Of Merchants & Heros

by Paul Waters

  I remembered how, at Tarentum, I had spied the deep private sadness in his face, how it had illuminated his features with such fine beauty. I saw it again now, and wondered if this was the cause.

  In my self-centred unhappiness, in my preoccupation with my failings, I had not considered that he too had his own demons to conquer, and his own pain. It seemed now that I saw him anew, with new knowledge. Love stirred within me; not like fire, though I knew that well enough, but like a perfect solitary note of music that encompasses all the world in its wholeness.

  We stood in silence, each communing with his thoughts, watching as the sun dipped behind Mount Parnes, and the evening star glinted on the horizon, presaging the night. I felt a new closeness to him, a loss of folly, a clarity of vision; until, surrounded as I was by shrines and temples, I even wondered if some god had touched me on the shoulder, and whispered, ‘See now what I see, if only for a moment; for here is truth, present among men.’

  Next morning Menexenos said, ‘Let’s go out to the Akademy, I’d like to show you something.’

  So we walked out through the great crenellated double gateway that the Athenians call the Dipylon, past old memorials of the war- dead, and took the path through the gardens and smallholdings, until we came to the shaded grove of the Akademy gardens.

  It was early still. Here and there people ambled along the wandering paths. We came to the gateway that was the entrance to the school of Plato. A small group was gathered there. I supposed from their serious manner and carefully nurtured young beards that they must be the philosophers Menexenos had spoken of, and asked him.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, casting them an attentive look, ‘or they imagine themselves philosophers anyway. That is why they dress like that, and don’t smile. But if wisdom came from such easy conceits, then every actor would be a better philosopher than any of them.’ He grinned at me, and we walked on.

  Presently we turned off the path and crossed the lawn, and came to a myrtle-shaded altar set in a clearing. Yellow and white wild flowers grew all about. Some had been plucked, and lay drying on the altar-stone, as one does when one wants to offer something to the gods. Menexenos paused, and so I asked what sacred place this was.

  He gazed round at the shading myrtles before he answered. I think he even blushed.

  ‘It is sacred to Eros,’ he then said. ‘It is a place for lovers. I used to come here, when I was a boy, and offer something.’

  ‘Alone?’ I said.

  He smiled at my question, then nodded. ‘Always alone.’

  I considered the little sprigs of flowers on the altar. ‘And did the god hear you?’

  ‘For a long time I thought not, and I started to believe that what I longed for was not to be found anywhere. And yet,’ he said smiling, ‘it seems he was listening after all.’

  He flicked shyly at an overhanging branch. ‘There,’ he said. ‘I have told you. I promised the god I should bring you here if I ever found you – and now I have done it. But I think Eros spied you long ago.’

  I looked at him smiling, then took his arm and pulled him after me into the thicket of old trees behind. ‘In that case,’ I said, drawing him close, ‘I think we owe something to the god in return.’

  And then we kissed.

  The rest of the day we spent walking alone, out beyond the Akademy, along the banks of the Kephissos. When we got back to the city there was a message waiting for me. It was from Pomponius, the head of the Roman legation to Athens, requiring me to call on him.

  ‘One hears when a Roman arrives,’ said Pomponius, easing himself back into his padded couch beside the window. He was a smooth portentous man of about fifty, with a paunch and a large self- satisfied face. ‘And I believe,’ he went on, smoothing down the folds of his mantle of fine-woven wool, with an embroidered border of prancing horsemen, ‘that you are a friend of Titus Flamininus.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ I said. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘I am a friend of his father.’

  I nodded.

  ‘You know his father?’

  ‘No, sir. We have not met.’

  ‘A pity. He is a good solid Roman – none of your foreign Greek habits – it is a shame his sons have not learnt more from him, instead of taking after that firebrand philosophical type Scipio . . .

  Still, I have not asked you here to talk about that. Crispus’ – nodding at the pallid young clerk who was standing in the corner by the desk – ‘tells me you were in Tarentum.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ I told him my stepfather had business there.

  ‘I dare say. So you were not part of Titus’s staff?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  He gave me a long stern searching look, and after a moment went on, ‘It is said you are on private business in Athens. Private business,’ he repeated with emphasis, ‘and that is all very well, but if I know anything of Titus and his friends, he will have asked you to keep your finger to the wind . . .’ Another pause. And then, ‘What I am saying is, whatever else you are doing here, I don’t want you meddling in political matters.’

  ‘I shall not meddle, sir.’

  ‘Good. Make sure you don’t. There is enough trouble brewing here already. I imagine you have heard.’

  I told him I had heard nothing, having only recently arrived.

  He had been picking without interest at a bowl of sweets beside him. But now he sat back, pursed his lips, and considered me. I stood and looked at him. He had not invited me to sit.

  ‘Well,’ he said after a moment, ‘since it is common knowledge, you may as well know. The Athenians have got themselves involved in a foolish pointless quarrel with a nation of nobodies called the Akarnanians – from west Greece somewhere, I don’t even know quite where, but it is not important. What is important is that the Akarnanians are allies of King Philip, and now they have asked him for help . . . and that is something we do not need. Really’ – he returned to the sweet bowl – ‘I don’t know why these Greeks must always be so touchy and quarrelsome. It was all caused by some nonsense to do with the Mysteries at Eleusis apparently. Outrage and offence, insults thrown, and now the Athenian Demos thinks it must teach the Akarnanians a lesson.’ He shook his head. ‘I tell you this, young man: whatever your friend Titus thinks, the last thing Rome wants is to get involved in this particular nest of hornets.

  Whatever we do, the Greeks will not thank us for it . . . So mind your step.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘I shall.’

  And as I left the house I meant it, for I could not conceive how I might become involved in such a quarrel.

  Not long after this, Menexenos took me out to visit his farm. It was small after the great estates of Tarentum, but it was neat and well kept, in good fertile land below Mount Paneion. There were barley fields, an ancient olive grove, and vines planted on the terraces that rose up the hillside behind the house. There were pastures with goats and sheep, and in the paddock a fine prancing grey colt that came nuzzling up to greet us.

  The house was old, and as simply furnished as the house in Athens. But what there was was of fine understated quality – chairs of smooth polished olivewood, a low table inlaid with ivory, and an old tapestry showing the Kaledonian boar-hunt. All this I took in.

  But what caught my eye most was the vase on the ledge. It stood alone, with nothing near; and painted on it, red on black, was a diskos-thrower, his arms tied with victory-ribbons, his head bowed, being crowned with a wreath of olive leaves by Athena.

  In honour of my coming, Kleinias ordered the steward to slaughter a kid, and that evening we feasted in the open courtyard on roasted meat, and sat late over cups of pink estate wine, with the single lamp-flame flickering on the surrounding columns, and the great sweep of the Milky Way overhead.

  Kleinias asked what I had made of the city, and I told him I had never seen so much of interest and beauty in one place. I mentioned too, a little later, that Pomponius had sent for me, and had told me of a quarrel between Athens and Akarnania, which seemed
to concern him.

  ‘Well he is right to be concerned. The whole affair is a great example of foolishness.’

  I asked him what had happened.

  ‘It was the smallest of matters, and so it should have remained.’

  Two young men from Akarnania, he said, rich men’s sons who had come to Athens to take in the sights and enjoy themselves, had followed the crowd that was on its way to celebrate the rites at Eleusis. When the crowd entered the temple of Demeter where the secret rites were held, the two Akarnanians had followed, not realizing that entry was forbidden to all but initiates. They had carried on chatting innocently to each other, asking those around them the sort of questions tourists ask, and soon they were noticed.

  Then there was fury. The initiates dragged the youths to the priests of the temple, and before anyone could stop them they had put the two to death for sacrilege.

  ‘It was a needless, hysterical reaction: all false, assumed outrage.

  Those boys should have been given a beating and sent home, not murdered. The mob at Eleusis, in its frenzy, did not reflect that Akarnania is allied with Philip, and Philip is waiting for an excuse to make war on us.’

  He shook his head. ‘I do not know a great deal of Rome, but I understand that there the best men rule, men who have learned to set aside their passions and private interests for the good of the city.’

  I answered that I had heard that this was so, and he continued, ‘It was the same here once, and then good sense and moderation prevailed. But now the city mob – the wretched vaunting Demos – are supreme; and politicians, whose task it is to lead, merely follow, pandering to them like a soft parent who gives sweets and gifts to an overindulged child, and offers them no correction.’ He paused, and sighed. ‘Well, I am talking on. The foolish will always be more numerous than the wise, and so to be ruled by the many is to be ruled by fools.’

  He said no more on the subject, and, soon after, made his excuses and took himself off to bed.

  But I thought about what he had said, and next day, when Menexenos and I had gone out to inspect the vines, I asked, ‘Why is it, Menexenos, that the common people – the Demos – rule, if they are so foolish?’

  ‘There are those,’ he said, ‘who think that, by ruling, they will make themselves better, just as a horseman or a runner grows better with practice.’

  ‘But your father does not agree?’

  ‘He has seen a good deal of the people’s fickleness. He says you do not teach a drunkard sobriety by leaving him alone in the wine store. Nor do the people have the right to do wrong and injustice, just because they are many. If they are not willing, or able, to school themselves in virtue, then they should leave the affairs of the city to others.’

  We had come out at the summit above the vine-terraces. The upland was spread with a patchwork of delicate springtime flowers.

  On a far headland a temple overlooked the turquoise sea, and in the distance a merchantman, its great russet sail swollen in the breeze, glided towards Piraeus.

  I said, ‘And you, Menexenos, what do you think?’

  He walked over to the ledge, where the land fell away, and, shading his eyes with his hand, looked out to the sea. The breeze stirred his hair, and the edges of his tunic. ‘This I believe,’ he said, ‘that a man does not find himself in a crowd, but in his solitude. The Demos is a figure, nothing more; and yet men worship Demos as a god, and by doing so stumble into error. There is nothing sacred in a crowd. If men know good, it is because each one has found it for himself. I learnt that on the running-track, and on the diskos-field.

  No man is born excellent, Marcus. And if some demagogue tells him he need not work at it, there are too many in the city who will believe him.’ He shrugged and turned. ‘And yet, for all that, Father is too severe. There is good in most men, if one only looks. He has ceased to look, having been let down too often. And who am I to judge him?’

  Before we returned to the city, Menexenos took me to the women’s quarters to meet his mother.

  She was a frail-looking woman, soft-spoken and fine-boned, proud and precise. An air of melancholy hung about her, like shadow on a bright day; and afterwards, though he did not speak of it, Menexenos was quiet for a while. I thought of the prize-vase of the diskos-thrower, and of his brother who had died. It seemed to lie behind everything, though it was never mentioned.

  Back in Athens, I went to one of the booksellers in the street behind the agora and bought something for Mouse, as I had promised. The bookseller made a great fuss of me, assuring me he employed only the very best copyists, and showing me the Egyptian papyrus he used. ‘The very finest quality,’ he said, nodding and inviting me to finger the paper, ‘and with careful handling it will last generations. Ask anyone at the Akademy, or at the Painted Stoa.’

  I spent half a morning there, browsing among the scrolls, trying to decide, among such riches, what Mouse should like best, knowing that what would delight her most would be to be here with me, browsing for herself. In the end I bought some volumes of Herodotos, a play by Agathon, and a dialogue about love by Plato, which Menexenos had once mentioned.

  Afterwards, pleased as a child, I paused outside the shop to look over my purchases. Through the window I overheard the bookseller’s voice say in a tone of hushed mock-horror to his friend, ‘A Roman buying books! Whatever next? Do you suppose he can read?’

  I was tempted to cough, to let him know I was there. But in the end I just smiled to myself, took up the parcel, and walked off. What mattered was what I made of myself; not what this fussing bookseller thought of me, or of Mouse, or of any Roman.

  It was two days later, while I was arranging to send the books to Italy, that the trouble began.

  I was on my own that day, Menexenos having been summoned to the gymnasion for athletics practice prior to the games. I had gone down to Piraeus to meet a sea captain I knew from my days in Tarentum, an old Syracusan by the name of Kratos, who owned his own ship and plied the route between Greece and Sicily. He had agreed to deliver my package for Mouse, and to take a letter for Titus.

  We met at the appointed time, beside the sanctuary of Aphrodite on the sea front. I gave him my parcels, and we paused to talk.

  There was a good deal of noise all about us – stevedores shouting and chanting; street-sellers; crewmen calling; the sound of wood on wood as crates were piled up, or loaded onto carts – but like a dog that catches a scent in the air, Kratos discerned among all this something that made him break off in mid-speech and cock his head.

  He listened, and under his beard his face hardened.

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  He looked from side to side, and then behind him. ‘Trouble, that’s what.’

  And then I heard it. From the south harbour, which lay on the other side of Piraeus a few streets away, there came shouts of alarm echoing between the buildings.

  Kratos peered down the quay to where his own ship lay moored beyond a row of four Athenian triremes. It was secured to the quay only by a single line, ready to cast off.

  On the deck the crew were waiting, craning their necks and looking about with serious faces. They too had heard the commotion.

  Kratos scanned the water and the mole, then gave a quick signal to his helmsman. From the stern the helmsman raised his hand in acknowledgement. Then he turned back to me.

  ‘I’m off, and I suggest you do the same. I’ve seen harbour riots before. I’m not going to wait around for my ship to be looted or burned.’

  He briefly shook my hand, assured me my parcel would be delivered, then hurried off to his waiting ship, throwing the mooring-line off the bollard as he passed it. The crew shoved off, and the short manoeuvring oars began to beat the water.

  A sailor had appeared on the deck of the nearest trireme. He was calling, waving his arms and gesturing to someone at the far end of the quay beyond my view, asking what was afoot. Two workmen came up from below to see. But otherwise the triremes were unmanned. Beyond, I saw Kratos’s
ship at the harbour entrance. The great striped sail dropped and filled out in the breeze; the crew busied themselves with the rigging.

  All about me on the quay, men were leaving off what they were doing. I turned to go. And then I saw the first of the great painted Macedonian war-galleys rounding the sea wall, its deck bristling with armed soldiers.

  But it was not the soldiers bearing down on me that made me gape and stare.

  He was standing in the prow, with one arm slung around the carved painted figurehead. He had tied back his flaxen hair, and in his hand he brandished a sword.

  He turned, smiling and laughing to those behind him. A chill went through me. My hands went cold, and my breath stopped in my throat. It was Dikaiarchos.

  I don’t know what my first thought was. All along the quay people were crying out and running towards the back streets. My ears rang with the sound of my own heart beating, and it seemed the world moved slowly, and the sounds came from a great distance. It was as if some dark inner part of me, some creature of my nightmares, had appeared before my eyes, and the rest of the world had dimmed. I glanced round. But I knew I should not run.

  I turned back. Two more warships had appeared, entering the harbour at full speed, their oars thrashing the water. I saw Kratos’s ship pass the end of the mole, where the lighthouse is, moving the other way. The Macedonians took no notice. Whatever they had come for, Kratos was no part of it.

  I forced my thoughts into order. I was unarmed. I did not even have a hunting knife (something I always used to carry in Praeneste).

  I cast my eyes about for something to use as a weapon. One of the workmen from the moored trireme shoved past me. ‘Hey!’ I cried. But he ran on, not heeding, his face a mask of terror.

  The sailor who had been calling was staring now across the water at the approaching Macedonians. I could not tell if it was bravery that stopped him running, or fear. Then, as I looked, I saw a stack of javelins, stowed on the deck, not far from where he was standing.

  I scrambled up the gangboard. The weapons had been strapped down. I began tugging at the leather binding. From the poop-deck the sailor shouted, ‘You there! What are you doing?’