“So it would seem, excellent saris,” Polydoros said. “But our words for ‘king’ are anax and, more usually, basileus. Neither of those is here.”
“No,” Mithredath said morosely. He mentally damned all the ancient Athenians to Ahriman and the House of the Lie for confusing him so. Khsrish and his courtiers would not be pleased if Mithredath had traveled so far, had spent so much gold from the King of Kings’ treasury, without finding what he had set out to find. Nothing was more dreadful for a eunuch-for anyone, but for a eunuch especially-than losing the favor of the King of Kings.
Mithredath read the translated inscription once more. “You have rendered this accurately into Aramaic?”
“As best I could, excellent saris,” Polydoros said stiffly.
“I pray your pardon, good Polydoros,” the eunuch said. “I meant no disrespect, I assure you. It’s only that there is much here I do not understand.”
“Nor I,” Polydoros said, but some of the ice was gone from his voice.
Mithredath bowed. “Thank you. Help me, then, if you will, to put together the pieces of this broken pot. What does this phrase mean: ‘it seemed good to the council and to the people’? Why does the stone carver set that down? Why should anyone care what the people think? Theirs is only to obey, after all.”
“True, excellent saris,” Polydoros said.”Your questions are all to the point. The only difficulty”-he spread his hands and smiled wryly-”is that I have no answers to them.”
Mithredath sat down on a chunk of limestone that, from its fluted side, might once have been part of a column. Weeds scratched his ankles through the straps of his sandals. A spider ran across his instep and was gone before he could swat it. In the distance he heard his servants crunching through brush. A hoopoe called its strange, trilling call. Otherwise silence ruled the dead citadel.
The eunuch rubbed his smooth chin. “How is Peiraieus ruled? Maybe that will tell me something of Athens’s ways before the Conqueror came.”
“I beg leave to doubt it, excellent saris. The city is no different from any other in the empire. The King of Kings, may Zeus and the other gods smile on him, appoints the town governor, who is responsible to the satrap. In the smaller towns the satrap makes the appointment.”
“You’re right. That doesn’t help.” Mithredath read the inscription again. By now he was getting sick of it and put the papyrus back in his lap with a petulant grunt. “ ‘The people,’ “ he repeated. “It almost sounds as if they and the council are sovereign and these men merely ministers, so to speak.”
“I can imagine a council conducting affairs, I suppose,” Polydoros said slowly, “though I doubt one could decide matters as well or as fast as a single man. But how could anyone know about what all the people of a city thought on a question? And even if for some reason the people were asked about one matter, surely no one could expect to reckon up what they thought about each of the many concerns a city has every day.”
“I was hoping you would give me a different slant on the question. Unfortunately, I think just as you do.” Mithredath sighed and heaved himself up off his makeshift seat. “I suppose all we can do now is search further and hope we find more words to help us pierce this mystery.”
The eunuch, the Hellene, and the two servants prowled the citadel for the next two days. Tishtrya almost stepped on a viper, but killed it with his stick before it could strike. Mithredath came to admire the broken statuary he kept stumbling over. It was far more restrained than the ebullient, emotional sculpture he was used to, but had a spare elegance of its own.
The searchers came across a good number of inscriptions, but none that helped unravel the riddle the first long one had posed. Most were broken or worn almost to illegibility. Twice Polydoros found the formula “it seemed good to the council and to the people.” Each time Mithredath swore in frustration because the rest of the stone was, in one case, buried beneath masonry and therefore would have taken twenty men to move, and in the other case missing altogether.
“Enough of this place,” Mithredath said on the evening of that second day. “I don’t care any longer if the answer is right under my feet. I think it would run away from me like a rabbit from a fox if I dug for it. Tomorrow we will search down below, in the marketplace. Maybe our luck will be better there.”
No one argued with him, although they all knew they had not thoroughly explored the citadel-that would be a job for months or years, not days. They rolled themselves in their blankets-no matter how hot the days were, the nights stayed chilly-and slept.
The marketplace had fewer ruins than the citadel. “How do I know this still is part of the marketplace?” Mithredath asked pointedly as he, Polydoros, and the servants picked then way along through grass, bushes, and brush. Before Polydoros could answer, the eunuch added, “Aii!” He had just kicked a large stone, with painful results.
He pushed away the brush that hid it. It was a very large stone; he felt like a idiot for not having seen it. In his anger, he bent down to push the stone over. “Wait!” Polydoros said. “It has letters on it.” He read them and began to laugh.
“What, if I may ask, strikes you funny?” Glacial dignity, Mithredath thought, was preferable to hopping up and down on one foot.
“It says, ‘I am the boundary stone of the agora,’ ‘‘ Polydoros told him.
“Oh,” the eunuch said, feeling foolish all over again.
The most prominent wrecked building was a couple of minutes’ walk north of them; its wrecked facade had eight columns, two of them still standing at their full height and supporting fragments of an architrave. “Shall we examine that first?” Polydoros asked, pointing.
Mithredath’s throbbing toes made him contrary. “No, let’s save it for last and wander about for a while. After all, it isn’t going anywhere.”
“As you wish,” Polydoros said politely. Behind them, Mithredath’s servants sighed. The eunuch pretended he had not heard.
“What’s that?” Mithredath asked a minute or so later, seeing another piece of stone poking up from out of the weeds-seeing it, thankfully, before he had a closer encounter with it.
“By the shape, it’s the base a statue once stood on,” Polydoros said. He walked over to it. “Two statues,” he amended. “I see insets carved for four feet. Ah, there’s writing on it here.” He pulled weeds aside and read, “ ‘Harmodios and Aristogeiton, those who slew the tyrant Hipparkhos.’ “
“What’s a tyrant?” Mithredath frowned at the unfamiliar word. “Some sort of legendary monster?”
“No, merely a man who ruled a city but was not of any kingly line. Many towns among the Hellenes used to have them.”
“Ah. Thank you.” Mithredath thought about that for a moment, then said incredulously, “There was in the marketplace of Athens a statue celebrating men who killed the city’s ruler?”
“So it would seem, excellent saris,” Polydoros said. “Put that way, it is surprising, is it not?”
“It’s madness,” the eunuch said, shuddering at the idea. “As well for all that Persia conquered you Yauna. Who knows what lunacy you might otherwise have loosed on the world?”
“Hmm,” was all Polydoros said to that. The Hellene jerked his chin toward the ruined building, which was now quite close. “Shall we go over to it now?”
But Mithredath reacted to the Hellenic perversity exemplified by the ruined statue base with perversity of his own: “No, we’ll go around it, see what else is here.” He knew he was being difficult, and reveled in it. What could Polydoros do about it?
Nothing, obviously. “As you wish,” the Hellene repeated. He then proceeded to skirt the ruins by an even larger margin than Mithredath would have chosen. Take that, the eunuch thought. Smiling behind Polydoros’ back, he followed him north and west.
Still, enough was enough. “I’m certain this isn’t the marketplace anymore,” Mithredath said when the Hellene had led him almost all the way to Athens’ overthrown gates.
“No, I suppose
not,” Polydoros admitted. “Are you ready to head back now?”
“More than ready.” Mithredath caught Polydoros’ eye. They grinned at each other, both of them a little sheepish. Mithredath glanced at his servants. They did not seem amused, and knew better than to seem annoyed.
Something crunched under the eunuch’s foot. Curious, he bent down. Then, more curious, he showed Polydoros what he had found. “What’s this?”
“An ostrakon-a potsherd,” Polydoros amended, remembering to put the Yauna word into Aramaic.
“I knew that,” Mithredath said impatiently. “I’ve stepped on enough of them these past few days. But what’s this written on it?”
‘‘Hmm?” Polydoros took a closer look. “A name- Themistokles, son of Neokles.” “Why write on a potsherd?”
“Cheaper than papyrus.” Polydoros shrugged. “People are always breaking pots and always have sherds around.”
“Why just a name, then? Why not some message to go with it?”
“Excellent saris, I have no idea.”
“Hrmp,” Mithredath said. He took another step and heard another crunch. He was not especially surprised to find another potsherd under his foot; as Polydoros had said, people were always breaking pots. He was surprised, though, to find he had stepped on two sherds in a row with writing on them. He handed the second piece of broken pottery to Polydoros and pointed at the letters.
“Themistokles, Neokles’ son, again,” the Hellene said.
“That’s all?” Mithredath asked. Polydoros dipped his head to show it was. The eunuch gave him a quizzical look. “Good Polydoros, why write just a man’s name-just his name, mind you, nothing else-on two different pieces of broken pottery? If one makes no sense, does twice somehow?”
“Not to me, excellent saris.” Polydoros shifted his feet like a schoolboy caught in some mischief by his master. This time his sandal crunched on something. Mithredath felt a certain sense of inevitability as Polydoros looked at the sherd, found writing on it, and read, “Themistokles, son of Neokles.”
The eunuch put hands on hips. “Just how many of these things are there?” He turned to his servants. “Tear out some brush here. My curiosity has the better of me. Let’s see how many sherds we can turn up.”
The look Raga and Tishtrya exchanged was eloquent. Like any master with good sense, Mithredath pretended not to see it. The servants bent and began uprooting shrubs and weeds. They moved at first with the resigned slowness servants always used on unwelcome tasks, but then even they began to show some interest as sherd followed sherd in quick succession.
“Themistokles, Neokles’ son,” Polydoros read again and again, and then once, to vary the monotony, “Themistokles of the district Phrearrios.” He turned to Mithredath and raised an eyebrow. “I think we may assume this to be the same man referred to by the rest of the sherds.”
“Er, yes.” Mithredath watched the pile of potsherds grow by Polydoros’ feet. He began to feel like a sorcerer whose spell had proved stronger than he had expected.
His servants had speculations of their own. “Who d’you suppose this Themis-whatever was?” Tishtrya asked Raga as they worked together to uproot a particularly stubborn plant.
“Probably a he-whore putting his name about so he’d have plenty of trade,” Raga panted. Mithredath, listening, did not dismiss the idea out of hand. It made more sense than anything he’d been able to think of.
“Themistokles, son of Neokles,” Polydoros said almost an hour later. He put down another sherd. “That makes, ah, ninety-two.”
“Enough.” Mithredath threw his hands in the air. “At this rate we could go on all summer. I think there are more important things to do.”
“Like the ruin, for example?” Polydoros asked slyly.
“Well, now that you mention it, yes,” Mithredath said with such grace as he could muster. He kicked a foot toward the pile of potsherds. “We’ll leave this rubbish here. I see no use for it but to prove how strange the men of Athens were, and it would glorify neither Khsrish the Conqueror nor through him our Khsrish IV, may Ahura Mazda make long his reign, to say he overcame a race of madmen.”
The eunuch’s servants laughed at that: they were Persians, too. Polydoros managed a lopsided smile. He was on the quiet side as the four men made their way back to the ruined building in the marketplace.
Once they were there, the Hellene quickly regained his good spirits, for he found he had a chance to gloat. “This building is called the Stoa Basileios,” he said, pointing to letters carved on an overthrown piece of frieze. “The Royal Portico. If we wanted to learn of kings, we should have come here first.”
Chagrin and excitement warred in Mithredath. Excitement won. “Good Polydoros, you were right. Find me here, if you can, a list of the kings of Athens. The last one, surely, will be the man Khsrish overcame.” Which will mean, he added to himself, that I can get out of these ruins and this whole backward satrapy.
Seized perhaps by some of that same hope, Raga and Tishtrya searched the ruins with three times the energy they had shown hunting for potsherds. Stones untouched since the Persian sack save by wind, rain, and scurrying mice went crashing over as the servants scoured the area for more bits of writing.
Mithredath found the first new inscription himself, but already had learned not to be overwhelmed by an idle wall scratching.
All the same, he called Polydoros over. “ ‘Phrynikhos thinks Aiskhylos is beautiful,’ “ the Hellene read dutifully.
“About what I expected, but one never knows.” Mithredath nodded and went on looking. He had been gelded just before puberty; feeling desire was as alien to him as Athens’s battered rocky landscape. He knew he would never understand what drove this Phrynikhos to declare his lust for the pretty boy. Lust-other men’s lust-was just something he had used to advance himself, back when he was young enough to trade on it. Once in a while, abstractly, he wondered what it was like.
Raga let out a shout that drove all such useless fancies from his mind. “Here’s a big flat stone covered with letters!” Everyone came rushing over to see. The servant went on. “I saw this wasn’t one stone here but two, the white one covering the gray. So I used my staff to lever the white one off, and look!” He was as proud as if he’d done the writing himself.
Mithredath plunged pen into ink and readied his papyrus. “What does it say?” he asked Polydoros.
The Hellene plucked nervously at his beard and looked from the inscription to Mithredath and back again. The eunuch’s impatient glare finally made him start to talk: “ ‘It seemed good to the council and to the people-’ “
“What!” Mithredath jumped as if a wasp had stung him. “More nonsense about council and people? Where is the list of kings? In Ahura Mazda’s name, where if not by the Royal Portico?”
“I would not know that, excellent saris,” Polydoros said stiffly. “If I may, though, I suggest you hear me out as I read. This stone bears on your quest, I assure you.”
“Very well.” It wasn’t very well, but there was nothing Mithredath could do about it. Grouchily, he composed himself to listen.
“ ‘It seemed good to the council and to the people,’ “ Polydoros resumed, “ ‘with the tribe of Oineis presiding, Phainippos serving as chairman, Aristomenes as secretary, Kleisthenes proposed these things concerning ostrakismos-’ “
“What in Ahriman’s name is ostrakismos?” Mithredath asked.
“Something pertaining to ostraka-potsherds. I don’t know how to put it into Aramaic any more precisely than that, excellent saris; I’m sorry. But the words on the stone explain it better than I could in any case, if you’ll let me go on.”
Mithredath nodded. “Thank you, excellent saris,” Polydoros said. “Where was I? Oh, yes: ‘Concerning ostrakismos: Each year, when the sixth tribe presides, let the people decide if they wish to hold an ostrakophoria.’ ‘‘ Seeing Mithredath roll his eyes, Polydoros explained, “That means a meeting to which potsherds are carried.”
“I
presume this is leading somewhere,” the eunuch said heavily.
“I believe so, yes.” Polydoros gave his attention back to the inscribed stone. “ ‘Let the ostrakophoria be held if more of the people are counted to favor it than to oppose. If at the ostrakophoria more than six thousand potsherds are counted, let him whose name appears on the largest number of ostraka leave Athens within ten days for ten years, suffering no loss of property in the interim. May there be good fortune to the people of Athens from this.’ “
“Exiled by potsherds?” Mithredath said as his pen scratched across the sheet of papyrus. “Even for Yauna, that strikes me as preposterous.” Then he and Polydoros looked first at each other, then back the way they had come. “Raga! Tishtrya! Go gather up the sherds we were looking at. I think we may have a need for them, after all.” The servants trotted off.
“I also think we may,” Polydoros said. “Let me read on: ‘Those who have been ordained to leave the city: in the year when Ankises was arkhon-’ “
“Arkhon?” Mithredath asked.
“Some officer or other.” Polydoros shrugged. “It means ‘leader’ or ‘ruler,’ but if a man only held the post a year, it can hardly have been important, can it?”
“I suppose not. Go on.”
“ ‘In the year when Ankises was arkhon, Hipparkhos, son of Kharmos; in the year when Telesinos was arkhon, Megakles, son of Hippokrates; in the year when Kritias was arkhon-’ “ The Hellene broke off. “No one was exiled that year, it seems. In the next, when Philokrates was arkhon, Xanthippos, son of Ariphron, was exiled, then no one again, and then-” He paused for effect. “-Themistokles, son of Neokles.”
“Well, well.” Mithredath scribbled furiously, pausing only to shake his head in wonder. “The people really did make these choices, then, without a king to guide them.”
“So it would seem, excellent saris.”
“How strange. Did the ostrakismos”-Mithredath stumbled over the Yauna word, but neither Aramaic nor Persian had an equivalent-”fall upon anyone else?”
Departures Page 3