Marathon: Freedom or Death

13

It was bound to happen. I may have been foolish enough to imagine that Darius would forget Athens, or that his reach wasn’t long enough to punish the one Greek state powerful enough to contest with him — but I was wrong. Darius never forgot Athens, and as the dead of Lade rotted on the sea floor and the timbers of broken ships washed ashore to become firewood, as a year passed, and another, and Artaphernes sought to heal the wounds Datis had caused and return his satrapy to peace and prosperity, so Datis, ever eager for power and the praise of his uncle, raised ships and soldiers for a new expedition. His intention was to do to Athens what he perceived Athens had done to Sardis — to sack the Acropolis and burn her temples.

For whatever reason, Datis bragged of his intentions. So when ships docked at Ephesus and Tyre, and on the blackened quay where men were rebuilding Miletus, they saw the evidence of the gathering of a mighty fleet, and they heard tell of a regiment of Sakai, the bronze-clad heavy archers from the steppes of Colchis, and two regiments of Medes, marching all the way from Persepolis to bolster the Lydians and Carians in Datis’s army.

I will digress here to say that I have always thought that Datis planned to take Sardis for himself, and then to knock Darius from his throne and make himself King of Kings. Such has always been the Persian way — the war among the strong makes the winner stronger still. Not unlike the Greek way, come to think of it. Very like the competition to be first man in Athens, if you ask me.

Miltiades told me of the Sakai and the Medes while lying at my side, eating figs. ‘Paramanos brought me that titbit,’ he said, ‘from a messenger who came over the passes from our friend the Jew of Sardis.’

I admit that even there, in the safety of Attica, far from Sardis, I felt a frisson of fear. ‘So Datis is really coming,’ I asked. And I thought of Artaphernes — and Briseis.

As if my thought could be translated into concrete reality, Miltiades put a small ivory tube in my hand. ‘Another friend sent me this,’ he said. ‘Datis really is coming.’

I opened the tube and took out a scroll, and my heart hammered in my chest. For the first time in days I forgot Euphoria, her father, my farm and my forge. In my hand was a slip of paper in Briseis’s handwriting.

Datis sails after the great feast of Artemis. 660 ships, 12,000 men.

Tell Doru that I live and so does my brother.

Tell him that our Heraclitus took his life after Lade.

I couldn’t breathe. ‘I thought her brother was dead too,’ Miltiades said. ‘Now he commands ships in the Great King’s fleet. He is becoming a great man, among the Greeks who serve Persia.’

I barely paid him a thought. ‘Heraclitus is dead,’ I said. I wept.

But in my head, I rejoiced, because Briseis was not dead, and she had written to me.

‘He is.’ Miltiades rolled on his back, drank wine from the kylix that was circulating and flipped the lees across the room, where they rang on the rim of one of my bronze water urns. He cared little for Heraclitus, or any philosophy. ‘If they come,’ he asked carefully, ‘can Athens count on Plataea?’

Suddenly, his addition to my hunting party was put in perspective. But he had, at least, waited two days to ask his question.

A hush fell over our part of the party, and I could see Aristides, who lay with Sophanes, lean towards me, the better to hear me.

I laughed grimly. ‘Unlike Athens,’ I said, ‘Plataea is a democracy. We would have to vote to stand with you against the Medes.’ Then, seeing their faces, I shook my head. ‘You know we will stand with you. Plataea exists because Athens stands ready to march on Thebes. We are not ingrates.’

Aristides rolled off his couch and clapped my shoulder. ‘I told you he was a man of honour,’ he said. Perhaps not his best-thought-out compliment.

Miltiades looked serious. ‘This won’t be about honour,’ he said. ‘This will be about survival.’ He looked at me seriously. ‘Forget Briseis, boy. She is not for you. Marry this girl, have strong sons and help me save Greece. That is your fate.’

Just for a moment, I hated him. Then I caught sight of Euphoria at her loom. She was chatting with Lykon — but she flashed me a smile.

In telling of politics, I threaten to forget Euphoria, which is unfair to her. She adorned some dinners, and played the kithara for us, and she and Pen and Leda sang together. I still remember them, their heads together, singing the Paean of Apollo in a way that haunted me, their high voices like the Muses themselves, and I mean no hubris, one voice brushing lightly on another in the heart of the music.

And there was a small feast — I think it was a local peasant feast, for Pan, who is a peasant god from the old days and almost unknown here. In normal times, I don’t think the household would have been allowed a feast, but with so many important guests — and more came in, including Themistocles, of all men!

He took my hand and embraced me. ‘Well met, Plataean,’ he said.

I considered a sharp reply — but again, the dignity of my elders restrained me. So I returned his embrace and we were reconciled.

Aleitus gathered his people and took us all on a cold picnic to the shrine of Pan in the hills, fifteen stades away.

The festival was a small thing, and had never seen so many rich, famous men. But Miltiades refused to allow the ‘big men’ to wreck it. This is where his touch was gold. He threw himself into dances and drank harsh new red wine with shepherds and farmers, and Aristides and Themistocles had no choice but to join him. I think they were better for it.

We sacrificed a bull to Pan, the richest sacrifice any man there could remember, and we added a hundred voices to the hymns. As darkness fell we gathered wood for a bonfire that was the largest I think I ever saw, because after a week of agon, manly competition, even gathering firewood was something at which every man sought to excel. The farmers and peasants laughed to be waited on by Euphoria and Penelope and Leda and half a dozen other gentlewomen.

When the dancing started, it was clear that on this hilltop the women danced with the men, and Aleitus allowed it, and so our maidens and matrons joined the ring of women, and we saw them dance — a rare sight in those days and rarer today. I remember spinning Euphoria in the middle of the circle when it was my turn, and her face grinning up into mine. And when the men and women went off into the dark, I envied them. I tried to kiss her at the edge of the fire, and she laughed and slipped under my arm and vanished. A few moments later, she was with Pen and Leda, giggling. Pen waved at me — and I could not take offence. Aristocrats’ daughters do not lose their virginity on the cold grass.

Briseis would have, though.

While I was thinking on Euphoria and Briseis — their similarities and differences — Miltiades came up and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Marry her quick, before she sees how old and ugly you are,’ he said.

I tried to smile, but I couldn’t. She was talking to Lykon, who was, I fear, both younger and prettier than me. But even as my heart began to grow warm, Lykon pointed at me across the fire — and when his gaze met mine, he smiled.

I smiled back. Hard to be jealous of a boy so open-hearted as to plead your suit for you. Which I still think he might have been doing.

‘Cleitus has gone into exile,’ Miltiades said.

‘That sounds good,’ I said. My thoughts were elsewhere.

‘Not for you, Plataean. He swore at the Temple of Athena to have your head. I have witnesses. He went into voluntary exile to have a freer hand in arranging his revenge and my downfall. He’s hiring mercenaries from all over Greece — masterless men and wandering warriors.’

I laughed. I could deal with Cleitus much more easily than I could deal with Euphoria. The firelight played on her golden hair and turned it orange, and now she and Pen and Leda were dancing together, a woman’s dance that moved the hips and shoulders. Euphoria swayed her hips in a way that suggested there was fire in her, and I had to look away. My eyes met Miltiades’.

He shook his head in mock disbelief. ‘You’ve got it bad, Doru.’

I shrugged. I didn’t see any point in denying it, as my eyes had already gone back to her.

Lykon was watching her, too.

‘Cleitus means to kill you,’ Miltiades said.

I shrugged again. ‘He’s welcome to try.’

‘Your arrogance borders on hubris, lad.’ Miltiades put an arm around my shoulder. ‘I think one of the reasons I’ve always loved you is that you remind me so much of me,’ he said, with a little self-mockery. He held out a skin of resinated wine, and I took a healthy pull. ‘He won’t come at you for single combat. He’ll come with a hundred men.’

Just then, watching Lykon devour Euphoria with his eyes, and watching her shy return of his attentions, I would happily have fought all hundred as a demonstration sport, as men sometimes fought duels at the Olympics. ‘Into Plataea?’ I asked, thinking about it. ‘What, from Thebes?’

‘Or from the sea,’ Miltiades answered. ‘It’s only forty stades.’

I nodded, sobered. And as I considered how to defend myself from that whoreson Cleitus, Euphoria linked arms with the other girls and, hands high, they began to sway — all their hips shot out together, like married women in the Dionysian dances, and they dissolved into giggles — and then across the fire, her eyes locked with mine.

She didn’t look away, and I could have stared at her for ever just then. One lock of her bright gold hair was loose, and it trailed away on the wind of the fire, and her face was the face of a goddess. A golden-haired goddess.

Aristides and Sophanes pushed forward through the throng to stand with Miltiades and me.

‘Now, this is a party!’ Sophanes shouted. He was just twenty, I think, and he’d fought well on the Lade campaign, of course. He was newly married and in love with all the world. ‘I wish my wife was here,’ he added. ‘I’d carry her off into the dark like a satyr.’

‘And she’d tell you that she was too cold for love,’ Miltiades said.

‘Not my wife,’ Sophanes said. ‘I keep her warm.’

Aristides put his hand on my arm and looked at Miltiades. ‘You warned him?’ he said.

‘I did,’ the big man answered. ‘And he laughed it off. Love has obscured his fine sense of danger.’

Aristides shook his head. ‘If the Medes come in the spring,’ he said, ‘you and your Plataeans will matter very much to us. This is more than friendship. Watch yourself.’

Euphoria had disappeared into the darkness.

‘If Cleitus comes at me in Plataea, I’ll make a drinking cup of his skull,’ I said.

Aristides choked on his wine.

‘That’s my boy,’ Miltiasay that a spirit of cooperation sweptdes said.

Euphoria never burned my heart like Briseis — but suddenly she was in it. So on the last day, I went to her father, bowed and asked for her hand.

Behind me stood Miltiades and Aristides, Alcaeus, Antigonus, Philip and Themistocles and a dozen other gentlemen.

He looked around at them before he met my eye. ‘I suspect it would be political death for me to refuse you,’ he said. And he smiled, and I thought that, despite our first brushes, we might grow to be friends. ‘But I swore to Artemis when her mother was dying that I would allow her a choice in the matter of her husband. Shall I send for her?’

Suddenly, I found myself nervous — I who had cleared the deck of a Phoenician trireme by myself. My heart beat the way it does just before I enter a fight, and I wanted to get away.

Euphoria came down to the courtyard surrounded by the other girls. Pen led her down the steps and Leda was hard at her heels. But they weren’t giggling or playing. They were solemn, and Pen wouldn’t meet my eye.

It was the dirty hands that did it, I realized. She didn’t want a low-born smith who would soil her weaving. She wanted someone like Aristides, who could stand in the front rank when required, but otherwise kept his hands clean.

It was rather like a lost battle. Once I saw how doomed my case was, my calm returned and I determined — because I liked her very well — to bear her refusal with a good grace.

She walked up to me, eyes downcast, her blonde hair piled artlessly on her head and neck. Her simple wool chiton was woven from wool that probably came from their own sheep, and it showed off her figure — her slim, slightly rounded waist and her wide hips and straight back. Few women have dignity at fourteen. Euphoria had it. She came up close to me, and only then did I realize how much shorter than me she was — by a head or more. She gave the impression of height with her dignity and carriage.

I expected her eyes to flick to Lykon, but they did not. They stayed firmly fixed on the ground in front of her.

‘Lovely maiden,’ I said. I managed a smile. ‘You would make me the happiest of men if you would consent to be my bride. Yet,’ I added, to soften the blow, ‘I live in far-off Boeotia, on a farm, and I hammer bronze for my bread, and no one will understand better than me if you choose to stay closer to hearth and home.’

Then she raised her eyes — a pale blue, like good steel. And she smiled, a sort of half-smile as if she was about to laugh — at herself. ‘My loom will be as comfortable by your forge as it would be in any house in Attica, I expect,’ she said.

Pen was grinning.

I didn’t understand, and in my confusion, I tried to think of something noble or witty to say, to turn aside my disappointment. I’ve been told twenty times by friends that I had never looked like such a fool in all my life, and that what I said was ‘Huh?’

She laughed aloud, a real laugh, such as maidens usually hide, so that her belly moved and her breasts rose and fell under the bindings of her chiton.

‘Yes!’ Pen said to me, poking me in the side. ‘She said yes!’

She said yes?

It took me a long time to understand. Not until I had digested her agreement did I understand how important it had become to me that she had said yes. In the time it takes Zeus to throw a bolt to earth, at the whim of a maiden, my life changed.