He laughed again, and it was a fell sound. ‘I have beaten the Persians at the gates of my city. I have won a victory — such a victory.’ He shrugged. ‘Since Troy. .’ he said, and burst into tears.
We stood together. I cried too, thugater. I cried, and the sun rose on the Persian fleet, turning away in defeat. Many men were dead, and many more would die. But we had beaten the Great King’s army, and the world would never be the same again. Truly, in that hour, we were with the gods.
Epilogue
A day later, the Spartans marched in on the road from Corinth. Their armour was magnificent, and their scarlet cloaks billowed in the west wind, and the head of their column was just in time to see the last of the barbarian fleet as it turned away from the channel by Salamis and started back for Naxos.
They marched over the mountains to Marathon and saw the barbarian dead, and then they marched back to Athens to shower us with praise. I think most of the bastards were jealous.
Many men died at Marathon — my friends, and men who had followed me. And worse awaited me at home, although I didn’t know it.
As soon as our lightly wounded could walk, I took our men back over the mountains to Plataea. We still feared that Thebes might move against us. Indeed, Athens sent us a thousand hoplites to accompany us home, to show Thebes that they had backed the wrong horse. Athens could not do enough for us — to this day, thugater, the priestess of Athena blesses Plataea every morning in her first prayer — and within the year, we were made citizens of Athens, with the same citizen rights as Aristides and Miltiades, so that all those freed slaves were able, if they wished, to go back to Athens as free men.
We came down the long flank of Cithaeron, three thousand men, new citizens and old, and the valley of the Asopus was laid out before us, the fields like the finest tapestry a woman could weave in soft colours of gold and pale green.
At the shrine of the hero, Idomeneus halted his men — those who had survived — and we embraced.
‘Good fight,’ he said, with his mad grin.
We poured libations for the hero. Probably hundreds. It is odd, but one of my memories of that autumn day is the wine lying in pools before the hero’s tomb. I had never seen so many libations poured there, and the image of wine filling the wagon ruts is, to me, one of the strongest I associate with Marathon. We did not commit hubris. We gave thanks.
Then we went down into the lengthening shadows of the valley, and we halted under our own walls and formed the phalanx one more time. Thousands of citizens came out to see us — indeed, they’d known we were coming when the first glint of bronze was seen on the passes, and runners had long since brought them the tale of the battle and the number and names of the dead.
We formed one last time, and Myron came out of the phalanx.
I took off my helmet and handed him my spear. ‘We are no longer at war,’ I said. ‘I was the archon of war, and I return my spear.’
He took it. ‘Plataeans,’ he said. ‘I return you to your city, at peace.’
And they cheered — the hoplites, and the new citizens, and the women and children and even the slaves.
It would be good if I could leave it there.
Pour me a little more wine.
I looked around for Euphoria — I hadn’t really expected her, as she would have been in her ninth month — but I saw neither Hermogenes’ wife nor my sister. I remember that Antigonus and I stood together, and I had a joke at the edge of my tongue, about how, for the first time, we were timely and our wives were late.
Before I could make that cruel jibe, one of my Thracians — the men I’d freed — came on to the Field of Ares. He told us his news, tears running down his cheeks. To be honest, I don’t remember anything after that, until I stood by her bedside. I had missed her by perhaps three hours.
There was blood — enough blood that she might have died at Marathon. She had fought her own fight — a long one — and she had not surrendered or given way. She stood her ground until the very end, and pushed our child out, and died for it.
‘I told her you were coming,’ Pen told me. She held me tightly against her, and I felt nothing but the fatigue and the crushing lack of emotion that had dogged me since we stormed the olive grove. ‘I told her, and she held my hand — oh!’
Pen wept. Antigonus wept.
I felt as if I had been wrapped in thick wool.
I drank some wine, and later I lay on some blankets, my eyes open. Then, my choices made, I got to my feet. I lifted her — she weighed nothing — and carried her outside to the stable. I took a horse — no great crime with a brother-in-law — and I carried her body across my lap, as I had carried her over the mountains when first she was my bride.
I carried her home.
Of course, there was nothing left of my home but the forge. Cleitus and Simon had burned my house.
I laid her on the work table in my forge, and I put everything on her — every jewel Mater had saved from the house, every piece of loot I had taken from Marathon or been given by thankful Athenians, until she glittered like a goddess.
Then I lit my forge.
I prayed to Hephaestus, and I lit my torch from my forge fire.
Then I set my forge ablaze, and I left it to burn as her pyre.
It burned behind me, bright as a new sun. I rode down the hill, away from the farm and the fire. I rode steadily until I heard the crash as the roof-tree gave, and the whoosh as the rest of the building leaped into new flame — and then I pressed my horse to a gallop and rode away.
I never promised you a happy story.
If I tell you more. .
If I tell you more, thugater, it will be another night. And then I’ll tell you how I broke the mould of my life and cast it away — how I went with Miltiades and then to Sicily, and left Greece behind me.
For now, though, leave an old man to weep old tears. So many dead — and only me to sing of them now. I am the last.
But remember, when you pray to the gods, that men stood like the heroes of old at Marathon, and were better. And that they are still no better than the women who bear them.
Wine!
Historical Afterword
As closely as possible, this novel follows the road of history. But history — especially Archaic Greek history — can be more like a track in the forest than a road with a kerb. I have attempted to make sense of Herodotus and his curiously modern tale of nation states, betrayal, terrorism and heroism. I have read most of the secondary sources, and I have found most of them wanting.
The Persians were not ‘bad’. The Greeks were not ‘good’. And since both cultures grew from the same roots, ‘Western’ civilization would probably have been much the same had the Persians remained the world empire. Or so I believe.
And yet, and yet. . the complex web of decisions, betrayals and conspiracies in Herodotus somehow gave birth to the first real attempt at democracy — at least, the first of which we know. I have done my best to make this element of the story as essential as the fighting — to try and show how the small men gained political power, despite the overwhelming power of landowners and an ancient aristocracy.
It is nothing but facile error to see Athenian democracy as bearing any resemblance to the United States, Great Britain or any other modern democracy except in the most general way. There were no ‘middle-class hoplites’ in the front ranks. Aristocrats led the demos in every walk of life, and at war they served in front, in their superior armour, with their superior training, and the evidence for this is on every page of the literature, and only the most pig-headed myth-making can ignore it. In the period of which I write, the ‘phalanx’ as we now imagine it was just being born. Indeed, one possible reading of Herodotus would suggest that the ‘phalanx’ was born at Marathon. Archers and light-armed men still served in the front lines, and heroic aristocrats still fought duels — or so the art and literature suggest, however the idea is disliked by current historians, especially ‘military’ historians.