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 brilliance is legendary. Trust an Athenian to plead a court case or to write a play. But what all those brilliant 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 called 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.
The law court was well 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 all the knucklebones, and all 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, willing 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 intelligent man, as I had cause to know later — and he saw as well as I did that by bringing all 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 allow my suit to be heard in the Agora on the day following the feast of Dionysus, in just four days.
The notion that we would all be vulnerable then ought to lull 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. Technically, 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 strolled 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 knowledge. .
It is also important to remember that theatre performances went on all day, not in the evening, and that one play followed another in fairly short order, interspersed with prayers and sacrifice at the public altars — don’t forget that in those days, the drama was still 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 still pious. An initiate of Dionysus is still 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 all down my right leg where I’d cut it leaping from roof to roof.
We walked across the Agora, past the still-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 wall of the old building despite the early hour, I found Agios and Paramanos and Cleon.
‘Ready?’ I asked.
They all 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 performance.’
We shook hands all around and they walked off down the hill. 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 all his pretended humility — and we were riding down a road with steep property walls 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.
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 all the other aristocrats. The path to tyranny usually 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 actually happened.
There was Athens — the richest city in mainland Greece. Sparta may or may not be more powerful, but no one on earth would willingly buy a Spartan pot. Eh? The poor bastards don’t even make their own armour.
All Athenians — or at least, all 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.