required. The couple wrapped in blankets and furs had various
naked limbs sticking out, and the man puled the blankets closer,
as if blankets would protect him.
I ran to the centre of the roof and looked. South was the high
wal of the brothel and east was the wide Panathenaic Way, but
wal of the brothel and east was the wide Panathenaic Way, but
north, uphil, the next roof beckoned. I had to keep moving – the
men below were not fools.
I ran, leaped and my feet came down badly, punching straight
through the seagrass of the roof so that my groin landed on the
beam, and for a moment it was al I could do to curl my legs
around the beam and moan. In the building underneath me,
people screamed – and their screams were answered by running
feet.
Sometimes the initial pain is worse than the resulting injury. I
got a knee up on the beam and the blow to my groin wasn’t as
debilitating as I had feared. I sidestepped north as men gathered
around the building, and north again, and this time I stepped over
the roof barrier on to the next roof – slate, thank the gods! – and
I ran across the firm surface. I could smel a fire that burned
charcoal and I could smel hot metal, and I realized I was
crossing the roof of a smithy – a big one.
There was an aley at the northern edge of the smithy, and I
leaped it without pausing to reflect – and my arms just caught the
edge of the higher roof – much higher, because the aley was like
a giant step up. I hung there for long heartbeats, trying to gain
control of my legs over the pain – and I swung my right leg over
the roof edge and roled.
My hips hurt and my groin hurt and my left shoulder
screamed as if I’d been scalded with boiling water. This roof had
an outdoor kitchen and a smal shed where the owner stored his
brazier and spare pots. I got myself into it – a counsel of
brazier and spare pots. I got myself into it – a counsel of
desperation, let me tel you. If they found me there, I was dead –
no more retreat. But I wasn’t thinking wel, and my instinct was
the instinct of the wounded animal. I puled the door closed and
lay there, panting.
I listened to the men in the street as they searched the houses
– broke in, beat people or threatened them. But actions have
consequences, and the fates were not blind to my predicament.
As they went from house to house, causing mayhem, men – and
women – turned against them. Greeks don’t take happily to the
invasion of their homes, however poor.
I heard the smith roar with rage as his dinner crashed to the
floor when the thugs overturned his table, He had weapons and
the strength to use them, and he hit a thug so hard that the blow
had that teltale sound of a broken melon – and then the
wounded man started caling for his felows.
The smith roared for the watch. His voice carried, and other
voices – housewives, prostitutes and the patrons from the brothel
– joined in.
Athens was a mighty city then – but not so big that the uproar
of throaty thugs and fifty citizens didn’t carry quickly.
The Scythian archers – the city police since the time of the
tyrants – came just as a party of thugs were breaking into the
house where I hid. I could folow their progress on the street by
the sudden change in sound – the babble of citizens teling the
Scythians what had happened.
My breathing was better, although the pain was stil there. I
lay stil, my eye pressed to the door of the shed.
lay stil, my eye pressed to the door of the shed.
A man’s head came up the ladder from the main room below.
I didn’t know him, but his ragged haircut and his expression told
me he was one of my pursuers. He looked around the roof
quickly, and then I heard him say that the roof was clear.
‘Fucking Scythians!’ came a voice from below, over the
shouts of the householder, an older man with a shril voice.
‘Vilains! Out of my house, you scum!’
I heard the man take a blow – a blow so sharp that his voice
was cut off in mid-imprecation.
‘We’ve got to get out of here!’ a man said.
‘Fuck that – this bastard is worth a hundred drachmas. Beat
the Scythians and make them clear out. He’s hiding – right here.
Somewhere.’ I knew the voice – my man from the aley.
‘You fight the cops, you mad bugger.’ The man who’d
checked the roof was not having any of it. ‘I’m off.’
‘Coward,’ the leader hissed, but by then, there were
Scythians pounding on the door.
Then both of them came up the ladder and on to my roof.
Beneath our feet, the Scythians were breaking in the door.
My two would-be attackers slowed briefly at the roof edge,
then they dropped over the edge, heading south.
I just lay there, unable to do much to change my fortunes. I
saw the Scythians check the roof – they spoke in their barbaric
tongue, glanced around carefuly, one man by the ladder with an
arrow on his bow while another man poked around with his
sword, but they didn’t check the little shed.
I waited a long time after they vanished – I waited until the
I waited a long time after they vanished – I waited until the
whole quarter was silent. Then I limped down the ladder, picked
the householder up and put him on his bed, and sneaked out of
the door.
I made it to Phrynichus’s house under my own power. His
poor wife was terrified at my appearance.
Phrynichus got me into bed – his own bed, as his apartment
was too smal for such luxuries as guest chambers. I lay there,
trying to frame something polite to say – and then, finaly, my
psyche released its hold on my body, and I went away.
The next day, I limped about escorted by half a dozen oarsmen.
I told al my people to lie low, and I made myself look afraid –
and abashed – when Cleitus pushed past me in the Agora.
‘Done meddling?’ he asked with a smile. ‘You don’t look
wel, foreigner. Perhaps you should stop playing with fire and go
home.’
‘Yes, lord,’ I breathed, exaggerating my injuries. In fact, my
paid informants were bringing me titbits by the hour. Al my plans
and preparations took time, and I warned my people – the
oarsmen, the informants and some paid thugs – that I wanted no
violence until I said the word. And money – some Miltiades’ and
some mine – flowed like blood in a sea-fight.
Some of my new friends disliked being made to lie low.
There were a few defections, but I was careful with my plans
and no one – except Cleon, Paramanos and Herk – knew what I
had planned. The informants were blind – each of them had a
particular task – and given the scale of reward offered, I
particular task – and given the scale of reward offered, I
expected results, and got them.
Let me interject here. A man who’s been free al his life might
struggle at al t
his – but a man who’s been a slave knows al
about how and where to get information. How and where to buy
violence. And how to plan revenge. Remember that the world of
Athens ran on slaves, and slaves, at some level, dislike being
slaves.
A week after my arrival in Athens, I knew where my girl was.
She was working in a slave brothel by the Agora. I was tempted
to grab her – but to do so would have given the game away.
Shortly after my informers found her, the best pair – Thracians,
former slaves who ran an ‘inquiry service’ – brought me the
names of the men Cleitus had hired to beat Sophanes and
Themistocles. I paid them a smal fortune, and they left the city
for a while – they guessed what I had in mind. Smart lads.
Another informer – a woman, a prostitute with a quick mind –
located my attacker, the smaler man in the aley, based only on
my description. He was a big man in the lower-class
neighbourhoods, a wine-shop owner and a money-lender. I paid
the woman wel and sent her to Salamis, too. My desire to send
these people out of the city when they had served my needs was
not altogether altruistic – I trusted none of them, and this way my
prostitute could not counter-inform to Cleitus. Perhaps I
wronged them – many were happy to help, just to strike a blow
against the oppression of the aristocrats – but talk is cheap and
informing can become a habit. So I sent them away, and
informing can become a habit. So I sent them away, and
Miltiades’ money paid and paid.
I didn’t share my plan with Aristides, or Miltiades, or even
Phrynichus, although he was beginning to catch on, as was
Cleon. Many Athenians are fine men, and their briliance is
legendary. Trust an Athenian to plead a court case or to write a
play. But what al those briliant men like Aristides and Miltiades
had missed was that the Alcmaeonids weren’t playing by the
rules. They had taken Persian gold and used it to pay the mob –
the same mob that should have been baying for their blue blood
– to beat better men.
I had grown up in Ephesus, where the Persians intimidated
the citizens, and where the citizens used force to intimidate each
other. I had been a slave. I knew how the world worked, in a
way that neither the Alcmaeonids nor the Just Man ever would.
When I was ready, I prompted Aristides to bring my civil suit,
and he summoned Cleitus to appear in my case just one day
after the Attic feast of Heracles, which seemed auspicious to me.
The civil court met briefly, eager to be away to their feasts and
holidays – many men went to the countryside for the feast of
Heracles, of course, and some for the feasts of Dionysus. Across
the Agora, a party of shipwrights were raising the theatre – a
wooden stage and the big wooden building behind it caled the
skene, and the wooden benches where the best men sat. I was
astounded at the speed with which they put it up – between the
opening and closing of the law court, the workmen had the skene
completed.
completed.
The law court was wel briefed and Cleitus was caught by
surprise. He turned bright red and shouted some foolishness. A
date was set, and Aristides explained to the sitting members of
the Boule that Miltiades would have to be released from prison
to plead for me, because he was my proxenos.
That was the law.
Cleitus began to protest, and then thought better of it. Why
wouldn’t he? He held al the knucklebones, and al his foes were
going to come to the same place on the same day – the feast of
Dionysus.
I stood by the temporary theatre, watching, wiling the
thoughts into his head, begging Zeus Soter to help me to recover
my oath and punish this man, and the king of the gods heard my
prayer. I saw Cleitus lower his fist, turn away and smile. He was
an inteligent man, as I had cause to know later – and he saw as
wel as I did that by bringing al his opponents together, he could
hurt us the more easily, with his thugs and with the law. Then he
agreed, as if making a magnanimous gesture, to alow my suit to
be heard in the Agora on the day folowing the feast of Dionysus,
in just four days.
The notion that we would al be vulnerable then ought to lul
my opponent, I hoped. Because I planned to strike at the feast
of Dionysus itself.
10
Even back then, before we fought the Medes, the theatre of
Athens was a famous thing, and much talked of throughout the
Greek world. Technicaly, I wasn’t welcome at the
performances, as I was a foreigner, but again, before the
performances were moved out of the Agora, everyone went –
slaves and free men and citizens and even a few women – bolder
spirits or prostitutes.
Athenian prostitutes aren’t like the poor tribal girls in this
town, thugater. Do I shock you, blushing maiden? What I mean
is that in Athens, slave and free, man and woman, prostitutes
have several protections before the law and, in an odd way,
status. A few are even citizens. In those days, they stroled
around the agora openly, made sacrifices – at least barley-cake
sacrifices – at the public altars, and performed their services to
the community behind the Royal Stoa. Not that I have any direct
the community behind the Royal Stoa. Not that I have any direct
knowledge . . .
It is also important to remember that theatre performances
went on al day, not in the evening, and that one play folowed
another in fairly short order, interspersed with prayers and
sacrifice at the public altars – don’t forget that in those days, the
drama was stil a religious expression, and a symbol of civic
piety. Men went soberly, as if to temple. When the satyr plays
were introduced, to celebrate the god’s love of revelry, that was
different, although stil pious. An initiate of Dionysus is stil pious
while puking, we used to say. And worse.
I stayed with Aristides the night before. He planned to make
a tour of his farms before going to the Agora, so I rose early and
walked through the deserted streets with Styges by my side.
Both of us were heavily armed, and I had bandages on my left
arm and al down my right leg where I’d cut it leaping from roof
to roof.
We walked across the Agora, past the stil-empty wooden
theatre and the altars of the twelve gods, right around behind the
Royal Stoa. There, while girls and boys plied a brisk trade
against the wal of the old building despite the early hour, I found
Agios and Paramanos and Cleon.
‘Ready?’ I asked.
They al nodded. Cleon was sober. ‘Have you got
Phrynichus?’ he asked.
‘I have him. Styges goes straight from here to watch him.
You make sure we don’t have a surprise during the
You make sure we don’t have a surprise during the
performance.’
We shook hands al around and they walked off down the
noises of men having a quick tumble or getting their flutes played
on the day of the festival – many men thought it was good luck to
couple on the wine god’s day.
Then I gathered my wits and headed back to Aristides. I
made it in time to eat a crust of bread in his kitchen with his wife
and two of his boarhounds, and then I borrowed a horse and
accompanied him around his farms, with Aeschylus the
playwright at my left side and Sophanes on my right. Aristides
mocked us for nursemaiding him. For my part, I had come to
enjoy his company as a philosopher, and I was afraid that by the
end of the day we would no longer be friends. But I had no
intention of letting him be attacked when my own plan was so
close to fruition.
We had just completed a tour of grain barns – Aristides was
a wealthy man, for al his pretended humility – and we were
riding down a road with steep property wals on either side when
I saw a group of men on foot coming the other way – a dozen
men, and many with cudgels.
‘Back, my lord,’ I said, turning my horse.
‘Nonsense,’ Aristides said. ‘That’s Themistocles. No friend
of mine, but hardly an enemy.’
Which shows what a foreigner I was – he was one of the
best-known orators in Athens, even then. And I’d never seen
him.
him.
Themistocles was another minor aristocrat, but by dint of
constant public speaking and a good deal of political strategy, he
had made himself the head of the Demos party – the popular
party, or the party of the lower classes. In those days, such a
role was considered a threat by al the other aristocrats. The path
to tyranny usualy lay through the control of the masses. Only the
lower-class voters could form armed mobs big enough to force
the middle class into accepting a tyranny.
I think I should say at this point how I think Athens worked
then. Now, to be sure, nothing I’m going to say bears any
resemblance to what Solon wanted for Athens, or even what the
Pisistratid tyrants wanted. This is merely my observation on what
actualy happened.
There was Athens – the richest city in mainland Greece.
Sparta may or may not be more powerful, but no one on earth
would wilingly buy a Spartan pot. Eh? The poor bastards don’t
even make their own armour.
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