The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae Page 19

  Like in the tragedies, the whispering had two voices: one whispered the danger of Aegina and the size of its fleet. Every Athenian knew someone who had seen the Aeginian pirates swarming ashore on our Attic coast to steal our wealth, rape our women and kill our men. So this fear-spreading whisper was particularly contagious.

  The second voice spoke of the wealth in trade and the demand for highly paid seamen there would be if we could build a fleet large enough to finish Aegina once and for all. With a fleet we’d have their wealth, kill men and take their women. There was no whispering about the threat of Persia because fear breeds conservatism.

  They’d whispered well, because when I arrived early that morning with Ariston and some of the lads the place was already heaving. Packed, rank and sweaty.

  We pushed our way as close to the front as we could, treading on toes, using our elbows, exchanging jokes, blows and insults. We collected wine, olives, onions, cheese pies and honey cakes from the vendors we passed and eventually found a spot near where the entertainer Hermaphroditus had established his pitch. I think the name was just part of his act. His trick was to fart popular songs, allegedly from two orifices. I’ve always found that brand of act overrated but my companions loved it. He did good business that day.

  The press of the crowd got thicker and tempers began to rise with the temperature. Scuffles broke out, Hermaphroditus judge the mood, collected his props and takings and scuttled off with his two orifices still intact.

  Maybe it would be a good idea to forbid drink from the assembly but, of course, no one would obey the ban. At last the trumpets sounded and the named Archon, Nicodemus, led the representatives of the Boule onto the podium and after fulfilling his sacred duties to the Gods and the Polis he invited Themistocles to climb onto the speaker’s platform and outline his proposition.

  Thus it begins.

  “Athenian friends, behind me befouling our pure wine dark sea lies the pirate island of Aegina. Recently we had an opportunity to change it, guide it. We failed.”

  He folded his arms and stared out at us as if it contemplating whether he should continue. This was one of his better tricks and I knew then the act would be worth watching. There was isolated heckling; he ignored it, shrugged his shoulders and started again.

  “We failed because we lacked the ships. They didn’t lack ships so they raided our shores. Some nights ago the Goddess of Athens and wisdom came to me in a dream. She came as a ship, a trireme sailing towards Laurium. When I woke I knew what I must do. No man can stand against the wish of the Gods.”

  He paused again and for some moments gave a silent impression of a man communing with the Gods.

  “When I woke, I followed the Goddess to Laurium where I found the silver that Mother Athene had placed there for us. Placed there for one purpose, and not to be doled out to each Athenian and pissed away on wine or boys or roof tiles or goats.”

  He smiled patronisingly at the obscene suggestions hurled at him from the landed factions in the crowd, replying only to one jibe with,

  “Well as a farmer, Timachus, you’ll be well acquainted with the versatile hindquarters of goats.”

  This drew applause and whistles from us. Then, at last, he got down to business.

  “Whose head do we see on our silver Athenian coins? Yes, the Goddess Athene, and now she wants these coins used for their true purpose. Shipbuilding. We will use that silver to build the fastest, deadliest fleet of triremes in the world. Those ships will bring down Aegina and free us from fear. With those ships we will control the seas. I won’t try to win you over, friends, by pointing out the demand for rowers and Athenian craftsmen that building these ships will bring. I won’t detail the high wages or the chance of gaining increased status through becoming a Thranitai on an Athenian trireme. I know that you honest Athenians are not standing here through self-interest. So I appeal to your love of your city. Your desire to see Athens become great.”

  He gave us space to let this sink in; then,

  “I offer you the chance to make Athens great and to become great yourselves. I speak to you the same words that noble Miltiades spoke to the hero Callimachus that day at Marathon. He said: right here, right now you have the choice to settle this matter, Callimachus. Only you, only you right now.”

  He raised his hands to the heavens, another favourite ploy, waiting for the crowd to settle and when they did,

  “So today, Athenians, each of you has the chance to become Callimachus, become a hero. Refuse the dole that is your right: make the city great, build a fleet. Right here, right now, you can do this, you can do this.”

  Without waiting for a response he jumped down from the platform and settled next to his political allies on the front bench. There was no real applause; we were too busy thinking. So preoccupied, in fact, that when Nicodemus rose to announce the next speaker, Aristides of the deme of Alopeke, hardly anybody bothered to shout out the traditional jibe, “Foxy bastard,” stemming from the similarity of the pronunciation of the deme name to fox.

  So Aristides got a less raucous reception than he might have expected. It was obvious to us that he hadn’t expected Themistocles to speak the way he had, and equally obvious he was confident that his proposition would be accepted.

  “Athenians, the son of Neocles was right to invoke the Goddess Athena: the Goddess of wisdom and tradition. Tradition that dictates that the city’s share of the silver be distributed amongst us. Distributed in the form of the city’s silver coins stamped with the sacred head of the Goddess. He may scorn these amounts, but remember: roof tiles build a roof, goats make a farm. Citizens, today you can leave here richer men and that wealth flowing through your honest hands will enrich the city and please the Goddess.”

  It was a good speech, simple and to the point and Aristides might have left it there. But he felt Themistocles had laid some sort of trap, which the sight of Themistocles sitting with a broad smirk on his face encouraged. So he laid down his own challenge.

  “And Athenians, I wonder how the son of Neocles would attempt to make his crazy idea work. How would you magic up a hundred ships, Themistocles?”

  “Would you like me to elucidate, son of Lysimachus?”

  Themistocles smiled as he spoke and I saw indecision cross Aristides’s face but it was too late: he’d offered the challenge.

  “I think we’d all be fascinated to hear what you came up with, son of Neocles.”

  “Then I’ll fascinate you.”

  Aristides stood down and Themistocles mounted the platform looking like a man whose dogs pissed honey.

  “A hundred triremes would need seventeen thousand men to row them. Those men are you, my friends, most of you men with the low status of thetes. Men with few rights and privileges in this city of tradition. Once you claim your place on the rowing bench of your new trireme, your status changes and the city changes with you. The son of Lysimachus and his friends, the men of tradition, don’t want that but I have a challenge for them.”

  I was watching Aristides as Themistocles said this. His face shone with the realisation he’d walked into a trap. Themistocles moved to spring that trap.

  “Listen: this is how we’ll get the ships. You aristos, you pampered elite, you men of wealth. You, yes you will build them.”

  Where was this going? We didn’t know and it was clear that they didn’t either. Themistocles beamed.

  “Again, friends, we are in debt to the Goddess who planted this seed in my mind as I lay in a slumber induced by the Gods. Now I will plant it in yours. From our share of the silver we will take one hundred talents. To the hundred richest men we will give one talent each.”

  For a moment there was uproar. Themistocles stood there smiling until Nicodemus managed to restore order.

  “You, the richest men who employ craftsmen, own land and slaves, will take that talent and turn it into a trireme. Just one each, easy. Oh, just one thing: if you don’t do it properly we’ll take the talent back and fine you another one.”


  There were roars of protest but now Themistocles was shouting above them.

  “Not possible, you say: well I’ll tell you this. Your aristo friend Cleinias managed it twice. Not once, twice, understand? One of your own; but a real patriot and servant of the city blessed by the Goddess. I think we can assume that what he did twice you can manage once?”

  Shouting and scuffling chaos disorder, but a chant starting.

  “We demand a vote, we demand a vote.”

  Nicodemus mounted the platform and gradually we calmed down but before he could speak Aristides used the calm to shout,

  “A vote yes, but the traditional vote. I demand that the proposition put before us be my proposal: do we accept the Boule’s proposal of a ten drachma dole to each citizen.”

  Themistocles nodded assent and Nicodemus called for a show of hands. His tellers looked out at us, then conferred with Nicodemus who announced,

  “There is no need for a head count; the decision is clear. The proposition is defeated.”

  Screaming, fighting, chaos: pure Athens. But we could see Themistocles shouting so we shut up and shut our friends up and so at last could hear him.

  “The Goddess requires a decision; we must move to the alternative proposition. I demand in the name of the Goddess who speaks through me a vote on the ships.”

  It took them about an hour to agree on a proposal which requested that a hundred men be given a talent of silver to undertake a project that would benefit the city of the Goddess by supplying her with a trireme. By the time the vote was taken, many of the proposition’s opponents had drifted away. Didn’t matter really; it was passed by a huge majority.

  That evening in the tavern of the Bald Man we celebrated. Aeschylus, who didn’t normally pay much attention to the business of the Polis, said a couple of things that made me see what we’d done. I remembered enough to scratch it down the next day.

  “He’s made the men who fear the fleet, and fear equally the sweepings of the Demos like you lads who crew them, build a monster to destroy themselves. But don’t think any of this is about Aegina. This is about the Great King and what you’ve voted for today will change this city more than any of you idiots can imagine.”

  He was right about that as well. It was a time of change in my life too. Elpinice disappeared: it was rumoured that her wits had been dislocated by the Gods and she’d been spirited away to one of the many country estates owned by Callias. What a tragic waste of one of the greatest spirits in Athens. But as Aeschylus has written,

  “The Gods throw things at us in order to see who becomes stronger and who crumbles into dust.”

  I think Cimon was more affected by the plight of his sister than he cared to show; the guilt of her sacrifice for his future burdened him and he departed for the Brauron estate. Of course, the scurrilous rumour and gossip of the city claimed that consumed by unnatural lust for his sister, he’d followed her. Rumours also, as you would expect, reader, attributed fatherhood of the stillborn child to him.

  Athens seethed with change and rumour: the rumour I’ll come to later but the change! Once the vote had been taken it became clear that the city precincts of Athens were not extensive enough to accommodate both Themistocles and Aristides. But for reasons none of us could have foreseen the clash was delayed. Themistocles was stricken.

  I think his success in persuading the assembly to act in the common good rather than in self-interest surprised him. He certainly didn’t celebrate, he took to his bed, didn’t speak to anyone for days. His brother said a black cloud had settled over him after the vote and turned away all visitors. It was this that told us how serious a malady it must be that affected him. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t settle to anything, and stopped eating. He’d tried almost single-handedly to change the city and I think the burden was too great.

  Strangely Aristides didn’t choose to take advantage of this; so maybe his self-serving and self-circulated title for himself of ‘The Just’ had some merit to it after all. Instead he worked as hard as he could to delay and obfuscate the ship building project.

  For me, though, the new ships opened a great future. There was a shortage of seamen and rowers but an even greater shortage of men who knew how to fight from the deck of a trireme. There were less who’d actually done so, but I had twice. So I slipped from Mandrocles the youth blessed by luck to Mandrocles the experienced sea fighter. As such, over the next months I had my work cut out training others.

  One more thing as I straighten out my personal life for you, reader. Some weeks after the vote, Lyra left the city to visit family in the Megarid. She didn’t tell me, just left a note with Demetrius. We’d been getting on well as lovers and friends, so why did she go? I couldn’t understand why the owner of the flute girl stable let her go, despite her duties now being restricted to playing and looking pretty; she was still the greatest asset.

  I was bitter and unhappy and when I asked Aeschylus why she’d gone, he said nothing; just looked at me as if he couldn’t believe I’d asked the question and didn’t know.

  But all of this was about to be eclipsed by a rumour that cast all our private lives into the deepest shadow.

  A secret messenger from the exiled Spartan king Demaratus, now established in the court of the Great King, slipped out of the city of Suza at night and sped towards Sparta.

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Scents, it’s the scents I remember most clearly from that last spring before the war: piles of fresh cut timber everywhere and caulking to waterproof the hulls, sweat from men learning the back breaking art of working an oar all day. The spume of sea spray thrown up as the new triremes rolled and tossed through the swell. But above everything else, hanging over Athens like a pall of storm cloud: the smell of fear.

  We were late with the triremes, of course: no one can accuse the Demos of being straightforward or efficient. Every procedural trick to slow down the shipbuilding programme was pulled out of the Alkmaionid bag. Successfully too, much to the frustration of Themistocles, whose black mood kept him from the councils of the city.

  So when it arrived, the news everyone dreaded supplied him with the shock of energy he required. The news, which the Spartans had damagingly kept quiet, finally reached Athens by way of a direct and secret message from the kings to Themistocles. Once he read it he had no choice but to rise from his sick bed.

  The first I heard of it was a message waiting for me at the dockside when the Athene Nike pulled in to her mooring. I’d been drilling some men in the skill needed to fight from a trireme deck; it was like teaching mules to dance: when they weren’t rolling and swaying they were throwing up. The new rowers interspersed amongst the veterans weren’t any better and Alexis, the replacement for Theodorus, did his best but without his predecessor’s skill and authority.

  By the time we reached the dock side we’d exhausted every oath in our vocabularies to little effect and gained an inkling of how difficult it was going to be training up landsmen to crew a war fleet. Building the ships was the easy bit and we were way behind schedule with that. One of Themistocles’s runners was waiting with a command to go directly to his house.

  I arrived late: the house was crowded and the session nearing its end. It wasn’t difficult to catch up on the news; the room was alive with it. The Persians were coming, their mobilisation well underway and their campaign strategy formulated. There was a further problem though: the motive of the warning.

  The Spartan Ephors had received two blank wax writing tablets from the exiled king Demaratus, now resident at the Great King’s court of Suza. It made no sense until Queen Gorgo suggested they scrape away the wax. This they did and found the message scratched into the wood. Being Spartan, they decided to keep the information to themselves. The information that meant life and death to free-living Greeks.

  I suppose they had some fair reason for this. Could they trust it? Was it genuine or an attempt to scare them? Whatever the motive, even they couldn’t sit on something
of this magnitude and after a period of subterfuge and in-fighting the kings, remembering Themistocles’s promise of a fleet, decided to inform him.

  I’d managed to pick up on this when Themistocles came to the point of the gathering.

  “We have, if we’re lucky, about eighteen months, maybe two years before they’re here burning our city. We need the rest of the ships or at least another hundred.”

  He paused and looked at us, packed, sweating in his courtyard and corridors. He looked tired, drawn and old. He let us digest his message. It was simple: we’d never be ready in time; there were delays and excuses at every turn. One faction in the city was striving to build and train a fleet, the other half was trying to prevent it, while across the sea beyond my home on Samos, the most powerful army the world had ever seen was preparing to cross the seas and crush us.

  “We can’t afford the luxury of opposition any longer. Aristides must be ostracised along with anyone else who gets in the way. They need to understand that it is life or death with us now.”

  For the first time listening to him speak in public, I could discern no rhetoric or dissembling manipulation. These were words driven by desperation; a stark truth forced out by crushing reality. I found this very frightening.

  You know what happened next: the Ostracism of Aristides was the last engagement in the internal war of the polis before the arrival of the Persians. It was hard fought and bitter but left surprisingly few scars. When the sherds were counted and Aristides left to join his friends in exile there was no celebration or triumph. Particularly from Themistocles.

  Afterwards, when the noise had died away, he gathered his chief supporters together. I was there with Cimon and his manner surprised both of us. He didn’t speak for long and ended with these words, which I’m sure will surprise you too, reader.

  “And that’s an end to it. Soon we’ll need them back from exile, need them standing with us keeping their supporters loyal to the city. Without them, how will we recapture the spirit of Marathon?”