never Athenians, but other Greeks – say that Cleisthenes brought
democracy to Athens. Crap. Cleisthenes was a far, far more
briliant man than that. I never met him, but like most middle-
class men, I revere his memory as the man who built the Athens
we loved.
What he did was to make every man an aristocrat.
In one stroke of law, every oarsman and every whore’s son
had as much reason to serve his city as Aristides and Miltiades
and Cleitus. To live wel, with arete, and to die with honour. I’m
not saying that it worked – any better than any other political
idea. But to me, it is a glorious idea, and it made the Athens that
stood against the Great King.
The main consequence was that the precinct of Heracles was
filed with men who would never, ever have been in a phalanx
fifteen years before. When my father died serving alongside
Athens in Euboea, their phalanx had about six thousand men,
and while the front ranks were superb, the rear ranks were poor
men with spears, no shields, no armour and no hope of standing
for even a heartbeat against a real warrior. That was the way.
for even a heartbeat against a real warrior. That was the way.
But the new Athens had a phalanx with twice as many spears
– almost twelve thousand. And from what I could see, almost all
of them had the white leather spolades for which Athens was
famous. The city owned the tanning trade back then, and their
white leather was prized from Naucratis to the Troad. They al
seemed to have helmets, too.
See, what Cleisthenes did was to create a city where a man
who made pots and worked a plot of land just big enough to
yield two hundred medimnoi of grain – about a tenth of what my
farm yielded in a good year – would spend his surplus cash – a
very smal amount, friends – on armour and weapons. Like an
aristocrat.
Thugater, you are laughing at me. Am I too passionate?
Listen, honey – I may be tyrant here, but in my heart I’m a
Boeotian farmer. I don’t want the aristocrats to rule; I want
every man to stand up for himself, take his place in the line, farm
his plot, eat his own figs and his own cheese – raise his hand in
the assembly and curse when he wants. When I’m honest, I
realize that I joined the ranks of the aristos pretty early. It may
be that, as my mother said, our family was always with them. But
I never wanted power over other men, except in war.
Now you’re al laughing at me. I think I should keep my story
for another day. Perhaps I’l go and sulk in my tent. Perhaps I’l
take blushing girl here for company.
Hah! More wine. That was worth the interruption. Look at
that colour!
Now, where was I?
Now, where was I?
In the morning, I mounted my horse and Gelon got on my mule
and we rode away north to find my brother-in-law and the
Plataeans. The Athenians turned east after they passed the great
ridge and headed for the sea.
I reached my men before noon, and found that they were fed,
wel slept and ready to march.
Antigonus shrugged. ‘I enjoyed being polemarch,’ he said.
‘Go back to the Athenians. I’l take it from here.’ He grinned
and slapped my back, but when we had the army moving, he
came up beside me in the dust. ‘Don’t ever do that to me again,’
he said quietly. ‘When you didn’t come back last night, al I
could see was panic and horror. The Persians had you, the
fucking Athenians had arrested you – what was I to do?’
‘Just as you did,’ I said, and slapped him on the back in turn.
I had brought a pair of guides from Miltiades, both local men
from the Athenian phalanx who knew al the trails and smal
roads that led east from our position. So we made good time,
although the way was never straight and at one point we actualy
crossed some poor farmer’s wheat field – two thousand men
and as many animals crushing his precious crop. But it was the
only way to join two paths. Attica had some of the worst roads
in the world then.
I rode ahead with Gelon and Lykon and Philip the Thracian,
both serving as volunteers as their cities had no part in this war,
and we found a camp – three hayfields, al falow or recently cut,
with stone wals al around, on a low ridge with a stream at the
with stone wals al around, on a low ridge with a stream at the
bottom. It’s one of the best positions I’ve ever found, and I went
back to it on another occasion. We slept secure. I had sentries
every night already – a lesson learned from my first campaigns.
We rose with dawn – al that hunting on Cithaeron had good
effect – ate hard bread and drank a little wine, then moved.
Before noon we were up with the tail of the Athenian force,
which was moving down through the olive groves that crowned
the ridges around Aleitus’s farm and tower. I knew the trails here
– again, from hunting – and my guides were off their own
ground. So I took us a little north, over the same ridge where
Aleitus’s party had kiled two deer, and down through the old
orchards where mine had kiled six.
Aristides was first that day – the tribes have a strict rotation in
everything, from order of march to place in the battle line – and
he was the strategos in charge, because the Athenians rotated
the command. He was choosing his camp when I rode up with
my little party.
He smiled when he saw me. I didn’t smile – any pleasure was
wiped from my heart when I saw that he was with Cleitus.
Aristides raised a hand. ‘Stop,’ he said.
I had my hunting spear in my fist.
‘We are here to fight the Medes, not each other,’ Aristides
said.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘You found a horse!’ I snorted. ‘I thought I
heard that something had happened to them.’
Cleitus had his sword in his hand. ‘How’s your mother?’ he
Cleitus had his sword in his hand. ‘How’s your mother?’ he
asked.
Aristides hit him – hard – in the temple with his fist. Aristides
was a good athlete and a fine boxer, and Cleitus fel from his
horse.
But when I rode over to him, Aristides caught my spear hand
in a grip of iron.
‘In this army,’ he said, ‘there are other men who hate each
other – political foes, personal enemies, men with lawsuits. We
have tribes with rivalries, and men with conflicting interests in
money – men who have absconded with wives and daughters,
men who committed crimes. And worst of al, as both of you
know, we have men who have taken money from the Great King
and who wil use their power to break us the way they broke the
East Greeks at Lade – through defection and treachery.’
Cleitus got to his feet and put a hand to his head. ‘You have a
heavy hand, sir.’
Aristides nodded. ‘We are in the precinct of Heracles –
ancestor to al three of us. You wil both come with me to the
a
ltar and swear – to the gods – to keep the peace and fight
together like brothers. You are leaders. If you fight each other –
we are finished.’
‘He kiled my mother,’ I said. ‘And his actions served the
Great King. He’s taking the Great King’s money. He planned to
kil me to keep the Plataeans out of this.’
Cleitus looked at me with the kind of contempt I hadn’t seen
in a man’s eyes since I was a slave. ‘You live in a world of
delusion, peasant. I would never do anything to serve the Great
delusion, peasant. I would never do anything to serve the Great
King. I am an Athenian. I wil crush you like the insect that you
are – for hubris. For treating my family as if we were at your
level. Kiled your mother?’ He laughed. ‘It should have been you
– and it is no care of mine if some raddled Boeotian whore got in
the way.’ He turned to Aristides. ‘I swore to kil him and al his
family. He has insulted me and mine.’
Aristides crossed his arms. ‘Cleitus – most men in this army
think your family are traitors.’ Cleitus whirled around in angry
denunciation, but Aristides cut him off with a raised hand. ‘If you
refuse to swear my oath, Cleitus, I wil send you from the army,
and I wil cease defending you to the demos.’ More quietly, he
said, ‘This is not the agora, nor the palaestra. He insulted your
family? You insulted his? By al the gods, we are talking about
the existence of our city! Are you a playground buly or a man of
honour?’
I had lowered my spear-point. Aristides always had that
effect on me. His moral advantage was almost as great as
Heraclitus’s – he lived the words he spoke. But I was stil angry.
‘Aristides,’ I said, ‘I honour you more than most men, but he
kiled my friends and felow townsmen – and my mother. He
kiled them for vanity. His so-caled revenge? He brought it on
himself, by trying to treat me the way he treats the demos – as
lesser men.’
‘You kiled his horses – fifty horses. The value of ten farms.
You kiled them.’ Aristides stood in front of me, imperturbable.
‘You kiled them to humiliate the Alcmaeonids. Not to save
Miltiades – but for your sense of your own honour. Deny it if you
Miltiades – but for your sense of your own honour. Deny it if you
can.’
‘He murdered my people!’ Cleitus said. ‘Family retainers!’
‘Thugs,’ I said. ‘Aristides, this is foolishness. You, of al men,
know why I did what I did.’
‘I do,’ Aristides said. ‘You did what you did to achieve what
you perceived as justice. As did Cleitus.’
‘He kiled my mother!’ I yeled.
‘My family is in exile,’ Cleitus said. ‘My uncle died – he died
– far from our city. Thanks to you, the dogs of this city bay for
our blood and the little men – tradesmen, men whose
grandfathers were slaves – treat us with contempt. For that, I
would kil you and every man and every woman with a drop of
your blood in his veins.’
‘So both of you can walow in selfishness, pride, self-deceit –
and Athens can be burned by the Medes.’ Aristides raised an
eyebrow. ‘Come with me – both of you.’
Such was his authority that we folowed him. He led us over
the brow of the hil on which the precinct of the shrine of
Heracles stood. Suddenly, in the blaze of the late-summer son,
we were looking down the hil to the plain, the fields and olive
groves of one of Attica’s richest areas, al the way to the beach
at Marathon.
And from the curve of the beach, as far north as the eye
could see, were ships. Hundreds of ships – ships as thick on the
sea as ants around an anthil when the plough rips it asunder.
Many of them were already stern-in to the beach, over by the
Many of them were already stern-in to the beach, over by the
marsh at the north end of the bay. They were unloading men, and
tents – or so I guessed.
Closer to us, in the open ground at the foot of the hil, there
were a dozen Sakai cavalrymen. They were looking up the hil at
us. They had gold on their arms, in their hats, on their saddles,
and every one of them had a heavy bow at his waist and a pair
of long spears in his fist.
‘There they are. The Persians, the Medes, the Sakai – the
armoured fist of the Great King, here to chastise Athens for her
sins. Now – choose. Stand here, in the sight of the enemy, and
fight each other to the death – and on your heads be the future
that you squander. Or both of you can swear my oath. Fight side
by side. Show the army – every man of whom knows your story,
and your hate, believe me – that war with Persia is bigger than
family, bigger than revenge. And when the Persians are gone,
you may kil each other, for al I care.’
Silence, and the wind sighing over the golden wheat fields
down by the sea.
I nodded. ‘I wil swear,’ I said. What else could I say?
Aristides was the Just Man. What he asked was just.
Nor was Cleitus – for al that I stil burn with hate for him –
less a man than I. ‘I wil swear,’ he said. ‘Because you are right.
I wil go farther – because I am a better man than this Boeotian
pig. I paid men to fight against you, Plataean. But I am sorry that
your mother died. For that – alone – you have my apology.’
I might have muttered an apology for the death of his uncle –
even if I did, his was the nobler gesture, but then, his was the
even if I did, his was the nobler gesture, but then, his was the
greater crime.
This is so often the way with men. The gesture is the thing that
we remember – the grand apology, the noble death. Did my
mother’s noble death wipe clean a lifetime of woe? Did Cleon’s?
Is a great apology the equal of a great crime?
I don’t know, and Heraclitus was no longer alive to tel me.
We stood on either side of the low-saddled altar of Heracles,
clasped arms like comrades and swore to stand together against
the Persians, to support each other and be brothers and
comrades. We folowed Aristides, word for word, until he
finished.
‘Until the Persians are defeated,’ Cleitus added.
‘Until the Persians are defeated,’ I repeated, meeting his
eyes.
‘You are both idiots,’ Aristides said.
I’d like to say that a spirit of cooperation swept the army after I
swore not to kil Cleitus, but I’m not sure anyone noticed. This is
the problem with acts of moral courage and ethical purity. Had I
struck him down with my hunting spear, I’m sure there might
have been consequences, but having stayed my hand, there was
no observable change. Heraclitus and Aristides both told me that
the only reward for a correct action is the knowledge of having
acted wel – fair enough, but I suspect that you have to be
Aristides or Heraclitus to feel that such knowledge is enough
reward for the sacrifice of something so deeply satisfying as
revenge.
At any rate, we made camp in the precinct of Heracles. From
the summit, we could see the Persians unloading their ships.
I brought the Plataeans to the north of the Athenians – the left
end of our line of camp, and the spot closest to the enemy. We
took the rocky end of the temple precinct, almost like a smal
acropolis.
It wasn’t much ground, but it would be easy to defend, and it
had a big stand of cypress trees in the centre – good shade. As I
considered it, I saw a man turn aside to relieve himself in the
woods, and I caught him. ‘No man relieves himself inside the
camp,’ I said.
Even with the hunting, they’d never been on campaign. Most
of my men had no idea how fast disease can stalk a camp. So as
soon as we’d stopped, I gathered the warriors in a great circle
and stood on a pile of shields so that they could al hear me.
‘Al men wil sleep here, on the rock,’ I said. ‘The cypress
trees wil give us shade and some shelter, but no man is to cut
one, or build a fire under them, for fear of offence to the god.
Nor is any man to relieve himself inside the precinct. I wil mark
a boundary for such things below. Nor wil any man use the
stream to wash himself, his animal or his clothes, except where I
mark it – so that the stream herself wil not feel defiled. And so
no man’s shit wil float down into our cook pots,’ I said, and
they laughed, and my point was made.
The Plataean strategoi chose their ground, and then we went
down the ancient ramp behind the high ground and chose a low
bog for men to use, and had slaves dig trenches across it and lay
bog for men to use, and had slaves dig trenches across it and lay
logs. And we chose a place for the slaves to draw water and
wash clothes.
‘Water is going to be a problem,’ Antigonus said.
‘I don’t understand why we have to have al these rules,’
Epistocles said. He shook his head. ‘If I have to go in the night,
do you realy think I’m going to walk al this way?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Wel, you can guess again,’ he said, with a foolish little laugh.
‘Epistocles, you are an officer, and men wil take their lead
from you. If men start pissing in our camp, it wil soon become
unliveable. This is the most defensible terrain for ten stades.
Don’t piss on it.’ I grinned at him, but only in the way I grin when
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