Adamenteis never had a chance to rally his supporters. We put it to the vote and the thing was done.
Athens chose to trust Sparta with its fleet. Friends — in many ways, it was Athens’ finest hour. Someone had to trust a stranger.
And with that trust came the scent of victory. Until Athens conceded that it would give the command to Sparta, we were some sixty odd cities with a common language and a lot of shared hatred. But after the question of the arch-navarchos was settled, the smaller cities began to show signs of fight. And as the last week of the conference rolled along, Themistocles framed a resolution calling for an even division of spoils — as in the Iliad — and the wording suggested strongly that if we won, we would punish those who stood with the Medes.
On the last day, Leonidas walked among the delegates and asked each how many hoplites his city could bring. And when he had counted them all, he nodded, and said — quite loud, so that it carried acorss the temple -
‘Sixty thousand.’
Silence fell.
‘If every city here does as they have promised, we Greeks can put sixty thousand hoplites in the field.’ He looked around, imperious in his scarlet cloak, but he would have been imperious naked.
Adamanteis didn’t exactly shrug, but he said — loudly enough to be heard — ’Xerxes will have a million.’
Themistocles laughed. It was a derisive, orator’s laugh, but it cut through whatever noble thing Leonidas meant to say.
‘We Greeks are poor. We don’t have enough wood to build more ships, nor enough food to feed all our people, nor enough bronze to make more armour, nor iron to make weapons.’ He raised his hands. ‘But thanks to the will of the gods, we will have enough Persians to allow all of us to be heroes.’
We arrived at the conference as factions — as Megarans and Plataeans and Lacedaemonians and Athenians and Thebans and Thesbians.
Most of us left it as Greeks.
5
The Vale of Tempe — 480 BCE
Tempe, (plur.) a valley in Thessaly, between mount Olympus at the north, and Ossa at the south, through which the river Peneus flows into the Ægean. The poets have described it as the most delightful spot on the earth, with continual cooling shades, and verdant walks, which the warbling of birds rendered more pleasant and romantic, and which the gods often honored with their presence. Tempe extended about five miles in length but varied in the dimensions of its breadth so as to be in some places scarce one acre and a half wide. All vallies that are pleasant, either for their situation or the mildness of their climate, are called Tempe by the poets.
That winter was one of the most delightful of my life. Perhaps it is only warm and full of light in memory — perhaps I see it that way in contrast to the two years of fear and horror that were to come.
But I had my daughter, and my son. I had Aristides all to myself, except for Jocasta, who has always been one of my ideal women. We were a happy house. Hipponax might have made a great deal of trouble, with his tendency to violence and his angry need for my approval, locked in a house with two old heroes, some women, and a lot of wine. But he didn’t. He’d had a strong mother and a strong grandfather — he had good bones, as Plataeans say. And he had Hector.
It was not all ease and light — the two of them stole a sacred bull and drove it through the town; they cut a swathe through the town’s unmarried girls and that had consequences; and when they were caught drunkenly spraying urine on a statue of Pan erected by the victors of Marathon, I decided it was time to send them away for a while. I sent them to Idomeneaus on the mountain.
And Euphonia adored them. It could have gone either way, but she chose to follow them around and gaze adoringly at each in turn — and to brag about their exploits to other girls.
As for me, as I say, I was with Aristides. When you are twenty, men of thirty-five seem quite old — and finished, mature, fully developed. But when you come around to that old age, you find yourself young, fit, hale — and still growing, if not in size, then in skill and maturity and some other ways. At thirty-five, I found Aristides to be more the man I wanted to be than any of them — even Leonidas. Oh, he was still a prig. His sense of honesty was so absolute that he would insist on telling his wife where she had gained weight, or how her breasts had looked when she was a maiden.
You may laugh, but I’d like to suggest to the men present that, unless you are Aristides, this is a foolish way to behave with your wife or anyone else’s.
Yet despite this failing, and his stubbornness, which could be blind and obstinate or pure and noble, he was in every other way the man I wanted to be. I especially admired his calm. I am a good man in a crisis — none better on a blood-drenched deck. But tell me that the house is out of olive oil and the best maidservant is pregnant and guests are at the door, and I am a very difficult man.
One night, with the winter rains pouring on the fields of Green Plataea and Kitharon lost in the dark and clouds, we lay — promiscuously, let me add. One aspect of change that Aristides had accepted was private dinners with the women in chairs. We had lamb in something saffron and sticky, and a slave had dropped the whole platter, and in a spectacular display of terror — he was new — he’d then collapsed across the as-yet-undamaged food, and then, leaping to his feet, managed to smear saffroned mutton on my second-best chiton.
Really, it was as good as Athenian comedy.
But I shot off my kline and struck him. Then I was in the kitchen, demanding that my butler get the mess cleaned up, when Jocasta brushed past me, shot me a withering glare, and snapped her fingers for attention.
They all ignored me and looked at her.
‘That was an accident and nothing to be afraid of,’ she said crisply. ‘Get Paolis cleaned up and see if we can have those nice large beans from last night — eh?’ She smiled at the cook, who had to smile back.
Then she turned on me — the very look that I would give to a helmsman who abused his authority on one of my ships. ‘Would you be kind enough to step in here?’ she asked, stepping into the cook’s tiny office.
I had to bend my head to get in, and I was so close to Jocasta that I could smell the mint on her skin.
‘The trouble with men is that, since they feel they are best at crises, they seek to create a crisis at every turn,’ she snapped. ‘A new slave dropped a platter. The Queen of Sparta was not at your table, and by Aphrodite, sir, even if she had been, there was no cause to strike the boy, who was already terrified. Your anger communicated itself to the servants, and now it will be an hour before we eat.’
Yes, yes.
The nice thing about getting lessoned by Jocasta is that, like a good trierarch, her authority was absolute. I couldn’t even manage male indignation. I merely stood, the hero of a dozen battles, and was dressed down — rightfully so — for cowardice and panic in the face of a dropped platter.
I’m sure a dozen other incidents occurred that winter, but that’s the one that sticks with me.
The three forges roared, too. They made armour and helmets, and the small phalanx of Plataeans grew better and better armed, until we were a fair show. Women complained that pots were not being repaired, and indeed, Myron called our building the ‘Forge of Ares’. Heron the ironsmith took on a pair of journeymen from Thrace — that is, Greeks from the Greek cities of Thrace, not Thracians — and they made magnificent swords, folded and folded again while still white hot so that the breath of the smith god showed on the surface, or that’s what they told me. Their swords were as good as the sword I’d brought from Babylon — flexible, sharp and beautiful. I had one hilted up in ivory.
And we made money. Aristides mocked me and said I was now a true aristocrat — my forges made money, my farms made money, and my ships, captained by other men who took the risks — Moire made a winter voyage to Aegypt — made yet more money, so that I sat and learned to be calm and dignified at home while other men worked.