.”
Everyone at the table had been listening in. The tale of men with wineskins had inspired the revelers. There were cries of, “More drink! More drink!”
A man with an amphora under each arm came over to fill cups.
“Would you like some beer?”
I looked up to see the man with the amphorae. I knew him. “Petros, what are you doing here?” Unfortunately I had a fair idea.
He smiled. “Did we not tell you that we want to show Athens what beer is like?”
“Here? Now? Is that a good idea?”
“Why not? No one has to drink the beer if they don’t like it. We merely offer. The Athenians might decide beer isn’t so bad after all.” Petros grinned
. He was a happy man. “Already many Athenians have drunk our beer and called for more.”
“Does Pericles know you’re doing this?” I asked, worried.
“You think a metic ever gets to speak to Pericles?” he said. “If Pericles can donate food and drink to the people, so can we.”
“Petros, I have to tell you, if what happened at the clearing last night happens here, it’s not going to be good.” I had visions of the people of Athens descending into one enormous orgy. What would the children say?
Petros shrugged. “Our beer maker Marinos says it will be fine.”
It wasn’t the most reassuring answer, but it was too late to do anything about it. Half of Athens was already drinking beer. In fact, if the rapidly increasing merriment was anything to go by then the Athenians had drunk an awful lot of beer, and an equal amount of wine.
The landlord put down his cup and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Say, this beer is pretty good. Do you have more?”
“Desecration! Abomination!” A voice shouted above the crowd, so loud that everyone heard it. The shouting came from the other side of the festivities, close to where Pythax and Euterpe sat. The speaker was Theokritos. I had a feeling he’d just discovered beer on the premises.
Theokritos mounted the steps of the Painted Stoa, beside a startled Pericles. Whether he knew what was coming, or simply didn’t want to be associated with anything controversial, I don’t know, but Pericles quickly disappeared from view.
Theokritos stood with his arms raised. Behind him stood the assembled vintners of Athens, with their arms crossed and stern expressions.
“People of Athens!” Theokritos spoke. “I remind you that this is the festival of the Great Dionysia. Today we worship the god of the harvest, Dionysos, who is also the god of the theater and of wine. Wine is his sacred drink. We praise the God when we drink it. We dishonor him when we drink anything else. It has come to my attention that there are people here drinking beer. This is a sin against the God. Think what you are doing. This is his festival. Beer is impious! Spurn it!”
Theokritos wrested a cup of beer from a nearby drinker.
“Here now!” the drinker objected loudly.