Marathon: Freedom or Death

10

Even back then, before we fought the Medes, the theatre of Athens was a famous thing, and much talked of throughout the Greek world. Technically, I wasn’t welcome at the performances, as I was a foreigner, but again, before the performances were moved out of the Agora, everyone went — slaves and free men and citizens and even a few women — bolder spirits or prostitutes.

Athenian prostitutes aren’t like the poor tribal girls in this town, thugater. Do I shock you, blushing maiden? What I mean is that in Athens, slave and free, man and woman, prostitutes have several protections before the law and, in an odd way, status. A few are even citizens. In those days, they strolled around the agora openly, made sacrifices — at least barley-cake sacrifices — at the public altars, and performed their services to the community behind the Royal Stoa. Not that I have any direct knowledge. .

It is also important to remember that theatre performances went on all day, not in the evening, and that one play followed another in fairly short order, interspersed with prayers and sacrifice at the public altars — don’t forget that in those days, the drama was still a religious expression, and a symbol of civic piety. Men went soberly, as if to temple. When the satyr plays were introduced, to celebrate the god’s love of revelry, that was different, although still pious. An initiate of Dionysus is still pious while puking, we used to say. And worse.

I stayed with Aristides the night before. He planned to make a tour of his farms before going to the Agora, so I rose early and walked through the deserted streets with Styges by my side. Both of us were heavily armed, and I had bandages on my left arm and all down my right leg where I’d cut it leaping from roof to roof.

We walked across the Agora, past the still-empty wooden theatre and the altars of the twelve gods, right around behind the Royal Stoa. There, while girls and boys plied a brisk trade against the wall of the old building despite the early hour, I found Agios and Paramanos and Cleon.

‘Ready?’ I asked.

They all nodded. Cleon was sober. ‘Have you got Phrynichus?’ he asked.

‘I have him. Styges goes straight from here to watch him. You make sure we don’t have a surprise during the performance.’

We shook hands all around and they walked off down the hill. I stood alone, watching them go, surrounded by the urgent noises of men having a quick tumble or getting their flutes played on the day of the festival — many men thought it was good luck to couple on the wine god’s day.

Then I gathered my wits and headed back to Aristides. I made it in time to eat a crust of bread in his kitchen with his wife and two of his boarhounds, and then I borrowed a horse and accompanied him around his farms, with Aeschylus the playwright at my left side and Sophanes on my right. Aristides mocked us for nursemaiding him. For my part, I had come to enjoy his company as a philosopher, and I was afraid that by the end of the day we would no longer be friends. But I had no intention of letting him be attacked when my own plan was so close to fruition.

We had just completed a tour of grain barns — Aristides was a wealthy man, for all his pretended humility — and we were riding down a road with steep property walls on either side when I saw a group of men on foot coming the other way — a dozen men, and many with cudgels.

‘Back, my lord,’ I said, turning my horse.

‘Nonsense,’ Aristides said. ‘That’s Themistocles. No friend of mine, but hardly an enemy.’

Which shows what a foreigner I was — he was one of the best-known orators in Athens, even then. And I’d never seen him.

Themistocles was another minor aristocrat, but by dint of constant public speaking and a good deal of political strategy, he had made himself the head of the Demos party — the popular party, or the party of the lower classes. In those days, such a role was considered a threat by all the other aristocrats. The path to tyranny usually lay through the control of the masses. Only the lower-class voters could form armed mobs big enough to force the middle class into accepting a tyranny.

I think I should say at this point how I think Athens worked then. Now, to be sure, nothing I’m going to say bears any resemblance to what Solon wanted for Athens, or even what the Pisistratid tyrants wanted. This is merely my observation on what actually happened.

There was Athens — the richest city in mainland Greece. Sparta may or may not be more powerful, but no one on earth would willingly buy a Spartan pot. Eh? The poor bastards don’t even make their own armour.

All Athenians — or at least, all rich Athenians of good birth — seemed to be locked in a contest for power. An Athenian would put this differently, and prate about arete and service to the state. Hmm. Listen, children — most of them would have sold their mothers to become tyrant.

So, for those locked in the great games there were three roads to power — although each road had some side turnings and branches. A rich man might follow the path of arete, spending his money wisely on monuments at home and at Olympia or Delphi, competing in games and putting up teams of chariot horses, paying for triremes for the state, sponsoring religious festivals — all as part of a slow rise to public esteem. In this way, and by using public honours to promote his own followers, a man might build a gigantic faction that would allow him to leap to the tyranny. The Pisistratids had done it, making themselves tyrants. And the Alcmaeonids were on the same path, and Cleitus, in particular, exemplified the path of arete.

That said, I have to add that there was a deep division among the old aristocrats. On the one hand, there were the eupatridae, or well-born, descended from the gods and heroes, like the Pisistratids and the Philaids, Miltiades’ family. On the other hand, there were the new men, the new families — all still aristocrats, but ‘recently’ ennobled by wealth and political position. The first of these families were the dreaded Alcmaeonids, whose famous ancestor, Alcmaeon, was enriched in Lydia by Croesus. There were other families of ‘new men’, and while at times the new men and the old families acted together — as aristocrats — to protect wealth and privilege, at other times they were at daggers drawn.

Then again, a man like Themistocles could choose a different path. He was born to comfort, and his father, Neocles, was reckoned rich enough, but he was not well-born by any means. However, by making himself the hero of the masses, the voice of the oppressed, the hand of justice to the lower classes, Themistocles harnessed the largely unvoiced power of the disenfranchised and the under-enfranchised, and turned them into a powerful force that could, on occasion, defeat the middle class and the upper class and demand power for their chosen orator. For all that the Pisistratids were wealthy aristocrats, they had always held the love of the demos — the people. And remember, odd as it sounds, in a well-run tyranny, the poor men had the most power.

Finally, a man such as Miltiades might find a third path. Miltiades and his father were members of one of the oldest and richest of the eupatridae families, but they rose to power and wealth through overseas adventures — piracy, in fact. Through military action, sometimes in the name of Athens and sometimes in their own name, they accrued wealth by something like theft, and enriched other men who then became their followers and dependants, allowing them to attract a following in all three classes — and allowing them to build up a massive military force that neither of the other two systems ever created. If we had won at Lade, Miltiades might well have been tyrant of Athens. He’d have had the money, and the military power. That’s the real reason Cleitus hated him.

Let me add that, however cynical I am, and was, about the striving of these men for power, I will testify before the gods that Aristides, for all his priggishness, never had any end in view other than the good of Athens. His party, if you can call it that, his faction existed only to support the rule of law and prevent any of the others from rising to tyranny. So let us say that there was a fourth faction — a faction of men who followed the path of arete with no end in view but the good of their city.

Naturally, that fourth party was the smallest.

So, I had fallen into the middle of the competition, and now I was sitting on my horse, blocking the narrow lane, as Themistocles and a dozen club-armed thugs surged towards us.

‘Chairete!’ Aristides called.

Themistocles was a handsome man, tall, well-built, with broad shoulders and long legs and a full beard like a fisherman. He had a sort of bluff, hail-fellow-well-met humour that made men like him. He stepped forward, but I’d have known him anyway, as he was a head taller than his followers and the best man among them. He looked like a good man in a fight.

‘Aristides! A pleasure to meet an honest man, even if he is mounted on a horse!’ His horse comment was meant to remind his own people that he, Themistocles, was walking, not riding.

Aristides nodded. ‘I’m doing the rounds of my farms. Are you to be at the festival today?’

Themistocles leaned on his stick. ‘Love of the gods and love of the people go hand in hand, Aristides.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I see we might make common cause, as we all seem to be sporting some token from the Alcmaeonids!’ He pointed at the bump on his head and his black eye — to Aristides’ injuries, and my bandages. Then he turned to me and, with an exaggerated manner, said, ‘You must be the foreigner from Plataea, sir.’

Clearly he knew exactly who I was.

I slid from my mount and took his hand in the Athenian way. ‘Arimnestos of Plataea at your service,’ I said.

He nodded, glanced at Aristides, then back at me, and I thought he might let go of my hand. ‘I have heard. . things about you.’ He looked at one of his men. ‘Recently.’

I smiled. ‘Nothing that might disconcert you, I hope?’

Themistocles considered me, and then looked up at Aristides. He was finding, as men have found since the invention of the horse, that it is much easier to stare a man down than to stare him up. ‘Your foreign flunky is making trouble among my people,’ he said to Aristides.

Aristides shrugged. ‘The Plataean is no man’s flunky, Themistocles. And just as he is not my flunky, so they are not your people.’

‘Don’t be a stiff-necked prig,’ Themistocles said, all the oil leaving his voice. He leaned closer. ‘Your man has tried to buy my mob. We should be acting together these days, not making separate efforts. And the mob is mine, sir.’

Aristides looked at me, and I couldn’t read what he was thinking. ‘Is this true?’ he asked.

I smiled. ‘No,’ I said.

‘You lie,’ Themistocles spat.

Aristides pushed his horse between us. ‘Themistocles, I have warned you before that utterances of this sort will not win you friends.’

‘Get your money out of town, foreigner,’ Themistocles shot at me. ‘No one buys mobs without my say-so.’ That last was directed at Aristides, not me.

I stepped towards him and his people began to close around me. ‘I am Arimnestos of Plataea,’ I called out. ‘And if one of you lays a hand on me, I’ll start killing you.’ I looked around at them, and they desisted. The man closest to me was a big man, but when his eyes met mine, he stepped back and gave me a smile.

I was the Arimnestos the man-killer.

Aristides looked pleased, which puzzled me.

‘I mean no disrespect,’ I said to Themistocles. I wanted no trouble with the demagogue. ‘What I have paid for will only benefit you.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’ he asked.

Aristides was watching me. I shrugged. ‘I would not tell every man on this road,’ I said. ‘Nor have I bought a mob. I have bought information, and I paid well.’

‘What kind of information?’ Themistocles demanded.

‘Information regarding my court case, of course,’ I said.

This satisfied him immediately. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘A certain slave in the brothels, I gather?’ he said, looking knowing and yet deeply concerned. The only sign of his hypocrisy was the speed of his direction changes.

‘Exactly!’ I proclaimed, as if stunned by his perspicacity.

He dropped me as if our business was done, then he and Aristides exchanged a commonplace or two and we passed through his retinue. When I glanced back, Themistocles was smiling at me. Aristides was not.

‘What are you up to?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said. I smiled at him. ‘Nothing that would interest you, sir.’

He rubbed his beard. ‘You’ve got Themistocles riled, and that’s never a good thing.’ He reined his horse. ‘You know what you are doing? You’re sure?’

I shrugged, because I wasn’t at all sure that I knew what I was doing. ‘I’m fighting back,’ I said.

‘Gods stand by us,’ Aristides said.

When the sun was high, we left our horses at his stables and walked into the city together. Men were gathered everywhere, and I was reminded of Athens’s power by seeing how many men she commanded. There must have been twelve thousand men of fighting age in the Agora for the performances, and that is a fair number of decently trained men — a greater total than Thebes and Sparta together, and therein lies the secret of Athens’s strength. Manpower.

When Athenians gather, they talk. It seems to be the lifeblood of the city, and they talk of everything from the power of the gods to the roles of men, the rights of men, the place of taxes, the weather, the crops, the fish — and back to the gods. Standing with Aristides in the Agora, trying to guard him, I was dizzied by the power of the ideas expressed — piety and impiety, anger and logic, farming advice, military strategy — all in a matter of a few minutes.

We were all crushed together when the magistrates went to the public altar of Zeus near the Royal Stoa and made the opening sacrifices. Then the ‘good men’, the athletes, the Olympic victors, the poets, the priests and high aristocrats, processed to the wooden seats that had been arranged — pray, don’t imagine anything elegant or splendid like modern Athens, honey. We’re talking about wooden stands that creaked when too many fat men climbed the steps! But after some time, the crowd settled, and the poor metics and foreigners and lower-class citizens pushed in around the sides and in the space between the stage area and the stands.

Early on, I spotted Cleitus. He was wearing a magnificent embroidered himation over a long chiton of Persian work, and he was easy to pick out, as he was sitting in the first row of the stand.

A set of priests and priestesses came forward, purified the crowd and made sacrifices. Then we all sang a hymn to Dionysus together and the plays began.

I don’t remember much about the first play — just that it was a typically reverent piece about the birth and nurture of the god. At least, according to an Athenian. We have our own ideas about Great Bacchus in Boeotia. But the second play was Phrynichus’s.

I saw him as soon as the chorus came out. He was behind them, wearing a long white chiton like the one that the archon in Plataea wears, and he looked more scared than he had been when the Aegyptians were storming our deck at Lade.

I began to push through the crowd towards him. It was not easy — everyone had heard that The Fall of Miletus was a different kind of play, and men wanted to see the poet, to watch him as they watched his play. I had managed to get close to him when the chorus, dressed as skeletons in armour, linked arms and sang:

Hear me, Muses! What I tell,

Is wrought with horror, and yet heroes walked there, too!

And where our fair maidens once walked,

Fire has swept like the harrow,

Breaking the clods of dirt, and making the ground smooth.

Hear me, furies! And men of Athens!

We died on our walls, in our streets, in the breach,

Where the Great King’s siege mound rose.

So that, where once our maidens for their young swains sighed,

Those same young men wore bronze, and for the

Want of Athens, there we died.

I’ve heard Aeschylus, and I’ve heard young Euripides. But for power, give me Phrynichus. And he was actually at the battle — well, Aeschylus and his brother were there, too. Aeschylus was also next to me as I came up to Phrynichus, pushing rudely through the crowd. He took my shoulder.

‘Not now,’ he said, pointing to Phrynichus, who was watching his chorus exactly as Agios watched his oarsmen in a sea-fight.

So I stopped and listened. I had been there, of course — and yet I was enraptured by his words. He laid the blame for the fall of the east on Athens. That was the point of his play — that the rape of Ionia was caused by the greed of Athens. Yes, he made Miltiades a hero — and that must have sat ill with some — but the greatest hero was Istes, and he towers over the play like Heracles come to earth.

It was frightening to listen to a man speak words I had spoken in council. And there was the man playing Miltiades — not that he was named, for in those days, that might have been considered impiety — and he stood forth and said:

Today, we are not pirates. Today, we fight for the freedom of the Greeks, although we are far from home and hearth.

And men cheered. Cleitus looked around. He was angry — doubly angry, I think. His men should have made a disturbance by then, shouldn’t they?

Hah! I’m keeping my plan from you children. It helps build the story, does it not? But not many men can say that in one day they bested Cleitus of the Alcmaeonids and Themistocles of Athens in a contest of wits. Let me tell it my own way.

The play was only halfway through when the first man in the crowd gave way to tears. And by the time Istes died (in the play, he asks ‘Where is Athens?’ as he falls to his death), men were weeping, some were pouring dust on their heads and the whole row of Alcmaeonids were looking uneasy under all that dignity and good breeding.

It was a mighty play.

And then there was my contribution.

Not long after Istes’ death, when the angry crowd was to understand that the maidens of Miletus were being ravished offstage by the Persian archers, I saw a man come to Cleitus. His face was broad and puffy — or did I imagine that? And when he whispered into his master’s ear, Cleitus flushed red and stood up.

We were separated by ten horse-lengths, but the gods meant him to know. I caught his eye. And I smiled.

Whatever the news was, it passed from man to man along the Alcmaeonid family seats. Several of them pointed at me.

Aeschylus watched them, and then Sophanes pushed up next to me.

‘What have you done?’ he asked.

‘An act of piety and justice,’ I said quietly.

I wasn’t there to see it, but Cleon told the tale well. This is what happened.

In a south-side brothel owned by the Alcmaeonids, a group of oarsmen swaggered in demanding wine — no uncommon thing during the feast of Dionysus. But when they had their wine, they demanded to see all the girls, and having chosen one, they beat the owner and his bruisers to death with their fists. Four men died. The girl they took away with them.

Oh, it’s a nasty business, children.

Out by the tanneries, a small crowd descended on a taverna known to be owned by one of the gangs of toughs who ‘organized’ things in the town. They pulled four men out of the taverna and stabbed them to death. The four men were literally cut to ribbons.

Up on the hill by the Acropolis, another pair of bruisers were caught by a small mob and cudgelled to death. Sailors were blamed.

But the worst atrocity, in the eyes of the ‘good men’, was that someone — or some group of men — invaded one of the largest Alcmaeonid farms. In fact, it was Cleitus’s home farm. His workers were badly beaten, and every horse in his barns was killed, throats cut with knives. Every horse.

Not everything I planned came off. I had wanted my own horse back, but the men who were sent to the farm misunderstood, and my nice mare died with all their stock. I hadn’t meant so many men to die — ten is a big body count for a peaceable city — but when you make soup, the vegetables are best cut small.

I did what had to be done. I wanted the Alcmaeonids to be struck with terror. I didn’t want them to consider fighting back.

I couldn’t be certain what the consequences of my little gambit would be. And perhaps the consequences would have been less, if not for Phrynichus’s play.

Cleitus had meant for the play to be cancelled, or if not cancelled, he’d planned a disturbance in the Agora that would have forced the magistrates to take action. That’s what should have happened, but his bruisers were cooling corpses by then, their shades already far on the road to Hades. I’d paid another crowd of oarsmen and their friends to attend the play. I packed the crowd to get it cheering, but that was unnecessary, and I regret that I thought so little of Phrynichus. I didn’t pay them to attack the Alcmaeonids. That happened all by itself.

The end of the play set off a convulsion of sorrow and regret. Phrynichus’s words brought home to the mass of men what the fall of Miletus had meant — and what role they had played, or not played. Never once had he named the Alcmaeonids, or spoken harshly of the power of Persian gold — but when men dried their eyes after the last speech, a demand by a Persian general that all Greeks submit or share the fate of Miletus, the crowd turned on the Alcmaeonids like wild dogs.

They were pelted with filth, and their retainers were beaten. At first, men were restrained, both by the prestige of the aristocrats and by fear of their bruisers — but there were no bruisers in evidence.

Then some of the oarsmen grew bolder and pressed forward.

But the aristocrats weren’t cowards — far from it. These were the leaders of Athens, and swords appeared, despite the law. Commoners were cut down.

The area behind the stands was now enveloped in the chaos of a formless fight. I pushed my way there, past men trying to join the fight and others attempting to flee it. I wanted Cleitus — I wanted to see his face.

Instead, I saw Themistocles. He was grinning from ear to ear, and yet he was struggling to restrain some thetes who had cudgels and were trying to finish off a fallen man.

Themistocles shook his head at me. ‘You see what you’ve done?’ he roared — not that he was displeased.

I pushed past him, looking for Cleitus. I took a blow on the shoulder and I wondered if the Alcmaeonids would be finished off right here in a massacre by the Royal Stoa, but the crowd wanted more and less than blood, and already the older aristocrats were clear of the crowd. And running. A sight that the demos never forgot.

Cleitus was holding the crowd back with a dozen armed men. The thetes feared his sword and his ability to use it.

I didn’t. I pushed forward through the last edge of lower-class men, and I laughed at him.

As if by prompt on the stage, Paramanos appeared with my slave girl in tow. Her eyes widened when she saw me — until then, as I later heard, she’d assumed the worst. If there can be worse than working in a brothel in Athens.

I grabbed her hand and she came with me.

‘I have back what is mine,’ I called to Cleitus.

‘You’re a dead man,’ he roared at me.

And then he ran, pursued by the sound of my laughter.

I gave her her freedom, as I had promised. It was a year or more late, and I paid her the best damages I could, hard silver for her lost year. She was never again the open-faced, friendly companion of our first weeks together. The gods had used her and cast her away, and I had forgotten her, who had sworn to save her. It’s not a pretty story. How many men did she service in the Agora because I was heartsick?

But we made the Athenian aristocrats pay. No Alcmaeonid dared come into the streets for weeks thereafter, and my court case was won by the absence of my opponent, and the unanimity of the jury was a sign of the collapse of aristocratic power. Miltiades argued my case with a deep voice and an unworried countenance, because he knew he was going to win — both as my proxenos and in his own case. No jury in Athens would convict Miltiades of anything after Phrynichus’s play. And the Alcmaeonid political machine died with their handlers. I’m afraid I taught the Athenians a terrible lesson, and they still fear the demos.

But I smile to think that Phrynichus and I saved Athenian democracy from the Alcmaeonids so that the man who wanted to be tyrant could save it from the Medes. The gods — who is so foolish as to not believe in the gods? — work in the strangest ways.

Aristides was distant for the next week, until my case was resolved. He was no fool, and he knew where the muscle had come from, and so did Themistocles. I went back to staying with Phrynichus, who was now deluged with money and offers of more from admirers as distant as Hieron of Syracuse.

Phrynichus knew I’d done something, but I never let on exactly what — and yet, by having Agios and Paramanos and Black and Cleon for dinner every night, Phrynichus became untouchable. We kept fifty oarsmen in the streets around his house at all hours, on Miltiades’ money.

But on the day that Miltiades was released — the jury refused to hear the charges read, which had precedent in Athenian law, and seemed to satisfy everyone — I met him and Aristides together with Themistocles. We met as if by chance in a wine shop at the edge of the Agora, where well-to-do men used to cement business deals.

Themistocles didn’t meet my eye. Miltiades, on the other hand, rose to his feet and embraced me.

‘Money well spent,’ he said. ‘Pardon my doubts of you, friend. I will always be in your debt.’ He gave me a broad wink. ‘I don’t think these other gentlemen liked their taste of your politics.’

Themistocles spat. ‘I do not want to live in a state powered by blood,’ he said.

‘And yet you seek increased power for the lowest class,’ Miltiades answered. ‘What do you expect?’

Themistocles glared at me. ‘I expect them to learn to be men of honour, and to stand in their places and vote — not cudgel each other like thieves.’

But Aristides shocked me. He took my hand and embraced me. ‘I thought to hate you,’ he said. ‘I considered asking for a writ of banishment against you.’

Themistocles looked at him as if the gods had taken his wits. ‘But you did not?’

Aristides shook his head and sat. ‘Drink wine with us, Arimnestos,’ he said. ‘I invited Cleitus to join us, but he declined. I wanted all the factions.’ He almost smirked. ‘Perhaps their faction isn’t worth having today.’

‘They’ll be back,’ I said.

‘So they will,’ Aristides agreed. ‘But no amount of Persian gold will buy them the mob now.’

‘And for that, you forgive this foreigner who used violence to achieve his ends?’ Themistocles asked.

Aristides shrugged. ‘In former times, when a city had reached a point of stasis — civil war — the leading men would invite a foreigner, a lawmaker, to come and save them.’ Aristides smiled. ‘My wife told me that I was being a fool, and that I should see the Plataean as a man who came to Athens and restored order.’

I looked around at all of them. ‘You see me as a killer of men,’ I said. ‘But I was trained by Heraclitus of Ephesus, and I know a little of how cities work. Athens has too many poor, and too few rich, for the rich to control the poor with fear and silver. Too many of Athens’s poor are seamen and oarsmen. They’re not cowards, as all of us around this table have cause to know. And they have no reason to love Persia.’ I shrugged.

‘I know all that,’ Themistocles said. ‘I don’t need some eastern-trained foreigner to tell me.’

‘You know it all,’ Aristides said, ‘but despite that, you did not act.’ He turned to me and smiled. ‘I prefer the rule of law, Plataean.’

‘I am a man of property, too,’ I said. ‘Not as rich as you lot, but I have a good farm, a forge, horses. I, too, treasure the rule of law. But when one side controls the laws, the other side must appeal to another court.’

Aristides nodded. ‘We all wish to ask you to leave the city now.’

I smiled. ‘You are going to run me out of town after all?’

Aristides nodded. ‘We have to. You killed ten men — and most citizens know how. You will be welcomed back soon enough.’

I rose to my feet. ‘Gentlemen, I have fought for Athens, bled for Athens and now I have schemed for Athens. The depth of your thanks never ceases to amaze me.’

Aristides shook his head. ‘Don’t be like that, Arimnestos. If you were one of us, we would all now fear your power. Since you are an ally, we can ask you to leave, and trust you again in the future.’ He said this as if it made sense, and in a way it did. But I was hurt, too. I had planned a brilliant campaign, and the only person who thanked me was Irene, wife of Phrynichus.

‘What can we do for you, Arimnestos?’ Miltiades asked.

I had the good grace to laugh. ‘Nothing, unless it is to make sure that Phrynichus doesn’t starve while you all plot the future of Athens.’ And then I had a thought. ‘Perhaps I will have something after all. I have in my hand a set of manumission papers for a slave girl. They’ve all been signed by a magistrate — how about if you all sign them?’

Her name, it appeared on the tablets, was Apollonasia — quite a mouthful for a twist-foot slave girl from Boeotia, but Apollo’s daughter she certainly was. And all three of them — the three most famous men of their generation — put their stamps and their names across the magistrate’s mark on her tablets.

It was the best gift I could give her. I went and fetched her, and introduced her — her eyes cast modestly down — and each swore that they would remember her.

She walked with us, out of the city. I stopped on the Acropolis hill to say farewell to Phrynichus, and I stopped in Piraeus to say farewell to Agios and Paramanos, and I stopped at Eleusis to say farewell to Eumenios, who I’d barely seen, because in Attica, eighty stades is reckoned a great distance. Cleon came with me, of course. And on our last night in Attica, at Oinoe, where my brother died, she came into my blankets, and kissed me.

‘I’m going in the morning,’ she said. ‘I’ll be a farmer’s wife in Attica, and my sight tells me I will see you again. I was a vessel to lead you, and now I am free.’

I murmured something, because I was hard as rock and wanted to have her, and I didn’t need any of her moon-gazing female nonsense just then, but she bit my shoulder hard to get my attention.

‘You owe me,’ she said. ‘Give me a child of yours, or I’ll curse you. Again.’

So I did.

In the morning, she was gone. I did hear of her again, and I know who she married and who our child grew to be, as you’ll hear eventually, if you all keep sitting here.

But I’ll say this of her in eulogy. She was a hero, as much as Eumeles of Euboea or Aristides. She was a vessel for the gods, and she stood her ground, and when they treated her like shit, she did not become shit. Eh?

I can never lose the notion that if I had gone back for her, the Greeks might have won at Lade. Foolishness. But I still carry the guilt for leaving her to bloody Cleitus for a year.

And he didn’t send her to a brothel because he was evil, either. That’s what you do with a club-footed chattel with good breasts, if she has no skills. Right?

I’m an old man and I have few regrets, but she is one. And when she lay with me that night and took my seed — I felt better. I won’t say otherwise. Much better.

When I awoke in the first light, she was gone, but sitting on my leather bag, where her dark head had lain just hours before, was a great black raven. It cawed once, and the beat of its wings frightened me, and then it rose into the sky with a cry.

I lay still with my heart beating hard, and my body felt lighter. Indeed, when I rose from my blankets, my hip and lower leg hurt less — much less. I’ve never run the stade since Lade, but from that moment I got something back. Something more than mere muscle and tissue.