Murder At The Panionic Games

by Michael B. Edwards

CHAPTER I

  The terra-cotta satyr's mask that I held jammed against my face was growing agonizingly heavy and my legs were beginning to tremble with exhaustion, as I leaped wildly around the orchestra area of the odeion. I dared not stop. I did not have to look into the theatron seats where the audience sat spellbound to feel the two sets of cold eyes, that I knew were searching continually for me. Those eyes had death burning from them.

  The other members of the chorus, all dressed as satyrs, whirled and vaulted about me in a maniacal dance, transported into ecstasy by the keening wail of the double-piped aulois, the rhythmic pounding of the skin drums, and the sting of the exarchos’ whip across their naked backs. The fronts of their loin cloths were soaked through with sweat, and the fox tails attached to the loin cloth's rear bounced and slapped against heaving buttocks and muscular thighs. Off to my left where an entrance tunnel emerged from the gloom into the orchestra, I could see the maenads chanting in time to the music, their long, flowing robes billowing about them, as they flapped and swung their arms.

  I risked a glance into the seating during one of my capers and again spotted one of the individuals searching so frantically for me. He was standing erect in a diazoma, one of the horizontal lanes separating sections of theatron seats, glaring desperately into the orchestra area at the dancers. Patrons behind him were apparently yelling at him to get out of the way. My quick look did not reveal the location of the second searcher, but if the one was there, then the other was somewhere in the audience too.

  How in Poseidon's name did the performers keep these damn masks in place during their cavorting and singing? The leering, goatlike visage stuck on the end of a rod that I held in front of my face felt like it weighed as much as a full wine jug, and I cursed as it almost slipped out of my grasp. My head pounded in time with the mad drums, and the sweat burned the chaffed skin of my wrists. Perhaps I should have thought, how in Dionysus' name did the actors do it, since this was a Dionysian ritual, but you will have to forgive me if my mind was somewhat preoccupied at the time.

  I was nearly done in, and I had to get out of there without being marked by my pursuers. If I delayed until the end of the ritual performance, they would simply wait until the odeion had emptied out and then close in on me. By that time I knew I would be truly exhausted and would not have any chance to defend myself. I was not caught up in religious ecstasy as were the other dancers. My gamboling was motivated by sheer terror, but even that cannot keep one going forever.

  I could feel that the cavorting was coming to a climax. The aulois blared louder still and the drums pounded with a feverish beat. By the gods, I could not keep it up! My legs were dying under me, and my arm keeping the mask aloft threatened to flop down at any moment. I began to edge towards the right tunnel entrance away from the wailing maenads, male actors who were doing their best to represent women intoxicated with the rapture of Dionysus, but I was blocked by a vaulting satyr in a full goatskin. It was the exarchos, the leader of the chorus, and he gestured furiously at me with his free hand to get back into the circle of dancers. He emphasized his desires by giving me a shove rearwards, and I stumbled back into the mad whirling, almost falling as my bone-weary legs tried to keep me upright. A large satyr cannoned into me. "Get back into line!" he growled under his breath, and gave me a buffet on my shoulder with a strong arm, wrenching my already sore neck. The blow propelled me back into the circle.

  It had to end soon. The dithyramb, the hymn sung in honor of Dionysus to celebrate his double birth from the maiden Semele and from the thigh of Zeus, had already been completed. This frenetic dancing was the last part of the satyric play.

  Suddenly the exarchos leaped atop the altar in the center of the orchestra area and froze in place, one arm uplifted to the heavens and the other trailing his short whip to the floor. The music crashed to a stop, one of the auloi droning on for a note too long. The satyrs all collapsed onto the sand floor of the orchestra, and the maenads stood stock still, their formerly windmilling arms hanging limp at their sides. I fell to the floor as well, a heartbeat after the rest of my fellow woodland creatures, puffing and gasping for breath like a winded long-distance runner. I eyed the theatron seats in despair and spotted the second searcher staring determinedly about the audience, peering into every corner of the structure. The first pursuer was still gazing down at the orchestra, and I could see his eyes shift from dancer to prostrate dancer.

  One of the maenads holding a kylix of wine minced over to the exarchos, who bent down from his perch on the altar and raised the cup in salute to Dionysus, the god of wine. No words were intoned, the dithyramb song being completed, but the chorus leader drained the cup and then saluted the heavens once more. Flinging the cup to the sand, he jumped down from the altar, straightened to his full length, and strode slowly and solemnly out of the orchestra to the tunnel on the right. The maenads carefully turned around, and began to exit from the left tunnel. I clambered groaning to my feet when I noticed the satyr chorus rising from the floor, and looked apprehensively up at the seats again. What I saw made my heart lurch! My mask must have slipped from directly in front of my face, because the first pursuer was pointing a long arm directly at me and signally excitedly at the second man. It was odd that the scene was accomplished all without a sound, as my hunters could not risk breaking into the final droning lines of the chorus members as we filed out of the odeion after the exiting leader.

  As I entered the tunnel my last sight of my pursuers was the two of them pushing their way determinedly down the diazoma toward my side of the theatron, evidently planning to cut me off at the end of the entryway. The audience rose to its feet in a single motion and broke into tumultuous shouts of applause or disdain for the performance as the tunnel's darkness swallowed me up.

  I am not a professional actor or dancer. Nor am I a follower of the new cult of Dionysus, which had recently wormed its way into several cities of Ionia after triumphantly moving out of its homeland in Grecian Thrace, quickly through to Boeotia, and from there to the islands of the Aegean Sea. The city-states of Ionia nestled against the eastern shore of the Aegean, and indeed, two of them, Chios and Samos, were on such islands just off the coast. The other ten partners of the Ionic League stretched from the lower border of Greek Aeolia in the north to the top edge of barbarian Caria to the south. My name is Bias, and I am a free citizen of the city-state of Priene, the most beautiful and one of most prosperous, if not the largest, of the cities of the Ionic League.

  We have the advantage of being at the end of the trade routes that wind from the great kingdom of Lydia to our east and down the majestic Maeander River to the sea. Priene and its port city of Naulochus squat on the northern end of the bay where the Maeander empties into the Aegean, while the mighty city of Miletus, greatest of all cities in the civilized world, stands guard at the bay's southern edge.

  But enough geography for now. My father must have spent many staters on various sophist teachers trying to pound the geography of the world into my thick head, but I am afraid it was never my cup of wine. I do well to remember the twelve cities of the league, much less all the lands that border Ionia. Let me see, there is Priene, Miletus,

  Ephesus, Samos, Chios, Erythrae, Colophon, Clazomenae, Teos, Myus, Lebedos, and far Phocaea to the north.

  Did I not just say enough geography? I will leave it by stating that Ionia is the finest, most civilized place in the world, and one is blessed to be a part of it. Others may not think so, but we know so and that is sufficient.

  Now, since I am neither an actor nor an devotee of Dionysus, you might legitimately ask how did I become involved as a satyric chorus member in one of the god's religious rites? A fair question, I must admit. It has nothing to do with my religious beliefs, that is for certain. As a matter of fact I am the minor priest of Poseidon

  Helikonios, the major deity of Priene, which is a position of some distinction at the religious shrine of The Panionion. This shrine is the religious and political heart of all Ionia
, and is located a few stades north of the city, separated from it by the spiny ridge of Mount Mycale, which runs like the shape of a bow from west to east. However, truth to tell, I do not owe my position of minor priest, with its Olympus-sent stipend, to my religious fervor. No, I owe it to the Herculean efforts of my father, Holicius, who was determined that his only son, me, should contribute to the family coffers from an outside source. The qualifications to be minor priest are to be a young man of a noble family, and I fit these stipulations nicely. Being born in this sunny city on the banks of the Maeander 24 summers ago and being an outwardly staunch believer in the powers of the lord Poseidon, I am amply qualified for this position. Indeed, I believe I am amply qualified to be the major priest, but the city fathers of Priene unfortunately considered one Crystheus, a pop-eyed, squeaky-voiced young aristocrat, to be more appropriate for the job. It is difficult to compete with a descendant of the one and only Aepytus, a grandson of Codrus, the last king of Athens, who founded the city of Priene during the Ionian migrations 200 years ago. But I console myself with the probability that I will be appointed in his place at the end of his three year term some 24 months from now. At least that is how it usually works.

  My potentially calamitous involvement in the satyric performance actually was partially a result of my sister's wedding, planned for the autumn month of Pynopsion and to immediately follow the festival of Apaturia. It was also due to my fortuitously having solved a murder for the city magistrates some five months before during the last magnificent Panionic Games. That murder, or actually series of murders, is a different story entirely, but it did unfortunately endow me with something of a reputation, not totally desired by me, of being a competent investigator. Or at least a lucky investigator. We do not have any police, you know, and the investigation of state crimes is considered to be just one more duty of the city magistrates. My sister, Ulania, is eighteen, and pretty enough in a mousy sort of way. In fact, mousy is a good description of her, from the light brown color of her long, straight, wispy hair to the way she tends to peer about shortsightedly, with her nose almost twitching. She has a mouselike personality also, being very quiet and observant, but intensely likable all the same. Did I mention that I am very fond of her? Well, I am. Several days before the beginning of the festival of Apaturia, I was picking wine grapes from our vineyard, which was nestled in a corner of my father's estate on the southern slope of Mount Mycale to the west of Priene. Scattered about the vines were my father, Holicius, and our two male slaves, Dryses and his son, Duryattes, all of us plucking the clusters of rich fruit from the plant stems and laying them carefully in reed baskets to be carried at intervals back to the house and deposited in a central wooden tub. It was not considered desirable for an Ionian gentleman to work at such manual labor, but the ripe grapes did not care if one was a gentleman or a slave, so here we all were. Ulania, taking a break from the myriad of household duties and simultaneous preparations for the wedding, had wandered out into the vineyard and was now staring at me in an annoyed manner, her hands on her hips.

  "Brother, you must find the time to sit with me and tell me what you know about Albiades," she stated for the third time, poking me in the side with a long finger, as I reached for a particularly large cluster of grapes. I flinched and dropped the cluster into my basket. Albiades, the son of our neighbor Mesivicus, was her betrothed, a pimply, weak-chinned, rather cross-eyed man of my own age. This worthy's father, a former city magistrate, and Holicius had agreed to the match after some months of wrangling at the end of the Panionic Games, and we had been gathering the final parts of Ulania's dowry ever since.

  "You have met him," I protested, reaching for another cluster. "What can I tell you that you do not already know? I do not know him that well."

  "Yes, I have met him twice, and only in the presence of our fathers." Her voice was as dry as the leaves that had dropped from the trees two weeks ago. "I would like to know a little more about him that just his appearance, which I admit is not Olympian in nature. I do not want to go from my home to that of a complete stranger." She sniffed and began to help me pull down a few clusters.

  "Leave the grapes alone or you will stain your hands," I said gently, pulling her away. "The wedding is only a few days hence." She stepped back and looked at me, her hands again on her hips. She was wearing a light chiton, and the warm, slight breeze through the vineyard stirred it against her legs and sandaled feet, revealing her ankles and the bottoms of her calves.

  "That is exactly what I am trying to say," she pouted, her lower lip stuck out. "I have asked you many times to tell me about him. I do not have much time left. You have at least talked with him at the baths or the gymnasium in the city!"

  I paused for a moment from my picking, and regarded her with an impatient sigh. "Very well," I concluded, noting the pleading look in her eyes. "I'll tell you what I know, which is not much." She forced a small smile at this, and we both sat down on a nearby boulder. I wiped my perspiring face with the short sleeve of my tunic, and carefully picked my words, just as if I were still picking the ripe groups of fruit. "I know that his face is not that of Adonis," I agreed, "but he is built well enough, and should be able to father fine sons. I have wrestled with him once or twice and run against him at the gymnasium, and have not beaten him by much." This was an exaggeration at best, as Albiades was skinny and tended to be an indifferent athlete, but he was a good fellow at heart and pleasant enough to be around. "He is kind and considerate to those around him, as far as I can tell," I continued. "I have never seen him strike anybody, and he does not brag about his conquests with women. At least, not to me."

  Ulania peered at me closely for a moment, and then laid a slim hand on my suntanned arm. The paleness of her hand made a sharp contrast to my bronzed skin.

  "I am afraid," she stated simply. "I will be leaving my childhood home to live in his house, and I do not know what to expect." I looked at her for a long moment. As I said, I am very fond of her, but I did not know what she wanted to hear.

  "You know that this is the way of things for a man and a woman," I answered slowly. "You will eventually be the mistress of your own home, just as Mother became the mistress of our home."

  "Do you think he can come to love me?" Her quiet question took me aback, as love was not the object of marriage in our society. The purpose of marriage was to produce plenty of sons who could help defend the city-state and just enough daughters to provide wives for other men's sons. Mind you, some husbands did eventually fall in love with their wives, just as my father had with my mother, Tesessa. She made that appear almost effortless, but I was well aware that she worked hard to maintain Holicius' devotion to her.

  "I think he is capable of doing so," I ventured. "But I think that Mother is the one to talk to on how you should go about obtaining a husband's love." Ulania twitched her nose, and smiled softly.

  "Oh, she has been lecturing me daily on how to behave, what to wear, what to say, what to cook, and a hundred other things," she revealed. "I was only asking you about Albiades himself, since mother does not know him personally." She rose from her perch on the rock, and scuffed at the earth with a small foot. "I want to be happy and desired and loved in my new home, not just the mistress of it," she said in a tiny voice. "I know I cannot expect these things, but I want my marriage to be like Mother's. Do you think it can be so?"

  "I think it is up to you," I answered honestly. "But it seems to me that if you will be Albiades' strong support in all things, he will have little cause to wander." I took her hand and stroked it absently. I did not know if my mousy sister could make a man love and desire her, but I wished it to be so, for her sake. She held for my hand for a heartbeat more, gave it a surprisingly strong squeeze, and then released it with a sigh.

  "Any other advice, older brother?" she asked lightly. I considered my next words carefully, unsure of how to say them without offending her.

  "One thing perhaps. Remember that men go to heterai, the...uh...accomplished wome
n, for a reason. It probably would not hurt the situation for you to learn a few of their...uh...techniques." I could feel my face growing red, as she stared at me with wide eyes. This certainly was not advice normally given to a sister. Ulania reached out a hand and quickly stroked my cheek.

  "Oh, I know about that," she said with a gamin's grin. "Mother's told me about those things already."