[Philocles 01] - Shadows of Athens

by J M Alvey

  As the evening arrived, I left Menkaure to escort Zosime home from the theatre. Following Hyanthidas’s directions, I found Potainos’s courtyard where his troupe of entertainers gathered before setting out for the symposium. Most were women, and I found that frankly disconcerting.

  There were eight girls, all told. They stripped off their everyday dresses and painted their faces before draping themselves in indecently flimsy fabrics pinned with gaudy brooches. None of them showed the least concern that I was seeing them naked. As they chattered and laughed I heard accents from every part of Hellas and cities far beyond. That was no surprise. No citizen woman would make her living like this, unless she was left utterly friendless and destitute.

  A generously breasted Arkadian reached into her bag for a sponge and a small oil flask shaped like an erect phallus. ‘Potainos! Will we be fucking tonight?’

  She was so matter-of-fact she could have been asking what was on the menu. Well, in a way, she was.

  Potainos was equally business-like. ‘Just a bit of cock-teasing and maybe a sticky handful.’

  I watched the girl put her sponge and flask back in her bag. I supposed that design of flask was one good way to make certain that particular oil didn’t end up in someone’s kitchen.

  ‘Just as long as the guests know that,’ one of the musicians said dourly. He was a lyre player from Crete. There were two other pipe players and one with a hand drum. They were far more interested in checking their instruments than ogling these undressed beauties.

  The lyre player caught my eye. ‘We’re not there just to play. If anyone gets rough with the girls, you get rough with them. Understand?’

  ‘Understood.’ I fervently hoped that Megakles’s guests would behave.

  Potainos brought me a long grey tunic brocaded with startling red flowers. ‘If any of the dinner guests slips you some silver when a girl puts a smile on their face, you give it to me.’ He narrowed his eyes at me. ‘Are you expecting the usual share?’

  ‘No, thanks all the same. I’m not here to cheat anyone.’ Pretending to be a musician was one thing. I drew the line at playing whoremaster.

  Potainos clicked his tongue, seeing how I was struggling to secure the pipe halter around my head. ‘Let me help you with that.’

  Hyanthidas had found me a halter with wider leather bands than usual, to obscure my face all the more. There was an extra strap over the top of the head as well. That helped secure the wig I’d begged from Sosimenes, while we were waiting to hear back from the Corinthian.

  I’d trusted the mask maker with the barest essentials of our plan, though not with everything that had led to it. Sosimenes had been happy to help and waved away any thought of payment. He’d said often enough how glad he was that Callias’s peace would save his sons from fighting in battles like the bloody clashes of his own nightmares.

  Potainos didn’t blink when he discovered the false curls hanging down over my eyes. Enough of his girls were enhancing their own tresses with flowing locks shorn from some pauper or slave, or possibly an unwary horse’s tail.

  The pipe players watched the two of us, amused. Neither of them wore a halter. Only a feeble musician would need such a thing for playing indoors. But, true to Potainos’s word, no one asked me any awkward questions.

  Once we were done, the Aitolian clapped his hands. ‘Right, let’s be off!’

  The girls hid their tantalising dresses under dowdy cloaks and we headed for Megakles’s impressive residence in the Diomea district.

  This evening the city had a very different feel. The Dionysia was over, now that Oloros’s Theseid had won the tragedy competition, though personally I think Zoilos was robbed. The festival’s closing rites were concluded and everyone would be up at first light tomorrow, getting back to work.

  As we threaded our way through the busy streets, we passed those who hired out their skills or labour heading home for a good night’s sleep. Merchants who’d be trading day-long in the agora were intent on the prospect of supper, barely sparing a glance for any passers-by. The wealthy had resumed their own entertainments. We saw another troupe of musicians heading for a private banquet, and Potainos and their leader exchanged a brief wave of acknowledgement.

  Once we arrived, we humble hirelings weren’t invited into Megakles’s private dining room. We weren’t wanted until his honoured guests had eaten their fill of exotic delicacies. So we sat in the Kerykes courtyard and watched the rich man’s slaves carry out successive tables laden with plundered dishes, empty seashells and well-gnawed bones.

  Over in the opposite portico, I saw Ambrakis, Aristarchos’s torchbearer, sitting with a handful of other tall, muscular men. These slaves were waiting to escort their masters home, so woe betide anyone prowling these streets after dark looking for well-dressed victims too drunk to fight back.

  Ambrakis was chatting with the other bodyguards and I hoped he might glean some useful information before the night was out. I avoided meeting his gaze though. We didn’t want anyone to think we knew each other.

  We were offered barley porridge. It was inadequately spiced, according to the lyre player’s whispered complaints. I hoped my refusal didn’t make me conspicuous, but I didn’t want to remove the pipe halter. Thankfully the food wasn’t nearly tempting enough to make me regret that. I barely sipped the thin, tasteless wine through the hole in my mouth strap. If I hadn’t already had good reason to dislike Megakles, such miserliness would have been enough.

  The girls didn’t care. The food and drink was free and that made up for any lack of flavour. As they ate, they speculated about the guests in the dining room. Evidently these well-born citizens would pay Potainos generously for the right to fondle and kiss the sort of women they’d sneer at in the streets.

  The dessert table was finally removed, bowls smeared with the remains of fruit in honey and dried grapes revived with aromatic wine. The girls gathered up their instruments: single pipes and light lyres. Two produced juggling balls from somewhere and the Arkadian girl fetched a set of pan pipes from beneath her stool. Standing up, they tugged open the unsewn sides of their dresses to reveal alluring skin from thigh to breast in every shade from barbarian ivory to Nubian ebony.

  A slave appeared and handed us all garlands of ivy and laurel. I reached for the bushiest one on offer and dragged it down to my ears. The more thoroughly I was disguised, the better. Another slave carried more expensive garlands fragrant with myrtle and herbs on ahead of us to the dining room. A boy followed with perfumed oils and linen napkins so the honoured guests could clean their hands before the entertainment began.

  ‘Good,’ one of the girls remarked. ‘No chance of peppered tuna sauce getting where it’s not wanted.’

  As her colleagues giggled, I hoped the pipe halter hid my blushes. The district brotherhood dinners I’m used to are clearly more sedate than these upper-class banquets.

  As we were ushered in, the diners were ready to make the first libation of the evening; taking their first and only sip of unmixed wine from the symposium cup that marked the end of the eating and the start of serious drinking.

  As Megakles piously entreated the Spirit of Holy Goodness and the cup began to circulate, Potainos gave his musicians the nod. They struck up a hymn of praise and I mimed as the girls sang. They were as good as Hyanthidas had said and I couldn’t blame Potainos for warning off an amateur like me.

  As we concluded the hymn, I studied Megakles. A man so well-fleshed could never have gone hungry. His beard barely concealed the slack flab beneath his chin, and his loose, expensively brocaded tunic didn’t do as much as he hoped to conceal the rolls of fat cascading from his chest to his belly.

  As host, he stood by his couch behind an enormous wine-mixing vessel. It was one of the fanciest styles, with high decorative handles featuring bunches of grapes. A picture of Dionysos lolling on a boat decorated the curved side. The god was eating grapes from the vines that were coiling up through the rigging while hapless sailors leapt into the sea,
to be transformed into dolphins.

  It stood twice as tall as my forearm is long, but it would have to be that big to keep every cup filled. This was quite a gathering. Not that this was a problem. Megakles’s opulent dining room was easily big enough to accommodate all his guests as well as this troupe of entertainers.

  ‘Shall we mix the wine with four measures of water or three?’ Megakles asked no one in particular. Slaves stood patiently waiting, one with the amphora of wine and one with the heavy jug of spring water. Several guests offered opinions, all men used to getting their own way.

  I reckoned that helped me identify those who wanted to get down to business before everyone got too drunk. One measure of wine to three of water would be too strong, they insisted. One to four was too weak, protested the others. I guessed they were here to be beguiled like Aristarchos.

  Megakles raised a commanding hand. ‘We will mix five of water with two of wine. No!’ He halted the slave about to slosh water into the mixing vessel. ‘How cold is that?’

  As he held up a cup for a splash of water in order to check its temperature, two of the men who’d differed on mixing the wine united in their objections to pouring the water first and then adding the wine. Others were equally vociferous, insisting it should be done the other way. Blessed Dionysos save us all from such fussiness.

  Megakles acknowledged his guests’ differing opinions with a courteous nod. ‘We will pour the wine first next time and see who can tell the difference. Now,’ he continued, finally allowing the studiously blank-faced slaves to tilt the heavy jug and the amphora, ‘who will give us the first song?’

  Four guests fancied themselves as praise singers and eagerly raised their hands. Megakles decided who should perform first and Potainos dutifully handed over his own lyre. I stood behind the other musicians and tried to look as if I was gazing at the room’s fine decor.

  It was worth admiring. The walls behind the diners’ couches were painted with fine scenes of ships at anchor in some distant island’s bays where nymphs frolicked in the surf. Twelve benches were raised up on the broad ledge that ringed the room. Each one comfortably accommodated two men reclining on plenty of cushions. Toss a few of the cushions aside and there would be room for a cuddlesome companion, if this had been an evening when the Arkadian lass would earn her silver by spreading her thighs.

  But there was no such expectation tonight. All of the benches were occupied, with no spaces left by the door to, welcome latecomers or unexpected arrivals. None of the guests had brought the courtesans so often welcome at such gatherings. This wasn’t a night to leaven the masculine atmosphere with feminine wit, or to satisfy wealthy men’s tastes for sensual pleasures and sex without the risks of robbery or disease.

  There were no younger men with perfumed curls, clean-shaven chins and no interest in public affairs, so I was glad we hadn’t pursued that notion to get me in here unrecognised. This was an evening for serious discussion among the great and the good.

  Wine circulated and everyone drank a toast to everybody else’s good health. The men who thought this was a normal banquet competed to sing their songs. They were passable performers, making it easy for Megakles and his cronies to flatter them. Finally the winner was agreed: a man who I remembered seeing in the theatre’s marble seats. He wasn’t the only guest I recognised, though I couldn’t put names to them all.

  The ones I could name convinced me we were in the right place. The man the Pargasarenes knew as Archilochos was reclining in the humblest seat, ingratiating himself with smiles to all and sundry on the other couches. A few places further along I saw the man who’d insulted me and the Carians in the agora.

  Megakles waved to Potainos, to indicate that the girls could begin dancing as he mixed another serving of wine. The Arkadian led the others into the middle of the mosaic floor. A gang of craftsman’s apprentices must have spent a month sorting those pebbles to match them so precisely by size and shades of cream and grey. Dolphins chased each other’s tails in a central medallion and octopuses writhed in the corners of the square frame of identically curling waves.

  The girls danced and entertained us with juggling and acrobatics, which gave the banquet guests a good look at their plump breasts and luscious buttocks. I stood behind the other musicians in the space where the doorway interrupted the square of couches. While I faked a tune on my pipes, I listened to the guests’ conversations.

  Pheidestratos was in the seat of honour beside Megakles, with Strato on the next couch along. The playwright had no interest in assessing the musicians for any professional purposes. He was nodding vigorously and obsequiously every time his comedy’s patron spoke to the man between them. Their target’s name was Thrasymachos. I knew him from his speeches before the People’s Assembly, vehemently contesting Pericles’s plans to use Delian League funds to rebuild our ruined city.

  Not that Thrasymachos had argued on behalf of our hard-pressed allies. He was utterly opposed to the notion that ordinary citizens should make such decisions. He believed that the people should abide by the choices made for them by the well-born and wealthy. He was soon ready to agree that these ungrateful Ionians needed showing a firm Athenian hand.

  I edged closer to the nearest couch on the other side of the doorway. Archilochos, so-called, had his back to me, reclining beside another playwright, Leukippos. He was intent on convincing the tragedian about something, though he didn’t seem to be making much progress.

  ‘Enough, Gorgias,’ Leukippos objected. ‘I’m sure the Ionians are as relieved as we are to see peace agreed, and grateful that Athenian triremes sail their waters to guarantee that tranquillity. I cannot believe that any city or island’s assembly will vote against paying the agreed tribute, whatever a few hotheads may say.’

  I stepped backwards, well satisfied. Now I had this fake Archilochos’s real name, we could ask around the agora about a man called Gorgias, with his description to confirm who we meant, who traded poetry scrolls in Ionia. It wouldn’t take us long to learn who his father had been and his voting district. How would his sworn brotherhood react, when they were told he’d been rabble-rousing among our allies, not caring if their sons went to war, so that wealthy men could get richer?

  It was clear that this gathering of noble citizens was drooling at the prospect of profits. On the couch beyond Gorgias and Leukippos, the man who’d insulted me and the Carians in the agora was all but promising fat contracts to a man called Metrobios who shared his couch. Metrobios had interests in timber, thanks to his family’s contacts in Thessally, and he owned joinery workshops in Athens.

  ‘Hoplite shields, triremes, oars.’ The speech maker threw out his lures. ‘All needed quickly and in quantity.’

  ‘You think the Council will open the Treasury’s strongboxes, Parmenides?’ Metrobios countered robustly. ‘No, some poor fools will find themselves beggared when they’re nominated to supply and outfit a trireme as their service to the city. I don’t want to draw the magistrates’ gaze when they’re looking for wealthy men to shoulder that burden.’

  ‘You can’t be asked to provide a trireme if you’re already sponsoring a play for next year’s Dionysia.’ Parmenides gestured at the playwrights in the room. ‘We have excellent connections when it comes to the theatre. You don’t imagine it’s a coincidence that one of our allies wrote a comedy this year, while another served as his patron?’

  Metrobios still wasn’t impressed. ‘Putting on a play hardly comes cheap.’

  ‘But then you need not undertake any public service, even if the magistrates pick you,’ Parmenides assured him. ‘We’ll help you make a case to nominate someone else to take on that obligation. Won’t we, Glaukias?’

  The man he appealed to was someone else I recognised, and I was sorry to see him here. Glaukias is one of the most sought-after speech writers in the agora. I had no doubt that he could get Metrobios excused such a civic duty, or anything else he asked.

  ‘Is there someone you’d like to do that particula
r disservice?’ the speech writer asked archly. ‘I can make anyone you care to nominate look as rich as Croesus while convincing everyone else that you live modestly within your means.’

  ‘Look to the future,’ Parmenides urged. ‘Once we see the Ionians condemned as Persian sympathisers, their lands will be ripe for confiscation.’

  ‘And every field and pasture will be given to the poor from Athens’ slums,’ Metrobios objected.

  ‘Not all.’ Parmenides shook his head. ‘There will be plenty left for us and our friends, to earn us rents in silver and goods.’

  ‘Not that the magistrates here will have any idea what those rents may be worth,’ Glaukias said quickly. ‘You need not fear that they’ll add it to what they know of your wealth.’

  ‘Far from it,’ Parmenides agreed. ‘Indeed, your new foreign holdings will offer a refuge for your income from Attica and any property you hold in Athens. Or you can ship your silver to one of our banks in Crete, in the care of someone you trust. No one will be able to point to your strongboxes lodged here in Athens.’

  ‘If anyone asks where your money has gone, you can say you are investing in Ionia, for the sake of future peace,’ Glaukias said, mock-piously.

  Metrobios still dug in his heels. ‘All my money could be lost if the Persians get wind of this unrest and take it seriously. What if they seize their chance to invade Hellenic lands?’

  ‘That won’t happen,’ Parmenides promised him. ‘We have agreements with satraps all along the coast. They’ll convince Artaxerxes that this is a passing storm and he’d be most unwise to try riding its currents.’

  It’s a good thing I wasn’t playing a tune. Hearing such rank treason openly admitted took my breath away.