The Glory That Was

Chapter Seven

"... in the indicative mood," said Flin implacably, "the secondary tenses are augmented."

"Why?" asked Bulnes.

"How on earth should I know? They are, that's all. Now this augment may be syllabic, by prefixing epsilon to verbs beginning with a consonant — or temporal, by lengthening an initial short vowel. Thus paideuo, 'I teach,' in the imperfect becomes epaideuon, 'I was teaching' ..."

Flin broke off as Bulnes grasped his wrist, saying, "Did you see that tough-looking party talking to our host?"

"Yes. He's gone out now."

"I didn't like the look he gave us."

Bulnes shifted to his rudimentary Classical Greek. He had found that by throwing in a word of modern Greek when he could not think of the Classical form, he could sometimes make himself understood. "O Kallingos!"

"You called?"

"Mine dear fellow, shall you not — ah — share cup of you — uh — excellent wine at us?"

"What said you?"

Bulnes repeated the offer with even greater care.

"Nai," said the innkeeper, wagging his head and confusing Bulnes until the latter remembered that this meant "yes."

"O Bouleus, you are as polite as a Mede, though not so stupid. Boy! Another cup. You should not, however, call this Attic belly wash 'excellent.' If I could sell you a jar of my Lesbian ..."

"What's he saying?" Bulnes asked Flin, who translated.

Bulnes gathered his mental forces and replied: "Me fear not — no got enough money. Whom — uh — who am — the man er — what's the word, Wiyem?"

"The man with whom you were speaking," said Flin.

"Not the kind of man," replied Kallingos, "you like to talk about."

"What's that, Wiyem? ... Who this man, please?"

Kallingos lowered his voice. "Phaleas the son of Kniphon."

. Bulnes and Flin exchanged glances. The latter said, "Didn't Diksen say something about Phaleas's gang?"

"Could be he." Bulnes turned to Kallingos. "Are him — er — ah — uh ..."

"The noted criminal," put in Flin.

Kallingos looked over his shoulder. "He is. He says two members of his band were slain four nights ago by a pair of barbarians, and he is now looking for these killers to revenge himself. They were huge, powerful men in some hideous Scythian or Persian costume, wearing curious caps upon their heads and tunics and trousers cut and sewn to cling to their bodies closely. Some of the band were enjoying a game of knucklebones when these giants sprang out of the dark, stabbed two to death, and would have done in the rest had they not run away."

Bulnes continued with Flin's linguistic help, "Things have come at such a pass, poor thief cannot — ah — earn dishonest living in Peiraieus without — uh — being rob by more big thief."

"True, ha-ha. That was the same night that the mysterious ship appeared in Zea Harbor."

"What mysteriously ship?"

"Have you not heard? The state galley Paralos was caught by the storm on her way back from Epidauros and rode it out behind Salamis. When the wind fell she made a run for home and was feeling her way into Zea when she struck a strange ship that had taken her usual anchorage. The ship sank near the wharves, and can be dimly seen lying on the bottom even now, with sails of strange cut mounted all awry. There is some talk of sending divers down to fasten ropes to the hull."

"To raise she?" asked Bulnes, concealing his eagerness.

"Zeus, no! What use have we for an outlandish rig like that? They will tow her into deeper water where she will not interfere with navigation. But now barbershops buzz with speculation as to whether there might not be a connection between these two events."

"I see ... O friend Kallingos, I fear we must leaves tomorrow."

"What did you say?"

Bulnes repeated.

"I am sorry. Is there aught you like not?"

There were a lot of things, thought Bulnes, beginning with the bugs in the dormitory. But he said, "No, it are that we am going at Athens."

"What?" cried Flin in English. Bulnes ignored him.

"It is too bad you could not stay over tomorrow."

"Why?" said Bulnes.

"It is the day of the Dionysia," said Kallingos.

"What is being shown?" asked Flin.

"The Aias of Sophokles and two other plays, at our own Dionysiac Theater. As Euripides is not competing this year, the Aias may win." '

"I say!" said Flin. "I shouldn't care to miss ..."

"Shut up, my dear Wiyem," said Bulnes. "Will them play be show again anywhere?"

"Yes, at the regular Dionysia in Athens. Of course, as foreigners, you would have to pay to get in."

"We may see him then. Meanwhile, could you recommend us to a innkeeper in Athens as honest like you?"

Kallingos made a gesture. "To be frank, there is none in Attika so honest as I. Wherever else you go you will be deceived. If you ask for your wine diluted with one part of water, you will get it cut with two. However, you will not be too badly robbed at the inn of Podokles, a few houses east of the Agora."

Bulnes thanked Kallingos, got some advice about prices from him, and went up to the dormitory, where Flin burst out, "What d'you mean by making a plan like that without consulting me? The logical thing is to exhaust the Peiraieus looking for Thalia before we think of moving. We've got a good innkeeper ..."

"But this gang ..." said Bulnes.

Flin, however, though usually timid in the face of physical risk, now showed the unreasonable obstinacy with which weak men sometimes try to assert themselves. Bulnes let him run down and said, "I'm going tomorrow, my dear fellow. You may do as you like."

When the eastern sky began to lighten, Bulnes groaned and forced himself up. He would never get used to the fiendishly early hours of the Athenians. They munched their sops and paid up. Flin said no more about refusing to move to Athens, and Bulnes refrained from taunting him.

Bulnes noted that Kallingos tried to swindle them out of only two or three oboloi — for an Attic innkeeper, he supposed, comparative rectitude. Then, as the sun gilded the brass helmet of Athene Promachos on the Akropolis the two travelers gathered their himatia about them and set out upon the dusty road to Athens, Bulnes muttering the paradigms of irregular verbs.

Flin said, "There should be a road running north of the Long Walls. It would give us a good view of the country, while between the Walls we shan't see anything."

"Anything you say, my dear comrade."

They pushed to northward through the stirring seaport toward the gate adjacent to the junction of the North Long Wall and the Peiraic Wall. After passing through the gate they came upon the muddy Kephisos in full spring spate, not yet shrunken with the summer drouth. The highway crossed the river by a ford.

Bulnes sighed. "Here, my friend, it seems we get wet."

Flin gathered up his himation, growling, "Jolly unfortunate we die n't land in a later century when they'd have had a bridge."

They splashed into the broad calf-deep crossing, climbed out the far side, and trudged up the hard-beaten wagon track across the flat Attic plain. Most of the plain was a waste of new grass and wild flowers, with a few stands of wheat and clumps of gray-green olive trees in the hollows. Other roads, even more rudimentary, joined theirs at intervals. Along these roads, mostly toward Athens, moved a traffic of vegetables, hides, firewood, and similar commodities. This traffic, sometimes on the backs of donkeys and sometimes on those of men, thickened as they neared the city.

After more than an hour the road confusingly began to fork and rejoin itself as they neared the walls of Athens. (Not, thought Bulnes, a very impressive defense.) On a flat space in front of the wall a group of men with shields, spears, and crested helmets marched back and forth.

Stopping to draw breath and watch, Bulnes remarked, "They don't look much like Greek gods, do they?"

They did not, for the Athenian militiamen came in the usual range of human sizes and shapes, tall and short, fat and thin. Although the universal beards and cheek-plates of the helmets lent them a deceptive similarity, a close look showed that they varied about as much in features as a random group of modern southern Europeans. Like the Greeks of Bulnes's own time they were mostly brunets, tending toward a stocky build.

Flin sighed. "I confess I find them something of a disappointment. Perhaps we shall be more impressed when we get to the Agora."

They followed the crowd through the nearest gate, a complex structure intended as a practical defense, for it included two sets of doors with a passage between them overlooked by galleries. A little group of Scythian archers watched the traffic and straightened out tangles.

Inside, a street about five meters wide led in the direction of the Akropolis. The city itself, however, proved far from impressive: a huddle of one-storey mud-brick buildings with the same blank, windowless outer walls that Bulnes had noticed in the Peiraieus. Here, moreover, instead of being laid out in a rectangular grid, the houses were placed every which way. The streets were nothing but crooked little alleys winding among the houses, often barely wide enough to let two pedestrians pass, with no pavements anywhere. The stench was worse than at the seaport. Out of this noisome confusion rose the Akropolis, crowned with marble and bronze, like a tiara on a garbage heap, with the peak of Mount Lykabettos towering behind it.

Bulnes, feeling that Flin knew the terrain from his studies, let his companion lead the way. Flin tended to get lost in rapturous contemplation of the objects around him.

"Come, my dear comrade," said Bulnes. "We're hunting the inn of Podokles. Remember?"

Flin shook his head, as if awakening, and led the way onward. Presently the street opened out into the Agora, like that of the Peiraieus, but bigger. It proved to be an open space in name only, for in addition to the statues, monuments, and plane trees that dotted it, it was crammed with tradesmen's kiosks.

The space left among these structures was crowded with Athenians, all reeking of garlic, waving their hands, shouting, laughing, haggling, arguing, and shaking fists in each other's faces. Many wore violets in their hair — "In honor of the Dionysia," Flin explained.

Flin pushed sunward through the crowd; Bulnes, towering over the short Greeks, strolled after him, wishing he had pants pockets to thrust his hands into.

"Looking for somebody?" asked Bulnes.

"My wife, of course. And I thought we might catch sight of Sokrates or Prodikos."

"My dear fellow! We don't even know yet if it's the real Sokrates or a modern imitation, and in any case I doubt if you could recognize him. There are enough bald, potbellied men here to make a hundred Sokratai." Bulnes turned and spoke to a passing Athenian. "To pandokeion Podoklou?"

"What?"

"To pandokeion Podoklou?"

"I know not," said the man, and went his way.

As they worked over toward the east side of the Agora they repeated their question until they got a set of directions, but with so much pointing and arm waving that the inn might have lain any-whither. Another half-hour's search and more questions brought them to their goal in the Limoupedion district.

Podokles proved a burly fellow with part of his nose missing from a sword cut. "Foreigners, eh? Where are you from?"

Bulnes had expected Flin to carry the burden of negotiations, but the teacher was lost in the contemplation of the design on a jar. So Bulnes told Podokles, "Tartessos. I be Bouleus and him Phi-Ion."

"Where is that?"

"In Far West."

"What did you say?"

"To the West."

"You mean Sicily?"

"Farther."

"Hm. I thought beyond Sicily was nothing but shoals and sea monsters. Know you anybody in Athens? I have to be careful."

Hardly the genial host, thought Bulnes. "Kallingos at Peiraieus referred us to you. We stayed with he."

"Then you may be all right," said Podokles dubiously, and they argued terms for a quarter-hour.

Bulnes handed Podokles the bag containing their modern clothes (recovered from the arsenal) and their few other possessions, and asked, "When are lunch?"

"Name of the Dog, you fellows get hungry early! If you want anything prepared, go buy it and bring it to my cook."

Bulnes said to Flin, "I can't get used to beginning the day at dawn. Let's look up Diksen."

"What are you two babbling about?" said Podokles.

"Not you, my dear friend," said Bulnes, smiling blandly through his stubble.

They went out and trudged through the filth toward the Hill of Ares, looking around to be sure of finding their way back. On the hill itself they passed a shed containing a curious object: a ship mounted on wagon wheels, used (Flin explained) in certain religious processions. At last they came to the barracks.

Roi Diksen, alias Pardokas, came out of the barracks rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. "I didn't expect to see you two for several days yet!"

Bulnes told him of the activities of Phaleas the gangster.

"Uh-huh," said Diksen. "I'd like to pin something on that ganef, but I think he's bought protection from one of the big shots. Can you make with the Grick, now?"

"Enough to manage if not to compete with the orators. Have you found our astronomer?"

"Yeah, just yesterday. Old geezer, name of Melon, lives just off the Agora."

"Splendid!" said Bulnes. "We thank you most gratefully."

"Aw ... Us barbarians got to stick together, see?"

"Meton!" said Flin. "By Jove, I remember now: He's the chap who burned — I mean he will burn his house down in — umm — fifteen or twenty years so that the Assembly will order his son to stay home from the Sicilian expedition to take care of him."

Bulnes looked questioningly at Flin. "How do we get access to this Meton?"

"That would take a bit of doing, you know. An Athenian citizen's home is his castle."

"Yeah," said Diksen. "Back in Yonkers, you wanna ask some guy something, you call him up and ask him, or say can you come around and see him? But these Gricks is funny. You knock on their door as polite as anything and if you ain't a citizen they sick the dog on you. Foreigners like you and slaves like me is just dirt under their feet."

Bulnes asked, "Does Meton ever go to the Agora?"

"Naw. Just sits around diddling with his calendars and things."

Bulnes said, "I suppose we shall have to find someone who can tender the proper introductions. It's like the story of the two Englishmen wrecked on a desert island who never spoke to each other until they were rescued, seven years later, because there was nobody present who could properly introduce them."

"A base canard," said Flin. "Don't believe him, Mr. Diksen. The English are as affable as anybody."

"I wish you luck," said Diksen, "but I can't help you none. An introduction from a slave wouldn't be no recommendation.''

Bulnes said, "At least you could tell us where to find Sokrates in the Agora."

"I guess he mostly hangs out around the Basileios Stoa, or one of them places. Now can I go back to sleep?"

Bulnes and Flin left the pseudo-Scythian and walked back down the slope of the Areopagos. Flin, wistfully eyeing the Akropolis a mere hundred meters away over his shoulder, said, "You don't suppose we could take an hour off for a spot of sight-seeing."

"No, my dear Wiyem, I don't. Sokrates first."

"We can at least take this street that runs down to the south end of the Agora and get a look at the things along the north side of the Akropolis ... That building must be the Thesmothetaion — or would it be the Prytaneion? Dash it all, 1 wish I had an eidetic memory ..."

"Why not ask?" said Bulnes.

"And accost some total stranger? Ah, there's something I know. See those holes in the cliff?"

"Yes."

"They're the caves of Pan and Apollo. There are supposed to be secret stairs or passages leading from them up to the Akropolis ... And there are the Long Rocks — those are the statues of the Tribal Heroes, and those are the public bulletin boards —"

"Excuse me, comrade, but you're taking us away from our destination."

"So I am," sighed Flin.

Back at the Agora they soon located the Royal Stoa among the shops and offices along the west side of the plaza. Inside the building, a crowd of people watched an argument being conducted before a man who sat on a raised seat and wore a purple himation and a dried-up wreath on his head.

"That," said Flin, "must be the King."

"I thought this was a republic?"

"It is, but they've kept the kingship as a sort of vestigial office. As I recall, he's a combination high-priest and domestic-relations judge."

"I see. Please start asking people for Sokrates."

"Dash it all, you know I hate speaking to strangers. Why don't you? You need the practice."

"Oh, all right- — for you I will. But kindly listen to their replies and be prepared to translate. When they speak fast, I get lost." Knut Bulnes turned his best Greek on one of his immediate neighbors, "Have you see Sokrates, please?"

Within a quarter-hour he had collected a variety of replies: "What?" "No." "I do not know the man." "Do you mean Sokrates the carpenter?" "I have never heard of him." "What are you saying?" "Not today." "I do not understand you." "He and his questions! When I catch that scoundrel ..." "I am a stranger, too." "No, and if you find him, tell him Mnesiphilos wants his five drachmai back." "Who are you?" And finally, "You are looking in the wrong place. He is usually to be found in the Stoa Poikile."

"Thank you," said Bulnes, and turned to Flin. "Where now?"

"I think the Painted Porch was — is — across the Agora. And if you expect to pass as an Athenian, you'll have to drop those ceremonious manners. The average Athenian has no more manners than an American."

"Really, my dear fellow? Most of the people I met in the United States had adequate manners ..."

They pushed out into the noonday glare, stopping at the Bread Market long enough to buy a big loaf from a truculent old woman for three coppers, but passing up a vendor of hot water for drinking at an obolos and a half a cup. Though Bulnes hungrily eyed a sausage-seller's stock, Flin objected, "Probably give you trichinosis. Anyway, this bread's so full of garlic and things it has all the vitamins we need."

As they walked, munching, a beggar plucked at the himation of Bulnes and whined. The man had a missing foot, an empty eyesocket, and some loathsome skin affliction, so Bulnes gave him a copper. Instantly a swarm of beggars descended upon the pair, clutching and importuning.

"Now you've done it!" cried Flin, and shouted "Go away!" until the beggars dispersed. "Why d'you do things like that? We're nearly in the gazette ourselves."

"I suppose I'm a soft touch," said Bulnes. "We see so few beggars I haven't developed an immunity to them. In Italy I could always get rid of people trying to sell me things by saying 'Ich will nicht,' but I don't know what would work here."

They won through the mob to the Painted Porch, where Flin gabbled over the murals: one of the Battle of Marathon, one of the Sack of Troy, one of Theseus fighting the Amazons, and one of some other battles. Bulnes admitted, "The execution's not too bad, but they can't have known^ anything about perspective. Gives a grotesque effect, don't you think?"

He resumed the questioning of passers-by about Sokrates until Flin plucked at his cloak, saying, "Over there. Looks like a sophist with his pupils."

A dignified-looking graybeard was sitting on a bench and lecturing three younger men. Bulnes went up behind the hearers and held up his hand until the lecturer interrupted himself, "Yes? You wish something?"

"Thousand pardons, sir, but have you see Sokrates?"

"What is that?"

"I said, have you see Sokrates?"

One of the youths said something nasty about barbarians who sought wisdom before they could even speak Greek, and the other two laughed. However, the graybeard cut through the ribaldry. "No, my good man, for he is not in Athens today."

"Indeed?"

"In fact he has gone off on a picnic, to revel with the nymphs and satyrs on Mount Hymettos, with Perikles's nephew Alkibiades. You may find him back here tomorrow. Where was I? Ah, yes ... whereas the Philolaos has been asserting the world to be a sphere, this speculation is shown to be absurd and untenable by ..."

"Now can we visit the Akropolis? Can we?" said Flin.

"Very well, my dear comrade."

They walked back to the south end of the Agora and thence to the path that wound up the west end of the Akropolis, through the Propylaia or entrance, and out at last on to the flat top of the great ship-shaped hill, about three hundred meters long and half as wide. With each step Flin's condition became more ecstatic until he broke into a run, dashing from statue to statue as if his life depended upon his seeing everything at once. He babbled happily, "That's the great Athene Promachos, Knut, though the name only goes back ... A Pheidias original! Think of it!"

He put out a finger and delicately touched the brazen foot of the ten-meter colossus.

"Looks bovine to me," said Bulnes. "I thought some of those others were prettier."

Flin, as if he had not heard, was reading the dedicatory inscription on a huge ornamental bronze chariot, almost big enough to have been pulled by elephants: "... the spoils taken from the Boiotians and Euboians ..."

He moved on to where a group of workmen were planting a life-sized statue of Athene on its pedestal, with ropes and grunts. "And this must be Myron's group of Athene and Marsyas, only Marsyas isn't mounted yet. Excuse me," he said to an elderly man directing operations, "but are you Myron?"

"Why yes," said the man.

Flin shut his eyes and squeezed his hands together. "I've seen Myron! I've seen Myron! Isn't it the most dashed wonderful thing you ever saw, Knut? I don't care if I die tomorrow, now I've seen this! Come on, there's the Parthenon!"

And off he galloped, sandals flapping. "No, the entrance is around the far end."

"Why," asked Bulnes, "should they put the entrance at the east end when you come up on to the Akropolis from the west?"

"Some religious reason, or perhaps they wanted the rising sun to light the statue inside for dawn ceremonies. Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it gorgeous?"

Bulnes said, "I must say the Akropolis looks different from what I expected. All those bright colors give the effect of one of the gaudier American amusement parks."

"Didn't you know they painted their temples and statues? I hope after all we've gone through it's the real original Akropolis and not a modern imitation, like that one in Nashville or whatever that American city is."