Marathon

  required. The couple wrapped in blankets and furs had various

  naked limbs sticking out, and the man puled the blankets closer,

  as if blankets would protect him.

  I ran to the centre of the roof and looked. South was the high

  wal of the brothel and east was the wide Panathenaic Way, but

  wal of the brothel and east was the wide Panathenaic Way, but

  north, uphil, the next roof beckoned. I had to keep moving – the

  men below were not fools.

  I ran, leaped and my feet came down badly, punching straight

  through the seagrass of the roof so that my groin landed on the

  beam, and for a moment it was al I could do to curl my legs

  around the beam and moan. In the building underneath me,

  people screamed – and their screams were answered by running

  feet.

  Sometimes the initial pain is worse than the resulting injury. I

  got a knee up on the beam and the blow to my groin wasn’t as

  debilitating as I had feared. I sidestepped north as men gathered

  around the building, and north again, and this time I stepped over

  the roof barrier on to the next roof – slate, thank the gods! – and

  I ran across the firm surface. I could smel a fire that burned

  charcoal and I could smel hot metal, and I realized I was

  crossing the roof of a smithy – a big one.

  There was an aley at the northern edge of the smithy, and I

  leaped it without pausing to reflect – and my arms just caught the

  edge of the higher roof – much higher, because the aley was like

  a giant step up. I hung there for long heartbeats, trying to gain

  control of my legs over the pain – and I swung my right leg over

  the roof edge and roled.

  My hips hurt and my groin hurt and my left shoulder

  screamed as if I’d been scalded with boiling water. This roof had

  an outdoor kitchen and a smal shed where the owner stored his

  brazier and spare pots. I got myself into it – a counsel of

  brazier and spare pots. I got myself into it – a counsel of

  desperation, let me tel you. If they found me there, I was dead –

  no more retreat. But I wasn’t thinking wel, and my instinct was

  the instinct of the wounded animal. I puled the door closed and

  lay there, panting.

  I listened to the men in the street as they searched the houses

  – broke in, beat people or threatened them. But actions have

  consequences, and the fates were not blind to my predicament.

  As they went from house to house, causing mayhem, men – and

  women – turned against them. Greeks don’t take happily to the

  invasion of their homes, however poor.

  I heard the smith roar with rage as his dinner crashed to the

  floor when the thugs overturned his table, He had weapons and

  the strength to use them, and he hit a thug so hard that the blow

  had that teltale sound of a broken melon – and then the

  wounded man started caling for his felows.

  The smith roared for the watch. His voice carried, and other

  voices – housewives, prostitutes and the patrons from the brothel

  – joined in.

  Athens was a mighty city then – but not so big that the uproar

  of throaty thugs and fifty citizens didn’t carry quickly.

  The Scythian archers – the city police since the time of the

  tyrants – came just as a party of thugs were breaking into the

  house where I hid. I could folow their progress on the street by

  the sudden change in sound – the babble of citizens teling the

  Scythians what had happened.

  My breathing was better, although the pain was stil there. I

  lay stil, my eye pressed to the door of the shed.

  lay stil, my eye pressed to the door of the shed.

  A man’s head came up the ladder from the main room below.

  I didn’t know him, but his ragged haircut and his expression told

  me he was one of my pursuers. He looked around the roof

  quickly, and then I heard him say that the roof was clear.

  ‘Fucking Scythians!’ came a voice from below, over the

  shouts of the householder, an older man with a shril voice.

  ‘Vilains! Out of my house, you scum!’

  I heard the man take a blow – a blow so sharp that his voice

  was cut off in mid-imprecation.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here!’ a man said.

  ‘Fuck that – this bastard is worth a hundred drachmas. Beat

  the Scythians and make them clear out. He’s hiding – right here.

  Somewhere.’ I knew the voice – my man from the aley.

  ‘You fight the cops, you mad bugger.’ The man who’d

  checked the roof was not having any of it. ‘I’m off.’

  ‘Coward,’ the leader hissed, but by then, there were

  Scythians pounding on the door.

  Then both of them came up the ladder and on to my roof.

  Beneath our feet, the Scythians were breaking in the door.

  My two would-be attackers slowed briefly at the roof edge,

  then they dropped over the edge, heading south.

  I just lay there, unable to do much to change my fortunes. I

  saw the Scythians check the roof – they spoke in their barbaric

  tongue, glanced around carefuly, one man by the ladder with an

  arrow on his bow while another man poked around with his

  sword, but they didn’t check the little shed.

  I waited a long time after they vanished – I waited until the

  I waited a long time after they vanished – I waited until the

  whole quarter was silent. Then I limped down the ladder, picked

  the householder up and put him on his bed, and sneaked out of

  the door.

  I made it to Phrynichus’s house under my own power. His

  poor wife was terrified at my appearance.

  Phrynichus got me into bed – his own bed, as his apartment

  was too smal for such luxuries as guest chambers. I lay there,

  trying to frame something polite to say – and then, finaly, my

  psyche released its hold on my body, and I went away.

  The next day, I limped about escorted by half a dozen oarsmen.

  I told al my people to lie low, and I made myself look afraid –

  and abashed – when Cleitus pushed past me in the Agora.

  ‘Done meddling?’ he asked with a smile. ‘You don’t look

  wel, foreigner. Perhaps you should stop playing with fire and go

  home.’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ I breathed, exaggerating my injuries. In fact, my

  paid informants were bringing me titbits by the hour. Al my plans

  and preparations took time, and I warned my people – the

  oarsmen, the informants and some paid thugs – that I wanted no

  violence until I said the word. And money – some Miltiades’ and

  some mine – flowed like blood in a sea-fight.

  Some of my new friends disliked being made to lie low.

  There were a few defections, but I was careful with my plans

  and no one – except Cleon, Paramanos and Herk – knew what I

  had planned. The informants were blind – each of them had a

  particular task – and given the scale of reward offered, I

  particular task – and given the scale of reward offered, I

  expected results, and got them.

  Let me interject here. A man who’s been free al his life might

  struggle at al t
his – but a man who’s been a slave knows al

  about how and where to get information. How and where to buy

  violence. And how to plan revenge. Remember that the world of

  Athens ran on slaves, and slaves, at some level, dislike being

  slaves.

  A week after my arrival in Athens, I knew where my girl was.

  She was working in a slave brothel by the Agora. I was tempted

  to grab her – but to do so would have given the game away.

  Shortly after my informers found her, the best pair – Thracians,

  former slaves who ran an ‘inquiry service’ – brought me the

  names of the men Cleitus had hired to beat Sophanes and

  Themistocles. I paid them a smal fortune, and they left the city

  for a while – they guessed what I had in mind. Smart lads.

  Another informer – a woman, a prostitute with a quick mind –

  located my attacker, the smaler man in the aley, based only on

  my description. He was a big man in the lower-class

  neighbourhoods, a wine-shop owner and a money-lender. I paid

  the woman wel and sent her to Salamis, too. My desire to send

  these people out of the city when they had served my needs was

  not altogether altruistic – I trusted none of them, and this way my

  prostitute could not counter-inform to Cleitus. Perhaps I

  wronged them – many were happy to help, just to strike a blow

  against the oppression of the aristocrats – but talk is cheap and

  informing can become a habit. So I sent them away, and

  informing can become a habit. So I sent them away, and

  Miltiades’ money paid and paid.

  I didn’t share my plan with Aristides, or Miltiades, or even

  Phrynichus, although he was beginning to catch on, as was

  Cleon. Many Athenians are fine men, and their briliance is

  legendary. Trust an Athenian to plead a court case or to write a

  play. But what al those briliant men like Aristides and Miltiades

  had missed was that the Alcmaeonids weren’t playing by the

  rules. They had taken Persian gold and used it to pay the mob –

  the same mob that should have been baying for their blue blood

  – to beat better men.

  I had grown up in Ephesus, where the Persians intimidated

  the citizens, and where the citizens used force to intimidate each

  other. I had been a slave. I knew how the world worked, in a

  way that neither the Alcmaeonids nor the Just Man ever would.

  When I was ready, I prompted Aristides to bring my civil suit,

  and he summoned Cleitus to appear in my case just one day

  after the Attic feast of Heracles, which seemed auspicious to me.

  The civil court met briefly, eager to be away to their feasts and

  holidays – many men went to the countryside for the feast of

  Heracles, of course, and some for the feasts of Dionysus. Across

  the Agora, a party of shipwrights were raising the theatre – a

  wooden stage and the big wooden building behind it caled the

  skene, and the wooden benches where the best men sat. I was

  astounded at the speed with which they put it up – between the

  opening and closing of the law court, the workmen had the skene

  completed.

  completed.

  The law court was wel briefed and Cleitus was caught by

  surprise. He turned bright red and shouted some foolishness. A

  date was set, and Aristides explained to the sitting members of

  the Boule that Miltiades would have to be released from prison

  to plead for me, because he was my proxenos.

  That was the law.

  Cleitus began to protest, and then thought better of it. Why

  wouldn’t he? He held al the knucklebones, and al his foes were

  going to come to the same place on the same day – the feast of

  Dionysus.

  I stood by the temporary theatre, watching, wiling the

  thoughts into his head, begging Zeus Soter to help me to recover

  my oath and punish this man, and the king of the gods heard my

  prayer. I saw Cleitus lower his fist, turn away and smile. He was

  an inteligent man, as I had cause to know later – and he saw as

  wel as I did that by bringing al his opponents together, he could

  hurt us the more easily, with his thugs and with the law. Then he

  agreed, as if making a magnanimous gesture, to alow my suit to

  be heard in the Agora on the day folowing the feast of Dionysus,

  in just four days.

  The notion that we would al be vulnerable then ought to lul

  my opponent, I hoped. Because I planned to strike at the feast

  of Dionysus itself.

  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. Technicaly, 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 stroled

  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

  the community behind the Royal Stoa. Not that I have any direct

  knowledge . . .

  It is also important to remember that theatre performances

  went on al day, not in the evening, and that one play folowed

  another in fairly short order, interspersed with prayers and

  sacrifice at the public altars – don’t forget that in those days, the

  drama was stil 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 stil pious. An initiate of Dionysus is stil 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 al down my right leg where I’d cut it leaping from roof

  to roof.

  We walked across the Agora, past the stil-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 wal of the old building despite the early hour, I found

  Agios and Paramanos and Cleon.

  ‘Ready?’ I asked.

  They al 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

  You make sure we don’t have a surprise during the

  performance.’

  We shook hands al around and they walked off down the


  hil. 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 al his pretended humility – and we were

  riding down a road with steep property wals 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.

  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 al the other aristocrats. The path

  to tyranny usualy 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

  actualy happened.

  There was Athens – the richest city in mainland Greece.

  Sparta may or may not be more powerful, but no one on earth

  would wilingly buy a Spartan pot. Eh? The poor bastards don’t

  even make their own armour.