The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae Read online

  “For that? Oh yes I think I do, young man.”

  I think Cimon had an inclination he was being tested, played with now, so he said nothing; just stared at Themistocles waiting for him to finish. Which he immediately proceeded to do.

  “There will have to be an internal war amongst the men who govern the Polis. Those who stand for the past will have to be removed and that, I admit, will prove difficult.”

  He smiled at Cimon, who continued to stare at him until at last he asked the question that Themistocles expected.

  “How and when will you achieve this, Themistocles?”

  “By starting tomorrow with Xanthippus, Cimon.”

  Cimon’s face was a mask of astonishment mixed with admiration. The sun dipped then fell behind the Acropolis, gleaming silver in the distance.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “See, Mandrocles, see how they play with us the Gods: I’m not even sure they notice or care.”

  He spat the olive stone onto the floor.

  “I’ve been thinking of Prometheus, how he tried to help humanity with the gift of fire, a generous gesture towards us primitives, and what was his reward? To be chained to a rock so an eagle could swoop down and eat his liver while he lived. Not just once but condemned to have it happen every day. I’ve been thinking about it ever since the affair with Xanthippus.”

  It was Aeschylus speaking, but you already knew that, didn’t you reader? No one else speaks like him, not then nor ever since. It had gone easily, even easier than Themistocles had hoped. I didn’t care much; ever since the trip to Aegina I’d carried no love for Xanthippus, not after what he’d led me into. This wasn’t Aeschylus’s opinion.

  “He stood with us at Marathon so don’t feel happy about what’s happened; no one’s safe now. He never thought it would happen to him, just like Prometheus.”

  He finished off the dregs in his cup before adding,

  “You know I’ll use this for a play one day.”

  He filled our wine cups. We were in his late brother’s bar a couple of days after Xanthippus’s departure to join the growing number of his friends and family in exile. It had hardly been a contest: he was an aristo who lost his traditional support due to his favour of growing the city’s power at sea. But there was only room for one leader of the sea searching Demos and it wasn’t him.

  Still, despite the fact that it cleared the decks for Themistocles, he got little joy from it. I think he’d liked Xanthippus and he’d been a useful dupe at times. Now it was a straight fight for who would pack their bags next between Themistocles and the undisputed leader of the aristos: Aristides. Before they went for each other, though, they needed to try and restore order in the city. Behind the legitimate process of Ostracism the city was wearing a darker face: blood shed, scores settled. Two nights of skirmishing, running fights in all the public places in the city.

  It was stirred up by young aristo hotheads, some of them friends of Cimon, who were trying to make their mark on public life. They’d copied the example of the poor farmer hoplites and carried their weapons into the sacred precincts of the city. However you couldn’t mistake them for dirt pushers, with their carefully barbered and perfumed long locks.

  At first, following the advice of Themistocles and his minion, the first archon Nicodemus, we’d ignored them, but each morning the mutilated bodies of honest artisans and sailors were found murdered in the streets. It’s not in the nature of Athenians to ignore such provocation.

  When one of the morning bodies turned out to be the elder brother of Gylippus, one of the most respected Thranitai of the Athene Nike, it became personal. The man had been touched by the Gods at birth; he was simple but friendly, like a child and earned bits of change doing odd jobs and carrying messages. Having not exposed him to die at birth his family had invested care and love in him and to the crew he’d been like a pet dog: they wanted revenge.

  Ariston had asked Cimon for permission to join a little expedition the following night. Cimon agreed; he understood the demands of honour. As Ariston was leaving the room he looked at me, then Cimon and asked,

  “And Mandrocles, skipper, can he come?”

  Cimon nodded and said a curt,

  “Of course.”

  Neither bothered to ask me. I didn’t want to go, had no taste for street fighting but it seemed it wasn’t my decision. So that night a large band of us went hunting and this time we went properly armed; like the farmers, we concealed our weapons beneath cloaks and blankets.

  We roamed the city, hearing sounds of shouting and clashes, but found nothing. Near midnight we’d had enough and wanted to call it off. Ariston and Theodorus managed to persuade Gylippus, who was still blood crazed, that we might just as well go for a drink. We knocked the Bald Man up: made him open the tavern and mix us a couple of chous of wine, and that’s where it would all have ended if the Gods hadn’t wanted some sport.

  We were almost finished when a couple of men I recognised but couldn’t put a name to came crashing into the bar. They were flushed, angry and clearly not here by chance and as soon as they saw us shouted,

  “They’re in Piraeus, a group of the bastards, messing with the ships.”

  It was a fair distance, maybe near half an hour at a jog, but we were fuelled by wine. Before they finished their garbled message we were legging it downhill, headed for Piraeus. Others joined us and by the time we were at the outskirts of the new square by Zea Harbour we had the whole story. A group of aristo youths from the oldest families holding the most traditional views had decided for a game to come onto our patch. The cream of their jest had been to piss into the triremes.

  Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it, reader; just a stupid boyish prank. But remember we were after revenge and drunk. The Gods got their entertainment that night: we had no trouble finding them. They were coming into the square from the direction of the ship sheds as we came in from the city. Both groups came to a halt; we could see they were young Cimon’s age, short of full manhood.

  I think it still could have been resolved this side of blood-shed if the opening exchanges had been handled sensibly, but that goes for every tragedy, doesn’t it? Their leader was a youth called Mikon, a relative of Callimachus, the hero martyr of Marathon. We knew him; he’d a reputation for wildness and arrogance, a spoilt loudmouthed brat.

  For a second we pulled up and both groups stood facing each other, the future hanging on a knife edge. Ariston was near the front of our group and I could tell he was about to prevent what was going to happen. You know with men, solid men like him. He never got the chance; Mikon lived up to his reputation. He must have been drunk like us. He crowed across at us,

  “Slum dwellers, make way for your betters unless you want to be found in the morning with the refuse.”

  It wasn’t only the words, it was the voice, pitched in the fashionable aristo lisp calculated to give offence to working men. I can still see the sneering grin on his face as he turned for the applause from his friends.

  Then it all happened in a flash. Gylippus went up to him, I don’t think he was going to hurt him much, just shake and abuse him. I don’t even think that Mikon’s reference to rubbish meant dead democrats, including Gylippus’s brother, although I’m sure Gylippus thought it did.

  I saw the look on Mikon’s face as Gylippus reached out to catch hold of him; it was fear, so I think what he did next he may have done in self-defence. He shrunk back from Gylippus’s clutch and reaching into his cloak, pulled out the weapon he’d customised and carried: a cut down hoplite lunging spear.

  He must have spent the better part of the day honing it to get a point like that: it slid into Gylippus’s breast like a knife through soft whey cheese. So easily that the bloodied point pushed its messy head out of the back of his sweaty tunic. I think Gylippus still hadn’t realised what had happened as he slumped to the ground and his soul fled, wailing, for the Elysian Fields. But we knew, we’d seen, we understood and we’d have our revenge.

  I remember th
e look on the face of the youth immediately behind Mikon, a mix of surprise and shock. A look that he took to the grave with him as Theodorus jerked the long perfumed locks of his hair to pull his head back and thrust his sword between the open lips, smashing through the well-kept teeth up through the roof of his mouth and into the soft pulpy interior of the head. He was the first to go down; Mikon, surprisingly, was still standing no one had touched him yet.

  Those at the back turned and ran with a pack of sailors chasing them, slashing at their backs; they were the lucky ones. The remaining three had no chance; one tried to run and was spitted. One dropped his weapon in terror and was smashed to the ground and Mikon, who looked dazed, was pushed up against a stone pillar. Theodorus had his face pushed up against Mikon’s; he was screaming at him, lost in blood lust. Strange how we value that in battle, because there on the streets of Athens it was howling madness.

  I had no appetite for this: since I’d killed the youth on the boat at Marathon I never wanted to do it again. But when you’re with your mates, what can you do? I was trying to hang back when I saw that Ariston was trying to stop it. He was shouting.

  “Leave them; this’ll take you to the gallows, stop, it’s gone too far!”

  You know the type of thing people shout in a brawl. He grabbed me.

  “Mandrocles, help me stop them.”

  I made a move towards Theodorus and Mikon. He grabbed me again.

  “No chance there, the other one, save the other one.”

  He was right; no one could have saved Mikon from Theodorus any more than they could have saved Hector from Achilles. The other one was on his knees, face bloodied, he’d pissed himself and was crying as they slapped him around prior to killing him, or buggering him then killing him. Ariston waded into them and the ones he unsteadied I pulled away. He was roaring at them like he did on the ship.

  “Stop it, you fools, stop: do you want to hang? I order you, stop it; fucking stop it.”

  I think it was as much naval discipline as regaining their senses that did it. They didn’t so much stop as lose interest, allowing Ariston to get to the kid and pull him to his feet. He was blubbering and hung onto Ariston as if he were his dad. He’s a member of the Areopagus now; then he was an inch from death. Ariston held the kid’s face between his two hands and spoke slowly and clearly to him.

  “Listen, we’ll not harm you but remember this. Your friend struck the first blow.”

  Behind him there was a dying gasp from Mikon, presumably a consequence of Theodorus striking the last blow; the kid’s head jerked back, his eyes rolling.

  “Easy, easy now boy, you’re safe we’ll get you home; but remember, you started this.”

  Human emotion is meant to be something individual but in that moment it was collective: something visible and visceral. I could feel the men coming to their senses, realising what they’d done and what it would bring down on them. I was aware of Theodorus, bloody handed behind me: Ariston diverted his attention from the boy long enough to direct one sentence at his friend.

  “Go to the harbour, get the first fucking boat out and disappear.”

  The big man looked stunned – it can be like that after the blood rage – then he shook his head as if trying to clear his thoughts and, without a word, turned and loped off into the night towards the docks. The men stood in a semicircle, looking at Ariston for direction.

  “Round up the others, get home, clean up and lie low. You was never here, get it? Go on, what are you waiting for? Me and Mandrocles will see this kid home.”

  They didn’t need a second invitation and within seconds the three of us were alone with the corpses of the youths and Gylippus, whose mother had lost two sons in forty eight hours.

  “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Myron, sir.”

  “Well Myron, thank the Gods that we were there to save you.”

  Myron began to snuffle his thanks but Ariston hadn’t reached the point of his speech.

  “Now understand this. You have a responsibility to the Gods and the city to tell this how it really happened or there’ll be more blood.”

  He nodded dumbly, looking like a young calf being led to slaughter; we began to walk him home. After we’d left him close to the district where he lived and we were heading back to Cimon’s house, I asked,

  “Do you think he’ll do what you asked, will this be the end of it?”

  “I doubt it: we’ll probably hang.”

  But we didn’t: the next day Themistocles and Aristides got together and brokered some type of amnesty. They were both good Athenians and neither wanted the impending trial by Ostraka to be conducted against a backdrop of civil war. As Themistocles said, after he’d tongue-lashed us for our part in the skirmish and Cimon for letting us go,

  “Somewhere out there just beyond your home island of Samos, Mandrocles, the Great King is preparing the most powerful army the world has ever seen. While we few Athenians in our pathetic little city are murdering each other.”

  There was nothing to say after that. But the world is full of troubles and my share for the day was still to come. Sometime after the lamps were lit I was sitting in my room staring at the wall when Cimon appeared in the doorway. I knew something had happened, otherwise he’d have sent the steward to fetch me. He said curtly,

  “There’s someone who needs to see you. I should forbid it as my father would have, but …”

  His voice trailed off; he was struggling with this, and I could see both anger and sorrow in his eyes. I watched him closely and thought ‘so this is what the man will look like’. I suppose I’d always seen the boy: this was different, this was the man’s outline and the essentials for the future were all in place, ready to be weathered by the burden of experience. In that moment the nature of our relationship changed. He said,

  “I should, as head of the family, veto this, but these are strange times. We were close during the escape from the Chersonese and it’s you she wants. So this time, and this time only, she can have it. You’ll find her in the andron.”

  When I got there I understood what had shocked him into this betrayal of propriety. She was thin, draped in black, but the trappings of grief were nothing compared with the dark cloud of desolation that the Gods hung over her. I think a madness was afflicting her because when I entered she ignored me, just stared into the corner. I’d never seen Elpinice like this; I think it frightened me. After some moments that seemed an eternity she turned towards me and shrieked.

  “I lost the child, it’s gone, I’m punished, even Callias shrinks from me.”

  She began to howl, like a dog at the moon. I watched, she didn’t stop. I tried to touch her to comfort her.

  “Keep away from me, I’m defiled.”

  She shook me off. Tears ran down her face; she pushed back the veil and began to tear at her hair. I’d seen it in the tragedies, never in real life. In real life it’s worse: she clawed at her face, raking the lovely gaunt cheeks with sharp fingernails. Still scratching as the blood began to flow. I tried to stop her, but before I could she stopped herself and said,

  “There, it’s done, it’s over, that is my childhood and youth gone, gone with the stillborn. Hardly formed, unrecognisable, just a slight thing in a bloody puddle when it was lost.”

  There was something so chilling in the image that the thought stopped her in mid flow. She took several deep breaths and then finished her message.

  “Now it’s gone and the girl you knew has gone with it, tracking it on its wailing course to Hades. I’m no longer that girl, Mandrocles, I’m something else.”

  She looked at me, an intense stare, but something else: pleading? Longing? I didn’t know, didn’t know then anyway. Now looking back I think I should have known; I think I did know. I know something was expected, something I … such grief.

  Chapter Twenty

  In the end it was all decided by our crazy system like Themistocles had predicted. Not in the Agora, either, but up on the ridge of the Pnyx hill, a
bout a fifteen minute uphill walk to the South West. The assembly used to meet there in the days of Cleisthenes but ever since I’d been in Athens it was closed for repairs. Now it was to host the most important meeting the city had held since the decision to fight at Marathon.

  Let me describe what it was like back then for you, reader, used as you are to the new Athens. It was a large, vaguely semicircular area with a slight downward slope towards the Agora, ending in a retaining wall with a space for the five hundred members of the Boule. It was dominated by a small speaker’s platform so whoever was speaking could do so from an elevated position.

  There was some rough stone building: accommodation for officials thrown up in a higgledy-piggledy manner. This was where Cleisthenes had envisaged that the Demos could gather to give assent to the legislation that their betters in the Boule deemed right for the city of the Goddess.

  As a place to meet and take decisions it had some advantages: being elevated there was often a breeze up there, and from the upper levels there was a view down across the Agora and out to sea. It was possible to watch our ships heading out for Sounion, Salamis or to where the carbuncle of Aegina lurked beneath the heat haze. This was particularly useful during dull meetings of the assembly.

  The disadvantage was more significant though. It was far too small for the big life and death meetings when the Demos was mobilised to oppose the Boule or agitate for an alternative strategy. It could hold about eight thousand in some semblance of comfort: ten thousand at a pinch. Hardly the full mass of the Demos. Maybe that’s why Cleisthenes chose it and radicals from Themistocles onwards preferred the Agora. There were more than ten thousand of us squeezed in and sweating that day.

  The whisperers had done their work well. I know you don’t need whisperers today, reader, now that there are laws that regulate everything, but back then if you needed your people to turn out, whisperers were essential. Themistocles had set them whispering before the news of the silver lode was made public. A clever ploy because from the first there was a sense that the wealth discovered at Laurium was in some way down to Themistocles.