Al Athenians – or at least, al rich Athenians of good birth –
seemed to be locked in a contest for power. An Athenian would
put this differently, and prate about arete and service to the state.
Hmm. Listen, children – most of them would have sold their
mothers to become tyrant.
So, for those locked in the great games there were three
roads to power – although each road had some side turnings and
branches. A rich man might folow the path of arete, spending his
money wisely on monuments at home and at Olympia or Delphi,
competing in games and putting up teams of chariot horses,
competing in games and putting up teams of chariot horses,
paying for triremes for the state, sponsoring religious festivals –
al as part of a slow rise to public esteem. In this way, and by
using public honours to promote his own folowers, a man might
build a gigantic faction that would alow him to leap to the
tyranny. The Pisistratids had done it, making themselves tyrants.
And the Alcmaeonids were on the same path, and Cleitus, in
particular, exemplified the path of arete.
That said, I have to add that there was a deep division among
the old aristocrats. On the one hand, there were the eupatridae,
or wel-born, descended from the gods and heroes, like the
Pisistratids and the Philaids, Miltiades’ family. On the other hand,
there were the new men, the new families – al stil aristocrats,
but ‘recently’ ennobled by wealth and political position. The first
of these families were the dreaded Alcmaeonids, whose famous
ancestor, Alcmaeon, was enriched in Lydia by Croesus. There
were other families of ‘new men’, and while at times the new
men and the old families acted together – as aristocrats – to
protect wealth and privilege, at other times they were at daggers
drawn.
Then again, a man like Themistocles could choose a different
path. He was born to comfort, and his father, Neocles, was
reckoned rich enough, but he was not wel-born by any means.
However, by making himself the hero of the masses, the voice of
the oppressed, the hand of justice to the lower classes,
Themistocles harnessed the largely unvoiced power of the
disenfranchised and the under-enfranchised, and turned them into
a powerful force that could, on occasion, defeat the middle class
and the upper class and demand power for their chosen orator.
For al that the Pisistratids were wealthy aristocrats, they had
always held the love of the demos – the people. And remember,
odd as it sounds, in a wel-run tyranny, the poor men had the
most power.
Finaly, a man such as Miltiades might find a third path.
Miltiades and his father were members of one of the oldest and
richest of the eupatridae families, but they rose to power and
wealth through overseas adventures – piracy, in fact. Through
military action, sometimes in the name of Athens and sometimes
in their own name, they accrued wealth by something like theft,
and enriched other men who then became their folowers and
dependants, alowing them to attract a folowing in al three
classes – and alowing them to build up a massive military force
that neither of the other two systems ever created. If we had
won at Lade, Miltiades might wel have been tyrant of Athens.
He’d have had the money, and the military power. That’s the
real reason Cleitus hated him.
Let me add that, however cynical I am, and was, about the
striving of these men for power, I wil testify before the gods that
Aristides, for al his priggishness, never had any end in view other
than the good of Athens. His party, if you can cal it that, his
faction existed only to support the rule of law and prevent any of
the others from rising to tyranny. So let us say that there was a
fourth faction – a faction of men who folowed the path of arete
with no end in view but the good of their city.
with no end in view but the good of their city.
Naturaly, that fourth party was the smalest.
So, I had falen into the middle of the competition, and now I
was sitting on my horse, blocking the narrow lane, as
Themistocles and a dozen club-armed thugs surged towards us.
‘Chairete!’ Aristides caled.
Themistocles was a handsome man, tal, wel-built, with
broad shoulders and long legs and a ful beard like a fisherman.
He had a sort of bluff, hail-felow-wel-met humour that made
men like him. He stepped forward, but I’d have known him
anyway, as he was a head taler than his folowers and the best
man among them. He looked like a good man in a fight.
‘Aristides! A pleasure to meet an honest man, even if he is
mounted on a horse!’ His horse comment was meant to remind
his own people that he, Themistocles, was walking, not riding.
Aristides nodded. ‘I’m doing the rounds of my farms. Are
you to be at the festival today?’
Themistocles leaned on his stick. ‘Love of the gods and love
of the people go hand in hand, Aristides.’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘I see we might make common cause, as we al seem to be
sporting some token from the Alcmaeonids!’ He pointed at the
bump on his head and his black eye – to Aristides’ injuries, and
my bandages. Then he turned to me and, with an exaggerated
manner, said, ‘You must be the foreigner from Plataea, sir.’
Clearly he knew exactly who I was.
I slid from my mount and took his hand in the Athenian way.
‘Arimnestos of Plataea at your service,’ I said.
He nodded, glanced at Aristides, then back at me, and I
He nodded, glanced at Aristides, then back at me, and I
thought he might let go of my hand. ‘I have heard . . . things
about you.’ He looked at one of his men. ‘Recently.’
I smiled. ‘Nothing that might disconcert you, I hope?’
Themistocles considered me, and then looked up at Aristides.
He was finding, as men have found since the invention of the
horse, that it is much easier to stare a man down than to stare
him up. ‘Your foreign flunky is making trouble among my
people,’ he said to Aristides.
Aristides shrugged. ‘The Plataean is no man’s flunky,
Themistocles. And just as he is not my flunky, so they are not
your people.’
‘Don’t be a stiff-necked prig,’ Themistocles said, al the oil
leaving his voice. He leaned closer. ‘Your man has tried to buy
my mob. We should be acting together these days, not making
separate efforts. And the mob is mine, sir.’
Aristides looked at me, and I couldn’t read what he was
thinking. ‘Is this true?’ he asked.
I smiled. ‘No,’ I said.
‘You lie,’ Themistocles spat.
Aristides pushed his horse between us. ‘Themistocles, I have
warned you before that utterances of this sort wil not win you
friends.’
‘Get your money out of town, foreigner,’ Themistocles shot
at me. ‘No one buys mobs without my say-so.’ That last was
directed at Aristides, not m
e.
I stepped towards him and his people began to close around
me. ‘I am Arimnestos of Plataea,’ I caled out. ‘And if one of
me. ‘I am Arimnestos of Plataea,’ I caled out. ‘And if one of
you lays a hand on me, I’l start kiling you.’ I looked around at
them, and they desisted. The man closest to me was a big man,
but when his eyes met mine, he stepped back and gave me a
smile.
I was the Arimnestos the man-kiler.
Aristides looked pleased, which puzzled me.
‘I mean no disrespect,’ I said to Themistocles. I wanted no
trouble with the demagogue. ‘What I have paid for wil only
benefit you.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Realy?’ he asked.
Aristides was watching me. I shrugged. ‘I would not tel
every man on this road,’ I said. ‘Nor have I bought a mob. I
have bought information, and I paid wel.’
‘What kind of information?’ Themistocles demanded.
‘Information regarding my court case, of course,’ I said.
This satisfied him immediately. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘A certain slave
in the brothels, I gather?’ he said, looking knowing and yet
deeply concerned. The only sign of his hypocrisy was the speed
of his direction changes.
‘Exactly!’ I proclaimed, as if stunned by his perspicacity.
He dropped me as if our business was done, then he and
Aristides exchanged a commonplace or two and we passed
through his retinue. When I glanced back, Themistocles was
smiling at me. Aristides was not.
‘What are you up to?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ I said. I smiled at him. ‘Nothing that would interest
‘Nothing,’ I said. I smiled at him. ‘Nothing that would interest
you, sir.’
He rubbed his beard. ‘You’ve got Themistocles riled, and
that’s never a good thing.’ He reined his horse. ‘You know what
you are doing? You’re sure?’
I shrugged, because I wasn’t at al sure that I knew what I
was doing. ‘I’m fighting back,’ I said.
‘Gods stand by us,’ Aristides said.
When the sun was high, we left our horses at his stables and
walked into the city together. Men were gathered everywhere,
and I was reminded of Athens’s power by seeing how many men
she commanded. There must have been twelve thousand men of
fighting age in the Agora for the performances, and that is a fair
number of decently trained men – a greater total than Thebes
and Sparta together, and therein lies the secret of Athens’s
strength. Manpower.
When Athenians gather, they talk. It seems to be the lifeblood
of the city, and they talk of everything from the power of the
gods to the roles of men, the rights of men, the place of taxes,
the weather, the crops, the fish – and back to the gods. Standing
with Aristides in the Agora, trying to guard him, I was dizzied by
the power of the ideas expressed – piety and impiety, anger and
logic, farming advice, military strategy – al in a matter of a few
minutes.
We were al crushed together when the magistrates went to
the public altar of Zeus near the Royal Stoa and made the
opening sacrifices. Then the ‘good men’, the athletes, the
opening sacrifices. Then the ‘good men’, the athletes, the
Olympic victors, the poets, the priests and high aristocrats,
processed to the wooden seats that had been arranged – pray,
don’t imagine anything elegant or splendid like modern Athens,
honey. We’re talking about wooden stands that creaked when
too many fat men climbed the steps! But after some time, the
crowd settled, and the poor metics and foreigners and lower-
class citizens pushed in around the sides and in the space
between the stage area and the stands.
Early on, I spotted Cleitus. He was wearing a magnificent
embroidered himation over a long chiton of Persian work, and he
was easy to pick out, as he was sitting in the first row of the
stand.
A set of priests and priestesses came forward, purified the
crowd and made sacrifices. Then we al sang a hymn to
Dionysus together and the plays began.
I don’t remember much about the first play – just that it was a
typicaly reverent piece about the birth and nurture of the god. At
least, according to an Athenian. We have our own ideas about
Great Bacchus in Boeotia. But the second play was
Phrynichus’s.
I saw him as soon as the chorus came out. He was behind
them, wearing a long white chiton like the one that the archon in
Plataea wears, and he looked more scared than he had been
when the Aegyptians were storming our deck at Lade.
I began to push through the crowd towards him. It was not
easy – everyone had heard that The Fall of Miletus was a
different kind of play, and men wanted to see the poet, to watch
different kind of play, and men wanted to see the poet, to watch
him as they watched his play. I had managed to get close to him
when the chorus, dressed as skeletons in armour, linked arms
and sang:
Hear me, Muses! What I tell,
Is wrought with horror, and yet heroes walked there, too!
And where our fair maidens once walked,
Fire has swept like the harrow,
Breaking the clods of dirt, and making the ground smooth.
Hear me, furies! And men of Athens!
We died on our walls, in our streets, in the breach,
Where the Great King’s siege mound rose.
So that, where once our maidens for their young swains sighed,
Those same young men wore bronze, and for the
Want of Athens, there we died.
for power, give me Phrynichus. And he was actualy at the battle
– wel, Aeschylus and his brother were there, too. Aeschylus
was also next to me as I came up to Phrynichus, pushing rudely
through the crowd. He took my shoulder.
‘Not now,’ he said, pointing to Phrynichus, who was
watching his chorus exactly as Agios watched his oarsmen in a
sea-fight.
So I stopped and listened. I had been there, of course – and
yet I was enraptured by his words. He laid the blame for the fal
of the east on Athens. That was the point of his play – that the
rape of Ionia was caused by the greed of Athens. Yes, he made
Miltiades a hero – and that must have sat il with some – but the
greatest hero was Istes, and he towers over the play like
Heracles come to earth.
It was frightening to listen to a man speak words I had
spoken in council. And there was the man playing Miltiades –
not that he was named, for in those days, that might have been
considered impiety – and he stood forth and said:
Today, we are not pirates. Today, we fight for the freedom of the Greeks,
although we are far from home and hearth.
And men cheered. Cleitus looked around. He was angry –
doubly angry, I think. His men should have made a disturbance
by then, shouldn’t they?
Hah! I’m keeping my plan from you c
hildren. It helps build
the story, does it not? But not many men can say that in one day
they bested Cleitus of the Alcmaeonids and Themistocles of
Athens in a contest of wits. Let me tel it my own way.
The play was only halfway through when the first man in the
crowd gave way to tears. And by the time Istes died (in the play,
he asks ‘Where is Athens?’ as he fals to his death), men were
weeping, some were pouring dust on their heads and the whole
row of Alcmaeonids were looking uneasy under al that dignity
and good breeding.
It was a mighty play.
And then there was my contribution.
Not long after Istes’ death, when the angry crowd was to
understand that the maidens of Miletus were being ravished
offstage by the Persian archers, I saw a man come to Cleitus.
offstage by the Persian archers, I saw a man come to Cleitus.
His face was broad and puffy – or did I imagine that? And when
he whispered into his master’s ear, Cleitus flushed red and stood
up.
We were separated by ten horse-lengths, but the gods meant
him to know. I caught his eye. And I smiled.
Whatever the news was, it passed from man to man along the
Alcmaeonid family seats. Several of them pointed at me.
Aeschylus watched them, and then Sophanes pushed up next
to me.
‘What have you done?’ he asked.
‘An act of piety and justice,’ I said quietly.
I wasn’t there to see it, but Cleon told the tale wel. This is what
happened.
In a south-side brothel owned by the Alcmaeonids, a group
of oarsmen swaggered in demanding wine – no uncommon thing
during the feast of Dionysus. But when they had their wine, they
demanded to see al the girls, and having chosen one, they beat
the owner and his bruisers to death with their fists. Four men
died. The girl they took away with them.
Oh, it’s a nasty business, children.
Out by the tanneries, a smal crowd descended on a taverna
known to be owned by one of the gangs of toughs who
‘organized’ things in the town. They puled four men out of the
taverna and stabbed them to death. The four men were literaly
cut to ribbons.
Up on the hil by the Acropolis, another pair of bruisers were
Up on the hil by the Acropolis, another pair of bruisers were
caught by a smal mob and cudgeled to death. Sailors were
blamed.
But the worst atrocity, in the eyes of the ‘good men’, was