“Stop, honey.” I grabbed Diotima’s arm. “Come with me.” I turned her around, and we walked the other way at a brisk pace, only to see behind us a mob of Spartans with hard eyes and harder clubs. At their head was Skarithos, who only moments ago had threatened me.
The Spartans stopped when I turned toward them.
I looked over my shoulder. The Athenians stood at the other end with arms crossed and grim expressions.
It occurred to me that I’d angered a lot of people. The Spartans had insisted an Athenian killed Arakos. Instead, I’d proven it was one of their own. Pericles had insisted the Athenians were innocent. Instead, I’d proven an Athenian had cheated at the Nemean Games, and tried again at the Olympics. Both Sparta and Athens were in bad odor with the other cities, and it was all my fault.
At the very least, I was about to take a beating.
Diotima was safe. Hellenes wouldn’t harm a woman for what her husband had done. What was about to happen would be painful for her to watch, but not as painful as it would be for me.
Diotima saw the problem, but my brave girl wasn’t scared, merely perplexed. There was no other path and no building in sight in which we could hide.
“We could run cross-country,” she suggested.
“Outrun trained soldiers?”
“Nico! Nico!” It was Pindar. He ran down the street past the Spartans-he didn’t even notice them-waving a sheet of papyrus in his right hand and holding his lyre in his left. “Listen to this, you’re going to love it,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Pindar, I don’t have time to talk,” I said.
“I’ve written your praise song, Nicolaos. I didn’t even use one of the prepared ones. You get an authentic Pindar original composition, my boy. One of my better efforts, too, if I say so myself.” He began to tune his lyre.
At that instant, both mobs advanced.
“I’ll listen some other time, Pindar. I really have to go.”
“But this is your Olympic victory song, lad! They’ll remember your name forever. There are men who would die for one of these.”
“I know. Send your bill to One-Eye. He owes me.”
I jumped onto the nearest chariot and snatched the reins from a slave. He protested, but I ignored him. The chariot was rigged for two horses and ready to go.
I held out my hand. “Come with me, Diotima.”
Diotima’s eyes shone. “Father will be furious with you again.”
“No, he won’t,” I said. “We’re going to Athens, for the official marriage we promised our fathers.”
Diotima smiled and stepped up onto the chariot. “Let’s go.”
I whipped the horses, and the chariot lurched off across the open country, with Diotima at my side, pursued by an angry mob of Spartans and Athenians, and Pindar, waving his music.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This author’s note talks about the real history behind the story, interesting facts that I couldn’t squeeze into the plot, and trivia to do with the characters. Which means it’s full of spoilers. If you haven’t read the book yet, this would be an excellent time to avert your eyes and turn to the front!
The pankration was the most brutal sport in Olympic history, probably the most lethal too. So it will come as no surprise that pankration had a huge fan base, even more so than chariot racing. A pankratist who won at the Olympics was treated like a rock star. Pankratists were the highest-paid athletes in ancient Greece. It was normal for a winner to be voted honors by his home city; he’d receive some special reward, typically free food for life-more valuable than you might think in chronically hungry ancient Greece-and he could expect his statue to be raised in his city’s agora.
Pankration is virtually unknown today. In 393 AD the Christian Emperor Theodosius banned the Olympic Games and all other pagan festivals, and that killed pankration. Which is a pity because if it had survived, pankration would be Europe’s answer to the Asian martial arts phenomenon.
From the many surviving pictures on vases, it appears pankration was vaguely similar to judo, only a judo in which punching, kicking, and choking your opponent to death were perfectly legal. If you’re interested, there’s a modern revival of the sport; I assume the rules have been toned down slightly.
Despite the violence, there was a great deal of science to pankration. Like all martial artists, a top practitioner could face a better-armed man and have the skills to win. In the time of Alexander the Great, for example, the best pankratist in the world was a certain Dioxippus of Athens. Dioxippus, in a challenge, took on a fully armed and armored Macedonian soldier. That means the Macedonian wore bronze armor and a helmet, and carried a sharp-edged sword. Dioxippus not only won, but did so with such contempt for his opponent that he didn’t even bother to hurt him, merely subduing the Macedonian in an irresistible lock. The Macedonians were ashamed that Dioxippus had beaten one of their best so handily. In revenge they framed him for a major theft and he, feeling his honor destroyed, took his own life.
But the most dramatic event in Olympic history-both ancient and modern-occurred with another pankratist. There once was a man named Arrachion who won the pankration at three Olympiads in succession! To win this fighting sport once was amazing; to do so three times in a row implies an almost supernatural ability to hurt people. Arrachion clearly was not someone you would wish to annoy.
Here is how Arrachion won his third Olympic crown. This excerpt is from the ancient writer Philostratus, in his book Imagines. We take up the fight with our hero in big trouble:
Arrachion’s opponent, having already a grip around his waist, thought to kill him and put an arm around his neck to choke off his breath. At the same time he slipped his legs through Arrachion’s and wound his feet inside Arrachion’s knees, pulling back until the sleep of death began to creep over Arrachion’s senses.
But Arrachion was not done yet, for as his opponent began to relax the pressure of his legs, Arrachion kicked away his own right foot and fell heavily to the left, holding his opponent at the groin, with his left knee still holding his opponent’s foot firmly in place.
So violent was the fall that the opponent’s left ankle was wrenched from his socket. The man strangling Arrachion signaled with his hand that he gave up.
Thus Arrachion became a three-time Olympic victor at the moment of his death. His corpse received the victory crown.
His corpse received the victory crown.
Arrachion had been at the top of his sport for twelve years. He certainly knew the consequences of what he was doing, and yet he knowingly sent himself to his death, because Olympic victory was more important than life itself.
This historically true scene provided me with the inspiration for Timo’s self-sacrifice in Sacred Games. In the book it might read like one of the less believable pieces of melodrama, but the essence of that incredible event actually happened.
Timodemus of Athens was a real athlete of the ancient world. He came from one of those sporting families that seem to throw up great athletes in every generation. Between them, the family of the genos Timonidae won four victories at the Pythian Games, eight at the Isthmian Games, and seven at the Nemean Games, one of which Timo collected himself.
After the Nemean victory, Pindar wrote a praise song in which he predicted that Timo would win at the Olympics, which he duly did.
Pindar was the most famous praise singer of his day. They were poets-for-hire, who for a fee would create a poem or song to honor a man whose deeds made him worthy of praise. Pindar really did write a praise song for Timodemus, which is known today as Nemean 2. This book begins with my own, very loose, translation of the first stanza. This is the one and only time that I’ve used my own translation of an ancient Greek text rather than rely on an academic version. To make it more accessible to modern readers, I cut some words and changed the meter. I hope Pindar’s psyche will forgive me.