The Isle of Stone

1.

The hill the Athenians called “the Squeezing Place” had a fine view of what was at stake in the deliberations there. Below the rock-cut dais, the Assembly of citizens packed shoulder to shoulder onto the sloping ground; when the speakers took the rostrum, the west face of the Acropolis stood on their right, the blue and dusty outlines of its temples looming against the ascending sun. To the left spread the smoky quarter of the marketplace, whose stallfronts and urinals were the usual venues for political discussion when the Assembly was not in weekly session. Under normal circumstances the city constables would have to literally rope the populace to the hill-a ship’s hawser, covered with red paint, was stretched across the square and swept in the direction of the meeting place. Anyone marked with the paint was liable for a fine if they did not turn up for their civic duty. Wise idlers learned to avoid the market altogether on Assembly days.

This morning, under dawn’s indigo skies, some twenty thousand male citizens-a fair majority of the public eligible to vote-were gathered into the confines of the sacred precinct. No one this time was filing up the slope late, and no one was smeared with red paint. In the seventh year of a conflict unprecedented in its bitterness, a war that divided the public down the middle, few wanted to miss the day’s debate. It was rumored that the Lacedaemonians had at last come to discuss peace.

In the best of times the crowd sorted itself in a patchwork of political affiliations. People from the interior of Attica separated themselves from the coastal people; rich citizens stood apart from poor ones, who were further divided into those who worked the land and those in the trades. Controversy over the war accounted for another division between those who wanted a negotiated peace and those who didn’t. The Acharnians, a nation unto themselves, formed the core of the militant bloc on the far right of the crowd.

Along the edges of the throng was perhaps the greatest concentration of genius yet known to history-Socrates, the father of philosophy, absently picking his nose; Alcibiades, the prodigy, silk-clad and hung-over; Nicias, the reluctant general, quietly hopeful for peace; the historian Thucydides, angrily scribbling notes; the dramatists Sophocles and Euripides; Aristophanes, the comedian, enjoying the spectacle of Socrates’ slovenliness. All were there; all had their views. But it would be the fools who would speak loudest that day.

The proceedings began with an invocation and sacrifice to the city gods on the altar behind the rostrum. Blood from the pigs was collected in clay pots, which were carried to the corners of the enclosure. As the crier promised the collective wrath of Athena-the-Protectoress, and of Aglauros, Hestia, Enyo, Ares Enyalios, Thallo, Auxo, Hegemone, and Herakles against anyone who spoke crookedly, the blood was poured in a ring around the assembled.

The solemnities were conducted above the buzz of conversation among the citizens, the chat of the magistrates in their front row seats, and the hawking of the bread- and cheese-sellers as they rushed to complete their sales before the blood circle was closed. The crimson trio of Spartan emissaries, grim-faced, grasping their staffs in identically diffident fashion, sat silent, making strict observance even to the rites of their enemies.

The preliminaries done, a banner of plain white was run up the staff at the crest of the hill. With this sign, the excluded part of the city’s population-that is, most of it-was made aware that debate was underway. The president of the Assembly asked the crier to recite the agenda, which had only one item that day: to hear the Lacedaemonians plead their case before the people. The motion to hear the emissaries passed by a show of hands. The herald, with the speaker’s myrtle-leaf crown on his head, rose to invite the Spartans to make their presentation.

All private chatter ceased as Isidas, son of Agesidas took the rostrum. There was a pause as he took the wreath from the herald and set it cautiously on his head, as if afraid to muss his dressed locks. The sprinkling of laughter was heard in the crowd-Lacedaemonians were well known for their vanity. Like a teacher before a class of unruly children, Isidas stood stone-faced, his staff planted on the platform, until the crowd settled. When his angular features at last cracked to speak, his voice was like the clatter of an old drum tumbling down an endless, boulder-strewn slope.

“O Athenians, we are not ones to address crowds. Those of our city, being more or less of one mind in matters as fundamental as war, have no need of such skills. Our craft is soldiering, and as such we are used to speaking plainly. We were sent here by our elders to be nothing other but plainspoken, and to give you the soldiers’ truth. Having been nominated to speak for my colleagues, I will say nothing more than what I must. My language will be simple, and the argument, by your standards, unadorned. I will not take much of your time.”

At this, Cleon, son of Cleaenetus, jerked his upper torso backward, as if struck bodily by the speaker’s absurdity. He was, as usual, in the front of the standing crowd, his bullish face marked by great, half-moon circles under his eyes. The feature made him seem perpetually exhausted, but he was in fact one of the most energetic men in Athens. As the emissary spoke, his eyes never stopped moving, flashing knowing glances at his friends, observing the mood of the crowd, regarding the Spartan up and down like some freakish spawn of Pan from the deepest backwoods of Arcadia.

“If nothing else,” Isidas went on, “we can agree together that this is an important moment in the course of the war. The truce arranged by our commanders in Pylos has held for two weeks. By its terms, the Lacedaemonians have agreed not to attack the illegal fortification your army has built in our territory. We have also restored to you, on a provisional basis, all warships that have been captured in actions around the Peloponnese. For his part, your general Demosthenes has undertaken no assault on our men on the island, and has allowed the delivery of such food, such as milled grain, as may not be stockpiled by the garrison. Apart from whatever we accomplish by this embassy, by hewing to this agreement both sides have shown themselves capable of restraint. It is our hope that the opportunity presented by these acts will not be wasted.”

Isidas’ eyes fell briefly on Nicias, son of Niceratus, who was seated on a bench before the arm of the Assembly dominated by the peace party. The latter returned his gaze, but only briefly, for his enemy Cleon employed sycophants who urged prosecutions on the basis of gestures as minor as a look. In any case, Nicias was not known for meeting the eyes of others: though he was one of city’s most talented generals, a leading citizen and natural heir to noble Pericles, he had little of his predecessor’s highborn bearing.

Since the war he had dwindled to just a gray-haired wisp of a man, his skin a cadaverous green, his gaze fugitive. The dolefulness of his temperament was legendary: several years earlier, after he returned from victory over the Megarians on the island of Minoa, Nicias moped his camp as if his father had died. After plague struck the city, he spent a considerable amount of his own wealth to rededicate the island of Delos to divine Apollo, assembling a fleet of gold-encrusted boats for the procession to the island, and raising a palm tree of solid bronze in honor of the god. Yet even as he led the splendid choruses over the water, witnesses reported that Nicias seemed spent, as if weighed down by the burden of his own benefaction. There was a similar look on his face that morning, as all the hopes of the peace party fell on his shoulders.

Isidas continued, “I have promised to speak plainly, and so I will: the goddess Fortune has done you a great favor with the entrapment of our sons. Even for men such as ourselves, who spend their lives making war, the goddess has much to do with the success of our efforts. It has been a hard lesson for us to learn this time, for we have had more than our share of her blessings in the past.

“Yet you Athenians have a decision in store that will be equally difficult: you must decide what to do with your good fortune. Yes, there will be voices among you that will urge all kinds of extravagant demands, to force a settlement favorable to yourselves that they imagine will be permanent. They will say that the Lacedaemonians are desperate, and that instead of accepting a just peace, you should take this opportunity to reach for something more. These men look at what is obvious to the rest of us-that the mighty one day may be laid low the next-and take a lesson that is directly opposite the truth. I don’t say this because I presume to lecture you on such things; I only say what even a simple soldier may understand.

“Other voices, perhaps not as seductive, certainly not as loud, will tell you that your gains must by necessity be fleeting. For this reason, this is the best possible moment to accept our invitation, and to make the kind of peace between us that will assure our joint hegemony. For when Athens and Lacedaemon work in accord, what state in Greece may stand against us?

“You may trust our word, for there is no more compelling debt than that of generosity owed an adversary who has put aside his own temporary advantage. So much the more, now that the contest has reached this point, where the end cannot be known to either of us, and no offense done by either side that yet makes peace impossible. And even as you make your advantage permanent in a more creditable form, think of the glory that will attend your name when you claim the gratitude of the Greeks for ending this war. What a lesson it would be, for the city some think the most grasping to pause here, on this precipice we all find ourselves, and redeem her reputation for wisdom!

“On the other hand, think what precedent will be set if you miss this opportunity. What lesson may the Peloponnesians take from a refusal of our offer? Grind us into the dirt, break our olive branch, and what can the Athenians expect of us when Fortune withholds her smile from you, as she inevitably will? Think hard on this when the chicken hawks come to perch on your shoulders, put their beaks to your ears, and whisper of reaching for something more. You know of whom I speak…”

At this, Cleon put his head back and gave his audience the benefit of his laughter.

“Allow us to suggest the following terms, then: the forces of both sides, and their allies, will relinquish all occupied territories. In cases over which the parties disagree, forces will remain deployed but undertake no action. All prisoners and captured ships will be repatriated without exception or condition. When these measures have been taken, the governments of our respective cities will enter into negotiation over the disposition of all remaining disputes, and over the terms of a new alliance between our two great peoples.

“That said, I feel chagrined to stand before you now. I know your Athenian speakers are capable of going on for hours, but you have already seen the extent of my skills. To those who have come for a rhetorical exhibition, I must concede defeat at the outset: they will talk rings around me. But to those who have come to decide matters of substance, consider me an ally in the common struggle, that good sense and our mutual interest may, even now, carry the day.”