Marathon: Freedom or Death

2

The law of Athens is a complex, dangerous monster, and no foreigner like myself could possibly master it. I stood there with my mouth agape, like a fool, and the smith came to my rescue.

‘Says who?’ he asked. ‘I haven’t missed an assembly since the feast of Dionysus, and no one has voted a capital charge.’

The Alcmaeonid shrugged. ‘You don’t look like the kind of fellow to vote on the hill,’ he said casually. What he meant was that iron-smiths didn’t get invited to join the Areopagitica, the council of elders, mostly old aristocrats, who ran the murder trials. I think my smith might have let it go, except that this Cleitus was such an arrogant sod that he gave offence by breathing.

‘I don’t have to be a sodding aristo to know the law,’ the smith said. ‘Where’d the charge come from?’

‘None of your business,’ Cleitus said. He reached for my chlamys. ‘Best come along, boy.’

Some men claim that the gods play no role in human affairs. Such statements always make me laugh. Cleitus and I have crossed wits — and swords — often enough. He’s as wily as Odysseus and as strong as Heracles, but on that day he couldn’t spare the time to calm the ruffled plumage of an iron-smith. What might have happened if he had?

The smith stepped around the counter of his shop with a speed that belied his bulk. ‘Where’s your wand, then?’ he asked.

Cleitus shrugged. ‘With my men, in the Agora.’

‘Better go and get it, rich boy,’ the smith said. ‘Hey, sons of Hephaestus!’ he called. ‘Down your tools and come!’

Cleitus rallied his wits instantly. ‘Now — master smith, no need for that. I’ll get my wand. But this man is a killer!’

‘A killer of Athens’s enemies,’ I said. A good shot — and it went right into the bullseye. ‘Not an unlawful killer.’

By then, there were fifty apprentices looking for a fight, and a dozen smiths, and every hand held a hammer. Cleitus looked around. ‘I’ll be back with my men,’ he said.

‘Bring your staff of warrant, or don’t bother,’ my new friend the smith called. Then he turned to me. ‘Tell me your tale, and make it swift. Men are missing work.’

So I told him. I left nothing out — not even the dimple I’d left in my helmet.

He sent an apprentice for Aristides.

I sat on a folding stool that was provided for me — fine ironwork, and very elegant — and began to breathe more easily.

And then I heard the screams. There were a fair number of screams in Athens — high-pitched, often in fun, sometimes in earnest. But by the third scream, I realized that this was my slave girl. I rose to my feet.

My smith looked at me. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘That’s my slave,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘I’ve pledged my people to this,’ he said. ‘You aren’t going anywhere.’

‘I’ve made her an oath to free her,’ I said. ‘Send a boy — send a pair of men with hammers. Please. I ask you.’

He spat orders at a couple of shop boys — big ones — and they hurried out of the door.

‘Arimnestos, eh?’ he asked. ‘I’ve heard of you. Killer of men, right enough. Thought you’d be bigger.’

I tried to sit still. The screams had stopped. Time passed.

More time passed.

Finally, the boys came back.

‘Cleitus has left the market,’ the bigger of the two said. ‘He’s got your horse and your girl. He talked a lot of crap about what you took from his brother. Did you kill his brother, mister?’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, and I felt tired. Did I say I loved Athens? Athens makes me tired. They have a great many rules. ‘Can he really take these things from me?’ I asked the smith.

He shrugged. ‘Alcmaeonids do what they like,’ he said. ‘Most commoners won’t even try to stand against them.’ He grinned. ‘Lucky you’re a smith.’

‘He’s no smith,’ said a voice behind my chair, and there was Athens’s leading pillar of justice, the greatest prig ever to lead warriors in the field. A man so driven by fairness that he had no space left for ambition.

I embraced him anyway, because I loved him, despite the fact we had nothing in common. It was Aristides. He was still tall, lanky, graceful like a man who’s had the best training the drachma can buy all his life.

‘I gather you’ve turned to crime,’ he said. I like to think it was a rare show of humour, and not a statement of fact.

‘Not true, my lord. This scion of the Alcmaeonids was killed by a man in my service — at a shrine, for impiety. I’ve given orders for his body and his armour to be brought here, and all his possessions that weren’t looted by his own servants. They will be here in a matter of days.’ I shrugged. ‘I am a man of property, not a freebooter, my lord.’

Aristides nodded solemnly. ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’

‘He’s a smith, right enough,’ the iron-smith said. ‘He knows the signs.’

Aristides looked at me under his bushy eyebrows. ‘Always more to you than meets the eye, young man. So you are a smith?’ Young man, he called me. He was less than ten years my senior. But he had the dignity of an old man.

‘A bronze-smith,’ I said. ‘And a farmer now. My property brought me three hundred medimnoi this autumn.’

Aristides laughed. ‘I never expected you to rise to the hippeis class,’ he said.

‘I’m not sure that I still qualify,’ I returned. ‘The Alcmaeonids just stole my best horse and my slave girl.’

Aristides’ smile was wiped off his face. ‘Really?’

Smiths and apprentices pressed around him, each telling his own version of the story.

‘Come to my house,’ Aristides said. ‘I’ll send to the council and announce that I have you in my custody and that I’ll represent you at the trial. Then everything will be legal.’

‘What about my horse?’ I asked. ‘And my girl?’

He didn’t answer.

I shook hands with every smith who had aided me, thanked them all and walked off into the evening with Aristides and a dozen young men he had about him — all armed with heavy staves, I noticed. When we were clear of the industrial quarter, Aristides wrinkled his nose.

‘I’ve seen you in the storm of bronze, Plataean. You are a man of worth. How do you stand the stink of all that commerce?’ He didn’t slacken his step, and he was a tall man.

I shrugged. ‘Money smells the same, whether earned at the point of the spear or in the sweat of a shop,’ I said.

Aristides shook his head. ‘But without virtue. Without glory.’

‘You’re arguing with the wrong man,’ I answered. ‘My master taught me that “War is the king and master of all, some men it makes lords, and others it makes slaves.”’ I laughed, and then my laughter stopped. ‘What’s happening here? Your lads are all armed, and those Alcmaeonids were out for my blood.’

‘Later,’ he said.

We walked around the steep hill, its rock worn smooth from hundreds of men climbing to the top, where criminal trials were held, and then past the slums on the east side and back up a big road, the road to the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion. The moon was up by the time we came to a big gate.

‘My farm,’ Aristides said with pride. ‘I don’t sleep in the city any more. I expect I’ll be exiled soon, if not killed.’ He said it with the flat certainty you hear from a veteran on the night before he takes his death blow.

‘You? Exiled?’ I shook my head. ‘Five years ago you were the golden boy of Athens.’

‘I still am,’ he said. ‘Men think I seek to be tyrant, when in fact I seek only to provide justice — even to your friends the smiths.’

‘There are noble men — men of worth — even in the forges and the potters’ shops,’ I insisted.

‘Of course! Democracy wouldn’t function if there were not. But they keep trying to insist on increased political rights, when any thinking man knows that only a man of property can control a city. We’re the only ones with the training. That smith could no more vote on the Areopagitica than I could dish a helmet.’

Aristides shed his chlamys and chiton, and I noted he was still in top fighting trim. As we talked, slaves attended us. I was stripped, oiled and dressed in a better garment than I’d worn since my last bout of piracy — all while listening to Aristides.

‘Helmets are raised, not dished,’ I said.

‘Just my point,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘Allow me to disagree with my host,’ I said.

He smiled politely.

‘Perhaps it is that the perfection of any trade — war, sculpture, poetry, iron-smithing, even tanning or shoe-making — provides a man with the tools of mind to allow a mature man to take an active part in politics,’ I said.

He rubbed his chin. ‘Well put. And not an argument I’d heard put in exactly that way before. But you are not proposing that all men are equal?’

I sneered. ‘I’ve stood in the haze of Ares too often to think that, my lord.’

He nodded. ‘Just so. But an equality of excellence? I must say that I admire the notion. But that equates politics and war, which are noble pursuits, with ironwork and trade, which are not.’

I took wine from a woman who had to be his wife. I bowed deeply, and she smiled.

‘Arguing with my husband?’ she said. ‘A waste of breath, unless it’s about the running of this house, and then he loses all interest. You are Arimnestos of Plataea?’ She had gold pins in her chiton and her hair was piled on her head like a mountain. She was not beautiful, but her face radiated intelligence. Athena might have looked so, if she were to dress as a matron.

‘I am he, despoina.’ I bowed again.

‘Somehow, from my husband’s stories, I thought you might be bigger. On the other hand, you’re as beautiful as a god, which he somehow forgot to mention. Every slave girl in the house will be at your door. I’ll just go and lock them away, lest we have a plague of the nine-months sickness in my house, eh?’ She smiled.

‘Women are not allowed in the assembly,’ Aristides said, ‘because if they were, we’d be left with nothing to do but move heavy objects. This is my dear wife Jocasta.’

She twirled her keys on her girdle and stepped out of the room.

‘Tell me your notion then,’ Aristides said. ‘You speak well, and men seldom face me in debate.’

I shrugged. ‘I am as outmatched as a boy with a stave would be against me in the phalanx, lord. But, as you are so polite as to hear me out. . You assume that war and politics are noble. You assume that they are ends to themselves. But you cannot make war without spears, and we have no spears without iron-smiths.’

‘My point exactly — the iron-smith is less noble than the warrior because his craft is subordinate.’ Aristides smiled as he made his point — his kill-shot, he thought.

‘But my lord, if you will accept my expertise,’ I said carefully, because I did not want to anger him, ‘war is a terrible end unto itself. I have made more war than you, although I am younger. War is a terrible thing.’

‘But without it, we could not be free,’ Aristides said.

‘Ah, so freedom is the higher goal.’ I smiled. Aristides frowned, and then he grinned.

‘By the gods,’ he said, ‘if all smiths were like you, I’d replace the council of elders with smiths tonight!’

I shrugged, and then met his grin. ‘Remember, lord, I was the pupil of Heraclitus.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, in truth, you are an aristocrat — as you were educated as one!’

‘While being a slave,’ I added. And drank my wine.

But Aristides did not laugh. ‘This is no matter for light talk,’ he said. ‘Athens is an experiment — an experiment that may mean life or death to her. We’re attempting to push responsibility for the city down — as far down as we feel that free men have the power to think and vote. The further down we push these rights, the more fools we must tolerate-’

‘And the more shields you have in the phalanx,’ I said.

‘And the harder it is for the Pisistratids or the Alcmaeonids to restore the tyranny,’ he countered.

‘Is that what this is about?’ I asked. ‘The tyranny of Athens? Again?’ I’d had four summers of listening to Miltiades plot to take the city. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine why any of them wanted it.

Aristides nodded. He sat down. ‘The Medes are coming,’ he said.

That was news, and no mistake. I sat on a couch. ‘When?’

‘I have no idea, but the city is arming and preparing. You know we are at war with Aegina?’ he asked.

I shrugged. Athens and Aegina and Corinth ruled the waves — so of course they were not friends.

‘It’s not much of a war, but we’re using it as an excuse to arm. The Great King is coming. He’s appointed a satrap of Thrace — of Thrace, by the gods, on our very doorstep! Datis is his name, or so we’re told. We’re to be the target as soon as Miletus falls.’

I started. ‘Miletus falls?’ I asked.

‘Every man in Athens — every political man,’ Aristides corrected himself, ignoring my interest in Miletus, ‘is gathering a retinue. Many — I name no names — have pledged themselves to the Great King.’ He shrugged. ‘Both factions are gathering warriors — citizens and noncitizens.’

I put my wine cup down and laughed aloud. ‘You — are allied with Miltiades.’

‘Well might you laugh,’ Aristides grumbled. ‘He would be tyrant here, if he could. Only men like me stand between him and power. But he can’t abide the Persians and he’s in the field fighting, while we sit here.’

‘Piracy for his own profit, you mean,’ I said. ‘I served with him for four years, my lord. And I might serve him again. But it is not the greater good of Athens that drives Miltiades to battle. More likely, it is his attacks on the Great King’s shipping that have brought the Medes down on Athens.’

‘Politics,’ Aristides said, ignoring me again. He held up his cup to a slave for a refill, and I was annoyed that his slave got a glance and a smile, whereas I was merely a sounding board. ‘Doubtless some busy plotter among the Alcmaeonids thought to hire your men for their side and leave you powerless — thinking that otherwise your men would serve me or Miltiades.’

I snorted with disgust. ‘I was at home in Boeotia, tilling my fields,’ I said. ‘Please do not take it ill, my lord, but I care very little who is lording it in mighty Athens, so long as my bills are paid and my barns are full.’

‘You disappoint me,’ Aristides said.

I shrugged. ‘You have seen a couple of handsome boys wrestling by a public fountain?’

Aristides nodded.

‘Because there are young girls around the fountain?’ I went on.

He laughed. ‘Yes. Every day.’

‘Ever notice that the girls don’t even glance at the boys? Because such posturing bores them silly. Eh?’ Now we were laughing together.

‘Of course. You have the right of it, my well-spoken friend.’ Aristides glanced away, at Jocasta, and they shared such a smile. It was a pleasure to see them together.

‘Well then. We Plataeans are the girls by the fountain. Come back and talk to us when you have learned to listen and to play tricks that please us. Until then, you and Miltiades and all these Pisistratids and Alcmaeonids are just boys wrestling by the fountain.’ I chuckled.

‘Who made you so wise?’ he asked.

I laughed. ‘A generation of girls at fountains in Ephesus,’ I said. ‘Now, how do I get my horse and my slave girl back?’

Aristides shook his head. ‘Ask after the trial,’ he said.

I coughed. ‘Trial? My trial? When is that? I thought you’d fixed that for me?’

He shook his head. ‘The law is the only glue that binds Athens,’ he said. ‘You will have a trial. I’ll be your speaker.’

‘When?’ I asked again.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said.

The idea of a trial drove news about Miltiades and the siege of Miletus out of my head.

In Athens, a foreigner cannot speak or defend himself at a trial of any kind. Without a ‘friend’, a proxenos, to represent him, a foreigner, even if he’s a metic who lives in the city and has a trade and serves in the phalanx, cannot utter a word in his own defence.

Actually, I approve of this law. Why let foreigners speak in your assembly? A pox on them. All they’ll do is stir up trouble.

Aristides walked with me as far as the first public fountain. ‘You are not permitted to speak,’ he said. ‘But that changes very little. You can still smile, and frown, and raise your eyebrows — you can control your emotions or give them free rein. Men know who you are — and if they didn’t yesterday, they will by this morning. The jurors will watch you. Comport yourself like a man. Ask yourself — what would Achilles do?’

I laughed. ‘Sulk in his camp until provoked, and then kill anyone who offended him.’

Aristides frowned. ‘The law is not a matter for levity. I must leave you — I have stops to make, and men to see. Be on the hill of the Areopagus by the middle of the day.’ He handed me a three-leaf wooden tablet with wax pages. ‘Keep this by you,’ he said. ‘I’ve written out the charges and your counter-charges, just in case another man has to speak for you. And I want you to understand. We’re suing young Cleitus for the civil loss of your chattels — that is, the girl and the horse. Of the two, the horse is by far the most valuable — and will, I think, trip young Cleitus up handily at the trial. Understand?’

I read the tablet quickly. The writing was tiny and precise, but I am a literate man — I was taught my letters early.

‘Will the trials go on at the same time?’ I asked.

‘Zeus! You know nothing of our laws. No. Your trial is for the murder of a citizen. That will be tried by the Areopagitica — the elders of the city. Friends of the Alcmaeonids, every man. In fact, more than half of them are Alcmaeonids.’ He nodded gravely. ‘The civil trials will be held when the roster allows — probably early in the spring. We’ll need a jury of at least four hundred.’

I swallowed some rage. ‘Spring? I promised that girl her freedom.’

Aristides shrugged. ‘I doubt you’ll ever see her again, frankly. I’ll see to it that you receive chattel of equal value.’

I shook my head. ‘Aristides, I trust you. But I will have that girl back, and I will free her. I swore it. It may seem a little thing to you-’

He shook his head in turn. ‘No — oaths to the gods are weighty matters, and you are a pious man. I apologize. I will do my best. But if they cannot kill you, these men will seek to hurt you — even your woman and your horse.’

I spat. ‘This is your democracy? Aristocrats hitting out at better men through their chattels?’

He went down into the Agora with the rest of his followers, leaving me two young men with staves: Sophanes, who already had a name as a warrior, and Glaucon, his friend. They were both aristocrats, both followers of Aristides and both very serious. They wanted me to tell them about Miltiades.

‘I want a good krater to take home,’ I said, ignoring them and shrugging off my rage. I put the tablet into the back-fold of my chiton — a beautiful garment of natural wool. ‘Something with a hero on it. Will you take me to the potters’ quarter?’

I had an errand on the way, and so I walked them down past the cemetery and took them to visit Cleon, my hoplite-class friend from my first campaign.

He met me in his doorway, and he barked like a dog, howled and threw his arms around me. Sophanes and Glaucon watched wideeyed as we drank a shared cup of wine — terrible wine — and traded tales.

‘You, Sophanes,’ he said, ‘you have the name of an athlete. Do you know that this big lummox charged the Persians single-handed at the Pass of Sardis?’ Cleon was proud to know me, proud to show me off to passers-by.

I shrugged. ‘Eualcidas of Euboea led the way, and there were ten of us.’

Cleon laughed. ‘It froze my fucking blood just to watch, by Aphrodite’s burning cunt.’ His face was red, and I thought that he’d had too much wine already. ‘You look rich and pampered,’ he went on.

I thought he looked like a broken man. ‘How are things with you?’ I asked. He had told me that his house was smaller than the stern- gallery on a trireme, and I could see it was true.

‘My wife died,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘And both of my children. Apollo sent some affliction, and they were gone in a week.’ He looked at the floor. Then he straightened his spine. ‘Anyway, how are you? Famous, I note.’

Talk of my fame made me nervous.

‘I’m here because Idomeneus killed one of the Alcmaeonids,’ I said, to cover the pain in his eyes with facts. Men do these things. Men are cowards when it comes to sorrow.

‘Good for bum-boy. For a kohl-eyed catamite, he’s a fine man. Killed an aristocrat? That’s something,’ he said.

I laughed nervously. Cleon was drunk, and difficult. Sophanes and Glaucon were both aristocrats, and they were not pleased.

I shrugged. ‘I have an appointment,’ I said.

‘Damn, you remind me of better times. I’m not even a hoplite any more, eh? Failed the property qualification.’ He looked at the floor, and then hugged me. ‘Damn, listen to me. All whines and self-pity. Come and see me again.’

I hugged him hard, took my two guards and left for the potters.

My two aristocrats clucked and muttered, and finally Glaucon spat that I had a friend of no worth.

I stopped and put a hand on his shoulder — older man to younger. ‘Cleon looked a little drunk. His wife and children have died.’ I held his eyes and the boy flinched. ‘He stood his ground and kept men off me — many times in the rage of Ares. When you have done as much, then you may speak of him in that way in my hearing.’

Glaucon looked at the ground. ‘I apologize.’

I liked him for that. The young are superb at disavowing responsibility — Hades, I was myself, so I know what I speak of. But this one was a better man.

We walked east into the morning sun and I lightened the atmosphere between us with tales of Miltiades. I was beginning the tale of the fighting in the Chersonese, and the Tearless Battle, where we took all the enemy boats with the loss of a dozen men and smashed the Phoenicians, when we crossed the festival road and found ourselves in the midst of a forest of brothels and taverns and free men’s houses. Only Athens could so hopelessly over-commercialize something as simple as sex. I remember losing the thread of my story as I contemplated — well, I’ll gloss over what I was contemplating, as you virgins would probably expire on the spot.

‘So we took fishing boats,’ I remember saying. ‘There was a fair fishing fleet at Kallipolis-’

The dagger punched into my back just above the kidney. The blow was perfectly delivered and had a great deal of force behind it. I staggered, fell to my knees and felt the blood leak out over my arse.

I should have been dead.

But I wasn’t. So I rolled through the fall and rose, my chlamys already off my throat and around my arm. As I came up, I had my knife in my right hand. Glaucon was down, but Sophanes was holding his own, his stick against two bullies with clubs. Even then, at seventeen, he was a foe to reckon with.

My man was big — titanic, in fact. I hate fighting big men — they don’t feel pain, they have a natural confidence that is hard to break and they are strong.

My man was still trying to figure out why I wasn’t dead. I shared his confusion, but I wasn’t going to dwell on it.

It crossed my mind that I probably didn’t want to kill him. Legal troubles, and all that.

I sidestepped, got down in my stance and flicked my chlamys at his eyes.

Behind him, Sophanes landed a blow with a crack that must have been heard at the peak of Cithaeron, and his man went down. The other backed away.

My opponent had a club and a knife. He cut at me with the gross ineptitude of the professional bruiser.

I killed him. It was no big deal — he was big, not skilled, and as the club rose I put my knife in between the shoulder muscles and the throat. Interesting point — I can remember that I had been planning a much more complicated feint when he left himself wide open from sheer folly and I took him. That’s single combat.

I threw my chlamys over Sophanes’ second opponent. It had corner weights and the gossamer wool settled like a net. Sophanes stepped in with his stave in two hands and broke the man’s head as if we’d planned the move for weeks in the palaestra. That was the fight.

I felt much better. When you are enraged at injustice and humiliated by your helplessness in the face of towering bureaucracy, killing a couple of thugs is deeply satisfying. At least, it is to me. Sophanes must have felt the same, as he flashed me a grin and we embraced. Then he went to his friend, who was starting to stir. I stripped the bodies of cash. Each had a little purse with a dozen silver owls — quite a sum.

The daimon of combat was wearing off, and suddenly I thought: Why am I alive?

The first blow should have been the last. I never saw it coming. And I was bleeding — just a little — from a deep puncture above my hip. A prostitute fetched water and cleaned my wound and said a prayer for me. Meanwhile, I cast around the ground, trying to find the dagger. All I could think was that the blade must have snapped.

The dagger was under the dead titan — lost things are always in the last place you look, I find. Glaucon was getting colour back in his face, and a pair of local girls were stroking him while a doctor felt his skull. Sophanes helped me roll the dead man over, and there was the dagger — a single finger of bright steel sticking out of Aristides’ wax tablet.

Sophanes whistled and made a sign of aversion. ‘The gods love you, Plataean.’

I’d fought with pleasure, but the sight of the tablet with the dagger right through it made me shake for a moment — just a moment.

That close.

I gave the girls five owls — a fortune — to make the body vanish. Sophanes was, I think, both appalled and thrilled.

The morning was young, and I found a brothelkeeper and had him take the other two thugs and lock them in his cellar, which was cut straight into the rock of the hillside. I paid him, too. The free-spending habits of a life of piracy instantly conquered a few months’ attempt to be a farmer. Kill people, take their money, spend it recklessly.

Yet I had changed — because another part of me registered that I’d just spent the value of thirty-five medimnoi of grain at current prices — merely to get rid of a body.

We left Glaucon to recover — ostensibly to watch the prisoners. I went and bought a wine krater. It’s that one, right there — Achilles and Ajax playing polis. It tickles my fancy, that it wasn’t all war. Men had time to gamble at Troy.

The sun was high, but not yet noon, when we got back to the brothel. Glaucon looked like a dog with too many bones — he’d had his flute played, I could tell — but the two men were both in the cellar. One was dead. Blows to the head can have that effect. Sophanes didn’t like that — that he’d killed a man.

I shrugged. ‘If you fight, you will kill,’ I said.

The other was terrified. He wasn’t a citizen and the punishment for his crime would be the silver mines until he died. Nor was he brave. But all he knew was that some men and women, all veiled, had paid the titan to find me and kill me. They’d been paid at sunrise, in the grove of Pan.

That’s all he knew.

I looked at him, tried a few more questions, listened to his tears — and cut his throat. Sophanes was shocked. I stepped back to avoid the flow of blood, and then handed the brothelkeeper five more drachmas.

He nodded to me, as one predator to another.

The two boys who had been sent to ‘guard’ me were spluttering.

‘Listen, lads,’ I said. I caught their arms and held them. ‘All he had coming was to be worked to death as a slave. Right?’ I looked at both of them. ‘And now the only story that will ever be heard is ours. Hard to cook up a lie if none of your witnesses can speak.’

‘You. . killed him!’ Glaucon got out, after some muttering.

‘He tried to kill you,’ I pointed out.

‘That was in the heat of battle,’ Sophanes said. ‘By Zeus Soter, Plataean, this was murder. It’s different.’

I shrugged. ‘Not when you’ve killed as many men as I have,’ I said. ‘Console yourself that he was a foreign metic, probably an escaped slave, and a man of no worth whatsoever. He wasn’t even brave.’ I wiped my knife on the dead man’s chiton, poured a little olive oil from my aryballos to keep it bright, sheathed it and headed up the rock-carved steps.

We were a silent crew as we walked to my murder trial. I was pretty sure that my two companions were no longer in the grips of hero worship.

Athenian justice is swift. I arrived a little early, but most of the Areopagitica was already on the hill, and the last of the old men made their climb just behind me. Aristides was there. He had a bruise on one shoulder that he hadn’t had that morning.

‘Tried to kill you?’ I said quietly.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And you, I take it?’

I handed him the tablet with the dagger through it. Heads turned all over the summit.

He was angry. ‘This is not Athens,’ he spat. ‘What are we, some court of Medes? Some soft-handed Lydians? Next, men will turn to poison.’ But then he calmed. ‘This will tell in your favour. I’ll hand it around. The symbolism is so clear, it’s like an augury — the dagger through the law!’

So I watched the tablet passed from man to man, and the muttering must have helped me a little.

Aristides was calm and forceful when the trial started. Let me digress a moment: you’ve noticed that I wandered the city without much trouble. I could have run. But of course I didn’t. That’s how it was then — Athens assumed that I would come to my trial, and I did.

In a murder trial, each side gets one speech — a couple of hours by a water-clock — first the prosecution, then the defence. And the verdict is delivered immediately after the defence delivers its argument. We’re much the same in Plataea, although it’s years since we had a proper murder trial. Simon, my cousin, killed himself rather than face the tribunal.

So we all stood in the blazing sun, and Cleitus of the Alcmaeonids began his speech. I can’t remember all he said, but I know it was damning and at the same time utterly inaccurate.

‘I accuse Arimnestos of Plataea, the man who stands before you, of the murder of my cousin Nepos. Nepos was murdered within the precincts of a shrine — foully murdered, with impiety — unarmed, standing making an oration to the gods.’ Cleitus had a good voice.

I couldn’t speak. But I could roll my eyes. So I did.

‘All of you know of this man — a notorious pirate, a man who serves with the vicious cut-throat Miltiades. With Miltiades, he sacked Naucratis. With Miltiades, he attacked the Great King’s ships, and those of our allies at Ephesus and other places — over and over again. It is men like this who bring the just wrath of the Great King down on our city.’

Well, I couldn’t really disagree with that, so I smiled genially.

‘Don’t let this man’s reputation as a fighter cloud your vision, though, gentlemen. Look at him. This is no Achilles. This is a fighter trained in the pits of slavery — a man who has neither arete nor generosity. He is merely a killer. Is the look on his brow more than that of a bestial destroyer? Is he different from a boar or a lion that kills the men who tend our crops?

‘This is a man bred to slavery, and what he has now, he has stolen from better men — first through piracy and then through open theft of a farm in Plataea. No man in Plataea dares act against him — they fear his wrath. But here in Athens we are better men, with a better strength of law.’

There was more — much more. Two hours of detailed (and fallacious) vilification. Cleitus knew nothing of me save some highly coloured details from Plataea — and it was obvious where they came from. Because my cousin Simon, son of Simon who hanged himself, was standing a little to the left of Cleitus, with a look of joyous hate stamped across his features.

I locked eyes with him, and gave him some bland indifference.

By the time Cleitus was finished, many of his audience were asleep. He had, after all, repeated the charges and the assaults on my character fifteen or twenty times. His arrogance showed through too plainly. Heraclitus would have taught him better. At Ephesus, one of the things we learned was not to annoy a jury — nor to bore it.

On the other hand, none of the men in that jury were my friends, and most were bored only because they had made up their minds before they put a sandal on the slippery rock of justice.

Slaves came and refilled the water-clock. I leaned over and pointed out Simon to Aristides, who looked at him and nodded to me.

Aristides stood up slowly. He walked gracefully to the speaker’s podium and turned to me. Our eyes met for a long time.

Then he turned back to the jurors.

‘My friend Arimnestos cannot speak here today as he is a foreigner,’ he said. ‘But although his tongue cannot speak, his spear has spoken loud and long for Athens — louder and longer than any of you Alcmaeonids. If deeds rather than words were the weight of a man, if the price of citizenship were measured in feats of arms, not barley or oil, he would sit in judgment, and none of you would even qualify as thetes.

Ouch. Powerful rhetoric — but a damned annoying way to win over a jury.

Aristides walked across to Cleitus. ‘You maintain that my friend is a slave? Or some sort of penniless foreigner?’

Cleitus stood. ‘I do.’

Aristides smiled. ‘And you have received my suit against you for the theft of a horse and a woman?’

‘I have taken them against the man’s indemnity,’ Cleitus said.

‘In other words, you admit yourself that my friend was the owner of the horse and the slave.’ Aristides stepped back, just like a swordsman who administers the killing blow and now avoids the fountain of blood.

Cleitus flushed red. ‘He probably stole them!’ he shouted, but the archon basileus pointed his staff.

‘Silence!’ he roared. ‘Your time is done and you speak out of turn.’

Aristides turned to the jurors. ‘My friend is the son of Technes, head of the Corvaxae of Plataea. My friend could, if he might speak, tell you how his father was murdered — by the father of that man standing by Cleitus — and his farm stolen by the same man, and how Arimnestos later returned from ten years of war — war at the behest of Athens, I might add — to find his enemies in possession of his farm. He might speak of how the assembly of Plataea voted to punish the usurper — that man’s father — and he might speak of what a twisted claim has just been made — accusations void of truth. Any man of Plataea would tell us, if called to witness, that my friend is master of a farm that provides three hundred measures of grain and oil and wine.’

Aristides had them listening now.

‘But none of this matters. What matters is simple. My friend did not kill Cleitus’s useless cousin. In point of fact, Cleitus’s case is already void, because he has spoken — and he may not speak again — yet he has not troubled to prove that his cousin is dead.’

Cleitus had missed the matter entirely. His head snapped up, his mouth worked.

‘Really, cousin — for we are cousins, Cleitus, are we not? — you are too young to plead before this august body. You needed, first, to prove that your cousin Nepos is dead. Second, you needed to demonstrate that my friend was in some way linked to his death, beyond the circumstance that he is from Plataea. If you had remembered, you would have maintained that your cousin died at the shrine of Leitos on the flanks of Cithaeron. But like a young man, you let spite carry you away, and you forgot to mention the place of this supposed murder, or any other facts relating to it. What you have not told these worthy men is that your whole knowledge of this matter comes from two panicked slaves who returned to you, claiming that their master had been killed. You have never been to Plataea, you have no idea if the claim is accurate, you have acted on the word of two treacherous slaves, and in truth, as far as you know, at any moment your cousin Nepos may stroll into the crowd and ask what this is about.’

Cleitus rose again. ‘He is dead. He was killed at the shrine-’

The archon rose. ‘Silence this instant, puppy.’

‘Listen to me!’ Cleitus spat.

The archon waved and two gaudily dressed Scythian archers took Cleitus by the arms and carried him off the hill.

Aristides looked around in silence. ‘I claim that my opponent has made no case. He has not shown a body. He has not offered a witness. There is nothing for me to answer but the slander of a traitor’s son. I call a vote on the evidence presented.’

Stunned silence greeted him. The water-clock was running noisily — it was still almost full.

The archon looked them over. ‘I cannot direct you,’ he said. ‘But if you pretend that Cleitus has a case, I’ll make you pay.’

I was acquitted, twenty-seven to fourteen. A carefully arranged vote, as it meant that I could not claim damages from Cleitus.

Several men tried to force through a different vote that would have made me stand trial again if more evidence could be gathered. They were still arguing when the sun set and Aristides led me off the hill.

‘You are the very Achilles of orators,’ I said.

Aristides shook his head. ‘That was bad. I used arts to win. Had I argued the case on its merits, they would have found a way to kill you.’ He rubbed his nose. ‘I feel dirty. Perhaps I should exile myself. This is not law. This is foolishness.’

‘The archon was just.’

‘The archon hates the Alcmaeonids as upstarts and posturers. He’s no friend of mine, but he’d raise me to Olympus if it would hurt the new men. All I had to do was put Cleitus in a place where his arrogance would count against him.’

‘What now?’ I asked. ‘I want my horse and my slave girl.’

Aristides shook his head. ‘Perhaps in the spring. And if you stay here, you’ll be dead. I don’t have enough wax tablets to keep you alive.’

We walked to his farm and Jocasta served wine. I told her the whole of the trial while Glaucon and Sophanes sulked. They didn’t love me any more.

Aristides noted them. He inclined his long chin in their direction and raised an eyebrow at me.

‘Hmm,’ I said.

Jocasta was looking at her husband with her eyes shining. ‘Should I invite this pretty foreigner to live in our house, so that I can finally hear what happens at your trials, love?’ she asked. To me, she said, ‘He never tells me a word of his speeches.’

The great man looked down his nose. ‘If I told you my speeches, you would only seek to improve them,’ he said. ‘I could not bear that.’

Their eyes met, and I felt a twinge of jealousy — not bodily jealousy, like a boy feels when a girl leaves him for another, but something in the soul. Those two had something I had never had — something calm and deep.

‘Why are the boys on edge?’ Aristides asked quietly.

‘I killed some thugs,’ I said. I saw the effect my words had on the lady. Killing was part of life for me. Not for her. ‘Sorry, despoina.’ When Aristides shrugged, I clarified why the two young men were upset. ‘One I killed in cold blood.’

Aristides shuddered in revulsion. ‘How can you do such things?’ he asked.

‘It’s much like killing a man in a fight, only quicker,’ I retorted. His squeamishness — did I mention that he was a prig? — offended me.

‘I cannot have you under my roof while you are tainted with such a crime,’ Aristides said.

I all but fell over in shock.

‘They attacked us.’ But I could see it on his face. This was Athens. I had spent too long in the camp of Miltiades. Men didn’t simply cut other men’s throats here. I had, unwittingly, committed a crime — and offended my host and patron.

I’m no fool. I got to my feet. ‘I understand, my lord. But the man — what was before him but death in the mines? And he might have been used against us in law.’

Aristides kept his head turned away, as if breathing the same air as me would hurt him. ‘A thug — a metic? He could never have been used in a trial. And you should know better. Are you a god, that you may choose who lives and who dies? You killed him because it was easy.’

Alas, he was right.

‘A god, or one of the fates, might well say that this man had no future but a straight trip to the mines and a few months of wretchedness.’ Aristides pulled his chlamys over his head in disgust. ‘You have no such knowledge. You killed him for convenience. Your own convenience. Now I am beginning to doubt my wisdom in defending you.’

Jocasta was standing as far from me as possible. They were a very religious household, and my bloody pragmatism now looked to me, as it did to them, like selfish crime.

I had two choices — the amoral outrage of the pragmatist, or admission that I had acted wrongly. Rage rose within me, but Heraclitus was there, too.

‘You are right,’ I said. I clamped down on my anger. It was wrong — ugly, unworthy.

Aristides raised his head. ‘You mean that?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You have convicted me in the court of my own mind. I should not have killed him, though he was of no use, even to himself.’ I shuddered. It was so easy to fall back into the habits of the pirate.

‘Cleanse yourself,’ he said.

‘I need my horse and my woman,’ I said. ‘I swore an oath.’

Aristides shook his head. ‘Cleanse yourself, and perhaps the gods will provide.’

There were, in those days, a number of temples that offered cleansing from the stain of death and impiety. Even the shrine to Leitos, in Plataea, although that was open only to soldiers.

But the principal places of cleansing for crime were Olympia, Delphi and Delos. And of the three, Delos was easiest to reach, though most distant in stades, I suppose. And the Apollo there was the most ready to listen to a common man.

‘I will go to Delos,’ I said.

‘You can be in Sounion by morning,’ Aristides said. ‘Have you money?’

I didn’t tell him I still had twenty drachmas from the dead men. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Gods speed you there,’ Aristides said. He stood by me while I rolled my blankets and an old bearskin, then followed me out of his gate. ‘Listen, Arimnestos. You may take me for a pious fool, or a hypocrite.’

‘Neither, my lord.’ We were alone in the dark.

‘You need to be gone — before your wagon arrives with the corpse and the goods, and they find an excuse to take you again. I will try to find your girl. But this murder is a stain, and you must be clean before you come back here. It may be that some god led you to it — because you do need to be gone, and tonight is better than tomorrow.’ He shrugged. ‘They will kill you if they cannot convict you.’

‘I don’t fear them,’ I said, but I wasn’t telling the truth.

‘In a year, the balance will change. Right now, you cannot be here. Even Plataea might prove dangerous for you. Go to Delos, and do as the god bids you.’ He held out his hand. ‘I do not fear pollution so much that I would not clasp your hand.’

And then I was walking in the dark, down the rocky road to Sounion.