Of Merchants & Heros

by Paul Waters

  I watched with Menexenos from the steps of the temple of Demeter. The potters’ workshops and masons’ yards and all the shops of the Kerameikos had closed for the day. The long colonnade was lined with people. Fires were kindled in bronze tripods on the altars, and not far from us, on the temple steps, a choir of boys, clad in white and garlanded with oak-crowns, sang a paean.

  King Attalos was mounted on a fine chestnut mare with a scarlet saddlecloth fringed with bullion. The gold flashed and glittered in the sunlight as he moved. At the Dipylon Gate he dismounted; and the archons and leading men escorted him into the city among the exultant crowds.

  From my vantage point on the temple steps I saw him pass. He was crowned with a gilded olive-spray, and wore a long mantle of brilliant white bordered with purple. I had never seen a king before.

  This man, measured and stately, wearing authority like an old familiar garment, seemed bred to it, and I said so to Menexenos.

  ‘Oh no,’ he replied. ‘He is the first king of Pergamon, and before that he was no more than a general.’ Whatever he seemed now, he said, was what he had made himself.

  I looked again. He was closer now, and to my surprise I saw he was not some man of middle age, as I had first supposed. Even though he held himself well, with a soldier’s straight-backed poise, he must have been well over sixty. His hair was as white as his mantle.

  ‘How old is he?’ I said to Menexenos.

  ‘More than seventy,’ he said, and laughed when he saw my face.

  He was at an age when most men, if they were alive at all, would be at home, sipping at a warm posset, fussed over by granddaughters and great-granddaughters. Instead he was waging war against the mightiest power in Greece, and roaming the ocean in pursuit of Philip. I gazed at him with respect and awe.

  Later the citizens were called to assembly and a letter from Attalos was read out, for he had told the archons he had rather not address the assembly himself. He reminded the Athenians of their friendship with Pergamon, and urged them now to join him in the struggle against Philip. Then the Rhodians spoke, urging the same, and when the vote came, it was for war.

  It was Kleinias who recounted to me what had happened up on the Pnyx. I do not know what prompted me – perhaps something in his tone – but when he had finished I asked, ‘Did anyone speak against?’

  We were back at the house, in the enclosure behind the street, seated on the stone benches beneath the fig tree. By now evening was coming on, and the shadows were deepening around us. But I saw Kleinias stiffen, and knew then what had made me ask, and what his answer would be. In his brisk, formal voice he said, ‘I spoke against.’

  ‘But why, sir?’ I asked, taken aback. For I too had been caught up in the general mood of joy, and it seemed right for the city to repay King Attalos and the Rhodians for what they had done.

  He turned his head and looked me in the face. ‘I reminded the assembly that Attalos’s army is far away in Asia; and that the Rhodians are a sea power. If Philip moves against us he will come not by sea but by land, and neither of them will be able to help us.

  We shall be alone.’

  He gave a weary gesture. ‘The chief Archon responded that the Roman ambassador had told him Rome would come to our aid if Philip attacked. I asked him then if he had received a formal assurance, for I had not heard of it. To this he did not answer . . . I hope you will forgive me for saying this Marcus, when you are our guest, but if my own conversations with your ambassador Pomponius are anything to go by, the Roman Senate is in no mood for war, and even if that were not so, there is no Roman army anywhere in Greece.’

  I nodded slowly, thinking how sure Pomponius had been that the Athenians would not dare rouse the lion from his den.

  I asked what had happened next.

  ‘My words were greeted with all the sullen displeasure against the sober man at the party, who, when the krater is still half full and the dancing-girls are coming on, reminds his guests of the sore heads they will have in the morning.’ He gave a wan smile at his little joke.

  ‘It is said the Persians have a wise custom. When a momentous decision is to be made, they consider it twice, once drunk, and once sober. That is a piece of good sense our citizens would benefit by.

  They are drunk on war. When their heads finally clear, it will be too late.’

  He stood, but paused before he went inside and, looking up at the darkening evening sky, added, ‘There is something that terrifies me in the spectacle of foolish people exercising power.’

  When he had left I said to Menexenos, ‘He looks ill.’

  ‘It is no surprise: it was far worse than he told it. In the assembly he was shouted down, and afterwards, as he made his way out, he was jostled by the rabble. It was shameful. All he asked was for the people to consider, before they declared war, how they intended to fight it.’

  Attalos left a token garrison at Piraeus and sailed away. Philip and the Macedonians were forgotten, and, with the games drawing near, Menexenos turned his mind to his training.

  When he was not running out beyond the city, he went practising at the Lykeion. He had the ability, which came of discipline, to close his mind to his daily cares and focus his whole being upon his task.

  It was like watching a man engaged in some act of solitary worship.

  His face was calm, his body poised and graceful, his grey eyes lit by some inner light. At such times his beauty took my breath away, as much as when I had first seen him that day in Tarentum. Even now I could scarcely credit that, out of the entire world, he had chosen me as his friend. It seemed I could hope for no greater gift.

  I went to watch when I could. But that summer I was taken up with a labour of my own.

  I had brooded on my encounter with Dikaiarchos. The god had brought him to me, and I had failed. Questioning myself on this, I had decided I lacked fighting skill, and though I sensed the lack, I did not know how to remedy it.

  One day, at the Lykeion, I asked Menexenos’s trainer.

  He listened, regarded me with an appraising eye, rubbed his chin, then said eventually, ‘I know the man you need, but he will refuse to teach you.’

  This answer made me all the more determined, and after some talk the trainer agreed to take me to the man’s house. He was, he explained as we walked, a retired sword-master. His name was Antikles; and he was difficult.

  I asked the trainer what he meant, and he replied, ‘He takes some pupils, and refuses others. It is not a question of money. I have seen the sons of rich men beg him, but he will not have them at any price.

  He despises modern fashion; nor does he spare the rod. He is feared by many.’

  But, he said, if I was determined, then it was up to me to persuade him, for there was no one better.

  We came to his modest house, and found him in the courtyard, sitting beneath the awning, burnishing the wrought pommel of a sword.

  He listened to what the trainer wanted. Then, without even looking at me, he said, ‘I do not take new pupils. Goodbye.’

  I looked at him. He had a short grey beard and was dressed in a simple homespun tunic. His body was tanned and lean. He must have been nearing sixty.

  I remembered the trainer’s words to me, and now, stepping up under the awning, I said, ‘Sir, I have been told I have no more to learn of sword-work, and perhaps it is so. All I ask is that you grant me half a morning. If I see you have nothing to teach me, as I suppose, then I shall trouble you no further.’

  At this, as I had hoped, he slowly turned. He placed the sword to one side, and from where it stood propped against the wall he took up his osier cane.

  I remained where I was in front of him. If he intended to strike me for my insolence I had already determined I should take it without flinching.

  But he did not strike. For a long time he looked into my face.

  Then he said, ‘How old are you, boy?’

  ‘Eighteen, sir.’

  ‘Eighteen, and you suppose you have nothing to learn? What
kind of fool are you?’

  ‘I have trained hard. I know what I know. But I do not know enough for what I need.’

  He considered me carefully, tapping the cane on the flags as he did so. Then, after a long pause, he said, ‘I shall be at the grove of Wolf-Apollo at first light tomorrow. If you do not know where it is, find out. Be on time. I shall not wait.’

  It was still dark when, next day, I made my way out to the Lykeion gardens, to the sacred grove where the marble statue of Apollo stands on a stone plinth, his hand stretched out, a lyre at his side, and a she-wolf at his feet.

  I waited, shuffling about at the foot of the statue in the cool dawn, glancing out at the path from the city along which Antikles would come.

  Suddenly, so close that it made me start, there was a stirring in the dark shadows, and he stepped out. I had not even seen him.

  ‘What is that?’ he said, scowling at the sword in my hand.

  ‘My sword,’ I said defensively. It was the old warrior’s sword from Praeneste.

  He took it from me and looked at it, holding it up to the brightening horizon, then balancing it in his hand.

  After some little time of this he said, ‘It is well made. A noble sword. But too heavy for you. You will need to build your arms and shoulders. Have you fought with it?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  He nodded, and then gave the sword back to me. ‘No, I can see you haven’t. Well, you have set yourself a hard task. Now strip, and we shall see what you can do.’

  By the time the gymnasion started to fill in mid-morning I was bruised and sore and sweating. Antikles had not even taken off his tunic. It was as clean as when he had arrived.

  In all the time we sparred he had hardly spoken. And yet, by his movements, he had conversed more eloquently than any words, showing me my errors, bringing forward my weak points so that it seemed I saw them clearly for the first time.

  At the end, when I lay panting in the dirt after yet another fall, he stood over me, pressed me down with his foot on my chest, pointed the blade at my throat, and said, ‘You are dead. Do you know why?’

  ‘No,’ I said, lying splayed beneath him.

  He removed his foot.

  ‘Get up.’

  I got up.

  ‘Now do you think I have nothing to teach you?’

  I shook my head. ‘I know nothing at all,’ I said bitterly. And though, before, I had exaggerated in order to persuade him, now truly it seemed to me that all the skill I had prided myself in was no more than a conceit of knowledge, if this old man three times my age could crush me so easily.

  I hung my head, then yelped and jumped back as he struck me suddenly with his cane.

  ‘Do not tell me what you know is false. You fight better than many, and you know it. But do you know why?’

  I shook my head, and then said, ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Because you are angry, that’s why. It shines in your eyes like fire.

  It gives you something others lack. But beware, young man, of anger.

  It drives you, but it may also kill you.’

  He struck me again, hard.

  ‘That is for remembrance. Now go and wash the dust from your mouth, and be here tomorrow at dawn.’

  When I returned to the house, the slave looked with alarm at my grazed arms and legs, sent for warmed water, healing herbs and a sponge; and then, while he helped me clean my wounds, told me a sailor had called that morning with a letter.

  He brought the letter. It was from Caecilius, and was a catalogue of his own concerns as dreary as if I had never gone away. He had been in Rome; he had met some rich senator who could help him; he had his eye on a new military contract in Gaul; he was planning to visit Kerkyra once more, and perhaps Patrai. At the end he reminded me to keep my eye out for opportunity: with Philip striking fear into all of Greece there would be something of advantage, and he relied on me to tell him.

  All this I read with little interest. But as I unfurled the last of the scroll a separate note dropped on the ground at my feet. I picked it up, and saw it was written in Mouse’s careful hand.

  She wrote: ‘Caecilia to her brother Marcus, my special greetings.

  The books you sent arrived. Thank you; thank you. You cannot know what joy they bring me. They sit on my table, and when I look at them I think of you so far away. Your mother is well, and sends her good wishes. The farm is as it was. So is my father. We are sad to say he will soon be leaving us once more on business. But we are confident we shall cope without him. We have assured him he must look to his business interests above all else. He says he will be in Greece. If so you may see him. Be well. Do not forget me.’

  I set the note aside. Caecilius would have read her letter before enclosing it with his, and she had written with that knowledge in mind. I smiled to myself. Her true thoughts, disguised from him, were clear enough to me, as she intended.

  Later, returning from the Lykeion, Menexenos exclaimed, ‘By Zeus, look at you! Were you set upon in the street?’

  ‘Don’t joke. It was Antikles.’

  ‘Well he knows what he’s about. I’ve been asking at the gymnasion, and everyone says so. And now I see the proof.’

  I threw him a grim smile, and rubbed at my bruises.

  In the days that followed I received many sound beatings from Antikles. Each day, when he had finished, he would say, ‘Have you had enough yet?’ and stubbornly I would say, ‘No.’

  Everything I thought I knew he managed to unravel. And yet, for all the humiliation I felt, I knew I had found the man I needed. I clung to him like a limpet, and he would have had to kill me before I admitted defeat.

  One early morning a few days later, when I arrived at our meeting place beside Wolf-Apollo, he said, ‘Let us go for a walk.’

  We took the country path out along the bubbling Eridanos, past the orchards and fields, and up the wooded slopes of Lykabettos hill.

  Antikles said, ‘Are you hurting?’

  My pride wanted to tell him no. But I had learned he had no tolerance for dishonesty of any sort, and so I answered, ‘Yes I am.’

  ‘Then good. That is as it should be. Better these bruises than death on the battlefield. Or do you disagree?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  We walked on. He had not told me where we were going, and I had not asked. But after some time we came out at a clearing, and here Antikles said we should pause.

  I glanced about. One of his lessons was that I must always be aware of what was around me. I knew by now that everything he did had purpose. I did not intend to be caught off guard.

  Beneath a twisted wild olive, half hidden in the dappled shade, was an old stone altar, crudely hewn, and behind it a little shrine to Artemis the Huntress, overgrown with honeysuckle and ivy.

  Already we had climbed a long way, and looking out over the plain I could see Athens spread below us: the agora and streets, the high-city with its temples, the Lykeion, and, further off, within the glittering stream of the Kephissos, the red tiles of the Akademy hidden among its dense-growing gardens.

  Antikles sat down, holding his cane before him. ‘We have reached a fork in the road,’ he said.

  I looked at him puzzled, wondering what I had missed; but he went on, ‘You have made yourself strong, and I commend you for it.

  You fight well, with determination and skill. I commend you for that too.’

  ‘Yet it is not enough,’ I said flatly.

  ‘For a man like you, who wants to put his hand into the fire, no.

  You cannot rely on your strength alone . . . or your anger. That path does not lead where you want to go.’

  I cried out in frustration. ‘What more is there? I have given everything I have!’

  He regarded me silently from under his heavy brows, with a calm patient expression, as if he had expected this outburst. Eventually, realizing this, I let out my breath and sat down on the grass at his feet, and waited.

  ‘I do not ask you to give,’ he said quietly. ‘I ask y
ou to see.’ He paused, then went on. ‘You are full of rage and desire. You think you can crush it, but no man has that power.’

  ‘What then?’ I said, looking up at him.

  ‘You must tame it, as the rider tames the wild horse. You must make yourself its master. You must search out what is dearest in your soul; and when you find it you must lay it bare . . . No, do not shake your head. I can see in your face that you understand. I saw it at the first. That is why I took you on.’

  I drew a long breath. Somewhere on the mountain, over the sound of the chirping cicadas, a kite screamed, lone and piercing. It screamed for me, calling from some other world. I was warm from the climb; yet I shivered.

  ‘You see into my soul,’ I said. ‘But what has this to do with sword-fighting?’

  He shifted, and looked me in the eyes. ‘Everything. It has to do with being the best. And for that you must first be master of yourself.’

  The days passed.

  When I was not occupied with Antikles, I went to the Lykeion and watched Menexenos as he trained, standing in the long colonnade with the usual crowd of spectators and suitors and passers-by.

  His diskos throw had come on well, and his running too. As for the wrestling, he said little about it. It depended, he told me, on whom he was pitted against in the contest. ‘And that,’ he said, ‘lies with the gods, if the gods concern themselves with such things.’

  It was a strange, restless time in the city, and I was glad I had my own business to concentrate upon. In the streets and the agora, everyone talked of war. Yet the days were calm, and life went on unchanged.

  Pomponius, after his initial surprise, said it would come to nothing, that Philip had taken fright and would not dare give offence to Rome. When I mentioned this to Kleinias he frowned and said, ‘Yes, yes, so everyone says; but where, then, is Philip?’ And he was right, for no one, it seemed, was able to say.

  One afternoon, when we had both finished with our training for the day, Menexenos and I went out walking, and at length we found ourselves in the Outer Kerameikos, where the old tombs are. Passing one, I paused and looked, for something about it had caught my eye.

  It was a weathered old stele with a tall white oleander growing in front, half obscuring it from the path. The paint on the sculpture was faded almost to stone, but the tale the carving told was clear. It showed two friends, their hands clasped in farewell, with a dog grieving at their feet.