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 follow 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, paying for triremes for the state, sponsoring religious festivals — all as part of a slow rise to public esteem. In this way, and by using public honours to promote his own followers, a man might build a gigantic faction that would allow 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 well-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 — all still 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 well-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 all 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 well-run tyranny, the poor men had the most power.
Finally, 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 followers and dependants, allowing them to attract a following in all three classes — and allowing 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 well 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 will testify before the gods that Aristides, for all his priggishness, never had any end in view other than the good of Athens. His party, if you can call 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 followed the path of arete with no end in view but the good of their city.
Naturally, that fourth party was the smallest.
So, I had fallen 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 called.
Themistocles was a handsome man, tall, well-built, with broad shoulders and long legs and a full beard like a fisherman. He had a sort of bluff, hail-fellow-well-met humour that made men like him. He stepped forward, but I’d have known him anyway, as he was a head taller than his followers 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 all 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 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, all 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 will 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 me.
I stepped towards him and his people began to close around me. ‘I am Arimnestos of Plataea,’ I called out. ‘And if one of you lays a hand on me, I’ll start killing 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-killer.
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 will only benefit you.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’ he asked.
Aristides was watching me. I shrugged. ‘I would not tell every man on this road,’ I said. ‘Nor have I bought a mob. I have bought information, and I paid well.’
‘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 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?’